In an effort to raise money for The Clearity Foundation for Ovarian Cancer Research, Nicole Miller came to San Diego to showcase her Spring 2016 collection at the Rancho Valencia Resort. The event, which consisted of a fashion show, trunk sale and ladies luncheon, offered Southern California’s luxury shoppers a personal and exclusive opportunity in which to see and buy Miller’s latest, and perhaps even catch a glimpse of the designer in person. We were invited to watch the show (and do a little shopping of our own), an opportunity we couldn’t pass up. But before the show, we sat down with Miller to discuss her charity work, what sets her apart from the next generation of designers and what she really thinks of the changes to Fashion Week.
Nicole Miller and San Diego boutique owner, Stefanie Lyon have worked together over the years to raise money for The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation San Diego Chapter, The Toby Wells Foundation, and The San Diego Humane Society. After Lyon lost a dear friend to ovarian cancer, Miller named The Clearity Foundation the beneficiary for this year's fundraiser. Despite the overcast weather the fashion show and luncheon was a huge success and raised over $10,000 for the charity. “I ran the store here with Stephanie for 20 years now I think. I think we opened in 1996 and she's been great, just fantastic,” Miller told JustLuxe. While The Clearity Foundation is a San Diego-based non-profit, she also chose the Southern California location for its style-savvy shoppers. “The girls here, they all look so good in my clothes. They like color and you know they’ve always been very receptive. San Diego is not a city of fashion victims,” she laughs. “I feel like nobody here is wearing asymmetrical, ugly clothes.”
After 30 years in design, Miller has amassed fans of all ages, and they’ve shown up en masse to support her benefit. Clearly, young designers aren’t the only ones with their own squad. “I think that today’s fashion designer seems to want everything right now: ‘I want a company after my own name, I want my own line, I want everything,’ because we’re living in a very now culture,” she says of the younger generation. “When I started out I was very happy to just take my time and learn and get better at what I was doing, because I think it takes a lot of experience. It takes a lot of expertise to actually make clothes properly.” As we talk, women are purchasing dresses off the racks without even trying them on—trusting that her pieces will fit and flatter. She looks down at her own clothing and tosses the material of her floor-length skirt, a graffiti-inspired piece from her Spring 2016 ready-to-wear collection. “I feel that there’s a lot of clothes throughout the stores that don’t fit. I’m always surprised because I do go and I try on a lot of other people’s clothes and I’m always surprised when I can’t move my arms,” she laughs. “I can’t lift my arms!”
But for Miller, quality of design isn’t just about fit. “I’ve always wanted [my designs] to maintain a youthful look because my theory is that nobody wants to look old—ever. I don’t care how old you are, you don’t want to look old,” she explains. It seems Miller knows her audience: around her women from their early 20s to their late 80s are dressed in bright and colorful Nicole Miller dresses and eccentric accessories, giggling amongst each other like schoolgirls as they sip on Champagne and nosh on chocolate truffles. One woman in her late 40s asks her friend if a dress is “too young for her,” as she holds up a short frock with some scandalously-placed cutouts. Her friend vehemently shakes her head, and the woman snaps it off the rack. “My clothes will never make somebody look old. I feel like if you put on a tweed suit, you automatically look 10 years older than you are—so you wouldn’t catch me in a tweed suit ever!” she laughs.
To make sure she’s keeping up with the times, and offering her shoppers the best on-trend pieces, she looks to her own employees for inspiration. “I have a very young staff, so I don’t want to get stuck in any ruts. I feel like a lot of companies that have been around a long time the clothes get older and dumber and not as hip,” she explains. Most of her employees regularly dress in Nicole Miller, but she loves to see how they add their own personal twist to each piece and make her collection their own. “I think it’s more of how they style them. So they might take a piece of mine and they wear it with their skinny jeans. It’s more about how they put themselves together,” she adds. Watching her assistants scurry to and fro before the show, it’s easy to see what she means. With the right accessories her pieces are transformed from subtle and sweet to edgy and sophisticated.
While the San Diego runway show and trunk sale is a special event to raise money for the Clearity Foundation, Miller isn’t traditionally a fan of Fashion Week’s new “see now, buy now” model. “I think they’re all being ridiculous. I think there are too many shows and … the idea of Europeans combining their men’s and women’s shows makes total sense. But these people that think that they’re going to get more sales because they show this bag on the runway and make it [available]; I don’t think it’s going to make any difference quite honestly,” she explains. “I think people are really doing that just for press. They’re feeling like they don’t want to miss the boat so they’re jumping on the bandwagon right away.” To her credit, the possibility of brands adopting new schedules and merchandising options has caused quite a bit of buzz in the media, especially stateside where the CFDA has been conducting studies to restructure the entire NYFW configuration.
Miller doesn’t plan on changing her format no matter what direction other brands decide to take. “For me, if I had to wait, if I had to make my collection six months ahead of time to show it right when we were going to ship it, I’d really be bored with it,” she sighs. “There’s something about the tension of producing a fashion show that makes you more creative. And I like being under the gun with the show. But if you make your clothes, ship to the buyers and then you see what sells and doesn’t sell, now you have a fashion show with what actually sold—I mean I just think it’s like a boring way to do things.” But what’s fun for the designer may not be best for business. When asked if customers could lose interest in the six months it takes to go from runway to retail, she leans in as if she’s letting us in on a secret. “The customer is already bored with everything,” she confides. “There’s too much stuff, there’s too much sale merchandise, there are too many celebrity brands. There’s too much of everything.”
