IU grad now hat designer for Nine West
Kurt Kress started his freshman year at Indiana University in the 1980s with the vague notion he'd like to be a lawyer one day. It didn't take him long to realize prelaw was the wrong career path.
"After the first year I was like 'no way!' I don't really like the word 'library,'" he jokes.
The word "designer" is another story. Now a top hat designer (though not a designer of top hats) with Riviera Trading on Madison Avenue, Kress designs for trendsetting companies such as Nine West and can count past positions with Esprit, French Connection (in wholesale sales) and Liz Claiborne (eight years as the sole hat designer).
This ad for Nine West features one of Kurt Kress' hat designs. The ad appeared on the back cover of Elle magazine this fall.
At IU, Kress received an associate's degree in costume construction technique that he says has served him throughout his career and prepared him for the Fashion Institute of Technology, where he took a series of classes to learn specifically about hats.
"My IU design classes really prepared me for design school," he said. "Part of my background was accessorizing for IU operas and ballets -- hats, gloves, parasols -- I knew I really liked accessories and wanted to learn more about hats."
IU also connected Kress with his first internship. During a class trip to Chicago his senior year, Kress so impressed recruiters, he landed a coveted internship with Esprit that led to a full-time job assisting the regional sales manager.
When Esprit almost went bankrupt that year and fired 700 people, "It was a good lesson," he said. "I was working in Chicago and I was fired over the phone by some vice president from San Francisco who basically said, 'Turn in your key, turn off the lights, goodbye.'"
It was then Kress realized what Heidi Klum tells us every week on "Project Runway," one of the shows Kress currently watches for inspiration: "In fashion, one day you're in, and the next day you're out."
He went on to work at French Connection in sales and then decided to further pursue the design portion of his IU degree at the Fashion Institute of Technology.
Kress considers his former costume construction professor Karla Kunoff, now retired, his first true mentor. He went into her required sewing class having never sewn on a machine. Kress had such inborn talent, Kunoff urged him to pursue a costuming degree after his first semester.
"She actually called my parents and asked them to meet with her and Kate Rowald (head of the fashion merchandising department and an IU professor of fashion design and culture and curator of The Sage Collection). My parents were so impressed that a college professor at IU would care enough and be encouraging enough to a student she'd known only a semester. I have nothing but good things to say about IU," said Kress, adding that he can't thank his parents enough for their "amazing support" over the years. "I would not have made it had it not been for so much unconditional love and support."
After working for Headmaster, a small accessories company, and Omega, a belt company, Kress became a hat designer for Liz Claiborne in 1992, a position he retained for the next eight years. When his boss from Claiborne went to work for Riviera, she made Kress an offer he couldn't refuse, asking him to launch a brand-new hat line for the company, designing for Nine West.
"I took the job as fast as she would let me say yes," he said.
What started as the biggest challenge of his career has become the most gratifying, even with the frequent 12-hour work days. "It was a risk -- Nine West had never done hats before. Within the first year, we had taken up almost one third of the hat market," he said.
Kress relies on both trend-watching services and collaboration with his team of assistant designers at Riviera as well as the design director at Nine West to pinpoint burgeoning trends in headware and pop culture in general. Teams of people at both Rivera and Nine West are designing for the same line, so attention to common themes and details (colors, hardware) is essential to giving each line a cohesive look.
"We have to keep up with pop culture, the gossip magazines. Indiana Jones brought the fedora influence," he said. And if Riviera has just put out one of its five annual lines (Spring 1 and 2, Fall 1 and 2 and holiday) and Lindsay Lohan shows up in a new hat, the company will rush out a limited run of a new style with the next possible order. "The Nine West customer is very trendy. We want to let the customer know that we're always going to update trends and take it to the next level," Kress said.
Kress has stayed in touch with IU's Department of Apparel Merchandising and Interior Design through his involvement on a board of advisors and participation in career days. When he was looking for an intern, he asked the department for a recommendation and found Kate Collison; she was so talented that when a job opened up at Riviera, Kress plucked her from a department store job in Indianapolis and brought her on board.
"When she originally came here to intern, she took notes feverishly during her first meeting and asked me about the industry buzzwords. It showed that she really wanted to learn and understand. I really credit Kate with what she learned at IU," he said.
"Your success in this industry is first about how you're made up and what makes you tick; then what you learned at school; and last, what you do with it. How much drive do you have? Striving for perfection is always a motivating step to success," Kress said. "I'm not from a fancy family with any retail connections in the fashion business. It was a dream. I tell students dreams do come true, if you work hard enough."
