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The New York Time | February 3, 2010 | by Eric Wilson
Slide Show: Zac Posen's Journey
Slide Show: Zac Posen's Journey
source | nytimes.comIt was late into the night last April 30, after a lavish dinner at La Grenouille honoring the 100th anniversary of Cartier, when Zac Posen, the precocious designer, took a seat next to Glenda Bailey, the editor of Harper’s Bazaar and the evening’s hostess. Mr. Posen was upset about what he perceived to be a slight of his work in the magazine, and he surprised the editor — and those around her — with a confrontation. The designer, who confirmed the details of his complaint in a telephone interview this week, was offended that the magazine, which rarely featured his clothes, had asked him to appear in a fashion feature that paired designers with characters from "Sesame Street."
He was supposed to stand next to the Count, the numerically inclined vampire (who happens to share the designer’s hairline and fondness for wearing capes).
“I didn’t want to model with the Count,” Mr. Posen said. “She said that was the only way my clothes could be in the magazine as a non-advertiser. I think she was surprised I wouldn’t take the part, but I stood my ground and I still do.”
In fashion, it is considered poor form to air one’s grievances in public, let alone at a party, and directly to an editor in chief; and yet Mr. Posen, in his meteoric career since founding his company in 2001, around the time of his 21st birthday, has never allowed decorum to stand in the way of his tongue. He has bristled at editors for any number of offenses, not the least of which was when they described him as a “young designer.” Mr. Posen knew he was bigger than that, no matter his age.
And, in a way, he had a point.
There was a time when brashness was a refreshing change in New York fashion, which had been dominated by a handful of aging mega-brands until Mr. Posen planted his flag in the biggest, most expensive tent in Bryant Park. But his extravagant success came so quickly, perhaps faster than his limited experience should have allowed, that his setbacks echo all the more loudly. He became unpredictable, lashing out at the news media as his company struggled with layoffs, a revolving door of executives and an investor pulling back the reins. He was the designer wunderkind who went too far, too fast, his sequins falling to the floor like the feathers of Icarus.
“This is survival mode,” Mr. Posen said in an interview in December, shortly after a round of articles about his business troubles and the departure of top executives. Those included Laura O’Connor, the president, who had joined the company in 2008.
New York, before the recession, was a breeding ground for young designers, overrun with labels that became overnight sensations merely because the industry willed them to be so, a phenomenon that can largely be traced to the example of Zac Posen. Young and connected, he had the attention of important fashion people while he was still a teenager, working as an intern for the designer Nicole Miller and building a network of friends that would include the children of famous artists, magazine editors, actors and President George W. Bush. When Naomi Campbell wore a dress he made — while he was still a student at a London arts college — it seemed as if it was his destiny to become a famous fashion designer. Now young designers think good looks plus diploma equals business plan.
As Mr. Posen put it: “The variables have become pretty clear. Do you feel comfortable having your photo taken? And can you talk, and get sponsorship? I mean, it’s really that crude.”
But if his extravagant success is emblematic of a certain period of recent fashion history that was driven by excess, then what is to become of the designer and his ilk in a post-recession, post-luxury world? In December, Phi, another favorite of fashion editors, was shuttered. Before that, it was Christian Lacroix.
Mr. Posen’s studio is in a loft building in TriBeCa. It is a warren of offices that have been combined over the years. It has room to house a jeans collection, fragrances and a retail operation, most of which have yet to materialize, leaving a lot of open space. He knows the rap against him, that he can appear pretentious, that he prefers the limelight to the hard work of making clothes.
“I think, in the last year, I grew up,” said Mr. Posen, 29. During that time, employees who had been hired to develop a lower-priced line had been let go when the project was put on hold. With the remaining staff, Mr. Posen developed two new collections: a different lower-priced line, Z Spoke, that will be sold at Saks Fifth Avenue beginning March 1, and a fast-fashion collection for Target in April.
“I’ve burned bridges and I’ve built bridges,” he said, “and I’m really just listening to my own voice now, and taking responsibility for it as well.”
Lately, Mr. Posen has been reading the works of John Fairchild, the retired publisher of Women’s Wear Daily, who chronicled the rise of society designers in his book “Chic Savages.” Mr. Fairchild’s battles with designers were legendary, including a longstanding ban of Geoffrey Beene from the pages of Women’s Wear that lasted almost without pause until Mr. Beene’s obituary appeared in 2004. Mr. Posen also talked of studying Charles James, the fabulously eccentric designer who, in the 1950s, almost never showed his work to the news media.
“It sounds like everybody who has craft and integrity doesn’t allow the journalists in,” he said.
Perhaps he allowed them to get too close. There was always a sense, even as a really young designer, that he was a showman trying to project a sense of grandness, when what he was good at was making wearable bias-cut dresses with kicky insets that were flattering to many body types. His spring 2004 collection, one of the best received, included satin dresses inspired by the insides of seashells and a raffia ball gown. The following season he wowed editors with a show called “Blixen,” interpreted by some critics as a reference to the German word for lightning (blitz) and by others as a nod to the reindeer because there was a lot of fur.
The turnout for his shows was tremendous, with Julianne Moore, Bette Midler, the president’s daughters and Sean Combs, who invested in Mr. Posen’s brand in 2004. Mr. Posen would often appear in white tie or a top hat, lending an air of nuttiness that was heightened by his more recent design influences: Shakers, intergalactic rock goddesses, Lewis Carroll meets Paloma Picasso.
“I am a Florenz Ziegfeld fanatic,” Mr. Posen said. “I love a spectacle, but I saw it as social commentary. I think my level of sophistication was a little higher than most people’s. I saw an abstraction to the whole media frenzy of it. But at the end of the day, that’s all that people felt, I think, and they didn’t really look at the clothing.”
Last September, however, Mr. Posen decided to change his presentations in a way that was interpreted by fashion insiders as a sign of retreat. He switched from the big nighttime shows to a small one at 9 a.m. Glenda Bailey did not attend that show, but a spokeswoman for Harper’s Bazaar said the magazine had always supported him.
There were other setbacks. A fragrance license with Selective Beauty that had been in development for two years, with a bottle designed by Fabien Baron, was canceled shortly before the company merged with another perfumer. Plans for Zac Posen stores in Paris and New York were postponed. And the investors who backed Mr. Combs, the Yucaipa Companies, began to impose tighter financial restraints on the company, Mr. Posen said, though he declined to be more specific.
Susan Posen, his mother and the chief executive of the company, said that the business, while not yet profitable, had always been operated with the bottom line in mind. The expense of putting on such lavish shows, for example, was balanced by sponsorship from other companies. She would not disclose the company’s sales, but Hoover’s Inc. reported sales of $3.3 million for 2007. Others have estimated sales to be as high as $10 million.
But sales declined last year by a double-digit percentage, and the company’s fast growth prior to the recession made it look to luxury experts like the kind of business most vulnerable in a downturn.
“It’s more difficult for them right now than for an established, mature brand, or for an emerging designer who has a small business and a small, but manageable, overhead,” said Robert Burke, a luxury consultant.
Mr. Posen, meanwhile, is making do. When interviewed again this week, he was taking a break from draping dresses inside a tent set up in the middle of his showroom. Asked how sure he felt about the business now, he said, “I am 110 percent, 200 percent confident and determined.”
Editors who have seen his new lines for Saks and Target have raved about each. He plans to show his fall collection during Fashion Week, at 9 a.m. on Feb. 15, in a more restrained way.
The reason is not only financial, he said.
Mr. Posen wants the show to be about the clothes, not the designer.
