California Apparel News

Designer Jade Howe has the answer to the metrosexual— and the limitations of that much-used new term coined to describe a man who takes as keen an interest in his wardrobe and grooming as women typically do.

Howe’s answer is “indie executive,” an umbrella term that encompasses the entire Howe Collection and, in essence, defines the Howe customer.

“Metrosexual describes what he does. This describes who he is,” Howe said.

“We are giving him a name, an identity,” he said. “[Indie executive] doesn’t mean executive as in Wall Street, suit and tie. The fact that he is independent is the key.”

The designer has his newly opened Howe Homme store to thank for fine-tuning how he describes his customer and helping to inspire the indie executive term.

Howe Homme opened in November in the designer’s Santa Ana, Calif., loft. The by-appointment- only boutique has been drawing enough traffic from the neighborhood and word-of-mouth to warrant extending its hours to Thursday through Saturday beginning in March.

After two and a half months of tackling men’s fashion emergencies and witnessing the diversity of customers who come to the store, the designer redefined his customer and, in some cases, redesigned his line.

“When you’re sitting one on one with your customer in your house and they’re talking about their needs and their views, it’s very powerful,” said Howe, who designed menswear for 18 years for such labels as Quiksilver, Volcom and Hurley International before launching the Howe Collection in 2001.”

“It’s been a revelation for me,” he continued. “I keep getting new inspiration all the time and it’s coming from the customer.

In its brief history, Howe Homme has been attracting customers as diverse as “55- year-old attorneys or financiers looking for a woven shirt and then some 22-year-old emo kid looking for the skinniest, tightest shirt we’ve got and the skinniest jeans and then some large buf fed-out guy coming in wanting suit jackets because he knows we make them in XL,” the designer explained.

New silhouette

Men are beginning to take more interest in their clothing and their style, Howe said, adding that it’s been several decades since there was a predominant style for men. A fashion shift toward luxury materials and brands and the emergence of premium denim have all helped establish the contemporary menswear category, which is somewhere between young men’s casualwear and traditional menswear suitings.

Howe also credits the shift away from oversize, boxy pants, shirts and tees to a slimmer silhouette for helping drive men’s interest in fashion.

“The whole premium category has tapped into this reshaping the silhouette,” he said.

“You know how trouser pants are cut wide at the waist and then they just taper down at the leg?” he explained. “All that fabric from the butt to the knee is just useless. The only reason it’s there is to fit the masses, so to speak.”

Howe said he explains the look to customers and urges them to try something on in the more-fitted silhouette.

“Once you give them that explanation it literally changes them,” he said. “Overnight, they cannot go back to what they were wearing.”

Expanding the definition of Howe

The expanding definition of Howe’s retail customer is a continuation of the expanding definition of the entire collection since it launched four years ago.

“We started this line out inspired by the indie rock skate kid, which is cool and edgy and hip—but it’s not much of a customer base,” Howe said. “Once we started to broaden and mature a little bit, it’s been cool that we’ve kept that edge and that image and that fan base, but the appeal is broadening out.”

The indie executive term will help target the customer, Howe said, explaining that the phrase will appear on hangtags and the concept will be realized in look books for the collection.

For Fall, Howe will feature a softer look centered around fabrics the designer created based on vintage 19th-century wallpaper prints on dobby fabrications. The fabrics are discharge printed and then washed down for a muted look and a soft hand.

“With this whole indie executive thing, one of the things I realized is that it’s a little bit softer, it’s not so structured and so tailored. So we washed things a little bit more,” he said. “We’re still grinding the edges—it’s not overly done—but a lot of the collection is almost soft to the eye from where we’ve come from. And the texture and the hand on the woven shirts is just absolute butter.”

The designer has also been working on a printing technique he calls “water staining.” Although he’s tight-lipped on details about the technique, he described the results as “prints dropped out of stains and the stain itself becomes the print. It’s not tie dyeing, just water staining.”

The denim, made from Italian fabrics, will feature a technique Howe is calling “plaiting” or “piecing,” in which pocket facings will be layered for a look he describes as “built.”

“The thread is all dyed-to-match indigo, so the jean itself is not overly contrasty, but when it washes down it looks rich, looks luxurious,” he explained.

The collection’s palette will include rich shades like dried clay, Sumatra, dark roast, seafoam green and blue calm.

The new collection and the indie executive concept will bow during the Feb. 14–17 run of the Pool trade show in Las Vegas.

“We wanted to hold this collection in tight,” Howe said. “We will be busting it out at Pool so it hits like a Mack truck.”