How Can Joseph Altuzarra Develop Its Own Style?

The United States, New York, "this is really not a competition," said Joseph Altuzarra in an interview with BoF in a studio in Howard street, New York. "I don't know if this is a side effect of poor company operation, but we really need to spend time thinking about how to design, take time to make something that we are proud of, and make something that will enable us to lay a solid foundation before building a tall building, which is very important to me."

The designer, who is only 30 years old, has been successful with his cautious style of work. In just five years, he has become one of the hottest people in the fashion industry. His sexy, Body Conscious clothing profile was deeply loved by Carine Roitfeld and Jenna Lyons, and fashion actress Cate Blanchett and Diane Kruger became his fans.

He also won various fashion awards. Just last month, Mr. Altuzarra won the international wool logo award in the US region, with a bonus of one hundred thousand dollars. At the beginning of this year, he won the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Awards in 2011 to help him complete his first advertising campaign. The US Edition Vogue September published a detailed account of this.

Barnes, Barneys New York, Lane Crawford, Colet fashion store (Colette), Net-a-Porter and so on, a total of more than 50 top retailers are willing to buy Altuzarra design. The annual revenue of the company is still around ten million US dollars (equivalent to about sixty million yuan), so there is still room for growth. Altuzarra will launch design handbags and early autumn series to build up its own brand by building e-commerce and flagship stores.

Joseph was born and brought up in the fashion capital of Paris. Her mother was a Chinese American mixed blood, and her father was a half breed of French Basque. Joseph Altuzarra was fascinated by high-end clothing in the early days and eventually formed its own characteristics. "I was dumped by Gucci and Saint Laurent's Tom Ford (Tom Ford) era," he recalls. "He is like Versace (Gianni Versace) in our era. His design embodies all the charming fashion elements, which are very attractive for young people."

But Altuzarra has not been formally trained in design. He studied art history at Swarthmore College near Philadelphia and worked for a clothing store in the University. He became interested in fashion when he completed the research on how to use the annotation of classical art history and the influence of pictures on luxury ornaments. Interestingly, Altuzarra was hired by Marc Jacobs as an intern in the fourth year. He still believed he was employed "not because of my skills, but because they needed an intern at the time, and they placed all their CVs in alphabetical order, and I was the first one." I know, it must be so. Altuzarra said humbly.

In Jacobs's three person studio, Altuzarra recalls, "what I do is the tedious thing, dyeing cloth, embroidery, making small accessories, helping to complete the design album. But I was very excited by all this work, because Marc was a small company, and Marc was always responsible for the design of clothes personally.

He later worked as a freelance designer at Proenza Schouler. "At that time, Proenza Schouler was still a small company even smaller than the current Altuzarra. Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough two designers were very generous to impart knowledge to me." Then, in order to overcome his inferiority complex, Altuzarra followed the former director of Rochas studios in Paris and Nicolas Caito, a local publishing house in New York, as an apprentice. "I feel that I have always lacked professional skills, because I have never read fashion schools. Later, Caito encouraged me to return to Paris, "Altuzarra said. "He thinks Paris is a great place to promote my creativity, where I can learn different ways of working, different working procedures... Facts have proved that he is right. "

After returning to Paris, Altuzarra entered Givenchy as the chief assistant of Riccardo Tisci. "If anyone used to be my mentor, it must be him," Altuzarra said. "When I worked with him, I was too young to have much experience. He put a lot of energy on me and taught me a lot. "

In fact, Altuzarra's experience in Givenchy has a direct impact on the formation of his own brand, such as sticking to the principles of stereotyping and adventure, such as completely different tailoring and sewing methods. "Riccardo's admiration is also my real learning place is that he always believes in his own ideas and methods, and is full of confidence in his design language, even though people do not understand what he has done. This is the most precious thing I have learned. "

At the age of 25, Altuzarra returned to New York to create his own brand according to the "special woman" in his mind. "I find that there is a difference between what I see in the mall and what I want to buy, which once interested me," explains Altuzarra. "The customer is not a girl. She is a woman, a woman like Carine Roitfeld. The world we create is French in style, submissive and sexy. On the other hand, it has both the practical characteristics of the American style. I think it is these two aspects that created Altuzarra.

From its inception, the company is a family business. The designer's father, Philippe Altuzarra, provides the start-up capital for the brand, while his investment banker, mother Karen Altuzarra, is the CEO of the company. "My mother set up a great payment method for the company, helped maintain sales volume, visited shops, and everything she did laid the foundation of the company. Two years ago, she became chairman of the company and gave CEO to Karis Durmer. "My mother wanted to retire to the second line. She was looking for someone to take over her job. The handover work went smoothly, and Karis slowly took over more mother's responsibility. After that, her mother returned to the background. They often communicate, even more than I communicate with my mother. "

However, about a year and a half ago, with the release of the 2012 autumn custom clothing and silver embroidery series, the brand ushered in a breakthrough time for development. "It is a turning point for us, whether in public opinion or in economics," Altuzarra said. "This series lays the foundation for the well-known profile in the late stage of the brand (straight shoulders, slit skirts and long skirts). It was also at that time that we really began to design the concept of combining extreme Yang and extreme Yin, and began to really understand the main direction of the company.

Indeed, the Altuzarra2012 autumn series is not only the highlight of this season's fashion circle, but also the brand's sales performance by thirty-six percentage points, and the number of stores selling the brand clothing has increased by forty percent.

After the formation of the special contour, Altuzarra We began to think about the core value of the brand from the perspective of development. "It took us a year and a half to get a consistent understanding of the brand understanding of every employee in the company, choosing Altuzarra women. customer What is the group like? What is the connotation of the brand? "He said. "But once you understand this, then the answer to our handbag and website design is clear."

Just before the start of the fashion week in New York, Altuzarra intends to launch a new website. The new website features rolling pictures and product albums to show the designer's inspirational images. But unfortunately, the website lacks the electronic commerce function. "The early autumn series is our next major investment project," Altuzarra said. "Because Karis has joined, she is familiar with the process of collecting customer, market and sales information. Therefore, we can know why customers choose us, what they want to buy from us and the difference between us and other brands. We can also understand what is missing from our product line and what improvements we can make. Therefore, we may introduce more knitting and holiday series.

But expanding the size of the company may be necessary. External injection If the partners of the company think this is necessary, Altuzarra will consider this matter. "I think we are in the stage of development. We are open to external capital injection and we also consider the opportunities they bring," Altuzarra said. "But the purpose of this plan is to promote the development of the company in a wise and strong way."