The Cutting Edge

Designer Rodney Telford brings a new look to New York fashion

Iike most thirteen-year-olds, Rodney Telford wanted clothes that impressed his friends. But unlike them, he started stitching them himself. "My mother kept putting off making me anything,

L so I begged her to teach me to sew. ' ' Eleven years later—after studying fashion in New York at Parsons School of Design and apprenticing with Koos van den Akker—the chiseled-faced, basso-voiced Telford is in his second season of designing women's wear under his own label. His elegantly whimsical spring collection features jackets with latticed "monster weave" collars, dresses with candycolored topstitching, and jacketjumpsuits whose sexy bottoms drop open like trapdoors. Though orders from big department stores keep rolling in, Telford's company, for now, remains tiny. His girlfriend works as fit model, and his hand-finishing is done in North Carolina—by his mom.

A.F.C.