HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — “This is a little bit of my shining moment, in a way,” Jennifer Lopez said of her latest adventure — the launch of a better contemporary collection called Sweetface.
It’s also, she added, a “scary” moment. For the first time in her three-and-a-half-year foray into fashion under the $350 million Sweetface Fashion Co. masterbrand, the pop superstar is hitting the runway with a show that will close Olympus Fashion Week in New York on Feb. 11.
“This should be looked at as the real start of our company,” Lopez continued during an exclusive interview with WWD to discuss her new collection, which will have higher price points and more limited distribution than her existing label, JLo. “Now we’re really going to show the world what we stand for.”
Not that the world doesn’t already know — and won’t get plenty of more chances to see it. As Lopez herself pointed out, “There’s a lot going on.”
Besides readying the new apparel division and a runway launch on which rests Lopez’s image as creative director, she is serving as executive producer on an MTV special documenting the process; rolling out her third fragrance, Miami Glow, and already promoting her fifth album, “Rebirth,” set for a March 1 release.
Beaming and at ease on a sofa at the Chateau Marmont here, Lopez arrived in town a couple of days before with “a million things” on her to-do list, she happily huffed. Her personal life was off limits in the interview, but her mood remained bubbly throughout as she openly talked about her professional endeavors. And, at the end of the hour-long conversation, Lopez’s face literally lit up as her husband of seven months, Marc Anthony, wandered out of the bedroom and engaged in discussion over the color choice for the new JLo hangtags sprawled across the dining room table (he pushed for periwinkle).
The JLo name has been aggressively licensed, amassing 11 categories, including successful JLo outerwear, lingerie and costume jewelry. Her two fragrances, Glow and Still, ring in additional retail sales of $100 million and $50 million, respectively, making them among the best sellers for Lancaster. And an international press corps greeted her in Moscow last May when she personally opened the first JLo by Jennifer Lopez door, a 4,500-square-foot lifestyle shop owned by Russian real estate developer Crocus.
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“JLo was a great way to start, to get ourselves in there with a younger customer,” said Lopez. “We’ve been successful. We have all our licenses in place. Now we’re ready to move on to that next level. It’s just about making a smaller line, with better quality and better fabrics.”
A sneak peek at the sketch book revealed the inaugural fall-holiday collection will be filled with cashmere sweaters, houndstooth slacks, velvet jackets, fox furs and crystal-speckled fedoras.
It’s also tight, short, marked by attitude one moment and girlish fun the next — much like the pop cultural force who spawned it.
Lopez is fully aware of the economic potential of her personal style — one she is eager to take to wider horizons; even, she enthused, one day doing a home collection under the Sweetface label. But she stops short of calling herself a “designer.”
“Let’s be real — I’m obviously not at the level of a John Galliano. There is an art to what he does that I admire. But I do have a certain style and a certain image that people respond to.”
Still, exclusivity is the operative word when it comes to the new Sweetface line. “We’re not going to try to launch it to a million stores,” said company director Andy Hilfiger, who flew in for the day for the interview. He shares a 50 percent cut of the parent company, founded in 2001, with co-director Joe Mastra, who tends to the financial end; Lopez owns the other half. Distribution of the Sweetface collection will be limited to specialty boutiques and better department stores nationwide in the first season, with expansion to similar retail doors abroad according to demand.
“It’s not going to be mass,” Lopez stressed.
Retail price points range from $150 for denim and knit tops to $600 for outerwear and fur-trimmed cashmere. While she and company executives declined to comment on first-year sales for the new Sweetface line, industry sources indicate the brand could do $5 million to $10 million.
“We’re not looking to make a lot of money off this right away,” said Hilfiger. “We just want to get it out there to the right places.”
And they have a whole promotional plan to make sure it does. At the runway show, Miami Glow will drop inside attendee goodie bags. This “remix,” as Hilfiger called it, of the original is reminiscent of a green apple Jolly Rancher hard candy. “I wanted something that young girls would love,” said Lopez.
The MTV special airs Feb. 24. Despite her attachment to the project, Lopez candidly offers up that, beyond her role in front of the cameras, the title of executive producer is mostly just that: “Come on, I leave it up to those guys who know what they’re doing.”
The program will inevitably serve as a kind of hour-long commercial for the new line. No advertising plan is in place for the launch, said Hilfiger, and editorial is being emphasized in marketing efforts.
The MTV special’s finale, of course, will be the superstar’s debut on the runway. “Since day one of the JLo clothing line, everybody said, ‘Let’s do a fashion show,’” she said. “But from that first day, I said, ‘No.’ I felt we weren’t ready. I like to do things at a high-quality level. I want to know that it’s going to be something people will, hopefully, respond to. I also need to be really proud of it.”
Beyond the runway, Lopez said she intends to wear the line. While she’s been singled out as the only pop-star-turned-fashion brand not to wear her own label, Lopez insisted she lives in JLo jeans, sweats and outerwear. “I’m thinking I’m going out incognito and here I have a big JLo on my jacket. It’s shameless self-promotion,” she said with a laugh.
She has appeared in print ads for her Still scent, as well as in the first billboards for JLo, mugging next to a Puerto Rican flag. But a look-a-like or product have since appeared in other brand ads. “I have a music career and movie career to consider. I have to be careful,” she said. “If, say, we’re launching a collection and I have a movie coming out and a single out, I don’t want to be overexposed. But it’s never about the fact that I don’t want to appear in the ads.”
Lopez appeared on the January covers of Vogue and Latina magazines, flogging mostly the album. It’s already scoring critical buzz, specifically for its first hit single, “Get Right,” a funky, infectious dance track getting regular rotation on MTV and radio. Lopez insisted its release so close to fashion week, however, was less about a media blitz than a delay in getting it finished. So, too, is the lack of Sweetface clothes in the video. “Get real,” she said, “the samples are not even ready right now!”
This, too, she explains is why she’s not wearing any of her new clothes on this day. Instead, she’s got on a pink, shrunken Morphine Generation polo; tight, frayed, white True Religion jeans, and a pair of pale pink Giuseppe Zanotti stiletto mules.
The music’s soulful, funky vibe — driven by all the James Brown she was hooked on in preparing for the album —seeped into the styling of Sweetface. A track or more also will blare inside the largest tent at Bryant Park the night of the debut.
So why go with a a nickname given to her by a former agent instead of her full name? “I felt like it was in line with the more contemporary style,” she said. “It’s a very girly name, but at the same time, it has a little sophistication in a weird way, a little street edge. That is what JLo the fashion company and now Sweetface is: Sexy, feminine, street, chic, all of it. There’s something about [Sweetface] that embodies that type of person.”
“Luxurious” is another favorite qualifier, one Lopez is thrilled to explore. “One of the things we’ve always been challenged by — and every designer and brand is, too — is staying within the [junior] price point. It’s hard when you only do one line. But if you have different levels [within a masterbrand], you can do this or that. It’s not the sky’s the limit, but we can have fun.”
But the JLo brand also is getting a boost. With fall, it’s skewing up to a more junior-contemporary look. Better quality, including premium denim, will also mean higher prices. Jeans could have a retail price span between $49 and $149.
The marketplace — and Lopez’s tastes — have evolved since the fashion brand began, she noted. “We started this business from scratch. You see what works, what doesn’t. You learn about factories and all kinds of stuff you never even wanted to know about. Then you get to a point where, OK, people like the line, my style. So where do we go from here? Let’s go back to the dream we had at the start.”
She upped her involvement in the design and business operations in the months before two key executives left Sweetface Fashions late last summer. Denise Seegal, president and chief executive officer since June 2002, left in August; Hilfiger has since assumed her former day-to-day responsibilities. A month before, vice president and creative director Heather Thomson exited at the end of her contract for a similar position at pop star Beyoncé Knowles’ line at Kids Headquarters.
Playing a more active role in her fashion venture, however, always has been part of the plan, said Lopez.
“I was the girl who would take my dad’s sweatshirt and cut it up, so it had all these straps. I remember being very young and looking at Madonna and thinking she was the coolest: Her bracelets up to her elbow, her lace and gloves and tights. Seeing how music is so correlated to fashion, or even how movies are so correlated to fashion, it’s something so natural for me.”
So, too, is rallying the troops since deciding to do runway to become “ultrafocused” on what she’s considering a turning point in her professional life. Up to 20 Sweetface looks could end up on the runway. And some JLo footwear, handbags, jewelry and denim will be mixed in, as “it makes sense,” she said.
The show will be split into three parts, representing stages of Lopez’s life. The street-edged “Birth” segment will represent her start in the Bronx; the next group will reflect her music career, and a glamorous finale will be a nod to her “persona” in movies and on the red carpet.
“It’s scary. It’s exciting,” said Lopez. “But I don’t care about critics or any of that stuff. At the end of the day, consumers will decide if they like it and if they want to buy it or not. All I care about is, ‘Are we going to be happy with it?’ That’s already a high standard to reach.”