Renowned menswear illustrator Richard Haines calls his story a “New York story.” Trusting his intuition, Haines moved to Manhattan in 1975 to pursue his dreams of fashion illustration and found security in a successful design career working with famous labels, like Perry Ellis, Calvin Klein and Bill Blass.

In 2008, Haines started his blog, What I Saw Today, and reinvented himself by capturing the spirit and style of New York men in his sketches. Haines now collaborates with brands like Dries van Noten, Prada, GQ, J.Crew and The New York Times. The Daily Orange spoke with Haines about his love for illustration and his career in fashion.

The Daily Orange: When did you discover your skills?

Richard Haines: I’ve drawn all my life. I look back and I think now, it was kind of an escape for me. When I was 5 or 6, my father was really sick. He was in the hospital for a few months, and I just remember kind of creating my own worlds to escape what was happening. For a kid that age, it was terrifying. That really kind of propelled my drawing. But, I have been drawing ever since I could hold my pencil.

The D.O.: How did you get started in fashion illustration and design?

R.H.: I moved to New York thinking that I would be an illustrator, but I never studied it formally, so I kind of backed down from it. I didn’t really have the confidence to be an illustrator yet. Then I was in fashion design for most of my career. In 2008, when the economy tanked, I couldn’t get a big design director job again, so I started a blog — everything changed after that.

The D.O.: Why did you decide to use a blog as a platform to showcase your work?

R.H.: Someone said, “Oh you should start a blog. It’s free, and you could just put your work up on it.” I remember looking around and stumbling on The Sartorialist. I saw it and thought, “This is really interesting — I’ll just start drawing stuff and posting.” It was incredibly powerful to just draw what I wanted to draw and post it. After working for big companies, where everything was so edited and someone always had their hand in something, it felt freeing. All of a sudden, I could just draw, scan and post it. I was doing it for me. As a designer, I had great jobs. But the way the industry accepted me was kind of like the universe saying, “You’re not really as good as a designer as you are an artist,” because the minute I started posting on my blog, I started getting feedback. Two weeks after I started the blog, someone emailed me saying I was written up on Style.com. It made me realize this is really what I’m meant to be doing.

The D.O.: Your father was a naval officer, so you traveled around a great deal as a kid. Do you think that exposure has had an effect on your designs?

R.H.: When I was a teenager, my father was stationed in Iceland, and I remember leaving the suburbs of Philadelphia at 13 and arriving there. It was so exotic. All the guys looked like Mick Jagger. I think it was the exposure to something so different that really opened my eyes. I was always so hungry to take things in visually — I was like a sponge. And, I still am. Traveling makes you think differently.

The D.O.: Many see the fashion industry as competitive and cutthroat, while others argue it is more like one big community. What has the experience been like for you?

R.H.: I think it’s all those things. The kind of world I am in now is a real community, because menswear is such a small piece of the pie. Can it be catty and bitchy? Yeah. I don’t know any field that’s not. Can it be embracing and amazing? Well yeah, that too.

The D.O.: If you had the chance to go back in time and talk to your 20-year-old self, what would you say?

R.H.: Follow your bliss. I mean, it’s kind of Oprah, but it’s true. Do what you love and the universe will back you up. I think it’s really about trusting one’s instincts and getting really deep and listening to yourself, not what your teachers or parents have told you. Advice is great, but I do think that everyone has this inner core of truth. It took me a very long time to get to it.

 

Published on March 18, 2015 at 12:01 am

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