How Michael Kors became a fashion empire

For the longest time, popular opinion had Hilfiger, Lauren and Klein as the first fathers of American fashion. But be in no doubt: the pantheon has a fourth. Michael Kors speaks about famous friends, billion-dollar buyouts (hello, Versace) and the ’70s street-style redux

Much like apple pie à la Mode, resistance to gun control and Bill clinton’s saxophone, Michael kors is an american institution. Kors, who launched his eponymous line in 1981, has since transformed his namesake brand into a global powerhouse, with an annual turnover a smidge under R69 billion. What's more, Capri Holdings – the parent company formerly known as the Michael Kors Group which owns both Michael Kors and Jimmy Choo – recently acquired Milanese super brand Versace for a cool R31 billion. Not bad for a lad from a backwater town on New York’s Long Island.

BUT

what is it about the Michael Kors brand that has such universal appeal? And how did the man himself get where he is today? A good place to start might be with his autumn/winter ’19 men’s and women’s show. Mounted on a brisk February morning in the Ciprianiowned former National City Bank Building on New York’s Wall Street, Kors’ runway featured appearances from Bella and Gigi Hadid, his front row consisted of Kerry Washington, Kate Hudson, Catherine Zetajones and Michael Douglas, while the closing performance was given by Barry Manilow, who sang a rollicking version of “Copacabana”. And that’s before you get to the clothes. A glittercoated, dollar-flickingly expensive tour de extravagance, it was an exercise in overstated glamour, which demonstrated not only Kors’ talent for putting on a spectacle, but also his peerless star-pulling power.

And then there’s the man himself. Never seen with anything other than a perma tan, single-breasted black suit, black crewneck sweater and pair of black aviator sunglasses, Kors is the embodiment of clean-cut American taste. A lean, mean, blue jean-making machine with (potentially) more Manhattan real estate than Trump and more celebrity friends than you could shake Claudia Schiffer at – the best thing about Kors is that he actually lives up to the hyper-glamorous persona he projects. Unlike other designers who cower from the limelight they are so effective at manufacturing, Kors is bold, brash and utterly brilliant. A beacon of high-fashion optimism in an otherwise sour-faced sky, he is a designer who embodies the brand he has created so perfectly that it’s easy to understand why so many people want a piece of both him and it.

When I meet Kors after his show, in what feels like a throne room in the vaults beneath the space, he’s positioned on a white stage at

one end, while a dozen or so staff members (plus his hirsutely handsome creative director husband, Lance Lepere) sit at the other. The Kors brand – his name – is emblazoned on a temporary wall, in front of which the designer is perched on a bar stool, like an emperor penguin on an ice block. He’s wearing his trademark black, his smile is warm and he looks healthy: sleek and replete, a modern Sun King with a killer tan. It’s no secret that 60-year-old Kors is a multimillionaire, and it’s also no secret he’d probably rather be topping up said tan on a yacht in his favoured holiday spot, Capri, than hanging out in a basement with me. But he’s pleasant and polite – if a little light on eye contact.

When we start to talk, his words fire out like glossy bullets, tipped with a nasal twang that’s more upwardly inflected Californian than the down and dirty vowels of his New York hometown. It’s a voice that brings to mind the Kors of my youth, the Kors of Project Runway, the Kors who would drop brilliantly acerbic one liners – ‘He looks like a reggae Jesus’ and ‘Tin Man, Hershey Kiss, ballerina, garbage, newspaper, dirty vacuum bag… these are fabulous fashion references’ – the Kors who made me feel excited to meet him.

Born in 1959 in the sleepy hamlet of Merrick, Long Island, Kors was a cheerful, precocious child who famously, age five, advised his mother on the wedding dress she should wear for her second marriage, to businessman Bill Kors. Despite demonstrating an early interest in architecture, Kors, or Karl Anderson Jr as he was then known (he changed his name after his mother’s nuptials), joined New York’s Fashion Institute Of Technology in 1977, before dropping out to work as the in-house designer at hip midtown clothing boutique Lothar’s, where he would pass the time between clients ‘watching all the ballet dancers leaving Carnegie Hall.’

Following the launch of the Michael Kors line (of little more than a rail of leather jackets and a few crêpe-de-chine dresses) in NYC department store Bergdorf Goodman in 1981, Kors showed his first runway collection in the autumn 1984 season of New York Fashion Week. Despite his early successes, the ’90s were tough on Kors. The move toward grunge didn’t align with the designer’s high-shine »

aesthetic and he filed for bankruptcy protection in 1993 when production stalled on his lower-price licence collection, Kors Michael Kors. A lifeline came in 1997 when LVMH bought a third of his company and

Kors himself landed the role of womenswear designer and later creative director at Celine (also Lvmh-owned). Though Kors was widely credited with turning around the fortunes of the label, he left in 2004 to focus on his own brand (that and 10 seasons of Project Runway, of course), which, in 2011, was floated on the New York Stock Exchange – a move that raised R11 billion and left Kors with a minority share in the international empire he built from scratch, an empire that today counts an impressive celebrity fan base, including Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton and Zetajones in the female camp, and Jenson Button, Hugh Jackman and John Boyega in the male.

That’s another thing to note about Kors. He loves celebrity. The designer famously spent a lot of time at Studio 54 in the ’70s and when I ask about that period of his life he is effusive. ‘I mean, we dressed for the door on Studio

54. It was just, “What are you going to wear that’s going to knock everyone out?” You’d be on the dance floor and Truman Capote would be there and he’d be dancing with [Diana] Vreeland and you’re like, “Is this surreal or what? I’m 18. Is this really happening?”’ He laughs. ‘We had Jackie Kennedy Onassis come in [to Lothar’s] to buy jeans once. She was lovely. Very softly spoken. I was 18 years old. My hands were shaking. I didn’t want her to go into a changing room, so I took her into an office instead. I knocked on the door to see if she needed anything. She couldn’t get her boots off. They were stuck. So I had to pull them off.’ And, before I can get a word in, ‘We had Muhammad Ali and his wife come into the shop and the front of the store was glass,’ he says. ‘We were helping his wife and the next thing I knew the entire sidewalk was full of people screaming, “Ali! Ali!” We had to lock the doors. He had no security with him, nothing.’

Kors’

autumn/winter ’19 collection was clearly inspired by his ’70s heyday, but were there any specific references to be aware of? ‘We were moving apartments and I came across my high school yearbook, which I’d not seen in 30 years,’ Kors tells me at a pace. ‘It made me think of when I came to New York in the late ’70s. Although New York was dangerous back then – it was dirty; it wasn’t a fabulous moment – there was an energy and optimism in the way people dressed. There was real individual style: it might have been the beginning of street style. People were doing their own thing and [street photographer] Bill Cunningham would stand on 57th Street and everyone just dressed for him, hoping they’d catch his eye. For autumn/ winter ’19 I thought about that mix you see in big cities and I really wanted to make it this melting pot, an urban collection where a girl in a disco dress passes a guy at a dance rehearsal. She’s coming home and he’s off to work.’

A bass-heavy riff of shaggy shearling bomber jackets finished with high-shine leather shells, ’70s-wash hipster jeans, openneck silk shirts in sepia hues and voluminous corduroy trench coats in brink-of-burnt caramel, the collection felt as grown-up as it did urban. Perhaps most importantly, however, it was laced with that Korsian thread of wearability. Kors, after all, has built a brand on making beautiful clothes with a democratic appeal. ‘If you’re buying a designer piece, it has to have it all,’ he says, when I ask whether he cultivates that approachable quality intentionally. ‘It has to have fashion quality, longevity and newness all at once. It’s not throwaway. You want to hold on to it and at the same time you don’t want it to be so boring that it doesn’t spice up your wardrobe. The Michael Kors man travels. He wants to be able to wear the same coat with jeans and a suit. He wants things that can cross seasons.’ »

‘i’m a strange thing in fashion – i come with joy, optimism and something spirited’

In addition to the glittering halo of celebrity he is so adept at creating, it is Kors’ acute ability to understand how real men and women want to dress that has helped him define his space so clearly on the global fashion landscape. In the same vein as his stateside peers Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein – all of whom are equally talented at combining ease of wear with creative edge (though, importantly, not so much edge that it scares away the more conservative American customer) – Kors has mastered his own brand of approachable luxury. Where Lauren has made a living selling his version of the American Dream, Hilfiger has his prepped-up brand of sports-inspired tailoring and Klein is the king of minimalism, Kors has his very own comfortable brand of glamour. Visit his label’s website and you’ll find yourself swimming in a sea of easy-wearing ‘cazhmur’ [sic] sweaters, slim-fitting jeans and R5 500 high-top trainers. These are not clothes designed to challenge their wearer. They are beautifully manufactured, simply designed and made for men like you and me. Oh, and celebrities, of course.

‘When you’re driving a car and you put it on cruise control it’s so boring you could die. It’s like, “Oh, God. You’re not experiencing anything,”’ he analogises, when I ask about this sense of consistency. ‘On the other hand, if you floor the car and are afraid you’ll come off the road, that’s not good either. So, with my brand, I always say to myself, “OK, you just have to turn the wheel.” I like an evolution. I want things to change. But when you see something by Michael Kors you should know that it’s Michael Kors,’ he says, thoughtfully. ‘I think that I’m this strange thing in fashion, which is chic and glamorous and luxury. But I also come with optimism, joy and something that’s spirited,’ he muses. ‘Fashion people sometimes think that to be chic or stylish you have to be sad and dour. And I don’t feel that way at all. The most stylish people I know have humour and joy. Hopefully I’m able to bring that combination of things to people, because I believe that’s the best you can hope for in life.’

Kors met Lepere in 1990, when the former hired the latter as an intern in his Paris office. They married in 2011 and the pair now live together in a sprawling Greenwich Village penthouse. In this Trumpian era of political

upheaval and social disquiet, does Kors recognise his responsibility as an out gay man in a position of influence? ‘I never in my life ever considered hiding who I was. My family was fully supportive of any lifestyle I was going to live and I think my generation was the first to think that way. I think also that there is a responsibility as an adult who’s lived an out life [and] is successful, is a business person, has a stable relationship and a marriage… You know you’re going to be looked up to,’ he says. ‘I always talk to these kids. Sometimes when I was doing Project Runway I would have parents stop me and say, “My son wants to be a designer and because of you he’s feeling more confident.”’

speaking

of confidence, I’m intrigued to hear Kors’ thoughts on his group’s recent acquisition of Versace. How does he feel about the only other person on the planet potentially more glamorous than him entering the Capri Holdings fray? ‘I’m thrilled that the house of Versace will be part of our global fashion luxury group,’ says Kors. ‘It’s wonderful to have another brand in our group that also values design, style and craftsmanship, and I look forward to having Versace as part of our family,’ he continues. ‘I have been a great admirer of Donatella Versace’s spirit for many years. She is smart, talented and a visionary

– all things I greatly admire.’

When I speak to John D Idol, the CEO of Capri Holdings, about his eventual plans for the group, he is equally effusive. ‘With the acquisition of Versace, we have now created one of the leading global fashion luxury groups in the world,’ he told me after my interview with Kors. ‘Our goals were to expand the global group to include three iconic, founderled brands defined by luxury fashion products with a reputation for world-class design and innovation. For the next 24 months, we’re going to focus on the development of Versace because we’ve made that very large acquisition. We’re still focused on the development of Jimmy Choo. And, of course, Michael Kors is going to continue to be our most important brand in terms of revenues and earnings, so we need to stay very focused on that.’ And does he plan to expand even further? Idol has a New York-based brand, a London-based brand and a Milan-based brand under his belt (is there an MK logo or a Medusa head adorning it, I wonder?) – is he in the market for something Parisian? ‘If something very interesting or unique or special was to come along, I think we would certainly consider it. But that’s not our priority right now.’

Back in the throne room my audience with Kors is nearly at an end, but I’m told that there’s time for one more question. Given that we’re on the subject of Parisian brands, I can’t resist asking Kors’ opinion on Hedi Slimane’s new take on Celine, the label he helmed for more than half a decade. Kors’ eventual successor at the brand, Phoebe Philo, was beloved by the fashion industry at large for her elegantly wearable work there and when Slimane joined as creative director in 2018, his first, super sexy collection caused quite a stir. Did Kors enjoy watching the drama unfold? ‘You know, I was there for six-and-a-half years. Now it seems like everyone’s tenure has shortened up,’ Kors says. ‘When I left, I felt like I was leaving the baby. And I hope that the baby’s healthy and able to stand, so I’m happy to see it evolve and grow and change.’ A pause. ‘Hedi’s done an amazing job.’

And with that, a quick handshake (Kors’ hands are incredibly soft – and tanned), a brief exchange about Brexit and Trump (which Kors, with Project Runway pithiness, paraphrases as ‘global madness. I should release a fragrance! “Global Madness!”’) and a swift-yet-smiley escort from the room,

I find myself deposited on the chilly Wall Street pavement, sure that, despite the freezing temperatures, I’ve caught a sniff of a tan.

‘some fashion people think to be chic, you have be sad and dour. i don’t feel that way at all’