By Design : Fashion: Gordon Henderson is the hot new face in New York. He designs real clothes--but with something extra.
Gordon Henderson may be staying in a $550-a-night room at the palatial Hotel Crillon in the heart of Paris, sipping champagne at night and taking breakfast in bed from a silver coffee service. But this native of Merced, Calif., sitting cross-legged in the middle of a mountain of papers, sketches, and fabric samples, can still grin broadly in the kooky wonderment of it all.
“You should have seen me in my macrame vests, my platform shoes, and my poor-boy turtlenecks,” the fashion designer says gleefully. “I remember when I made my own patchwork jeans and patchwork vest and wore them to school. I was too cool. You couldn’t touch me.”
Who would have imagined that when his high school class voted Henderson “Best-Dressed,” he was in fact most likely to succeed? At that point, certainly not Henderson himself. The New York fashion scene was “in another stratosphere.”
Now 33, Henderson is in Paris shopping for fabrics for an upcoming collection. But he spends most of the year in New York, where he is the current toast-of-the-town designer, riding high on a wave of acclaim after winning the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) Award for best new talent, and being featured not just in the fashion press but as a phenomenon worthy of Time and People magazines.
After only a year in business, his women’s separates are available in stores throughout the United States, including Modasport and I. Magnin in Los Angeles. He expects sales to reach about $6 million in 1990.
Henderson’s sense of style is closer to Los Angeles than New York. He shows long, full skirts, camp shirts in unusual colors, short shorts and minis, in the soft shapes and casual combinations inspired by life at the beach, on patios and in cars. His fall line debuts for buyers and the press Tuesday in New York, and stays true to the simple, all-American clothes--in surprising colors--that have become his signature.
Despite the simplicity of his lines, Henderson, with a touch of embroidery here, an oversized pullover there--and a splash of soft, fresh color--seems to have that magical extra ingredient that makes even the most blase fashion followers perk up.
Henderson’s introduction to fashion was unique. He is probably the only name designer today who can claim he discovered the exciting, international world of style while sipping a Slurpee at a 7-Eleven.
“I discovered GQ magazine when I was 16,” he says, reminiscing fondly. “I thought I found something nobody else knew about and I kept it a secret. Before then, in the small-town atmosphere I grew up in, I didn’t think it was right that a man could be interested in fashionable clothes, but GQ validated my interests and showed me another world existed out there.”
As a high school dandy, he says he wouldn’t have been caught dead in a pair of blue jeans, but these days, Henderson’s uniform is basic blue denim--jeans, shirt and jacket punctuated discreetly by a pair of expensive leather Oxford shoes and a vintage camel overcoat.
“I like the idea of the uniform, the idea of something monochromatic, and in the same fabric,” Henderson says. “Uniforms allow you to relax and not worry about what to wear in the morning. But it has to be a uniform you create on your own--not somebody else’s.”
Although he traveled to Paris to check out the Premiere Vision European textile fair for new fabrics, he has also been sent away from Seventh Avenue’s concrete jungle by his financier, World Hong Kong, an international manufacturing company, to soak up some ambience and inspiration.
“When I come to Paris, I look for the freedom people have in dressing,” he says. “American women have been trained to find ‘a look’ to attach themselves to. I want to break down these kinds of walls.
“I figure, you’ve got your favorite things that you wear every day, like your favorite watch and your favorite pair of earrings,” Henderson continues. “You should be able to fuse a piece from my collection into the wardrobe you already own. That whole designer head-to-toe thing is over. Women aren’t going to go for that anymore.”
This season, he launches a new spin-off line called “But Gordon,” (the preface he hears most often in his showroom, as in “But Gordon we needed that yesterday”) which is priced at around 50% less than his regular collection. Shirts start at $40, trousers at $50.
“My success comes from the bottom up. I feel like I’m communicating with the woman on the street, the working woman. I want to get them excited about ‘real’ clothes again--the kind they can afford,” he says. “My challenge is to create a staple in the wardrobe.”
Several overnight sensations of the ‘80s, among them designers Stephen Sprouse and David Cameron, famous for their trend-of-the-moment flair, soon fizzled out like bad firecrackers and have since filed for bankruptcy.
Henderson, the first New York star of the ‘90s, hopes to avoid this fate.
“Success is a scary thing,” he says. “You can’t let yourself be overwhelmed. I depend on my ability to keep in touch with myself.”
Despite the occasional shoe splurge, he is, he insists, a practical soul. And one who has always known what he wanted.
It started when Henderson was a mere 8 years old, with a blue-green V-neck pullover he discovered while shopping for school. His mother said it was too expensive, so he staged a two-month boycott of all the other new school clothes she bought. She finally gave in, returned all the unworn clothes, and bought the one perfect sweater.
“My most recent love affair was a three-quarter length, zip-front leather jacket from the ‘40s. The minute I saw it, I knew it was my jacket. It was, like, excitement. It’s a feeling of finding a gem--walking along and finding a diamond in the earth. Somehow, a glint of light catches your eye, and there it is.” To Henderson’s horror, the jacket was lost when it was sent to be copied by one of his production factories.
But this drove him to create a new series of leather coats to debut this season on the runway.
It’s the same old love story: Boy meets jacket. Boy loses jacket. Boy designs an even better one. Then he sells it. In the fashion world, that’s a happy ending.
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