Rachel Antonoff Says Her 'Wacky and Fun' Parents Often Model Her Clothes: 'They Will Literally Do Anything' (Exclusive)

New York City-based fashion designer Rachel Antonoff has the two best people on deck to dress up in her creative clothes: her mom, Shira, and her dad, Rick.

Home is wear the heart is — especially for Rachel Antonoff.

The New York City-based fashion designer is famous for her eye-catching clothing with a fun and feminine twist. Her eponymous brand boasts everything from sweaters with a “seafood tower” and the female reproductive system to PJs with toiles of Sex and the City character Miranda Hobbes all over them.

The designs are as popular as they are imaginative, and while Antonoff has no shortage of people wearing her clothes around (a feat she says is "completely thrilling"), two of her favorite models are her own parents: dad Rick and mom Shira.

“I have yet to find something they won’t wear,” Antonoff, 42, says. “My parents have been modeling for me since the beginning, and I keep thinking I'm pushing up against a line that they're not going to want to cross, and I'm not. They will literally do anything, it's crazy.”

Antonoff hails from an artistic family — her younger brother is musician and producer Jack Antonoff— so perhaps her parents’ delightful and innovative spirits are really no surprise, she says.

“They're really, really fun, strange people. Really creative people. They're complete weirdos, which I feel like makes for the most creativity," she explains. "And my dad, he is a musician, but he never pursued it professionally. And my mom played the flute. It’s just wacky and fun, and it was definitely an imaginative house to grow up in.”

The creative fervor seemingly imbued in her genes has served Antonoff well in her career. She set out to be a writer, studying communications at Fordham, but she quickly realized there was more to her lifelong love of clothing and “playing dress-up.”

Her simultaneous “dirty little secret” and secret sauce is that she’s not actually professionally trained as a designer. Everything she’s learned, she’s learned on the job.

“I came at this from such a side door, weird way,” she admits. “Back then… I was kind of ashamed of it. And now, I feel so proud that I kind of elbowed my way into this industry, learned through doing,” she says. “And I mean, [I made] wild mistakes, like crazy, huge cry-in-public kind of mistakes. But now, I actually have a working knowledge.”

A working knowledge of industry things like fabrics and textiles and how they go together to bring a vision to life seems like a humble understatement given the colorful and unique designs Antonoff turns out. Her favorite one of late is one she calls the cupcake set.

“I've been wearing it every day and it's like the perfect little holiday outfit,” she notes, before adding that she finds inspiration for her clothes in “everything and nothing.”

"I'm not walking around the city feeling enchanted by everything, but I do find that ideas for prints and clothes come from truly the most random places,” she says. “If I'm sort of in a time crunch and I need to get some ideas going, it always happens if I'm running. I think because daydreaming happens during running.”

At the end of the day (or run), Antonoff hopes her brand inspires confidence and peace in the people who wear her clothes.

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“I have always struggled a little bit with fashion and feel like the general vibe can be very, ‘You can't sit with us,’ and not inclusive. And I consider it my personal mission to try to carve a little place in that industry that's not that, and where clothes can make people feel good, and that dressing up can feel like it did when you were little,” she muses.

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“Dressing for yourself as opposed to for someone else," she says, "that's really important to me.” 

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