Re-Start Start-Up: NYC Fashion Label Tucker on Paris and International Expansion
By Tucker Founder, Gaby Basora
I am Gaby Basora, of Tucker, maker of blouses, dresses, jumpsuits, and coats of mostly silk fabrics; cheeky, floral or abstract, original prints.
I founded the company in 2006 on words and handshakes.
We had a relatively quick rise to 300 retail doors worldwide, Net-A-Porter to Neimans. Tucker was a finalist in the Woolmark prize in 2013, I am a member of the CFDA and designed a collection for Target’s Go International program.
Appreciated for novel prints and dynamic energy, collaborations with other designers, musicians, dancers and artists are a part of the body of work we can be proud of.
Tucker is based in New York and our collection is entirely produced in Manhattan in the factory that made the first blouse, and then the first order for Barneys NY. When a committee was organized by NYCEDC to create fashion-based initiatives led by Andrew Rosen, Tucker was invited to participate.
In New York City, serendipity rules. Soon after, at an NYCEDC cocktail networking party, I met fashion venture Resonance’s co-founder Lawrence Lenihan.
In 2011, a fire devastated the Tucker offices, studio, and headquarters. The setback was immense.
Tucker had been part of a case study conducted by the Institut de la Mode, FIT and Hong Kong Poly Technic University. I met the director of the MBA program at IFM, the extraordinary Veronique Schilling, and I decided to get my MBA at the IFM in Paris.
My ties to Paris and France in general have always been strong.
In New York, the street culture, the noise and the music of the honking horns and the bustling clatter. In Paris, a deep appreciation for French history, the tradition of craftsmanship and the sincerity that time takes to develop. Not to mention the bread, red wine and cheese. There is a lot of complaining about the problems of both cities, but to me the combo is like a perfectly fitting pair of ooh la la, Sasson jeans. Paris-New York. Two words I would love to see embroidered on every Tucker hang tag.
Before the fire, we had begun to enter the French market with a retailer or two, attention from the press and French women; Cecile Cassel, Camille Rowe, and expats/part-timers Zoe Cassavetes and Dorie Greenspan in Tucker.
In 2015, an article by Lawrence Lenihan in The Business of Fashion caught my attention and I reached out to him.
Joseph Ferrara and Lawrence had recently founded Resonance, to provide infrastructure to grow fashion companies to their fullest potential. New York City is full of fashion labels and aspiring designers, what luck to be chosen!
We re-started Tucker August 18, 2015. Start up style.
Joe encouraged me to participate in the Global Business Exchange created by the NYCEDC and Paris & Co. to bolster growth of start-ups in a wide range of business sectors.
Tucker is at home in Paris with its reverence for beauty, poetry and sensuality and shares values with many French heritage brands that are determined by the craftsmanship and diligence that goes into product.
Participants in the exchange include artist and designer Adam Frank and Tiffany Pham, the founder /CEO of Mogul, an online news aggregator and publishing platform for women.
Via the business exchange, Tucker is working on a broad collaboration project with French companies that have been making beautiful things for days, decades, or even centuries.
Inspired by an essay New York Photographer Virginia Thoren wrote in 1958, titled, “ Why I like Paris.” We will be delivering up, New York bike messenger style, a panier of prints and optimistic Tucker.
NYCEDC’s initiatives and programs have played a beautiful part in Tucker’s story: all the valuable connection-making that essentially fosters a business.
Little steps, big moves; or as they say in Paris: Petit a petit l’oiseau fait son lit.
