A Life Well-Designed, A Business Well-Run
Tibi creative director and owner Amy Smilovic changes 10 times before leaving home — but she’s got an eye for what women want to wear. Danielle Dubin Manion talks Family and Fashion with the busy greenwich mom.
Danielle dubin Manion: How did you first decide you wanted to be a designer?
Amy Smilovic: I’ve always, always wanted my own business. It was funny, growing up on St. Simons Island in Georgia I never thought about making the clothes — I only thought about earning more money so I could buy the clothes! My mom was a schoolteacher and my dad was a psychologist. If I wanted a Gucci bag, which was the big thing when I was in high school — the $250 Gucci bag — I had to save up. So I really did want nice things and I knew that I had to make money to get them. From an early age, like eight, I would sell the most Girl Scout cookies, and I set up a babysitting company and had employees. I didn’t just crochet scarves; I sold them on street corners and I made braided belts and sold them in stores locally. I would do things like buy sweatshirts and paint them or make belts. But I didn’t think I would become a designer, I just took it more from an intellectual approach.
DD: How did you get your start?
AS: I moved to Hong Kong in 1997 with my husband Frank [Smilovic. The couple met when they worked together at American Express stateside]. Frank was running a division for American Express Asia — so if I had stayed there I would have been
reporting to him, which didn’t feel right and definitely is not encouraged at AmEx! I just knew I wanted to have a business. Back in New York City, when I was getting married, I heard about this woman. She had a service where you select a style of clothing and a fabric and she would make it up for you. I thought that was such an interesting concept. Then when I went to her house the styles were boring and I thought the fabrics were ugly. I thought, ‘What if someone had this set up where the styles were great and the fabric was amazing?’ I was always thinking of business ideas and just writing them down. When the opportunity came up to move to Hong Kong I thought it was the perfect place for that business because there were so many tailors there.
DD: So how did the idea move from paper to an actual business?
AS: I met my business partner Octavia Hyland in Hong Kong. She was just 22, newly engaged and an avid traveler living in Hong Kong. I met her at a meeting for American expatriates on my fifth day in Asia. She and I decided to come up with a line of country club wear based on batik fabrics, sort of like Lilly Pulitzer meets city cool Hong Kong, Asia. We came up with four designs and went to Indonesia, picked the fabrics, named it Tibi and then it just evolved into this thing I could never have predicted.
DD: How did you learn the business?
AS: Living in Asia, I was literally going to my factory every day and learning it that way. From a clothing perspective, we never tried to be earth-shattering or ground-breaking, I was just trying to make pretty things. Honestly, who hasn’t invented it all before? It all comes down to who can put it together in a way that is understandable and cohesive to the customer and who has the wherewithal to get it produced and not screw it up. It’s all about being someone who has the ability to secure the funding, produce it and ship it.
DD: Where does the name Tibi come from?
AS: Tibi was Octavia’s grandmother’s name. The runners-up were my grandmothers Bernice or Betty and they did not make it. When she said Tibi it was like, ‘that’s perfect.’ That’s part of the success of the line — people just like the name.
DD: How would you describe a Tibi girl?
AS: The pretty tomboy. She’s a mix of country club and city. She’s loves color, but she never wants to be garish or scream when she enters a room, but she does like to be noticed. Women who wear Tibi really do want to be pretty. They’re not women who dress for other women and they’re not women who dress in an overtly sexy way.
DD: How have the different places you’ve lived affected your aesthetic?
AS: The line is a mix of niceness of Southern girl and edginess of a girl who works in SoHo every day. It also has the practicality of a girl who drops off her kids at Stanwich School, the relaxed feel of Indonesia and the eclecticness of Hong Kong.
DD: What inspired the current collection?
AS: The collection started with a book — a retrospective on Peter Beard’s work. That’s where some of the color started out. It became a mixture of deep, rich, saturated colors mixed with natural colors like Peter Beard used — indigos and literally blood and Saharan sand, very textural things.
DD: Your husband is the president of Tibi. What’s it like working together?
AS: Working with Frank is fine. It really is, and I think that it’s what works for us. If my husband went into New York City every single day and I was back in Greenwich, I don’t know. It would be so strange to not see him during the day, every day. Frank and I worked together when we were at AmEx as well so I always saw him in the work capacity. This is just a continuation of the norm for us. We’ll get in our fights for sure but I can’t remember a time when we carried a work fight into our personal life. We’ll lay into each other in the office about something and then I’ll go, ‘It’s five o’clock are you ready to go?’ And we leave and it’s fine.
DD: How do you balance work and family once you’re home?
AS: It’s hard. I really try and shut it off when I’m at home. My husband is not good at that and he’ll definitely try and bring up something about margins or sales or revenue in the middle of dinner and I just want to throw a biscuit at him when he does that. I just do not like to mix family and work at all once we’re at home. If the word Tibi comes up at all, the kids [sons Gabriel, 9, and Charlie, 7] are like ‘No, no, no!’
DD: Has being a mom informed the way you approach your business life?
AS: Motherhood lightens the entire mood and completely puts the business in perspective. It’s reassuring to know that even if everything went south and people stopped buying my clothes, it would be OK because I’d still have my health and a wonderful family.
DD: Any favorite places to hang around Greenwich?
AS: Tarry Lodge has the best food in the whole entire world. Frank and I could live there forever. Our other place that’s just so easy is Terra on the Avenue in Greenwich. When you walk by it smells like you’re in Italy. I love being in there with my kids and they’re just so nice. I spend a lot of time on Greenwich Avenue, but not anywhere nearly as much as I used to because you see a bank every five seconds! I love Graham’s Kids Cuts and it’s so appalling to me there aren’t more places like that. Richards, of course, falls into that category, too: Places where the owners are there, it’s their own company and they know their customers.
DD: Do you work out?
AS: I despise yoga and Pilates and anything calm. I don’t even have the patience to sit and get a manicure. I jump rope or I put on a really loud song on my iPod and turn the tennis ball machine up really high. It has to be intense, high impact. I cannot stand slow stuff — it makes me crazy.
DD: How do you relax?
AS: I love music. I spend probably $100 a week at least on iTunes. As for TV, I’m obsessed with Glee. For me TV is 100 percent downloaded and I work out to it too. I’ll listen to music for like 15 minutes and then if I’m doing any machines[at the gym] I’ll watch TV. I like stuff like Tabatha’s Salon Takeover and Launch My Line. The show that we watch [as a family] is American Idol. That’s when the kids get to watch TV during the week. We have pizza — the whole thing.
DD: No Project Runway?
AS: None of the fashion shows are real. When you watch it’s just for sheer entertainment. It makes me crazy. A $100 budget for a dress is realistic. A real designer would have to work with that. But you wouldn’t have to come up with a red-carpet gown in six hours made of toilet paper. It doesn’t tell you if those people are able to design a collection for Neiman Marcus.
DD: What is it like to see your label on the red carpet?
AS: It’s just a surreal experience I haven’t felt completely comfortable with yet. Even now, I don’t personalize it very much. I have 60 employees and I know how many people played a role in bringing that product to someone’s back.
DD: What’s next for Tibi?
AS: My dream would be to turn the entire basement of our SoHo store into a home area. Carpets and couches — I would love that. I know I need to get around to jewelry. Also former fashion editor Toby Tucker Peters and I are working on a book about how women can get their style mojo back. We’re focusing on the more casual moments. It seems like everyone knows how to get dressed up for the gala. That’s a no brainer. But it’s more about how you go to Whole Foods and look like you actually care a little bit. There’s a miss in the market. TV moms are either these gross Kate Gosselins (not that she’s gross, her husband is gross, but that hair is horrible) or these Housewives of... There’s no middle ground. What if you’re normal? What if you didn’t want eight kids, you didn’t cut your hair like that and you don’t have a husband who wears Ed Hardy? Although I guess Greenwich isn’t entirely normal. Maybe it’s not normal, but aspirational! *
{Around the clock}
All in a Day’s Work
Her powerful prints are inspirational and aspirational, but her waking hours look a lot like those of most working moms.
Monday, February 1
6:30 A.M. I get up and fix lunches and get the kids ready for school and then I literally change my outfit 10 times in the closet. I don’t spend time on hair and makeup, but I do spend time on the outfit.
7:20 A.M. I take the kids to the bus stop. Then I run back home and get Frank who is now getting dressed because he was feeding the kids while I was getting dressed.
7:30 A.M. We drive into work. Breakfast is a Powerbar eaten in the car.
9:30 A.M. On Mondays we have fittings. My design team has already gotten there at 8:30 a.m. That’s one of the trade-offs if you work for Tibi. You have to come in early, but you get to leave early — like 5 or 6 p.m. In the fashion world it’s usually the norm to work until 10 or 11 p.m., but that’s not the way we do it.
11 A.M. I have a music session to go over the runway music for the upcoming [fall 2010] fashion show.
12 P.M. I obsessively eat at 12 o’clock. I bring soup in from Whole Foods and that’s it. I don’t like to get too caught up in it all, but honestly when all those models start coming in, you don’t want to sit there with a big piece of pizza sticking out of your mouth!
1 P.M. I meet with Toby Tucker Peters from Greenwich, to discuss our book. We are looking at something to do with a TV show. We’re meeting with HGTV next week. I don’t know what our show is yet. I don’t want it to be about me and I don’t want it to be a reality show.
2 P.M. Meeting with my favorite person [makeup designer] Bobbi Brown who I’ve been working with a lot. Bobbie has done the makeup for our fashion shows for the past two seasons. Bobbi is a mother of three boys and we’re cut from the same mold.
4 P.M. By now I’ve visited the Tibi store [at 120 Wooster St. in downtown Manhattan] and made sure it’s merchandised properly.
4:30 P.M. I’m back to the office. Usually going over the line one more time with my head of design.
4:45 P.M. We leave the office. The whole ride home is conference calls about e-commerce and our new website.
6 P.M. We’re home. I literally run in the door, turn on the stove and start cooking dinner for the family. Frank is going over homework with the kids.
7 P.M. We sit down for dinner.
7:30 P.M. Frank takes Gabriel to hockey and I’m reading books with Charlie and getting ready to crash.
9:30 P.M. I’m curled up with my Kindle. Right now I’m reading The Help — it’s amazing. I loooove my Kindle. I’m buying 10 books a week on Kindle, which is pretty ridiculous.