The Stylist

Sabina Schreder: Yes, absolutely. True enough though, I should do that more often. The only problem is that their collections are in Vienna and not here in the US. For example, I really like the Viennese designer Petar Petrov. Just recently I got a suit from him as a gift, and when I wear it in New York everyone asks me about it.

Yes, it’s true. At the moment, I’m working on founding my own label. Its name is “Sabina” and will be available online and in select stores latest by spring 2016.

It’s still a secret (laughs).

I never really decided for it. It happened by coincidence. I moved to Vienna when I was 17, after my graphic design education at the Höhere Graphische Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt in Linz. Then I studied fashion design with Jean-Charles de Castelbajac and Vivienne Westwood at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Parallel I did jobs as a freelancer for ad agencies like GGK, Demner & Merlicek, and DDB. But soon I realized that I’m not really an advertiser. I was far more fascinated by working with fashion and clothing, or the poetry of Japanese graphic art. By the way, originally I wanted to study painting with Arnulf Rainer…

I love painting and drawing, but only for myself, mostly portraits of friends. I used to cover the entire staircase of my country house with paintings.

Yes, in Upstate New York, together with Elfie Semotan (famous Austrian photographer and Helmut Lang’s muse – editor’s note). She visited me once in New York. An old timber cottage with a big veranda had caught my eye, and she spontaneously said: “I also like it there, I’m on board.” And because people always ask me: Yes, we get on really well together! We also have a similar taste for interior design!

It has been a while, but in summer 2014 we photographed a campaign for Liska furs in Vienna. My career actually started with her! She’s a few years older than me, but still very cool. And my father Heli Schreder is also cool (laughs).

So we both have been lucky! (laughs) When my father visits me in New York, and he does it quite often, he still hits the town at night. My father is a self-employed graphic designer, painter, and designer in Linz, and he’s quite successful with it. He used to design Atomic skis and created many things for Logo-Dan kitchens. Now he paints mostly. He is selling well. Nice things!

Yes, and from my uncle, who also worked as a graphic designer. My mother also wanted to study fashion, but she wasn’t allowed to. She had to learn a “decent job”. This was the opinion people had on the countryside back then. I was also sent to a convent school.

At that time, the Internet was not so common yet. When you wanted to introduce yourself somewhere you had to travel there personally. So I flew to London with a befriended photographer. We went door to door to all the important people there and told them we would like to do something for them. We were lucky that we soon got the chance to work for the London magazines “The Face” and “Dazed & Confused”, which were relatively new on the market at that time. Then, in 1998, I moved from Vienna to New York with my boyfriend at the time, a graphic designer. He had a job offer there. We weren’t “rich kids” and had to fight our way through. But because of London my starting position was pretty good.

Thanks to the Internet I don’t have to personally visit all the showrooms anymore and sort through the clothes. Today you go to vogue.com, where you see everything at first glance and compose the look that you want.

No, not at all. I like that it is interpreted in that way. I think people notice that I come from graphic design, that Japan continues to fascinate me, and that my work is quite conceptual and less intuitively from the stomach. But that’s a matter of opinion. A good friend of mine, for example, said that I work very intuitively. I don’t just want to dress a look and that’s it. I have fun when I can work creatively, whether for editorials or commercial commissions. My works for Aldo, Sisley, Premiata, Cesare Pacioti, Vivienne Westwood, H&M, Margiela, Hugo Boss, or Uniqulo come to mind. But I also style politicians in Washington or celebrities. Such things.

Okay, I’ll try… (thinks for a while) Shortly after my arrival in New York I got to know the photographer Terry Richardson and made all the Sisley campaigns with him. We were pretty successful, good works. Today it wouldn’t work like this anymore. I went uptown to Sisley and searched out everything I needed for my styles. They just threw everything in big bags, and we went somewhere on our own where it was cool: to Los Angeles or to the desert in Nevada. That was really something.

I research in the Internet, sure, but for the most part I get my inspiration from analog sources, from books and catalogs, be it art books or even old photo books. I compile my concepts on the basis of pictures, then I collect the outfits and accessories that fit the story and send everything to my assistant who designs a PDF from it. Finally, I look for the appropriate photographer and then for a good location together with him or her.

Advertising jobs take care of the income, as is the case with many others who are active in creative fields. And these jobs are very well paid. But to sustain the level on which I am working I also do a lot of editorials, which are moderately paid when at all. On the whole, I can manage life in New York quite fine this way.

I miss my family, my friends, the good food, and Austrian culture. I manage to go to Austria twice a year. Not often enough. My style is definitely based on a European identity. This summer I was there again, and it was wonderful. I almost didn’t want to leave, but it’s always like that for me.