从售货员到美国第一夫人御用服装设计师

    在宾夕法尼亚州的艾伦镇，桑姆•布朗尼算不上是最大的名人。汽车业标志性人物李•艾柯卡才是这里最为家喻户晓的人物。不过，本周这位纽约时装设计师却名声大噪。

    总统就职典礼当天早上，身穿方格海军蓝外套的米歇尔•奥巴马与总统先生走出加长轿车时，第一夫人的时髦装扮便引起了人们的讨论。而为奥巴马夫人设计服装的便是笔者的同乡布朗尼。他的职业故事肯定能让许多人受益匪浅。

    布朗尼的第一条成功法则是——做真实的自己。布朗尼出生在一个崇尚运动和成就导向型的天主教家庭，家中共有七个孩子。最初，他名叫汤米•布朗尼，在高中时，他与我的一位好友成为邻居。布朗尼的父亲是当地一家金融公司Finance America的负责人。这家公司当时隶属美国银行（Bank of America），后被克莱斯勒公司（Chrysler）收购。布朗尼的母亲是一位律师，但为了抚养孩子，做了20年家庭主妇。46岁的布朗尼说：“我父母经常告诫我们：‘不论你想做什么，都要做真实的自己，并且一定要努力做到最好。’”

    他的兄弟姐妹后来要么成了律师，要么当了医生。布朗尼的兄弟迈克是纽约市的一位银行家，另一位兄弟帕特则是宾夕法尼亚州参议院的共和党议员。桑姆是家里的另类。他回忆称，在圣母大学（Notre Dame）学习商学专业时，“许多人对于未来想做什么都懵懵懂懂，我也是其中的一个。”1988年毕业后，布朗尼前往洛杉矶，希望成为一名演员，空余时间则收集和改造复古服装。他经常会穿着自己的作品。很可惜，他的演艺事业发展得并不顺利。于是他在1997年来到纽约，并成为乔治•阿玛尼（Giorgio Armani）专卖店的一名销售员。

    从此，布朗尼进入时装行业。谈到自己在该行业的发展，他说：“我之所以进入这个行业，是因为我愿意做很多事情，愿意跟各种人打交道。对于学习如何做事，我一直都认真对待。”

    后来，他加入拉夫•劳伦（Ralph Lauren）旗下的摩纳哥会所（Club Monaco）。在那里，他学到了如何创建一个标志性的生活方式品牌——他说，也就是“如何打造一个永不褪色的世界。”

    2001年，布朗尼离开摩纳哥会馆，创立了自己的品牌桑姆•布朗尼。目前，该品牌在美国中部并不出名。他设计的服装仅在全球119家店铺中销售，他旗下的公司Brooks Brothers目前约有员工30人，在曼哈顿城区拥有一家零售店铺，今年三月将在东京开设第二家连锁店。

    不过，桑姆•布朗尼品牌之所以成功，主要是因为其核心产品——男装，不同于其他设计师的作品。他的男装设计以醒目的短裤子为主。这样的设计一方面遭到了嘲笑（有批评家认为，那些衣服像是美国一出谐趣剧 Pee Wee Herman中的夸张服饰），可另一方面却包揽了时装业内最富盛名的几项大奖。两年前，布朗尼开始销售女装。他的女装非常贴身，他说自己的设计意图是使女性看起来“更富有女人味，更妩媚动人。我不希望女性在穿上我设计的服装后看上去就像穿了件男装。”

    Thom Browne isn't the most famous person to come out of Allentown, Pa.—that would be automotive industry icon Lee Iacocca. But the New York fashion designer had his dose of fame this week.

    When Michelle Obama and the President stepped out of their limousine on Inauguration Day morning, people were talking about the First Lady's sleek, checkered navy coat. The man who designed Mrs. Obama's outfit is Browne, who hails from my hometown and has a career story that offers lessons that could apply to anyone.

    Be true to yourself—that's one lesson in Browne's success story. One of seven children in an athletic and achievement-oriented Catholic family, Tommy Browne, as he was known back then, grew up next door to my closest friend from high school. Browne's dad headed a local finance company, Finance America, that was owned by Bank of America (BAC) and later by Chrysler. His mom was a lawyer who took 20 years off to raise the kids. "My parents always told us, 'Regardless of what you want to do, you need to be true to yourself—and try to be the best at it,'" says Browne, now 46.

    His siblings grew to be lawyers and doctors—Browne has one brother, Mike, who is a New York banker and another, Pat, who is a Republican member of the Pennsylvania State Senate. Thom was the oddball. At Notre Dame, where he majored in business, "I was one of the many kids who had no clue what I wanted to do," he recalls. After graduating in 1988, Browne moved to Los Angeles, tried to make it as an actor and spent his spare time collecting and restructuring vintage clothes, which he would wear around LA. Not succeeding as an actor, he moved to New York in 1997 and got a job selling in Giorgio Armani's showroom.

    This was Browne's break into fashion. "I am here because I was open to doing a lot of things and meeting a lot of people," he says about his rise through the industry. "And I was serious about learning how to do things."

    When he moved to Club Monaco, owned by Ralph Lauren (RL), he learned from Ralph how to build an iconic lifestyle brand—"how to create a world that will be forever," he says.

    Browne left Club Monaco and started his own label out of his apartment in 2001. Thom Browne, the brand, still isn't well-known in middle America—his clothes are sold in just 119 stores around the world, plus Brooks Brothers, and his company, which employs about 30 people, owns one retail shop in downtown Manhattan and is due to open a second, in Tokyo, in March.

    But Thom Browne, the brand, is iconic because his core product, men's suits, are different from other designers'. Structured with strikingly short pants—as Browne is wearing in the picture on the left—his menswear has attracted both ridicule (the suits are Pee Wee Herman-like, some critics say) and the fashion industry's most prestigious awards.Browne started selling women's apparel two years ago. While the clothes are form-fitting, he says he designs to make women look "feminine and beautiful. I don't want it to look like a women in a man's suit."