Issue link: https://www.balharbourdigital.com/i/867968
posting my drawings and really liked the reaction I was getting. It became the part of the day I liked the most," she recalls. (Walton now has a following of 150,000.) After an illustration job inquiry came in offering $750 for a project, Walton quit her job at Calypso. "When I got that gig, I was like 'I made rent!' I didn't have too much lined up, but I hustled and made it work," she says. She took a freelance design position at Anthropologie's headquarters in Philadelphia, decamping to her parents' home in southern New Jersey where her father would drop her off every morning on his way to work, "a nice trip down memory lane," she recalls. On a couple of her trips to Manhattan, Walton and Schuman's paths seemed to continually cross, including at a 3.1 Phillip Lim show, which she fibbed about having tickets to. Schuman suggested they shoot her for the Sartorialist, and shortly thereafter, he invited her to help him layout his third book. The two soon became a romantic pair and became engaged earlier this year. She now handles the inner workings of the style site managing partnerships, collaborations and book plans. In the meantime, Walton continues to draw a breadth of assertive and languorously lined figures in the fashions of the moment. She has been hired by large chains such as Target, who uses her illustrations to add grace to a host of accessories, like shoe boxes and silk scarves, and by magazines like InStyle to illustrate trend features. "We're in a time where it's so easy to photograph everything, and it all becomes so literal. It used to take six months for a trend to appear, and fashion illustration had so much mystery to it; I think that's what people miss," opines Walton on the surge in appeal for the hand drawn. "The mystery in illustration is so refreshing." The illustrator finds inspiration in Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's Japanese-influenced woodblock style and René Gruau's perfect, minimalist lines that infer, rather than tell. She greatly admires her contemporary, Richard Haines, and work that rejects the obvious. "Why would you want to copy a photograph? 84 BAL HARBOUR "We're in a time where it's so easy to photograph everything, and it all becomes so literal. The mystery in illustration is so refreshing." —Jenny Walton