Tags: Artisan, Body Oil, Love Affair, Obsessed, Oil, Tata Harper, Vermont

“I’m a knitwear designer, but I collaborate with a lot of other designers to make other things. I’ve collaborated with VPL, Cooperative Designs and some other people for their lines. But now that I have my own line, since I only knit, I want woven designers and jewelry designers, filmmakers—I want to collaborate with everyone who has a specialty. So now I’m working with a few different people for Fall/Winter to do that. There’s a girl named Claudia Baethgen who is the assistant designer at Gary Graham and she’s doing the wovens, and she’s incredible. And Katelin Gibbs, who I share a studio with, does jewelry and I hope to pull on a few more people along the way.”

“Knitting was always a huge priority. I learned to knit when I was three but I didn’t really start knitting until I was eight. My grandma taught me, we didn’t have a great relationship but she taught me and it stuck because it’s something that keeps your hands busy; but there’s times where you have to think a lot about it, and times when you can kind of coast and think about other things. It’s kind of really math oriented.”

“Most of the time if I lounge around too much in the morning I have trouble getting momentum so I get up, brush my teeth, wash my face with ultrabland from Lush. You don’t really wash your face with it exactly, it’s almond oil based so I just smear it on and use an astringent to take it off. It makes my skin feel really clean but also not too dry, I hate that—overly dry. Then I just use a very basic fragrance free moisturizer and go. I go to my studio and I can get pretty messy throughout the day. When I get home I use Trader Joe’s shampoo and conditioner. I have one dreadlock that I have to oil, that is a major part of it because it’s bleached so I have to make sure it is not too dry. So I use Moroccan tree oil on that. At night I use ultrabland again and use the same moisturizer.”

“I don’t like to wear makeup to the point where you know that I’m wearing makeup. Um, I use Lorac on my face because I have really sensitive skin so it’s pretty light, and then I use black MAC eye shadow as eyeliner in carbon. I like to darken my eyebrows a little bit as well. That is my basic makeup routine. I like being kind of pale and then having dark hair and dark features; I think it’s a good look for me. Sometimes in the summer I use my winter color Lorac powder to look paler.”

“When I went to RISD, I really liked fine art but then I also really liked fashion, so when I came up with this collection for the last fashion week. I realized through the presentation process, not really a fashion show, but a presentation, that  you have a space and it can be a gallery, and you have models, but it can be fashion. Also I want kind of the sterile fashion people who are really serious to come into one of my spaces and be like, “this is kind of fun” because I think there is this overly serious issue in fashion and fine art.

It was actually a struggle to stick with one collection through fashion week and still be talking about it in October. I’m excited to make new things. It’s like, this is old news for me let’s make new stuff! I am really looking forward to next fashion week and am really excited about what I’m working on.”

“Every once and a while I like to throw on some crazy lipstick. Illamasqua makes a great black lipstick that I love and wear out at night. If I’m going on a date but I also don’t know if it will go anywhere I like to wear lipstick, like a first date. Several lipsticks mean several different things to me though. I’ll go for red during the day just to feel sexy or if I’m going to SOHO, and then I’ll notice everyone is wearing red lipstick so maybe I’ll opt for pale purple. I never wear too much eye makeup, I think it’s one or the other, eyes or lips.”

“Because everything is hand-operated there is no electricity in any process that is happening, so it’s very green. Everything is handmade by me and the knitting machine. It’s a machine but it doesn’t plug into anything—it’s just me moving it back and forth with two needles. Well the last collection I didn’t duplicate, so each piece is worth the value of a fine art piece. I don’t think it will always be that way, I think I will have to resort to factories but even for this next season I am looking into production and so far I know the names of the technicians. So Instead of saying “Handmade by Lindsay Degen in Brooklyn” it will say “Handmade by Michael in Austin, Texas.” I’m still micromanaging as much as possible.”

“When you knit and when you come to the neck drop, you have to knit each shoulder individually. When I do that, I sometimes mess up and I’ll knit twelve more rows on one side than the other and then I’ll have a lopsided garment and I’ll have to problem solve. I think that the essence of what makes my pieces my own is what happens when I need to problem solve after I have made a stupid mistake.”

Photos by: Aimee Blaut

Tags: Art, Bumble and Bumble, Claudia Baethgen, Cooperative Designs, Fashion, Gary Graham, Illamasqua, Katelin Gibbs, Knitting, Lindsay Degen, Lorac, Lush, MAC, RISD, VPL

“In the morning I will just get out of the shower, wash my face with water then put on Khiel’s, the ultra moisturizing lotion. I tend to get really dry around my nose during the winter so I will put on some papaw—it’s amazing, it’s so good. I’m not really too fussy. My mom was a super hippy. Until I was like fifteen she never even shaved anything. She moisturized her legs—she always did that and she always had lip balm. So every single day I get out of the shower and I moisturize and I have lip balm. I’ve had those in my routine for my whole life. Other then that I didn’t grow up around makeup or beauty products really. When my mom woke up it was just water and she has beautiful skin. So I always felt like people overdo it a little bit. I am really basic and stick to what I have.”

“If I have a casting I will put on a tiny bit of Laura Mercier concealer, just around my nose and eyes. And then I’ll put on a bit of MAC powder just to make it stick or the Make Up Forever HD powder, though that can dry out my skin a bit. I will use the Make Up Forever one if I need my concealer to last all day. Sometimes I will wear it just under my eyes because it keeps the concealer from moving. I wouldn’t necessarily wear it on my whole face in my daily life, but on shoots they use it because it is great for photos. I guess next I’ll use a little bit of MAC blush. Then I’ll brush out my eyebrows and occasionally I’ll put on a tiny bit of mascara. For castings it has to be very natural.”

“If I’m going out, then I’ll use the Armani foundation. It’s smooth and I like a really matte look. Whenever I do my makeup I like it to look like I’m not wearing any at all. The foundation stays really smooth and gives good coverage without being super heavy. I use the Givenchy mascara with the ball at the end. I think there is a real technique to using it. I am really used to it now, so I am much better at it then the normal wand. You can do so many different things with it. The ball really pushes your lashes out so it curls them a lot, which I like since I don’t have an eyelash curler. I’ll usually do a white liner under my eyes on the inner eyelid because it makes the eye look so much bigger and kind of extends it. I am not necessarily big on black all around the eye because it can make the eye look smaller. Though sometimes just some smudgy black under the eye could be really cool. It’s fun to play with my eye makeup at night if I am going somewhere. I like to do a golden brown cat eye that’s a bit smokey or a black liquid eyeliner. Also I have super long bottom eyelashes, they are like the size of my top lashes so I will press them together so they clump.”

“YSL has the best classic red lipstick, and I think it’s the perfect color. It’s not too matte or too creamy, it stays on really well—it’s perfect. I like a really dark, vampy sort of lip as well, a dark maroon or a brown—that’s the going out color. I probably wouldn’t wear red out as much. I like to be a little gothic sometimes a bit romantic goth. I think it’s much cooler, like if you’re going to go to a rockabilly bar it’s a much better look then red. I love red but I’ll wear it to a wedding or to a brunch.”

“I’ve been really involved in an organization called Cleanse that was started by the Dutch model, Anne Marie Van Dijk. She created the organization around health and nutrition, in order to educate younger models. Cus there’s not a lot of help out there and when you start at fifteen, nobody tells you how to approach the industry in a healthy way. There’s a lot of miscommunication and myths out there; a booker can be like, “just eat rice cakes for the weekend.” It’s very easy to fall into eating disorders and bad habits. There’s so much pressure to stay so thin and it’s a really unhealthy image. There’s nobody to advise girls and teach them the way to look after themselves. To be that way you need to have a lower body weight then what’s normal or what is healthy or what is recommended. You have to do that as healthily as you can and be careful. Obviously, we all have a certain body type naturally, but you also just have to look after yourself. Eating vegetables and good protein and fruits is much different then just having a Jell-O.

Cleanse also helps teach younger models how to handle their new financial situation because suddenly you can be earning 3,000 dollars a day or more. Do you go out and spend it on a designer bag or do you put it away because you will probably need to stop modeling at twenty-five? Basically, the organization deals with all these kinds of issues.

There’s a team of health professionals, a life coach, trainers, a nutritionist and counselors who all form this little network. IMG at the moment, and soon other agencies, basically send their new girls to us for anything they will possibly need. IMG being so supportive is wonderful. It’s a big risk to go against the grain and to do something different. A lot of agencies aren’t willing to forge the way ahead, but IMG can because they are IMG and are path makers.”

“I have always been involved with music and played the violin for fourteen years. I was studying music for a little while at the conservatory in Australia and that’s what I’d always wanted to do really. I kind of realized maybe three months ago that I didn’t want the lifestyle of a musician. I spent so much time traveling the past years I hadn’t really had a home somewhere stable. I don’t want the late nights and that type of scene. It was kind of a big crisis for me at the time—I was like “what am I going to do!” I’ll always be involved in music but it’s just not a career path for me I don’t think.”

“I’m just about to start studying psychology next month, which is pretty exciting. It’s going to take me a long time; I have to do it online because I have to work. I would love to be able to go to university but I can’t commit to certain dates with my schedule, which is a bit frustrating. I feel like a whole part of going to university is getting to meet the people and your professors and being able to have those kinds of conversations, but that’s not really possible for me. So that’s ok, it is going to take a while but Ill get there.”

photos by: THE FORMULA

Tags: Anne Marie Van Dijk, Armani, beauty, Cleanse, Emma Ishta, Givenchy, IMG, Khiel's, Laura Mercier, Lucas' Papaw Ointment, MAC, Make Up Forever, Model, you are a babe, Yves Saint Laurent