Alexander Lewis’s studio apartment is located in the Knightsbridge panhandle of central London opposite a pub where, on a recent 11am visit, patrons were already enjoying their pints. Around the corner from her apartment is a picturesque gated garden (a local dowager controls access to the key) surrounded by row houses straight out of Mary Poppins. But while the 27-year-old designer has plenty of bona fide Anglo – a graduate of Harrow, the prestigious boarding school frequented by Winston Churchill; apprentice on Savile Row, he is in a way a human melting pot, partly Brazilian, English and American. Lewis, the son of an American father and a Brazilian mother was born in Chicago. When he was nine, after his mother remarried a Briton, the family moved to London. And a first fashion gig gave him Ultra-American credit: designing for Minnesota-based Red Wing Shoes while he was still in high school. (His father had been the managing director of the company in Europe.) He returned to the United States to study at the University of Southern California, where he majored in communications and business. But it was while working in sales and e-commerce for Cameron Silver of The Mecca of the vintage Decades that he called “the most basic part of my fashion education,” since part of his job was to find superior treasures from auction previews – get the chance to examine, for example, an Yves Saint Laurent heirloom, “the actual piece, not a benchmark,” he says. The designer then returned to England and worked as a personal shopper at Harrods and as a haircut at Norton & Sons on Savile Row.
Lewis launched his own line early last year. True to his traveling upbringing, the first two seasons of his namesake collection were inspired by distant vacation destinations. Every season begins, he says, with the premise that “you can take it all and know that you will have everything you need: daywear, sportswear and evening wear.” Thus, his debut, for the 2013 seaside resort, had as its theme Barra Grande, a seaside resort that he and his family frequent in Bahia, Brazil. Beach shorts sported prints based on traditional Bahian brick structures, while a bright yellow cutout dress was inspired by the curvaceous shapes of Brazilian furniture.
Now, for his pre-fall 2013 collection, Lewis ventures over the equator to snowier climates, taking inspiration from Aspen, another favorite family getaway spot. He studied the venue’s 70s A-frame architecture and leaned over vintage ski photos of zinc nosed beauties, taking inspiration, he says, from “the vibe of those girls who s ‘have a good time – they are healthy, athletic, young, social.” As a result, there are plenty of local baked-on details in the line’s pieces, from birch bark prints on a cotton and jacquard silk jumpsuit to a waistcoat with diamond-patterned designs that evoke both ski-lodge roofs and black diamond slopes. Even the lush pile of the superfine mohair he uses has a shag rug feel. A full line of accessories – mod bells, slingback-cowboy-boot hybrids, and braided horsehair jewelry (made by Colorado inmates as part of a rehab arts program) – completes the Me Decade look. (The pre-fall collection costs $ 280 to $ 2,500 and is sold on Avenue32.com.)
He’s still silent on next season’s destination, but Lewis recently had the opportunity to test whether his travel-themed collection stood up to actual travel. He brags about it on a trip to New York, “It all came with me in two bags, and I just hung it up.” No steam needed.
