IF TAMARA MELLON HAS HER WAY—AND WHEN HAS THE JIMMY CHOO COFOUNDER NOT?—HER NEW NAMESAKE COLLECTION, WITH ITS BUY-NOW, WEAR-NOW MONTHLY DELIVERIES, MIGHT JUST SHAKE UP THE FASHION SYSTEM AS WE KNOW IT.
Last Monday, a sign on the glass doors at Pace announced the gallery was closed for a private event: the debut of Tamara Mellon’s new namesake brand. Inside, Diptyque candles burned. A beyond-belief-huge fox-fur throw was draped over a low-slung couch that sat behind a marble coffee table—all Mellon’s own. Richard Misrach’s On the Beach photo series, one of which is part of her personal collection, lined the walls. And perched on white Plexi boxes were the collection’s first offerings—shoes, boots, and bags in black, white, red, and leopard print (she adores leopard). Mellon, who walked away from Jimmy Choo in 2011 with what’s estimated at nearly $100 million, doesn’t do anything small. That goes for last week’s presentation, as well as the brand itself. She’s come up with a fairly revolutionary concept: monthly shipments of in-season merch. Warm coats in September, not July! Spring clothes in the spring, not February! Even better, she’s determined to put an end to the $2,000 dress. That’s enough to make headlines on its own, but what really made us sit up and take notice were the fabulous, why-hasn’t-anybody-else-come-up-with-that? ideas such as leather and suede legging boots, thin knits sold with matching cashmere bras, perfect stretchy turtlenecks that you’ve never been able to find. Woman-friendly is the rather unsexy term that comes to mind. Mellon herself puts it this way: “She’s glamorous, she’s a luxury woman, but she’s not buttoned up or uptight in any way. And she’s independent.” Here, the entrepreneur and designer sits down with Style.com to discuss the label’s genesis, where it’s going, and why she lives and works by these two rules: keeping pace with the modern consumer, and keeping control of your own company.
NP: When did the idea for a namesake brand come to you?
TM: A couple of years ago. I was toying with the idea of doing something under my own name, and I decided probably it was the right time. I could’ve stayed at Jimmy Choo for another five years, but I decided if I didn’t do it now, I’d never do it. I thought I’d take the risk.
I like the idea of doing something that gets away from the fashion system. Your idea of delivering every month is much more the way women and men want to shop these days. No one has quite done it yet. It’s exciting.
If I’m going to go down, I might as well go down in flames. No, but personally, I got so sick of having to buy clothes in the wrong season. I don’t want to think about spring and summer clothes in February, and I don’t really want to buy a winter coat right now. It all started, really, when shows went online. The customer and the world have moved forward, but the fashion industry hasn’t moved forward. It hasn’t really thought about how to keep up with the consumer. When I started going to shows in the early nineties, when I was at British Vogue, nobody could see the clothes except the buyers and the press, and then the customer saw it when it came out in the magazine and the stores. Now, you have a show, it’s on Style.com, and as a consumer, I can look at those pictures for six months before the product gets into the store. When it finally does get there, I feel like it’s been overexposed. There’s sort of a fatigue to it. By the time it’s in the stores, she’s already seen the next collection, so she wants that. I want to create that excitement for the customer again, and also put clothes in the right season: what you want to wear when you want to wear it.
Zara does this. Why aren’t other higher-level brands doing this?
What they have to think about in their structure is being seasonless, and think about monthly, bimonthly deliveries. I’m making my shoes and bags in the same factories that I have for the last eighteen years, and they’re really happy producing this new way. I’m going to do limited wholesale. My business is really going to be based on my own retail. We’re opening two stores next year, New York and London, and online. The advantage I have is starting from scratch. I don’t have to change big old structures, but also there’s a lot of old thinking. We have to change the way the fashion business thinks. I love the hashtag that’s going around Twitter at the moment #DISRUPTFASHION.
I think you just gave us our headline.
The world’s moved on, but not the fashion industry. I want to buy something and wear it the next day. I don’t want to look at it for the next four months.
The line is a real mix of glamour and clever, woman-friendly wardrobe solutions. I’m thinking of the legging boots, or the thin cashmeres sold with bra tops. Is that your formula?
Absolutely. I thought about the things I want to wear, the things that frustrate me that I can’t find, and the easy, non-stressful way I want to live my life. So I did a lot of transitional pieces you can wear day to night literally by just changing a boot or shoe or accessory. I just hate the whole thing of having to change. And then you can buy one dress that has two purposes.
People think of you as an accessory designer. What were the challenges of getting into ready-to-wear?
I knew that people wouldn’t believe it until they saw it. So I just tried to remain confident in myself. Yeah, there were people who said, “Well, she doesn’t know anything about ready-to-wear,” but I had a vision, and I knew that I could execute it.
