Kenneth Cole

Kenneth Cole is a designer, activist, and married father of three who says he thrives at work, at home, and in the community by merging these three worlds. As the creative head of his eponymous fashion company, he has long championed the AIDS research foundation amfAR and firmly believes in engaging the public through social media, in spite of a Twitter controversy he sparked earlier this year. Interviewed by Alison Beard Photography: Peter Murphy HBR: How did you get into the fashion business? Cole: My father had a shoe factory in Brooklyn. I’d graduated from college and was on my way to law school, but that summer I became fascinated with the business. I found myself gravitating toward the sample room and watching the transformation of a bunch of components into what ultimately seemed like a very simple commodity. I was fascinated by how, with the slightest manipulation of the shape of a heel or the finish of a leather, you could end up with a totally different product. In law, the quest was to learn the rules, and he who was most creative at interpreting those rules would go the furthest. In the fashion business, there weren’t any rules. In fact, the better you were at creating something new, the greater the likelihood you would be successful. So I decided to defer law school. How do you maintain creative control over all your products: five brands, shoes and clothes, men’s and women’s? It’s difficult. What I oversee is not the actual design but the design direction of our products. It’s 35 different classifications now, and they all have seasons and market needs and executional complications, but unless they’re executed consistently, the brand fails. So we have to have a specific point of view, and that’s what I spend a lot of my time doing. The design groups meet at the beginning to discuss concept and direction. Then everybody goes off and interprets it and executes it to the degree they think they can. Then we circle back and review it at one or two points and ultimately approve the final product. Do you ever get into the nitty-gritty anymore? When I can. I’ll wander down to the design department and work on conceptualizing if not designing. There’s a funny story about why your company is called Kenneth Cole Productions. In the early 1980s, there were two ways of addressing shoe buyers. One could take a room at the Hilton Hotel with about 1,100 other companies, where the buyers would walk all the rooms. Or one could take a big fancy showroom near the hotel. I didn’t really have the resources to afford either. So, on a whim, I called a friend who was in the trucking business and asked to borrow one of his 40-foot trailers. Then I called the mayor’s office and said, “Excuse me, how does one get permission to park a trailer on the corner of Sixth Avenue and 56th Street?” And they said, “Sorry, son, they don’t. This is New York. You get permission only under two circumstances: If you’re a utility company servicing our streets, or if you’re a production company shooting a full-length motion picture.” So I hung up the phone and changed the name of my company to Kenneth Cole Productions, Inc., and the following morning I filed for a permit to shoot a motion picture called The Birth of a Shoe Company. I opened for business on December 2nd. I had a cameraman, stanchions, and klieg lights. Within two and a half days, I had sold 40,000 pairs of shoes. And the company today is still Kenneth Cole Productions to remind us of the importance of resourcefulness and problem solving, and that the best solution is rarely the most expensive—and almost always the most creative. When you were first starting out as a designer, where did you draw inspiration from? It’s not much different than today. I try to be out in the world and understand what it is that people are looking for. My job isn’t to tell people what they should wear. My job is to find out what they want and give it to them in a way they didn’t quite expect. When I was younger I would often go to nightclubs and sit in the best-lit corner to look at what people chose to wear, or I’d go out and around the city—to places where people express their sense of what they think looks good. So, I get a sense of that, and then I try to interpret it. Why was your first big ad campaign, in the 1980s, linked to AIDS awareness? At the time, people wanted to get involved in causes. There was “We Are the World,” Hands Across America, Live Aid, World Aid, Farm Aid. And I thought: If this is what is inspiring people, then I, too, would like to connect with them in a more meaningful way. AIDS was a problem nobody was speaking about. We didn’t know how to cure it, but we knew how to contain it. The biggest obstacle was the stigma. So I did a campaign showing most of the big models in our industry at the time and children. The message was “For the future of our children, support AIDS research.” All of a sudden, my associates were feeling a bigger, more emotional bond to the business and the brand. I joined the board of amfAR a couple of years later. I’ve done their marketing and branding ever since, and I became chairman in 2005. It sounds as if your involvement with amfAR has been as rewarding as your day job. I learned years ago not to distinguish between the two. Everybody struggles to find a balance between their personal lives and their professional lives, and in some cases, their connection with the community. So what I’ve looked to do over the years is marry as many of those as I can. I know you have a very successful wife and three daughters. What’s the secret to balancing family with work? And what have you learned by living with four women? I’ve learned that I can’t win 24 hours a day. I’ve learned that life is about finding a working compromise. I’ll give you one anecdote. When my youngest daughter was eight, she came to me one day after school, when I was in my office at home, and said, “What are you doing?” I said, “I’m working.” She said, “Who gives you the work?” I said, “Well, I give it to myself because I have to get it done.” She goes, “Well, aren’t you the boss?” I said, “Yes, that’s why I give myself the work, and that’s why I have to make sure it gets done.” The next day, at almost the same time, she came to me. “What are you doing? Aren’t you the boss? Who gives you the work?” And then, the same thing two days later. I told a friend about it: “She’s a smart girl, but she just doesn’t get it.” And he said, “Or you don’t. She spent a week trying to teach you a lesson, and clearly, you still haven’t learned it.” So I learned not to take what I do all that seriously. At the end of the day, people don’t need our shoes, and they don’t need our clothes. The truth is, we have to make ’em think they do and make ’em glad they thought it and make ’em think it again. But I continue to remind myself and my associates that, important as this may feel, people have more compelling ways to spend their money. I know that you’re quite active in social media. Why do you like it so much? You know, we used to tell people what we thought. Today there’s no place for a monologue. There’s an exchange, and we have to be appropriately responsive. The window between creation and consumption has also significantly shortened. Before, we used to have to anticipate what people would want and then hope six months later that we were right. But today you have ongoing feedback. The great thing, too, is the world got very small. Today, if you are viable anywhere, you’re viable everywhere. If you put forth a fashion or a social message, you have the ability to connect in a meaningful way to a significant audience, very quickly, which can either work for you or against you. A tweet of yours—linking the uprising in Egypt to your spring collection—sparked a backlash. What’s the best way to handle a mistake like that? There are no rules. But I think if you say something and miscalculate the impact, it’s important to not dig your heels in. We put out an explanation, an apology. Has it changed your behavior? I filter myself now. I often think twice and seek some objective feedback before I press “Send.” But I still love that the brand and I, personally, have this viral platform to talk to people and provoke them in hopefully meaningful and inspiring ways. So much of what’s happening around us is being communicated with these new mediums. And if you’re not where the message is, it’s hard for you be relevant. I need to understand what’s on people’s minds and what people are thinking. And I love hearing it.

Kenneth Cole

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