76 marieclaire.com.auMINI MOGUL
JACKIE FRANK: When did your interest in
fashion first start? You’ve got a wonderful
story about your mother, who was
a model, getting remarried when you
were five years old ...
MICHAEL KORS: For her
first marriage, she
had eloped and so
there was no big
bridal gown. For the
second, it was going
to be a big wedding.
My mother ordered a
gown from Priscilla
of Boston, which was the bridal label at
the time, and brought my grandmother
and me to her fitting. As soon as she
put the gown on my grandmother’s face
lit up and she said, “It’s perfect! You’re
a fairy princess. It’s fantastic.” I sat inthe corner grimacing and my mum
looked at me and said, “What’s wrong?”
The dress had zillions of satin bows all
over and I said, “The bows are terrible.”
JF: At five?
MK: At five. And my grandmother
said, “Oh, he’s five – you know what
you are doing.” And my mother
said, “Maybe we should clip a few
off and we’ll see what it looks like.”
They clipped an area
of the dress and
my mother looked
in the mirror and
said, “He’s right.”
And they clipped the
rest of them off.
I think I realised
I had the power to
get women to listen. And I was also
surrounded by very opinionated
women: my mum, my grandmother, all
of my aunts, my cousins. The women I
knew never agreed about fashion
choices. My grandmother loved lots ofjewellery, lots of make-up, lots of
colour, pattern, print. She wore wigs
and travelled with lots of suitcases,
whereas my mum was very sporty and
very pared down.
JF: You went on to open several stores,
but tell me about your very first one.
MK: Oh gosh. I think I was 10, going
on 11, and I was very hippie crafty;
I did batik and tie-dyes and I made
candles and jewellery but I really didn’t
know what to do with them all. Then
I thought maybe I could open a
fabulous little boutique in the basement
of our suburban house. I sold everything
in about three days and I was out
of business. I made some money, but
it was then that I realised I was
entrepreneurial.
Now, I’m going to give you an
exclusive, a big exclusive! When I went
to summer camp, all of our clothes
would come back from the laundry and
they just looked terrible and, of course,
we were in the middle of the woods.“You need to find
your ethos, your
attitude. You should
focus on that and
forget the bad”He’s the New York designer who’s turned an all-American
aesthetic into a global business. The dresser to the stars, 57,
sits down with Jackie Frank to talk about his life in styleMichael
Kors
SPEAKING
frankly
with
Q&A