Behind the SS21 Kids’ Collection
The Story Behind the SS21 Kids’ Collection: Q&A with Anna
In October 2019, long before words like "lockdowns" and "coronavirus" entered our daily conversations, Anna Wallack, Misha & Puff's founder and creative director, traveled to Oaxaca, a state in southern Mexico. Oaxaca is known for its indigenous cultures and rich textile history. Amidst this backdrop, Anna worked for five days on the SS21 collection.
Months earlier, Anna had settled on a color palette, one inspired by a painting closer to home in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Anna had been strolling the MFA’s corridors one Sunday morning while her daughter attended a class. She confesses she likely walked by this painting before, but for some reason, it spoke to her that day. (It wasn't her only source of inspiration, of course. Another painting that influenced this collection: Edgar Degas's paintings of dancers.)
We asked Anna to sit down for a "behind the collection" Q&A for The Journal, which you'll find below. If you haven't already, check out her walkthrough of SS21 part 1 and part 2 on Instagram and prepare to geek out with her over all the new colors and silhouettes. :)
Tell us about the painting you spotted in the MFA and how it inspired the color palette for SS21.
ANNA: Here's what I wrote when I shared the pic on my Instagram: 'When a color palette stops you in your tracks. Jean Hélion, composition: Standing Figure 1935 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.'
It was in a hallway that always has the same things. And I never noticed it before. It's like, this was the right time to notice it, you know? It had a palette in it that I really liked. So I kind of started there and thought about the colors that could round it out.
SS21 is a very pink and blue collection. I think it looks really gentle and beautiful and sophisticated.
Do you have a favorite color from SS21? I know that's like asking you to pick a favorite child.
ANNA: I don't know if I usually have favorites. Because color for me—it's not even necessarily what I would wear that is my favorite, but it's sort of like what I'm feeling. I don't often do things that I don't like. So I do feel like the colors of this collection... I feel that I love them all.
What would I personally wear? It might be different than what my favorite would be. But I think that the Cocoa Bean is super wearable. I get excited for colors like the Cocoa Bean, too, because I don't think that they're seen in kids' wear a lot.
What colors are returning from past collections?
ANNA: So String is one that we had before. String is a natural white, but it's not stark white. It looks like what it sounds like: Baker's twine. But that's the only color from before. I recently did our walkthrough video on Instagram. I was like, 'Wow, I can't believe we did a collection with so many new colors.' It's a lot of new for people to get their heads around, but I'm excited for it.
Like, Paprika. This is a different red than we've ever done before. It feels spicy, but not hot. It's on the rustier side. I think it's really nice and flattering.
I've pulled out from this palette a couple of different stories. There's a red and green story and a Paprika and Rose Blush story, which I think is nice. You could easily do—in a French way—reds, creams, String, and blue. Or red, Straw (a palish yellow), and blue is also nice—an off-primary kind of look.
Is there a certain color you're curious about how customers are going to respond to?
ANNA: I'm curious if they're going to like this pink called Rose Blush as much as they've liked other pinks. I think it's really pretty, and it has a vintage feel to it.
And then the other one that I really love is Pea Pod. I feel like I've been kind of not going strong on green for a long time. In the last couple of seasons, I've been bringing it in, and our customers have been responding to it well. Pea Pod did well for our wholesale accounts, and I'm interested to see what our customers think of it.
OK, let's shift gears and talk about your trip to Oaxaca in October 2019.
ANNA: I was doing a design week. Usually I just take the design week off, but I decided to go someplace instead. Oaxaca definitely inspired the collection. The textile background. But it's also where a lot of natural dyeing comes from and weaving.
I think it was really inspiring just being someplace else. They do artist residencies, but this was their down time. So I was able to rent a studio and have a quiet place to work. I love being in other places, traveling, and being inspired. Even wandering around and going out to eat by myself and stuff like that, where you get to really think about the work and not have to stop, you know?
I go there with my source material. I work through what the silhouettes will be, the details, what the themes are going to be. I really kind of flesh it out during that design week.
As you were designing, what particularly inspired you from your source material? What got into your brain that you couldn't let go of?
ANNA: For me, it's usually a synthesis of lots of different kinds of inspiration and source material that I really like to pull together and recombine in a way that doesn't feel derivative. So, like, if you see circus themes in this collection, it's not a straight idea. Or, for example, I was also looking at vintage Sonia Rykiel and Yves Saint Laurent for women's clothes—you know, in two-piece separates, knit separates, and things like that. And so there might be references, but I would hope it's not a literal translation, because I feel like that's not as interesting.
I do like to look at vintage and pieces like that, but then really want it to come through a filter to be wearable and modern day. One thing I talked about in the walkthrough on IG was the vintage top find that was in a silk or fussy material and thinking about how ruffles could translate from woven fabric or silk to knits.
Do you have a favorite style from the SS21 Kids' Collection?
ANNA: Oh, that's a good question. A favorite? One favorite? So I really, really like this popcorn halter dress that we did. Because I think it looks visually striking and almost a little bit too much, you know? It's got an all over popcorn and then a skirt, but it also feels like a different, new silhouette. I think it's wearable, even though it's a halter. I think it could be cute with a cardigan or something underneath it so it doesn't feel as bare. I think that might be my favorite. That's a brand new style, too.
I do think there's a lot of opportunity for mixing texture, too. Like our space dye is tonal. The prints are also tonal and gentle. Graphic, but I think easy to treat as almost neutrals or one color to mix in. So I do think that it's a very wearable collection that you don't have to think too much about, and you can combine to get some interesting ideas.
Also, I worked hard to figure out what the boy options were for this collection. I think that's one of our biggest requests, what's for boy? But what's for boy in that it's still really Misha & Puff. Personally, I think there's a lot of great options for boy in this collection, and I'm excited to see how our customer works with it and styles with it. We shot more boys than we've ever shot before. I think it's exciting to see, too, how a pair of pants could look—how it could be so unisex, too.
Do you have a favorite style or two for boys that you want to make sure people check out?
ANNA: The new Pima that we did... it's this heavier Pima. I described it as a sweatshirt without the sweatshirt part or without the Terry part. I think it's going to be nice for boy because I've heard that boys can be harder on their clothes. That's not my experience between my two kids, but boys can be harder on clothes. And I think that having a little bit of a thicker, harder wearing cotton will be nice.
We did a pant that feels super us, but rugged also. It's a little bit of a higher waisted, baggy pant that sort of gently tapers in a little with an elastic waist. And then a funny little jacket that goes with it that's styled on a shirt that we called the Director's Jacket. And then we have a great ribbed jogger, too, that's really kind of balloony but also cropped at the ankle bone. Also, a very vintage looking lightweight knit polo—so some cute stuff.
Then our full space dye collection, we picked colors that I thought would be strongly unisex. There's a strong red story and then a blue violet story.
If you had to describe the SS21 Kids’ Collection in two or three words, what would they be?
ANNA: I'm trying to think of words that I haven't used before too. Nostalgia is always one of them, but I feel like there's a little bit of theatricality to it, that references to it, and that we played with in the lookbook shoot. But I think that the work that I do is sort of always like that, maybe because I think that wearing clothes is performative in a certain way, you know?
To me, it feels kind of fresh. It doesn't feel heavy in its styles or ideas. It feels kind of light. I think that also there's a gentleness to it. There's a lot of new ideas, but I think nothing's heavy handed.
Are there any cool stories behind the naming of any of the colors?
ANNA: Well, it's funny. We obviously think about them a lot and talk about them internally a lot. And now, at this point, we've named so many pinks. Pink is hard to name because we've done a Rose and we've done a Blush, and this new one we called Rose Blush. But I think Pea Pod is awesome because it feels like that's the spring idea—Peapod! And it feels so grassy and bright, but also delicate and baby in a way, you know? Pea Pod! It's so cute.