Caroline Issa on Going From Street Style Star to Designer

You might not know the name Caroline Issa, but you’ve most definitely seen photos of her—sauntering around Paris during the most recent round of haute couture shows in a dreamy camel Dior coat with an asymmetric hemline, sitting front row at Tory Burch during New York Fashion Week in September in a pink dress and long yellow vest. The obvious theme here: This is a woman who’s always impeccably dressed.

And it’s outfits like these that have turned Issa into a bonafide street style star, and a quasi Internet celebrity, a new phenomenon over the past several years thanks to an abundance of photographers who line up to document what fashion insiders like Issa wear to Fashion Week. A few years ago she would have been just another well-dressed fashion week attendee, but thanks to Pinterest and Instagram, women the world over now look to Issa for outfits to copy like they do celebrities such as Beyoncé and Jennifer Lawrence.

For Issa, street style stardom is really just an advantageous extracurricular. A former management consultant, she’s the longtime Fashion Director at independent fashion magazine Tank, a brand consultant, and even an occasional model (she’s fronted campaigns for J.Crew and Monique Péan). Now, she’s readying adding yet another line to her already overflowing resume—designer.

Photo: bridesmaid dresses perth.

Nordstrom has tapped Issa to collaborate on its private label "Nordstrom Signature & Caroline Issa" women’s collection, with the debut collection for Spring 2015 hitting stores February 9. Unlike other influencer brand collaborations this isn’t just a one-off, Issa has signed up to oversee four collections a year, for at least the next few years. Another key difference? This isn’t meant to be fast fashion—prices range from $195 for a silk camisole to $2,995 for a double face leather jacket. And lastly, what sets this line apart is that it’s meant to be body inclusive—the collection is being offered in sizes 0 to 16, a rarity on the designer floor.

"Funnily enough, when I used to be a management consultant in the old days, Nordstrom was my first ever client," Issa said while walking us through her 28-piece debut.

Over 15 years later, after becoming acquainted with Pete Nordstrom, Nordstrom’s Executive Vice President, the department store approached Issa with the idea for the line, and she found her career coming full circle.

"I thought, ‘This is kind of amazing, I’ve never done this before, you’ve never done this before, but I already felt like part of the family because I kind of lived and breathed Nordstrom [at one point] and I am a Nordstrom customer,’ so it just felt really natural," she said.

That was over a year and a half ago, and from there Issa set out to create a collection of modern-day classics for women—the perfect cashmere sweater, the perfect work suit, the wear-with-everything biker jacket.

"I was thinking about the woman that I wanted to dress…and I started looking at photos of American style icons like Lauren Bacall, Lauren Hutton, Slim Keith, women who had incredibly timeless style," she said. "These women could be street style stars today which is kind of incredible…I [also] wanted to make sure that we were doing amazing tailoring, stuff that I really use on a daily basis as go-to wardrobe essentials."

What’s all too clear after hearing Issa talk about these clothes is that this isn’t something she just phoned in so she could slap her name on something. Cashmere is sourced from Loro Piana, tailored blouses made at a length long enough that you can both tuck them in and wear them out, some of the jackets feature contrast collars—all things that get her truly excited.

The process of building the collection involved Issa going back and forth from her home base in London to Seattle where Nordstrom is headquartered to work with retailer’s design team on building mood boards, going through several stages of fittings, talking through the collection with Nordstrom’s buyers, and then shooting the lookbook (which she stars in, and which was inspired by street style photos).

And through that process, the longtime fashion insider got a new appreciation for the jobs of designers. "We’re so quick to judge [when we see a collection] and say ‘I don’t know, was it new?’ And now I am like, ‘I know how much blood, sweat, and tears went into the details, and how hard it is just to get clothes produced.’ It’s made me appreciate every single designer."

As for her side gig as a street style star, Issa seems all too aware how much it’s upped her personal brand. "The phenomenon has been amazing and insane and I’m the first one to admit how much I have benefitted from all of the incredible opportunities that have come my way [because of it]," she said.

A fun byproduct of street style celebrity for Issa? Fans. "I was in Tokyo for the Dior Pre-Fall show walking down the street and this young woman came up to me and she said, ‘You’re Caroline Issa!’ And I was like, ‘Yes!’ And through the language divide she was showing me her Instagram pictures and how she follows me. I love that the world has become so much smaller because of social media."

Still, she says dressing for the cameras that feverishly document what she wears isn’t her agenda. "I don’t think you can inherently change your style because there happen to be tons of photographers out there. You stay true to your style and your point of view. I do really understand [the appeal of it] though. I look at Tommy Ton’sphotos because they completely inspire me."

And yes, while we all eagerly anticipate what Issa wears to the next round of Fashion Week shows kicking off this week, behind the scenes, she’s already working on the next collection for Nordstrom, for Spring 2016. "I couldn’t have predicted even four years ago that I would be doing something that would have my name on the label," Issa shared. "Now I’m just really excited to see women in the clothes."

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