Is the latest designer to head up Anne Klein finally . . .Mr. Right?
Twenty minutes before show time, Patrick Robinson, looking like a young Bonaparte, surveys the scene: 10 models in semi-disarray. Will he interfere? Throw his weight around? Become The Designer?
Not Robinson. He is nervous and shy when it comes to making personal appearances. But theonly giveaway is his constant fiddling with four thin gold rings on his right hand. Neatly clad in a black Armani suit, T-shirt, sockless crocodile loafers and small, gold-rimmed glasses, he watches from the center of the room, waiting for something.
A chatty model, slouched in a chair, strikes up a conversation, and Robinson swings into action. Working the room in a soft, confident, amused voice, he dishes about landlords, furniture, life in Europe, makeup and dimples, of which, he demonstrates, he has one and questions its disappearance from his official photograph.
Now they are all in this ordeal together: The new whiz-kid designer for Anne Klein will talk the talk and the Los Angeles models will walk the walk, introducing a slice of his fall collection to 150 veteran store buyers in the ballroom of the Four Seasons hotel in Los Angeles.
At “28 going on 50,” by his own reckoning, Robinson has his dream job and a difficult road ahead. He is giving himself four years, he says, “to find out more about myself through my design, to see how it unfolds, how it unwinds and the reaction from the customer. I want to have a broader audience that’s both national and international. I want to have a set image for Anne Klein, an image very much fixed into people’s minds when they think of Anne Klein by Patrick Robinson.”
The $175-million company has lately had an identity crisis. Begun as Anne Klein Studio in 1965, the company’s original concept was luxurious day and evening wear, with the sensibility of classic sportswear. The tradition was carried on by Donna Karan and Louis Dell’Olio after Klein’s death in 1974. After Karan left in 1985 to start her own company, Dell’Olio remained. His position seemed secure until, in 1993, he was ousted, blamed for staid designs and sagging sales.
In a surprise move, the company’s owners, Takihyo Inc., hired a Hollywood fashion hero--Richard Tyler--who lasted all of 19 months. His super-sexy, super-young designs, coupled with Steven Meisel’s controversial advertising campaign, were generally considered too over-the-edge for the Klein customer.
But the official party line, as reported by Women’s Wear Daily, was that Tyler did “outfits, rather than sportswear, and there weren’t parts that mixed and matched and built a wardrobe.”
Enter Robinson, a man committed to components, looking for a new challenge. He had spent four years in Milan, Italy, “stretching every category” in Le Collezioni, Giorgio Armani’s secondary line. “The most important part for almost anyone was that the sales quadrupled. For me, it was the change of the attitude of the clothing. But I reached a point where everything that I could give the collection was there.”
And he wanted to come home. “This is the best country on Earth,” he says passionately. “Everything works. I’m the only person, I think, walking around New York grinning.”
He took 2 1/2 months to create a collection that ordinarily takes six. So meticulous “it drives people crazy,” he asked for an office alongside his tailors and pattern makers. He delved into the archives, discovering among other things that Anne Klein had a great sense of humor.
He has humor of his own, evidenced by a white evening dress with an unexpected beaded bow above the buttocks. And a passion for precision tailoring. He starts by anchoring “everything--jackets, dresses, blouses--from the shoulder. For me, that’s the frame of the face. And then I work down.”
He based his collection, he says, “on everything that’s happening today--just looking around the world I live in. I didn’t open a magazine, I didn’t open a book. I just started sketching. It was an outpouring of me.”
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After his 153-piece outpouring was shown in New York in April (it begins filtering into stores next week), the first people to congratulate him, he says with pride, “were my pattern makers and seamstresses, my head tailor. These are people who had worked with Anne Klein, and they told me it was a true Anne Klein collection, which made me very happy.”
Buyers at the Four Seasons presentation seemed to sense a revival of the old days. They lined up for Robinson’s autograph, raving about the “very valid” pearlized-velvet separates, gold-pin-stripe pantsuits, side-slit skirts (some call it his signature) and intricate bias-cut gowns.
But not everyone has been so kind. Women’s Wear Daily grumbled that the collection was “very, very, very commercial.” Another critic griped that the “conservative chocolate-colored jackets were the sort of thing you’d find at Talbots, but at Anne Klein prices.”
Robinson received an unexpected boost when, by chance, he sat next to Karan on a recent flight. In addition to telling him that he should keep doing what he believes in, “she said that I was going to be all right and that she believed in the collection a lot.”
Even without Karan’s comforting words, Robinson would see the silver lining. That’s how he got where he is.
“It’s never crossed my mind in my whole life that I would fail at anything,” he says. “That was one thing my parents taught me, that in this world you can do anything.”
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He attended Sunny Hills High School in Fullerton, working at Nordstrom in Cerritos part-time and briefly designing surfer shorts and T-shirts with a friend. Everyone in his household, including two brothers and two sisters, “had great style,” he says. More important, his doctor father “subscribed to every magazine in the world and we had a big library,” which fueled his desire to read and collect information, something he believes “has really helped me in my career.”
The career smacked him in the face one day. Watching a school presentation, he was mesmerized by scenes of Jeffrey Banks and Calvin Klein in their rarefied world: “All of a sudden it clicked, and from that day on there’s never been a doubt in my head.”
Nor any real failure. While at New York’s Parsons School of Design, he signed on as Patrick Kelly’s first design assistant and spent two happy years in Paris. After graduating he designed for Albert Nipon and Herman Geist before landing the plum Armani assignment.
Yes, he’s been lucky, he says. But to him that means: “Walking around with your eyes wide open. Luck is taking opportunities and using them for all they’re worth.”
Confident, not arrogant, he knows how he became Anne Klein’s potential savior: “Talent is pushing yourself very hard to keep looking. The only thing I believe in is that I can do it better--better than I did last season, better than I did a moment ago.”
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THE KLEIN LINE 1965 Anne Klein (born Hannah Golofski) opens Anne Klein Studio; it became Anne Klein & Co. in 1968. She is credited for turning girly junior-size clothes into sophisticated sportswear. 1972 An Anne Klein maxi-skirt. Yes, that’s Cybill Shepherd. 1974 When Klein dies, Donna Karan and Louis Dell’Olio take over as co-designers at Anne Klein & Co. (now wholly owned by Takihyo Corp. of Japan). 1985 Karan jumps the Klein ship to open her own company, backed by Takihyo. 1992 Dell’Olio continues to design the clean-lined sportswear that is the hallmark of Anne Klein. 1993 Dell’Olio is unceremoniously dumped. Takihyo looks for a young-blood designer to attract youthful customers. 1993 Los Angeles designer Richard Tyler, known for his exquisite tailoring, takes the helm briefly. His designs are a dramatic departure--too dramatic. In less than two years, he, too, is given the boot. 1995 Patrick Robinson, 28, is hired from Giorgio Armani’s design studio to restore Anne Klein to its original concept: safe, sexy, understated, finely tailored day and evening wear in luxurious fabrics.
