Ann Willoughby of KC likes to ‘mix and match’ items she loves
Ann Willoughby has an out-of-the-way closet in her Kansas City basement where she stores clothes she no longer wears but loves too much to throw away.
When she went browsing through it early last fall, she discovered a remarkable patterned jacket she had almost forgotten. It was from Asiatica, the Kansas City company known for creative textiles and an Asian-inspired aesthetic.
“It was probably 10 years old, vintage Asiatica,” Willoughby says. She removed the shoulder pads and put it back in her day-to-day wardrobe.
Willoughby is an award-winning graphic designer whose company specializes in brand building. Clients have included the Buckle retail fashion chain, Harvesters, Black & Decker, Coors, BNIM Architects, the catalog company Peruvian Connection and Feng, the high-fashion Overland Park retail store.
A Mississippi native, Willoughby retains the soft, gentle speech of her past. And her personal style reflects a quiet, effortless chic, usually with a serendipitous twist. She describes it as eclectic. “I’ve never been into the top bread-and-butter designers. I like to mix and match.”
Like many women who travel, she frequently wears black with a “touch of color” to change a look from day to day. And she now buys thoughtfully and conservatively, maybe a few items to add to her wardrobe.
She favors clothes with meaning.
“I’m now looking more carefully at the things I love,” she says. They might be items made in the Kansas City area or a reminder of a wonderful experience.
She remembers a favorite leather handbag she had custom-made in a studio in Rome. She treasures earrings given to her by a childhood friend now living on Maryland’s eastern shore.
With her Asiatica jacket this day of the photo shoot, she wears Ralph Lauren jeans, a scarf by Kansas City artisan Debra Smith, silversmith Robyn Nichols’ earrings and Donald J. Pliner cowboy boots.
“I’m looking at more sensible shoes now,” she says. The Pliner boots give her the structure and support she wants but have a “little bit more style.”
She is photographed at her Westport headquarters before a “Metropolis” poster, the original art created to promote the famous 1927 film.
"I'm now looking more carefully at the things I love."|Ann Willoughby