A lot of us are clothing nerds too. We like garments. Before I came here, I was shopping around for your stuff and I wasn't necessarily impressed with the buys. How do you feel about the different buys you see for your brand? You have stellar pieces, and your line is carried all over the place, but everywhere I turn I just see the dip-dyes and the jeans. I mean they're great pieces but the real strong stuff is missing. I saw that Barneys picked up the neoprene vest though, and that's wild. Have you noticed a change over the years in the types of buys as well?
It's always been like that. I complain about it a lot and stuff though. [laughs] For example at Isetan in Tokyo, I'm at like the coolest store, and I go and look at the Lanvin collection and it's literally like 25 shirts, some of them with the grosgrain collar, then there's five blazers, one leather jacket, and one show coat. And it sucks. But it's the reality of the consumer. Somehow you want to blame the store, but it's not the store. They're buying what the people are buying in the store. That's just the reality.
But you guys. You're a smidgen of a percentage of the actual reality. You guys are the ones that are into it. We're like the nerds. The ones that want to see those cool pieces that you see on the runway. But the reality of the business is that 95% of people buy the dip-dye sweatshirts, and they buy the shirts, and the denim, and that's it. And it's
painful.
Most stores will buy the jeans and the shirts, and they'll pick up one or two of the other pieces. But say there are three deliveries - if it's in the last delivery, and the first two deliveries you see jeans and sweatshirt. Then something will come in, like one exciting piece. I wish it was different, of course. I've been doing it for long enough and you can try to push the stores, but then if you push the store to buy something and it doesn't sell, what's the point? They're unhappy, we're unhappy, it sucks.
How did you manage to find it?!
