Accorda Is Making Glamorous Clothes You Can Wear on the Subway

Growing up in Richmond, Va., Alex McEachin fell in love with clothes via movie costumes, specifically Cecil Beaton’s for “My Fair Lady” (1964) and “Gigi” (1958) and the tartan ensembles worn by Alicia Silverstone in “Clueless” (1995). For a time, she considered a career in costume design, but after working on a few school productions, she realized she was less interested in interpreting a director’s concept than in coming up with her own. To that end, she moved to New York, where, in 2017, she earned a degree from the Parsons School of Design and landed a job in product development at the fashion brand Proenza Schouler. There, for seven years, she acted as a liaison between designers and producers, shepherding ideas into finished pieces and acquiring, she says, an “almost doctoral level of education in fashion.” Now she’s applying that knowledge to her own creative vision: Accorda, an artistic yet deeply wearable fashion line that launched in February.

McEachin, who is 30 and lives in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood, took the name of her brand from an Italian word that translates roughly to “harmony.” It’s a fitting moniker for a line that gracefully balances disparate aesthetics. Streamlined silhouettes including slim-cut dresses and tailored jumpsuits are imbued with dramatic flourishes like a wide, wavy collar and pleats that fan out from a side seam. Sporty and workwear-inspired details show up in party-ready clothes, including a currant-colored viscose dress with a front zipper and gathered neckline that channels a hoodie; a floor-length black Lurex dress with exaggerated armholes that brings to mind a muscle tee; and a strapless black tweed jumpsuit with oval cutouts that recalls a pair of overalls.

Though McEachin avoids stretchy fabrics, considering them “too easy,” her fluid clothes encourage movement — tellingly, the dancer-choreographers Gregory Hines and Trisha Brown influenced her senior thesis collection at Parsons. Imbued with what she calls “informal glamour,” her pieces are also built for city life. As McEachin says, “there’s nothing you can’t take the train in.” She titled her first offering the Dinner Party because, she says, she imagines her friends wearing the clothes to such a gathering, with her acting as host in jeans and the collection’s black Lurex bomber. “You walk in and there’s an immediate reaction,” she says of the textured, light-catching jacket. “Everyone wants to touch it or try it on, but it’s not delicate in any way.”

Her relationships within the industry were a driving force, too. While at Proenza Schouler, she spent weeks each season visiting European factories and ateliers, troubleshooting issues that arose with samples and bonding, she says, “with the people who are thinking about the beads and agonizing over a button.” Now some of those same detail-obsessed makers are working on her brand. And while she’s savvy about how the landscape has changed since Proenza Schouler’s founders, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, arrived on the scene in the early 2000s — these days, everything is more expensive, more branded and more digital — she hopes she can be a part of shaping the next generation of New York fashion. Opening a brick-and-mortar store in Chelsea within the next five years is one major goal. “I still believe,” she says, “that it’s possible.”

​Models: Aliza Jarmon at The Society Management and Gracen Wilkens at Supreme Management. Casting by Ricky Michiels. Hair: Jadis Jolie at E.D.M.A. Makeup: Grace Ahn at Day One using Nars Cosmetics. Production by Shay Johnson Studio