LOS ANGELES — Three Dot, the luxe, contemporary knit brand with a cult following, has hired former Helmut Lang designer Yuchin Mao as creative director.
Overseeing Lang’s men’s and women’s knit lines for the last five years before moving to Three Dot, Mao’s experience also includes five years at Tse and a brief stint assisting the swimwear licensee designer for Calvin Klein.
While her work at Lang provided a “great playground for experimentation,” Mao, 34, said she is eager to dress a wider base. “What was curious about being at Helmut is we could do all these amazing designs, but they were not that accessible to everyone.”
Not surprisingly, “lifestyle” pops up through Mao’s plan for the brand, particularly conveying “the carefree, casual yet edgy spirit of living in California,” she said. “It doesn’t mean you have to live here to experience it. But the West Coast is very different. New York is cosmopolitan in a very European way, whereas California is very much its own place.”
Mao is a Vietnamese immigrant who arrived in New York in her teens. She attended Parsons Paris School of Design to complete her fashion studies. Now she’s in Orange County, where Three Dot has relocated to Garden Grove, which has one of the largest Vietnamese-American populations in the U.S.
The company’s 76,000-square-foot headquarters contains production and distribution facilities, as well as a full studio. “I get to work with everybody, from beginning to end,” Mao said. “It’s this big Disney playground.”
The first collection with Mao’s stamp is resort 2006, and hits stores in November.