In Lieu of a Runway Show, Tanya Taylor Debuts Fall 2024 Via a Kelly Rutherford Selfie

Ana Colón

February 14, 2024 at 11:18 AM·7 min read

With more than 10 years in business behind her, Tanya Taylor has done the fashion week thing. She's also opted out of it, at times coming up with some clever alternatives to a live collection unveiling: She's released lookbooks, but she's also filmed comedy skits and voting PSAs. Now, she's thinking outside the box yet again, debuting Fall 2024 on fashion's latest Instagram obsession.

"Isn't it amazing that she's actually been doing these selfies for a while? She's always been stylish, but it's just caught on," the designer says of OG "Gossip Girl" star Kelly Rutherford's popular elevator outfit documentation. "She's captured people's attention because it's so, so real. The styling's not overdone. It looks like she just snapped it on her way out."

Taylor herself started paying attention to the actor's social media presence last fall. "Honestly, she inspired a lot of the knitwear in the collection, because I just kept seeing her wear these stunning, fuzzy sweaters and really cool Fair Isles. She was doing something really classic, but then she put on this one-shoulder weird little taffeta dress. Her different personalities really intrigued me."

Taylor's Fall 2024 offering has that feeling, too, of speaking to a variety of women and styles. So, this season, the brand worked with Rutherford to premiere select pieces from the collection on her Instagram.

"I always love thinking, if we're not having a show and we're not speaking to our customer through fashion in a physical sense, how we can still bring fashion week to them through someone that they're looking at?," Taylor says.

Rutherford picked out the looks she liked from the collection and styled them out herself. "Obviously, she always puts her signature sunglasses," Taylor says. "It's a different elevator this time, which is kind of fun.... I always like thinking about real people when I'm designing, and it's just nice to have her as a muse, in a way, of who I want to continually dress."

Though Taylor certainly had points of inspiration on the mind, the Fall 2024 collection is less so about a specific theme or a story. "I've spent so much time building the collection creatively that I wanted to make sure that a hundred percent of our focus was on product," she says. "Sometimes, as a smaller brand, it feels like you can't do two things at once — you can't put on a fashion week show and also be in production fittings and also make the right product at the right price that's good for the business. I've just really decided to choose one lane... It feels like the reprioritization of the collection is the most important thing."

In September, the brand opened its first standalone store, and that has shifted the way Taylor thinks about the collection. "I feel a responsibility to make great outfits for real people, because the last thing I want is someone to walk in and feel challenged or feel that something's unapproachable or confusing," she says. "I'm focused on comfort, on softness, on ease — all those things make the retail experience so much better. Then, you can get playful with color and the way you combine colors within things that feel really wearable."

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A post shared by Kelly Rutherford (@kellyrutherford)

For Fall, the brand is pushing knitwear, stepping up its offering with new space-dyed Fair Isles, as well as making a bigger investment in those details that take a blouse or a pant from something you wear every day to something you can't wait to wear every day.

"I needed the time to sit in front of each piece and just consider how to make it more special, but really wearable," she explains. "All of our shirting has cool beaded details in the chest. Our denim have really special studs. It's definitely evolved, but it's more in the details of each piece."

The brand's also doubling down on pieces that have been selling well, like a fringe sequined skirt from Fall 2023. "We sold 50 units of that sequined skirt in the first month, which is cuckoo," Taylor says. "We brought it back as a dress. We have it as a skirt and as a really cute short mini dress. That was fun, to riff off of something that we had confidence in."

A big takeaway from the first six months on Madison Avenue is that customers are coming to Tanya Taylor to shop holistically. "People want full outfits. They're coming in and buying three, four pieces. They're looking to be fully styled," she says. "That's been really surprising when we've been traditionally known as a dress brand."

Having Rutherford put her own spin on the Fall 2024 collection is not only in line with these retail learnings, but it also allows the brand to translate them onto different platforms and incorporate them into its storytelling.

"She's kind of your perfectly-styled cool friend, but then she also has 2 million followers — but she doesn't act that way," Taylor says. "There's something interesting about how she might apply to our e-comm business, our retail business and just our brand awareness through social. It's fun sometimes to think about how, when you have those different ways to sell to people, you tell a brand story about who your ambassadors can be.

See every look from Tanya Taylor Fall 2024 below.