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Standing room only
“When our families all get together,” says Rag & Bone’s David Neville, “it’s generally madness. But a really, really warm madness.” From far left: Gucci Westman; Snowdon, David, Gray, and Dash Neville; Noah, Marcus, Henry, and Cate Wainwright; and Glenna Neece. David, Marcus, Glenna, and Gucci, photographed at Morandi restaurant in New York City, are all wearing their own clothing and accessories—including lots of Rag & Bone, of course. See Glamour Shopper for more information.
All In The Family What does it take to create blazers, jeans, boots, and fedoras that everyone—and we mean everyone—wants to wear? Jason Sheeler finds out that for the guys behind Rag & Bone, it takes two gorgeous wives, five adorable children, a dog named Snowdon, and big-time love from the hottest actresses in Hollywood. Photographs by Jason Schmidt 305 g la mou r.c om
This is called a board meeting
“We decided a long time ago that work should be fun,” says Rag & Bone cofounder and designer Marcus Wainwright, near right. “You know what? It usually is.”
“O
K, now I know why we’re at Fred Segal.” I eavesdropped as a tawny blond twentysomething rolled her eyes behind her oversize nerd frames. It was a Saturday afternoon in Los Angeles, and the actress-DJ type stood with a friend in front of a wall of clothing at Melrose Avenue’s cool-girl shopping emporium. Shoulder to shoulder, they museum-gazed at natty blazers, beat-up denim, soft, flowy blouses, and the kind of floppy wool-felt hats best worn while dashing through airports feeling famous—all bearing black labels with white typewriter font: Rag & Bone. The brunette of the pair pulled down her aviators, dropped her enormous Céline bag on the floor, and declared, “I might have a problem.” She powerflicked through the racks, oohing, aahing, hmm-ing, saying “cool” a lot, and finally throwing on a sharply cut tuxedo jacket. “Wait—you already have that,” the blond said. “Uh-uh,” her friend corrected her. “I have the knockoff. This is the real deal. It’s perfect.” Founded 12 years ago by Marcus Wainwright, 39, with David Neville, 37, joining later, Rag & Bone is indeed the real deal. An understated mash-up of two parts Britannia and one part New York cool, the American label has become a not-trying-too-hard uniform for A-list celebrities and fashion insiders. (And, well, anyone who wants to look like an A-list celebrity or fashion insider.) Put it this way: Rag & Bone is what stars wear on their days off, when they get to wear stuff they actually bought. Jennifer Lawrence’s edgy-yet-professional suit when she met with Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer? Top model Cara Delevingne’s favorite tuxedo jeans? Virtually all of Lake Bell’s New York–black wardrobe? Rag & Bone. “I wear Marcus and David’s clothing,” the actress and director tells me, “because it’s my uniform to kick ass.” Over the past decade, Neville and Wainwright have built a solid brand and accrued true fashion cred too, with two awards from the Council of Fashion Designers of America that put them in the same league with Marc Jacobs and Ralph Lauren. The duo—Wainwright focuses on design while Neville handles the business side—also helped usher in the era of the $200 jean (remember that tipping point for your wallet?) and stealth, label-free style. Cameron Diaz, who’s a cheerleader and a shopper of the brand, has been a fan from the start. “From the beginning they wanted to make clothing that
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would allow people to remain true to their individual style,” she tells Glamour. “I love how devoted they are to their families, and it’s supercute and sexy that their wives are an inspiration to the brand.” Now, before you think these two live on Gulfstreams loaded with pugs and magnums of bubbly, Neville and Wainwright are kind of just…guys. Guys with good style. Their sartorial signatures—Neville goes for tweed suit vests and T-shirts; Wainwright is a total sneakerhead—are on full display when I join them at one of their favorite New York City restaurants, Morandi. It’s a family dinner of sorts: two couples, five kids, two nannies, five bottles of Peroni, and a cream-colored retriever called Snowdon (named for the mountain in Wales). Crowded into a banquette, they’re pretty much the Brady Bunch of fashion. Rowdy six-year-olds Dash Neville and Noah Wainwright, born a week apart, jump up and down in the booth, Noah wearing an illustrated T-shirt of his own design. Henry Wainwright, age four, dives into a pile of Uno cards. Wainwright’s wife, the model Glenna Neece, holds orange juice in one hand and her two-year-old, Cate, in the other. Hazardous marinara drips from pasta, inching toward the ruffled hem of four-year-old Gray Neville’s Chateau de Sable party dress. Sprawled on the floor, Snowdon yawns—then gets back to chewing on a chair leg. “O! M! G!” yells Dash in full-on, midair sugar high, his shaggy blond hair and chocolate-stained wool tweed vest echoing his father’s look. “Is there more dessert?” His dad beams as only a father can while cleaning up hot fudge. “ ‘OMG?’ Dash learned that from Linda Evangelista,” Neville says. “English lessons from supermodels—that’s just…perfect.” Perfect is a word both Neville and Wainwright use a lot. “At Rag & Bone, we focus on perfecting things,” Wainwright tells me a few days later in the company’s Meatpacking District design studio. I look around the office he shares with Neville, with matching sideby-side desks, where cool seems to be born. The glass-walled space looking out onto the showroom is like a 3-D Pinterest board: suede low-heeled boots, pale slipdresses from their spring collection. Up high on a shelf are well-worn rugby balls from their boarding school days, a wool fedora recently seen on Miranda Kerr and currently wait-listed, and framed photos of the guys with assorted fashion dignitaries. A lone, slouchy black leather satchel hangs over the three of us. Wainwright notices me looking at it. “That was one of the first things I ever made, back in 2002,” he says with pride. “It was for my wife. Our new handbags are based around that. It’s still got her old lip gloss in it. Pretty disgusting.”
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Spring 2006
school,” Wainwright tells me. “But at that point it was, ‘Let’s open a bar.’ ” Eventually they settled in London, with Wainwright working in telecom and Neville in banking. “We had a lot of nights of laughing—and crying about girls,” Wainwright says.
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I sip the coffee I grabbed downstairs in the flagship store, where I watched the actress Rachel Weisz buy a navy sweater and brown suede Newbury boots that Google Images later informs me she probably already owned. (“The
“I love how devoted Marcus and David are to their families,” says Cameron Diaz, “and it’s supercute and sexy that their wives are an inspiration to the brand.” They also had good paychecks, if not exactly happiness. Both enjoyed fashion—Wainwright liked knowing how it was made (“I’ve always liked taking stuff apart”); Neville was more into shopping for his girlfriends (“I was all about that Tom Ford, Gucci, late-nineties thing”). But like a lot of people, they found themselves— their purpose, really—when they met their spouses. Believe it or not, Rag & Bone actually started with the words Do you speak English? Down in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, in 2001, Wainwright saw a really beautiful girl on the beach. His future wife, Neece, did speak English; she was from Michigan. “Everything changed that day,” Neville remembers. “Marcus said, ‘I met this really hot girl, and I’m moving to New York.’ ” He did. And then one day Wainwright had a thought bubble: He needed a pair of jeans for himself, made out of the stiff unwashed denim he was wanting to wear. Wainwright visited a now-closed factory in Kentucky and ended up traveling back and forth for almost two years until the first collection hit
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perfect boot,” Weisz tells me.) The sleek yet cozy store—run by sales associates best described as offduty rock stars—is an extension of the guys’ office, crowded with stuff that looks at once antique, brand-new, and extremely desirable. “Whether I’m designing a bag or shoes or a jacket or jeans,” Wainwright says slowly, “I spend a lot of time taking away elements, until the item is just right. Tom Ford says the same thing, that the process is about eliminating everything that’s wrong with something.” He ties his Nike Dunks and looks up across the office to Neville. “It’s been quite organic the way this has happened,” Neville says, fiddling with the St. Christopher cross around his neck. “We’ve moved very slowly. That’s just the way we do fashion.” I joke that they’re like a couple, a yin and yang type of deal. Silence. Crickets. “Well, our parents are having dinner together tonight,” Neville says with a laugh. “But you should know this is not a real ‘you’re amazing!’ type of relationship. There’s not a lot of hugging. Well, just drunk hugs.” Bro-hugs or not, Neville and Wainwright’s friendship has some heritage. The guys met in boarding school in England when they were 15. “We thought we might want to do something together back in boarding
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White Top: Sebastian Mlynarski/Getty Images. Plaid pants, orange blazer: DAN & CORINA LECCA for Rag & Bone. Blue skirt, teal pants: Giovanni Giannoni/WWD (2). Stripes: Thomas Iannaccone/WWD. Orange jacket: George Chinsee/WWD
Runway to real-life: From their first show, for spring 2006, far left, to the minimal pastel layers in their spring collection, Rag & Bone’s best looks could walk off the catwalk and into your closet.
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Cameron Diaz in the Leonard dress at the Rag & Bone store in L.A.
stores, in 2004. He’d bring jeans home monthly for Neece to try on as a fit model. “She was our first employee,” Wainwright says proudly, noting she continues to be a big source of inspiration. “The way she mixes hard and soft, masculine and feminine—it’s the way girls dress these days.” Neece, now a painter, remembers: “I tried on so
I notice the name on the screen: G Unit. As Wainwright and Neville settled down in New York, their personal and professional lives grew in tandem. Gwyneth Paltrow in the (“We’ve all grown up together,” says Piper dress on Good Morning America Neece. “We truly are a big family.”) Westman—who does the makeup for their shows at Fashion Week—has served as in-house celebrity wrangler. “When they
“We thought we might want to do something together back in boarding school,” Wainwright says. “But at that point it was, ‘Let’s open a bar.’ ” many pairs! I kept telling Marcus, ‘I just started, I was always asking friends and want my body to look good in these jeans.’ clients to come to shows,” she confesses. “I That’s what everybody wants.” And, she would even take jeans to shoots with, like, adds, all those fittings mean that Rag & Jay Z—who had his own denim [line]! He Bone does “look good on everybody.” was like, ‘Girl, what? Are you crazy?’ I was As Wainwright trekked back and forth like, ‘Come on, Jay!’ Today Marcus and to Kentucky, Neville moved to New York in David certainly don’t need my help.” 2004 to jump on board and help build the She’s right. Wainwright and Neville are brand. Still, “there were some really horriforging ahead, as part of a new generation ble times,” Neville says. Wainwright gamely of American designers. They adamantly admits it was their wives who supported want to design differently than their predethem financially at the beginning and mencessors, and insist (alas) they’ll never offer Cara Delevingne in tions the help—or Rolodex—of wife Gucci a cheaper spin-off collection or Target line. Tuxedo jeans Westman, a fashion star in her own right. at Paris Fashion Week “We started this brand as a reaction to fast Neville had met Westman, now global fashion,” Wainwright says. “I can’t imagine artistic director of Revlon who regularly ever doing that.” tends to the faces of Cate Blanchett, Drew So what is ahead for Wainwright and Barrymore, and Diaz, at “some bar in the Neville? They say a lot more of those perfect East Village.” He says it was good timing. jackets, boots, jeans, and bags, all designed “I’d had a bad breakup,” he remembers. with that signature Rag & Bone recipe But when Neville met her, he knew someof slow-cooked cool. And, of course, they thing was different. “I could focus. I felt Zoë Saldana shopping in plan to keep focus-grouping their designs with a Lillian blazer in L.A. like I’d made a major life change.” What their core audience at home. was different? I ask. “Our wives are our customers,” Neville says. “He got under her thumb,” Wainwright “We are our customer. So we just have to be shouts across the room with a laugh. At ourselves.” that very moment, Neville’s phone rings. Hilary Rhoda in “That’s her now,” Neville says sheepishly as Jason Sheeler is the articles editor at Glamour. the Adeline jumpsuit 308 g la mou r.c om
in East Hampton, New York
Diaz: Fern/Splash News. Ambrosio: GVK/Bauer-Griffin. Paltrow: Alo Ceballos/FilmMagic. Bell: Paul Morigi/WireImage. Saldana: Stefanie Keenan/WireImage. Rhoda: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images. Delevingne: KCS Presse/Splash News
Alessandra Ambrosio in L.A. wearing Rag & Bone Harrow boots
Working dads
“I love all this fashion stuff,” Wainwright, left, says, “but at the end of each day, I just look forward to going home to my wife and kids.” Stylist: Anne Christensen; production: Dana Brockman; hair: Nicole Blais; makeup: Keiko Hiramoto for Bryan Bantry Agency.
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