Advisry’s Keith Herron Designs With the Artist in Mind
On the top floor of a Brooklyn apartment building lies the home base for Keith Herron’s Advisry. Serving as the brand’s design studio, the multi-bedroom space offers a look into both the vision and the life of the California native. More importantly, the office serves as a symbol of home and the artistic elements that have fueled his journey thus far.
Herron is a designer by trade, but the enchantment behind his brand doesn’t rest solely on fashion. Rather, his early interests in music shows of equal importance within his studio, occupying an entire room. Silver racks filled with shoes and previous collection merchandise sit next door to a bed concealed by rolling hills of clothes. Out in the living room, you’ll find tools of the trade, from a Singer sewing machine to a heat press before you arrive at Herron’s hall of fame wall – featuring Kanye West, NIGO, N.E.R.D, Childish Gambino, Frank Ocean, a poster of Martin Scorcese’s 1985 film After Hours and more. The space is uniquely inventive, personal and irrefutably genuine – all traits of Herron’s NYC-based label, which recently showed its tenth collection this past New York Fashion Week.
More than just showcasing what the designer is capable of, Advisry’s latest line demonstrates just how far the brand has come since a 13-year-old Herron was cooking up designs on PowerPoint in 2014. Whether it be using the software’s magnetic lasso tool or crafting stacked designs, those early years saw Herron using his many inspirations from brands like Billionaire Boys Club and Diamond Supply to invest in himself by creating his own brand. He focused on t-shirts as most teenagers do, but the capacity to create, regardless of medium, is what continued to refine Advisry as he moved from tees to more intricate ready-to-wear items.
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The brand has graduated from tees to ready-to-wear. When Herron moved to New York City about five years ago, the brand moved into new territory as Herron’s approach to fashion as a vehicle of expression started rapidly expanding. “Moving definitely opened my eyes to another side of fashion as a form of expression. Just because in California [Herron is originally from Sacramento], everything’s so easy,” he tells Hypebeast. “Whereas in New York, you’re going from place to place and you might run into X person without wanting to run into them. It showed me different ways to get dressed.”
Since then, Advisry has developed a style that sits at the intersection of preppy and cool. It’s not so rigid in terms of what each item or collection has to be. Rather, it continuously refines its attention on preppy, laid-back garments in a way that feels indicative of the larger community it serves.
“The most important objective is to reflect and amplify the creative voices of our generation.”
“I call [Advisry’s design language] easy luxury, which is combining the feel of California cool with luxury cuts and materials.” Graphic chunky knits, remixed outerwear, and hybridized tracksuits are just a few of the pieces the brand has sent down the runway recently. But for those who’ve looked closer, the past two seasons have been particularly important for Herron’s label.
A pivotal growth moment came with the brand’s ninth collection as it marked its introduction to womenswear. Entitled “Masculin Feminin,” the SS23 collection marked a turning point in how Herron approached the craft of design. Before, he solely focused on menswear, but still, his collections came to exist within an entirely unisex design atmosphere. Herron then used that reality as an opportunity to expand the Advisry world, with part of the challenge revolving around not letting his personal style dictate the design choices. More importantly, the collection was a place of exploration, which allowed him to understand the woman a bit more and rethink menswear.
“I titled it “Masculin Feminin” because I was curious about the way that womenswear would translate to menswear, the same way the mens [line] was able to translate to the women’s,” he says. “It references a film by Jean-Luc Godard in which he interviews women and tries to understand women through the perspective of one man. That’s what I was doing with that collection.”
With the initial challenge of womenswear in the rearview, Herron upped the ante for SS24. Offering a little bit of everything, the “Technicolor” collection offered the brand’s most expansive collection with garments like tweed suiting, sequined button-downs, relaxed adidas tracksuits and collaborative knitwear, sculptural suiting, mixed-fabric dresses and cocoon-esque statement pieces moving across the runway. With it, the collection aptly visualized how Advisry has grown in a decade. Rightfully so, it was Herron’s favorite brand moment to date. In the most elevated fashion, “Technicolor” still maintained the prep with an edge styling that has become an undeniable brand signifier.1 of 2
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But the core of the brand lies in who it is created for. Whether it be the musician, producer, painter, sculptor or designer, Herron’s label holds these creatives near to his heart. “I surround myself with a community of artists,” Herron says. As a multidisciplinary artist himself, the extent of Herron’s life has grown and flourished within this space as it is one he so deeply understands. That is exactly why with each passing season, Advisry not only gets better but uncovers a new detail of its character. “The most important objective is to reflect and amplify the creative voices of our generation through a multidisciplinary community that’s founded on inclusivity, curation, and integrity.”
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