Eastern Spring 2009 : Page 5
with gorgeous quiet dazzle Toni Hacker bags the Big Apple From Manchester, I n 2005, eight years after graduating from Eastern, Toni Hacker and her partner Ben Harnett streaked across the New York fashionista radar with a line of women’s accessories instantly praised by customers and critics for their “gorgeous quiet dazzle,” beauty and functionality, superb price/quality ratio and almost supernatural bead on what women want. “How many years have you been doing this?” an editor demanded just after the launch of Hayden-Harnett from a tiny shop on the ragged river edge of Brooklyn. Naturally, fashion media painted a Cinderella story of overnight success. However, Toni Hacker has no fairy godmother or deep-pockets investor. She does combine a life-long appreciation for “beautiful objects of use,” stunning capacity for hard work, acute fashion sense and small-town conviction that success is meaningless without integrity, independence and community. Asked to recall her first design success, Hacker cites an assignment from Mrs. Westerfield, her third grade teacher in Manchester, Ky.: “You’re stranded on a desert island. Build something useful.” While classmates groaned, Hacker focused on what desert people need. She built a working waterwheel of milk jugs and tobacco sticks. After utility comes beauty. She remembers going shopping at age 11 with her Grandma Reese for a special Barbie doll. Her pocket held “five dollars from my mother, five from Grandma and one random dollar.” Passing a yard sale, she spied a vintage clutch handbag and forgot the Barbie. Years later, that clutch is her office icon. She holds it lovingly, brushing the still-glossy black satin, demonstrating the crisp inside pockets, perfectly fitting mirror, tiny change purse, fine hardware enriched with an amber clasp: a beautiful object of use. As a teenager she devoured Elle and Vogue magazines, but no profes- sional artist or fashion designer showed up for career days in Manchester. At Eastern she dutifully studied psychology. Then she joined a friend in Dr. Don Dewy’s drawing class. “It blew me away! It was so hard. Dr. Dewy pulled things out of me that I didn’t know were there. I had to learn this.” She switched to art and drawing classes. Then came the difficult blow: her BFA portfolio review. The faculty kindly but firmly declared that her future was neither drawing nor painting: it was in 3-D art like sculpture, ceramics or jewelry design. “It hurt,” admits Hacker, “but they were so right.” Eastern 5
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