Interview with Project Runway Season 6's designer Logan Neitzel

The highly anticipated return of Project Runway, featuring
designer Logan Neitzel, premieres Thursday,
August 20, at 10pm ET/PT, on Lifetime Television.
Photo Credit: Mike Yarish/Lifetime Networks, 2009

Okay, so Logan Neitzel was not at all what I expected from a guy who was voted Seattle’s Sexiest Bar Back in 2005. I expected a swaggering, boastful young man. What I found was a very experienced designer who has been hanging on in Seattle for a year, waiting for Project Runway to air. Mr. Neitzel has worked it all, and spent extensive time in China over the last 4 years working on the back end of the design and manufacturing process. He traveled to China multiple times for a previous employer. “I think that it’s definitely one advantage that I had over a lot of the other designers in the show was the realization of how the whole process works.”

I don’t know many fledgling designers that have had experience in the manufacturing end of their work. In fact I ran across more than one “designer” in my day who felt they did not even need to know how to sew. Others would be sewing for them, so why bother to learn? Sadly, they did not see the link between being able to draw a dress, and being able to construct a dress that could actually be worn.

Think I am exaggerating? I worked in a small children’s-wear company early in my career. I was there to hear about the whole batch of swimsuits that had to be thrown away because there was no way to get the suit on. You see, dress forms have no head. High necked racer back swim suits easily slip over the stub of a neck….but add a real human head, and oops!

No, this sort of experience is invaluable to a designer, and in this case it was even the reason that Mr. Neitzel became a designer. He was simply tired of working on everybody else’s designs. Now don’t get me wrong. His innate skills did not leap, full formed, out of his forehead. They came from his family. Mr. Neitzel confesses “I had watched my grandpa and my dad work with leather when I was younger so that was kind of the first thing I was really exposed to sewing, was hand-sewing leather.” 

One of Logan Neitzel's pre-project Runway designs.
Check out his web site for more.

Knowing this, and the fact that Mr. Neitzel grew up in Blackfoot, Idaho with a family who routinely repaired saddles and other horsy leathers, I have visions of his youth. I see his dad as the Marlboro Man, and little Logan looking up at him, coonskin cap cocked to one side, and his yellow dog by his side—but if that’s the case, where did his fashion sense come from? Well, okay he does say that his fashion “must” is cowboy boots (I think my Lucchese boots count for this one, especially for an eastern girl) but that is as far as his cowboy goes. Well, almost. His first garment was a pair of leather moccasins he made when he was 14. He says, “Basically it was made out of elk hide that my brother had tanned, and I decided to make myself some moccasins” Oh yes…that elk they had lying about in the back, that his brother decided to process and tan one day. Incidentally, yes, they did fit, and yes, he still has them (but they no longer fit). But really, does he know what he’s sitting on with that heritage to pull from? You can’t buy training like this. No one else is going to have his design viewpoint. He’s truly a one-off, and he wasted no time heading for the career he never knew he wanted.

At age 14 he worked on a small sports shop. He was going to trade shows, and at age18 he became a sales rep, and began selling other people’s product. That’s when he got sick of that and decided to go to design school. “That was how more or less how I go into design. I was kind of sick of selling other people’s garments and I was ready to create my own.” So, he took a huge leap. “I had decided, and within a week I was already moving to Seattle after I had gotten accepted (AIS—Art Institute of Seattle).” When he arrived, he found that he had a more talent than he expected. He also found a sort of comfort in the design process itself. “I have always been good with making things with my hands, and so I think that after learning how to use the machines—that whole process was so interesting to me — breaking down the garment to pieces and doing it all from a flat pattern to a constructed garment was really cool to me.”

He found that he still loved his leather, and denims, and he uses them in a way no one else can, because he looks at them in a different way. He looks at what they become on a body well after he puts it on the client. It’s a point of view only a horseman would notice. ”It’s interesting to watch a garment like that kind of take on who you are as you wear it. The more you wear it, it wrinkles here and shapes and takes on who you are as a person. So that’s why I use a lot of leather today.”

Mr. Neitzel’s designs have the spunk and fun-factor of a Betsey Johnson design, but with a harder, streetwise edge. He mixes fabrics and leathers in a fresh way, and still maintains a wearability that’s necessary for a designer to actually make significant sales. His work is fresh and fun, but he does not feel that Seattle “gets” him. “The majority of Seattle doesn’t really get what I do. So that’s kind of a tough thing that I have been realizing over the last year. I’m just trying to really establish my niche market and the ultimate goal is to kinda have a cult following behind my clothing and having people be inspired by what I am doing. “

PROJECT RUNWAY: SEASON 6 DESIGNERS
The highly anticipated return of Project Runway, now in 
its sixth season, premieres Thursday, August 20, 
at 10pm ET/PT, on Lifetime Television. 
L to R: Top Row: Mitchell Hall, Ari Fish, Nicolas Putvinski, 
Louise Black, Malvin Vien, Shirin Askari, Ra'mon-Lawrence 
Coleman, Christopher Straub, Gordana Gehlhausen
Bottom Row: Irina Shabayeva, Johnny Sakalis, Qristyl 
Frazier, Logan Neitzel, Althea Harper, Carol Hannah 
Whitfield, Epperson
Photo Credit: Mike Yarish/Lifetime Networks, 2009

Why doesn’t Seattle get him, when it can be said that it has a logging and salmon heart—close kin to leather and denim? “Just because the fashion scene isn’t quite as forward—I consider most of my designs more, I don’t know, I can see them more in Berlin, London, Tokyo, or something like that” but he adds that “it’s important for me to stay here for at least the duration of the show so people know how to track me down.”

Hmmm…well, when one is as well-traveled as Mr. Neitzel is, one tends to acquire a worldlier outlook. “I traveled to China quite often over the last 4 years, and so I usually try to book a layover, to travel a little bit, so Tokyo—I have been to South Korea, Bali and different places to try to relax a little bit and see a different culture, and try to build some of my designs off that.”

With all the travel he does, Mr. Neitzel necessarily takes much of his inspiration from the Orient. “I think that Japanese fashion in general—it’s just interesting how you’ll see groups of people there, it’s just head to toe what they are trying to be. You know, whether it’s the rockabilly look, or whatever. Head to toe, they’re all done up. I just love it. I love dressing up myself. I just think it’s so interesting, the culture there, how they attach to certain things. One hundred percent, they’re behind it.” I am thinking that he must have seen a great deal of cosplay while he was there. The evidence is on the photos of his trip. There is a lot to be inspired from in just that little niche market of Japan. I think he really does appreciate it. It shows in those silver jeans that he shows to us on his closet tour video. “Silver jeans…get worn on special occasions. It’s important for a designer not to be scared to wear something different. Most of the stuff I design is a little different. If I was scared to wear it myself, then who’s gonna believe in what I do?” Beautiful.

So, a year later, we finally get to see his work on Project Runway. He’s got a beautiful web site up and ready for us to ogle. He did a beautiful runway show at Seattle’s Fashion Week where he "stole the show" last spring. He’s set, at long last, to make his mark. “It’s been a long haul for me. I am excited for everyone to see what I have created on the show and just go through what I experienced last year. Most of my friends did not know the process and didn’t know where I was. I just kinda disappeared. I told my friends I was in China. They are slowly starting to figure out that was a lie.”

I hope they quickly see his design chops, ‘cause he’s got them. He looks to Karl Lagerfeld for a map of his future. “Viewing myself in 50 years I hope to obviously be at some sort of similar level as him. I have the utmost respect for what he does and just how outspoken—personality-wise he’s an amazing designer.”

Nope, Logan Neitzel’s not at all what I expected, and that may be why he’s not raking in the dough—yet. No one knows what to make of him. His blog is a series of photo essays. He makes ends meet by bartending. Seattle loves having him there, if they do not actually buy his work. This, of course will soon change as he has a few pieces that will be sold on the Project Runway.com site. He’s a hard one to categorize. But that, I think will end up being a good thing for him. It’s that bit of the unknown quantity that makes his work sing.

More interviews:

Project Runway Designers Unveiled

Althea Harper

Mitchell Hall

Malvin Vien

Gordana Gehlhausen pt 1

Gordana Gehlhausen pt 2

Nicolas Putvinski

For more info: Seattle Magazine, Logan's collection at Seattle fashion Week, Flicker set, Follow Logan on twitter, Tom and Lorenzo.