New Line From Directives' Drobnick
Sheri Drobnick, a former merchandise manager with Directives West, has left the Los Angeles–based buying office to launch a new label aimed at “a woman who has a designer headset but not a designer budget.”
The line is tentatively called Credibility by Sheri Drobnick and will launch at Fashion Coterie in New York in September.
Drobnick was with Directives for 15 years, covering the contemporary and better sportswear market. After leaving the buying office, she accompanied her husband, Richard, a vice provost at the University of Southern California, on a business trip to Bangkok in October.
While there, she had a pair of pants made for herself and was impressed with the quality and the cost to manufacture.
And that, she said, “is when all the bells started going off” and she began to think about launching her own line.
The concept for the line is to offer women ages 20 to 60 a collection of fashion-forward career clothing.
“The whole market in general has gotten so casual and young and girlie, it left few options for women who wanted to know what to wear to work,” Drobnick said, adding that she wanted to take more of a fashion approach to the career category than she has seen in the market.
“I want to up the ante,” she said. “I don’t want it to be plain and basic. I want to bring the word stunning back to the industry.”
The collection will take its trend cues from the designer market and will feature European fabrics. It will be produced in Thailand.
Drobnick is opening a design studio in downtown Los Angeles at 112 W. 9th St. at the end of the year and is currently looking for showrooms in New York and Los Angeles.
She plans to target retailers such as Los Angeles–based Ron Herman/Fred Segal–Melrose, Traffic and Dari; Scoop in New York, Saks Fifth Avenue and Barneys New York —all “the great specialty stores,” she said.Drobnick can be reached at (213) 840-5490. —Alison A. Nieder
