After 22 years in the fashion industry, designer Aaron Levine is now stepping forward with a brand of his own. Photo: The New York Times
Aaron Levine had a pretty good idea he was going to be fired from Abercrombie & Fitch.
Just before his fateful review, Levine, then the senior vice president for men’s and women’s design, turned to his wife, Nicole, and said his “spidey senses” were tingling.
“I just felt that maybe I was too annoying, I wouldn’t say yes enough to things,” Levine said.
He could see the train leaving the station – Abercrombie & Fitch, after all, would see its stock rise by more than 800% from the start of 2021 – but Levine had a sense that he was about to be told to hop off.
Indeed, he was let go in mid-2021. His period of unemployment was brief.
In the months and years that followed – all, he assures me, within the bounds of a stringent noncompete clause – Levine became a behind-the-scenes hand at other mainstream fashion brands like Madewell, Vince and Aime Leon Dore.
He designed fleece jackets for the urbane outdoor outfitter Huckberry and created a boot for Viberg.
He was the great Oz behind the curtain directing teams of designers on essential fashion minutiae like which plaids sell best, how slender a suit should be and how many pleats to fold into a pair of pants.
Levine kept a bit of a low profile during this chapter of his career.
These days, however, he’d like some recognition. After 22 years in the fashion industry, he’s stepping forward with a brand of his own, debuting this week. For the first time, work he designs will bear his name.
“I was so tired of having to ask for permission,” said Levine, who at 48 had perhaps earned some surliness.
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It was late May, and he was sitting in the Williamsburg, Brooklyn, studio where he was giving shape to the collection, surrounded by pinned up sketches and muslin rough drafts of his designs.
The line is polished, if a little cautious. Date-night clothes and modern workwear for the man who works a midlevel graphic design job – somebody who wants to be better than J Crew but for far less than Loewe.
Familiar white button-ups are tweaked with Western yoking details. A Carhartt-style zip-up jacket is styled on a model, opposite a slim parka in the mold of one Levine used to snowboard in.
There is a single, slightly-roomy suit in brown, as well as Detroit-made hoodies and half-zip sweatshirts.
Levine is the main investor and hasn’t taken any outside capital. His teeny team – perhaps the smallest he has worked with – includes Josh York, a Detroit-based manufacturer; Nolan White, a baby-faced Instagram influencer who is an all-around aide; and Jon Tietz, a former GQ editor who is the line’s in-house stylist.
The Robin to Levine’s Batman is Arturo Castaneda, a designer, patternmaker and tailor whose Williamsburg studio is where Levine has been working.
During an interview in late October, members of Casteneda’s team were stitching together pants for the first collection steps from where the brand’s original mock-ups were pinned.
“This is a humble room with a humble team,” Levine said.
What Levine has always demonstrated – what has made him the guy to call if you need someone to design plaids and straight-leg pants – is a freakish ability to make palatable, elemental clothes appear interesting.
He is a star graduate of the Ralph Lauren school of “classics with a twist”.
Work underway on the first collection of a new label by fashion designer Adam Levine. The line is polished, if a little cautious. Photo: The New York Times
“His taste level when it comes to discerning what separates good from great product is just really, really high,” said Jake Woolf, 33, a men’s fashion content creator who has long been an admirer (and shopper) of Levine’s work, which he described as classic, yet eclectic.
Levine, he said, has an exceptional eye for those nitpicky details – a higher armhole on a blazer, a particular wash on a pair of jeans – that just make a simple garment better.
“It’s all these little tiny things that most guys probably don’t necessarily think about when they’re buying clothes,” Woolf said.
The cleanest comparison for what Levine achieves may be Jenna Lyons, who during her tenure at J Crew didn’t just make edged-up office wear for women but showed them how to wear it.
To that end, Levine has an Instagram account, where he posts photos of himself demonstrating the lumberjack-with-an-MBA fashion sense that lands well with many men. The account has more than 116,000 followers.
Levine started posting outfits to Instagram during his time at Abercrombie & Fitch, where he felt creatively stifled by the parameters of such a large, public company.
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“I can’t style anything, so I’m just going to style myself,” Levine said of his thinking.
The account shows him in cream crew necks tucked into faded jeans, straight-leg black trousers and vintage corduroy jackets and big pleated khakis with Belgian shoes. The outfits are creative, yes, but also easy enough to duplicate.
Woolf said that Levine’s Instagram felt especially inviting to people who may be “intimidated by the idea of men’s style”.
The account offers more than the clothes.
Levine has become a sort of online menswear Tony Robbins, pairing the photos with life-coach adages like: “I’ve always regretted not walking through the door when the offer is extended way more than ever saying yes. Buy the ticket, take the ride,” and “Here’s to pushing ourselves mentally emotionally physically creatively and 'whateverelseically'.”
Overall, the account gives him a built-in audience to market his version of style. Teaser images of his brand triggered comments like, “When does it go live?!”
“He’s got the playbook, the Aaron Levine playbook,” said Matthew Spade, 39, a digital content creator and fan of Levine’s designs. “And it’s not cheesy. It’s not contrived. It’s very natural.”
Speaking about a week before Levine’s brand was set to debut, Spade (a follower and occasional commenter on Levine’s Instagram) spun hopeful theories about what the clothes would be.
“I imagine it’ll be a bit more tailoring, a bit more elegant,” he said. – ©2024 The New York Times Company
