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"  Chevy Chase movies don&amp;#039;t typically inspire fashion revelations, but when Matthew Edelstein glimpsed Christie Brinkley&amp;#039;s blink-and-you&amp;#039;ll-miss-it cameo as &amp;quot;The Girl in the Ferrari&amp;quot; in the 1983 favorite National Lampoon&amp;#039;s Vacation, the designer had what you might call an aha moment. The supermodel was wearing a little white dress, Edelstein recalls raptly. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s belted, and it&amp;#039;s just this American [look]. That was the starting point, actually, for this dress,&amp;quot; the 37-year-old says, pointing out a smocklike white frock that&amp;#039;s a dead ringer for Brinkley&amp;#039;s. Behind him, mood boards papered with pictures of late-&amp;#039;70s and early-&amp;#039;80s post-punkers the Au Pairs and old-school hip-hop trio De La Soul attest to the designer&amp;#039;s pop culture obsession. &amp;quot;Being a visually inclined person, you have all these influences rattling around in your brain from your entire life, from your career and from your childhood,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;But I take all these references and ideas from the past and try to make them [reflective] of this time.&amp;quot; Growing up in Bellingham, Washington, Edelstein always envisioned himself becoming a designer: &amp;quot;The only thing you know when you grow up in a small town and you want to be in fashion is to be a fashion designer. So I always thought that was going to be my path.&amp;quot; But as it turned out, the path was a bit more peripatetic than that. After studying fashion design at Parsons in New York City, he realized that the traditional approach to design\u2014with its focus on patternmaking and cutting\u2014&amp;quot;was absolutely not the right fit. The way that I approach fashion involves thinking about things in a different way,&amp;quot; drawing from entertainment and street style in the same manner a stylist would. He ended up switching to the school&amp;#039;s design marketing program; stints as a fashion editor at W, Harper&amp;#039;s Bazaar, and Details and as a stylist at J.Crew, working under CEO and marketing whiz Mickey Drexler, followed. Click here to see looks from the debut collection! After 14 years in the industry, Edelstein came down with an acute case of fashion fatigue. He had seen so many over-the-top creations parading down the runway that he became drawn to the idea of &amp;quot;making clothes that can exist in the real world rather than these fashion flights of fancy,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t want to make an art piece. I want to do a cool shirt in a new way.&amp;quot; When designing the uniform-inspired Friends &amp;amp;amp; Associates debut collection for resort (&amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m always thinking, Why can&amp;#039;t women have a uniform of their own?&amp;quot;), Edelstein piled on the references. After researching cheerleader skirts, military garb, Girl Scout attire, and even judo suits, &amp;quot;I threw it into a blender and tossed it all together [and] gave it new proportions and fun colors.&amp;quot; The result: an innocently flirtatious mix of peppy rah-rah skirts, folded trapunto-sleeve jumpsuits with contrasting pockets, and zippy athletic shorts, accessorized with flower-bedecked baseball caps\u2014a thoroughly adult take on play clothes, or, perhaps, a chicer version of Garanimals. (In fact, when I tell him that the late-&amp;#039;80s vibe of the collection reminds me of something, he quips, &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s our childhood\u2014that&amp;#039;s probably what it reminds you of.&amp;quot;) The 80-piece lineup will be sold on his website, Friendshop.us. At $100 to $300, each piece in the collection rings in at a contemporary price point: &amp;quot;In my opinion, [the pieces] are the kind of thing you should want to buy a few of. Like yummy candy or fruit.&amp;quot; That sense of playfulness even extends to the collection&amp;#039;s name: &amp;quot;I wanted it to be a little bit of a funny take on a law or an accounting firm name\u2014it&amp;#039;s Friends for fun, and Associates because we mean business!&amp;quot; Click here to see looks from the debut collection! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/fashion/a14430/designer-matthew-edelstein-interview/>