Every fashion studio has a piece of equipment it cannot function without. At Collina Strada, the label Hillary Taymour founded in 2008, that piece of equipment weighs about four pounds, has a coat like a stormcloud, and was born under the sign of Scorpio. His name is Powwie, he is a merle Pomeranian, and by the designer’s own account he is the perfect fashion dog.
He earns the title honestly. Powwie models. He appears in the brand’s look books and struts its runways, and Taymour has described him as a natural in front of the lens who refuses to leave a shot until the photographer finally puts the camera down. He has the confidence of an animal who knows exactly what he brings to a set, and none of the nervous energy of a typical tiny dog.
The studio’s unofficial greeter
Collina Strada is not a quiet place to work. Taymour built the label into a fixture of downtown New York fashion by being loud, playful, and inventive, drawing a devoted following that has included Rihanna, Charli XCX, Lorde, JoJo Siwa, and Camila Mendes, and she was the mind behind Kim Petras’s horse-girl Met Gala look. She has kept the brand experimental through every kind of season, staging collections as video games, digital lookbooks, and short films when a normal runway would not do. Vogue, reviewing one of her returns to the physical runway, summed up the appeal as, in its words, “good vibes and high-octane fun,” which is roughly the house style.
That kind of creativity runs on a lot of nervous energy, and Powwie is the counterweight. Taymour has said his spirits lift the moment she asks whether he wants to go to work, and that he treats the studio as his personal social circuit, making the rounds at lunch and turning up wherever someone needs a cuddle. Because the label works with the same models season after season, Powwie greets them like old friends arriving at a party he is thrilled to host.
An emotional-support animal with a job title
Ask Taymour how a collection comes together and the picture is less glamorous than the finished runway suggests: long, formless days of work with no reliable formula, a process she has admitted she never quite enjoys while she is inside it, precisely because the discomfort is what pushes her to make it better. It is draining work, and the weight of everything left to do tends to sit heavily right up until a show.
Powwie is how she carries it. When the frustration and overwhelm hit, she has said, he simply climbs into her lap and settles the room down to a manageable size. She adopted him as her first pet in adulthood, after a year of healing following the death of her childhood dog, a Jack Russell terrier named Ringo, and she credits Powwie with making her softer, more responsible, and more grounded. She can no longer disappear into a wild night out with no strings attached, because there is now a small animal at home expecting her to come back to him.
A very good boy with one guilty pleasure
For all his poise, Powwie keeps his mischief endearingly small. His favorite object in the studio is not a toy at all but a spool of thread, and the worst crime on his record is chewing one all the way through, a caper Taymour has valued at roughly a dollar in damages. He is also a seasoned traveler who took his first flight at four months old and has a talent for going undetected on planes, buses, and trains, tucking himself into a bag and going quietly along for the ride.
He did once cross over into product. Collina Strada designed a small capsule of tie-dyed dog T-shirts inspired by him, made from recycled materials in earthy tones with a grunge-meets-glam bow at the collar, a run that fit neatly with the brand’s downtown, eco-conscious ethos. Taymour has been noncommittal about making more dog clothes anytime soon, pleading a full plate, though she clearly loves seeing puppies wear the pieces and get tagged online.
Sustainability, with a Pomeranian nearby
The eco streak is not a marketing coat of paint. Sustainability sits at the center of how Collina Strada operates, shaping which collaborations the brand will even entertain. Taymour has described building garments from deadstock fabric and from recycled cotton tees she sources at Ghana’s Kantamanto market, and experimenting with unusual materials, among them an organic cellulose fiber called rose sylk, spun from rose bushes and stems, with a hand that lands somewhere near silk or bamboo. None of it is easy, she has acknowledged, but she frames the sourcing and research as simply the right thing to do.
As for whether Powwie will ever get a sibling, Taymour has been unusually firm: no. She jokes that he has a serious case of only-child syndrome and would never forgive the intrusion. For now, the studio’s four-pound manager has the run of the place, the models’ affection, and a designer whose hardest days get a little softer whenever he hops into her lap.
