Amy Smilovic is one hip mom.
Along with raising her two children in Greenwich, Conn., she also designs and runs Tibi, the contemporary line she started in 1998 while living in Hong Kong. About five years ago, she moved the company to New York’s Crosby Street, from where she now ships Tibi’s collections 10 times a year to Neiman Marcus and Bloomingdale’s, as well as more than 200 boutiques.
The line — a playful mix of feminine, colorful looks in easy shapes — is chock full of eye-popping prints. “They’re really what we’ve become known for,” says Smilovic, 37. In fact, she estimates that prints make up 50 to 60 percent of the line and account for at least 75 percent of sales. “Prints are a fabulous way for people to communicate who they are,” she says. “Ones that are bold without screaming for attention and colorful yet clean are what I’m drawn to nearly every season.”
And Smilovic isn’t the only one drawn to said prints. Developers at The Cloister, a hotel built in 1928 on Georgia’s Sea Island, recently commissioned the designer to do a three-part project for the hotel’s redesign, due to be finished next March. Smilovic will design the staff uniforms as well as a collection of caftans, dresses, skirts and cashmere sweaters that will be sold exclusively in the hotel’s luxe boutique. In addition, Smilovic is designing special prints for the “Tibi Suite,” which will be splashed onto its walls, couches and beds.
For ideas, Smilovic scours vintage shops in Paris, as well as those in Greenwich, such as Sophia’s Vintage — one of her favorites. “I would say that 90 percent of my prints are vintage-inspired,” she says, noting that she has a penchant for scarves, men’s ties and the wallpaper of past decades. After choosing a look, the designer borrows either its design or its colors to create a new Tibi print. “Obviously, nothing is exactly the same as the original,” she says. “What I later create is just a taste of what inspired me the most.”
A longtime painter and illustrator who began taking classes when she was three, Smilovic ends up drawing or painting about half of Tibi’s prints — her favorite part of her job, she says. In her 2005 resort collection, for instance, she took the acid yellow-and-green graphic print of a Sixties Mod coat — nabbed at a Paris flea market, naturally — and transformed it into a similar print, but in coral, white and khaki, and used it for tiny shorts. And a terry tunic from that same collection was inspired by a psychedelic floral dress from the Seventies, also found in the City of Light.
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Tibi’s collection for spring 2006, which marks the designer’s first foray onto the runway, features motifs that are “timeless, sort of tongue-in-cheek and brilliantly noticeable without being shocking,” Smilovic says. Particularly important, she adds, are prints that are placed, as well as ones that start with a heavy density at the bottom and fade away at the top. “On a recent trip to Paris, I found a smashing little tiger print that’s so chic and modern — it’s a tiger snuggled in bamboo,” she says. “It will be featured on silk jersey for dresses and wrap skirts. The tiger part of the print will be placed, while the bamboo will run up almost the length of the garment.”
Placed prints are a way to offer her customers looks that are more luxurious and special, explains Smilovic, simply because they’re more difficult to knock off. “With shops like H&M and Zara out there, you really have to present things that are harder to replicate,” she says.
The upcoming runway show is a vehicle Smilovic hopes will expand Tibi’s international business. And so far, she seems to be on the right track: She has just begun a relationship with Scout, a London showroom, and is exploring licensing opportunities in Japan. No doubt prints will be a big part of that mix. “We’re ready to take the line to the next level and we’ve expanded the collection to include more prints,” she says, adding that, when it comes to the Tibi girl, “Buying clothes is more about the sport of having fun, and prints definitely play into the whole mentality of having fun while you dress.”