Lizzie Grover Rad Vocalizes Social Issues Through Fashion

Photography Phylicia J. L. Munn

Technically speaking, fashion is Lizzie Grover Rad’s second act. But if you were to follow the receipts all the way back to the designer’s beginnings, you’d see that the desire to create garments was always there, not only co-mingling with her passion for all matters of visual culture, but in fact leading their discussions and spurring them on. The paper trail starts in Grover Rad’s hometown of Richmond, Virginia, a city that cultivated within her an appreciation for architecture in its image, and a sense of fashion in its ignorance of it. Dressing became a liberating act of rebellion, a way for Grover Rad to push against a conservatism she didn’t feel connected to and to erect in its place a provocative alternative. And, perhaps because fashion operated as such an important means for self- definition and community engagement for her at an early age, when it came to thinking about what she wanted to become, Grover Rad decided to put head over heart—turning her gaze towards the main chance. While in college at George Washington University, Grover Rad launched Hutch, a disruptive interior design service. “I felt like I had to pick a lane, so I chose the clearer path, which was interior design. And then I did the tech approach. I never take the traditional route, even when I set out to,” Grover Rad recounts, with a twinkle in her eye. “Seeing how the fashion landscape has changed in the past few years re-sparked my interest. I started to see how I could take it [on] with a fresh lens.”

These thoughts grew almost overnight into actions. Grover Rad said goodbye to Hutch and turned her full attention to launching her own namesake fashion brand. In 2020 she began planning her inaugural collection, which arrived in Spring 2022 loaded with a sense of urgency and momentum, decades of pent-up punk, and the same political impulses that had originally brought her to clothing. “Something that I’m inspired by is looking at what’s happening in the world. And, just as I was observing, it became quite obvious that reproductive rights needed to be my topic. Once I latched onto it, I couldn’t let it go: the research, the historical context... by the time I had made it into the archival artwork stage, it just became so clear to me where things were heading in America,” Grover Rad says. “History repeats itself, and I’m always looking for the through-lines.” The resulting collection drew several of its own—establishing lineages of resistance by connecting images from Mary Hallock Foote’s groundbreaking illustrations of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter with spellbook excerpts from witch covens in the 1600s: a searing reminder of the historical danger that has always existed for women who wear their beliefs on their sleeves, leading up to and particularly painfully in today’s post–Roe v. Wade America.

“It’s quite an introduction, isn’t it?” Grover laughs, referencing her first collection’s arguable centerpiece: a plaid trench coat that reads: Mom, tell us about what happened when you got pregnant very young, before abortion was legal? The question arrives in the form of a cartoon word bubble, courtesy of Grover Rad’s artist collaborators: mother and daughter comic artists Aline Kominsky-Crumb and Sophie Crumb, who contributed their own abortion stories to several garments in the collection. “I’ve gotten a lot of feedback about that coat in particular: Someone asked me to not cross the crosswalk so that they could finish reading what the coat says,” Grover Rad shares. “So, yes, it was risky to put abortion so large [on the coat]. But to me that was the most rewarding part, because it draws everyone in. I really wanted to create clothes that started a conversation with strangers.’’ Again she smiles. Her face is alight with the knowing grin of a punk, and its mischievous sentiment is reinforced by the demented halo of the George Condo nude figures that flank her.

If you google Grover Rad, her George Condo is among the first things to come up—and while it is a good painting, it is just one priceless treasure in a life full of them. The designer is a collector with a capital C. Even here, where contemporary art has stolen the spotlight with its blue-chip name games, one can still see the evidence that fashion came first for Grover Rad. She began buying clothes in high school and now is the proud owner of an extensive archive, which serves as the essential resource for Grover Rad’s future. “I’ve always collected screen-printed denim, so it only made sense for that to become a recurring motif for Grover Rad too,” she says. “We are a very print-heavy brand because that’s how I bring in the messages and that’s where most of my research [time] is spent. That, and on different printing techniques for how best to present the words and patterns I’m finding.” Her hope is that in the future, a Grover Rad client might step outside wrapped not only in layer after layer of fine fabric, but perhaps of meaning as well.

Collection three will debut in spring 2023, and, privately, Grover Rad is already in the midst of conceiving collection number four. She can’t say much except that, again, she is working with artists to bring her next topic to life. She namechecks Wade Guyton and Mary Corse as individuals she’d want to collaborate with but gives no hints of who her current allies are. Her plan is to release biannual drops and remain ahead so that each collection gets enough time to bake. Because while impulses might move quickly, great clothes and friendships take time—and the one thing Grover Rad knows for sure is that she will never be okay with compromising quality for a hot take. History repeats itself after all, and the only things that survive its cycles are those prescient enough to align with it, and well-made enough to endure it.