Ilana Kohn isn’t new to the creative world. Before she launched her line in 2010—filled with the sort of refined pieces that attract attention with their controlled prints and strikingly understated cuts—the Pratt-trained artist worked as an editorial illustrator for seven years, drawing celebrities and senators alike. But, unsatisfied with the hectic, hustle-hustle nature of the freelance world, she headed back to her alma mater for some structure and a master’s degree in historic preservation. It was then, with a sudden lack of creative projects, that Ilana began making clothes on the side—and people ate them right up. Once she wrapped up grad school in 2011, Ilana was ready to take things to the next level: This season, for the first time, she’s designing her own textiles. “It’s much more labor intensive,” she notes. “Before, I just went to fabric stores in the Garment District. Now I have to sit down, design, and wait for samples.” The spring/summer 2012 collection also marks the first time Ilana’s working with a factory—she had been sewing everything from her Fort Greene apartment. But even with all these changes, there’s one thing that has remained constant throughout the years: her own style. “I live in jeans and T-shirts, and, except for a preference for Isabel Marant over Hanes today, that same unfussy aesthetic is still my go-to.” —jiayi ying Make sure you don’t miss Ilana’s edition! It’s like spring in a scarf.

Taking in the relaxed yet put-together pieces in Ilana Kohn’s eponymous line, you might not guess that the New Yorker by way of D.C. defines her own style as “tomboyish and pseudo-grunge”—an aesthetic fueled by her adolescent passion for skating. Here, she shows off her bad-ass side and opens up about what all that has to do with the silken magic she makes now. —jiayi ying Showing off her skills at a NISS event. “I was a skater kid from sixth grade all through high school—it was my whole life. One of my friends started doing it, and I thought it was awesome. That picture is from a NISS competition—the National Inline Skating Series. We drove all over the place for it. I remember my friend Daisy and I being the only girls out there with all these guys—busting up rails and beating ourselves up.” A high school-era, skater-chic snap from a trip to New York. “To this day, I still have half a right eyebrow from when I took a faceplant during my sophomore year of high school. I fell off the handrail and went boink, boink, boink down about twenty steps, landed on the bottom, and smacked my head—that put a bit of a dent in my confidence. I can’t even imagine how many times I’ve called 911—about once a month, somebody had to take a trip to the hospital. I realized just how serious it was around my senior year—it’s a rough sport. You take a lot of chances.” Ilana, in red, dressing up with her friends in middle school. “But there was definitely a whole fashion side to it all that appealed to me—the baggy clothes, the tomboy-ish look. I was never, ever, ever much of a girly girl, though clothes have always been my weakness and my love. I had the most enviable thrift-store stash, and I was already dying shirts and sticking little patches on stuff in middle school. My friends would come over, and we’d do little photo shoots of ourselves. Even today, I won’t buy things for the house sometimes, but clothes? That’s where every cent goes.” Don’t miss out on Ilana’s edition! Fear not: Her rose print scarf wouldn’t go very well with a sk8r gurl look.

When Ilana Kohn started her line in 2010, she had to teach herself how to make clothes, starting more or less at the beginning. “My mom got me a starter sewing machine when I was in middle school—but it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I got a real machine. And then it just became an obsession,” the Brooklyn-based designer says. Now, five collections and a ton of online research and pattern-studying later, Ilana’s delving into textile design. And the scarves she made for Of a Kind? They’re the very first pieces to be produced from one of her creations. Here’s a look behind the scenes. —jiayi ying Snag Ilana’s first print EVER on the scarf she designed just for Of a Kind. Right this way… Marbled scarves hanging in Ilana’s Fort Greene apartment-slash-studio. “My best friend Emily and I took a marbling class just for fun one day last year. We marbled a lot of scarves and really liked it. I already had the line, so we decided to sell some of them on the site—they ended up doing really well.” A painting from Ilana’s illustrator years. “I’ve been making clothes for some time now, so it made sense to start doing textiles—I kind of feel like all of my creative experiences are coming full-circle with this. Having worked in print, I know how to tweak the colors, and what colors work best with what medium. Now I’m learning that all over again with textiles—certain fabrics hold more pigments, so you have to bump up the contrast more.” The sketchbook starting point. “The whole process begins with my sketchbook. I’ll doodle random stuff, scan it, and then play around with it in Photoshop or Illustrator to create a repeat. If I like it, I’ll just fiddle around with it until something that grabs my eye comes up.” Modeling her Ermie scarf. “Most of the textiles for the collection will be screen-printed because they’re flat two-tone, but the scarves are actually digitally printed in San Francisco. Jennifer Parry Dodge from Ermie was so helpful in recommending places. I wish she lived on the East Coast—she’d be my best friend.” “The print on the chiffon Of a Kind scarves is actually from a textile I designed for the upcoming collection—with the colorway inverted. This is the first time the print’s going out into the world.”