23 March 2026 |
How bohemian vibes and creative bonds helped turn the downtown indie brand Collina Strada into a very big deal.
What if friendship, not money, made the world go round? The downtown New York fashion label Collina Strada is betting on them both, using enterprise to fuel human connection—and trusting the power of collective fun to help sell cool clothes. The 18-year-old label goes hard on this mission, turning everygirl values like loyalty, fun, and vibes into its own kind of feel-good utopia.
In Collina-land, impromptu dance parties and shared piles of pretzels are just as fundamental to creative excellence as the brand’s coveted lace-slashed slip dresses and spiked floral jewelry. “There is no Collina Strada without community,” says founder and creative director Hillary Taymour from a studio loft in Brooklyn, where 10 of the label’s BFFs-turned-muses have trekked through below-freezing winds to meet up for this photoshoot. “You can’t make clothes in a vacuum,” she says. It’s better to make them in a thrumming, plaid-embroidered hive.
Collina Strada began in 2008 when Taymour was still studying design at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising (FIDM) in Los Angeles. She began making handbags from the leftover fabric at her internship at a large indie accessory brand—swingy, Chloé-adjacent hobo bags that girls would buy from Taymour directly at house parties and clubs like Les Deux. Soon, the Palos Verdes, California, native was selling to insider boutiques like Satine.
A friend-based brand from the beginning, Collina Strada came from Taymour’s college crew, who nicknamed the young dynamo collina, which is Italian for hill, i.e. short for Hillary. Then she added strada, which means road, for fun. Even when her bags, dresses, and tees hit bigger retailers, Taymour continued using leftover materials and deadstock fabric to make her pieces. “You know how people say, ‘Love is a verb?’” she asks. “Sustainability is like that, too. It’s a practice. You have to just keep doing it, keep trying. I never get angry at the fashion industry for not being perfect. I get mad at them, at us, as an industry I guess, for not trying.”
Helping her get it done is Charlie Engman, perhaps Taymour’s most steadfast collaborator, whom she met on Craigslist in 2010. “I wanted to learn how to sew and I found this internship on there.
It turns out Hillary and I were born exactly a week apart and I was like, ‘Listen, I’m not gonna intern with you, but I’m gonna learn how to sew on YouTube or something, and then come back and collaborate with you.’” Engman ended up pivoting to photography and now shoots every brand campaign and lookbook and helps to creatively direct the brand’s now- legendary fashion shows, which have taken place at venues like the roof of a secret urban farm in Brooklyn and a runway for private jets on the East River.
from left: clockwise from top left: Efron, Veronika, Athena, Simone, Kristin, Indira, Aariana, Charlie, Hillary, Oyinda, and Sara wear COLLINA STRADA
Like any good creative vision, Collina Strada’s includes thoughtful, intentional growth. Her clothes are entirely made from organic or recycled fabrics, thanks to partnerships with mega-brands like Gucci and Marni, as well as deadstock merino and cashmere sourced from Vitelli’s Italian wools. Yes, she does collaborations with affordable mega-labels like Ugg and Baggu, because “if I don’t get into those spaces and encourage them to try and make things more sustainable, how will they know it’s possible?”
Fans like Lily Allen and Dove Cameron have worn the looks on red carpets. The brand sells its bestselling bias-cut skirts and organic floral tees at big-time retailers like Nordstrom and Harvey Nichols, but last year, it opened its first dedicated retail store in Manhattan’s central trend hub, Dimes Square. Its signature aesthetic has also evolved from mushroom-cloud dress shapes and flutter-hemmed cargo shorts to tulip-shaped black satin frocks and leopard leotard tops. In February, Taymour created a pair of bug-out black sunglasses that swallowed the models’ faces; in October, Pierpaolo Piccioli sent a near-identical pair down his debut runway for Balenciaga. “That was fun,” says Taymour with a catlike smile. “Wasn’t it fun? I loved it.”
“Her brand has evolved, but she’s also let us as her models evolve,” says the model and musician Aariana Rose Philip, who has been working with Taymour since she was a teen. “Now that I’m older, I’ve gotten more bodycon. I’ve gotten more into sexy, really luscious clothing. And Hillary has rolled with that. Suddenly, she’s creating these romantic, hot gowns for me, you know?” Philip exclaims, beaming. “She’d never tell me, ‘No, you can’t be sexy.’ I love her like a sister for that.” In 2023, the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York created a mannequin based on Philip, making her the first trans woman in a wheelchair to appear in any of the museum’s exhibitions. The mannequin was dressed in Collina Strada.
Other members of Collina Strada’s eclectic tribe note that the brand has expanded their own definition of personal style. “I’m a pretty shy and quiet person,” says Simone Embrack, a model, musician, and sound engineer from Brooklyn. “Working with Hillary has brought out a more adventurous side of me. It’s pretty cool that she’ll do a show and tell us, ‘Okay, you’re butterflies’ or ‘Okay, you’re shadows’ and give us a chance to perform. It’s brought me out of my comfort zone in the most fun way.” Adds Kristin Drab, “I moved here from Berlin to model. Of course, you’re nervous, you know, it’s New York! But you show up backstage, and everyone is so nice. You forget to be nervous. It’s very joyful. Not every job is like that as a model, but Collina always is.” As Drab says this, Taymour’s 14-year- old Pomeranian rescue mutt, Powie, begins sniffing at her feet, and she bends to pick him up. “See? They even have the cutest dog. You cannot panic with this dog around.”
clockwise from left: Oyinda, Indira, and Aariana wear COLLINA STRADA; from left: Veronika wears dress and necklace by COLLINA STRADA, shoes by COLLINA STRADA X CONVERSE, Charlie wears shirt, pants, and necklace by COLLINA STRADA, shoes by COLLINA STRADA X CONVERSE, Oyinda wears dress and rings by COLLINA STRADA, shoes by COLLINA STRADA X CONVERSE, Indira wears COLLINA STRADA
When the pro skateboarder Effie Danzig asked Taymour for pant-skirt hybrids she could wear while doing tricks on her board, she was immediately enlisted as a show model and later as a shopgirl at the Dimes Street store. Danzig describes the retail emporium as “the luckiest place to work because it’s so chill. Nobody’s panicking. Nobody’s pressuring anybody… I know that’s not normal in fashion.” A New York native, Danzig previously walked as one of Balenciaga’s Erewhon zombies in the brand’s Fall 2024 Los Angeles show. “But it’s normal at Collina. In fact, it’s, like, required.”
The mandatory “calm the fuck down” energy required to be part of Team Collina comes in handy during Taymour’s raucous shows, which are often held outdoors. Model Athena Grace Wilson remembers one runway rehearsal where she accidentally mooned all of Manhattan while walking down Pier 23 on the East Side. “My ass was fully out,” she admits. “So I ran to Hillary and I was like, ‘Is there perhaps a special underwear?’ She just looked at me and said, ‘It’s going to be fine.’” Wilson remembers stepping onto the runway for the actual show when the wind suddenly died. “I was stunned,” she recalls. “I was like, ‘Did Hillary just… somehow… stop the wind? How did this happen?’ When I mentioned it after the show, everyone just nodded, like, that’s just the Collina way. Everything works out.” Wilson called her agents that night and told them to prioritize booking Collina Strada shows and shoots whenever possible.
Singer Oyinda, who grew up in London, was pulled into Collina Strada’s shows by Engman, a fan of her music. “I’m actually the one on the show soundtrack singing ‘I care a lotta; I wear Collina Strada!’” Oyinda says, with obvious delight. During the brand’s famed Fall 2023 show, which put prosthetic animal ears and snouts on many models, and closed with actress Tommy Dorfman wearing an elfin princess gown, Oyinda was cast as a cat. “I clawed the runway and started hissing. In a strange way, it felt very natural.” Hours later, she would see the footage of the show and realize that she had hissed and growled directly at Anna Wintour.
“I’ll tell you the real secret to how we stay so calm,” says Sara Hiromi, who works as an event designer as well as a Collina Strada model. “We go home and do jigsaw puzzles. That’s
our favorite thing in the world. Yes, our hopes, dreams, and ambitions bring us together, but the jigsaw puzzles are what really bind us. Hillary and I want to enter a speed jigsaw contest this year,” she says. “We try and do them every month to practice,” Hiromi says. She says that watching Taymour, Engman, and the rest of the Collina Strada design and production team gear up for fashion week is like “a college-level class” in focus and delegation that sounds… well… a lot like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. “She’s very clear about all the things that need to come together and she’ll make teams so that nobody feels alone doing it,” Engman recalls of hand-illustrating fabric until 4am the night before a show. “It’s one of my favorite memories,” he says. “Because we talked all night, like kids at a sleepover.”
from left: Athena and Simone wear COLLINA STRADA; Kristin, Oyinda, and Athena wear COLLINA STRADA
The model Veronika Vilim has been working with the brand since 2023. “I had just bought a pair of her shoes and then they called me in for a casting!” says the New York native. “So I already loved the style. I was like, ‘Great, please let me embrace my inner freak.’ And they gave me this tiny, beaded purse shaped like a shrimp that I carried out on the runway. I was so in love with it and was like, ‘I, too, am a cockroach of the ocean! Let’s go!’ I really wanted to be a part of this fantasy.”
This year, Vilim will launch her own small swimwear collection, in part because of Taymour’s help. “She’s become such a mentor. She’s given me fabrics and zippers. She’s given me so much advice. Fashion can be such a competitive industry, and there’s been nothing but support from Hillary and the Collina Strada team.” In Collina World, collaboration is part of longevity. When one Collina pony wins, everyone does.
“I actually hate words like ‘inclusive’ and ‘collaborative’ because [they] sound so fake,” says Taymour after the models have completed their final shots and had a brief, perfect dance party to Madonna’s Ray of Light. “But if you can’t make clothes for everybody, and you can’t make opportunities for other people coming up after you, then what’s the point?”
According to Taymour, Collina Strada is now profitable. “Some people in the industry still think we’re these crazy little indie kids,” she says with a sigh. “Well… we’re not. We’re a real company, and we’re starting to succeed in some very big, exciting ways. But we do that because we believe in something bigger than money or fame.”
Taymour scrunches her face up into something like the cringe emoji. “Collina Strada is bigger than me. We’re making something you can live in, together.”
from left: Indira wears COLLINA STRADA, Sara wears top, skirt, and ring by COLLINA STRADA, shoes by COLLINA STRADA X CONVERSE; Athena and Indira wear COLLINA STRADA
from left: Kristin wears dress and necklace by COLLINA STRADA, shoes by COLLINA STRADA X CONVERSE,
Oyinda wears dress and rings by COLLINA STRADA, shoes by COLLINA STRADA X CONVERSE, Athena wears COLLINA STRADA; Powie wears shoes by COLLINA STRADA X CONVERSE
Taken from 10 Magazine USA Issue 6 – CREATIVITY, CHANGE, FREEDOM – out now! Order your copy here.
COLLINA STRADA: FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC
Photographer RYAN PETRUS
Talent HILLARY TAYMOUR, VERONIKA VILIM, CHARLIE ENGMAN, EFRON DANZIG, SIMONE EMBRACK, AARIANA PHILIP, KRISTIN DRAB, SARA HIROMI, OYINDA, ATHENA WILSON, and INDIRA SCOTT
Text FARAN KRENTCIL
Hair DAVEY MATTHEW
Makeup KENTO UTSUBO
