Lucire: Where are you finding that you are having the most success in selling your collections?
Andy Salzer: Surprisingly, with a name like Yoko Devereaux, it’s Tokyo. Tokyo has been our number-one market for sure. We are also making incremental headway in the European market. The reality is that there are only a certain number of stores in which we would like to place our products within the United States. (I learned this after being in business for a year and a half because when you are evolving, you don’t necessarily have the brand awareness, the history or the reputation to have any clout with buyers.) At the same time, there are only a small number of boutiques where the product mix is an equal balance of street-wear and high fashion in all of the United States. I would say there are only 20 of them; and of that 20, only 10 are even good. The thing to remember is this: when you are starting a new brand, the placement of your brand is everything. It’s not a matter of being snotty. If you are going to put your heart and soul into a project, then you have to put it where you want to put it and don’t accept anything less. It takes longer [to achieve success] and you do have to be more patient but it will happen.

Lucire: You have mentioned earlier on that you were involved in another retail company. What lessons did you learn from that partnership that you have carried over into Yoko Devereaux?
Andy Salzer: The biggest lesson I learned was that rather than approaching merchandising in an over-analytical manner (what pieces you think are going to sell, what you think is going to work and taking the joy out of it by depending too much on demographic research and polls), it’s better to enter the project with a mindset that you are doing something you really want to do, thus allowing it to grow and morph into a viable business on its own. The stores I operated in Seattle were based on labour-intensive hard research and looking at markets with focus groups and all of that. This was important for developing a business plan, but for the long haul, it just wasn’t much fun or very creative. It was financially successful yes, but personally, no. Yoko Devereaux was a project that I really wanted to do. It is a project that is an extension of me and my beliefs.

Lucire: So while you do want to be successful, you are not expecting this to be a multi-multi million dollar business two years from now?
Andy Salzer: My goal with this project is to live off of it and enjoy what I am doing. Where that goes and what it becomes is totally up in the air. My main focus has been making sure that I am personally growing, the business is growing and that I don’t have to depend on other jobs that would distract me from giving this my all.

Lucire: We touched on the Tom Ford–Gucci situation earlier. Do you see their failure to reach an agreement as a precursor of changes to come throughout the rest of the industry?
Andy Salzer: It depends on who ultimately makes the final decision. Fashion and design are creative industries, and mixing them with business, a lot of times, can be like mixing oil and water. Tom Ford and the time he spent at Gucci was at the very beginning of the economy rising up and becoming crazy good for everyone involved. The timing couldn’t have been better. His Studio 54 take on fashion made Gucci sexy. He was selling Studio 54 sexy and that’s what Gucci means to me. It was the party I could never get into. Why? Because one, I wasn’t around then but mostly he was selling exclusivity and the right to be one of the beautiful people. His early and continued success gave him a lot of freedom to call the shots because tons of money was coming back into the business. He was a major personality within the business and a force to be reckoned with on all fronts. The cult of personality played a major role here, and still does throughout the industry. From my reading of the situation, he was seeking to maintain that 100 per cent creative control he has always had in a financial and creative climate. That has changed; and the parent company was like, ‘No, we’re not going to allow that.’ What does this mean? No one knows just yet, but the message I got from that was it’s not enough to be creative: one has to be accountable financially for what decisions they make creatively. The owners of Gucci could decide to replace him with someone who’s less charismatic, thus placing more emphasis on the product. Or, they could replicate the same formulæ: a charismatic and talented designer who defines the brand, much in the way Mr Ford did during his lengthy tenure at Gucci. Either way, it’s a new day at Gucci and all the world’s watching to see how it all pans out.
   I understand both sides of the situation because, as an independent designer, if I am not a strong business person, then I won’t be in business long; and it is that much harder to be taken seriously later on when I may need to turn to someone else to help me grow the business. As it stands now, I still have a general grasp on building and evolving the Yoko Devereaux line. I don’t feel that I have hit the wall, whether it is financial or personal. Am I in over my head yet? No. Talk to me a year from now, you may get a different answer. There will be a time that if I want to continue doing this, I will need additional financial backing. And I don’t know what will happen in a situation like that. Would I willing sell the company? Give up control? I don’t know.

Lucire: You recently announced that Thomas is leaving the company to go back to school in Boston. It must have thrown you into a transition that you least expected.
Andy Salzer: It’s definitely a transition. Thomas and I started the project, and we’ve worked on every aspect of it together from the beginning. However, Thomas decided he wanted to go back to school, which is great. I totally support that. What that means for the company? We have a new menswear designer and design director, Troy Smith, who is really quite talented. He’s been doing this for years, skilled with working with leather and other skins; he’s had his own business, and is a great asset to us. The biggest challenge in a transition like this is making sure that the message we are sending as a brand and through the clothing isn’t turned upside down. A lot of times when you change designers, you unintentionally invert the whole project. Troy is someone who’s worked in design production for a long time, and his experience will allow us to step up to the next level on a lot of the details. He gets the brand, thus this isn’t something that is too far out of reach for him. This is a chance for us to grow. If [Thomas’s leaving] had happened after the first season, we would be having an entirely different conversation. I don’t know that we would be talking right now. But we have built the company’s foundation up to a good point where Thomas’s departure and Troy’s arrival will cause nary a ripple.

Lucire: What are some of the other changes coming on the horizons for you and the company?
Andy Salzer: We are working on introducing a higher-end Yoko Devereaux collection, consisting of about seven to ten pieces. The plan is to design a higher-price product, keeping it exclusive and small until we have worked out all the kinks and are ready to break it out to compete with similar designs on the market.

Lucire: What should we expect for the fall 2004 collection from you guys?
Andy Salzer: I think this next season will be our entrance point into some specialty department stores. We are now prepared to enter the larger menswear arena with greater confidence to include Barneys, Saks and other larger stores. The line will continue to be very fashion-forward with a focus on fit and wearability. With our using better fabrics and attempting to stretch our wings a bit design-wise, it will have an old-school feel with a dose of our sense of humour. In the early years, we worked hard at internally defining the brand among ourselves first before taking the message out to community. Yoko Devereaux is not just about wearing T-shirts and jeans. Nor is it about just suits. It’s positioned somewhere in between modern sportswear and what your father wore in his time.

Lucire: How are you, yourself, dealing with all the changes?
Andy Salzer: I love it and am very excited about the future of Yoko Devereaux. I’ve always loved change, that’s the thing. Change is really healthy. Thomas’s leaving is very upsetting because I just adore him, but for like everything else that is going on, nothing seems bigger than it should. It all seems to be happening for the right reasons.

Lucire: I am going to put you on the spot. As someone in the eye of the storm, what is the future of menswear in America?
Andy Salzer: I hate these questions because I can’t predict the future. I have no idea. I do see where men are beginning to be more dressed up again. Was it Simon Doonan who said that he was over the dirt-bag look? I think it’s a genius statement only because it has been so casual for so long. There’s a comfort factor that’s inherent with casual dress that I actually love and formal can be too uptight and elitist, which I can’t stand. With men having learned how to walk the tightrope between the two extremes, I think it’s going to be a little bit nicer to see guys more cleaned up. Men may not abandon their T-shirts and jeans but they will bring in more formal elements into their wardrobe. The people I know and respect are not wearing T-shirts and jeans that much anymore. They are wearing pants that look like jeans. They are definitely wearing more blazers and dress shirts. They are trending up into a casual formality that bodes well for everyone.

Lucire: Do you foresee a time when you may leave the company? Or is it going to be disbanded if you are not around?
Andy Salzer: I have no idea. Right now, I am really happy with what I am doing and will continue working in the company as long as I am happy with my performance. Let’s put it that way, I can’t imagine not being here.

Phillip D. Johnson is features’ editor of Lucire.

‘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’

ABOVE LEFT: Taavo for Yoko Devereaux. ABOVE: Troy Moxham for Yoko Deveraux. BELOW: Troy Smith, the new design director of Yoko Devereaux.