Joy Cioci On Her Style, Fashion Week

Despite her young age, Joy Cioci has built up an impressive resume in the fashion industry, working with major labels like Gucci, Carolina Herrara and Nina Ricci. Her collection presented during New York Fashion Week illustrated her love for elegant flowing silhouettes coupled with gorgeous colors synonymous with the changing of seasons. Cioci thinks a modern woman has the freedom to dress exactly how she wants. “I think that now women have such strength that they never had before and identity,” she told Uinterview exclusively. “They know how they want to dress and how they want to feel everyday more than they ever have.”

This is the fourth in a series of designer interviews presented by Effen Vodka.

Q: Hi Joy, this is Angel from Dallas, and I wanted to know how you made the transition from working at other fashion lines like Gucci and Nina Ricci to finally branching out on your own?

A: I was fortunate to have experience in luxury and also in contemporary in the industry, and I was able to take both those experiences and make them into what my brand is and what I wanted to offer to the customers and from that experience I was able to see the level of fabrications and cuts and patterns and draping from both sides and I was able to mix both of them together in a sense it having a modern fabrication with a technical, a difficult technical like pattern or something that’s going to be harder to drape and sew or versus having a simple silhouette with a very like luxurious fabrication.

Q: Thanks, and how you define what style is today?

A: I was fortunate to have experience in luxury and also in contemporary in the industry, and I was able to take both those experiences and make them into what my brand is and what I wanted to offer to the customers and from that experience I was able to see the level of fabrications and cuts and patterns and draping from both sides and I was able to mix both of them together in a sense it having a modern fabrication with a technical, a difficult technical like pattern or something that’s going to be harder to drape and sew or versus having a simple silhouette with a very like luxurious fabrication.

Q: Hey Joy, it’s Matt from Nashville. What is your design process like? Do you work with a team?

A: My creative process as a designer is a little bit unique, especially because I’m just starting up with my company and my brand. So, I don’t have a large team helping me. I first start off with my concept that I have and inspiration for the season, and the collection, and I bring that into a mood board to visualize it a little bit better for myself, and from that point I’m able to sketch and like bring things that I had in my mind to paper. Then I kind of go back and maybe I’ll change the mood board a little bit or my inspiration just to tweak it to where I think I am you know ready to excel in that full point of view and then from that point I’ll sit and I’ll sketch things for a while and until I get perfect and how I want it to be. So, that process is a little bit long, it sounds short but it takes a little bit to get there mentally and artistically. From that point I’ll do like sketches and like technical flats and then I’ll go and I’ll work and I’ll do some draping up. I’m in Uptown, and Midtown, I’m in Soho and from that point it’ll actually come from real life, from actual patterns and fabrications, and then the garment actually goes through a large fitting process and it can change completely from what I might have sketched it originally to be. So, it’s always kind of a surprise at the end when it turns up. But it’s definitely rewarding.

Q: Hi Joy, this is Bree from Detroit, you began your work in fashion at age 15. How did you know that was the right career path for you at such a young age?

A: I knew I wanted to be a fashion designer at a young age because it was something that I felt strongly about. I was an artist as a young child, I had an artistic grandmother, I always went shopping with my mother and fell in love with fashion. I always saw things in the store that I wanted to have that weren’t really there. So I decided to start sketching things myself and I looked how clothes were made. I watched a lot of fashion news and fashion like videos and I kind of you know flipped through magazines and I fell in love with it. And then even when I became 15, 16 in high school we had a very strong fashion program that I went into and excelled at it and I came to New York and I went to Italy. I just knew that’s what I wanted to do for my life and my career.