This article first appeared in WWD on Jan. 1, 1992.
Her favorite coat is bright orange, she rides a motorcycle to work and every morning plays reveille for her employees — on a bugle. Still, designer Cynthia Rowley insists she’s shy.
“I can’t verbalize things that well, but give me a pencil and paper and I’ll draw what I’m trying to say,” she explains.
That talent has taken the Illinois native to the edge of fashion stardom. In the last year, she added a children’s line to her nine-year-old dress company, moved to a larger space at 498 Seventh Avenue and expanded into Europe, selling her spring collection to Selfridges in London.
While last year’s sales were estimated at $2.5 million, she’s projecting at least $4 million for 1992.
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She made her first sale in 1981 as a senior at the Art Institute of Chicago when a Marshall Field’s buyer noticed her outfit on a train and asked Rowley to bring in her line. She rushed home and made five dresses. “I pretended to have my own company, but finally admitted I was just a student.”
Fields bought the dresses and Cynthia Rowley Inc. was born. Two years later, with everything packed into a U-haul, she moved to New York. Now her dresses sell in Macy’s, Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus and Henri Bendel, among others. The collection includes day-, evening- and careerwear and wholesales for $69 to $130.
The prices are only part of what makes the line so popular. “When I got into this, I looked at what the market needed,“ she says, “and it was dress at a good price point. Besides, I couldn’t imagine designing really expensive clothes — that’s just not what I’m used to.”
She’s glad some of the “fabulousness” of ’80s fashion is wearing off, noting people want real clothes now. The success of The Gap, she says, shows that.
Her line, while not exactly basic, includes wearable clothes with a touch of whimsy. For fun, there are little red check dresses with plastic fruit straps, while evening offers black slipdresses with gold heart straps. For work, there are blue drop-waist dresses with pleated hems.
“My customer is fun and funny, but not ridiculous. She’s also feminine and a little bit sophisticated.”
While all this describes Rowley pretty accurately, she’s a very smart businesswoman, as well, and the sole owner of the company she started with a $3,000 fellowship award and a $1,000 loan from her grandmother.
She’s come a long way from the days she and her friend, photographer Tom Sullivan (now her husband), would go to happy hours at bars just for the free hors d’oeuvres. Now, their idea of nightlife is hosting small dinner parties in the East Village apartment.
“I wish it was more glamorous than that,” she says. “It’s just like the way I design. I don’t get my inspiration from Paris. I get it more from housewares and stuff.”
