Tyler McGillivary is Mother Earth’s whimsical designer

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Picture this: Deee-Lite’s music video for “Groove Is in the Heart,” is thumping on your computer. Lady Miss Keir, glowing in a fur coat (labeled faux in the first frames) and shimmering shorts, struts around a black backdrop. She’s a mind-boggling sight, prancing around the stage before asking with an inflated French accent, “How do you say… Deee-Lite?” Cut to swirling visuals of the band in gaudy psychedelic attire, featuring several looks from Lady Miss Keir as she dances through the song.

The fabulous Lady Miss Keir was one of New York-based designer Tyler McGillivary’s earliest style icons. “She has that hyper-color, hyper-fun style that I used to be really obsessed with,” McGillivary says, smiling. “When I started getting into fashion, that ‘90s-mod, psychedelic energy was what I used to be really drawn to.”

Read more: How Anna Sui created some of music’s most iconic looks

Five years ago, McGillivary launched her namesake label with that same vibrance. Graduating from New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized study in 2017, McGillivary fused style with her studies in visual culture, sociology, and nature to form the brand identity. Her botanical and peculiar works have caught the attention of celebrities like Charli XCX, Wolf Alice’s Ellie Rowsell, and Madonna.

This year alone, McGillivary has been on a winning streak. Recently announced as a participant in Disney’s Create 100, and being part of Coach’s circular sub-brand Coachtopia, the latter includes two exclusive pieces in collaboration with the label. 

Growing up in suburban Washington, D.C, McGillivary recalls turning to nature as a creative playground. Having often felt bored in the suburban plane, she found peace going outside.

The brand came of age around the advent of Instagram’s shopping feature, when other smaller designers were beginning to market their work. Creating more experimental, personal pieces for the shop, like flower tops and clothes with interchangeable fabric, McGillivary recalls being moved by new age ‘60s furniture as inspiration. “It’s hard to think of a time where it didn’t exist,” she says, explaining that the saturation of these amorphous aesthetics felt very new in the internet’s hive mind. 

“You’re all absorbing the same visual information [on Instagram]. For artists, it causes a reaction where we’re all reacting to the same stimuli. It creates an overlap of ideas. People genuinely come to the same idea, because they’re looking at the same thing,” says McGillivary, brushing her sandy blonde hair behind her ears. “I do also love that there are so many different outcomes that come out of consuming the same imagery.”

When it comes to the convergence of nature and style, the work offered by McGillivary has its own eccentric, surreal quality to them. Having never seen these ecosystems, its creatures, and forms in their organic states because of her suburban upbringing, McGillivary deliberately chooses to highlight their natural beauty. Transforming the wearer into butterflies, poisonous frogs, and carnivorous plants, McGillivary’s work offers a uniqueness that a floral print halts.

There’s a certain fairytale-like aspect to being covered by flowers, butterflies, or the ocean. “I think they’ve often existed in fantastical forms,” McGillivary notes. On a particular day in the studio, McGillivary had been looking through different images of butterfly gardens. The thought fluttered in like a quiet premonition, “what would it be like to be covered in butterflies?” And just like those butterflies twinkling around their gardens, the idea was manifested into the “Elsa Dress,” a poly-satin dress with laser cut butterflies appliqued all over the dress.

In a recent drop, McGillivary took to the sea for reference. When it comes to the ocean, coral reefs are like “gardens of the sea” for her. There’s an undeniable mystery about the ocean that McGillivary resonates with, even in a way that gardens and flora aren’t. “I keep returning to them, especially jellyfish, sea slugs, coral, stuff like that.”

McGillivary cites media like Belladonna of Sadness, Fantastic Planet, and Hayao Miyazaki’s illustrations for Studio Ghibli as inspiration, but she is constantly sourcing old wildlife books, looking through nature photojournalism and National Geographic magazines.

She describes the upcoming season as “the fragility of life indicated through nature.” Dutch paintings, darkly romantic, and rose-tinged pieces tell the story of the collection, showing beauty and rawness through decaying forms. Moved by the hyper-symbolic motifs of Dutch paintings, McGillivary intends to evoke those same emotions.

The concept of a Tyler McGillivary flagship sounds like the vivid daydream of a cartoon fairy, but is still very alive and in the works for McGillivary’s brand — a cozy log cabin, set in a bizarre forest, where the vivid colors of McGillivary’s work illuminates the shop; life size pillows of plants and insects; homegoods that McGillivary is currently in the process of manufacturing. 

Whether it’s being wrapped in a butterfly’s wings with her “Dani dress,” or possessing the attitude of a venus fly trap from the “Dover tank,” McGillivary’s vision for her brand is as clear as it is thrilling. “I want to feel like a little person living in a big garden,” the whimsical designer says. The metamorphosis is exquisite.