Jack Sivan, a Brooklyn-based menswear designer with a specialty in tailoring, began his foray into design in high school, where he began as a self-taught sewist. Eventually, he co-founded a small business with a friend named jack & jacksons’ through which he sold neckwear created from upcycled vintage fabrics. He attended the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and studied tailoring, pattern drafting, and women’s formalwear, among other subjects. Throughout college, he worked at various retail businesses and tailoring and interned for design. He started his career as a production assistant at the denim retailer R13, where he worked on NYFW collections, a refurbished garment line and set up an archival system. He then transitioned to The Row, where he worked as a technical designer and worked on the Menswear RTW collection and focused on fabric and fit. After stints as a head designer and associate designer at Terry Singh NYC and SANS GÊNE respectively, he currently works for Melke NYC as a sample maker and the contemporary brand Ronny Kobo as a designer. He is also an independent designer, making clothes under the eponymous label, Sivan.

At a young age, what about sewing caught your interest?
Ever since I was little I have loved to make art. The people around me encouraged that interest but I didn’t grow up in a big arts environment, so in school I was always the “art kid.” In high school I started to pay attention to fashion, specifically tailoring, and I realized the only way I’d probably be able to have all the nice clothes I wanted was if I sewed them myself. My parents took me to a sewing class, where I sewed a pillow (which I still use regularly) and broke a machine. For the rest of high school, I taught myself, through trial and error with friends, and from dissecting thrifted garments.

You co-founded a small retail business called jack & jacksons’ at a young age. Where do you think your sense of entrepreneurship comes from?
At its core, I was a teenager with no money, who wanted bow ties and to get better at sewing, and my friend wanted the same. While my parents really encouraged my creative exploration, it was implicit that whatever career in the arts I pursued, it had to be a career I could live off of. My dad is a sociology professor at a business school, and my mother is an interior designer and, when I was young, she started her own interior design company. It wasn’t something I thought about consciously but she has modeled for me what a creative professional pursuit is supposed to look like, and my dad definitely instilled an ideal that any business I got into had to be thought through. Also, since my entry point into fashion was through an interest in bespoke tailoring, my imagined career didn’t start with “what label would I work at” but rather “what would my shop look like.”

Why did you decide to attend RISD and what made you want to pursue a formal design education?
My dad grew up in Providence and I grew up in Boston, so Mass Art and RISD were kinda the only art schools I actually knew. When applying I also considered Pratt, but preferred RISD because I thought I might be less overwhelmed if I was in a smaller city that I knew a bit better (Mass Art was physically just too close to home). In hindsight, I think my early work opportunities might have been greater if I’d gone for school based in a city that had a fashion industry to explore while still in school, but I really enjoyed my experience there.

I knew pretty soon after developing my interest that fashion is what I wanted to pursue professionally. Since I didn’t have any personal links to the fashion industry I thought the best way to get in was with a diploma. One of the great things about the fashion industry is how many entry points there are, but you do still need access to an entry point. I was aware that I didn’t know anything, the little I had taught myself, not just about making clothes, but about fashion history made it clear that I needed a stronger foundation in every regard.

Is there something RISD taught you that solely doing apprenticeships could not have?
What appealed to me about it when I was applying, and what I appreciate most since leaving, has been the apparel department’s focus on technical exploration and the requirement that you make everything yourself. We were given the machinery to make whatever we wanted and the freedom to mess around and experiment, and I don’t know of any other environment where that’s an option.

I’ve wondered how my skill level might be more refined albeit narrower if I’d tried to get a tailoring apprenticeship. I did have a job as an alterations tailor at a local Providence haberdashery while in college, and my main takeaway (aside from a faster hand) was that I didn’t have the patience for doing the same thing over and over again. Besides, a “jack of all trades” is fitting.

There seems to be an overarching theme of vintage and archival that spans your career from jack & jacksons’ to R13. What about vintage fabrics attracts you?
There are a few facets to my interest in vintage. The first is creative. I get a majority of my inspiration for vintage garments and styles. There are so many interesting details in older garments that have gotten lost in favor of a more standardized production landscape. I get so excited by all the details that never caught on, maybe because they were too complicated or niche, but they inspire me to put as much thought into my own designs. Materially, I'm also a lover of deadstock fabrics, the idea that you have the last of something adds so much history to a garment I made only yesterday.

The second is philosophical. I think vintage garments and vintage techniques are a big part of what fashion needs for a more sustainable future. Whether that's in upcycling vintage garments or looking at vintage garments to study what makes them so much more long lasting than what’s largely made today. Or in looking to older styles to see what styles persist and what trends are fleeting. As a designer I am obligated to design sustainably and a key to that is an eye on the past.

The third is just that it’s usually cheaper. I’ve never been able to afford my own taste level, shopping vintage has pretty much always been the only way I could access and afford interesting clothing. Also, I find thrift shopping is a more engaging shopping experience than most of what retail has to offer. I hope if I ever have my own brick-and-mortar shop I can find some way to explore that experience.

Is there a specific fabric with which you particularly enjoy working?
This is a difficult question to answer. Wool cashmere blends, twill if possible, ideally in a deep blue.

You describe yourself as a “detail-oriented designer”. In that sense, how was your experience working at The Row where fit, cut, and silhouette are treasured?
I only worked there briefly over that first pandemic winter, so my experience there was heavily colored by an apocalyptic malaise. My main takeaway from working there was the experience of what a real high-end atelier could look like and function. The details I picked up on most were the infrastructure and expectations of standards for a luxury label of that caliber. The combination of trying to get by working crazy hours, the stress of the world in the winter of 20-21, and the fact that my role there wasn’t one with any creative agency, is largely what pushed me to strike out on my own.

You are also the head of your own eponymous label Sivan. Has opening your own label always been a goal of yours?
It has. As I said, I didn’t get into fashion with a label or designer I dreamed of working for, if anything it never occurred to me to set any other end goal. I’m young and I have to imagine that may change one day, but pursuing my own label has just always been the natural dream, I wasn’t sure when I’d start down that path. In the past few years in the industry, that goal has definitely been flushed out. Wanting my own label is now more than wanting creative freedom, it’s also about wanting to build a label run the way I think one should. A label that puts sustainable and labor concerns at its center.

What advice would you give to young designers hoping to start their own label?
I think I’m still too young to answer this well. It’s expensive, most of the people you run into doing it started off with a lot more money than you think. I think that if your goal is to do something avant-garde then your only option really is luxury. Your relationships are going to really matter, you’re going to have to develop a wealthy clientele, so you should probably be comfortable with your work being inaccessible to the general public. If your goal is to do RTW you need to seriously ask yourself what do you want to add to a market, are you serving the under-served? Why do people need/want what you’re making? I think in a world of overconsumption as a designer you need to be able to justify your audacity to add more to the heap.

I’d say breadth of experience is important. Get to know the industry, take different jobs, work in retail, work in production, learn about as many different angles as you can. You don’t need to be an expert in everything, as I grow I know for sure where my strengths do not lie, but it’s important to know about the roles you don’t intend to do yourself, if only to be able to make life easier for the people you work with in those roles.

Oh, and if you can’t be good at sewing, at least try and learn. It seems like a universal experience among sample makers and factories that they deal with designers who don’t actually know how to make the clothing they’re designing. It’s just a lot easier for everyone if you know what you’re asking for and sewers tend to like you more when you ask them to do things that are physically possible.

As an independent designer, how do you incorporate sustainability in your designs? Sustainability is incorporated at every level. On the material level I only buy natural fibers (and even there, I veer towards the longer lasting, low impact ones), and I prefer deadstock, and before then I shop my own fabric stock. I almost exclusively shop locally in NYC to reduce shipping. I hope one day as I scale to develop my relationship with mills and dyers, since that seems to be where the least transparency is in the designer/production relationship. I also work with a fabric recycler to handle all the scraps at the end of production. Focusing on natural fibers is not only good for reducing up-front environmental costs, but also at the tail end, when items are finally used up and disposed of, it ensures a cleaner decomposition.

In design, my core guidelines focus on what’ll keep garments in use longest. One of the benefits of tailoring is that adjustability is kinda built into the framework, and that's a good way to keep something in circulation and out of the dump longer. I stay away from trends (that's not to say I completely ignore the fashion around me), my focus isn’t on a fast fashion “how can we serve the taste of this week” approach, but rather “how can I make the jacket that someone is still going to be wearing for five to 10 years.

At this point my label has only done some very small batches of production, it's mainly focused on bespoke garments commissioned by clients. I'm currently in the process of expanding to a RTW line and I’m excited for how those challenges of scale come up against my sustainability goals. It’s a challenge a lot of labels seem to be more than willing to give up on.

What is one thing the fashion industry is doing well in terms of sustainability? And is there anything it could improve on?
Nothing (as a whole), that is. And everything (in terms of needed improvements). Like every industry dealing (or not) with the reality of climate change, there’s a cycle of blame. Shoppers go for cheaper and more toxic. Brands aren't transparent with what they do. Governments are lax in their guidelines and allow for bad actors. And it’s true, global supply chains are a global problem, but it’s disingenuous to pretend like blame is equal.

Consumers only know what information they are given access to, and a vast majority are shopping cheaply because they don't have the financial leeway to make responsible decisions if they wanted to. Governments certainly are responsible for not effectively policing commerce. They’ve failed to protect workers, mainly in the global south but we also have bad working conditions here in America, and there exist no adequate guidelines to prevent greenwashing. All that being said, the responsibility lies largely on a fashion industry unwilling to do the right thing.

The industry has taken advantage of consumers' lack of knowledge, and government’s lack of oversight, and for the most part, despite public outcry, its leading brands and organizations seem determined to simply wait out that outcry until their eventual payouts. Excuses for not doing better abound. We need to accept that if a brand can’t function sustainably and ethically, then it doesn't function.

I recognize that I’m a small potato. I’m not beholden to large investors and quarterly reports to a board, and as I grow these will be pressures I will have to face and do my best to not bow to.

That’s not to say it’s hopeless! There are so many inspiring innovations in material construction, from packaging to fabrication, and the number of brands committed to sustainability grows every day. I really hope for a future industry where the idea of adding more garbage into the world is as abhorrent as we all thought skinny jeans were for the past few years.

Describe your personal aesthetic in three words.
Timeless, cheeky, tailored.

Is there a celebrity you would love to dress for a red carpet? And why?
I’ve honestly never put that much thought into red carpets, or celebrities. But the first that come to mind are Alan Cumming, Chris Pine, and Fran Lebowitz.

What is one milestone in your career that you are most proud of?
The first suit that I made that held up. As in, I felt it was well made enough that I still wear it. But I’m self-critical so this wasn't that long ago, and already I’ve altered it twice.

Social Media.
Instagram: @jack.sivan_official

CREW CREDITS:
PhotoBook Editor-In-Chief: Alison Hernon
PhotoBook Creative Director: Mike Ruiz + @mikeruiz.one
Talent: Jack Sivan
Tearsheets by Daniel López, Art Director, PhotoBook Magazine
Interview by Sneha KC, Contributor, PhotoBook Magazine