How Ernest Alexander Got His Start
It took knocking on Garment District doors to get his line off the ground.
After graduating from Columbia University—and making a brief stop at the Guggenheim in Venice—Ernest Sabine (middle name: Alexander) found himself with a successful career in fashion advertising. But, then, it wasn’t exactly what he wanted—he was itching to create the sorts of things he was marketing. He quit his job and took business classes, simultaneously doodling patterns and trying to find someone to make them for him, tracking down old-school clothiers who don’t bother with silly things like listed phone numbers. Here’s how the pieces came together. —seth putnam
Looks from his fall 2010 collection.
“I sensed that I loved being closer to the product. I thought one day I’d love to have my own fashion line. But when you’re young, there’s a scariness: How do you launch a company, or how do you even get anything made? Without having gone to fashion school, you’re on the outside.”
Chalkboard sketch of one of his shirts.
“I remember schlepping down Seventh Avenue with a roll of fabric on my shoulder. Even now, I sit here and agonize over things: Should this button move half an inch down?”
The big, happy Ernest Alexander team today.
“I always had this pipe dream. But it seemed far off; I thought, ‘One day, in 15 years.’ But Andy [Dunn, the CEO of Bonobos] gave a talk at Columbia and was passing around these really soft corduroy pants. These guys are Stanford MBAs, and here they are launching their own pants company. It really inspired me. I realized if you’ve got an idea and some smarts, you can do this. That’s what gave me the push and made me realize the dream was closer than I thought.”
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How Ernest Alexander Got His Start
It took knocking on Garment District doors to get his line off the ground.
After graduating from Columbia University—and making a brief stop at the Guggenheim in Venice—Ernest Sabine (middle name: Alexander) found himself with a successful career in fashion advertising. But, then, it wasn’t exactly what he wanted—he was itching to create the sorts of things he was marketing. He quit his job and took business classes, simultaneously doodling patterns and trying to find someone to make them for him, tracking down old-school clothiers who don’t bother with silly things like listed phone numbers. Here’s how the pieces came together. —seth putnam
Looks from his fall 2010 collection.
“I sensed that I loved being closer to the product. I thought one day I’d love to have my own fashion line. But when you’re young, there’s a scariness: How do you launch a company, or how do you even get anything made? Without having gone to fashion school, you’re on the outside.”
Chalkboard sketch of one of his shirts.
“I remember schlepping down Seventh Avenue with a roll of fabric on my shoulder. Even now, I sit here and agonize over things: Should this button move half an inch down?”
The big, happy Ernest Alexander team today.
“I always had this pipe dream. But it seemed far off; I thought, ‘One day, in 15 years.’ But Andy [Dunn, the CEO of Bonobos] gave a talk at Columbia and was passing around these really soft corduroy pants. These guys are Stanford MBAs, and here they are launching their own pants company. It really inspired me. I realized if you’ve got an idea and some smarts, you can do this. That’s what gave me the push and made me realize the dream was closer than I thought.”
Score the amazing canvas-and-leather purse Ernest made for us—part of his first women’s collection!
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The Story Behind the Finch Briefcase
For his Of a Kind edition, Ernest Alexander looks to his own personal style and to Gregory Peck.
Ernest Alexander Sabine thinks that the briefcase he made for Of a Kind works on any guy—or girl, for that matter. “I’d feel equally as comfortable carrying this bag to a job at a hip advertising firm as I would to a job as a hedge-fund manager in downtown Manhattan,” he explains. Below, he makes his hard sell. —seth putnam
Click here to nab one of the bags Ernest designed for us—before they get away!
Ernest’s sketch of his exclusive creation.
“The design is unique, but it’s still very wearable. It lets people to break out of their business suits without being over-the-top. It allows them an escape. It’s for the guy who doesn’t want to feel he’s part of the pack.”
Chocolate-y leather handles for the stand-out brief.
“Getting back to the roots of American manufacturing is very important to me. We’re using a beautiful gray, wax canvas for the outer that’s actually milled in New Jersey, about 50 miles outside NYC. The lining is this sweet navy twill from St. Louis, and the handles are a rich, brown leather—the color pairing is striking and different. That leather is finished right here in the Garment District. The whole bag is manufactured on 29th Street, just two blocks from our offices. It’s pretty amazing to be able to pop over there and see it.”
Ernest hard at work in his studio.
“What inspires everything we make, in a way, is my personal sense of style, which I’d say is sort of Anglo-British, urban, preppy, with a slight dash of dandy. Since it’s a workwear piece, we imagined a guy carrying it around town. You picture To Kill A Mockingbird and Gregory Peck with his masculinity and quiet resolve.”
comments, reblogs & likes
How Ernest Alexander Got His Start
It took knocking on Garment District doors to get his line off the ground.
After graduating from Columbia University—and making a brief stop at the Guggenheim in Venice—Ernest Sabine (middle name: Alexander) found himself with a successful career in fashion advertising. But, then, it wasn’t exactly what he wanted—he was itching to create the sorts of things he was marketing. He quit his job and took business classes, simultaneously doodling patterns and trying to find someone to make them for him, tracking down old-school clothiers who don’t bother with silly things like listed phone numbers. Here’s how the pieces came together. —seth putnam
Looks from his fall 2010 collection.
“I sensed that I loved being closer to the product. I thought one day I’d love to have my own fashion line. But when you’re young, there’s a scariness: How do you launch a company, or how do you even get anything made? Without having gone to fashion school, you’re on the outside.”
Chalkboard sketch of one of his shirts.
“I remember schlepping down Seventh Avenue with a roll of fabric on my shoulder. Even now, I sit here and agonize over things: Should this button move half an inch down?”
The big, happy Ernest Alexander team today.
“I always had this pipe dream. But it seemed far off; I thought, ‘One day, in 15 years.’ But Andy [Dunn, the CEO of Bonobos] gave a talk at Columbia and was passing around these really soft corduroy pants. These guys are Stanford MBAs, and here they are launching their own pants company. It really inspired me. I realized if you’ve got an idea and some smarts, you can do this. That’s what gave me the push and made me realize the dream was closer than I thought.”
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Meet Ernest Alexander
How prep school and grandmas can make a man—and a line.
As a student at the prestigious, all-boys Belmont Hill School near Boston, Ernest Alexander Sabine bumped headlong into a strict dress code: slacks, collared shirt, tie, jacket, no exceptions. “I got a Saturday detention for not having my tie all the way up,” Sabine recalls with a laugh. “I had a hard-ass Latin teacher who busted me.”
Despite the uncompromising rules, Ernest credits the school for influencing him stylistically. But his introduction to the world of clothes came via his grandmother and great-grandmother, seamstresses who escaped Latvia near the end of World War II. “The Nazis were closing in on them, and they came here,” he says. “I grew up in a household with old sewing machines and patterns. They’d copy the dresses they made during the day and bring them home to my mom. I just remember being like six years old and going through their old paystubs and thinking, ‘Oh my god—look how hard they worked.’”
No surprise here: Ernest has brought that same intensity his own classic, American-made menswear line, Ernest Alexander. After two and a half years of steadfast focus on the guy’s side of things, he’s gradually incorporating womenswear into the mix—a nod to those hustling matriarchs that got him started. —seth putnam
