There is a somewhat accepted trajectory in the fashion world that provocative new designers start out in London and cut their CSM-trained chops at dingy show venues before tantalising the world with their fledgling talent. As soon as they’ve solidified that attention into say (hopefully) monetisable hype, they leave. To make money brands go to New York, for prestige they go to Paris. It isn’t often that it works the other way around. But Carly Mark, the 36-year-old Detroit-born, New York-made designer of the cult brand Puppets and Puppets is bucking the system in more ways than one.
Classified as a ‘downtown darling’ by Vanessa Friedman, fashion director of The New York Times, Mark’s brand, which she launched in 2018, offered a punkish uniform for her coterie of like-minded, similarly cast zeitgeisty faces: Julia Fox, writer Miranda July and Lena Dunham are friends and fans. As is Ella Emhoff, Kamala Harris’s fashion fawned-over stepdaughter, who took one of Mark’s signature motif ‘Cookie’ bags to the Democratic National Convention last month, causing a rush for the piece. ‘Everything’s always changing depending on the internet,’ says Mark. ‘She posted herself wearing it [on Instagram] and overnight my sales skyrocketed.’ Yet, even her cult-status, snack-derived handbags, CFDA (NY’s version of our Fashion Awards) nominations and a Fashion Trust award couldn’t keep her afloat in New York.
