Confusion reigns as to what precisely is going on behind the sturdy jet-black doors of 25 East 22nd Street in Manhattan. "People think it is a new boutique hotel," says David Chu, laughing. "They'll walk up and ask when we are going to open." He lets rip with another burst of laughter, and frankly, who can blame him for finding it hard to suppress a laugh, with a new solo venture riding so very, very high.
The building's 1840s facade betrays little about what Chu has in store. Two years ago, the 51-year-oldChinese-American designer walked away from Nautica, the company he founded in 1983, with a $100 million payout. Not a bad reward for an architecture buff who ended up in fashion by "a happy accident," as he puts it.
Chu is still not averse to taking risks. He saw the cash infusion as a chance to start anew, with a label more in keeping with his older, wiser outlook. It's not what one might expect from a guy who turned designing cargo pants into a fine art. If Nautica's boaty outerwear was all about the surf dude who only cared about where his next barrel wave was coming from, David Chu is squarely aimed at the guy who cares about investing in the kind of clothes that will outlast whatever new wave is coursing through fashion. There are fine eighteen-gauge sweaters so light they're like wearing a T-shirt, but still they keep the wearer warm. His cashmere-lambswool coats distinguish themselves by resisting the rain. And trenchcoats in his new line use the same fabric worn by the battalions who braved the trenches of the First World War. (Chu has a 30,000 strong collection of vintagalia that he uses as research. His favorite piece: a Japanese World War II kamikaze pilot's flying suit.)
"I'm in my element. I am finally doing everything that I have ever wanted to do," he says, walking up a winding staircase lined with 45 architectural studies that signal his eye for construction. Not the most subtle way to draw parallels between the art of building and the art of tailoring, to be sure, but they function as a mission statement for his new venture: Whatever he's making is built to last.
His idea for David Chu, the label, was to make clothes that solve practical problems and possess a sense of luxury and identity. The results are items, in Chu's view, that "people can grasp and enjoy." He grabs the blazer he's wearing. "I'm reworking classics to make them better," he says. "This jacket is lighter, more comfortable, but it still looks exactly how it should." And he's using traditional fabrics—like the district checks for the suiting that calls to mind those worn by gamekeepers—that he sources in the British Isles, particularly Scotland. "And not just because I love to go there to play golf," he says, smiling.
Chu has already garnered one new fan, the Welsh-born, LA-based actor Ioan Gruffudd, who will star in The TV Set, a satirical stab at pilot season, later this year, and, after that, in Michael Apted's Amazing Grace. Gruffudd also wears Giorgio Armani and Dunhill and is currently appearing in Burberry's new ad campaign. But it's Chu's clothes that speak to the method actor in him. He says they make him feel the same way he did when he wore a doublet and hose for the Apted movie, a biopic of the 18th-century British politician William Wilberforce: "You stand in a different way, your stride is different. Something about his suits just gives you a sense of confidence."
