New York is a “city built by immigrants, powered by immigrants,” Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani said in his victory speech last night. The same ethos fuels Custom Collaborative, a nonprofit organization for mentoring and empowering economically disadvantaged and immigrant women in the fashion industry. The organization’s new headquarter, dubbed the Fashion Career Design Hub, in New York’s Garment District, thus celebrates the women’s work and creativity as a place to sew, present, learn, and host events. Frederick Tang Architecture weaved together all these programmatic needs in a 6,700-square-foot space using welcoming, bright, and flexible fabric.
The architects organized smaller, private areas like offices and conference rooms around the perimeter of the hub, leaving the middle more open. But the nonprofit’s vast array of programming still required work and exhibition space, so the center is broken up into different zones. They’re divided, and can be broken down, by a series of Kvadrat drapes to provide acoustic separation from sewing machinery and other equipment, as well as enabling the central space to completely open for runways and other events.
“The design had to be as flexible and transformative as their programs—curtains that shift and overlap to turn one room into many: a classroom, runway, sewing studio, exhibition area, and celebration space,” said the firm’s principal, Frederick Tang.
The fabric palette is bright and vast, ranging from sheer to denser consistencies. Hues include butter yellow, forest green, and lilac. Together the palette creates a bright and inviting interior. As Tang continued, “The headquarters are meant to feel as dynamic, resourceful, and vibrant as the women who use it.
Other elements extend this vibrancy. The partitions are paired with overlapping and figural carpets and flooring by FLOR Tile in corresponding colors, helping to create non-fixed zones in the space. Custom-designed plinths and podiums extend this color palette to visually cohere the furniture to the floor and fabric, including the mirror gifted to the space by Angelina Jolie. The design both resolves the spatial puzzle of the program and offers a considered hub for women to pursue careers in fashion design.