Act Two: Can Tiffany Alana Continue Her Overnight Success?

Tiffany Alana just lost several thousand dollars, and the chagrin resonates in her voice. She rushed the crucial patternmaking stage of production and now has hundreds of flawed skirts and double the labor cost.

“I didn’t truly perfect the pattern, but I gave the go-ahead to produce,” she said in frustration. “I okayed something that I needed to make sure works for everyone.”

“They stumble that run fast,” William Shakespeare wrote, and what a race it has been, blunders and all, for the 23-yearold Los Angeles designer.

Last summer, Alana was a part-time nanny selling her designs at the Fairfax Flea Market in Los Angeles; by the end of the year she was the head of an eponymous fashion label projecting $5 million in gross sales for 2004.

She now faces the formidable task of coming up with “the next big thing.” On March 1, buyers will get their first full look as Alana exhibits at the Designers & Agents show in New York. There she’ll unveil the 12 new designs following up the skirt that made her 2003’s instant fashion darling.

Alana’s accelerated success is entirely due to “the skirt.” Last spring, she took a swath of cotton/Lycra fabric with diagonal stripes and draped it into a two-layered skirt with a handkerchief hem that fell just below the knee. She fastened a whimsical vintage brooch at the hip and took the design to the fateful flea market, where she was discovered by an employee of influential Los Angeles retailer Lisa Kline.

“We knew the pins would sell it,” recalled Kline, known for discovering young talent. “Her fabrics were totally cute, and it was super-flattering.”

The skirts retailed for $179 at Lisa Kline, and customers often bought three at a time. Alana was elated—until she stepped into Urban Outfitters one day and saw a knockoff of her skirt staring back at her.

“I almost threw up,” Alana recalled. “I was devastated, and there was nothing I could do about it.”

Copycats

Proving that imitation is the sincerest form of capitalism, a slew of major chains copied the distinctive skirt. Ready or not, Alana was baptized into the competitive world of the fashion big leagues, where trends are exploited immediately and mercilessly. “It’s good when someone takes off that quickly, but bad because they also get copied quickly,” Kline said.

The skirt quickly came to eclipse Alana herself, as knockoffs made the look instantly recognizable to the fashion cognoscenti while erasing its lineage like a trail of breadcrumbs.

Alana’s meteoric rise came after years of selling her designs on consignment at several Los Angeles–based independent retailers. The St. Louis native spent one year at Brooks College in Long Beach, Calif., before striking out on her own. For the next three years, she sewed and sold one-of-a-kind items while making a living waiting tables and delivering pizzas.

After Kline discovered her, Alana faced a new challenge: how to run a business. Life lessons came quickly and, at times, harshly. A Los Angeles retailer took on Alana’s line and offered to help her go into production. The owner found a sewing contractor in the Los Angeles Fashion District who could make the striped skirt for $38. Though naive about production, Alana thought the price was high. She approached the sewer, who quoted her a much lower price. The experience was sobering. She subcontracted with the sewer directly and has not spoken to the retailer since.

Sales pitch

Finding a sales rep also brought its share of drama. Alana first signed with an established apparel showroom in the California Market Center. But she soon met Gisela Marin, head of jewelry showroom Nyali in Los Angeles. Marin said that Barneys New York had expressed interest in the skirt. Although Marin represented only jewelry lines, Alana trusted her and was impressed with her aggressive style. The young designer faced her first firing, a heart-wrenching experience that left her original sales rep “absolutely devastated.”

But Marin came through on her promise and garnered orders from 100 stores during the August Market Week in Los Angeles. Throughout the rest of the year, Barneys, Saks Fifth Avenue, Nordstrom and Marshall Field’s opened accounts, and Alana landed Macy’s East and Macy’s West in January 2004. In two quarters, she went from flea market hawker to emerging designer in some of the country’s leading department stores.

Including sales reps and subcontractors, nearly 25 people now work for Alana. And her only financing was a $2,000 personal loan from her grandfather.

“She captured everyone’s imagination,” said Wendy Schwartz of retailer Scott Gregory in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. “Her designs are really fresh and unique, and the skirt looks good on everybody.”

Intermix buyer Sari Sloane, who ordered about 750 skirts for the company’s five East Coast stores, said she sees about two unknown designers become overnight success stories each season. “Our hope is that they will develop new things that are hip and not just run with one thing and then disappear. And that happens often.”

Los Angeles is a town filled with plenty of one-hit wonders and former child stars. And the fashion industry is notoriously fickle. Alana knows that staging her second act is daunting, but her initial dread has blossomed into a breezy confidence.

“I love the new pieces,” she said. “They’re nice, clean lines, and I think they’re going to get a good response.”

Her new 12-piece collection consists of two tube dresses, assorted tops and a mini version of her famous skirt. “My rep is anticipating it will be bigger than the original skirt,” Alana said.

The pieces, which wholesale from $65 to $185, include neither the striped fabrics nor the droll brooches that were her signature; instead they are solids that are “pretty and elegant.”

West Los Angeles’ Intuition already carries Alana’s new items and is reordering them on a weekly basis, said owner Jaye Hersh. Jennifer Lopez, Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears have all ordered Alana’s merchandise.

“She’s talented,” Hersh said. “There’s a lot of longevity in her label.”

Alana continues to crank out the original skirt to the tune of 4,000 pieces per month, but she expects its popularity to finally fizzle by fall. She hopes to have a complete collection by then and participate at Fashion Coterie in New York.

And her ambition doesn’t end there. She said she hopes one day to have “Tiffany Alanas in every major city.” But then the designer, catching herself in another stumble, realized her words had run too fast. “Make that selective nice cities,” she corrected.