Colleen Allen Balances Form and Function

Colleen Allen is obsessed with functionality. Questions of comfort and wearability first became central to Allen’s work as a menswear designer at The Row, where she worked for three years. In 2023, the 29-year-old designer left to start her eponymous brand. But even with her transition to womenswear, she has maintained a commitment to practicality central to men’s clothing. “There are these conversations when you’re fitting menswear about, ‘How do you feel in it?’ ‘How are you living in it?’” Allen says over Zoom from her studio in Dumbo. She jokes that a menswear designer could never get away with making an article of clothing a man couldn’t sit down in at an awards ceremony. “There’s no way.”

But by foregrounding utility, Allen hasn’t sacrificed elegance or her eye for tailoring. In both her Spring and Fall 2025 collections, Allen combines ethereal silhouettes with practical materials, rendered in rich hues of orange and purple. A popular jacket from her line combines the prim silhouette and hook-and-eye closures of a Victorian-style coat with an unexpected material—Polartec fleece. Usually reserved for outdoor activities, the fleece makes the jacket feel more casual without becoming sporty. For Allen, it’s crucial to make clothes women can actually wear in a “modern context.” “It’s really important to me that you can walk in them, that you can be a participant of society in them,” says Allen. “I think that so many people right now are making clothes that people can’t even sit down in.” While she appreciates these more sculptural designs, she says she doesn’t identify with them.

Allen’s debut collection in February 2024 was purchased by SSENSE and earned the attention of Vogue, The New York Times Magazine, and key fashion editors. Now, with only three seasons behind her, Allen has solidified her position as a rising industry favorite, and she expresses gratitude about her success. “It’s really fun for me to see things that are so personal take on a new life. Seeing somebody wear it to an event or perform in it and seeing that transformation is really satisfying.” Her personal understanding of femininity, translated into her work, has resonated with a wider, star-studded audience: Lady Gaga and Saoirse Ronan both wore the designer’s work at recent press appearances.

Allen remains open-minded about the future direction of the brand, trusting her own evolving instincts. “I love working with things I hate,” she says. Three years ago, Allen wouldn’t have conceived of moving to womenswear. Most recently, she’s become obsessed with bridal, something she thought she would “never do” in the past. “Now it’s something that I love because it’s so far from everything I’ve done.”

Raised in a suburb outside of Chicago, Allen grew up sewing and drawing. “It wasn’t necessarily about fashion, it was always just about making.” Her late grandmother, a quilter, taught her how to sew as a child, and Allen says she thinks her grandmother would appreciate what her love of making has become.

Once Allen became aware of her own sense of style and identity in middle school, she started deconstructing her clothes. “Rather than seeking it out externally, I just started taking my stuff apart and remaking it,” she recalls. By cutting up her jeans, adjusting the sleeves of her tops, and roughly fixing what she didn’t like, Allen says she learned the mechanics of clothing. “By taking things apart, I sort of learned how things are made.”

After taking fashion illustration and sewing classes at the Art Institute of Chicago in high school, Allen attended the Parsons School of Design and, later, London’s Central Saint Martins. As a designer, Allen still uses herself as her fitting model, allowing her to make quick decisions about how something feels or functions. “It starts with this sort of self-care and then is presented to the customer in a way,” she explains.

The care Allen extends to her wearer has paid off. In addition to Lady Gaga and Saoirse Ronan, Charli xcx, Paloma Elsesser, and Ayo Edebiri have also worn Allen’s designs. These “brand muses” all possess what Allen describes as a “witchy quality to them.” Allen remembers thinking, “This is like a full seance,” when Charli xcx first donned her clothes for an Ibiza Boiler Room set last year. Allen later designed five custom looks for the pop icon to bop around in on her Brat tour. To Allen, this witchy quality describes women who possess strength, confidence, and passion: “The archetype of the witch, which is so central to the brand, is about just being a true individual.”

The musician Zsela, pictured in Allen’s Fall 2025 collection, is another figure who represents the brand’s ethos. “The way she presents herself has this sort of witchy, esoteric, fantastical energy that I love and think is special,” the designer explains. Allen says she listens to Zsela’s music while working on her designs and saw the artist perform earlier this year.

The archetype of the witch bucks traditional femininity, something against which Allen pushes back. Resistant to clothes that possess a “preciousness,” Allen says she wants people to feel like themselves in her designs. “I want them to feel like the most beautiful, elevated, mystical version of themselves.”

Until now, Allen has shown her work by appointment only during fashion weeks, but she says she’s slowly working towards her first fashion show. The designer says the level of control and thought behind a lookbook, coupled with the intimacy of working with a small team, allows her to prioritize her clothes and brand identity for now. But, initially drawn to the theatricality and performance of fashion shows, Allen says she can see herself reimagining a space for her own work in the future. Her dream would be to transform the familiar, “making you feel like you’ve entered another world.”