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To score good ideas, this rookie designer looks to the '50s and '60s.
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Like many women in their 20s, Phoebe Sung looks to trendy movie stars for fashion inspiration.
But forget Scarlett Johansson and Selma Blair. Sung's favorite ingenues are from the New Wave cinema of the 1950s and '60s, as in Jean Seberg, Jane Birkin, and Anna Karina. “I copy everything from those movies,” says Sung. “Even Julie Christie's nightgowns in Petulia blew my mind.” That obsession with retro chic led the former journalism and Chinese major to switch her educational studies to clothing design; she graduated from Massachusetts College of Art's fashion program last May. The gaminelike Sung makes many of her own clothes, mostly short, flirty dresses. She fit right in as a production intern at Marc Jacobs in New York last summer, and just landed her first design job at Briggs New York in Brighton. “I'm drawn to styles that are quietly different, as well as a little cheeky,” says the South End resident. “I feel if you look innocent, you can get away with more.”
– Tina Sutton
