Changing Room
The Time Has Come for A Transformation of Claiborne Menswear, And It's No One-Man Job

By Robin Givhan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 3, 2008

NEW YORK

The menswear designer John Bartlett schedules business meetings in his home studio in Greenwich Village, where a three-legged rescue mutt -- his company's mascot -- is likely to nuzzle a guest's leg. Liz Claiborne executive Dave McTague takes meetings in a stark boardroom in midtown, where the only display of affection is the attention this overly scheduled manager shows his smartphone.

The fashion world is filled with pairings of creative souls and bean counters, the yin and yang of the industry, but this is one of the most pronounced cases of opposites attracting with the mission of reviving a withered American brand.

They are seeking a more lucrative way to dress that most elusive customer: the Dockers man. He is the gentleman who is neither traditional -- which in fashion parlance means someone drawn to the rigors of a well-tailored suit with its high, tight armholes -- nor especially fashionable. He may yet to have even committed to flat-front trousers, which replaced pleated ones as a wardrobe basic almost a decade ago. He treasures the ordinary. He is neither clownish nor a fashion plate.

Bartlett was hired by Liz Claiborne earlier this year to reinvent its menswear brand -- renamed Claiborne by John Bartlett. The designer, with his close-cut sandy hair and professorial spectacles, spices his speech with smart-kid tangents, plain-spoken realism and self-conscious hyperbole. The support he has received from Liz Claiborne, Bartlett says, "is like nectar from the gods."

McTague, the executive vice president charged with making a success of this match, uses phrases like "supply chain structure." And he is not shy about crooning a love song to Wall Street: "A bad economy is an opportunity," he says.

Throughout his career, Bartlett has always been an independent player on Seventh Avenue. While he has dabbled in womenswear and been a designer-for-hire at Ghurka -- the American leather goods house -- and Italy's Byblos to help pay his bills, he has always focused the lion's share of his passion on the menswear collection that bears his name.

Bartlett, 45, grew up in Cincinnati, graduated from Harvard and then enrolled in the menswear program at the Fashion Institute of Technology. In 1992, he started his own label, and over the years he has allowed his interests in everything from the plays of Jean Genet to the films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder to inspire his work. He has won awards from his colleagues and the loyalty of men's magazine editors who admire him for his creativity, his intellect and his good nature. Like a lot of independent designers, he has experienced the highs and lows that are cyclical to the business, including temporarily shuttering his brand in 2002 and taking off on a decompression journey to Southeast Asia, where he studied yoga and Buddhism.

He returned possibly even more preternaturally calm than when he departed and with a more centrist perspective on style, choosing to draw inspiration from the classic Ivy League sensibility of his alma mater rather than the homoerotic illustrations of Tom of Finland. Still, Bartlett remains a man who is willing not only to wear a djellaba but to put one in his collection.

In his home studio on the second floor of a Greenwich Village townhouse, he works at an expansive faded-wood plank table. Bartlett's inspiration bulletin boards are pinned with words and images that have caught his fancy. The one for his signature line includes a newspaper clip about Albanian women who have taken a vow of celibacy and live as men. He suspects that the lives of these elderly women will influence this collection, which is sold from his own boutique a short walk from his home -- a place where he plays eccentric shopkeeper in a butcher's apron.

The John Bartlett line is aggressively personal. Its staff totals two, including the designer. He can indulge his politics and his social consciousness by producing samples "off the grid," as he puts it, meaning consuming the least amount of energy. The freelance seamstresses use pedal-powered sewing machines. In his signature collection, where a suit can cost upwards of $1,500, Bartlett engages in high concepts, which automatically limits the appeal of his work. How many men see their wardrobe inspired by Albanian cross-dressers? He might produce 100 pieces of a popular design. At Claiborne, it's not unusual to manufacture 48,000 sweaters in one style.

On the other side of the wall in his studio, which might as well be a universe away, is the inspiration board for the spring '09 Claiborne collection. The color palette is dominated by quiet shades of blue, familiar patterns and images of sturdy-looking guys with Marlboro man machismo and surfer boy wholesomeness. The silhouettes, he says, "are super classic. They're not for waif boys.

"The collection is for a guy who doesn't want to wear traditional pleated khakis and oversized polo shirts, but he's not ready to dive into skinny, low-rise khakis," Bartlett says. "I think of my brother-in-law in Cincinnati." The constant question: What would Jerry Solimine wear?

When Bartlett arrived at Claiborne in January, he did not study the house's archives, as so many designers coming into an established brand tend to do. The Liz Claiborne women's collection has a rich history, famous for its mix-and-match sensibility and serving as the wardrobe for countless women entering the workforce in the 1970s and '80s. But the men's line, introduced in 1985 and now sold in more than 500 locations, was a blur.

If someone says Tommy Hilfiger, you think urban preppy. Calvin Klein connotes minimalist. You might also think sexy. Theory? In-the-know shoppers might think Prada-lite. Tommy Bahama? Loud prints. Claiborne menswear?

"There was no immediate history there," Bartlett says flatly. "They were known in the market for fit and for a good price/value relationship and the ability to distribute on a very expansive level." In other words, the most that could be said about Claiborne is that it kept a man from having to go naked.

"I didn't feel a soul to the brand," McTague says. "I saw nice product."

While the company says the brand is profitable, the clothes haven't been selling well enough to keep Liz Claiborne in the black. In 2007, Liz Claiborne Inc., which includes more than a dozen brands, had net sales of $4.6 billion, but a net operating loss of $426 million, a number that would have been even higher if not for the success of labels such as Juicy Couture and Lucky Brand Jeans. (The company doesn't break out sales for individual brands.) The 2007 annual report described the year as "dismal."

In the last year, the corporation has been reorganized. More than 1,300 positions were cut, and the brands were divided into two categories. It is a division that effectively boils down to stars and stragglers. The stars, which include Juicy Couture, Lucky Brand Jeans, Mexx and Kate Spade, made money. The stragglers did not. They include both the Liz Claiborne women's line, which is now being designed by Isaac Mizrahi, and the menswear.

Bartlett's goal is to give the brand a point of view and a personality. McTague will try to pry it out of a destructive cycle in which retailers like Macy's make decisions about what to sell based on what sold last season and end up boring customers. But Claiborne seems as committed to the middle-of-the-road as ever. Bartlett is charged with reinventing the familiar.

There is no story line for the collection. It's all about the merchandise -- about the door busters, rack-poppers and pant-eaters, lingo for the eye-bulging bargains and fanciful offerings that are meant to excite customers. The "door buster" is "like the leather jacket for $99," Bartlett explains. "You put it on sale at 7 a.m. and people come and bust the door down."

The pant-eater is a particularly enticing jacket. A rack popper "draws you into the pod," Bartlett says. His rack popper will be an especially fetching argyle sweater. The prices for tailored clothes will hover around $300, but can go as high as $1,200 for an item such as a limited-edition coat.

Being at Claiborne means "understanding margins and marketing. It's a whole other way of approaching design," Bartlett says. "It means stepping outside the ego."

* * *

Bartlett was in his shop when the call from Tim Gunn came through last year. "Project Runway's" Gunn has been at Liz Claiborne since 2007, where he plays consigliere to the bean counters. In addition to traveling into the hinterland to remind audiences of women that capri pants almost invariably make legs look stumpy and a skirt hemmed to the knee is universally more flattering than one at mid-calf, Gunn has been helping the company in its stated goal to "build buzz" and "cultural relevance." He invited Bartlett to Liz Claiborne's Garment District headquarters.

McTague was in on that first meeting. "His DNA, his heritage lent itself quite nicely to where I wanted Claiborne to be taken," he says. "And coming from Cincinnati, with those roots, he keenly gets who the average guy is out there."

From the beginning, the company wanted Bartlett's name on the label. For the designer, it's an opportunity to extend his reputation beyond the confines of the fashion cognoscenti. For Claiborne, it was a clear announcement of change -- the first time the men's line has had a "name" designer. And in a moribund economy, having an American designer at the helm matters, McTague says.

"There's a natural sense of nationalism that overcomes this country," says McTague, 46, who in his trim pinstriped suit and with his perfectly slicked chestnut hair, pitches his vision of American fashion like a fellow who has stepped from the offices of "Mad Men."

"Historically, people pull together and people think about that," he says.

So American factories are churning out all that merchandise? "The line is sourced everywhere," McTague says.

Is any of it made in the U.S.A.? "Certainly we would like to make more clothes in the U.S. There's great pride in wanting to do that." That would be: no.

McTague came to Liz Claiborne in 2007 from Converse, but he has also worked on the business side at Nike and Tommy Hilfiger. He was born in New York and grew up in Virginia. He's a slight man of medium height who, even as he's sitting in the Liz Claiborne boardroom or a month earlier at a Moroccan-themed dinner party celebrating Bartlett's arrival at the company, has the percolating energy of a man ready to bolt from his chair. It's late on a hot summer afternoon and McTague is expanding on his vision for Claiborne. As he describes his imagined customer, he keeps using words such as "majority" and "middle" and "appropriate."

His customer, he says, is "building a life around balance; it's not just about 'How do I climb the ladder fastest?' "

The customer is not a master of the universe; he's one of countless orbiting moons. This guy wants intellect and whimsy, but not a uniform.

Claiborne, McTague says, has to be about -- and here it comes -- the L-word. Claiborne by John Bartlett will be a "lifestyle" brand. Since McTague isn't talking about house paint or vases, what exactly does he mean?

"It's not creating a product for a single use," McTague says. But then, other than a tuxedo or swim trunks, are there any garments that are so limited in function? Isn't every garment, whether it's jeans, sneakers or a blazer, essentially meant to be incorporated into a person's life rather than saved for a specific event? Isn't this just marketing smoke?

It's Bartlett -- the fantasist -- who stops the room from spinning. He gets back to the clothes. "It's always about a shirt and a pair of pants.

"I just want to get that guy out of those no-name, baggy Dockers," Bartlett says. "I want to speak to that guy. He could be 18 or 60. And he's shopping in department stores, not Madison Avenue."

Bartlett will inject his personality into the collection, perhaps even throw in a few old ideas from his signature line. He's okay with ordinary. He's respectful of it. He understands that Claiborne isn't looking to dress the minority of men who want to be ahead of the pack but rather all those who want to be comfortably in the thick of it . . . right alongside his brother-in-law and a lot of other guys from Cincinnati.