Spotlight: Keith Herron Talks Founding Advisry, NYFW & Unorthodox Creating
☆ BY SOPHIA GARCIA ☆
Photos By Jonathan Roensch for The Luna Collective
Styling & Motion Direction By Sarah Kim
BACK IN 2014, LIVING IN SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA — Keith Herron, known as Rooftop, began his first clothing line and established Advisry at just 13 years old. Now, eight years later, and operating out of New York, Advisry has expanded into a multimedia brand, involved in film production, music, fashion design and radio, among other projects. Herron is the mind behind Advisry: creative director, filmmaker and fashion designer. Selling a variety of clothing items including T-shirts, hoodies, fleeces and denim, Advisry has attracted a cult following. Its community appreciates pop culture references, refreshing designs, and the creativity that is present throughout the entire brand. Picture graphic T-shirts explaining where we feel emotions in our body, or a blue cardigan with sunflowers worn by popular alternative R&B artist Steve Lacy — all of which were designed by the self-taught designer himself, Herron.
While he may lack a traditional fashion background, Herron makes up for it with his determination, attention to detail, and love of the art form. “I like working — it’s kind of like my first nature,” he says. “It's the way I love to express myself. So I love having a lot of work. They always say that the reward for good work is more work.”
And Herron has certainly kept busy, as he releases collection after collection, visual projects, and is on to his third New York Fashion Week. Most recently, Herron released a collection with visual artist Danny Cole, founder of Creature World, a magical space embodied by immersive art projects and experiences. Cole collaborated with Herron to create a “clothing collection of wearable art,” as described by the painter’s website. The collection features work shirts with Creature World’s creature graphics, as well as work pants, denim, fleece, psychedelic thermal sweaters, and vests. The clothes are vibrant and playful, and were successfully received by both Herron and Cole’s creative communities.
Texture was an important aspect of the Creature World x Advisry collection and highly informed Herron’s design. Having worked with denim, linen, canvas and knit, he chose to introduce fleece for this collection, as well, presenting a challenge that comes with working with a new material. “A huge issue was finding the right colors that go with the perfect texture of fleece,” Herron explains. “It's crazy — there's so many types of fleece. You wouldn't even think that — it was definitely a long process to find this fleece specifically. We actually went through maybe six different types of fleece before we came to the one.” With two versions — the Black Fleece and the Orange Fleece — each item includes striped arms and features the iconic creature graphic on the back.
In another creative exposition, Herron debuted his short film, “Sometimes Dancing,” at NYFW last September. The film revolves around a young Black couple as they navigate their relationship, love, and the Black experience in America. Everyone in the film was outfitted in Advisry’s featured Season 8 collection, but as Herron explains, the short film actually broke NYFW rules. “You're supposed to do a runway show, but I literally just did a narrative film — not much to do with fashion at all,” he describes. “But a year prior I did do a runway show, and that one was digital.”
This year, Herron was invited back NYFW, but this time, his creative process is slightly different. His previous collection at NYFW did not have a theme until after he shot the runway film, which inspired the rest of his collection that followed. “Whereas this collection,” he elaborates, “I more so had the theme already ready. So this collection was more informed by the theme deliberately. But with each collection, what I really try to do is to just create without limits, basically. And I tend to notice that the story comes together without me even trying as I go on with the process.”
But just because Herron has been featured in NYFW before doesn’t mean the experience has lost its luster. “It's obviously a dream come true,” he says. “I feel like the type of designer that I represent is the designer that took the most unorthodox route to get there. So it's really cool to be able to actually be there and to be recognized on a stage like that.”
That unorthodox route being that Herron never went to fashion school and was never trained as a sewer: “I think it's gonna be more of a norm in the future,” he explains. “I know a lot of designers today are starting to look very different. Like KidSuper is one [who] just got recognized by LVMH. And he also does not know how to sew and has a background like myself, where we just create art and our medium of choice is fashion. So it’s really cool.”
In a way, this was the last thing Herron expected when he started Advisry. He knew what he wanted to do at the time, but felt no pressure to succeed at a certain level. He simply enjoyed learning and creating art. Herron partially credits his lack of pressure and knowledge at the time with why he was able to flourish as he has. “Not knowing everything allowed me to be able to create without limits.”
While Herron has grown and learned a lot since 2014, his vision for Advisry has largely remained the same. “Except the levels that we're creating on — [those] are definitely beyond what we imagined we would be doing,” he says. “Now we want to be making Oscar-level films and Paris-level fashion shows and then doing festival performances on the music side. We want do art at the highest level possible.”
But with bigger projects comes bigger teams. His collaboration with Creature World — seeing how Cole’s team functioned — inspired Herron to grow the Advisry team in New York. His ideal situation would see him solely working on the creative roles for Advisry, leaving the rest to other team members as to not drain his personal creativity. This is Herron’s plan as he continues working on new films, fashion, music, and other exciting and innovative projects, all of which are in the works.
For those looking to grow a fashion brand as Herron has, he has some words of advice: “Make what you want to be wearing,” he emphasizes. “See what's out there, but try to find things that you think are missing, which a lot of times could be something that already exists that you might just add a little bit more function to or change slightly. If you wanna make anything, never take no for an answer.”
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