Own Your Look With Fall's Latest Must-Have: Hand-Painted Pieces

The best way to own a look? Customize it with original artwork. Here, two of our favorite rising designers discuss how they're picking up a brush and redifining bespoke fashion.

Patrick Church
"I'm really inspired by the human form and exaggerating it, especially in portraiture -- I love having a sense of humor with fashion. I never consider gender when designing. I want anyone to be able to wear my pieces and feel special, and I love that my clothes speak to the queer community. My process is quite sporadic. Sometimes I search for vintage items to work with: old beaten-up pieces, especially leather jackets, and also gowns. I'm quite fearless when I paint on them -- it feels instinctive to just go for it. When you're painting something like an Hermes Birkin, you can't be scared. My new collection mixes prints of my artwork and original hand-painted items, such as my signature biker jackets. I love doing custom pieces for people because they're one of a kind."

Courtesy Tyler Wallach

Tyler Wallach
"I started out in 2009 drawing characters I called CLOUDZ and covering my college campus in stickers with my artwork. Now I make acrylic paintings that I photograph and turn into textiles for clothing and accessories. I'm inspired by Keith Haring and Kenny Scharf, the over-the-top fashion and music of the 1980s, the Nickelodeon cartoon boom in the 1990s, and even Toulouse-Lautrec. In fall 2017, I spent time as the artist in residence at Barneys New York, working to customize luxury leather bags, but things had really gotten wild when Bob the Drag Queen wore a gown I painted on the red carpet for the Season 8 finale of RuPaul's Drag Race. Since then, I've painted multiple custom couture garments for Sasha Velour and dressed queens like Jujubee and Courtney Act."

Courtesy Tyler Wallach