Aug 28, 2007

Mendel takes fashions beyond luxury furs

Associated Press

Gilles Mendel didn't know he was at the right place at the right time when, 25 years ago, he was eating gefilte fish and a pastrami sandwich in Manhattan's garment district.
In fact, Mendel was feeling a little sorry for himself: He had come to the United States on a tourist visa with a dream that he would be the next featured French designer on Madison Avenue, envisioning his name up there with Hermes and Chanel. But - no takers.

"I was losing little by little my dream," Mendel recently recalled. But just days before he was to return home to Paris and the successful family fur business, he met one of his father's business associates for lunch in an old Jewish restaurant. An acquaintance of that acquaintance passed by the table and gave Mendel a lead that there might be a design opportunity at Elizabeth Arden.

He went in, showed off his sketchbook of coat designs and - on a handshake - had a deal.

"I had a commission on sales and no rent to take a place in the couture salon and have my name on the windows on Fifth Avenue," he said, a mere block away from Madison.
At the time, Elizabeth Arden wasn't only a beauty spa, it also sold couture clothing, catering to a crowd that would appreciate his luxurious furs.

Mendel added, "It's where Oscar de la Renta started so many years ago."

Nowadays J.Mendel, Mendel's label, is listed alongside marquis names such as de la Renta, Donna Karan and Michael Kors - all of whom do have shops on Madison - as participants at New York Fashion Week. Mendel will show his spring 2008 collection on Sept. 7.

Mendel, 50, has a reputation as a consistent performer. His show isn't a frenetic scene of paparazzi and the starlets they chase, but there are always a handful of celebrities and even more socialites whom Mendel can count as friends and clients. Last February, Celine Dion and Natasha Richardson took their place in the front row.

"Gilles created his own niche, he makes women feel sexy and so feminine at the same time. His designs are timeless," Dion wrote in an e-mail to the Associated Press.

The clothes are luxurious but not showy. They often look simple and effortless on the wearer but are comprised of layers of subtle details. His customers can wear the garments with confidence knowing that each of those details - be it a pleat, raw fabric edge or a button - has been carefully considered by Mendel.

For fall, among the outfits shown on the runway were a wild-type mink kimono coat, kept close to the body with a satin trenchcoat belt tied in an obi, and a black satin blouse with chiffon panels, worn with a long black pencil skirt, and a black-and-white tweed minidress, also with the obi sash. For evening, there was a black satin gown with an asymmetrical neckline, oversized sequin pocket and gathered sleeves.

At the J.Mendel office, which still operates as an old-school atelier where everything from design to production occurs, Mendel, who wears sneakers with his slim dark suit and keeps his black hair very short, was slightly delayed for an interview because he had to inspect a group of wedding gowns before they could be deemed done.

"There's a bit of a story in each piece," Mendel said. "It's very emotional to me. Each piece is defining the DNA of our company."

Mendel says understanding a woman's shape helps him craft a delicate, sensual look by grazing the body with fabric, even if its a heavy wool tweed or sheared mink, and not getting bogged down with heavy embellishment.

"When you wear the clothes you feel really pretty," said Dr. Lisa Airan, a well-known Upper East Side dermatologist and longtime customer. "It's a feeling, it's a lightness, it's the way the garments are made to flatter your figure - and the designs are really good.
"And they're not designs that you feel you've seen before," she adds.

Mendel created for Airan two dresses for her wedding last year: one a formal gown with a hand-embroidered silk overlay and sable sleeves for the ceremony that also landed on the pages of Vogue; the other, for the reception, was a sexier Grecian gown with a black band around the bodice that was encrusted with pearls.

For years, Mendel concentrated on fur because it's what he knew best. At Arden, and later at Bergdorf Goodman and his own namesake store, important tastemakers - including Jackie Kennedy Onassis, he notes - wore his furs. They were more traditional coats at first, but then he started experimenting with different fabrics, mixing fur with cashmere or using fur for the lining of a raincoat.

When he renovated his flagship boutique in 1997, there was a slight flaw in the design of the security system: the gates were built on the inside of the window, not the outside. He was worried that the fur would be tempting to thieves who would then break the windows, so he began taking the furs out at night and substituting a wool coat or a dress.

"I had a 200-square foot space above a coffee shop and I hired two sewers and we started to make little sheath dresses with a coat to match. It was like Cinderella in the window - we'd switch from couture fur during the day to day clothes at night."

The young social set took notice and requested he start selling the dresses. "It was an immediate return, which was so exciting to me because I felt like the best kept secret for so many years."

In 2002, he made the decision to launch a complete collection of ready to wear and show it at the Bryant Park tents. "We're still more specialized with fur, but I always wanted to present myself as a fashion house," he explained.

He now has five freestanding boutiques, including a newly opened store in Russia, and is sold at top-tier retailers such as Harrod's, Harvey Nichols and Bergdorf.

He still gets a thrill when he sees someone walking down the street in one of his designs.
"I generally stop people. One time, I scared a girl downtown. She had on a sheared mink and sneakers - I just wanted to say she looked great," Mendel said. "I love knowing she looks good that way and that she feels good in it."

He's especially gratified when women of means - women who can buy any label - choose his. But he doesn't want to limit his clientele by focusing on a customer of a certain age.

To survive in this industry, you have to appeal to the young generation, too, he observes. That's where his teenage son and daughter fit in. They've been needling him to be a judge on "Project Runway."

"My daughter, she's an unbelievable trendsetter," he says. "She designs incredible things on my sneakers. There's 'peace and love' graffiti on my sneakers right now."
The favor is returned when he gives her a fur vest to wear.

"I think my daughter thinks I'm cool because I hear her talk to her friends, but she'd never tell me that! My daughter would come to my show if I told her Justin Timberlake would come."