THREE-WAY DRESS
by society for rational dress

Corinne Grassini might be the mastermind, but she’s not taking all the credit.

The tremendously talented designer behind Society for Rational Dress is obsessed with process, so much so that she wanted to take us behind the scenes to meet all the people involved in the edition she dreamt up for Of a Kind—the ones who rarely get any credit.

Check out (and buy!) the finished product here. There are just 20!


“This is me draping it on a dress form. This is a pretty straightforward piece, so it doesn’t take too long.”


“Myra—she’s been with me for three years—is making the tech pack. She’s sketching everything out on her computer and taking measurements to hand over to the pattern-maker.”


“Natalia is making the pattern. She works in our offices, and those are our patterns behind her, too—ones we’ve done in the past.”


“That’s our cutter—that’s Tony. I’ve worked with him for seven years now. The cutting factory is probably about ten minutes away. I try to keep everything as local as possible.”


“Tony cuts the piece in duplicate and sends it over, along with the sample, to Maria. She is doing a single-needle stitch.”


“Arirs is so cute—he’s always smiling like that. He’s pressing the garment. The owner of the factory is his wife. We’ve been working with this factory for three years now.”


“Laura does all the final trimmings. If there are stray threads or anything, she takes care of that, and then she’ll do the final inspection.”


“Kristina is an intern of ours in our offices. She’s doing a final, final quality-control inspection and then packing and shipping the dresses to you.”

The L.A. designer has been using flowy silk and rich leather since the beginning.

Society for Rational Dress has a distinct point-of-view: Once you get to know the line, you can spot designer Corinne Grassini’s creations—and its masculine-feminine, tough-delicate balance—anywhere. And the really cool thing is that the traits that make her work so stand-out have been in place since the very beginning—2004. As proof, four styles from the early days, back when she had time to make all of the patterns herself and do custom pieces.


“I patterned it, I cut it, I pleated it, I sewed it—I did everything to it. It was a total labor of love because it took days, months to perfect the pattern. I was always recreating it for different women’s bodies. It was a tailored piece—it was never mass-produced—which is something I really love about it as well. When I pull it out of a garment bag, I know there’s only one of them just like this.”


“I did the leather component on this with a guy that I used to work with in the Valley. We would talk forever—just shoot the shit about how much we loved leather. It was amazing what he could do with leather—he was totally magical—and he probably thought I was crazy doing this little silk undergarment with the harness on it.”


“That’s an actual army-surplus harness. You can see it’s much more industrial and raw than the other one. Every season, I like to go back to the one-shoulder pieceto re-inspire me—to see where I want to go next and also to bring me back to what I love about fashion and design.”


“This is one of my favorite pieces—just for the simplicity of it. Anybody in the world could make it. You just cut a circle on the bias and two circles for your arms. I used that shape a lot when I was getting technical with all of the other patterns and wanted something that was super, super simple. Depending on the fabric that you choose and how you decide to close it, it can be a really beautiful piece.”

Don’t miss out on Corinne’s newest creation: the versatile silk dress she made exclusively for us.

The designer shares her army-surplus and equestrian-shop inspiration.

When Corinne Grassini was first starting her line, Society for Rational Dress, she used real-live parachute belts and other sturdy leather finds to add some toughness to her work. (Nowadays, she produces her own leather accents to accent her drapey, feminine pieces.) Through the years, she’s amassed quite the assortment of beautiful and well-worn goods that were formerly used on battlefields or in barns—here, she shares her five favorites.


“I used to scavenge army-surplus stores wherever I would go, whether I was out-of-town or in L.A. This is one of the first pieces I ever bought, and I love just the combination of the colors of the leather and of the metal. It’s huge and super heavy—a very big man could wear that. I have no idea what it was used for, and I kind of like that—then I can get more creative with what I use it for.”


“That one is from an army-surplus place too. My bag is like eighteen times the size of that and weighs thirty pounds. I’d so much rather have something like this that’s like a little fanny pack.”


“I love the different ways that leather wears. The two sides of this have worn in completely different ways. On one side, it’s almost burned, and on the other, it looks like it has acid stains. I got this piece at the Fairfax Flea Market. There are a couple of vendors that always have really amazing pieces.”


“When the first iPod came out, I made cases for myself. I came across one the other day, and it looks so similar to this leather pouch—that’s probably where the inspiration came from. It’s fun to look back on some of this stuff and see where my ideas originated.”


“One thing I love about all these pieces is that they are about function. Nobody put that much thought into the design, but somehow they came out as these amazing things. This is from a horse store in Santa Ynez. I used to ride a little when I was younger. My sister was really into it, and I just sort of tagged along. I loved smelling the leather along with the hay and all of that. I get super nostalgic when I walk into some of these places.”

Now’s your chance to get the (leather-accented) edition Corinne made just for Of a Kind.