Jason McDonaldAdvertisement - Continue Reading BelowFor decades now, beneath the roar of the runway and the buzz of sartorial savants who look to report contemporary trends and instead end up uttering desperately oblique bons mots about gray being the new black and skirts being the new pants, the canary in the proverbial coal mine has been singing a dirge for American fashion as a directional concept. Stores both high- and low-end are adrift in unwanted retail stock, not only because of shoppers' economic anxieties but apparently because there's nothing tempting enough to buy. Within the industry itself, inspired design has yielded to hype and obvious visual conceits, and the cult of the superstar designer with an E! channel–ready celebrity following reigns: See Mischa Barton toting designer X's or Y's interchangeable bags.
More From ELLEOf course, American fashion as a real contender for the global spotlight is a Johnny-come-lately compared with old-world European couture—and in any case first made its mark not with elegant evening gowns but with sportswear. The "American look" came into its own around 1940 with Claire McCardell's pragmatic yet strikingly unconventional approach to fashion, which conveyed comfort and ease with her signature use of playful materials such as cotton, gingham, and denim; ubiquitous pockets; and clean lines free of superfluous ornamentation. It was an idea of American practical¬ity that Anne Klein expanded in the '70s into a collection of everyday separates, while Donna Karan put her working-woman stamp on the theme with her seven easy pieces in the '80s. Meanwhile, Calvin Klein boosted the sales of jeans with a single provocative advertisement. And then there were the two megatalents, Halston and Geoffrey Beene, whose distinctly different, equally assured, minimalist visions of perfected simplicity in the '70s and '80s brought them worldwide global recognition. But beginning in the '90s, as the fashion cycle spun ever faster, with one look (grunge, for instance) overturning the previous one (monastic), only to fall out of favor quicker than you can say The Olsen twins, American fashion has become an increasingly confounded affair. Who is the customer being sought? What is the link between the runway and the actual merchandise that is ordered by influential department stores and boutiques? When you add to this foggy state of affairs the fact that we are in an increasingly severe recession, one would naturally think of this as a moment for retrenchment and caution rather than adventurousness, for camping out on familiar grounds rather than staking out untrammeled terrain.
Well, think again: Derek Lam is having none of it. Without much drama or self-¬promotional huzzahs, the soft-spoken 42-year-old Chinese-American designer—his mother is from Hong Kong and his father, the son of Chinese immigrants, is from San Francisco, where Lam grew up with two sisters—is striding, albeit in his own unaggressive style, against the tide. A mere five years after he started his eponymous company (his résumé includes two four-year stints at Michael Kors, book ending four years overseeing a mass-market chain in Hong Kong), his first stand-alone boutique is opening this spring. Designed by the Japanese architectural firm Sanaa and financed by Labelux, the Austrian com¬pany that bought a majority stake in Lam's company last July, the store is located at the ineffably chic juncture of Crosby Street and Howard in SoHo, steps away from Jil Sander and Ted Muehling. While recognizing the greatness of couturier talents like Coco Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent (his personal favorites include Vionnet, Miuccia Prada, and Rei Kawakubo), Lam neither mourns the tradition's demise (he refers to Valentino's "pluperfect" draping as sometimes creating a "goddessy effect, like Jean Harlow draped in platinum charmeuse") nor frets about where his next client might be coming from or whether anyone in the press will take note of her. "I don't think traditional upper-class society makes a difference," he observes. "China and Russia are the new society." As for celebrities, he insists that they "have no mystery anymore." Lam is at once expansive about fashion's potential—to which end he and Jan-Hendrik Schlottmann, his CEO since 2003 and his companion of the past decade, have conceived a 10-year business plan—and modest about its larger significance in the world.
Jason McDonald"God, it's only clothing!" Lam says half-mockingly, sitting at his glass-topped desk in a small office at the back of his all-white studio on West 26th Street, where sewing machines are humming and patterns are being pinned even though it's the Monday before Thanksgiving. Not that there is any sign of trickle-down anxiety, either: The mood in the studio seems decidedly calm, even peaceful. Then again, Lam is about as undiva-like a designer as the species allows. Although I have seen him act impatient or a bit irritated, he is as far from a drama queen as one can be and still fret about whether a particular blouse needs buttons on the cuff, if so how many buttons, and should they be self-covered or left as they are. Today, Lam is dressed in an approximation of the uniform he's worn each time I've seen him (not counting a formal dinner event): a T-shirt under a gray V-neck or crewneck and a variation on the theme of jeans. He often wears sneakers—a pair of subtly tricolored Converse All-Stars, say—but today he is wearing unzipped, shearling-lined, Siberia-ready boots because, as he explains, he felt cold when he woke up.
Advertisement - Continue Reading Below