A luxurious alpaca coat, cashmere sweater and silk charmeuse slip dress from the Michelle Smith ... [+]
Michelle Smith feels lighter and freer than she has in years. Relieved of the burden of designing more than 28 collections per year as her role as creative director of Milly, the contemporary brand she launched with ex-husband Andrew Oshrin, demanded, she jumped off the fashion hamster wheel of wholesale accounts, runway shows and company-owned stores. After a hiatus, Smith formulated and started working on her next act, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced her to rethink everything.
Her concept for a women’s brand with an emphasis on special occasion styles and a vacation vibe didn’t make sense for a world that was standing still. “No, that’s not what anybody wants or needs right now,” said Smith, who followed her instincts, changed course and ultimately re-envisioned something very different. “I was able to create what we need right now."
With the pandemic fueling a sense of uncertainty, Smith leaned into comfort with unmistakable luxury. “I was living for the last two months in T-shirts and jeans,” said Smith, who also recognized that the shift toward working remotely taking hold. “We want to feel and see something more luxurious on our bodies, but we’ve become quite attached to the comfort aspect.”
Smith’s eponymous collection focuses on elevated materials such as cashmere, silk charmeuse, and rare baby Italian Suri alpaca. Deceptively simple pieces have alluring details like the cutout on the front of a stretch cashmere dress and penny sewn inside the center of the cowl neckline of a silk slip dress for beautiful drape and good luck, hand-made criss-cross spaghetti straps for alluring back detail and side slits beginning at five inches below the lowest hip point, to subtly reveal “the loveliest part of the leg.”
Luscious sweaters with intricate cable stitching have extra long sleeves and cashmere bralettes and sweatpants layered with cardigan sweaters are an elevated take on loungewear.
The Caterina cashmere bralette, Billie cashmere sweatpant and Ingrid cashmere cardigan.
Pre-styled multi-piece looks, or kits, are a novel approach for the luxury space, designed for consumers who don’t want to think too hard about putting an outfit together. Most kits come in three colorways: black, gray or steel, and champaign or wheat. For example, the Giovanna kit, inspired by effortless Italian style, consists of the Sophia silk slip dress, Stacey cashmere sweater and Eva coat, $4,350, while the NoLiTa kit is made up of the Caterina stretch cashmere bralette, Billie cashmere sweatpant and Ingrid cashmere cardigan, $1,960. Purchased separately, prices for the collection range from $385 for the bralette to $2,750 for the maxi coat.
“After coming off of Milly, which was launched as a wholesale business, it feels great to have the communication with my customers,” Smith said. “It feels really good to be off that kind of crazy carousel and think about what I want to create, and create things with purpose and meaning and not under that horrible pressure of timing and deadlines. Inspiration doesn’t always come when you need it to. It’s not like making a spreadsheet. I design when I’m inspired, when I have something meaningful to give.
“Because I don’t offer my collection to other retailers, I’m not obliged to follow the traditional wholesale-retail calendar,” Smith said. “Even before the pandemic, I always had a plan to launch as a direct-to-consumer business, which helped me because I didn’t experience the pitfalls of retailers cancelling orders. Michelle Smith is a luxury brand, so it’s a different price point.”
At its height, Milly generated $50 million in annual sales. Smith declined to discuss volume for the new brand, but said she’s thinking in terms of quality over quantity and adhering to pre-order business model that supports sustainability by cutting down on environmental pollution and waste.
“I was nervous about whether or not my customer would agree to the preorder, but I’ve been so incredibly pleased with response,” she said. “Hopefully, people appreciate the environment and that I’m not ordering more fabric than I need, and not manufacturing more than I need and producing according to orders received. It’s a new way of running a business.”
Being small gave Smith the luxury of being able to work with top factories. “My collection is heavy in cashmere, and it’s knit in China,” she said. “China was the first area to come alive and factories were up and running in April. Having the ability to stay nimble, I could go to where I was able to manufacture. My wovens are made locally in New York City, where factories came back in the summer.”
The Stacey cashmere sweater has an intricate cable stitch.
The designer’s limited edition styles will be released twice a year, interspersed with surprise capsules. “They’re designed to be relatively seasonless, with exception of my coats,” she said. “They’re timeless investment pieces. We plan on doing preordering for collection 2 in January, and shipping in March and April. In between I’ll have little surprises. I have a black sparkly silk coupe fabric that I’m ready to jump into when the time is right. I want to make sure it’s appropriate and not tone deaf.”
Rather than a corporate office like her Milly digs, Smith is working from her apartment in Harlem this time around. “COVID had a lot to too with that,” she said. “I never signed an office lease and realized, maybe I don’t need an office now. My team and I are on Zoom calls together. Maybe certain overhead expenses I assumed I needed before, I may not need now. When I need to do more industrial-related things like cutting fabric or sewing fabric, I go to one of the factories I work with and we collaborate. I have a very lean staff. It’s liberating not having so many employees and not having the pressure of having to pay rent. It’s nice to be able to structure my day.... I can go pick up kids from school.”
Despite a background that includes internships at Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior’s haute couture atelier in Paris, among others, as well as studies at ESMOD the French fashion school, Smith worried about how her transition from contemporary designer to luxury would be received.
“The challenge for me is that I’m entering a new market, whereas, for long time I was in the contemporary space,” she said. “Early in my background I had luxury training at Hermes, but I was nervous about whether people would accept me in this new space or brand me as a contemporary person.
“I create from my heart and my passion,” Smith said. “I launched Milly when I was 27 and now I’m 47. I’ve gone through a lot of changes. I’m a different person, but we all evolve.”
