Christian Francis Roth Ahead of His Sophomore Collection

This interview first appeared in WWD on June 27, 1989.

By LAWRENCE CHUA

NEW YORK — Christian Francis Roth is not our average piece of press bait.

He may be every fashion journalist’s dream: young, good looking, with nice white teeth and, of course, talent, but this 20-year-old designer is well aware of the shelf life of the common press darling.

“The press always needs some­ thing new, which is understandable, but the work is so delicate, so difficult and requires so much attention,” he says. “You wind up breaking your concentration trying to make clothes to please other people. You start listening to what other people say.”

So far, Roth seems to be doing well, listening to no one but himself. His first collection, for last fall, was picked up by Saks Fifth Avenue, Nan Duskin, Bullocks Wilshire and Bon­wit Teller, and sales totaled $45,000. This fall, his third season, he’s add­ed Bergdorf Goodman and Martha’s to the list and projects a volume of about $150,000.

Roth is showing a small, upbeat, well-tailored collection of merino wool and jersey separates and dresses. Wholesale prices range from $150 for a wool jersey sweater to $600 for a merino wool gabardine smoking jacket.

Manhattan-born Roth grew up here and, at the age of 17, left high school to work for Koos van den Akker. When Roth told his boss that he wanted to design his own collection, van den Akker said Roth wasn’t ready. To prove that he was, Roth designed and produced a sample line by himself, sewing the clothes at home.

Van den Akker then allowed Roth to book sales appointments out of the studio and eventually loaned him the start-up capital for his first collection. Van den Akker even went on to find his protégé space on the fringes of the apparel district, telling him not to worry about the overhead. His instructions to the young designer: “Just keep on making great clothes.”

On the roof of the building that houses his combination sample room, design studio, showroom and corporate offices, Roth is looking over a 16-floor precipice into neigh­boring sweatshops.

“It’s not like floors of garmentos selling ABC sportswear. It’s real hard-core factories here,” he says. Wearing a utilitarian uniform of white T-shirt and Levi’s that he’s customized with a portrait of the comic book hero Tin-Tin, Roth is surprisingly somber when he talks about his funky, effusive collection. “I’m not necessarily happy when I work,” he says.

“There’s a lot of pressure to make things perfect. Sometimes I sleep in the studio and don’t take a shower for three days.

“I’m definitely not always happy but when it’s finished, right then,” he arches his back slightly and snaps his finger to accentuate the rush, “it’s like drugs for me.”

While Roth claims he’s not particularly interested in contemporary art, there’s a definite Pop flavor to his clothing that manages to excite even the more weary fashion palates. His Roy Lichtenstein-like bottle-cap appliquéd jacket and a bright orange topper emblazoned with M&M bags jolted the crowd out of their fashion daze at the last Fashion Group luncheon, when his clothes made their runway debut. Roth, hidden backstage, peeked from behind a curtain to see the crowd go wild.

Of course, there’s more to Roth than trendy gimmicks. He’s a stickler for quality, and his clothes are of a caliber that’s unexpected from such a maverick designer. He may cite comic strip characters like the X-Men and Wednesday, of “The Addams Family,” as his muses for the season, but there’s a certain sobriety beneath Roth’s humorous surfaces. Everything fits well, and the humor isn’t disrupted by split seams or poorly sewn buttons. “It’s there for everyone to appreciate, but it’s not like fast food,” he says.

For spring 1990, Roth is looking to the beach for his inspiration. He’s thinking of things like “a walk on the beach going swimming, tasting the salt,” but admits that it may all be a little too subtle. Working with a pale palette, but not pastels, Roth is considering sundresses with collars shaped like kites and jackets layered with silk straw that looks like seaweed growing.

“I’ve always been fascinated by women,” he says. “I mean very fascinated. I like the ‘odd’ girl. It could be in the personality or the voice or the shape of a nose. I try not to be categorized myself, and I like the women I design for not to be categorized, but she’s got to be different.

“You see huge categories of people, nothing quirky about them, nothing that makes them an individual, nothing that makes them beautifully weird. The woman I design for can be absolutely physically beautiful or a nightmare.”