Designer Andrea Schwartz on bringing Torrid’s Sailor Moon collection to life

*Patched denim jacket. Photo credit: Torrid*

If you’re looking for some new ways to add moon prism power to your wardrobe, you’ll want to check out Torrid’s latest geeky collection. On Tuesday the company launched the first Sailor Moon plus size fashion line containing seven pieces featuring familiar designs and imagery from the series. (Disclosure: Torrid and Hot Topic links in this article are affiliate links. If you make a purchase, we may earn a commission.)

It’s a line that’s been in development for about the last nine months, according to Torrid designer Andrea Schwartz.

“Sailor Moon has always been something our customers have asked for so we were really excited to partner with Toei [Animation] and make this line a reality, especially because Sailor Moon’s Japanese collaborations are really beautiful. They’re awesome, but they’re rather restrictive to the plus size customer in the west. They’re a little hard to access if you’re not really in the know,” Schwartz told GeekFold.

Since this was Torrid’s first fashion line for Sailor Moon, Schwartz said they wanted to include a mix of “more cosplay inspired items for a super fan or somebody going to a convention as well as easier knit pieces to wear for every day.” This can easily be seen in the variety of the line. There is a skater dress inspired by Usagi Tsukino’s school uniform that would be perfect for cosplay, but there’s also a cardigan displaying symbols from the series that you can wear anywhere.

With so much inspiration from the property to choose from, Schwartz said they really wanted to stick with classic Sailor Moon.

“I personally grew up watching the series on Toonami in the ‘90s. I feel like a lot of customers were in the same place so we wanted to start with first season classic icons,” she explained.

They also considered adjustability for various body types when developing the line. According to Schwartz, they do this with their main line as well and, for example, you’ll find items with fabric that has some stretch in it here so it can have give and be comfortable when wearing it. Creating the line was actually a little atypical from their usual process though.

“We did a full set of fashion illustrations for Toei to pitch to them our concept and illustrated very nicely by hand. We usually don’t do that if we already own the property, but this was an extra bit of convincing so they would give us the license and we could proceed,” Schwartz said. “From there it goes to the digital sketches such as done on Illustrator and of course there are meetings reviewing with our buyers, with our marketing team, to make sure we’re all on board with these concepts and so accessories and jewelry can look at the line and see what things they want to do to complement it. Once everything’s decided on, essentially I’ll make the blueprint for each item and talk with our art team about what artwork we want to create to go into that.”

The line then went through three rounds of fitting as they reviewed the fit with their plus size fit model.

“In the meantime, strike offs are coming back from our factories with different prints and artwork and embroidery we’ve requested, to see if we have to make changes or if things are ok. Then everything’s sent to the licensor, Toei in this case, so they can review and make sure everything’s up to their standards or catch anything related to the intellectual property that we might have missed. Then once it has their seal of approval it goes to production,” she said.

This isn’t the only Sailor Moon line released within the family of brands that include Torrid. BoxLunch also released a Sailor Moon line today featuring some exclusive items as did Hot Topic. Schwartz said she designed both those collections as well.

“There was a meeting at the beginning with all the buyers and of course we want to think of each customer for each brand separately...” Schwartz told GeekFold. “We want to consider what the buyers from each brand wants because different types of product work well for each brand.”

Asked if we’ll see more Sailor Moon fashion in the future, Schwartz said she hopes so. It sounds like this is just the beginning of the geek fashion we’ll see from the company this year at least.

“There’s a lot of cool stuff coming in 2018 so I hope everybody looks out for it,” she said. “The whole team is made out of giant nerds who are super into this stuff so we’re also really excited to work on these and see them come out so other people can enjoy them.”

The Sailor Moon line is available on Torrid’s website now and you can see more pieces from the collection below!