Michael Kors

When a label has the global household-name recognition of ‘Michael Kors’, it’s easy to forget there’s an actual person behind it. And that person was actually born Karl Anderson Jr (the ‘Kors’ happened when his mother remarried, and the ‘Michael’ was a name he chose for himself ).

When a label has the global household-name recognition of ‘Michael Kors’, it’s easy to forget there’s an actual person behind it. And that person was actually born Karl Anderson Jr (the ‘Kors’ happened when his mother remarried, and the ‘Michael’ was a name he chose for himself ). If you do think of the person, it’s probably the mile-a-minute Project Runway persona. But behind the spotted everywhere MK totes − aka, the bags that turbo-charged the idea of ‘accessible luxury’ − there’s a lot more to Mr Kors. Born in Long Island, the fashion writing was on the wall early on. He helped design his mum’s wedding dress for her second marriage − when he was five. He couldn’t be doing with the theory of fashion design, dropping out of New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology to work in a boutique. After landing at Bergdorf Goodman as a salesperson, he started designing for the department store and launched his own label in 1981. When it comes to the fashion house of Céline, Phoebe Philo (rightfully) scoops the credit for turning it into the world’s coolest label. But it was Kors who originally resurrected it, turning it from a forgotten second-tier French house into a serious player during his time as creative director from 19972003. To celebrate the launch of Kors’ collaboration with fashion illustrator David Downton, we pinned him down for a chat about, well, being chatty − and lots more besides.

Was there a definitive moment when you knew you’d be a fashion designer?