Over the past year, Cate Blanchett and Ben Affleck were spotted out and about in Los Angeles wearing cashmere looks from Iris von Arnim — the Oscar-winning actress in a double-faced coat, Affleck in a cozy cardigan. Such celebrity endorsement is quite unusual for the German designer, who quietly built a following based on ultraluxurious knitwear, mainly on her home turf but increasingly on a global basis.
Celebrating her 35th anniversary in business this year, the Hamburg-based designer is making a push for growth, led by her son Valentin von Arnim, who serves as general manager of the company in charge of operations, marketing and sales. Currently, the U.S. accounts for just 4 percent of the business, but the company plans to grow that number to 15 percent by continuing to pursue “the right partners, to remain exclusive and work with the right stores,” Valentin von Arnim said. Wholesale accounts here include Bergdorf Goodman, Gorsuch in Aspen, Colo.; Blake in Chicago, Coplon’s in Charlotte, N.C., and Roan in Richmond, Va.
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“These are brand ambassador stores, and we work very closely with them,” he noted. “The distribution is not too broad. It remains an exclusive specialty product, something that is not readily available in a department store in every country. It’s not about growth at any price and building it fast — it’s about long-term [growth].”
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It’s a philosophy the founder swears by. Reflecting on the anniversary, Iris von Arnim said, “In the past 35 years, I have learned the importance of staying true to myself. I was always uncompromising when it comes to quality. But I also had to follow certain strategic steps to stay with the zeitgeist — no matter if it concerned design, marketing or sales. In any case, I want to continue to create timeless fashion. That’s my philosophy.”
The label made its mark in the Eighties in Germany with novelty sweaters bearing Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso motifs as well as designs involving race-car drivers, horseback riders, golfers and tennis players. The designer’s beginnings are quite unusual. During a yearlong hospital stay after a car accident, a friend brought her a bundle of wool and encouraged her to start knitting to pass the time. Her first few sweaters caught the attention of the woman with whom she was sharing her hospital room, and the woman bought them.
For a while in the mid-Seventies, she managed a fashion boutique in Sylt, the fashionable German island in the North Sea, and also offered her own designs there. The rainbow-colored angora sweaters were a hit with the resort’s jet-set crowd, which included the likes of Gunter Sachs.
Von Arnim formally founded her own label in 1979, when she started wholesale distribution. By the Eighties, she grew tired of angora and turned to cashmere for designs, which were produced by Brunello Cucinelli for a time. By 2000, the company had a freestanding store in Sylt and 250 wholesale accounts. More recently, the von Arnims have stepped up expansion, opening stores in Vienna and Munich and, last year, adding the men’s wear collection and an online shop. There are also plans for additional units in Düsseldorf and Kitzbühel, the Austrian ski resort. “Retail is a very important growth strategy,” Valentin von Arnim said. “We will build more shops-in-shop with the big department stores, where we can manage the inventory. And certainly the Web, too.”
The company is family-owned and, according to Valentin, debt-free, with “enough capital to grow slowly, step-by-step and not too fast where we can’t follow with the product that we want to have.”
For the anniversary, Iris von Arnim reintroduced the Sweater Casanova, a limited-edition cashmere number with a smoking pug intarsia for $995. That hasn’t been the only way the mother-and-son team marked the milestone. There was also a summer celebration, themed “Cashmere, Reggae and Champagne,” replete with a reggae band on Sylt’s toniest shopping street. “We thought it was such a funny combination because you usually don’t drink Champagne with reggae, but Iris was a hippie before she started in business,” Valentin said.