Fashion Designer Stops at Saks to Showcase Her Spring Collection

 Above: Rebecca Minkoff standing next to her spring 2011 handbag collection. Photo/ R. Levenson

Rebecca Minkoff, edgy and sophisticated fashion designer, launched her spring 2011 collection at Saks Fifth Avenue at Town Center in Boca Raton on April 1 and I had the pleasure of conducting an exclusive interview.

As Minkoff greeted me in her Wrangler vintage jean jacket layered over a modish tan-and-black jumpsuit designed from her collection, I immediately grasped the extent of her fashion sense.

Minkoff’s spring 2011 collection is influenced by reinvented vintage and 70s-inspired attire, incited by fashion icon, Bianca Jagger and American singer and free-spirit hippie, Janis Joplin.

As a designer who has been sewing and designing since she was 8-years-old, one would agree that she has had a voracious appetite for fashion most of her life. As she describes her style in high school, she shares, “Every year I went through a different phase; so when I started high school I was into Gap and very conservative. Then I became a dirty hippie and then I decided to be a punk-rocker,” she continues. “By the time I graduated, my style was closest to my style now.” Her collections today converge looks from different phases that evolved into her edgy-retro-bohemian style today.

Her favorite aspects of design are the handbag collections.  “I’d say my collection for Saks Fifth Avenue [is my favorite to design]. I do an exclusive high-end handbag collection and I get to use the most expensive materials and the finest leathers, so I really enjoy getting to play around with that [because it’s so boundless].”

I asked Minkoff what celebrity she would most like to design for. “Probably Sienna Miller and Kate Moss,” she answered. “I love their style and feel like I can relate to how they dress.”

My intrigue with Lady Gaga’s fashion sense left me with one question I could not avoid: “What do you think of Lady Gaga as a modern fashion icon?” She responded with, “I think that she’s an innovator; personally her style, for me, is a little too [outlandish], but I think had she not done that [with her style], she would just be seen as everyone else, and I think she was really smart to do what she did because it made her stand out.” When I asked if she would take up an offer to design an ensemble for Lady, she responded, “Definitely.”

Minkoff has been credited as the number one independent accessories designer in the U.S. She has been featured in the media and was once included in a segment on “Good Morning America.” “That was one of my first TV experiences so I was really nervous,” commented Minkoff. “But now I’m not nervous anymore.”