Humberto Leon and Carol Lin: Rebels with a Cause

 

Humberto Leon and Carol Lin, co-founders of Opening Ceremony and directors of fashion awesomeness

Wintour Optional

If The Devil Wears Prada taught us anything, it’s this: Working in the world of fashion is fiercely cutthroat. Climbing the ladder rungs to the top of luxury fashion houses like Louis Vuitton and Valentino and working for large corporations like Vogue is a tedious and often discouraging process. Finding a position that offers any true influence over the fashion industry can take years of “dirty work” jobs and massive amounts of luck. But for people who are willing to take the risk, power and autonomy can come at a much lower cost.

In fact, for innovators like Carol Lim and Humberto Leon, a little risk-taking and creativity has given them the ability to do much more than giant fashion houses do. As the co-founders of Opening Ceremony, they run a worldwide fashion company that not only holds a huge stake in deciding which designs are “hot” among fashionistas, but also cultivates new designers from around the world.

Their work bringing Opening Ceremony into being has led them to chief creative director positions for the much-loved fashion label Kenzo. By establishing themselves and gaining respect for being free-spirited risk-takers in the fashion world, they now can quite literally do anything they want and know it will be respected.

A D.I.Y. Business

Eleven years ago, Leon and Lin began as college classmates bored with their jobs in corporate fashion. After quitting their jobs and pooling their small savings accounts together, Leon and Lin brought their vision to life. After having an SUNY draft them a business plan for free, the two opened a boutique in downtown New York.

But the two knew they wanted to integrate their love for travel as well as art into their work, which led Opening Ceremony to becoming much more than another store in New York City. The duo had always known they wanted to integrate their love for travel and art into whatever they did, and after being inspired by a past trip to Hong Kong, they curated the boutique’s offerings with their favorite designers discovered on the trip as well as homemade items made by their mothers. The idea behind the product offering, Leon claims, is that "we'd stock [the stores] with things we would have brought back anyway as gifts"--souveniring to the max, if you will. 

The business soon became a platform for showcasing international designers by featuring a new country every year. Not only did they discover a new way to bring undiscovered international designers into the limelight, but they also enabled their fashionista following to start seeing fashion on a global scale.

Prada, Nada

The pair continued to push limits in more ways than one—though their business is undoubtedly upscale, they weren’t afraid to follow their whims and integrate affordable products into their offering. Believe it or not, the founders of Opening Ceremony are also responsible for the wide popularity of the Havaianas flip-flop.

Leon explains, “when we were in Brazil, we stumbled across a supermarket that sold these plastic flip-flops … Carol and I were obsessed.” They filled their grocery carts full of the sandals and began researching how they could import the brand into the U.S. At the time, Havaianas didn’t have the infrastructure to create and sell large amount of their shoes to other countries, but thanks to Opening Ceremony, they are now sold across the globe. Is that something Prada could get away with? I think not.

Colorful Prospects 

Though they’ve now reached the same status as many luxury brands in the industry, two still haven’t ceased to show their wild sides: as creative directors of Kenzo, they collaborated with the trendy Parisian juice bar, Bob’s Juice Bar, to create “fruit carpet” made out entirely out of bananas, lemons, strawberries, and more for their Spring/Summer 2014 Menswear show. Guests were invited to sample fruit directly from the carpet, and the rest was donated to the Red Cross after the show.

Kenzo's fruit carpet made an impact at the Spring/Summer '14 menswear show in more ways than one. 

Next, at New York Fashion Week, Leon and Lin set up their own pop-up market called Opening Ceremony BTW (by the water) at Pier 57 to supplement their first show for Opening Ceremony’s new in-house line. The market featured fashion and food vendors hand-picked by the two themselves. Clearly, Lin and Leon have ‘tailored’ their work in the fashion industry to be exactly what they want it to be—who knows what kind of fun they’ll come up with next.