The “Lousy Secretary” Gets a Promotion at Lucky Jewel SS24

This is not the business-casual of the 2010s. Downtown brick-and-mortar Lucky Jewel’s dress code-defying sophomore collection, titled New Outfit, brought scrappy materials and slutty secretary vibes to the St. Mark’s Church. Nostalgic indie sleaze stripes, low waists, and dangling key accessories pumped down the runway to sounds by The Dare, a fellow member of New York’s new guard. After the show, Shay Gallagher, Olive Woodward, and Lola Dement Myers slipped away from a torrent of congratulations and pull requests to talk about playing with foam and sentimental studio moments. 

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MEKALA RAJAGOPAL: All right. So we’re in church. How does it feel to be done with your second show?

SHAY GALLAGHER: Epic.

OLIVE WOODWARD: Pretty perfect.

GALLAGHER: Pretty slay. We learned a lot during the first round. 

WOODWARD: We’re a lot more prepared.

GALLAGHER: Yeah. We have a good network of people who we are really happy to work with, and this time around people seem more acclimated. It’s a lot of friends involved, and I feel like that’s what makes it go so smoothly, even though we’re still just in the early stages. 

RAJAGOPAL: It definitely feels like a family affair.

LOLA DEMENT MYERS: That’s what we want.

RAJAGOPAL: Can you talk a little about the idea of New Outfit?

GALLAGHER: I think we all think about our uniforms, and our characters’ outfits. We’re all pretty consistent with it, and this one is still kind of keeping that consistency, but it’s a new outfit. We’re learning what to do, coming into ourselves a bit more, and refining, even though it’s low-key—

WOODWARD: The same outfit.

GALLAGHER: Same vibe, same person.

RAJAGOPAL: It definitely felt like a continuation of the show but a little more grown-up and polished.

GALLAGHER: It’s like the girl got a promotion.

RAJAGOPAL: Literally. I was like, “I want to wear this stuff to the office.” Is that appropriate? 

DEMENT MYERS: That’s actually our thesis.

GALLAGHER: I keep saying it’s like the lousy secretary got a promotion.

WOODWARD: She’s still a little unsure of the dress code for her office.

GALLAGHER: But she’s everyone’s favorite in the office too.

RAJAGOPAL: You guys used similar materials as last year’s show. What’s the process like?

GALLAGHER: Yeah, totally. Our whole process is pretty guided by material. We all have a fine arts background, so we get really excited by these materials, and incorporating that playfulness is really important to our process. That’s why we like using these unconventional materials that actually end up working in very functional ways like Tyvek. The foam, it’s silly, but it still serves its purpose. It’s a fun little moment.

DEMENT MYERS: And then we made a print of the foam.

RAJAGOPAL: Was that for the silk dresses?

GALLAGHER: Yeah, it was a digital scan of the pieces of foam used for all of the other pieces, printed onto silk. And I feel like that’s representative of the refinement in our materials where it still has that fun essence at its core, but it’s incorporated into a more sophisticated context.

RAJAGOPAL: Was the foam tube dress the original?

WOODWARD: It’s a piece of foam we’ve carried around for years.

RAJAGOPAL: Really?

GALLAGHER: Yeah. We’ve had it so long that it yellowed perfectly. It’s natural coloring that happened over time from us literally just holding onto it for at least three years.

DEMENT MYERS: So it’s fun to see it as an actual garment now.

RAJAGOPAL: Crazy. I loved the screenshot belt too.

WOODWARD: That’ll be a real thing too, but we just hammered the studs on for now.

RAJAGOPAL: In terms of the materials and New Outfit, it also feels like a comment on consumerism. It’s like, when do you actually need a new outfit for real, or can you just take what you have and freak it?

GALLAGHER: Yeah. It’s low-key the same outfit.

WOODWARD: I feel like we all have our one-outfit-per-week or per season.

RAJAGOPAL: When is it actually time to buy a new outfit?

DEMENT MYERS: When the collection drops.

RAJAGOPAL: Right.

DEMENT MYERS: It’ll be in stores eventually.

RAJAGOPAL: You also played with hair a lot and it felt like a huge part of the whole dress-up game vibe.

DEMENT MYERS: That’s Matthew [Sosnowski].

GALLAGHER: That goes back to our collaborative process with the team that we’ve built. I feel like the magic happens when we’re in the studio late at night, just laughing and playing dress up, and we can make an outfit on someone.

RAJAGOPAL: When you drape it on a person.

GALLAGHER: Yeah. Or use pre-existing pieces that aren’t working. They really get their life once they’re on a body, once it has that life in it.

RAJAGOPAL: And where do all of the keys lead?

GALLAGHER: To all of your hearts.

RAJAGOPAL: Cute. Thank you guys. The show was so fun.

WOODWARD: Thank you for coming.