Designer Spotlight: To Accorda’s Founder Alex McEachin, Fashion Is An Ever-Shifting Art Form – Essence
Alex McEachin, founder and creative director of design label Accorda, constructs her design world within an ecosystem of artistic influences and interpersonal connections. Her debut collection, “The Dinner Party” is an amalgamation of years of masterful design training and personal expression, culminating in a line that is unexpected and intriguing.
Accorda, meaning “harmony” in Italian, is a nod to her artistic practice. “The idea of harmony came from a German word I learned while studying abroad in Paris: Gesamkuntswerk,” McEachin shares with me during a video call. “It means a total work of art,” and speaks to an artistic movement, usually applied to architecture with its many disciplines working as one. The term felt aligned with McEachin’s affinity for engaging with multiple disciplines, and thus, Accorda was born.
This harmony can be found most explicitly through her design process, which she says occurs simultaneously with each element coexisting and influencing each other. It is as fluid as the audience she hopes to create for. “Accorda is for anyone who has a sense of dynamism about them. It’s about an energy that you bring to life; somebody who’s curious, who enjoys being challenged, and moves through life a bit fearlessly and happily,” the designer mentions. This means that she is hopeful that customers are left open to all of the interesting experiences that life has and can offer. “I don’t think that there’s a specific age range or gender that Accorda is for.”
Immersed in the world of arts from a young age, McEachin has always thought critically about the flowing dialogue between disciplines. Devouring the words published across style.com as a child, she became infatuated with fashion design and explored her creativity through the available outlets of performing and visual arts.
Hailing from Richmond, Virginia and attending a traditional all-girls school, she found comfort in the structure while also fostering the curiosity that led her elsewhere. “Richmond influenced my aesthetic and design perspective, because it’s very traditional, very idyllic. But as much as I like some of the stability that I had growing up, I also knew this is not the whole world. So much more was out there and I needed to see it.”
Her involvement in theater and dance nurtured her love for fashion through costume design. As her studies and experiences deepened, so did her understanding of the intersection between fashion, visual art, and movement. She was drawn not to the scene-stealing looks in a play, but to the everyday wear that characters were clothed in for the casual, “in-between scenes.”
This focus feels fitting, as she names Marc Jacobs and Rick Owens’ particular ability to create original yet functional designs as sources of inspiration. Studying the lane Jacobs built for himself in New York, and Owens’ construction of a specific niche in the industry influenced the way she approaches her reason for design. “[Owens] has such a distinct aesthetic and perspective that’s his own, but within that has so much space for all types of people,” she articulates.
Though her fascination for fashion design sprouted at a young age, a high school after-school program pulled everything into context for her. Participating in the “Teen Stylin’” program, courtesy of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, introduced her to an environment of like-minded teens and affirmed for her that this was a space in which she belonged. “It was one of the first times I was with [several] other people my age who were also obsessed with fashion and art,” she tells me. It cultivated not only the self-confidence needed to pursue fashion professionally but also a network of relationships that she took with her through college and beyond.
She went on to study fashion design at Parsons, holding three different internships including one at the luxury brand Proenza Schouler. Post-matriculation in 2017, McEachin cut her teeth at the designer label in product development. She spent the next seven years honing in on her craft, eventually serving as the Director of Product Development before transitioning to focus on Accorda in 2024.
While development is different from design, she spent those formative professional years gaining what she would call a “doctoral degree in fashion design” and grasping the skills needed to make luxury clothing at scale. Studying the technical creative elements of design, navigating international fashion markets between Europe and New York, and working directly with people at all steps of the design process from factory to archives to ateliers, gave her a profound understanding of the levels of care poured into each detailed step of the design.
Her international travel, during the making of her career from 2017 to 2024, expanded her perspective around the design process. Broadening her world beyond her structured, Southern-bred roots to the global stage prompted interest in seeing how New York fashion can refine its position within the global conversation. “An ocean separates us from where the majority of the international global fashion conversation is taking place and I think that conversation is important to show here, because New York is such a global city.”As she balanced working between New York and Europe, she found beauty in working alongside individuals with historical technical knowledge of the craft, imbuing their culture and background into their passion.
“It made my design process much more intimate, in a way, because I know the people who are working on the other side of it. I’m sharing it with them as much as I’m sharing it with the general public who will be seeing the collection in person via showroom or fleetingly on Instagram or my website. That [intimacy] is found in my clothes as well, because every detail is thoughtful,” she shares.
The designer sharpened her detailed approach to art over the years, and as a result learned to embrace fluidity. She emphasizes the importance of fluidity, because the design process does and should change as the garment materializes. “Fashion, because it is on living bodies, is kind of a living organism, almost in and of itself. You have to respect that and listen to the garment once it starts telling you how it should be.” It’s easy to see how her perspective comes to life through Accorda’s concepting and design, as movement and functionality are front of mind with each piece.
We continue to discuss the poignant displays of emotion and movement present in her inspirations and the role they play in fashion design overall. “When it comes to the emotional aspect, fashion is, particularly luxury fashion, non essential. So it has to be something that you have an emotional reaction to, and I think I have always been influenced by pieces of art that give me an emotional reaction. That’s what I hope to create with Accorda.”
On the details of her debut collection, “Dinner Party,” she shares the name stemmed from the life changes that come as you approach your 30s. Carving out time to share with loved ones during these all-consuming pivotal moments, feels sacred, as is the collection that commemorates the experience. Amidst the design process she contemplated what her friends wear in their daily lives, and created her elevated, transitional designs to be as malleable as possible for life whether that was at the office, going out, or convening in the park.
The result is an assemblage of distinctive silhouettes and unique fabric selections that draw any viewer in. “I wanted the fabrics to be visually stimulating,” she starts, as she paints a picture of design decisions that can best be described as intuitive.
With her first collection, McEachin hopes to garner intrigue and emotional resonance from her audience, “whether or not they purchase the piece.” Ultimately, she is eager to see how consumers will fold her creations into their daily lives. Her priority is to focus on releasing collections over the next fashion cycles via intimate presentations, showrooms to connect with buyers and journalists, and building intentional awareness to ensure steady, sustainable growth.
Sharing her creations in her first preview came with a range of emotions, as one might expect, though she describes the space she occupies as “the right evolution of events.” Transitioning from product development at Proenza Schouler to designing for Accorda feels like an exercise in switching how her brain thinks, from the technical to the abstract, and back again. Now, she is channeling her expertise and exploratory interests into shaping her own fashion conversation.
