When hand-me-downs are an inspiration

Suk Chai fine-tuned her fashion vocabulary as a child, watching items that originally belonged to her eldest brother get passed to her second-oldest brother, then to her older sister, and finally to her

Listening to the designer Suk Chai describe a garment in thorough detail is almost like seeing it and touching it for yourself. She fine-tuned her fashion vocabulary as a child, watching items that originally belonged to her eldest brother get passed to her second-oldest brother, then to her older sister, and finally to her. "I waited for this particular tweed coat and red beret for at least six years," says Chai, now 43, who was born in Korea and raised in Seattle. Her first non-hand-me-down came in the form of a white, crew-neck, short-sleeved, all-cotton dress with patchwork and a poofy skirt (the occasion: her second-grade piano recital). "Both outfits were special," she remarks. "The tweed coat - I had my eye on that for a long, long time, and I loved it and knew it'd eventually be mine; but I did like having my own clothes."

That childhood awareness of fashion certainly contributed to the launch of her own women's wear line, called Schai - though it came after Chai had already spent more than 20 years in the fashion industry.

She graduated from FIT in 1995 and headed to Adrienne Vittadini and Liz Claiborne, then returned to Seattle and developed Nordstrom's private label. "It was a huge collection - 250 styles or more, per season, petite and larger sizes," Chai says. "Everything that I learned, I probably learned at Nordstrom - sourcing, quality check, specifying measurements and fit - and there were a lot of teaching-myself moments, because the Nordstrom Product Group was just starting when I joined. The company is so strong now, and known worldwide, but at the time, many mills and factories in Italy and Asia were like, 'Who are you? Who's Nordstrom?' Though I feel like I've been doing this forever, Schai is new to market, so people were also like, 'Who are you?' It's the same thing."

In 2011, she left Nordstrom after 14 years - though she didn't rush into Schai.

Instead, she took a two-year-long break from fashion (including shopping) to regroup mentally and travel. One day, she found herself in the Seattle Barneys outpost, touching a "buttery" 100-percent cashmere coat by Lanvin. "I had tears in my eyes, I had goosebumps all over my body, my heart was racing - it was such a visceral and emotional moment," Chai says. "That was the reason I got back in. I said to myself, 'I need to do something that'll make me feel just as great and as attached to the product,' and the customer who's going to wear my clothes needs to experience the same attachment."

She sketched the entirety - and then some - of her debut collection in a single night, drawing 45 head-to-toe looks (easily 90 or 120 pieces, by her count) from 8.30 pm to 4.30 am; she edited the selection and decided to bring her Italian and Japanese fabrics to New York's garment district (and to do some consulting on the side to pay for them). Salt, her inaugural offering for fall 2014, inspired by a magnified image of a salt crystal from her then-20-year-old son's microscope, was picked up by three stores.

Since then, Chai - who now splits her time between Seattle and New York - has continued to add stockists, including the Dreslyn. Legion, Schai's fall 2016 collection, which debuts here, appears to be military-influenced and, in the designer's words, is an homage both to teamwork and wanting to be protected and peaceful.

She mentions the karate-like belts - which are long enough to wrap around the body twice and hand to another person - as tactile elements important to the line.

But a plush, blush-colored Ghianda fabric - used for coats, dresses and skirts - is the centrepiece of sorts. "It's actually a bit sheer. It has silk organza as interlining, cut together with fabric, to give it some body, and then the garment is lined with imitation silk," she says. "When you touch the fabric, you want to show it to somebody else and say, 'Touch this.' It all comes back to that."

©2016 The New York Times