Abroad Jump

With Promising Gains Here, Designer Derek Lam Is Thinking Big, Acting Boldly

Derek Lam, left, and partner Jan-Hendrik Schlottmann are taking their budding line onto the world stage, having made favorable impressions in pockets of the United States. (Helayne Seidman - For The Washington Post)

PARIS

Afashion designer just launching his own collection has endless hurdles to clear: financing, manufacturing, marketing. Derek Lam, who has been in business since 2003, had all of those worries -- and one more. He calls it the "implant issue."

American women, it seems, can't get enough of large, attention-grabbing breast implants. The ever-growing number of man-made C-cups, D's and DDs has created an imbalance. A woman who might be an enhanced size 8 on top, says Lam, often is only a size 4 on the bottom. (This being the world of high-end fashion, there is no need to get into a conversation about a size 14, which is as rare as a polyester blend.) Such top-heavy figures make the construction of something as form-fitting as a strapless dress a perilous endeavor for a designer.

Lam could have reworked his patterns and his sizing to fit this excessively endowed American woman. But if he changed the proportions to fit American customers, the clothes wouldn't fit shoppers in Europe. It seems that while the women there are also enthusiastic consumers of cosmetic surgery, they favor smaller cup sizes.

Lam -- an American entrepreneur with global ambitions -- regrouped. "The secret to success," he says, is "the V-neck dress."

He relays this observation with an I'm-not-making-this-up chuckle. Lam, 40, in this most international of fashion capitals for fashion week earlier this fall, is explaining his multi-country business strategy while sitting in the brocade-drenched tearoom of the Meurice Hotel. "An audience that likes what I do," he says, "I know that doesn't exist in just one country."

Lam has yet to garner much name recognition in the United States outside New York and perhaps Los Angeles, but he already has set his sights on Paris, London, Milan and the vast luxury market in Asia. In an unusual move for the fashion industry, Lam is branching out into Europe before he has conquered Chicago.

In the past, American designers would grow big and muscular on domestic dollars before swaggering onto the global stage. That's the way Polo Ralph Lauren, Donna Karan and Calvin Klein did it.

But the high-end clothing market in the United States has become more competitive since those designers began building their businesses in the 1970s and '80s. Many more fancy designers are trying to get a piece of the country's tightly controlled retail space. The international market, however, has expanded dramatically, with increasing numbers of conspicuous consumers in places like Russia and China. A beginning designer has to get his nibbles wherever he can.

"One of the pitfalls of concentrating in America is you have difficulty expanding out of it," Lam says. He has shunned the example set by Karan, who positioned herself as confidante of the American professional. Lam doesn't want to focus on the nuances of an American woman's lifestyle to the exclusion of a French woman's. He believes he is as likely to find women who appreciate his design viewpoint in Europe as in the States.

The narrow silhouette of Lam's spring 2007 line, shown earlier this fall in Paris.(Dominique Maitre - AP)

Lam isn't a particularly esoteric designer, as are so many of the men and women who show their collections here. He's not creating jackets with armholes for extra appendages and he is not an extravagant showman. His work is firmly rooted in the traditions of sportswear as established by Claire McCardell, who essentially invented modern American ready-to-wear, with its practicality, informality and attention to comfort. One season, for instance, his collection was inspired by the kind of layered dressing practiced in a hot-cold Bay Area summer.

His clothes have a youthful sensibility and he aspires to bestow them with a couture-like attention to detail. And they are expensive. It is not uncommon to find his dresses priced at more than $1,000. It is an aesthetic that he hopes will easily translate across borders. Emblematic of his international approach are the sizes on his labels. He uses the European system: 36, 38, 40, etc. And his clothes have a narrower silhouette than the typical American brand.