Purl, Interrupted

For his first presentation at New York Fashion Week in February 2007, funded by an Ecco Domani award, Tom Scott was inspired by installation artist Ann Hamilton. It seems that a particular self-portrait of hers had caught his eye. It’s from her “Body Object Series”; she wears a dowdy black dressing gown and even dowdier shoes and sports a cluster of hay where her head is supposed to be. Scott’s theme that season? Introspection. This fall, Scott mined the work of Françoise Sullivan. While attending the Documenta art festival in Germany last year, Scott was struck by an adaptation of Sullivan’s 1948 performance piece “Dance in the Snow.” And somehow he connected the dots between this exhibition, which featured much swaying and buckling, and a lineup of knits.

Scott's spring 2008 inspiration book.

In fashion, it’s all too easy to leap to conclusions. Hearing about Scott’s esoteric inspirations, for instance, one might imagine him an ivory tower–type designer. That his label, Tom Scott, shows his name upside down—“incognito,” he says—speaks to that profile even more. In fact, he would prefer to have no logo at all, but another famously elusive industry nonconformist (Martin Margiela) has already claimed that shtick. Instead of inspiration boards, moreover, he creates a mixed-media art book to set the mood each season. Then there’s the sartorial evidence. His sweaters are unusual—unusual in a Rei Kawakubo sort of way, in a raise an eyebrow and just go with it manner. They’re consciously disproportioned—one side is more drawn out than the other, or there’s extra fabric languidly hanging from behind. Things are distorted, worn upside down and backward. Naturally Scott’s an arty idiosyncratic type in a white lab coat, manipulating his silhouettes in his studio like Willy Wonka stretches and plays with salt-water taffy—right?

Think again. Get to know him, and it turns out that Scott, 34, is perfectly normal. On this particular summer day, he’s casually dressed in jeans and a black Band of Outsiders shirt over a white T-shirt. His thick eyebrows and scruffy beard lend him a slightly boyish, rough edge. He pulls a shaggy beanie, covered in wool “hair,” off a rack in his showroom and plops it on his head. “People were trying these hats on and cracking up,” he says. “You know, I have a sense of humor about my pieces. We’ll have a laugh and think, That’s so strange—we’ve got to do it.”

As a kid growing up on the outskirts of Philadelphia, knitwear design was one of the last things on Scott’s mind. But his family’s vocations certainly pointed him in that direction. His father was a carpet weaver who worked on looms all day; Scott’s grandmother was a lacemaker at Quaker Lace Company. “She taught me how to crochet,” he recalls. “But I never thought textiles was something I wanted to do. I thought it was corny. Everybody else’s parents were lawyers or whatever, and, I mean, my dad [was] the carpet weaver?”