Graham Tyler Is a Millennial Designer With a New-Old Aesthetic

Graham Tyler’s All the Stars Are a Riot of Flowers installation at the George Billis GalleryKevin Czopek/BFA.com

It was Adam Selman who encouraged Tyler to make clothes of his own design, which he started to do after teaching himself how to sew. After some trial and error, the designer launched his namesake brand. It is built around the idea of curating archives, meaning that each season Tyler aims to let his collectsion “more so be the artifacts from my research and less so about just making clothes.” In this way Tyler is walking the line between art, which he defines as pieces made with “intention,” and fashion. “I think that when you want to make work that people care about,” Tyler says, “making things that people have on their person helps them to connect much easier than to things that they just hang on the wall.”

Graham Tyler’s All the Stars Are a Riot of Flowers installation at the George Billis GalleryPhoto: Kevin Czopek / BFA.com / Courtesy of CCPR

Tyler’s conducted his research for fall 2020 at The Morgan Library & Museum, where he focused on a file the artist Joseph Cornell had put together on The Little Prince, but which mysteriously included other ephemera, like dried leaves. While trying to unravel this mysterious treasure, Tyler discovered Cornell’s unfinished film, Jack’s Dream, which he felt was a good summation of the artist’s (and his own) thoughts on “this idea of childhood and never being able to get back to it, even though you do a lot of things to try to feel the same way you did as a child.” At Tyler’s presentation, the film was projected on a “screen” that was a white shirt (the brand’s signature item) blown up into gigantic proportions.

Graham Tyler fall 2020 ready-to-wearPhoto: Graham Tyler / Courtesy of the photographer

There’s a sense of play to Tyler’s work, which this season had a wistful, fairy-tale quality to it: A black sweater had the word memories embroidered in white script across the neckline, a sash of key charms were strung across a Victorian-style jacket, and a technical jacquard had a turreted towers motif. Though you wouldn’t guess it, Tyler’s work is new-old, both in approach and creation. Handwork is combined with technology. The jacquards, for example, are woven in pattern-specific shapes to avoid waste. The designer is currently working with an astrophysicist friend with the goal of eventually making his brand “completely circular—or as circular as it can be—from a textile perspective.”

Graham Tyler’s All the Stars Are a Riot of Flowers installation at the George Billis GalleryPhoto: Kevin Czopek / BFA.com / Courtesy of CCPR

Though the past has a lot of pull on Tyler, he’s not mired in it; it’s unexpected combinations that interest him. “I live in a city that’s a melting pot of things and cultures and time periods, and I think that my work is that in many ways,” he says. “To me it’s very, very American. It feels American today.” It also speaks to a new generation of consumers who are searching for meaning as well as style. “I think almost all of my friends almost exclusively shop vintage, and it’s because they love the idea of collectsing,” says Tyler. Asked why he thinks millennials are clinging to nostalgia, the designer responds that they are disillusioned with the present and “want any time but now.” They ache, he opines, for “the idealism of an imagined past and the possibilities for the future.”