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When it came time for New York designer Shanel Campbell to photograph her new Bed on Water collection last year, she was faced with limited options. Due to the pandemic, she couldn’t have that many people on set, so she resorted to styling her clothes on mannequins instead of traditional models—a “creepy” choice, she admits, but one that ended up being much more intentional than she first imagined. “[The mannequins] reference this idea of the ‘ideal fashion body,’” says Campbell. “I’m someone who has always struggled with body dysmorphia, and I’ve always been like, Oh, you wish you looked like this mannequin.” She saw a clever irony in displaying her clothes, which she envisions for all body types, on a form that has traditionally perpetuated a narrow viewpoint of beauty.
Seeing Campbell’s striking, energetic ruffled pink dresses and printed cutout frocks on lifeless bodies indeed made for an eerie end result. And in a way, that mysterious vibe of her new collection—which fuses elements of Afrofuturism and clubwear—is just as enigmatic as the brand itself. On its Instagram page, the brand rarely posts content, yet its money-print bras and skirts are currently sold on the Gucci Vault, the label’s online concept store stocking emerging designers and vintage Gucci pieces, and have been worn by celebrities such as Tracee Ellis Ross, Issa Rae, and Solange Knowles. Campbell, who is from the Bronx and a graduate of Parsons School of Design, admits to deliberately keeping a low profile. Like her mannequins, she prefers to remain faceless, allowing her clothes to speak for themselves. “I’m a super-private person, and I’m not really a social media person,” she says.
So far Campbell has only released two official collections, but each one has shown extreme promise and a glimpse into the designer’s creative mind. Her first collection debuted during New York Fashion Week in 2018 (the line was called Shanel at the time). “My first collection was very witchy; it was all red and even a bit costumey,” says Campbell, who showed sculptural dresses and separates in bright crimson. Her second collection, now under the name Bed of Water, is decidedly vampier. She was drawn to a spooky-glam aesthetic for the line’s designs, which include velvety corsets and abstract-print slip dresses. “Being an October baby, I love Halloween and spooky season,” says Campbell. “I want to be the designer who just takes over October, but making really fine clothes—not costumes.”
Campbell also looked to her heritage for the new collection’s inspiration. “The research started by understanding my own history: I’m African American, but I have Caribbean ancestry,” says Campbell. “African American history [holds a lot of] dark things, but there’s still [lots of] rich color and soul.” Campbell depicted this in her graphics, incorporating abstract patterns with deeper meanings. “There are prints that are extracted from the last five seconds of a James Baldwin and Nikki Giovanni interview,” she says. “It’s a two-hour interview, but at the very end it glitches in a weird way. I took it and I repurposed it in Photoshop, and then made prints from it.” The designer also experimented with a more industrial look. “My dad was a construction worker, and when I was younger, he would take me to the construction sites, while he was putting himself through law school,” says Campbell. She used a heavy-duty, 1,000-denier canvas to produce some of the dresses. “I used it to create these very feminine, shaped pieces, but the fabric is [traditionally] used to make tool kits and tool bags.”
In addition to her distinctive vision for the clothes, the designer hopes to make Bed on Water more of a collective, where fellow BIPOC creatives can come to collaborate on various projects. “I want Bed on Water to be a multidisciplinary art house,” says Campbell. “I want to employ people of color and to be weird and alternative, and offer them a safe space—because sometimes we’re put in a box, by other people and even by our own people.” Until then, however, she says she already has some exciting fashion projects of her own in the pipeline. “I’ve already fully sketched out the next collection. I have more than 50 sketches,” notes Campbell. “I’m going slow and taking my time. If you look at my social media, you may think I do nothing—but I actually work a lot privately!”
