Last February, when Laura Kim and Fernando Garcia presented their first collection as co-creative directors of Oscar de la Renta, they took an impressive first step towards ensuring the brand’s legacy. For the duo, it marked a triumphant return to the place that they began their careers in fashion. And for the company, it signalled the beginning of a new chapter after a rudderless few seasons.
It is no exaggeration to suggest that Oscar de la Renta was one of the most important figures in 20th century American fashion — and one of its most beloved, too. De la Renta learned his craft through an apprenticeship with Cristóbal Balenciaga, and then worked as a couture assistant at Lanvin. With his own label, founded in 1965, he established a sartorial blueprint for a certain sort of aspirational woman — a woman for whom dressing up was de rigueur, for whom cocktail dresses were more than a once-yearly occasion. His designs, rendered in sumptuous fabrics and vibrant colours and patterns — he favoured floral motifs — were devoted to making women look and feel their best.
Bolen is refreshingly candid about his reasons for hiring Copping over Kim and Garcia. “I was not aware of the extent of their maturity,” he admits. But the interlude proved beneficial. “I was not a boss, so to speak, when I was at Oscar,” Garcia explains. “I’ve learned, since I left and came back, how to manage a team, how to make everyone feel listened to, feel involved in the design, and feel excited every day. The most important thing that you need to run a company is a happy team.”
For Kim and Garcia, the challenge of juggling both labels has turned out to be a blessing, an energizing challenge that generates free-flowing creative momentum.“You get to switch off your thinking for one type of woman and turn it on for the other,” says Garcia. “The ideas stay — in a positive way — as naive as possible.”
It is no exaggeration to suggest that Oscar de la Renta was one of the most important figures in 20th century American fashion — and one of its most beloved, too. De la Renta learned his craft through an apprenticeship with Cristóbal Balenciaga, and then worked as a couture assistant at Lanvin. With his own label, founded in 1965, he established a sartorial blueprint for a certain sort of aspirational woman — a woman for whom dressing up was de rigueur, for whom cocktail dresses were more than a once-yearly occasion. His designs, rendered in sumptuous fabrics and vibrant colours and patterns — he favoured floral motifs — were devoted to making women look and feel their best.
De la Renta, along with contemporaries like Halston and Bill Blass, proved that American brands could drive trends rather than simply follow them. But times change, and maintaining a legacy is at least as difficult as building one. It requires adapting to a shifting social context — the cocktail dress may have been Oscar’s bread and butter, but in an increasingly casual world that no longer calls for them, the label has needed to adjust. It falls, now, to Kim and Garcia to shepherd it into a new era, and update its offerings in a way that remains true to its history.
When Oscar de la Renta CEO Alex Bolen refers to Kim and Garcia as part of the family, he is not doling out platitudes. The pair has contributed hugely to the brand since Kim joined in 2003 while in the midst of completing her BFA in Fashion Design at the Pratt Institute. Says Bolen: “Laura and I started working at Oscar de la Renta in the same week. Laura started here as an intern, and I started as, I thought, a consultant who was going to help sell my wife’s family’s business. But, for both of us, it turned into a much longer engagement.” Garcia joined the company in 2009, as an intern reporting to Kim, after completing a degree in architecture at Notre Dame at his family’s behest.
Just before Oscar passed away in October of 2014, British designer Peter Copping was named his successor, and Kim and Garcia — by then design director and senior designer, respectively — left the company shortly thereafter. Oscar was deeply concerned with ensuring a smooth transition, fearing the slide into irrelevancy suffered by Blass and Halston after their founders’ deaths. Oscar was directly involved in bringing Copping aboard, courting him while he held the position of creative director at Nina Ricci. The hiring looked great on paper — Copping had couture training, which mattered to Oscar, and the two shared a proclivity for refined, colourful, joyful femininity in their designs. But Copping’s tenure at the house lasted just three full ready-to-wear cycles. His resignation was announced abruptly in July of 2016, not quite two years after he joined the company.
Just before Oscar passed away in October of 2014, British designer Peter Copping was named his successor, and Kim and Garcia — by then design director and senior designer, respectively — left the company shortly thereafter. Oscar was deeply concerned with ensuring a smooth transition, fearing the slide into irrelevancy suffered by Blass and Halston after their founders’ deaths. Oscar was directly involved in bringing Copping aboard, courting him while he held the position of creative director at Nina Ricci. The hiring looked great on paper — Copping had couture training, which mattered to Oscar, and the two shared a proclivity for refined, colourful, joyful femininity in their designs. But Copping’s tenure at the house lasted just three full ready-to-wear cycles. His resignation was announced abruptly in July of 2016, not quite two years after he joined the company.
While Copping was helming Oscar de la Renta, Kim and Garcia were busy building Monse, one of New York’s buzziest young labels. Monse’s presence was immediately felt when it debuted at New York Fashion Week in September of 2015 — the collection they showed, built around playful, sexy reinterpretations of the traditional dress shirt, earned rave reviews. The brand quickly became a fixture on red carpets, worn by such sought-after stars as Sarah Jessica Parker, Selena Gomez and Lupita Nyong’o. These prominent placements were partly the result of relationships with A-list stylists Garcia cultivated during his early years at Oscar de la Renta.
And while it appeared to outsiders that Monse emerged from thin air, that, of course, was not the case. The years Kim and Garcia spent under Oscar’s tutelage left them amply prepared to launch a label with a strong commercial foundation. Though Monse skews funkier than the ready-to-wear offerings at Oscar de la Renta — it’s more adventurous in its fabric selections, more provocative in its cuts, more directional in concept — it shares a focus on wearability that Kim and Garcia picked up from Oscar himself. Says Kim: “In fittings, Oscar always said, ‘What does that dress do for her?’ That’s something I always keep in mind.”
“Oscar always said that it’s not fashion until a woman buys it and wears it,” adds Bolen. “I think that Laura and Fernando very much take that to heart.”
“Oscar always said that it’s not fashion until a woman buys it and wears it,” adds Bolen. “I think that Laura and Fernando very much take that to heart.”
For Kim and Garcia, the challenge of juggling both labels has turned out to be a blessing, an energizing challenge that generates free-flowing creative momentum.“You get to switch off your thinking for one type of woman and turn it on for the other,” says Garcia. “The ideas stay — in a positive way — as naive as possible.”
While Kim and Garcia wasted no time in adding new categories to the Oscar de la Renta repertoire — denim and suiting, for instance — they are keenly aware that they have a dedicated customer base that mustn’t be alienated. Says Garcia: “It’s very important to have an evolution, not a revolution, as people say. We’re protecting that client who loves the brand and has bought so many clothes throughout the years — decades, for some. If this was a brand that relied on beauty or accessories, sure, it would have been fine to toss the DNA of the ready-to-wear out the window and start fresh with a brand new idea, but it’s a brand that’s strongest in ready-to-wear, so it has to be protected.”
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