Outsider trading

BAND of Outsiders' Scott Sternberg loves being in LA, away from the NY "fashion bubble". The man is not "just some nerdy Jew selling clothes".

Scot Sternberg

IT'S early evening when WISH meets Scott Sternberg, the designer behind the label Band of Outsiders, in his company's offices above a warehouse in Hollywood. It's already dark, and surprisingly chilly, for Los Angeles.

The previous 24 hours was a period of torrential rain in the city with flash flooding, trees down, car accidents and roofs blown off all over town. It's definitely not the sort of weather that comes to mind when you think of LA. "We like it when it rains here because it's a bit of variety," says Sternberg, confirming the popularly held belief that it's always sunny in California.

So it seems appropriate to ask Sternberg, who hails from Dayton, Ohio, what he likes about living in LA and why he decided to base his clothing company 4000km from the centre of American fashion, New York. "It's a good question because it's such a strange place," he says. "It's beautiful but you have access to a very strange level of culture. It's not like New York culture where you have theatre and the arts and so on. You have access to interesting people in LA and creators here and the like but the design talent is really all in New York. I can't imagine ever doing this in New York. It would certainly make my life easier from a resource point of view and building the company into what I want it to be, which is super challenging out here. But by the same token, from a brand perspective - and this isn't why I live here - this is an interesting story for people to latch on to."

Sternberg's story has certainly grabbed attention. Nearly every article on him begins with the fact that he was a former agent with Creative Artists Agency, better known as CAA, and worked in the film industry. And it's a great story angle - a young Ari Gold (played by Jeremy Piven in the TV series Entourage) figure, who turns his back on a promising Hollywood career to try his luck as a fashion designer and ends up creating one of the coolest labels on the planet - only this is Hollywood and things aren't always what they seem.

"I wasn't a talent agent, I was an agent who worked and represented talent but within a totally new realm," says Sternberg. "I worked with companies [including brands such as Coca-Cola] and helped them figure out how to leverage movies and television and celebrities and all that type of stuff. At CAA I discovered a strong entrepreneurial instinct and a desire to make something, as opposed to represent something or to provide a service to someone.

I was able through working for this really great company to work out that I didn't want to be an agent, I wanted to be a client. I wanted to be the creator not the representative and more than that I didn't want to make movies. I wanted to make something that you can hold, stuff and objects."

Sternberg is uncharacteristically honest for a fashion designer. For one, he doesn't spin the typical story that he always had a burning desire to be one. "It took me some time to connect the dots between wanting to be an entrepreneur and my love of clothing and my personal style. There was a gap in my brain that said I could never be a fashion designer but then I figured out that it was possible and it could even be done in Los Angeles."

He also has an acute understanding of how it all works.

"I get it, we're a great story and the next time you do an LA issue there will be another great story and that's just the reality of what this is. If you can embrace that and deal with it then you can have an honest conversation and I think people really respond to that honesty. I didn't come into this naive, I came in really, really clear about what I wanted to achieve."

He is just as honest when it comes to the business side of things. In 2010, he freely told a reporter from The Wall Street Journal that Band of Outsiders had revenue of $US12 million at that time and that his plan was to transform it into $US40 million over the next three years. As a private company, Sternberg doesn't have to talk about financials and most private companies choose not to. "[The WSJ] really pressed hard and I thought about and I thought, well he really wants to know and nobody else ever gives it up so who cares, what's this going to do?"

What it did was let the fashion world know Sternberg was not "just some nerdy Jew selling clothes", as he put it self-deprecatingly during our photo shoot, and that the cool dudes out in LA behind Band of Outsiders label were as savvy, if not savvier, than any fashion label in New York. They weren't making clothes in between attending auditions or surfing the break, they were serious about fashion.

"People were amused that we actually gave it up," says Sternberg. "But I've learnt over the years that articles like the one in the Journal are as much a part of your brand as the article in GQ or Vogue. Fashion is so much about brand and perception. It's not just about beautiful product. The product has to be beautiful and it has to be unique, there's no question about that. But a shirt is a shirt is a shirt at the end of the day so acknowledging that first of all and having a brand message with a unique product is helpful. I sort of learnt to create a brand in a really honest way at CAA after seeing a lot of people create and maintain brands in a slightly dishonest way."

Sternberg left CAA in 2004 and armed with little more than some savings and a couple of credit cards he launched Band of Outsiders. At first it was a limited collection of shirts and ties in vintage fabrics. He says he didn't think it was a risky venture. "I wasn't trying to show at New York Fashion Week or anything big like that. I was basically trying to be Ralph Lauren and just show some shirts and ties to magazine editors and menswear buyers. It cost less than $5000 to put the samples together and they were all made in vintage fabrics, which meant we didn't have to invest heavily, we could just buy by the yard." Sternberg says that when the orders started coming in he paid for the production of them with credit cards, which at the time in the US had marginal interest rates. "It wasn't risky at all but now it feels like the stakes are much higher," he says.

In 2007, a menswear-inspired women's line called Boy was introduced on the back of demand from his existing retailers and later a diffusion women's line called Girl. "Womenswear wasn't always part of the plan, it was something that became inevitable as we went along," says Sternberg. "But womenswear is where the volume is and by the middle of the year it will be bigger than the men's side. Women just buy more clothes, plain and simple."

In 2008, four years after launching Band of Outsiders, Sternberg won the Council of Fashion Designers of America award for emerging talent. In 2009, he was named Menswear Designer of the Year (in a tie with Italo Zucchelli for Calvin Klein).

Band of Outsiders gets its name from the 1964 film Bande a Part by Jean-Luc Godard and cinema has influenced Sternberg's collections from the very beginning. His collections have referenced West Side Story, Manhattan and Picnic at Hanging Rock but it's not simply the film's costumes that inspire him. "It's not like I like stylish men from old movies," he says. "What I like are the narratives, the music, the lighting, the whole thing. I think about collections in terms of narrative and in terms of these big cinematic images."

For the brand's Autumn/Winter 2012 collection shown last month in New York and pictured above, Sternberg is reported to have looked to filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky and his film El Topo for inspiration. The show, which combined menswear and womenswear was, acccording to Women's Wear Daily, a more sophisticated and decidedly more luxe collection than the label has shown before.

To produce the Boy collections, Sternberg inked a deal with Italian manufacturer Pier SpA and in return sold them a small stake in the business. The rest of the company is owned by Sternberg but he is looking for investors so he can ramp up his expansion plans. "There are different ways to get money these days. I think the old notion that you just get in an investor and they give you a whole lot of money doesn't exist any more. It's not just cash, you want to get smart money; people who hopefully know what the hell they're doing when it comes to opening a store or knowing their market or whatever it happens to be."

The next big step for Band of Outsiders is for Sternberg to appoint a CEO to handle the business side of things so that he can concentrate on the product. "I'm a hands-on designer," he says. "I have to touch and feel things, I can't get there otherwise. The goal is to step back a bit and get more people in because we want to open stores and things like that, which brings a new element of stuff to deal with."

The real challenge will be to maintain the buzz and exclusivity of Band of Outsiders - or "the great story", as Sternberg puts it - and to grow the brand at the same time. As for relocating to the Big Apple one day? "I just don't see it happening," he says. "We'd lose what's unique about us if we went into that fashion bubble."

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