Casual Friday pushed it too far: men wore everything from Dockers to anything not dirty or overly wrinkled. The rules were cast aside, with ensuing chaos. But now we are coming back to a sane point of reference

ABOVE, FROM TOP: Yoko Devereaux through the seasons: fall 2001, fall 2002, spring 2003, fall 2003.

Lucire: It’s funny you should mention that. We have just finished walking through the Costume Institute’s Men in Skirts exhibit. How does that tie into your vision of Yoko Devereaux?
Andy Salzer: First off, it’s interesting to see a show titled Men in Skirts. The show itself used an interesting timeline in making a case for men to step out of the box and be adventurous in matters of dressing. When you look back, you really see, especially in the 1600s, as it started to evolve that there are certain gender roles that have come out of the whole idea of what is acceptable for men and women. Unfortunately, the skirts for men idea seems to show up more on runways and in specific real-life presentations more so than in real-life application. Kilts are the exception because the cross-over appeal is more widely accepted by society even if they are some­times considered to be a novelty item. You don’t see a lot of guys just running around town in kilts or skirts for that matter. You see that at fashion industry events or places where it is worn to make a statement.
   This, in a roundabout way, brings me back to my original statement. Even after hundreds of years and after watching the evolution of men’s designs, menswear, by and large, is still a pant, a shirt, a jacket, a suit. It’s very specific. The biggest change in menswear, the biggest shake-up in recent years, has come from the suit market and the bloodless coup that gave us "Casual Every Day". You only have to look at pre- and post-Casual Friday dressing, in terms of the clothes men wear in the workplace to see the truth in what I am saying. Men used to wear suits at work, and then they would go home, take off their suits and put on sweatpants, etc. to hang out with their friends and families. And then it’s back to wearing a suit the next day to go to work. Their lives were governed by the strict adherence to this controlling, workplace culture. Casual Friday kind of pushed it too far in the wrong direction. With men wearing everything from Dockers and polo shirts to just about anything that’s not dirty or overly wrinkled (a concept acceptable in the high-tech, dot-com sector) as a professional uniform, the rules were cast aside, with ensuing chaos in their place. But now we are coming back to a sane point of reference again. I, like so many others in the industry, am of the belief that the suit market isn’t dead; it’s just been reinterpreted.

Lucire: In what way?
Andy Salzer: The blazer, for instance. The blazer right now is considered one of the most staple items in a guy’s wardrobe (in the 22- to 30-year-old age group). They don’t wear it the way their fathers did nor they are not averse to wearing a blazer jacket either. The idea then becomes to take a suit jacket and wear it with jeans or casual pants and a button-down Oxford shirt, but not as a full suit. This is the Yoko Devereaux customer.

Lucire: At your spring 2004 presentation, I noticed that other designers’ wares played a vital part in defining the Yoko D. look. You paired special, one-of creation T-shirts with your own designs. What was the impetus behind that?
Andy Salzer: The role of designers collaborating with each other is a key component with designers today. You look at the influx of the last few years of DIY designers, all these people wanting to be fashion designers or in bands, seeking out any which way to showcase their creativity. Speaking for me and my friends in Brooklyn, I am surrounded by people who are talented in specific areas. You have people who are graphic designers, artists who work all day in corporate jobs. Therefore, all they get to work on all day is job-specific, boring projects. You see a lot of fashion designers that are sector-specific in their scope: they just design bags, or T-shirts, or jewellery. This is often the case because it’s a huge, problematic and expensive undertaking on their parts to do a full collection encompassing the full range of fashion. For example, it’s very difficult to approach some companies without them first interjecting, ‘What’s the financial bottom-line? What’s this going to do for me? How much are you going to pay me?’ It’s easier to approach your friends, or other small companies, and say ‘Hey, if you work on this, I’ll work on that and we can produce and show our stuff together and share the cost.’ Again, this is very true of the creative community in Brooklyn. It’s a more relaxed and realistic attitude towards life.
   The collaboration you mentioned earlier was an opportunity to bring in 30 people who were all friends of mine that are all talented in their respective fields, to have them take our theme for the collection and do their own interpretation of that theme in to a T-shirt. And the cool thing is that we are splitting everything down the middle: the cost of production, and the profits from all the T-shirts.

Lucire: What has happened since the show in February with the T-shirt collaboration and the sale?
Andy Salzer: It has been awesome. Creatively, anyone who works on their own project can become too close to it. But when you ask 30 other individuals to give their take on the matter, you get 30 new ways of looking at your own work that never even crossed your mind. In terms of what it has done for the collection, the thing to remember is that the T-shirt is such a key item for our customers because guys wear T-shirts everyday. We were able to offer 30 unique T-shirts to the buyers who came in that they wouldn’t find any place else. Our experience has shown us that the people who buy our designs are not necessarily buying for big, chain department stores. At least, not yet. The reality of the market right now is that it’s all about separates, the rise of the thrift store culture and mixing and matching pieces. The days of head-to-toe Dior or Chanel are long gone. Rather than buying something and seeing 20 other people wearing it, thrift store culture allowed you to buy the one thing you knew no one else will ever have.

Lucire: As someone with a strong background in both the financial and creative arenas of fashion, what are the differences you see between the way European and American designers approach fashion and design? And is it the same with buyers?
Andy Salzer: My experience has been that the American fashion community is very price-orientated and much focused on wearability. That’s how Americans buy. They need to feel that they can multi-purpose something, that they got it for a deal and if not, that it was worth the money they spend. I am not saying that that’s necessarily good or bad, that’s just an American way of looking at fashion. The same cannot be said for Europe or the Asian market. Tokyo, we found, is a great market for us because the culture there is so repressed to the point that fashion is one of the few ways that kids can completely express themselves. Japanese buyers don’t ask questions about cost, they just react positively to things they like. There are no questions as to what percentage of the collection will be sold or where an individual piece will be placed in relations to similar designs of its kind. They are like, ‘This is cool. I’ll take it.’ European buyers tend to be the same in that they react to the design of a piece first, and then they go ahead and make purchases. The questions about price points are secondary factors.

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