The Label
For all his name recognition and accessibility, Michael Kors has had a tough time making money in the 21st-century fashion business. This is in part because he started his empire at a time (1980) when big department stores, which had been so crucial to other designer businesses, were becoming less dominant in the retail universe, and in part because Kors’s love of classics is at odds with a trend-driven industry.
In 2003, Kors was acquired by fashion financiers Lawrence Stroll and Silas Chou, who intended to spread the name across multiple categories and make it a billion dollar brand. Fragrances and accessories did well, but other categories—menswear, lower-priced lines—didn’t. In summer 2006, the company began opening the first of a planned 100 Michael Kors stores that would mix all his various products in one space. “Everyone says it’s all about the mix, and that she wears couture with denim, or sable with flip flops,” he told WWD that August. “This is how a lot of people want to shop.”
The Look
Straightforward, unmistakably American sportswear in the clean-line tradition of Norman Norell, Claire McCardell, Bill Blass, and Halston; very luxurious natural materials like gazillion-ply cashmere, suede, double-faced wool, furs of all sorts, silk jersey, and crisp linen.
The Designer
Michael Kors was born in 1959 to a well-off Long Island family, and he attended the Fashion Institute of Technology. While working at a now-defunct boutique on 57th Street, the 22-year-old designer showed his first collection to a Bergdorf Goodman buyer, who placed an order. Kors, not yet prepared for business, frantically assembled the clothes and then borrowed his aunt’s Mercedes to deliver it. One of the most popular designers in America thanks to his self-deprecating humor, he’s won two Council of Fashion Designers of America awards, one each for menswear and womenswear, and is a judge on Project Runway.
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