And one that has blown Kors's career to its highest altitude since he launched his business 18 years ago. In June, the Council of Fashion Designers of America honored Kors with the Womenswear Designer of the Year Award—fashion's equivalent of a Best Actor Oscar. And a batch of his designs will be show-cased in the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair, opening Aug. 6. "This is completely and totally Michael's moment," says Fern Mallis, the CFDA's executive director. "We're all thrilled that he's finally being acknowledged."
Kors's subtly elegant, practical designs have been sought by celebrity fashion hounds for years, and he has built relationships with a roster of marquee names that includes Claire Danes, Anjelica Huston, Courtney Love and Barbara Walters. "His clothes always have clean, classic American lines. He doesn't overproduce things—no ruffles or frills, thank goodness," says model-actress Lauren Hutton. Adds Thomas Crown star Rene Russo: "I just love the way he makes [his clothes] so simple yet still so elegant. You feel completely dressed but never overdone."
Kors's more affordable suits, sold at Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus, run from $600 to $2,000, but party-bound cinema sirens can pay $4,000 for a beaded gown or $15,000 for a snakeskin coat. Along with the hushed elegance of his dresses (often the result of specially commissioned fabrics from Italian mills), Kors says he strives to create clothes that are wearable. "The '90s will be looked back on as ushering in an era of comfort," he says. "When people go to the Oscars wearing a T-shirt, you know things have changed."
Kors began doodling his first dresses while growing up an only child in Merrick, N.Y. At 5, he was spotted at a birthday party by a TV producer who helped get him into TV ads for Lucky Charms and Charmin bathroom tissue. But "what he really wanted to do was draw," says his mother, Joan, 60, a former model long divorced from Kors's father, Karl. She now runs her own textile-design firm. "He drew buildings and cars first," says " Joan, "and by the time he was 6, it was clothing."
After dropping out of design school, Kors started designing as well as clerking at Lothar's, a hot Manhattan boutique, and at 21, in 1981, he used his savings to launch his own clothing line out of his tiny apartment. Later that year he carted his entire collection on the subway to the office of New York magazine fashion editor Anna Wintour (now editor-in-chief of Vogue). "I had to hang it all on a coat tree [to show] her," he says. But Wintour loved the clothes, and her support helped get Kors's threads into stores.
After a licensing deal with an Italian company went sour, his company was forced briefly into bankruptcy in 1992. But by 1997 his sales had rebounded so strongly that the French fashion and luxury-goods conglomerate LVMH hired Kors as chief designer for its ailing Celine house in Paris, then later bought a one-third stake in his company. His business brought in about $60 million in retail sales last year, and Kors plans to expand by opening his own boutique in Manhattan next year.
But some things remain the same. Kors still dresses in blue jeans and sweatshirts, has only two neckties to his name and lives with his 17-year-old cat Max in a one-bedroom Greenwich Village apartment. Nor does he plan any changes in his approach to fashion. "I know what women look good in. I don't think the rules ever change," he says. "People want to look taller and thinner. No one says, 'Ooh! Let me buy that dress because it makes me feel matronly!' "
Erik Meers
Nancy Matsumoto in New York City
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- Nancy Matsumoto.
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