[MUSIC PLAYING]
For me, because I have to wear the clothes,
I want them to be comfortable.
But there are moments when I will like Fernando to design me
a dress stops a little bit tighter, a little bit more
structured, not necessarily comfortable,
because I want to look certain way.
So it's nice to have both sides.
And I'm definitely more masculine than Fernando
in a way, right?
In every way every way.
But there's something about prints I love.
Because when I say I like masculine clothes that
sounds that I want black, I want tailoring.
But since I was a kid I love printed clothes,
and I love developing prints.
So I do have that side of me that's
a little bit more feminine.
Yeah, I think that obviously I gravitate
towards evening and a more feminine,
always a sexier look than Laura does.
But what's wonderful about our constant dialogue
is that we feed off of each other's needs, right?
She develops a print.
I look at it.
I'm like, "I don't ever see you wearing that."
Or at least I say, "I don't want you
to wear that print this way.
If it's like maybe a sexier blush color underneath I
will feel like it's more feminine or more sultry."
And she pays attention to that because, I mean,
I'm the opposite sex and I have a different brain.
I think differently.
And she understands that.
It's very important to have trust in the person
that you're working with.
Laura and I have never had that issue because we are completely
vulnerable with each other and we
let the other person influence our design.
You should let whoever responds to something that you're
showing them or doing, and evolve it
into whatever they want.
To me, that's a sign of the team working together,
the team agreeing on something.
You should welcome it, in fact.
I love it when we leave our table.
It's kind of very similar to how we work every day.
And I come back next day and like,
let's say, this image got like multiplied by 10 different ways
because someone really liked it.
Like, they just walk by our desk and they're like,
"Oh I love that."
And they sketched into, like, many different directions.
That just kind of shows me that they're
into what we've been talking about.
Yeah.
And it's flattering, you know?
So we welcome it.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
In the beginning of Monse, we didn't necessarily
know who our customer was going to be, right?
So we started deconstructing shirts
just to see if a shirt dress, which
we knew Oscar clients liked, could be made into something
interesting.
So right there that tells you we had some information
of how to start on something that could potentially sell.
We just had to make it a little bit more interesting and fresh.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
After the first couple of seasons went by,
it just started to feel like our customer was about somebody
who wanted to wear a tried and true staple like the shirt
dress but with a twist.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
And I guess that means that our customer needs
something that can go from day to night because it's a staple.
But it's interesting enough that you can dress it up
with a pair of earrings or a cool shoe to go out at night.
We've talked about her being, like, she's working girl.
She has an important job, like really fun life,
daring to wear, like, little bit weird clothes.
Yeah.
Well, sort of just like interesting enough
that you could wear it to work or go out on a date with it.
I think Monse's a little bit more streetwear.
But it is dressy.
It's not the casual clothes.
Whenever I wear Monse I get, like, people asking me,
like, "Oh, there's a hole in your sweater."
And you have to be kind of like confident enough
to be like, "Yeah, that's part of my look."
You know?
Whereas Oscar, it's very feminine, glamorous.
There's a certain elegance to you
when you decide to wear an Oscar dress.
You need to put on your elegant hat.
That's at least how I feel our customers, when we meet them
at trunk shows or events, carry themselves.
They have a certain, like, poise to them.
Yeah.
Whereas a Monse girl walks right by her
and pushes her to the side.
I feel like that's how
She's a bit more quirky.
She's a bit quirkier.
She doesn't care if she's, like, the odd girl in the room that
has a bunch of holes in her sweater.
So it's very different mindsets.
But what was interesting to me is that we
have customers that wear both.
And very much like characters in movies come to life,
they definitely become different people
when they're wearing a Monse dress or an Oscar dress.
A Monse jacket of the day and an Oscar gown
at night for a big event.
People like to be characters and they're not one note.
They don't wear one kind of look always.
They like to have versatility.
I think also women, now more than ever, they
dress differently to different things.
Like, you start with, like, Nike leggings in the morning
to go to gym, and then you wear Monse to go to work,
and maybe you wear something else to go to another event,
and wear Oscar for big events.
Like, I think there's room for women to explore.
Yeah.
Whereas before, I think, they were too scared
to be more than one kind of a woman.
I feel like what is wonderful about today's world is what
Laura just said, is there seems to be more freedom
to be whoever you want to be day or night.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Once we do the fittings of the garments,
then we have a stylist that usually
has an outside perspective that refresh
the whole concept of the collection
and sort of remind us what feels the most innovative.
Because you do tend to be swallowed
in your creative process for three months
and you really have to make sure that that dress
or that blouse or anything that you design
feels like that model would have bought it on her own.
Our CEO at Monse has always told us, even when
we were assistants at Oscar and she was a buyer for the brand,
there is only 16 good looks.
What she's trying to say with that is that there is enough
thought process behind that entire creation of the look.
You have to make sure that it's paired well, a top and a skirt
or a pant or a suit.
There's only, in her opinion, that many amount of riveting
looks that her store cannot not buy.
And you definitely want to make sure
that you're remembered as a brand that
has high sell-throughs.
It does not mean that they buy all of your collection.
It means that they buy the ones that will sell in the end.
You have to make your message simple and clear
so it's easy for people to remember.
Even as a consumer when you want to buy something
and you need an outfit for certain event and you remember,
"Oh, that brand showed this that stuck to my mind,"
you're putting out a stronger message
by having less but having a stronger point of view.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
First collection, the most important thing
is getting your vision out there clearly as possible.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
You should worry about who you're
going to sell it to but you shouldn't, like, merchandise
or water down your idea.
It should be a vision.
Like, it should be directional.
It should be what you want to be represented as.
What I recommend is to have a person who
knows how to sell a collection speak to you prior,
a friend at a store where you're thinking you
could potentially sell.
Make friends there.
Just walk up to people in the selling team and just ask away.
They actually like to have those conversations.
They don't get that asked enough.
They have opinions and ideas of what that floor is missing.
So when Laura and I had a couple of ideas and sketches
for the first collection, what we did is we went to the people
that we already had a relationship
with from the Oscar years.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
And when we asked them what they gravitated
towards from the sketches, they seem
to all gravitate towards the deconstructed shirting world.
What that did for us is it allowed
us to have confidence to play into the highs
and the lows of that one idea.
That idea hadn't been tapped into the market.
And because of it, we said, "OK, this
is what we're going to focus it on.
And we're going to do evening, we're going to do day,
we're going to do a sweater off from this one idea."
The collection was how many pieces?
Like 20?
Less?
Like 30.
It was all about the shirting, stripes, bold colors.
Until this day we kind of still keep that formula
from that first collection.
And if someone were starting their first collection,
and if they don't have the connections,
like lot of people we reached out we actually
didn't know them.
For example, on LinkedIn I sent a message
to a Net-A-Porter buyer, and she replied.
And she knew Oscar de la Renta but she didn't know of us.
And she asked us to come in, show her the collection.
And she loved it.
And she told us, "Maybe you should
add this or take that out."
I think it's important to knock on the door,
even if you don't know them.
Because you never know when they're
going to open that email, and they
were looking to mentor someone.
So I think it's important to ask.
You're not going to lose anything.
Yeah.
Don't be afraid.
Everybody has a fantasy place where they
want to sell their clothes.
Knock on that person's door.
Yeah.
You never know if they're going
to be able to answer or give you some input.
And even if they don't buy the first collection,
I promise you if it's a successful first collection,
they'll buy the second or the third.
[MUSIC PLAYING]