Loris Diran is the winner of this year’s FGI (Fashion Group International) Rising Star Award 2011 for Excellence in Menswear. If you have been living under a rock, or remanded to the Space Station taking photographs of the planets, allow me to introduce him to you.
Sometimes You Have To Expect The Unexpected
I met with Mr. Diran in his shop the other day. His shop is downtown. Way downtown. Manhattan’s Bowery may not be the kind of neighborhood one first associates with fashion. Historically, the Bowery has been a dark place, bereft of the frivolity of couture. The Bowery has long been the refuge of the disenfranchised. More accessible associations might be skid row bums or new wave bohemians. It may seem counter intuitive (in fact, it may actually be) for the sophisticated and comely Loris Diran to take up residence in the Bowery, but business seems to be brisk. Mr. Diran is in fact, in good company with neighbors like John Varvatos, Derek Lam, Charlotte Ronson and Rogan.
If one were to stop by Mr. Diran’s shop on East First Street, the first signifier that you are in the correct neighborhood would be his corporate icon, emblazoned on a flag, snapping in the May wind, is consists of a black crown of thorns set against a white field, which seems to speak to a deeply ingrained Christian mysticism. That may all be well and true, but on further revelation, like the clothing he designs, all is not as simple as first expected. Loris derives from the old English, meaning sorrow, something elegiac. Diran is Armenian, meaning crown as in aristocratic. Ergo, sorrowful crown, as in a crown of thorns, therefore his icon is as well crafted as his famed collections.
I place great stock in how other people treat each other. Mr. Diran was just saying good-bye to some customers visiting the US from Columbia, customers who placed his boutique on their prioritized list of things to do. While only entering in on the tail end of their conversation Mr. Diran very ably assisted them with great aplomb, diplomacy and even a little bit of panache. He gently guided them through the process of selecting the most flattering style, and superior colors based on what the garment was meant to accomplish, I.e., mother of the bride dress, it needed to be attractive, age appropriate, stylish, but not be distractive. In another incarnation, he might make for a very charming ambassador.
The Trajectory Of A Designer…
I doubt that Mr. Diran ever wanted to be anything as mundane as a fireman, astronaut or cowboy (well, maybe a cowboy). So how does one become a fashion designer? Mr. Diran comes to fashion with a life story that demands attention. Mr. Diran is of French and Armenian descent, and grew up in Lake Como, Italy, France and the Upper West Side. Something sounds awry here! Regardless, this exposed him to multiple cultures, and expanded his worldview significantly. The mélange of disparate cultures informed him of the infinitely differing levels of what constitutes taste. His family life may sound quite gentrified, but he assures me he grew up in a family of “modest means“. TBD.
Loris Diran is an apple that has not fallen far from its tree. I do know this; his parents were a very handsome and stylish couple as evidenced on his periodic face book postings. So, it is no wonder then, with superior DNA already set in place, Mr. Diran is as they say remarkably attractive and stylish. Mr. Diran is a square jawed, bedroom-eyed gentleman with lips prettier than Angelina Jolie. There was no question as a youth that he would he start his career as a model, perform on Broadway and appeared on Capital Records as a recording artist. Fame and fortune seemed to be his destiny. Destiny, a philosophy his father ascribed to, and he, Loris, all together rejects as being self-defeating. Something he, Loris, is not.
This doesn’t just happen in Hollywood! Having attended LaGuardia, The School for Fashion, Art, Music and Entertainment aka FAME. Timed almost too perfectly, he was going to FAME just about the time the film came out in 1980, and was cast in the production.
Back then, the hip social scene for young people coming of age was certainly not found on the Upper West Side, or Broadway. The emerging social scene was “downtown”. Anything below 14th Street was considered downtown, a place where night creatures trolled CBGB’s Trude Hellers, Rothko, the Unique Clothing Warehouse, The Mercury Lounge, Canal Jeans, Click, The Paradise Garage, LaMama, and perhaps the Catholic Worker. It was a time when novelist Sarah Shulman was writing People In Trouble, which later became Rent. Films like Alphabet City, Liquid Sky and The Warriors warned us about the unruly and reckless youth of “Downtown”. The period was about glam-punk and pop culture. Downtown was a amalgam of music and fashion, where Willy Smith, The Velvet Underground, Madonna, Cindi Lauper, Patricia Fields, Dead Kennedy’s, Patrick Robinson, Devine, Cherry Bomb, Robert Mapplethorpe, Patti Smith, Henry Rollins, Stephen Sprouce, and Jeff Acquilion were likely to cross paths on Broadway /Lafayette or the N train. The creative community was turned on to the counter-culture. Danger or the fear of it can be quite exciting. Mr. Diran was a frequent habitué of those worlds, so Mr. Diran has in many respects, some twenty years later, come home, as he is now ensconced in the Bowery once again. The Bowery of today is an altogether different place. How imperiled can you feel in a world of Duane Reade, Starbucks the Gap?
Mr. Diran is wearing a white pocketed tee shirt and black stretch jeans with skinny leg (no belt) black trainers, and two narrow bracelets, nothing more or less. Nothing more or less is needed. He is casual and comfortable. There is no pretense or falsehood. However every picture online (and there are thousands) Mr. Diran is dressed in one of his signature suits. Therefore, I am taken aback. I have dressed for the occasion, in a vintage-pilled herringbone, gradient ombre ribbed crew with a Pierre Cardin ascot, grey slacks and black quilted slippers on what is a rainy day. Wearing velvet slippers when it is raining tells you only one thing, I am an optimist or completely impractical.
While we talk about many things tangentially Mr. Diran speaks with affection for the retailer Century 21, which at first seems an odd choice to have an affinity for. Mr. Diran opens up and credits them for a good deal of his fashion education and acumen. He credits Century 21 with introducing him to designers like Gaultier, Martin Margiela, and Yamamoto. Designers now well know, but who were relatively unknown in the US in the early 1980’s. Mr. Diran an excellent point, that Century 21 was, and may still be a place to expand our horizons beyond Banana Republic or Club Monaco.
Ah… to be young, gifted and beautiful, lest you delude yourself and think Mr. Diran slipped into success because of his good looks please know he was twice blessed with both an alarming amount of talent and intelligence. Temper that with a reputation for being one of the nicest and most affirming gentlemen in the industry and you have what the French call “je ne sais quoi” meaning, “I don’t know what,” that indiscernible thing that defies explanation, but is desirable.
You might think that Mr. Diran went to “the school of hard knocks”, granted, a solid work ethic. diligence and tenacity did not open up all the doors you might surmise. Life has not been a piece of cake. The world has not beaten a path to his door. Graced with a facility for design and an unerring eye for detail, Mr. Diran didn’t spend every waking hour downtown, he graduated with a Fine Arts degree from NYU, but where does someone known as being one of the nicest and most affirming gentlemen in the industry go with a bachelor’s degree in fine art?
Visit the Loris Diran website at www.lorisdiran.com
Return in two days for the continuing story…
