Tuesday December 7, 2004
Adrover Packs Up, Moves to Majorca
By Eric Wilson
NEW YORK — In the end, Miguel Adrover couldn’t beat the system.
The designer, whose fortunes have turned from bad to good to worse, referred to his spring fashion show in September as his “last battle” for retail relevance and basic survival, following the last of 100 models onto the runway wearing a T-shirt that read, “Anyone seen a backer?”
It was the final stand in Adrover’s brief and curiously antagonistic campaign to change the fashion industry. Once heralded as the Next Big Thing for his ironic tweaking of brand icons and his none-too-subtle references against fashion imperialism, Adrover has more recently been described by some as the designer who cried wolf.
On Monday, sitting in his Chrystie Street studio amid hundreds of packing boxes that contained the relics of his career, Adrover admitted defeat. His collections are no longer carried by any stores in the U.S., having lost his final two accounts this year, and sales from private clients could not cover the $3,500 a month rent he pays for the studio.
Adrover said he was unable to secure financing to continue to produce a collection in New York and that he plans to move his company to Majorca, where he was born, with the hopes of finding a more receptive audience, and possibly a new backer, for his unique brand of politically infused fashion statements.
“With the political situation here, it’s the perfect time to be moving the company,” Adrover said. “If we didn’t get financing in the past few years, I don’t think we will be getting it now. At least, not in the next four years.”
Adrover’s story is part industry legend, part cautionary tale. Young designers still come up to him on the street, recalling the headlines he made in 2000 when he created one of the most buzzed-about collections in years, his second, on virtually a shoestring budget while living in a basement apartment in the East Village with supposedly only a few bucks in his bank account.
He moved to New York from Spain, first working as a janitor, then breaking into the fashion business with a job at a former T-shirt collection called Dugg, then opening a store in 1995 called Horn that attracted an influential crowd of editors and designers. Soon Adrover wanted to launch his own collection and rallied a team of volunteers to work on the project, based on their belief in his talent. He sent out invitations with the details stamped on $1 bills, so when the guests arrived, he got his money back. For raw materials, Adrover was equally frugal, restyling discarded Burberry coats and New York Yankees baseball caps and the ticking of a mattress reputed to belong to the late Quentin Crisp.
Mixed with a selection of finely tailored blouses and suits, the audience sensed a success and heaped lavish praise on the collection, leading to a battle between retailers to carry it and, within a few weeks, an investment from the newly formed Pegasus Apparel Group, a company backed by a private equity fund looking to create an American version of a luxury conglomerate.
Adrover was able to move his company into a new studio and got a Jaguar as part of the deal. But that success also turned out to be his downfall, perhaps in a case of poetic justice. His ill-timed embrace of Middle Eastern dress in his 2001 collections came just before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, while Pegasus was having its own problems. The conglomerate dropped its support of Adrover after just a year when the designer lost favor with editors, who considered his ego had gotten too big, and with stores, which were unhappy with the performance of his retail debut.
But Adrover pressed on, mending some of those fences and continuing to show collections with financial support from companies such as U.P.S., working with a team of volunteers he recruited from design schools around the world and invited into his studio each season. The work maintained its polarizing effect.
“We got to a point where we had tried and tried and tried,” Adrover said. “We held on for three years after Pegasus dropped us. But we decided the best way is to try someplace else, where we might get backing. I can’t put my team in place one more time when I don’t know if I can do this.”
Under Pegasus, Adrover’s collection was picked up by top specialty stores including Saks Fifth Avenue, Barneys New York and Jeffrey New York, generating sales of $5 million at its peak. But after Pegasus closed, only Henri Bendel and Jeffrey New York continued to support the designer in the U.S. Adrover said he sold about $70,000 to $100,000 worth of clothes from his 2003 collections, but that Bendel’s had recently informed him that it would not continue to carry the line.
Jeffrey Kalinsky, owner of Jeffrey New York, said he’d bought Adrover’s women’s collection for the spring 2003 season but it was never produced. The last collection he carried from the designer came from a men’s footwear license, delivered that season.
“Miguel is a very talented designer and I think he will still make it,” Kalinsky said. “I think that he has wonderful talent, but he had a lot of misfortune. His problems had to do with bad circumstances that were beyond his control, but I hope what is a sad thing for us turns out to be a great thing for Miguel.”
Adrover is optimistic about his chances in Europe, where he hopes to be able to stage a show in Paris next September. Joan Solivellas, a former fashion executive who resides in Majorca, is helping him set up his studio there in the Palau Veri, a former palace that now houses art galleries and a retail complex. The local government is also offering assistance, Adrover said, noting he would like to establish his own fashion school.
His studio manager, Oscar Correcher, and design director, Peter Hidalgo, are planning to join him there. Adrover said he is leaving New York on Dec. 15, the day after his 39th birthday.
He characterized his decision to move the company as a disappointment and criticized several companies and designers that have enjoyed more recent successes than his own. He lost the Jaguar when Pegasus closed his line in 2001. In Majorca, he will have a horse.
“I cannot change anything,” he said. “I think it’s fair what happened. We played with the rules. We took risks. If I wanted to be at the top of the New York fashion industry, I could have been there if I played the game. You can manipulate the New York scene very easily. But it is not representative of what is really going on in the streets of New York. What the fashion industry embraces now, I feel very sad about that. They only care about the bling-bling.”
Adrover’s stinging rebukes of designer brands and personalities in both his collections and in comments made during interviews have sometimes met with a receptive audience. His message, shown season after season in a United Nations-worthy blending of tribal costumes, hip-hop streetwear and WASP-tailored suits, was an appealing embrace of multiple classes of societies and cultures. But his enthusiasm — some have said zealotry — was a turn-off for others, who pointed out that like Tom Ford or Ralph Lauren, Adrover, too, still had something to sell.
His ego checked, Adrover said he understands their point of view, but had he the chance to start over, he said he would have done the same.
“I think the message has been understood, it’s just that a lot of people don’t want to support that message,” Adrover said. “So many people ask me, ‘Why do you mix politics with clothing?’ I find that offensive. Politics is what’s going to affect my life today and tomorrow, not fashion. Fashion is going to only affect my wallet.”
)
What season was it?
