LOS ANGELES — Robert Rodriguez is ready for the spotlight.
In less than two years, Rodriguez and partner Nicola Guarna have created a better contemporary line with more than 300 doors domestically, including Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, Bergdorf Goodman and specialty shops such as Ron Herman in Los Angeles and Intermix in New York. Sales are projected to surpass $22 million in 2006.
“We love it,” said Frank Doroff, general merchandising manager at Bloomingdale’s. “It’s a great performing line. The sell-throughs have been very strong. Robert has a fresh perspective we love, and we’re putting the line in more and more stores.”
But as much as fans know the collection of sophisticated separates, forward cashmere shapes, fur-trimmed coats and chic dresses, the man behind the label remains unknown.
“It’s been a very busy start. We’ve hardly caught our breath,” Rodriguez said from his downtown studio in the Cooper Building. There, his staff of 21 work out of two — soon to be three — expansive lofts. The designer will soon hire two more assistants.
Rodriguez and Guarna have resisted offers to license the brand in accessories, footwear and even a fragrance until Rodriguez is better known. They have opted to grow strategically and slowly in order to maintain complete control.
“We appreciate that we’ve gotten into every major door, and been able to pick the ones we want to be in,” said Guarna, whose financial know-how has been the complement to Rodriguez’s design sensibility.
That means clothes for women, not girls. Not surprisingly, Rodriguez has spotted Angelina Jolie, Nicole Kidman and Scarlett Johansson in his wares.
For fall, bowing at Coterie and the Mercer Hotel in New York next week, there are ladylike pencil skirts, frilly blouses, ribbed sweaters with dolman sleeves and suit jackets with flounced back panels.
The collection wholesales from $80 to $350.
He references Forties silhouettes through an Eighties prism with stovepipe pants and wide-leg trousers, and cashmere sweaters striped in neutrals and neon brights. A camel peacoat with A-line sleeves is cropped and lined in leopard knit.
A soft, fine leather group features skinny pants, knee-length shorts and a new military jacket.
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The Robert Rodriguez woman is “contemporary, fashion-driven,” the designer said. “The idea is to give the customer designer-like clothing at the best possible quality and affordable prices. We have everyone from daughters to mothers buying the clothes. That’s been our success.”
He knows something about straddling both the designer and better-priced markets. Born in Cuba and raised in Miami, Rodriguez went to New York and received a degree from the Fashion Institute of Technology. He spent the next six years through 1992 assisting the evening dress designers at Christian Dior.
Six years after that, he came west to be the design director at the contemporary label Laundry by Shelli Segal. Months after he left in 2003, he met Guarna, a Montreal-based distributor with several lines in the misses’ and contemporary markets. The two hit it off instantly.
Eight weeks later, a collection was ready for buyers. “We wrote $10 million that first year,” Guarna said.
The next stage involves image building as much as expansion into new markets, he said. Although the label now sells at Browns and Harvey Nichols in London to Lane Crawford in Hong Kong, the company recently signed with a European distributor to help with the markets there.
“The demand for an American brand there is amazing, so we decided we needed someone who could better service the customers there,” Guarna said.
A considerable investment has been made in revamping the trade show booth, too, in order to cement Rodriguez’s image.
“I understand Robert’s vision, he understands mine,” Guarna said. “We work well together. I see Ralph Lauren, Giorgio Armani — we have the highest respect for the way they’ve built their businesses. There’s a whole structure, a plan behind all of this.”