David Aliperti
(Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
Self-definition has always been the goal for David Aliperti, the Concept Director for Oscar de la Renta. An immigrant from Brazil, Aliperti worked to “get the hairnet off of his head” when he came to America, because he did not want to be defined by where he was from, he wanted to find what he would become. In this way, fashion is a metaphor for Aliperti’s life. The fashion industry strives to define beauty and is always anticipating what’s next, the latest trends, the hottest designers, the freshest models, etc.
Similarly, Aliperti has always searched for the next step in his life until he got to a place where he could decide what is beautiful. Although Aliperti is by no means at a stopping point in his career, he is happy where he is today and grateful that he had the grit and the guts, or as he would say “balls,” to get himself there.
What do you do?
I work as a concept director, which means that I work alongside the design teams to generate a cohesive narrative for the season. It’s a fun job because I get to interact with designers from every category, from knitwear, to accessories, to the textile department. There is never a dull moment.
Tell me a bit about where you’re from.
I’m originally from Brazil. I grew up in Rio de Janeiro. I didn’t want to stay in Brazil because I did not feel that there was opportunity for me. So I got my GED and I went to community college in America. I lived in Kansas, Massachusetts, and finally made my way to New York.
When did you first realize that you wanted to work in the fashion industry?
It was strange because growing up in Brazil, we didn’t have access to art. Especially in the ’90s. Things weren’t where they are today, no Internet, I lived in the suburbs, I had no access to a library. My idea of fashion was just the girls and the guys in my neighborhood and they were tacky as hell. And then when I moved to America, I noticed that people dress a little differently. I saw goths and ravers, which didn’t exist in my suburban, Brazilian home.
I just took an interest in art and photography so I would go to libraries and look at any book that I could get my paws on. And I discovered fashion photography and the works of John Galliano and Miuccia Prada, and the Japanese designers, and then boom. I thought it was really cool.
My feelings towards art then were that it can be a little snobby, and that artists are dicks, so I didn’t know if it was for me. But as soon as I realized that it was a way of expression that had to do with confidence, that really excited me because I had none growing up. I was bullied for being gay, I didn’t even know I was gay, I was closeted forever. And all of the sudden, I’m like wow, you can express yourself and beauty is not just what I learned it was in the suburbs in South America. There’s beauty in strength, there’s beauty in mind, you can be a freak and be beautiful. I wanted to find a voice, so I got into fashion. And also, my English was weak and my GPA was mediocre, so…it was easier to get into fashion school than Harvard.
You mentioned to me before that when you were in school, you decided to take a break from studying art and focus on English. Why did you decide to do that?
I went to a community college in Massachusetts when I came to America, and it was hard. It was hard for me to get a job. I couldn’t get a job in a store as a sales associate because I didn’t have ‘the look’ for Andover. So I ended up in the back of a restaurant. I went to a community college for three hours every day and I just hated the fact that I couldn’t convey my thoughts eloquently. I was paying attention to the classes but when it came to talking, I just couldn’t. And there was this asshole in my class who was so mean to me and he used to call me ‘dummy.’ I just hated it. I did not come to this country to commiserate with other Brazilian immigrants. I felt limited. I realized that my opportunity was limited and there was a narrative being written for me, of who I was to be and become based solely on my strong accent and my limited vocabulary. I am intelligent, hardworking, and articulate. I didn’t want to fall into this immigrant trap. I wanted change and I wanted to be able to tell the guy from my class to fuck himself in 125 different words in the English dictionary.
My goal was to learn art but I cancelled as many classes as I could and decided I was going to focus just on English at that time because I figured that until I had that on speed dial, I couldn’t play the part. So it was rough. It was a hard year. I failed one of my classes, but I tried. I started reading a lot, watching a lot of movies, paying attention to music. Slowly my vocabulary grew. Eventually I realized that every single word that’s really fancy and sophisticated in English is not a Germanic word, it’s usually a Latin word. And I thought, ‘oh, at that I’m really good.’ I really wanted to sound educated. It was important for me because I found that I couldn’t run away from this stigma that I felt in any other way. Even when I started studying fashion I made sure that I always went to English classes. I always took language very seriously. And now as a fashion designer, I’m very grateful because you can have the best idea in the world, if you cannot relay it, it dies in a dream.
Do you feel that designing was one of the ways that you were able to express yourself?
I had an artistic inclination, I wanted to paint, I wanted to draw, I wanted to color, I wanted to sculpt, and there’s a dimensionality to fashion that allows you to do this because a body is a soft sculpture. So that was one thing that really fascinated me. The other two things that I think were very important for me, were that fashion defined women in a way, it empowered women and the idea of womanhood was very big in my head. When I was a toddler, I always thought that when I turned four or five, I could choose my gender. I didn’t realize that we were born pre-assigned to a gender and I was waiting for the moment that I would become a woman. And then, that moment didn’t come. And to make things worse, I realized that whenever I expressed myself in a feminine way, it was associated with shame. Even as a little child I would feel that. But I think, implicitly, I always felt this strong connection with feminine energy. And I felt like, I could get that from women’s wear. The third thing was revenge. I was an ugly duckling my whole life. I was like the ugliest kid in class, we were poor, my shoes were shitty. All of a sudden, I got to dictate what was beautiful and have revenge on all of my high school classmates. Holy shit! That’s how my 18-year-old self felt at that time. That was my initial excitement towards fashion and design.
When did you come to New York?
I dropped community college after a year and changed because FIT accepted me. And I was living in a hell town, I was renting a laundry room from this woman that was a hoarder and I couldn’t wait to get out of there and the moment that New York was an opportunity, I moved to a place in Brooklyn on Myrtle Street. Myrtle Street wasn’t as good as it is today, I was there back in the late ’90s, and I later found out that my neighborhood was one of the best places in the country to score drugs.
When I started going to FIT, I hated it to be honest with you. Draping sucks, it’s a lot of work, sewing is annoying, and the teachers were terrible. After being there for a year and a half I realized that Parsons was training the creative directors and FIT was training the people to serve the creative directors. And all of a sudden I found myself in a very similar entrapment of servitude that I felt when I couldn’t get a job, and when I couldn’t speak English. So I did what I do best, I rebelled. I wanted to know, who were going to be the bosses of the people at Parsons. So I moved to Europe.
Where did you decide to study instead?
At first I went to Polimoda in Italy because it was linked to FIT and even though my GPA was shit, I think I was a good student. I definitely challenged the fuck out of my teachers and one of the deans of the school was very fond of me. I had finished my associate’s degree and I was already working at a patternmaking company and one day the dean asked me to do a drawing for her, so I did, and she was like ‘how would you feel about going to Europe?’ And I was like, ‘you have no idea.’ So she helped me get to Polimoda. And those were…the golden days of my education. I went to Europe, I was thirsty, I was a little smarter than I was before, I was ready.
I participated in every single contest I was able to. I started meeting a lot of kids from other schools through the contests and I started going to London, I started going to Antwerp, I started going to Paris. I started hanging out with all of these young fashion students who are mostly all super famous creative directors now. One day will be my day, but not yet. And that for me was, again, I can’t even explain to you, my brain just exploded. And I had no idea how far behind I was in the race, in a good way.
How did you end up at the Institut Français de la Mode?
I participated in the International Talent Support contest. Actually, I’m very proud of my standing upon going to this contest. I was definitely the poorest. I was the first American to be allowed to participate in this contest and I was the first student to represent a non-European school. I had just broken up with my boyfriend, a guy who used to draw and study birds as a hobby. So I got super depressed, locked myself in my room and started drawing birds that were made out of twigs and flowers and other things because it was a way to narrate them along with the idea of the impossible and I named that project ‘Birds of Impossibility.’ And I based my whole collection on it, things that are impossible, that are imagined. Even though the project wasn’t very well executed, when the people in the contest heard about it, they accepted me. And I remember my suitcase broke the week before I went to the contest. I carried my wheel-less suitcase all the way to the train station, all the way to the airport, all the way to the bus. I arrived with my broke ass suitcase. I was taking out all of the clothes that I made with my friends and asking people if I could borrow their steamers. Meanwhile, kids were arriving with fucking personal assistants, those kids were prepared. Some of them had teams. But you know what, I won the contest. I didn’t win first prize, but I was the first student to win a full scholarship. And that’s how I went to the Institut Français de la Mode.
I didn’t speak French then, which was tough. And the school has changed a little bit now, but at the time they only taught master’s classes, and only ten students were allowed every year because they were funded by YSL, by Chanel, by all of these brands. It was an institute to create leaders in fashion. I think that experience defined and formed me as a person. Not just because it was in Paris, but because, the game changed for me from that point on. I got a master’s degree! In a seven-year span I went from Friendly’s busboy to scholarship student at one of the most prestigious schools in Europe with a master’s degree in fine arts…pretty cool. And I was really happy it was one of the best things that ever happened in my life, hands down.
Tell me about your first job in fashion.
I have a sketchy answer for you. My very first job was when I was going to FIT because I had to work to pay my bills. It took me four years to do my associate’s program because bills had to be paid and the girl had an expensive taste. So, my very first job in fashion was doing clothing sketches for a Japanese company that imported American clothes to Japan. In Japan, they had a few pseudo-American brands. And after sketching for this company for a few months they hired me as a designer for a pseudo brand and I worked there for two years. It was a weird job, it didn’t pay a lot, but I got to go to Japan which was cool.
After I graduated I needed more money so I worked for a pattern-making company in the garment district that would do rip-offs and sell their stuff to malls. Then Nelly was starting a brand so I was going to start working with him, but Europe happened and I didn’t get the chance to work with him. But I did get a demo tape of ‘Hot in Herre’ like six months before everyone else. It was so cool. So those were my first real jobs. I think to discredit those as jobs would be disrespectful to my journey.
How did you eventually become a design assistant at Louis Vuitton?
After I graduated from Institut Français de la Mode, my first job, and I really lucked out, it was luck and a little bit of grit, was at Louis Vuitton. When we graduated, they invited every head hunter from the industry to meet all of the students. And a woman saw me last and asked me if I could do my presentation quickly because she only had five minutes. So I told her that if she only had five minutes, to go home and catch dinner because my shit was hot, she needed at least 30 minutes. I asked her if she wanted to grab a coffee with me and I wore a Louis Vuitton broach. She asked me why I bought the broach. And I said, ‘I bought it because it’s trash.’ She was confused. So I told her that before I knew fashion, I knew Louis Vuitton because it’s a status symbol in my country. I like that when you have a bag, you don’t have to be young and skinny and blond. You can be any shape, any color, any age and it empowers you. And I didn’t know I was talking to the chief head hunter at Louis Vuitton and with that she called me a week later and said, ‘have you ever done bags? Try it, do a project, and I’m going to pitch it.’ That’s how I got my first job.
What was it like working at Louis Vuitton?
I was assistant to one of the meanest designers in the company but I liked her. She was tough, she had grit. She spoke no word of French, very little English, scrappy Italian, but she made way. She was a Korean woman, and I think to be a Korean woman in a French brand at that time was great. So for that alone, I took all of her shit. I have thick skin and I was there for a year. Then my documents expired and LVMH didn’t renew documents for people at an assistant level so I had to go back to America.
What did you do when you returned to New York?
I wanted to work for Marc Jacobs and I thought that because I had worked at Louis Vuitton that it was going to be a piece of cake, but it wasn’t. The door slammed in my face, they wouldn’t even take the time to meet me. And then the woman that got me the job at Vuitton told me to meet her friend who might be able to get me a job. When I showed this friend my book she was totally not interested at all. She wasn’t digging my face, she wasn’t buying my pitch, she thought my book was lame. And I had a bag of all of these embroideries I had been working on with me and I was like, ‘you know what, fuck it.’ I just ditched the bag of embroideries on the table and showed them to her. And she really liked them and said that she knew somebody who liked embroideries and there was a position at Oscar de la Renta for accessories and they were looking for a senior designer. When I met with the company I got the senior designer job. To this day I love Oscar, he was one of the best human beings I ever met. But I decided to leave after a year.
Where did you work after that?
This guy from Coach, Reed Krakoff, was starting his own brand. I heard about him through a friend of mine who was interning with him so I ended up getting an interview and he really liked me. But I had a tough time. I had a boss who I hated so much, but now she’s one of my best friends because she taught me resilience and strength. She threw so many curveballs at me that by the time I learned how to dodge them, I could literally work for Trump and survive. But after a while I knew that there was no more growth opportunity for me working there and I wanted more.
So where did you go next?
Next I went to Cole Haan. And that was a risk because my entire resume and portfolio…trust me the hairnet story had disappeared and I totally reinvented myself as this European snobby aristocrat. So when I went to Cole Haan it was a shock because I went from designing a $6,000 product to designing a $200 product. The pressure was on because when you work for a luxury brand you can draw some things that are pretty ugly and people will convince themselves that it’s beautiful. But when you’re at a mall and mom is buying your stuff…if it’s good, it sells, if it’s bad it doesn’t sell. I’m so grateful that I made the switch from luxury to contemporary at that time, and in the end I loved working for Cole Haan. After a while, I didn’t agree with the direction that the brand was going and Nike sold the brand, so I left.
What did you do after you left Cole Haan?
After that I worked for Tory Burch who was my favorite human being in the world. And I stayed with her for four years, in between I took a few freelance jobs in Europe but I stayed mostly working with her because I really loved her. Still do. Then one time I was talking to her and I told her, ‘I got your back. I don’t want to leave here until the cops are pulling me out or when I’m in a casket.’ Then I had a heart attack, so it was the casket.
I left the job, decided to take some time off, got bored and went back to Oscar de la Renta.
What do you think helped you get to the position that you’re in now?
I would love to say hard work and talent but it’s not just that, because you can work as hard as you want and have all of the talent in the world and still be nowhere.
It’s People.
What I’ve learned about fashion is that, past the bullshit — and trust me, it’s an industry based on bullshit alone. But once you get past that, it’s an incredibly humane industry. And I feel like the weird thing that I didn’t know about fashion is that almost everybody who gets into it are seeking the same thing. They’re defining their idea of themselves, their idea of beauty, their idea of the world, their idea of womanhood and empowerment. I don’t think that you can get anywhere in life without people. You need people every step of the way.
What’s next for you?
I don’t want to have another heart attack, that’s number one on the list. And working as a concept director for Oscar de la Renta I feel like I’m doing something that I’ve never done before which is collaborations and partnerships with artists and with younger creatives. So I’m learning, again, the importance of working with people and I want to keep on growing that craft.
I always wanted to have my own brand but I don’t know what relevance that has in the world right now. I also do art, I do sculptures in my free time, so now I’m asking myself if I want to continue working under a system that generates obsolescence. What I don’t like about fashion is that every six months, you’re seeing the exact opposite of what you saw before. You’re invalidating your previous beliefs just to force people to buy more shit they don’t need. And I think that in the world we live in, we need to have more of a social conscience than that. I don’t have the answers yet. But whatever I do I want to make stuff that stays. That people wear to the bone, that they interact with until they can’t anymore. And I see myself trying to figure out what that is in the next five or ten years, maybe I’ll sell it and maybe I won’t, but I’ll definitely try to figure it out.
Edited by Marley Shelby (marley@andthem.com)
