There’s a revolution brewing on Seventh Avenue. If all goes according to plan, Ralph and Oscar and Calvin will be ousted to make way for Todd and Zang and Gemma and Soyon and Jun.
These new American designers are hardly household names, and they seem pretty exotic even to the hothouse that is Seventh Avenue. Zang Toi, 29, is Malaysian; Gemma Kahng, 36, and Soyon, 23, and Jun Kim, 25, are from Korea. Todd Oldham hails from Texas. But whatever their birthplaces, they are clearly the American fashion industry’s hope for the future.
Very few star designers have emerged in the last decade–a fact yawningly apparent at the annual Council of Fashion Designers awards, where the same people keep winning the same honors. With the prizes have come skyrocketing prices ($3,000 for a wool suit from a designer like Calvin Klein is not unusual). Not surprisingly, rebellion is brewing in the well-bred ranks of fashion customers. Even the wealthy balk at being bilked.
That’s why the New York brat pack’s clothes are so appealing–and have been so quickly embraced. Their designs display a good deal of cross-cultural borrowing but share a common vocabulary of sophistication. Toi specializes in a mix of unusual colors pioneered by Christian Lacroix. Kahng adorns classic suits with huge jeweled buttons in unexpected shapes. Soyon and Jun Kim (who design under the Isani label) create youthful ’60s-type shifts and plaid suits with Chanel touches. Oldham, 29, the most original member of the group, designs exotic, scrupulously constructed suits and evening clothes inspired, most recently, by African and Aztec designs.
In department and specialty stores, these clothes hang next to those by Bill Blass and Donna Karan, but the price tags are often half as high. Store executives love them; in fact, the new Bendel’s marketing strategy decidedly favors young designers. Lynn Manulis, president of Martha, opened two new shops in 1989 expressly to sell these newer styles. “I was going after the young woman who makes up more than half of the work force in this decade,” Manulis says. “And there was such a need for more affordable prices that even the older customers have started buying them.”
Of course, affordable is always a relative term. The new designs are “fashion” as opposed to just nice clothes (commercially popular lines like Anne Klein II or Liz Claiborne), and fashion is always expensive–a suit by any of the young designers can cost more than $1,000. Though most people can’t afford it, fashion is important because once it sets a trend, it is then copied by mass-market manufacturers and shows up at every price level-witness the huge fake jeweled buttons now popping up on the cheapest suits. Fashion customers are willing to pay a premium for forward-looking styles that embody current trends, are meticulously tailored and are not aimed at everyone. “I don’t have to appeal to the masses,” says Oldham. “I just have to reach those people with my sensibility.”
There are enough of those people to allow the 29-year-old designer to build a $5 million business in just a few years. Times 7, Oldham’s collection of designer shirts, was launched three years ago and now grosses $4 million a year. His year-old sportswear and evening lines have already taken in $1 million. Zang Toi, Gemma Kahng and Isani have each parlayed small investments into sales worth about $1 million in only two years.
Unencumbered by huge advertising budgets, the new designers can pass their savings on to the consumer. “I think women are looking for good prices and styles that are new-not just young people in the same mold as the current stars,” says Toi. The wealthy may have found that with these new designers. The rest of us will just have to wait for the knockoffs.
