Billy Reid, winner of the 2010 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund award, has an aesthetic at once so warm, authentic, classic, tailored, and rustic that I wish I could bottle it.

His clothes are so well-designed that they don’t seem new– they’re just so right that you assume they must be vintage classics from another era. It’s just as if they always were, they’ve always existed, and you just happened to find them now.  It’s like when you can say about a decorator that their houses don’t seem “decorated”– it means they feel lived in, that they tell a story and have a past, and that someone didn’t just come in and buy everything at once– and it’s a feat to accomplish.

That’s they way both his clothes and his interior spaces feel. Nothing strikes the eye as trying too hard, they’re just perfectly executed classics with personality.  They’re inspired by a rich history, but not stuck in the past.

And to make you love him even more, he lives and works in Florence, Alabama, where he also opened his flagship store (he’s a native Southerner– born in Amite, LA).  Above and in the gallery, images from his Florence store, as well as the Bond St. store, his office/design space in Florence, and his wares.

Photos from Robbie Caponetto, nyt, selectism.

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