Lincolnton native’s star keeps rising in fashion world

Placed amongst a list of well-known celebrities that included Kendrick Lamar, Prince, Lester Holt and Janet Jackson, a Lincolnton clothing designer was recently honored with red carpet treatment at a Beverly Hills hotel.
Charles Harbison is featured in this year’s EBONY Power 100, a catalog of the African-Americans who best inspire, lead and demonstrate their individual talents. The Lincolnton High School graduate was feted at a Dec. 2 event held at The Beverly Hilton and hosted by Arsenio Hall.
“It’s intense in that EBONY is one of the magazines I grew up pining through,” said Harbison, now a Brooklyn, New York resident. “To be honored with Prince and John Legend and Jesse Williams, it was a really profound experience to be at the gala and just to be on the list.”
Earlier this year, The New York Post called Harbison a designer who was “about to blow up.” Beyonce wore his ensemble at a Kanye West fashion event and, in October 2014, Harbison was a guest at the White House for the first-ever “Fashion Education Workshop.”
Harbison attended North Carolina State University and held internships at Michael Kors and Jack Spade. After stints with Michael Kors, Luca Luca and Billy Reid, he founded Harbison, a company in his namesake, in 2013.
“Really, I initially thought Charles Elliott would be the name,” Harbison said. “But I was talking with a friend of mine who found my last name, we like the gender anonymity of it. It’s a bit more feminine and it’s a perspective that a woman is not wearing a garment with a man’s name on it. It’s a family name.”
Harbison is in the process of taking his company to the next level. That means building infrastructure and finding the necessary funding to take the next step. He is in the middle of sales for the mid-fall season and is working on building out his e-commerce site.
Reached by phone on Tuesday, Harbison’s day was consumed with appointments. He had been late to a meeting with a hat collaborator and from there had stops with a fabric contact and an intern appointment in his studio.
Harbison said his journey was “extremely difficult and quite simple.” It may also be categorized as quite random, with a stroke of luck thrown in. He was between jobs when images from his portfolio wound up in the hands of someone at Vogue. The magazine wanted him in its pages and profiled his work regularly. Vogue named him one of 11 designers who were shaping “the future of fashion.”
Vogue featured Harbison and two other designers in a video series a week before September 2014’s New York Fashion Week and his fall 2015 line was expected to be a hit.
A wide-ranging background — he studied fine arts, painting and textiles at NC State — is part of what Harbison attributes to his success.
“It’s a fusion of ideas,” he said. “My fine arts background is a really big deal…I love the graphic elements, I love modernism. That’s just fused also with the drawing process my mother did growing up.”
Harbison describes his company as a lifestyle brand. Though his focus is in women’s clothing, he’s also designed accessories, shoes and bags.
The next chapter in Harbison’s story may be getting big-name celebrities to wear his clothing at red carpet shows prior to prime time events. Beyonce has already reached out to him, Harbison said, and though unfamiliar territory, it’s a step he is eager to take.
“That’s a new process that I’m walking into and I’m walking into it with Beyonce,” he said. “That’s a new direction that I’m trying to take the business. I’m selective with whom I work. I like the process of being honest and collected. You want to align yourself with people who you feel represent the brand.”
He considers himself a working-class boy from rural North Carolina whose hard work and dedication has enabled him to carve out his own space in the Big Apple. And though the reviews are glowing and positive, as well as ever-present, Harbison said he doesn’t really take time to stare at his surroundings and bask in present glory.
“I don’t take time on Cloud 9,” he said. “I see how I could spend time on Cloud 10, Cloud 11, Cloud 12.”