From their travels to your closet…

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By FP contributor, Jules Boyd.

Have you ever wondered where your clothes come from? Thought about what they looked like, from initial sketch to finished product? For Kelly Davis And Nikki DeJesus, two in-house designers for our free-est collection, that’s just part of their job.

free-est, a combination of our former dresses-forward Summer and knitwear-focused FP Beach lines, recently merged into a cohesive, jet-set ready collection of our gauziest, billowiest, and, well, free-est silhouettes to transport you to an oasis no matter where you are. I sat with both Kelly and Nikki to learn a little more about the design inspiration behind the brands and the journey that led to free-est.

Free People: First things first: let's talk about your outfits today! What was the inspiration, if any, behind them?

Nikki DeJesus.: My top is actually part of a set, and the skirt is the Bubble Bliss! I just love these proportions, and it’s a really hot day so I just wanted to throw-and-go and be done.

Kelly Davis.: I’m wearing the Zon Jumpsuit — I also put this on to literally throw-and-go because I don’t want to think too hard in the morning, which honestly comes down to a lot of the things I wear. I chose this because this was part of our first FP Beach/Summer collaboration before we were free-est, the top part is my Beach fabric, and the pants are Nikki’s woven from Summer. We wanted to use each other’s mediums!

FP: How long have you both worked at Free People? Was this your first job out of school?

K.D.: I’ve been here almost 15 years! This was my first job.

N.D.: I’ve been here about 13 years. This was also my first job — we never wanted to leave!

FP: Did you both go to school for design? How did it morph into a career?

N.D.: It’s funny — Ana, our Chief Creative Officer, is a second cousin of mine. She inspired me to get into design when I was young, so I feel like I’ve been following her path a bit. But I’ve always been a creative person; I had to wear a uniform to school most of my life, so dressing up was a creative outlet for me. My grandma also sewed, so she taught me how to sew, and it all just felt natural to me. I went to FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology) for design!

K.D.: I was always into art, and I knew I wanted to do something with that. By my junior year of high school I had taken just about every art course I could. Then they offered a new course focusing on fashion illustration, and that’s when I realized I could do this as a career and started envisioning art on people and went on to study it in school.

FP: Did you start out designing for free-est (formerly our FP Beach/Summer collections)? How did those former labels come about, and what led to them merging into free-est?

K.D.: I was originally on the knits team, specifically designing for We The Free products. Beach had been around the entire time I’ve been in the company; it started under the knits branch, and it was a lot smaller back then — it was maybe five pieces. Knits are a lot of remade T-shirts, and my former boss would literally cut up those tees and turn them into dresses or tops. That’s how the line started and how I found myself designing for it!

N.D.: I started by mainly designing dresses using our woven fabrication. For our Summer collection, they wanted to expand the dresses into that same sensibility with gauzy dresses or pieces you’d wear on the beach, but more elevated.

K.D.: The two of us work so closely together — we travel together, we have the same buyer — so it felt like our collections just make more sense together. We also weren’t competing with one another, moreso supporting, and building a collection and lifestyle brand. We just felt like there were strengths that each of our mediums had that the other couldn’t use because of the different fabrics, so it was a matter of officially putting us under one roof.

FP: I love that! You mentioned you travel together, do you do that a lot for work? Do you find a lot of design inspiration while traveling?

K.D.: Yes! So much. We definitely shop a lot in different places, but we also love to people-watch. We always try to make one of our destinations a beach city.

FP: You can definitely see that beach sensibility with the free-est styles!

K.D.: Absolutely. We have our own set of rules: we don’t do prints, we don’t do a lot of trims, and we do very clean and minimal silhouettes. And while we travel, we’re probably wearing one of our styles because they’re so easy to wear and travel with. That also helps with the design process — like, ‘Oh, this should be a crinkly material because that’s easy to pack.’

FP: Can you both walk me through your typical design process? Where do you start?

N.D.: We truly can start with anything!

K.D.: Sometimes we see a fabric and say right away, “I know what I want to do with that!” Other times, it’s about visuals we’re passing back and forth.

N.D.: It could be a detail we’re all into — like smocking, pintucking, or draping — then we build it out. We try to start with a story first to jump off from.

FP: Can you explain what stories are?

K.D.: It’s basically a concept that we can tackle in our own way. For example, we just used a “retro” sensibility for a design story that ended up being our Blair Sweater Mini.

FP: Can you talk a little about original design inspiration for the free-est line?

N.D.: For me, it was really ethereal. Like, something you can wear on the beach that’s flowing in the air and everyone is watching you.

K.D.: Yes, and you have so much movement with her woven fabric I was talking about. Whereas with the knit fabric, which I design with, it’s super laid-back and casual but can easily be dressed up with the right accessories. I think the main reason this line has been able to sustain for so long is that we have silhouettes you’re not really able to find anywhere else.

N.D.: We definitely try to do timeless designs.

FP: Do you have a specific design in mind that you’re really proud of?

N.D.: The Extratropical Maxi! I remember being a scared, timid designer and wondering if it would work. I mocked it out of a bunch of gauzy dresses, and luckily the buyer at the time believed in it. It turned into a bestseller, and still is today.

K.D.: Sweaters as a whole are exciting for me, like my Hailee Set, and it started as a passion project that I’d asked to do. Now beach sweaters are a huge business, and that came out of me just wanting to design them!

FP: Okay, last question: if you could wear a single piece of clothing for the rest of your life, what would it be?

K.D.: I would literally wear a bathing suit if I could every single day — which is probably why I also design free-est swim.

N.D.: I would wear a sleeveless shift mini dress, just something really easy. We definitely design this way, I’m a little more feminine-

K.D.: -and I’m a little more laid back. Honestly, our outfits today are a perfect representation of us!