–Katya Moorman
To me, luxury is not spectacle — it’s patience, skill, and care. Whether it’s a hand-knit sweater made from American wool or a properly cut coat, each piece is designed to stay, not just be seen.
Fashion designers are always told they must “tell a story” –whether that’s the story of one collection or an entire ethos. So it was advantageous for Becca Flood to have taken up literary studies along with fashion while at Parsons/The New School. “Studying two forms of art allowed me to figure out how I interpret the way all media overlaps. I see all art as a question, an answer, or a question with an answer.” she shared.
While she might sketch, create mood boards and color schemes like other designers, she also adds what she’s learned through writing to her design process. “I build some version of an essay outline of what I’m trying to express. It has reminded me of the importance of editing, revising, and killing your darlings.” Fashion gives her a narrative complexity that translates through texture and the visual.
The narrative she chose this season is the myth of Arachne. The story goes Arachne was a mortal weaver so skilled that she boasted her talents surpassed those of Athena, goddess of craft, prompting Athena to challenge her to a weaving contest. Arachne’s tapestry portrayed the gods —especially Zeus— as deceivers and predators who manipulated and seduced mortal women. Confronted with a work that both mocked the divine and surpassed her own in beauty, Athena was consumed by fury. She destroyed Arachne’s tapestry in rage and Arachne hanged herself in shame. The goddess then transformed Arachne into a spider, condemned to weave for eternity.
It was meant to be a story of the hubris of a young woman who dared to defy the gods. Becca reinterprets Arachne as a figure of the original punk. A female defiance which is particularly apropos in Trump’s America.
“Its supposed to serve as a warning against defying those in power and many attribute the theme of hubris to Arachne, for believing she could beat Athena. However, I’ve always chosen to think about the hubris truly being that of the Gods’, believing they could act hypocritically and never be called out by the mortals.”
That reframe became the collection’s emotional core. Revisiting the myth while building the collection, she found herself mapping it onto the current state of the industry as much as the world.
From there, the design process was concrete. She asked herself what silhouettes she associated with excessive pride and immediately thought of the polo shirt – that WASPy article of clothing seen on golf courses worldwide. She exaggerated the collar and elasticized the waist which creates a decidedly feminine cropped silhouette —a starting point for pieces with enough drama to get noticed, enough restraint to be worn. Arachne’s move, as Becca reads it, was to get Athena’s attention first. The collection follows the same logic.
Everything Becca makes is produced in the US, in natural fiber blends, in limited quantities across multiple sizes. She’s clear-eyed about what that costs. “It’s nearly impossible not to think about how many more pieces I could be making, or how else I could be spending the money on other aspects of the brand, if I was willing to compromise.”
“If you’re not willing to prioritize your beliefs and make room for them in your budget from the start,” she continues, “you won’t make space for them later.”
Becca’s knitwear comes from a tradition passed through the women in her family, and she carries that inheritance with some ambivalence. “I think some part of me also feels guilty that I’m the first one in my family who gets to spotlight their craft like this,” she says. She describes herself as the least technically skilled knitter among them — and mourns not having a record of their work. “I think back to what my cousin was knitting when she was my age and it seems so daunting to me.”
When she launched, Becca worried her work sat in an awkward middle —too funky for one customer, not abstract enough for another. She was wrong. “It’s been such a pleasant surprise to see the variety of people who are pulled to my pieces.” There’s no clean demographic, she says, but something in common: a pull toward careful sourcing and a classic piece with a little flair. “I like to think my styles can be ageless.”
The collection is dedicated to a mentor Becca lost, and when she talks about grief, she talks about it in physical terms. “So much of what I value about fashion as an expressive medium is that it makes me feel like I have someplace to physically put the grief. I still have to see the grief and accept the grief, but I don’t need to keep it inside me.”
That relationship between making and feeling runs through the conversation she’s part of — about what it means to work with your hands at a moment when most people’s hands just scroll. Becca’s position is less romantic than it might sound. “Working with your hands is significant and important. Full stop. It doesn’t need to be in the context of living in an era when people are so tech-obsessed.”
She does think it’s a form of defiance — not against individual scrollers, but against a system that stripped recent generations of the tools to learn skills that were once survival basics: sewing, mending, knitting. “I think it’s important to avoid shaming the generations that have fallen victim to it,” she says. The general population, she argues, doesn’t know what they’re missing. Becca grew up watching people knit, sew, care for animals, build things with their hands — and seeing first-hand how fulfilling it was, and how attainable.
“I would love to see people remembering, or even learning for the first time, what they’re capable of when they use their hands for creation rather than consumption. A skilled, confident community is a powerful one.”
Becca’s Favorites
Book A tie between Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief and Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad. Two works of fiction that deeply affected me when I read them at age 12 (Book Thief) and 19 (The Penelopiad).
Movie/Series Series: One Piece – Anime specifically, not live action remake (nothing against it just haven’t watched it). Movie: La La Land
Creative Inspo Anger, Grief, Hope. Anger disguised as Grief. The Grief of being continuously hopeful.
Food Potatoes.
Quality in a human being Honesty. Above all else, be honest with yourself and with everyone else.
Animal Can’t pick an all time favorite. Top 9, no particular order: Praying Mantis, Hammerhead shark, dog, cat, sheep, tortoise, crow, horse, Ranchu Goldfish
Person you Admire Living – Bridgit Mendler, Deceased – Claire McCardell
Quote to live by “It’s a lucky man, a very lucky man, who is committed to what he believes, who has stifled intellectual detachment and can relax in the luxury of his emotions – like a tipsy traveller resting for the night at wayside inn.” Alexander Pushkin
Find Becca Flood here
Lookbook photos by Oliver Barile, all photos courtesy Becca Flood.
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