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Kenneth Richard, a  designer who has been working out of this turbulent, competitive city since 1992 is that rare and coveted craftsman who creates clothes that perfectly  reflects the drama and intensity of modern urban living. Edgy but eminently wearable his designs are polished, aggressive,
familiar, challenging and rife with a pronounced sense of modern chic. In this conversation with NYW Richard reveals the intelligence and passion which makes him, in our view, one of NY's most promising design talents.
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In the last 4 seasons the Kenneth Richard line has evolved from a conservative one based on pantsuits to a more  edgy one built from diverse pieces. How did this come about.

I feel that actually in the last five years of me being in business, its all been one big experiment, season after  season. You really run the risk of becoming just a dress designer or just a pantsuit designer. I'm just trying to broaden it all out. Now I want to play with colors that I wouldn't typically go with.I'm sure two years ago, if someone were to show me an acidic green I would have looked at that and said y'know "Who wants to walk around looking like that,"  It certainly is an acquired taste. But it really rounds out your design perspective. Sometimes going after things you purposely don't like and trying to make yourself fall in love with them...if you can fall in love with it and you don't particularly care for that color, if you can make that color interesting to you,then you've done something challenging...I guess that's what I've been trying to do for the last year

Neon for Fall. That's pretty challenging Kenneth

I walked out of Premiere Vision looking at all these dark colors for Fall and  I thought how boring...Its funny...I'm more interested in dark colors for Spring now than I am in dark colors for Fall. I just think its too predictable. I got back and I just started brainstorming   and I thought "You know what, I like some of those Spring colors, if we could just twitch em up a notch." 

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