A Friday Evening in the Timo Weiland Showroom

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Follow Style Unzipped through a special three-part daily series featuring an insider view of rising fashion star TIMO WEILAND

It’s a damp and chilly November night in Manhattan, but inside the Timo Weiland showroom the temperature couldn’t be hotter.

Part 1 of 3:

It’s seven thirty on a damp and chilly Friday night in Manhattan, and our cab has just pulled in front of an unassuming and unmarked SoHo midrise. A quick call confirms that this is the correct building. We relinquish our cab to a group of pedestrians huddled under an umbrella nearby and exit onto the freezing sidewalk. What has brought me out on this miserable night is the opportunity to meet with fashion’s newest wunderkind, Timo Weiland and to ease some cold weather anxiety by previewing his spring collection. Since the recent barrage of press coverage in everything from WWD to Interview to Style.com it would be hard not to know who Weiland is, but just in case, I’ll recap: at just 26 years old Weiland has gone from a desk job at Deutsche Bank Securities to wallet designer to neckwear innovator to full on fashion entrepreneur. The latest role having been realized with an eponymous label founded in 2008 with partner, Alan Eckstein. A mutual friend was invited to stop by the showroom to preorder pieces from the Spring 2010 collection in celebration of her recent birthday. I have managed to score an accompanying role replete with press privileges.

We come into the building’s dark, concrete entryway and climb up to the second floor office. A heavy door swings open into a small foyer revealing a cheerful assistant. We are escorted into the main showroom where Timo awaits, looking the epitome of casual chic in a white tee adorned by an undone bowtie overlay of the same color subtly sewn around the neck—appropriate for a man who made his name with neckwear—and pleated trousers from his men’s collection that deftly balloon at the hip and taper at the ankle. He introduces himself in a soft and slightly raspy voice with a warm, settling quality to it that makes me feel like an old friend. Rolling racks of clothes abound and shoe stacks decorate the landscape like chimneys, as a bouncing soot black Standard Poodle navigates the terrain. The remainder of the room is occupied by a large desk and an open kitchen where someone has been baking. Spread around the kitchen counter are Alan Eckstein and Megan Maguire Steele, the collection’s PR representative. The atmosphere is warm and familial, like grandma’s house only much, much hipper. It is after regular work hours on a Friday night. Cheese and crackers are out. Cans of Pabst Blue Ribbons (a frequent Maguire Steele sponsorship partner) have been poured—I later notice that the dog is wearing a Pabst collar—and a jovial happy hour energy persists despite the fact that everyone is still working hard with no foreseeable exit time.

Late nights are nothing new to Weiland and Eckstein. As their debut runway show at Fashion Week approached this September days were long and sleep was short. Weiland explains, “we did alterations and corrections up to the day of the show, sometimes spending all night altering,” and later confesses to spending four days with their fit model perfecting the tailored curves of the derriere on a pair of cummerbund topped accordion shorts. Making the collection’s success even more impressive is that it marks the brand’s transition from accessories to ready-to-wear; an experience that Weiland sums up simply as “intense”. To keep from being overwhelmed by the pressures and demands that accompany a successful clothing line, he draws from the triage training he received when working as a lifeguard growing up, and prioritizes according to, “what is the most urgent and what will harm other people’s schedules the least.” But with his original venture, Timo Wallets, still going strong and the handmade neckwear that established the brand having grown into an entity all its own, Weiland admits that most days are unavoidably chaotic.

Continue to Part 2 of 3 . . .