The Rationalist

Jason McDonald

"God, it's only clothing!" Lam says half-mockingly, sitting at his glass-topped desk in a small office at the back of his all-white studio on West 26th Street, where sewing machines are humming and patterns are being pinned even though it's the Monday before Thanksgiving. Not that there is any sign of trickle-down anxiety, either: The mood in the studio seems decidedly calm, even peaceful. Then again, Lam is about as undiva-like a designer as the species allows. Although I have seen him act impatient or a bit irritated, he is as far from a drama queen as one can be and still fret about whether a particular blouse needs buttons on the cuff, if so how many buttons, and should they be self-covered or left as they are. Today, Lam is dressed in an approximation of the uniform he's worn each time I've seen him (not counting a formal dinner event): a T-shirt under a gray V-neck or crewneck and a variation on the theme of jeans. He often wears sneakers—a pair of subtly tricolored Converse All-Stars, say—but today he is wearing unzipped, shearling-lined, Siberia-ready boots because, as he explains, he felt cold when he woke up.

"I like to think of my line [as being] for people who can have anything they want and feel that they can indulge it because they've earned it," Lam explains, leaning back in his desk chair, arms clasped behind his head. "Women 35 and over. Someone who works hard in technology or film but is not bound by traditional personas. They're past wanting to try every Four Seasons in the world, and they're not going to let fashion dictate their lives. They're not going to fly over to Paris and have five fittings." He pauses for a second and then adds, narrowing his eyes and gritting his bottom teeth forward as he does whenever he's in the groove, whether considering an idea or the way the ruffles on a sleeveless blouse flow: "It's kind of me."

I'm not quite sure, in all honesty, who Lam's idealized prototype of a woman resembles, unless it would be a sculptress—an aspiring Louise Bourgeois, say—who happens to have enough money not to blanch at his prices, which he describes as "not anal-retentive," such that the woman buying his clothes would have to worry about "losing her husband or having to hide her shopping bag." Separates average $750 for trousers and $800 for blouses; dresses start at $1,500 and eveningwear at between $3,500 and $4,000. Lam refers to the sketches he always keeps in front of him as vital to the process of figuring out "how she's getting dressed," pointing out that "it's really important as a male designer to try and understand how women want to express themselves and appreciate it." In any case, he offers up this assessment in a considered tone, as if he were feeling his way toward a response to the questions that continue to be asked, if only implicitly, since the launching of his first ballyhooed solo collection in September 2003: Who is Derek Lam, and what exactly is his aesthetic?

This Is A Developing Story

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