Nanette Lepore Back in the Game With Maria Cecilia, a Direct-to-consumer Brand
Nanette Lepore is back in the fashion game.
She has launched a new womenswear brand called Maria Cecilia, featuring 17 pieces including dresses, tops, skirts, suiting and bottoms. Prices range from $175 to $875. The looks are produced in New York City and are available to be purchased at mariacecilianyc.com.
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“In my 60s, I decided that I need to start all over again,” Lepore said in a telephone interview Thursday. “For the time being it’s direct-to-consumer. I think eventually, I’ll offer a little wholesale. I want to be careful about who it is and want to have a more relaxed situation.”
Lepore spent a year searching for a good name for the company and decided to name it after her grandmother, Maria, and her own middle name, Cecilia.
In 2015, Lepore sold the majority of her eponymous business to Bluestar Alliance LLC. By the following year, Lepore was in litigation in federal court, charging breach of contract. A strong proponent of the Save the Garment Center movement in New York City, Lepore alleged Bluestar cut her out of the business and allowed licensees to manufacture foreign-made “inferior and defective products” under her trademarks, according to the complaint. The case was resolved and they ended up parting ways. Bluestar bought out Lepore’s 20 percent ownership stake. At the time of the 2015 sale, Lepore had maintained a small stake and was doing a designer line herself, which she shut down in March 2020.
“I no longer have any part of my name,” Lepore said Thursday.
Meantime, Bluestar is having success with the Nanette Lepore business.
“Today we thrive with the [Nanette Lepore] brand. It’s been great and selling extremely well,” said Joey Gabbay, chief executive officer and co-founder at Bluestar Alliance.
Since 2020, Lepore has spent time figuring out what she wanted to do next in her life.
“I need to work right now,” said Lepore, who is financing the business on her own. Her husband, Bob Savage, who had been president and CEO of the original Nanette Lepore, has retired. “I’m so excited and happy to be back at work, and it’s also a financial decision,” she said.
With an emphasis on luxurious fabrics in styles and shapes that work for women of all ages, Maria Cecilia is starting off the same way Nanette Lepore did back in 1992. Lepore said she’s shopping by herself for fabrics at retail, and ordering through old resources that she liked. She’s also working out of her New York apartment, where her dining room table has become a cutting table and she’s been holding fittings in her living room.
“I’m going to the factories every day on my own. I have no employees. I have a volunteer board of directors, which is really sweet. It’s people who used to work for me who are pushing me back out there,” Lepore said. “Day to day, I’m the one who has to pick the zippers up and have them shortened, and run over and get the care labels. I’m losing weight running around,” she said. “I want to be really careful. I know how quickly money can fly away. I’m trying to be as cautious as possible.”
She said she started the new business committing to eight styles, “and of course, it doubled.”
Her eponymous business peaked at around $140 million in retail sales in 2007-08, and the brand was sold at stores such as Neiman Marcus, Bloomingdale’s, Saks Fifth Avenue and Macy’s. Lepore’s designs were worn by such celebrities as former First Lady Michelle Obama, Nicki Minaj, Taylor Swift and Sofia Vergara. She also had around 140 employees in New York City, 10 stores in the U.S. and two stores in Tokyo with licensed partners.
“We grew too big too fast. We were doubling every year and we weren’t making wise decisions, and we weren’t watching the money close enough,” Lepore said. She said they really needed partners at the time.
Asked who she’s gearing the new line to, Lepore said, “You get really insecure as you get older and wonder if you’re really valid. I had a vintage outfit of mine appear on ‘Euphoria,’ [worn by Maud Apatow in the finale of the second season] and my daughter and her friends went crazy. They started searching for some of my old things from the ’90s on eBay and online. Partially, I’m gearing things toward 25-year-olds, and partially I have a lot of friends who love my brand and are looking for things. Literally, it’s stuff for my daughter and me.”
When she first started putting together a campaign, she realized she has many friends who have daughters around her daughter Violet’s age, that it’s easy for her to choose some of them to feature in the images. She said recently one of her friends came over and bought an outfit for herself, which she said she’s going to share with her daughter.
Lepore said the nice thing about doing this on her own is she’s not being pigeon-holed and told what type of things she needs to design.
“The beginning was a lot of friends and family purchasing, but slowly we’re adding new names to the list, and it’s slowly growing.” The website, which was developed by Effigy Agency, launched in late May.
She said she is using two factories in the Garment District on 35th and 39th Streets, and she has a cutting room on 38th Street. “If we didn’t have this Garment Center, there’s no way I could do this. My biggest cut ticket is 24 pieces right now. I go in and recut as I need. I could never get away with that in any other way.”
She plans to do two to three collections a year. Sizes range from XS to XL and 0 to 10. “If I have a friend who needs something, I’ll go ahead and grade the pattern because it’s just helping me in the future,” he said.
She’s also getting to work with luxurious fabrics, which she loves. For example, she’s using a beautiful hammered silk satin. “I’m so happy, I don’t have to worry about margin. I can buy expensive, beautiful fabrics again.” Other fabrics in the line are silk charmeuse, rayon crepe, recycled cotton shirtings and Indian plaid dupioni.
Lepore described the new collection as “luxuriously fun pieces” such as ball skirts in fuchsia and black. “The ball skirt is because my daughter was raiding my closet and pulled out an old ball skirt,” she said. “I think that people want a sense of drama back. And then there’s a beautiful, silky dress in the hammered silk that’s floaty and long. I’m getting the vibe that the world is ready for a little drama and a little escapism.” She’s also doing “fun little minis” that are embroidered, as well as pajama sets that can be worn out during the day.
She’s hoping to find a wholesale partner, like she had in the late ’80s with Jayne Harness at Barneys New York, when Lepore would bring swatches in and they’d work together.
Asked what pitfalls she hopes to avoid in this new business, she said she doesn’t want to mark anything ever and she doesn’t want to have too much inventory. “I want to live with clothing that’s continuous and people come back to me because they loved what they got and they want it in a new color, or want the long-sleeved version or the short one. I want my clientele to depend on me for aspects of their life that they can count on and keep updating,” she said.
She said she’s hoping to do some fun collaborations, a fashion show some day, as well as pop-up shops in different cities. In fact, she’s participating in a pop-up shop from Thursday until Sunday at Lazypoint, a clothing store in Amagansett, New York.
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