Alyson Eastman arrived at our building wearing a tent.

Not a look inspired by one. An actual tent, or what was left of one. 1950s army issue, the canvas cut down and rebuilt into a jacket that still repels water seventy years after somebody last slept under it. The trousers came from the same decade and the same war surplus. Remnants, patched together into a blanket first, then cut into trousers.

Perfect summer day in Greenpoint. The kind that makes New York briefly forgive itself. She had come to shoot with us and she walked into the room dressed entirely in things other people had abandoned, which, if you have any idea what this magazine is, tells you why she was there at all. So when a designer turns up in a seventy-year-old tent canvas, we are not meeting a trend. We are meeting a relative.

For those who don't know her, here is the compression. Alyson Eastman grew up in the country in Washington State, across the river from Portland, in a private school that put her in a uniform from kindergarten through eighth grade. Clothes were not a language available to her. Then she moved to a public high school where you could wear whatever you liked, and the whole thing detonated. She was about ten when she decided what she was going to be.

She studied at FIDM in Los Angeles. Then Paris. Then New York, where she spent years inside other people's fashion houses learning the parts of the trade that nobody romanticises. Retail. Wholesale. Production. A little styling. Zac Posen. Badgley Mischka. Ports 1961. She did not learn to design and then discover she could not sell. She learned to sell first.

She started her own label in 2016. The first collection was motorcycle jackets (Famously worn by Karte Moss) and nothing else. For five years she made leather and only leather. The industry told her repeatedly that this was not a business. Too expensive. You need a full collection. She has been generous about it since, saying most of them were trying to help, which does not make it easier to hear at the time.

She held. And her reasoning was never about taste, it was about arithmetic. One material meant one supply chain. One supply chain meant she could produce with a single exceptional factory outside Florence instead of chasing five suppliers she could not afford. Multiple fabrications would have meant multiple factories, multiple minimums, multiple ways to die. Her position is that if she had widened early, the label would not exist.

The constraint everyone read as her ceiling was the floor she was standing on.

Ten years in it is a full wardrobe. Leather outerwear is still made in Italy. Denim and cloth made in the USA. Vintage denim, luxury deadstock wovens, and now army surplus from a war that ended before her parents were born. In February 2025 she opened her first physical store in the Portland metro, which is the opposite direction to the one independent designers are supposed to travel.

I sat down to chat with Allyson and for anyone already reaching for the word sustainable, just WAIT. Here’s how it unfolded. 
 

ON THE UNIFORM

BJ I love the story of how you started. Can you share how you got here?

AE I started this journey when I was about ten. I grew up wearing uniforms, and I went to a public high school where you could wear anything you wanted, and it was like the heavens opened, and I was inspired, and I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted my own clothing brand. I wanted to express myself through clothes, so I went on that adventure. I went to school in LA and Paris, worked for many different fashion houses in New York City, and then finally started mine in 2016.

BJ How's it going?

AE Fantastic. I love every day. Every day is different. Every day is a challenge. Every day is a small win. It's up and down for the good. It keeps me busy. I'm a Gemini. I like to learn and keep moving, so I love it.

ON WHAT COMES NEXT

BJ There was a denim range, now the army range. What's next?

AE Bigger and better. Whatever I can find. I just sourced some seventies wool blankets that we're going to make into some beautiful coats for the winter time. Plaid, bright colours, just moving forward in that direction. Still making new products with new fibers, but all natural fibers, not polyester and things like that. Just seeing where the journey takes me, and growing from there, sourcing from there.

ON DRESSING FOR YOURSELF

BJ What do you want to see from the world, from the fashion industry?

AE I would love to see people dress for themselves and not for who they think they should be. I think people get caught up in looking cool because someone says it's cool, or they read in a magazine that it's cool. Everyone has their own style, and they are cool, and they should resonate on that and find that, because that's also a journey that goes a lot deeper. But it reflects in your personal style, and I think that's really important. I wish everyone would tap into that a little bit and dress with younger, smaller brands. You don't have to dress in Gucci to be cool. Although Gucci is cool. But support the small guys. We put a lot of love and heart into it. We oftentimes have the best quality because we care, and some of the coolest materials.

Most designers draw first and source second. Alyson works backwards. She flies to Los Angeles, digs through material nobody else wanted, and lets what she finds decide the collection. The army remnants became trousers because that is what the cloth was willing to be.

Look at what is in her studio. Leather nobody wanted after dinner. Canvas that housed soldiers and then sat in a warehouse for seventy years. Denim somebody wore out. Wovens the mill could not shift. Every material she owns is something the system had already given up on.

Then, in the same conversation, she says what she wants from America is for us to work out why a person is behaving the way they are before we decide they are bad.

Same rule. Cloth, people, no difference. Nothing gets written off for arriving damaged or unfashionable or seventy years late.

She heard herself and got embarrassed. It's cheesy, but it's true. It is not cheesy. Anybody can post about love. She built a business on it and held the line for five years while the industry told her it would not work.

The industry was wrong. It usually is.

Everything she makes was already here. Nothing gets thrown out. Not the hide, not the canvas, not the person you have already written off.

I have been doing the maths ever since. Take twenty percent of it. Run that across eight billion people. Then look at what fashion becomes.

She walked in wearing the argument.