Word: warnaco
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Manhattan's Seventh Avenue and was evicted from his Harlem apartment for not paying rent. "What Patrick has done, no one else has done," says Audrey Smaltz, a New York City fashion-show producer. Since July 1987, when Kelly signed a licensing contract with the $600 million conglomerate Warnaco, his business has shot up from $795,000 a year to $7 million a year. "Behind all of Kelly's Folies-Bergere, there are real clothes with high-voltage whimsy," says Bernard Ozer of Associated Merchandising Corp. "He's selling well in an uphill market...
Kelly's story has a mythic quality: fairy godparents pop up at the right time, dark perils lead to happy endings. An old friend from Atlanta, model Pat Cleveland, ran into him on the street. She suggested Paris and, unasked, sent him a one-way ticket. The Warnaco deal had the same Kellyesque serendipity. Three years ago, Kelly was free-lancing while building his own label. "If we'd have sneezed, we'd have gone bankrupt," he remembers. Enter journalist Gloria Steinem on assignment to do a profile about Kelly for NBC's Today show. Steinem introduced Kelly to Warnaco...
...progressed to making costumes for a discotheque and, with the help of his business partner, Bjorn Amelan, outfits for a trendy Right Bank boutique and for Benetton. By 1985, his own little black dresses, decorated with bows and buttons, were selling out at Bergdorf Goodman's. Now, with Warnaco behind him, Kelly is expanding rapidly, with 60% of his sales in the U.S. and a booming demand in Europe and the Far East...
...ideas. His 38 manufacturers produce virtually everything but Lauren's top-of-the-line Polo menswear. The largest licensee is Cosmair, for fragrances, followed by Bidermann Industries, for womenswear. Lauren retains a final say, which he zealously exercises, over the end products. Recalls Clothing Executive George Ackerman, whose company, Warnaco, makes some of Lauren's moderately priced Chaps menswear: "A few years ago we did a safari jacket with copper snaps. Ralph loved the jacket but hated the snaps. Too brown, he said. He wanted black metal snaps. Our manufacturer in Korea, who couldn't make them that color, didn...