Rewriting the fashion rules with Lena Wells
From Trendsetting Designer to Creating Her Own Sustainable Brand, LWN
We're in the midst of Fashion Week season, so it's apt that this week's interview features a seasoned Korean-American designer, Lena Wells, who has honed her craft behind the scenes for over 30 years. Wells recently launched her own label, LWN, as a response to what she has learned in the industry and is now rewriting the rules.
“I started wearing clothes that facilitate a creative lifestyle - being a mom, managing my business, being outdoors and indoors - all while letting my clothes serve me. I’m creating pieces that are inclusive and easy, and may seem very basic.” shared Lena. Central to her brand’s philosophy is sustainability, “I'm not doing corseted jackets anymore because I don't want to have to start over and have a whole new line in six weeks. It seems insane. I don't want to have a built in obsolescence and shelf life from the things I put in the world. So that is the challenge”.
Tracing Lena's fashion trajectory is like observing the trends in fashion unfold in real-time. She designed, innovated, and led the path as foundational pillars of fashion morphed and evolved, from diffusion lines to high-end designer collaborations to technical sportswear.
Lena attended RISD, studying apparel design and joined the press teams at Paul Smith and design at Calvin Klein in their 90s heydays. After meeting her British boyfriend turned husband, the couple moved to London where Lena ditched the more corporate and commercial environments to join Hussein Chalayan’s team working on his womenswear line with the small team of six at the time. Chalayan’s work blurred the line between fashion and art (see the iconic coffee table dress), offering Wells a front seat to an incredible education. Lena went on to work Chalayan’s menswear line and later ran his diffusion line (diffusion lines, popular in the 90s and early aughts, were the lower priced secondary line from a fashion house. They have been replaced in more recent times by collaborations, streetwear versions of the line declining the barrier to entry, and of course, fast fashion).
After Chalayan, Wells went to work at Puma, leading their high end designer collaborations followed by joining McQ (McQueen’s diffusion line) as senior womenswear designer. In 2009, Chalayan joined Puma as creative director and Lena decided to return. “I was well versed in a language, aesthetic, and process of their creative director. It was a wonderful experience…very sport and tech based,” she recounts. Her journey then took her to Band of Outsiders, an award-winning brand based in Los Angeles that unfortunately declared bankruptcy in 2015. She has truly seen it all.
After relocating her family to Los Angeles for Band of Outsiders, Lena was hesitant to move once again. “I’m Korean American and growing up in preppy Massachusetts and then living in London, I always felt like an outsider. So when I came to LA, I thought, this is my place. My people”. Lena started consulting and freelancing with brands like J.Crew, J Brand, VF Corp. One project, an organic Kundalini line, piqued her interest in sustainability. At first, Lena was skeptical of how she would make it work, but quickly became enamored with the possibilities of working with deadstock and being part of a solution, not landfill. “We used to plan a season 18 months in advance, so it’s antithetical to my whole training [to work with deadstock],” reflected Lena. But her years of working with European brands gave her the unique ability to spot quality in a fabric graveyard and give it a new life.
With this kernel, LWN launched a year ago with a collection of unisex basics that are easy, natural, and joyful. Lena’s line is inspired by her mom and the other Korean ajummas that meet early in the morning at the park “and they are all out there geared up with so much swag” to the quiet moments with her daughter when she was young and they’d get cozy in their “home clothes” together before bedtime. “The whole idea is that you don’t have to get suited up and armored. You don’t have to change your clothes to do your life”.
A special element in each of her pieces is the “human thumbprints” she designs as little easter eggs. Things like hand painted fabric labels sewn in and swing tags that are rough around the edges, made by Lena and her mom while they watch Korean soaps (“thank god there’s a lot of Korean dramas to watch while we work”). Her latest fall drop includes spray painted cosmic dots that were done in collaboration with a supplier in Vernon who started off spray painting surfboards in the 70s. All of these elements add layers seemingly simple clothes and are small way to remind you a human was here.
LWN was recently catapulted by a mention in style and culture Substack,
, leading the collection to sell out near instantly. Another memorable moment Lena shared was a school teacher who bought one of LWN’s cropped wool shackets at a craft fair in San Francisco, “It has these pockets and bracelet length sleeves and she [the school teacher] is like you made it for me. It was so lovely to have that kind of unaffected gratitude from a non-fashion person who works hard and really enjoys the garment.” In Wells’ prior life she’d catch a snippet from the sales team or a soundbite in the showroom, but nothing compared to how intensely personal the feedback was building her own brand.
At her , Lena is an artist and more akin to her early days at Chalayan - pushing Boundaries between art and fashion. The end result may be something you wear everyday versus see in a museum, but that’s also the point. “There are enough clothes out there. So how do I make this in the best way within my own flex”.
You can find LWN on Instagram and buy direct on their website here.