Tibi at W Department

Tibi began in Hong Kong in 1997. Amy Smilovic had been living abroad and working corporate jobs, first at American Express and then at Ogilvy, and started a clothing line from there. She moved it to New York, and she is still the person deciding what it is. A house run by one point of view since 1997 accumulates a position rather than a look, and that is what this one has.

The word she uses for the position is pragmatism. The house calls it creative pragmatism and defines it as “a design philosophy that balances highly conceptual creativity with utility and functionality,” which sounds like a compromise and is not one. The operating principle underneath it is stated just as plainly: “less is more, better is always better, and creativity thrives when humans and a distinct point of view are the basis for all decision making.” Smilovic wrote a book about it, The Creative Pragmatist, whose argument is that style is learned rather than possessed, and that it has nothing to do with age, shape, or size.

Two of her terms do most of the work. A WOF is a Without Fail: the piece you reach for and that works every time. Her insistence is that a Without Fail should be anything but basic, a white shirt with an actual point of view, a jean with a proportion, rather than a blank. An I&O is an In and Out: the piece that arrives, is loved, and moves on. The argument is not that one is better than the other. It is that the Without Fails have to be right first, because everything else in a wardrobe is judged against them.

The method shows most clearly in one garment. The Liam is the house’s blazer, and Tibi recuts it season after season in whatever cloth it is thinking about: cashmere suiting, tropical wool, crispy nylon, silky cotton, and a double-faced wool and angora. The pattern barely moves. The cloth changes what the jacket is for, which is the whole argument, because a cashmere blazer cannot be built the usual way, by imposing a shape and trusting the cloth to hold it. It has to be drafted so that falling is the intention. The result reads as tailoring from across a street and behaves like a cardigan once it is on.

The cloths are named and specific, which is the other half of the same discipline: Japanese selvedge denim, Japanese compact nylon, Italian twill, washable cashmere, acetate, and bio twill. Tibi is a New York house now, with its own stores in New York City and on St. Simons Island in Georgia.

The blazers are the reason. We have taken the Liam in cashmere suiting and in tropical wool, which are the two ends of one pattern: one that reads as tailoring and behaves like a cardigan, and one impeccably made and deliberately unremarkable in outline, meant to be reached for without a decision. A blazer you put on without thinking has to look like nothing in particular, and that is harder to draft than it sounds.

Beside them sits the Alec, Tibi’s five-pocket selvedge jean, in a classic blue and a dark indigo. The wash is the only real decision left to make about it: the dark one goes with the tailoring, the lighter one with everything else. Then the knitwear and the washable cashmere, the nylons, the acetate slip skirt and the cami cut to match it, and the tees and tanks that the rest of it gets layered over.

One practical note. Tibi sizes its clothing in US numbers and its denim in waist inches, so a jean and a trouser from the same house are not sized on the same scale, and ordering both at once is where that catches people out. If you are choosing, call us and we will measure before you commit.

Continue Exploring

All Tibi. Blazers, selvedge denim, knitwear, nylon, silk, and the tees underneath.
Layering With Tibi. Our writing on how these pieces work against the rest of a wardrobe.
How to Build a Wardrobe. Building slowly rather than seasonally, which is the Without Fail argument by another name.
The Fabric Care Guide. Cashmere, selvedge denim, acetate, and technical nylon.
Studio Nicholson. London, and built cloth first in the same way.
Massimo Alba. Milan, also carried at W Department.
The Library. Our writing on the houses we carry, plus the monthly playlist.
Visit W Department. 54½ Lincoln Avenue on The Plaza, open daily, 11 to 5.