Meet Casey Immel-Brown | Fashion Designer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Casey Immel-Brown and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Casey, what role has risk played in your life or career?
In one sense risk is the entire basis of my career as a designer. I left a long, stable IT career in my late-30s to go back to school for a fashion design degree. And then after graduating, instead of taking a job in mass market retail or creating commercially accessible ready-to-wear, I’ve focused on the laborious process of hand crafting luxury pieces that tend toward one aesthetic extreme or another. At the same time, I think often when we label something as “risk” it’s a result of mistakenly equating stasis with safety. I left my previous career because I was completely miserable for the majority of my waking hours. The choice really came down to either staying in place, in which case the outcome was guaranteed to be a life I wasn’t ok with, or to make a massive change which at least had some chance of allowing me to wake up in the morning feeling genuinely excited about where I am and what I’m doing. In a way, the latter option was actually a lot less risky. The same principle applies to the work I produce. Trying to force myself to create the kind of clothing everyone else is also trying to create, especially when it’s not organic to who i am or how I work, seems like a pretty guaranteed way to wind up spinning my wheels. On the other hand, as someone who has taken a rather unusual path in life (and never really started out particularly “normal” to begin with), if I lean into what comes naturally to me then there’s a decent chance I will produce things that there aren’t a ton of other people out there already making. So when some aspect of my work does resonate with someone it becomes worthwhile for them to actually invest in purchasing something. Because it’s doing something for them they can’t get otherwise. There’s a quote from Brian Eno I think about constantly, “People in the arts often want to aim for the biggest, most obvious target, and hit it smack in the bull’s eye. Of course with everybody else aiming there as well that makes it very hard and expensive to hit. I prefer to shoot the arrow, then paint the target around it. You make the niches in which you finally reside.” So from that perspective a lot of the “risks” we take aren’t nearly as risky in comparison to the alternative. They’re the only paths that will actually get us where we want to go.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I make luxury clothing and accessories using classic couture and tailoring techniques. I also create garments from heavy vegetable tanned leather. It’s is a material which is typically only used for shoes and accessories, but by wet molding the leather and incorporating elements of traditional saddlemaking I’m able to use this type of leather to create entire outfits. The central idea behind all of my work is using fashion as a means for self-actualization. It’s a product of having grown up in a cult, and having learned early in life that clothing is an intensely powerful way to protect your identity and sense of self in an environment where any individuality is actively suppressed. I’ve taken to calling this aspect of my work “transgressive elegance”. I’m essentially always trying to find ways to take all of the elements of our internal selves that we’re taught to outwardly repress and create clothing that allows the wearer to express these parts of themselves as freely as they would any other. Because when you’re walking around feeling like you have to bury your anger, your political experience, your sexuality, your humor, or any number of other things it’s difficult to interact with the world with any real sense of confidence. In a lot of ways it’s really about looking at all of the work I had to do to get through my own trauma and mental illness and trying to pass some of those lessons on in what I create.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
The first thing I always suggest to people visiting Columbus is antiquing. There aren’t really many areas of the country left that still have the kind of old school, mildly chaotic antique malls we have where you can spend hours digging through stalls and wind up with something that you’ve never seen before. Essential stops for antiques would be Heritage Square on the Far East Side and then drives out to the antique malls in Powell, Springfield and Delaware. In a similar vein, the Westland Flea Market would absolutely be on the agenda. Then a visit to the Ohio History Center, partly because it’s just a great museum with the kind of atmosphere that calms me instantly, and partly for the incredible brutalist architecture. In terms of art, No Place, Skylab and the Cultural Arts Center are always impeccably curated. For food, first a tour of various African cuisines on the East Side. Calanley for Somali food, Ethiopian at Addis and then West African at Drelyse. Then Lavash for incredible Palestinian food. And lastly, the only real area where I have any sense of regional chauvinism is my absolute loyalty to classic Columbus thin-crust, square cut pizza, so I’d take someone to Rotolo’s, Iacono’s and Casa Di Pizza as many times as it took to convert them.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
One thing I’ve discovered about fashion is that, more than any other creative or professional arena I’ve ever been in, everything really is about people helping each other, and sharing connections and opportunities. So in that sense basically everyone I’ve ever worked with deserves some recognition. That said, Celeste Malvar-Stewart, who is an incredible designer and teaches in the fashion department at Columbus College of Art and Design has been the absolute most significant mentor to me as a designer. Aside from being the person I can go to with technical or creative questions and meltdowns, she’s really been the person who has pushed me to always go one step further with what I’m doing, and to trust that I can find a way to pull something off even when it feels impossible. Bethany James, who is an amazing jewelry designer, and also teaches at CCAD is another person who really who has impacted how I approach everything I do. Bethany has a way of getting people to analyze their work from all possible angles, artistically, technically, commercially, societally, etc… and to do so in a way that ends up making you value your own work in a way you likely didn’t before. Even though I have always been absolute in my belief that all fashion is art, ironically I was never able to think of myself as an artist until after working with Bethany.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/caseyimmelbrown/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jcaseyimmelbrown/

Image Credits
Gail Shamon Desiree Reed