In conversation with Magali Blanc

Making the Cut is kicking off Season 3 with real conversations with the designers, educators, and industry insiders shaping fashion right now. Our first guest is a familiar face to anyone who’s studied at The Cut Design Academy. Magali Blanc has taught our students for years, and she’s spent the last two and a half years as Head Designer at Brunette the Label, the Vancouver brand behind the “Babe Community,” a Paris Fashion Week showing, and a collaboration with Holt Renfrew.

Liza sat down with Magali to talk about the eight years since she first landed in Vancouver, what she learned interning at Vivienne Westwood, why she thinks North American and European designers approach inspiration so differently, and where she stands on AI in the design process.

From burnout to a new home

Magali came to Vancouver on what was supposed to be a short break. She’d spent ten years building brands across Europe and Asia, traveling constantly, working long hours she never resented because she loved the work. Vancouver offered something different: quiet, space to think, and for the first time in her career, the confidence to say no to a project instead of chasing the next one. She meant to stay for a visit. Eight years later, she’s still here, and she credits that quieter pace with opening up opportunities she wouldn’t have found in an oversaturated market like Paris or London.

Translate versus interpret

One of the most interesting threads in this conversation is the distinction Magali draws between how European and North American designers work. In Europe, she explains, a collection starts as a story, often pulled from architecture, film, or music rather than fashion itself, then translated into clothing with a deliberate twist. It’s rarely a literal read of the reference. In North America, she’s found the approach is more direct: designers interpret existing fashion into their own brand’s language.

Neither approach is better, she’s careful to say, but the shift required real adjustment. She traces the instinct back to her time at Vivienne Westwood, where she learned to take a collection and market it in almost the opposite spirit of how it was designed, shooting a soft, floral, distinctly French collection in a New York parking lot, for instance, so the contrast does the storytelling.

Stepping into someone else’s brand

Taking over design at Brunette the Label meant stepping into a brand already defined by its founder, Miriam, a former sales rep who built the label from the trunk of her car into a national name. Magali describes the transition as natural from day one, grounded in a shared, clear vision for where the brand could grow. Her advice for designers in that position: don’t rush. Build categories deliberately, watch how customers respond, and resist the pressure to do too much too soon.

That same philosophy comes up when she talks about mentoring young designers and interns. Her biggest note isn’t about skill, it’s about confidence: being willing to give your point of view, back it up, and pitch an idea like you believe in it. As she puts it, a design idea doesn’t exist yet. You’re selling the story before there’s a product to sell.

Where AI fits, and where it doesn’t

The conversation closes on AI, a topic Magali approaches with more curiosity than fear. She’s tested it for pattern measurements and pitch copy, and finds it useful for organization and speed, but limited by design: it can only work with what already exists, which means it can produce something correct but rarely something with feeling. For a designer, she argues, that feeling is the whole point. It’s what turns a product into something people connect with enough to buy.

Rapid fire

The episode wraps with a quick round of questions: the one piece in her closet she’s worn for over a decade (a sweater she made herself), the brand she thinks deserves more recognition (Jonathan Anderson’s willingness to go fully anti-fashion), and the advice she’d give herself starting a label from scratch today: take your time, and don’t make too much product.

Listen to the full conversation for the parts we couldn’t fit here, including her take on why she still won’t walk into a design meeting with a Pinterest board.

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