BEFORE THEY WERE HAUTE
From stocking shelves to selling clothes — and even acting in cereal commercials — here’s how fashion’s biggest names got their start
IT hasn’t always been pulsing catwalks and Champagnefueled parties for fashion’s superstar designers. Such is the takeaway in the new book “Fashion Lives” ( Rizzoli, $ 55) by Fern Mallis, the industry stalwart best known for founding New York Fashion Week in 1993.
Out Tuesday, the tome collects 19 transcripts from Mallis’ “Inside the Actors Studio” style lectures at the 92nd Street Y. It offers candid personal accounts from style world luminaries, many of whom got their start in and around NYC. Here are five of the book’s most surprising revelations, from Tommy Hilfiger’s denim hustle to Michael Kors’ shortlived acting career.
Sherry baby
Before she started dressing generations of famous women, Donna Karan, 66, was a teenage aspiring illustrator in Woodmere, LI. She landed her first job with the help of a little white lie:
“I was a salesgirl. The store was called Sherry’s. I drew an amazing sketch in the dressing room, and all the mothers loved me to dress their kids. I was about 13 or 14,” Karan told Mallis in 2012. “I lied about my age [ to get the job].”
Jean schemes
Tommy Hilfiger is well known for denim— and has been since the beginning. During his senior year of high school, the naturalborn hustler, now 64, started buying jeans and selling them in a makeshift basement store in his hometown of Elmira, NY:
“[ We bought jeans] on the streets. We found vendors. My friend . . . had been to New York many times, and he led the way through the Village and he knew all of these cool shops,” Hilfiger told Mallis in 2012. “We used to buy excess merchandise from a lot of the cool stores, pack the clothes into our Volkswagen and drive it upstate.”
Lucky one
As anyone who’s ever seen “Project Runway” knows, Michael Kors is far from camerashy. In fact, the 55yearold Merrick, LI-reared mogul launched a shortlived acting career at age 4 after being scouted at a party:
“[ The producer] said, ‘ I think you’d be great on television.’ And the next thing you knew, we were doing Lucky Charms [ commercials] and all this crazy stuff,” Kors told Mallis in 2012. “I still have my SAG card. [ My mother] retired me, though, at 6.”
Rising stock
Marc Jacobs, NYC’s homegrown enfant
terrible, has always been fearless. At 15, the now 52 year old designer snagged a stockboy gig at Upper West Side menswear boutique Charivari, where he introduced himself to iconic designer Perry Ellis:
“I ran up to Perry— I said, ‘ I’m really serious about being a fashion designer. You’re my favorite American designer. Could you give me any suggestions?’ ” Jacobs told Mallis in 2013. “And he introduced me to [ then Ellis employees] Jed [ Krascella] and Patricia [ Pastor] and said, ‘ They both went to Parsons, and if you’re serious, then that’s where I’d suggest you go to get a good education.’ And that’s what I did.”
Clothes encounters
Vera Wang is the darling of Alist wedding gown designers now, but the 65yearold NYC native paid her dues as a 20yearold salesgirl at a Madison Avenue shop, where she met her future boss, Vogue editor Frances Patiky Stein:
“I was helping [ Patiky Stein] buy clothing, and she said, ‘ You are really gifted— when you get out of college, call me and I’ll give you a job at Vogue.’ I knew what Vogue was, but I didn’t understand what a fashion editor did,” Wang told Mallis in 2013. “My mother said, ‘ Don’t be ridiculous. She’s not going to give you a job at Vogue.’ And I got out of college and I called her up. I said, ‘ You may not remember me,’ but she did, and I got the job.”