NEW YORK — Having seen thousands of trends come and go, last winter three editors from Elle magazine, Abigale Levinson, Karen Reinitz and Ana Maria Pimentel, saw one in particular that inspired them to design their own collection.
“We decided to do our own collection,” said Reinitz, “when those tweedy, Chanel-inspired jackets started coming out. At that point, we knew we wanted to do something that combined comfort and quirkiness with the shape of that lady-like jacket.” Hence, their line, AKA, with its signature look, a terry cloth, fitted jacket, was born.
None of the editors-cum-designers had any experience in design, which meant it was a learning experience from the start. “We really didn’t know how this would all work,” said Levinson, senior fashion editor at Elle magazine. “We found a pattern maker and, honestly, we’d say, ‘We’d love to make this shape,’ and he’d say, ‘No, you cannot make that shape.’”
The trio, all 29 years old, each contributed financially (they have no financial backers) and kicked off their business in January 2004 when they began to sketch designs for fitted jackets, skirts and dresses in terry cloth and cotton jerseys embellished with eyelets, tassels, wood, shells or delicate pom-poms.
They meet at Levinson’s Sutton Place apartment once their 10-hour-plus workdays end. For hours, they conceptualize ideas, choose fabrics, crunch numbers and work out distribution orders. They’re known to work into the wee hours of the morning before heading back to the magazine or Van Cleef & Arpels, where Pimentel took a position as a media relations manager in August. They also regroup as AKA on at least one day of the weekend. Reinitz, associate fashion editor at Elle, and Levinson’s peers at Elle have been equally supportive: a jacket from their spring 2004 collection was featured in the June 2004 issue of the magazine.
AKA officially launched two seasons ago, but they’re still working out the kinks. They’ve found that they want to base their delivery schedule as a swimwear company would, which means they’ll focus on spring and resort and skip fall shipments. They also want to keep the collection, which wholesales in the range of $42 to $100, very piece-oriented with an emphasis on personal touches — even if that means applying pins with their bare hands in Levinson’s apartment until dawn — which they’ve done. They manufacture the line here in the Garment Center.
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“Everything we create is very easy to wear. There are no zippers, everything can be pulled on over your head, and everything travels well,” said Levinson. “We create things we want to wear.”
The first delivery AKA shipped was to Barneys New York, with deliveries to Bergdorf Goodman, Saks Fifth Avenue and Bloomingdale’s shortly thereafter. Now, Levinson, Reinitz and Pimentel are shifting their focus to specialty boutiques nationwide. At a Kitson boutique in Los Angeles, Paris and Nicky Hilton picked up terry cloth fitted jackets and each were later photographed in it. The AKA partners expect their wholesale volume for 2004 to reach $150,000.
Though retailers and celebrities have already expressed interest in the collection, the big score came in October when the women hosted a press preview party at a friend’s Gramercy Park brownstone here. “We had a really great turnout,” said Pimentel. “So many editors came out to support us and even better, they started placing personal orders.”
The design trio had garnered the respect of their peers, which is no small feat, considering, Levinson’s bit of knowledge: “We know how much stuff crosses an editor’s desk, so that was really great for us.”