Admit it, you always wanted to be a Vargas girl. Problem is, you can’t find the appropriately sexy bathing suit, let alone the photographer (since illustrator Alberto Vargas died in 1982) and makeup artist. Local designer Brooke Shipley might just be able to help you achieve the look with her incredible new line of bathing suits. Shipley showed them off to great effect on May 30 at a fashion show at The Standard, and we’re looking forward to seeing more of them, especially with the hot weather likely to continue into September and beyond.
Shipley doesn’t simply co-opt vintage: Instead, she takes the best fit and visual elements of classic suits from the ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s, and uses them to make something new, original and fashion forward, understanding that today, there’s a stultifying sameness in a lot of the suits we see.
“Really, there are three standard types of suits out there,” she says. “The triangle shaped bikini—which really doesn’t flatter unless you’re a size 2; the tankini—which doesn’t do much either; and the one piece, which these days is almost universally unflattering, until you get up into the higher price points. And locally, it’s just tough to find the good, original suits.”
Shipley, who’s spent a good deal of her career working as a stylist in New York and elsewhere, is very much aware there’s still plenty you can’t find in this area, and bathing suits are one of the most trying things to hunt down. Realistically, if you aren’t in love with department store finds, you’ll go online and buy, and hope it’ll be flattering. Or you’ll buy on a trip—in South Beach, New York, L.A. or Atlanta, where the options are simply more diverse.
So, she’s taken her vast design skills, found a niche and created something buyers want. It’s a win-win situation, and we can only hope her vision continues as part of the vanguard of promising Nashville designers who are actively and artistically challenging the still-clinging notion that we’re more overalls than couture. If the market isn’t excited enough about coming to a city as culturally rich and as vibrant as ours—fine, we’ll remake the market from here.
Brooke Shipley’s fashion career began in high school, with her mother teaching her to sew, to read patterns and so on. “We went to the fabric store the summer before my sophomore year,” she recalls with a laugh. “I bought a Vogue Pattern, I think, and altered it, and made this cotton ‘gown-thing’—I added ruffles, capped sleeves, it was hideous.” She grins. “I wore it to school; I was proud of it.”
She’d been interested in fashion since middle school, finding her own distinctive style—she began cutting up and remaking jeans, including some she got from her brother, wearing ribbons as belts, and doing what she could to be creative. As she got older, Shipley found herself checking out vintage booths at the flea market, looking at expensive pieces like corsets, then coming home and trying to teach herself to pattern them....
Credits:
Photographed on location at Percy Priest Lake
Photography: Sarah B. Gilliam
Hair: Shana Michelle Taylor
Makeup: Eryk Datura
Models: Esseri Holmes, Salome Steinmann and Laurenne Paladino
Assistants: Amber Bradford, Michaela M. Powell, Rachel Growden, Shea Halliburton