“To be honest with you, I’m a little kind of pinch me.” So says Michael Kors about his 40th anniversary, which he’s celebrating with a blockbuster fall 2021 collection reveal tomorrow. With characteristic ebullience, he adds, “I’m still kind of juiced to just see people on the street wearing what I design.” His cup runneth over: Michael Kors has fans everywhere.
What draws these customers to Kors, beyond 10-ply cashmere and and a super-recognizable geometric logo, is the jet-set dream. A sun and fun ethos has always been a mainstay of the Kors brand, be it the flash of clear blue waters, the diamond sparkle of snow, or the pop of a flashbulb. Celebrities like Zendaya, Viola Davis, and Nicole Kidman flock to the designer not for the Cinderella treatment, but for red-carpet looks with just the right amount of dazzle that lets them shine.
He’s the quintessential New Yorker. “We are the birthplace of the life that is just warp speed,” he says. “I think quickly, I move quickly, I talk quickly. Our ethos has been about the movement of a life lived quickly and indulgence. So there’s comfort, which you need for speed, mixed in with the idea that I believe that most people have this sort of streak in them: that they want to indulge. As much as we all want to have a salad, everyone dreams of the chocolate mousse.”
Kors’s recipe for success, both personally and professionally, is based on the balance of opposites. As far back as he can remember, the designer notes, “there’s a part of me that’s very pragmatic, and then there’s a part of me that’s silly and indulgent.” Those contrasting forces meet in garments that are at once timeless and topical, luxurious yet democratic. Speaking of his process Kors explains that he’ll stick to neutrals when creating dramatic silhouettes, and leans towards “outlandish” colors or prints when working with simple lines. “Am I user friendly? Yes,” he says.
In the course of four decades, the designer has seen fashion and communication go global, and the speed of change increase exponentially. “The world is definitely spinning at a faster axis than it did when I started. [As fashion people] we talked about the rules changing for years, but I think we were just speaking to ourselves. We’d be like, ‘Oh yeah, there are no seasons, there’s no time of day. You can wear sequins to the office, you can wear sneakers at night, you can wear boots in the summer, sandals in the winter. And I think for a long time, we in the industry might have lived that way, but the public hadn’t started thinking that way. And now just all the rules are gone. There are no seasons, there are no borders. The notion of American fashion versus British fashion versus Japanese fashion versus the French—I don’t think any of that matters anymore at all, because I think we’re all plugged into the same things and information is so available and we’re all learning and stealing from each other. So it has gotten far more democratic, and I think more interesting.” Definitely more interesting in Kors’s case. Here, a timeline of his 40 fabulous years in business.
Born Karl Anderson Jr. in Long Island, New York.
Changes name on the occasion of his mother’s marriage to Bill Kors. “My mother said, ‘You’re getting a new last name, so why don’t you pick a new first name?” Appears as a model in advertising for cereal and household products. Sees his first musical, Annie Get Your Gun, starring Ethel Merman.
Opens his first boutique, the Iron Butterfly. “I was real crafty. I had a little shop in my basement selling things that I made. I was 12.”
Becomes a mall rat. “I’m a suburban boy who, like, got a rush walking into the mall,” Kors once told Vogue. “I remember being 14 years old and saving up for something: the tissue paper, the shopping bag, the whole thing.”
“All of a sudden, disco hit. I was 16 and out came the platforms and the Fiorucci jeans. I went out every night.”
Skips his high school prom to dance all night at Studio 54, wearing, he has said, “a piece of raw-silk jersey wrapped into a diaper pant.” Enrolls at the Fashion Institute of Technology and works part time at Lothar’s, which he would later describe as “the Gap for the Guinnesses.” Is at Studio 54 the night that Bianca Jagger rode on a white horse through the club. Needless to say he was late to class the next day. “I have big Porsche sunglasses on, and the teacher says, ‘Well, thank you so much for joining us.’ Of course, the arrogance of 18, I said, “I’m sorry, but I was out at Bianca’s birthday party.’ And all the kids in the class looked at me and were like, Ugh, you’re gross.”
Leaves school to work at Lothar’s full time as a designer and display director. FIT “was the only place that I wanted to go, but I only lasted a semester and a half. Honestly I was itching to work. I also wanted to go out,” the designer later said. “We made simple things, those lace-up-the-front pants Jackie O. always wore, in every color,” he recalled. “It was the first time designer jeans and silk shirts were sold here. It was the first time affluent women wore casual clothes.”
Launches business in May. Shows his small collection of separates, made with the help of a tailor, to Dawn Mello, then at Bergdorf Goodman. She put the pieces, which Kors had hand-delivered driving his aunt’s Mercedes, in the store’s windows—a real coup. “I was 22, so I didn’t really realize the impact of [having the] windows going onto the Avenue at Bergdorf Goodman my first season in business. Now when I look back, I think to myself, Wow, this is the singular pinnacle store that is only here in New York City, nowhere else in the world, and what a way to launch.” December: The designer is profiled in Vogue. “Only 22 years old, Kors firmly believes American women want everyday clothes to be comfortable with dash. And, he makes a point of eliminating any detail that would be gimmicky,” noted the magazine. “I want to make clothes that won’t date,” the designer stated.
Soon came a write-up in New York magazine. “Michael Kors, 22, feels that fashion should be evolutionary, not revolutionary,” read the blurb written by Anna Wintour. “He plans to keep his collections small and interchangeable, stressing pared-down luxury.”
Presents first runway show, for fall 1984, at The Tower Gallery in New York, in which Iman walked. “Michael Kors is a man with a minimalist point of view, and he knows how to deliver it,” reported WWD. “I waited and I did not have a fashion show for almost four years. And honestly, I didn’t think anyone was going to come to the show,” the designer said in a 2021 interview. “I was like, Why would anyone come to see me? I’m new, and I’m small, and I’m somewhat under the radar. There’s a buzz, but I’m not a household name. And I remember at the end of the show, when I came out, I was shocked that not only did it go well, but there was actually an audience there that was excited to see what I had been doing.”
“My customers are confident women who really like themselves. They’re looking to put their imprint on their clothes, and not vice versa,” says Kors in Vogue’s “Special Report in Who’s Who in American Style.”
“Fashion in the late ’80s really started to shift—we saw the emergence of the supermodel with Linda, Cindy, Christy, and Naomi. It was an incredible moment for American fashion. When these women hit the scene, you finally started to see personality, diversity, and variety on the runway. They just lit up the room,” Kors has written. He explored tailoring in depth for his fall 1998 collection, in which these models walked. See all the fall 1988 looks.
Beginning of Kors’s long standing commitment to God’s Love We Deliver, which started when the designer was visiting a friend with AIDS at Beth Israel hospital and noticed that the woman sharing his friend’s room never had visitors. “The head nurse told me that when her family found out she had AIDS, they stopped speaking to her. She was a pariah. It just hit me like thunder. What really inspires me about God’s Love is that this is a very concrete thing: We sat down, we had dinner, I feel nourished,” the designer has said. “That’s something that we can actually roll up our sleeves and do.”
Enters Chapter 11, recovers, launches the lower-priced KORS Michael Kors line in September.
The ceiling falls on Suzy Menkes’s head during Michael Kors’s fall 1991 runway show, presented in a loft in Chelsea. She was thankfully unharmed, but the incident precipitates the creation of a centralized New York Fashion Week. See all the fall 1991 looks.
Debuts Michael Kors Men’s with a show at Grand Central Station.
“One of the things that distinguish the man whom Iman calls ‘the true quintessential American designer’ from other designers of his generation is that there is nothing dark about him,” Jonathan Van Meter writes in a 2015 Vogue profile. “He admits that the last time he staged something spiky was for his fall ’93 collection. ‘We were playing, like, Astor Piazzolla,’ says Kors, ‘and the girls were scowling and they had, like, dirty braids and stomper boots. Carla Bruni, the second girl out, came back and said, ‘There’s a fistfight in the photographers’ pit!’ I remember thinking, Maybe this kind of anger and sadness isn’t really appropriate for Michael Kors.’ ”
Shows a fall collection that he later says was “all about legs, legs, legs, legs, legs.” See all the fall 1994 looks.
Fall 1996 “is probably the most indulgent show we ever did at the time,” says Kors in retrospect. “It’s the first show where I did all of this double-faced cashmere, all of these incredibly lush coats, the sweaters in that show were all 10-ply cashmere.” See all the fall 1996 looks.
Named Creative Director for the house of Celine in Paris. “They’re the only quality French house that was known for their sportswear,” Kors later tells The Los Angeles Times. “They’re interested in real clothes that are expedient, comfortable, pragmatic, and push that luxury envelope. That’s what I do.”
March: Presents debut Celine collection for fall 1998. “I always thought I was such just a New York guy. I never in a million, zillion, trillion years thought that I would ever design and show in Paris,” Kors says, looking back. “The first season designing Celine, back in ’98 and, and showing in Paris, it blew my mind. It felt cinematic to me and I am a movie aficionado and suddenly, I felt like Kay Thompson in Funny Face.” Later in the month Celine Dion wears a Michael Kors for Celine gown while performing “My Heart Will Go On” at the Oscars. July: “I switch between a baseball cap and a beret with great ease,” said Kors of his transatlantic gigs, noting, “Paris is softer; New York is sharper. Doing the two collections is good for me. It allows me the two sides of my personality.” August: Model Carolyn Murphy wears Michael Kors for Celine on the cover of Vogue.
March: Naomi Campbell models a cape in Michael Kors’s fall 1999 collection that Joan Didion subsequently later wears in a Tina Barney portrait. June: Receives the CFDA Womenswear Designer of the Year Award, presented by Susan Lucci. August: Creates Rene Russo’s wardrobe for the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair. September: The theme of his spring 2000 collection is “Palm Bitch.”
May: Writes a “Nostalgia” piece for Vogue about Arthur Elgort’s 1976 photograph of model Lisa Taylor driving. “I think it’s fair to say that you probably can’t get past the era in which you come of age,” he wrote. “When that photograph ran, it was a serious time, and an anti-fashion, anti-affectation moment—a jeans-and-T-shirt moment. To this day, my favorite clothes are still jeans, T-shirts, and sweaters. I love sweatshirts, I love men’s pullovers. But at the same time I don’t want to be taken away from the indulgence, perhaps the innocence, that I had before I came to the realization, which is a kind of disillusionment, that style ultimately emanates from the wearer. This is the question for a jeans-and-T-shirt person like myself: How do you not lose the pleasure? It’s a tug-of-war that’s always being waged at the back of my mind: a to-ing and fro-ing between the impulse to allow the wearer to transform the clothes, and vice versa. When the tension between these impulses is constant, that’s when fashion really works.” September: Opens flagship store on Madison Avenue in New York City.
Launches Michael Kors Collection accessories line.
January: Silas Chou and Lawrence Stroll, as Sportswear Holdings, invest in Michael Kors. June: Receives the CFDA Menswear Designer of the Year Award.
March: Presents final Celine collection, with a lineup that had, according to the program notes, “the sporty American simplicity of C.Z. Guest and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy mixed with the youthful European sophistication of Leslie Caron, Jean Seberg, and Audrey Hepburn.” December: Becomes a judge on the Emmy award-winning reality TV show, Project Runway.
“Time and again, the designer seeks inspiration in America’s open spaces,” notes Vogue’s Nicole Phelps, when reviewing the designer’s spring 2006 collection.
Jay Gatsby and Ali McGraw, in Love Story, are the designer’s twin inspirations for fall 2006’s prep fest.
Receives his fifth consecutive nomination for the CFDA Womenswear Designer of the Year Award. February: Shows what Vogue’s reviewer deems a “super polished” Mad Men-inspired collection.
Dresses First Lady Michelle Obama for her official White House portrait. “We had made the dress for her [but] I had no idea where she was going in it or what she was planning on wearing it for. And not only did I feel incredibly proud, when I saw a First Lady looking that modern, that unencumbered, a First Lady in a portrait wearing black jersey, sleeveless, not a colorful suit with a broach, I felt so excited to be a part of this moment that I knew was a game changer. A huge game changer, not just for me as a designer or as even an American, but just for the world at large,” Kors later says.
June: Becomes the youngest-ever recipient of the CFDA Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award, presented by Anna Wintour. “I’m on the board at the CFDA. I remember sitting at one meeting and Diane von Furstenberg looked at me and she said, ‘Well, now we’re going to talk about the Lifetime Achievement award.’ And I said, ‘I think we have a lot of great ideas.’ And she said, ‘Well, darling, [there’s] one idea that everyone agreed on.’ And I said, ‘What was that?’ And she said, ‘You.’ I looked at her and I said, ‘No, that’s impossible. I’m too young.’ And she said, ‘It’s the work, it’s not your age.’ ” September: Nicole Phelps reports that Kors’ s company is on track to “break the $1 billion sales barrier this year.”
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February: “The designer is marking his 30th year in business,” noted Phelps in her review of Kors’s fall 2011 collection. “Yes, he started young—at 19, in fact. Tonight, he’ll celebrate in the tony confines of Bemelmans Bar at the Carlyle.... Next month, no less a figure than the American ambassador to France will welcome him to Paris, with a festive dinner. Kors is opening a store there on Rue Saint-Honoré, and they’re putting the finishing touches on a renovated Madison Avenue flagship as we speak. In other words, the designer is having a pretty good birthday year.” August: Marries longtime partner Lance LePere, vice president of Michael Kors Women’s Design. December: Takes Michael Kors Holdings Limited public with one of the most successful IPOs in fashion history. “Talk about never in a million years,” jokes the designer in a 2021 interview. “It was a little surreal ringing that bell, and realizing that my approach to design, and really my thoughts on how people should look, was suddenly going to actually explode to a broader audience, and coinciding that with launching Michael Michael Kors and seeing in every city that I was in, a handbag, a watch, a shoe.”
Launches the “Watch Hunger Stop” campaign, partnering with the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) to help fight world hunger.
February: “All anyone could talk about before the Michael Kors show was the news last week that thanks to his soaring stock price, the designer is now a billionaire,” reports Vogue. May: Opens flagship store in Shanghai, China, and celebrates with a runway show titled the Jet Set Experience.
February: Vogue reports: “Kors’s new fall lineup landed smack-dab in the middle of his sweet spot: opulent as all get-out, yet true to the all-American, unfussy, and optimistic spirit on which the company was built.” In the months that follow, he is nominated for a CFDA Womenswear Designer of the Year Award. June: God’s Love We Deliver recognizes Kors’s generosity and commitment by naming its headquarters after him. October: Profiled in Vogue. “No one believes me,” he said then, “but I am such a hippie at heart. My joke about it is that we are such a contradiction: We love caviar with potato chips while listening to Joni Mitchell in Capri in flip-flops, wearing 10-ply cashmere. Everything we love is laid-back but indulgent.”*
Then Vice President Joseph R. Biden presents Kors with the World Food Programme USA’s McGovern-Dole Leadership Award for helping to fight hunger globally.
“This is a designer who, when he decides to do a tie-dye sweatshirt, makes it in multi-ply cashmere (and lines it in cotton, to boot) and throws in a matching cashmere blanket to seal the deal, Vogue opines.”
Michael Kors Holdings Limited changes its name to Capri Holdings Limited, and Capri Holdings Limited completes its acquisition of Versace.
The designer secures the rights to the Studio 54 logo and uses it in his 1970s-themed fall show that finished with a surprise: Barry Manilow performing “Copacabana.” Kors took his bow, reported Vogue, “with another legend of the era, model Patti Hansen, who closed the show in a metallic trouser suit.”
Vice President Kamala Harris wears Michael Kors Collection on the digital cover of February Vogue. “I don’t have kids, so my designs are my children; my husband, and I feel that way about what we do. And I beamed with pride [when I saw the cover] and thought what a stupendous, stupendous moment for the country, for the world, for myself. Amazing. It sounds cliché to say it, but a pinch-me moment.”