Michael Kors on the reality of streetwear and the importance of unplugging from technology

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29th Aug 2019

Tired and feeling the effects of a glorious night out, a young Michael Kors would end an evening – or by this time the morning – with a quick breakfast. Glitter still in his blond hair (it was long back then), he took himself off to work running on no sleep. But did he bother changing? You bet he did.

“I’d put a new look on. Maybe something a little less crazy for the office,” he allows, looking back on a time that was definitive for himself and for a certain style of dress, too. The famed story goes that he was working at Lothar’s boutique on 57th Street serving, among others, Yoko Ono, Jackie Kennedy, Rudolf Nureyev and Muhammad Ali. Being properly dressed was not so much a work dress code, but a self-imposed imperative to meld in with the clientele. “It was the mix of people, it was the melting pot. You saw different ages, different senses of style: jeans next to an evening dress, a tuxedo and a pair of shorts. All of that mixed up made it special.”

It would be enough to make an aspiring fashion designer from Long Island, aged 18, quiver. Kors didn’t. “I wasn’t afraid of anything. I jumped into New York,” says the designer, who turns 60 this month, after his autumn/winter ’19/’20 collection. “It was crazy, but I wasn’t nervous, I wasn’t afraid. It was my dream come true.” Kors is bringing back panache alongside a youthful brand of late-70s freedom to inhabit your own character. Call it a naive confidence born on the gritty and sometimes unsafe streets of New York, in his West 50s haunts. “It was dangerous, dirty, terrible – I mean it was a terrible place!” he says emphatically. “But people dressed with joy and enthusiasm. We went out and we didn’t even think that you could get killed when you walked down a street when you left a club.”

On a winter’s morning, in a much safer epoch, he has just led showgoers on an early-morning night out at Cipriani’s FiDi, a place he has attended many a party (“New York at night, but in the daytime, so you don’t have to stay up so late.”). At a show preview he described movement and freedom in his new collection. “Everything has to have joy – so here we’re mixing floral, back to plaid, things that catch the wind.”

Bias-cut slips, floral tea dresses, denim skirts with handkerchief hems joined metallic wrap and one-shouldered cocktail dresses skimming by, making the concept unmissable. Structure was mellowed via coats with sleeves rolled up that gave off a lived-in warmth, while tailoring was softer in Prince of Wales checks or even marabou-adorned sleeves. No hemline was straight. If the point wasn’t driven home in the official Studio 54 collaboration that meant a ‘54’ print on shirts, bags and neck twillies, then it was with the closing: an all-out disco with Barry Manilow singing Copacabana, Bella Hadid dancing at the head of a model melange in black sequin-festooned blazer, and Patti Hansen for good measure.

Returning to the 1970s was a chance for the designer to revisit more innocent times. Kors’s own creations didn’t get off the ground until 1981, so he wasn’t designing under his own label during the 70s. Now he’s the founder of a multibillion dollar empire, Capri Holdings, formerly Michael Kors Holdings, which acquired Jimmy Choo in 2017, then Versace last year, and there is talk of an American luxury conglomerate in the making.

With a revenue target of US$8 billion, with the aim of taking Michael Kors from US$4.5 to 5 billion, he could easily get caught up in numbers. Instead the designer is focussing on the soul of the brand. This outing was a chance to interpret a time that he was really living. Chancing upon his high school yearbook recently, Kors rediscovered notes classmates had written: ‘When you have a store on 5th Avenue, will I get a discount?’, and, ‘Can I get a Kors T-shirt?’. To that he says simply: “I just decided that these are the stories of my life and so it’s very personal.”

Attending a Jay-Z and Beyoncé concert last year with his husband, Kors realised in the moment he was videoing the whole thing, despite his front row seats. “So my husband and I both looked at each other and said: ‘Turn your phone off!’” No stranger to change, social media has impressed upon the designer the need to trust instinct, rather than seek the approval of others. “I think people are more self-conscious now because we have too many photographs of ourselves,” he says, noting that it’s a concept that could be applied to both designing and getting dressed. “Then you get nervous thinking: ‘What will people say, what will they think?’ People have to get past the comments that they might get.”

For Kors, it’s all about dressing up for yourself. Back then, and now, he was inspired by the characters he saw on the streets, coming and going from Carnegie Hall and Studio 54. The flamboyance of dancers off-duty from Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in the precinct bordering Broadway. Cher on a stroll, Baryshnikov on the street. The only person to impress was Bill Cunningham. “We all dressed for him,” he admits.

Michael Kors Collection ready-to-wear autumn/winter ’19/’20. Image credit: GoRunway.com

“You know, it’s strange when people talk about street fashion. I think a lot of people think that means sneakers and track pants. I am actually a street designer because the reality is I design for the street, for real life,” Kors continues. The aforementioned dancer inflections were because he saw them as the original bearers of athleisure, though “somehow we went downhill”. He is re-elevating the off-duty look in supple knits made to wrap, layer and take on and off as the weather demands, saying versatility shouldn’t mean wearing the same thing everywhere; it can be as simple as slipping on or pulling off a cashmere wrap.

Always drawn more to reality – Kors quit nine months into his studies at the Fashion Institute of Technology to design a line for Lothar’s – he is now spotting a return to being put together. “When I talk to people in their early 20s, they say: ‘Oh, a suit! A jacket, a real jacket!’ You know, not a casual jacket – feeling polished, feeling dressed up.”

Does he feel the winds of change blowing the same way they did back when Barbra Streisand ruled the stage, and Bianca Jagger the disco? “Yes! Absolutely – we’re in it! You know, these are the good ol’ days.” He points to diversity, something he works toward, asking his models their names, where they’re from, how long they’ve been modelling. It’s a realness that’s making a return if, Kors says, we all can just look up. “That’s what’s wrong with being so plugged in 24/7 – you miss the moment. Because wonderful things are happening still.”

This is his 38th autumn/winter collection and he says the difference today is he’s having more fun each time. “When you’re young you’re nervous, then when you’re more experienced you get frozen, and what you want is to still be curious but confident.” Taking a long drink of water, Kors pauses for a break. “I feel like I was just dancing at Studio 54 all night long. I feel the same way: exhilarated.”

This article originally appeared in Vogue Australia’s August 2019 issue.

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