Brazilian ready-to-wear designer Alexandre Herchcovitch is looking East.
Herchcovitch, whose extracurricular projects have included uniforms for McDonald’s employees in Brazil, apparel for the nation’s Olympic athletes and a cell phone under his own label with Motorola, has chosen Japan for his first foreign store, which will open in Tokyo next February.
He has five stores in four of Brazil’s biggest cities, together netting $2 million a year, according to market sources, and exports to more than a dozen countries, generating another $1 million annually. His main foreign markets are Japan, with 50 percent of exports, and the U.S., with 25 percent.
Partnering with the designer is H.P. France, a clothing distributor and retailer in Japan. France carries Herchcovitch in some of its 70 multibrand stores there and distributes the brand to clients. France has invested $1 million in leasing and renovating a 1,076-square-foot, two-story freestanding store in Daikanyama, one of Tokyo’s fashion districts, for Herchcovitch’s store. A loft above the second floor will be an office.
“Herchcovitch is hot in Japan because his unique prints and strong colors are very attuned to Japanese tastes,” said João Santos, an H.P. France project director, “so we decided to be collaborators on his Tokyo store.”
Herchcovitch has another take on why the Tokyo store will do well: “[The Japanese] like to wear clothes that make them stand out physically, to express their individuality. My collection’s strong color palette and prints allow them to do so.”
The Tokyo store will feature men’s wear on the first floor and women’s on the second, as well as the designer’s jeans line. Herchcovitch has designed the Black Ltd. Edition line exclusively for the shop, which will also carry the collaborative Judy Blame ‘AND’ Alexandre Herchcovitch line, a limited men’s and women’s collection of oversize, inside-out and multicolored tank tops and Ts. The label bears a combo of the duo’s trademarks: Herchcovitch’s skull and Blame’s crown.
Black Ltd. Edition features pieces from prints to monocolor items from past Herchcovitch collections that the designer has dyed black. He launched the line “to bring back highlights of past collections, but in a different, innovative way.”
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“For example,” Herchcovitch said, “if you dye black one of my white shirts, the polyester stitching and buttons remain white, creating a special effect that differentiates them from other black shirts.”
The first Herchcovitch ready-to-wear collection to be sold in the Tokyo store will be for spring; he showed the line at São Paulo Fashion Week in July and at 7th on Sixth in New York in September.
The collection’s standouts were punk-African stylized tribal prints. Some of the outfits feature a double-edged razor-blade print or geometric prints, with beadwork and in strong primary colors. The front, back or side openings are closed with big, beaded safety pins.
“I chose to do the collection in strong primary colors because designers have tended to make their palettes too sophisticated, and I wanted to go back to basics,” said Herchcovitch. “And I think the vibrant nature of this collection will appeal to Japanese tastes, too.”
Until now, few Brazilian designers have opened their own stores abroad. Some exceptions are Carlos Miele, who has a Manhattan store, and Osklen, which has a beachwear operation with five European stores.