Yigal Azrouël | Photo: Claiborne Swanson Frank

NEW YORK, United States — “For me it’s all about longevity,” says designer Yigal Azrouël. “You see a lot of brands out there becoming stars over night. And then they disappear. I am building it slowly, slowly. It’s much deeper. It’s much stronger.”

Growing up in Israel, where he would later work occasionally as a stylist, the young Azrouël believed his prospects of becoming a fashion designer nigh on impossible. But when he came to New York to visit his sister he was immediately seduced by the romance of fashion. “I was dreaming about it,” he says. “I wanted to be part of it all, this glamorous world. I had a fantasy of it.”

And it is with the determination of a fantasist who doesn’t care to awake from his dream that Azrouël has built his company on firm footing, reinforcing it every step of the way.

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Victoria Bartlett | Source: VPL

NEW YORK, United States — “It was almost like an experiment,” says Victoria Bartlett, of starting her much-loved underwear-as-outerwear line VPL in 2003. “I felt like a scientist going in and I really didn’t know how it was going to go.” Seven years on, with a CFDA Vogue Fashion Fund nomination (2007) under her belt and a recently opened retail presence in New York’s SoHo, we can fairly say that the experiment has been a success.

The road that got her there is paved in equal parts with Bartlett’s adventurousness and the shrewd discipline that has proved a boon for her line. Fresh from the London College of Fashion, in the late ‘80s the British-born Bartlett launched a line called BC, which, as she says, “failed because I was too green and too young.” So the young designer went in search of other avenues to pursue her love of fashion. “I took a sabbatical and decided to take a venture into styling,” she says, “which wasn’t as prevalent as it is now.”

She still speaks passionately about the tools she learned working as a stylist, and the way they inform her life and work now. “You learn how to create clothes,” she says. “A lot of designers (I know from consulting for them for years) get very tunnel-visioned — they start with a skirt or they start items and they don’t know how it all goes together.”

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BoF Breakfast Club at Norwood Club | Photo: Drew Innis

NEW YORK, United States — When I first met Rachel Shechtman at a Harvard Business School luxury goods conference back in 2007, we quickly learned that we had much in common. Since then, we have made a point of meeting for breakfast to catch-up and discuss the state of the industry whenever work brings me to New York City.

It got us to thinking. With the non-stop madness of the fashion business, many of us don’t make the time or have the energy to sit back, think about and discuss the changes which are happening all around us. More than ever, we need to have honest discussions about the brave new world of fashion.  There is much we can learn from each other. Why not open our breakfast catch-up sessions to like-minded peers and colleagues from the industry? And thus, the BoF Breakfast Club was born.

Last Thursday in New York, designers and CEOs of established and emerging fashion businesses — Shirley Cook of Proenza Schouler, Maria Borromeo and Thakoon Panichgul of Thakoon, Charles Nolan, Bonnie Takhar of Halston, Waris Ahulwalia, Brian Murphy of Loeffler Randall, Courtney and Phillip Crangi, Elana Posner of Peter Som, Michael Angel, Susan Posen of Zac Posen and others — gathered for an intimate, off-the-record conversation on the future of fashion at the Norwood Club.

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Graham Tabor and Migel Villalobos | Photo: Miguel Villalobos

NEW YORK, United States — I first met Graham Tabor and Miguel Villalobos over sushi in New York with our mutual friend Diane Pernet. Then again, it felt like we already knew each other since their smiling faces were often featured on Diane’s blog and she had already told me so much about them.

Since then, Graham and Miguel have kept me captivated with their creativity and ideas. A talented photographer and illustrator working in film, fashion and art, Miguel is always casually snapping photos away when we’re together. He has worked on creative projects with various collaborators including another friend of BoF, Zaldy Goco. For his part, Graham has long collaborated behind-the-scenes with other talented creatives — including  super-stylist Melanie Ward, Helmut Lang and Karl Lagerfeld.

Most recently, Graham and Miguel put on their first solo sculpture exhibit in Paris, featuring animal skeletons constructed out of found cardboard and masking tape, covered in layers of resin, which made for some arresting imagery.

I’ve often wondered in the back of my mind how this dynamic duo would take their complementary creativity and commercialise it some day. The answer finally came during Paris Fashion Week just past when they showed me their beautiful new line of fine jewelry, 1-100.

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NEW YORK, United States — “I want to own this whole thing,” Philip Crangi says of his popular jewellery brand. “I’d rather own 100 percent of something small that 10 percent of something huge.” The 2008 CFDA Swarovski Award for Accessories winner — whose jewellery is both intensely popular with editors and intensely personal to those who wear it — takes as much pride in forging his business as he does each golden amulet. “It’s more than a job,” he says. “It’s my baby. I want control over it. I believe in control.”

Growing up in Boca Raton, Florida, Crangi developed a fascination with the talismanic nature of jewellery, charms and trinkets. “I wanted to find the buried treasure in flea markets or in the attic,” he says. “I never did, so I have to make it myself.”

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