The Kooples made fashion history a few years back when it launched its now well known ad campaigns showing real-life couples telling us how long they’d been together. It was a novel, daring approach that helped propel the French label to international success. Then last autumn, for the first time since it was founded in 2008, The Kooples introduced a big change: the people featured in the label’s ad campaigns weren’t necessarily couples anymore. Instead, they were twins, artistic duos or two people somehow related but not romantically involved. And for spring 2017, the various duos starring in the ad campaigns offer the promise of love but aren’t even together or related.
Alexandre Elicha, who founded The Kooples with his brothers Laurent and Raphaël, and who’s the current menswear artistic director, explains it best. “This season we went back to a couple’s love story, but instead of a real-life couple, we wanted to focus on the first date, the romantic encounter and thus the beginning of a love story,” he says. “For that, we chose not to feature a real couple but a dreamed couple, a couple you could see in movies. We shot the first date through different moments: the loving escape, the promise of a sexy night, the promise of a real love story after that night.”
This isn’t the only change that The Kooples has undergone this year, especially with regards to its menswear collection. For years, the label was known for a style that was simple, almost minimalistic, but pushed over the top with unusual rock ‘n’ roll details: a skull pin on a narrowly cut sports jacket, a black scarf attached to a men’s burgundy sweater, a mini black jacket in leather and denim with zippered sleeves. Black and white were always the primary hues, and the clothes, whether for men or women, always carried an androgynous vibe. “This is something very strong in The Kooples’ collections,” Elicha says. “Since the beginning, we had in mind a shared wardrobe because we love the idea of a couple shopping together and wearing the same pieces in different ways… A denim shirt can be very masculine and at the same time perfectly feminine over a dress.”
The underpinnings of The Kooples style remain the same, but this season, the men’s collection is inspired by flamboyant fashion icon Waris Ahluwalia. “We invited him to The Kooples in Paris, and Waris spoke about his travels and experiences, and from these stories a collection began to take shape,” Elicha says. “Laurent and I really wanted to take The Kooples further and introduce more colours, embroideries and details, so Warris added this sense of flow to the collection.”
The result is The Kooples’ most vibrant men’s collection to date. “Indigo and red shades are lighting up the stores,” says Elicha. “The fabrics are very light and include linen or silk, and the shapes are of Indian and Japanese inspiration. Key pieces include kimono collar shirts, pyjama-inspired trousers and shirts, geometric prints and suits in brighter shades such as blue, burgundy and lavender.” In addition, as it has done in the past, The Kooples is offering pieces made specifically for their local customers. “Middle Eastern men have a very refined approach to fashion,” says Elicha. “They can be very daring and know how to select very fashion-forward pieces. That is why we offer pieces exclusively designed for them in our boutiques in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.”
Still, the pieces are still designed to be worn every day, in keeping with the brand’s ethos to create staples that exude a unique flair. “Of course we love to design strong image pieces for a show or the campaign, but in the end, on a daily basis, clothes are made to be worn,” says Elicha. “The Kooples is also about this right balance between timeless pieces and originality. For example, a shirt can be a bit rock ‘n’ roll thanks to a leather collar, but the collar is removable to make sure you can wear the shirt for every occasion.”
With the brand now available almost everywhere around the globe, the Elicha brothers can be commended for what they’ve achieved in less than a decade. While they come from a fashion family (their parents founded Comptoir des Cotonniers in 1995), their vision for The Kooples business model was quite their own and today, the company creates 12 collections per year and ensures that each of their stores is stocked with new items every single month.
For the near future, Elicha says that the company plans to keep opening boutiques and points-of-sale around the world, but there’s more. “To reveal a secret,” he says, “in September 2017 we plan to launch a complete collection of bags and accessories with about 20 references. Of course we can’t show you pictures of the bags nor reveal the name of the muse. But I can tell you that we want to compete with brands such as Michael Kors and Tory Burch, with a price point around 380 USD. We’ve got a lot more coming so stay tuned!”
