PSNY's Dao-Yi Chow and Maxwell Osbourne Discuss Life Post-DKNY and 2017 Goals

PSNY co-founders Dao-Yi Chow and Maxwell Osbourne exited DKNY earlier this month. In their first interview since the departure, they talk about what they’ve learned, what they were proud of, the PSNY brand and achieving new goals in 2017. The duo will showcase their new men’s and women’s collection at New York’s Fashion Week on February 12 at 11 a.m. ET. Check out a few excerpts from their sit-down with Nicole Phelps of Vogue below and read the full piece here.

Proudest moments at DKNY:

Dao-Yi: I think the proudest thing was the way that all of the teams came together, all of the senior management across all the departments: design, obviously, merchandising, the retail team, the PR and marketing teams, all those teams coming together for the vision, everyone from the CEO down to the people in the stores, that’s what we’re proudest of.

Maxwell: It wasn’t an easy task. You had to knock down the walls and make everybody feel like one. It took a year for everybody to start to connect, and to feel like one unit. On that last show [in September], that’s where we felt that everybody knew their role, what to do, how to do it, knew the vision, and believed in the vision. Everybody on the design team had been at DKNY for a long time, so they knew an old way of working; it took some time, but everybody embraced the new way. That’s the culture we wanted to have. No matter how big it is, to treat it like a small company is something we wanted to do.

Dao-Yi: I think culture is an important word. That was our number one priority, to create a vibe that people could believe in. Like Max was saying, the last show was the culmination. People really trusted each other, believed in each other, and loved working there.

Lessons learned at DKNY:

Dao-Yi: It was such a huge business, that was one of the learnings: just learning how big the company was, and how segmented. It meant something different to the woman here in the States, vs. the woman in Asia, vs. the Middle East, vs. Europe. Finding out what the brand meant to all these people and how that affected business in each of those regions and trying to reel all that in, and have one focal starting point.

On running two labels at once:

Dao-Yi: It would be a lot harder if you didn’t have great people behind you. And we had the best of both worlds. We had our team back at Public School, who gave us the blessing to do it and the belief that we’d be able to split our time, and we had the best, best team at DKNY, a big part of that team was a team we inherited. Another learning was finding how passionate people are about the DKNY brand, about Donna, what she meant to women. We had these two amazing teams that were able to pick up really quickly on not having us there full time.

Maxwell: One of the reasons we moved Public School off calendar is because at the end of a show it’s emotional. You put a lot of effort into it, and to do it again within a couple of days and be emotional again, it’s a lot.

On focusing just on PSNY again:

Maxwell: For me, it feels like a recharge, there’s a new battery in my pack. Everything at Public School is reactionary as opposed to being at a big company where it takes a while to do things. For me, it feels like a whole new day.

Dao-Yi: We loved being at DKNY and working with that team. So, that part of it, feels you’re already nostalgic about the process, but like Max was saying, we can take that energy and put it back into Public School.

On PSNY in 2017:

Dao-Yi: Creatively that’s how we think. We’ve never thought men’s then women’s, or women’s then men’s. It’s always been a joint thought. It makes sense for us. The vision is the guy and the girl, and they’re not separated. Especially for us, a lot of the silhouettes and fabrications cross over, so why wouldn’t you show it that way? That’s the complete vision, any other way it’s not the complete picture.

On a possible storefront:

Maxwell: It’s in the future.

Dao-Yi: We’re participating in this Retail Lab that the CFDA and Cadillac have put together in January. They select x amount of designers and give them the [Cadillac House] space for three months. We’re going to have a secret not-so-secret pop-up in Paris this summer for our new Jordan and Nike collaboration. Retail has always been a passion of ours, and that was the great thing about DKNY. We had such a major hand in redesigning the New York store and learned so much about that part, we’re eager to take that info and put it back to Public School.

Goals:

Dao-Yi: Opening the distribution up a bit, especially internationally, especially in Europe, that’s a big opportunity. That and really developing our direct-to-consumer interface, whether that’s through e-commerce or these pop-ups. The great thing about Public School vs. DKNY was that we were and still are able to do things on the drop of a dime, where we didn’t maybe have that mobility at DKNY. That is something we want to continue to explore. A retail store doesn’t mean signing a 20-year lease on a space, and being locked in in those traditional ways. Retail means something completely different, whether it lives online or brick and mortar. The disruptive part of that is what excites us, what motivates us to do cool things that speak to our consumer directly. The old ways of doing things don’t apply, that freedom motivates us.

On open letter to fashion community in regards to Black Lives Matter:

Maxwell: I got a great reaction. A bunch of random people either DM’d me or emailed me. It was great. The reaction from the younger designers, was, “thanks for speaking up,” “thanks for the inspiration.” It started a whole email chain between Prabal [Gurung], Bethann [Hardison], and Edward [Enninful] from W, where we were trying to figure out a way to maximize and keep pushing that Black Lives Matter piece, or what can we do in our communities to make it really something. A lot of people did reach out and were touched.

Are you socially minded designers?

Maxwell: Every season starts with a conversation about what’s going on socially, politically. What we did in Art Basel Miami [launching a radio show] was trying to bring people together and breaking down borders.

Dao-Yi: Inherent in the Public School name is some sort of social engagement or activism. If you go to public school in New York City, you’re more than likely there with kids from tens of different cultures and backgrounds and experiences. We feel fortunate to have grown up in New York, which is why we called the brand Public School. Those experiences made us who we are. That idea of convergence and reappropriation, taking things from all different places and putting them together. That’s at the core, the essence of what Public School is. Inherently there’s always been a bigger mission than just fashion. We’re slowly figuring out the different ways to activate those things. Personally, I’d think of myself as active in terms of being politically and socially conscious. Sometimes I’m torn about how much of that should roll over into the brand. And sometimes I’m like, fuck that, this is our platform, this is what we built to be able to have a bigger voice and reach. Pre- and post-election, it didn’t really matter how much spilled over. We talked with our staff too. The thing that gets us by is coming to work and seeing our staff, which is so diverse, and so representative of the America we know, love, and appreciate.

2008 vs. now:

Dao-Yi: The stakes are higher. We’ve put in so much of our own time. Our families’ time. Our friends’ time. And all of the people who’ve contributed to getting us where we are now. There’s a body of work and time that is now in the past.

Advice for those trying to break into the business:

Dao-Yi: Be in it for the long haul. A couple of years ago I would’ve said that. Now, the entry point seems pretty attainable, pretty accessible. Some people treat it as this quick thing. For them it’s more about an expression than it is trying to dress people. If you really are trying to dress people in a bigger way, it takes a long time to have it mean something. I’d also tell the person, don’t listen to what I’m telling you. There are no rules anymore. When we first started, there were regimented rules. We felt we were bound to some of those things. Now it seems, all bets are off. You can do it your own way, if you have a clear point of view and something that you stick to, you could affect some people.