REED KRAKOFF

Money Can’t Buy Talent

(This article previously appeared in the New York Times with the title: “Bulletproof Clothing: Take Your Best Shot”) 

THE opening of a palatial new boutique on the priciest stretch of Madison Avenue during a downturn, when so many storefronts have papered their windows, raises questions. Who are these people? Are they from an alternate dimension where there is a parallel, but separate, economy? Can they fly?

Since becoming president and executive creative director of Coach, Reed Krakoff has raised the accessories brand from a $500 million company in the late ’90s to a ubiquitous $3 billion monolith. But apparently, he really wants to sing. I mean direct. I mean, he wants to be a legendary fashion designer. So, after introducing his clothing line last season, he made the rather nervy move of opening a hugely expensive shop in New York (and another in Tokyo), a mere shoe-toss away from those of historic design houses he would appear to regard as his contemporaries: Prada, Chloé, Lanvin, et al.

Fashion reviewers have struggled to be kind about Mr. Krakoff’s sartorial talent, which isn’t quite ripe yet. Blog commenters, grumbling and eye-rolling, have declared that it is not possible to do it this way: that you can’t buy yourself into the role of an important, relevant fashion designer.

Well — ding-dong — apparently you can. It’s interesting to witness the stupendously splashy introduction of a designer who might not make it through the first five eliminations on a season of “Project Runway.” It feels ... awkward. As if Cybill Shepherd had performed her first jazz-singing gig at Carnegie Hall awkward.

But here we go, through the heavy black glass doors, into a high white room, where a heady aroma of new leather and cut wood hits the nose of the Shopper like a $1,500 handbag full of after-shave.

Mr. Krakoff has casually described his ambitious new look as “luxe punk.” Indeed, one could not accuse the line of being too feminine. Everything looks sturdy, thick, armored and unbreakable, even the sweaters.

“It’s a very interesting time to re-embrace American design,” Mr. Krakoff says on his Web site. “That ability to take something industrial and utilitarian and elevate it.”

My interest was piqued by a thick little black dress that I assumed was wrought from Kevlar seat-belt material; only between my fingers did it reveal itself to be a particularly butch gauge of linen. I was not convinced the designer was aware that the safety-regulation appearance of the dress made the mannequin (which was jointed, like a pose-able drawing model) resemble a crash-test dummy — an impression reinforced by orthopedic-looking accessories nearby, like an ivory fur-wool whiplash collar.

Despite my tendency to disregard artistic prestige obtained via the vulgar mechanisms of brute wealth, I did like stuff. Much of the heavy metal jewelry would be ideal for hand-to-hand combat: shiny gunmetal chain-links of a girth normally seen around the waists of bicycle messengers; bracelets resembling the hardware required to break a psychotic horse.

The footwear, too, is nicely aggressive — for example, armored motorcycle boots with enough buckles for fight-dancing to Michael Jackson’s “Bad” album.

Perhaps the most puzzling accessory was the “Beaver suspenders” ($3,200), a strappy black lederhosen-like contraption with wide beaver-pelt mudflaps on each hip. I couldn’t make sense of it, but it would certainly keep your kidneys warm if you were out poaching mastodons. The video of Mr. Krakoff’s runway show, projected on a wall, was little help. When the model Karlie Kloss, who is nine feet tall and has thighs the circumference of a tangelo, wears this totalitarian beaver-enforcement garment, she looks like the box her dishwasher came in. There is little doubt that if I wore it, people would call me Mr. Baggins and beg me to destroy the Ring.

“It’s definitely a conversation starter,” the saleswoman offered, aware of the garment’s difficulties. “Or a conversation ender.”

Struggling to envision a context in which these dense garments could exist, I eventually came up with a movie plot. The time: a not-too-distant future, post-environmental collapse, as seen through the limited technologies and styles of 1979. Kurt Russell stars as a tough Yukon cop in an arctic dystopia. He stumbles upon a glacier and finds, encased within, a living-room set, with four perfectly preserved wealthy women in long, thick beige sweaters with built-in elbow pads ($940); tall, lizard-skin spectator boots ($1,895); and massive amber-tint sunglasses, flash-frozen around a massive chrome coffee table. He thaws them out and takes them as wives, only to refreeze them when their hunting skills prove to be inept and their resurrected conversation bores his favorite sled dog to death.

I TRIED one of the utility-inspired numbers: a buckled kimono jumper made of the kind of gabardine that auto mechanics wore in the 1950s ($1,190). I liked its perverse combination of expensiveness and pseudo-blue-collarness, for both good and wrong reasons. It didn’t quite fit; neither did the black seat-belt dress, but I did admire it: racer-tank back, heavy as a vintage overcoat, astonishingly nice buttonholes hidden inside ($1,390).

A long black leather gown in a similar cut also showed spunk and promise ($3,700), but I couldn’t envision a woman who could fit in it properly; the model walking on the wall in the same dress seemed to be fighting it for normal movement.

Rich people are not like us. The most compelling luxury at Reed Krakoff is the rare spectacle of enough capital to squander on a learning curve that most people would prefer to master privately, before inflicting their genius on an unsuspecting public.

But hey, this is America. Chief executives and movie stars buy their way into politics. Reed Krakoff stuck a lovely boutique on Madison Avenue and behold: he is a major designer. If he can get it to fly, we will salute ... eventually.

P.S.  The New Yorker later wrote a similar follow-up article about Krakoff, and his couture line’s battle with the critics.  The last paragraph of the article was this: 

  A young man wearing a black cloak asked how he’d felt about Cintra Wilson’s scathing review in the Times. Krakoff said that he did not finish reading it. “I will frame it and put it in my office one day,” he said. “Not yet.” 

Reed Krakoff’s eponymous label shut its doors in 2015.  I like to think I had something to do with it, because that was some David and Goliath shit right there.  I got him with the slingshot I made out of my bra.  Kazam. 

Cintraw@gmail.com

Artwork: “Henry The Ape,” oil on canvas, 2019