Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 12, 1993 TAG: 9309100142
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: FRANCINE PARNES ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Now at the helm of one of the most commercially successful design houses - Anne Klein - Tyler came to notice designing funky leopard prints for Rod Stewart's and other road bands. He is best known for dressing the Hollywood crowd.
Tyler was appointed head designer at Anne Klein in May, just two months after coasting on favorable reviews of his collection in his first runway show in New York. His first work for Anne Klein will be in stores next spring.
Tyler typically wears suits of his own design with a turtleneck or T-shirt. His dark, curly hair hangs almost to his shoulders; he could be mistaken for a member of his rock 'n' roll following.
But now his bread and butter will be the professional woman who wants to be fashionable but not faddish.
"At Anne Klein, I'm aiming for the loyal customer we already have and the new customer whom we want," says Tyler.
"I never stop working or thinking about it, 24 hours a day, actually. I work 12 hours a day, and the rest of the time I eat, sleep and breathe fashion. Talk about it all the time, too. I love it and wouldn't want to do anything else."
Tyler's fluency in fashion is a family affair.
His rags-to-rag-trade-riches story started 45 years ago when he was born in Sunshine, an industrial suburb of Melbourne. His father was a plastics factory foreman; his mother designed wedding gowns and costumes for the Tivoli Theatre.
"My father loved clothing, and when I design, it is really with him in mind," says Tyler.
"He was a factory worker, but impeccably dressed. I remember that as soon as he removed his shoes, he polished them. In his closet, the sleeves of all his suits were folded inward. All his handkerchiefs were pressed and folded."
Tyler's nascent passion for fashion was kindled at age six, when he learned to sew at his mother's side.
"I used to go with my mother to fittings, and I was around all these actresses, ballerinas, models," he says. "Especially for someone so young to be around that all the time, it was rather glamorous."
Tyler would make deliveries on his bike, the gowns wrapped in sheets on the handlebars.
"On Saturdays a lot of people would get married," explains Tyler. "That was before we had a car, and Dad was working, so it was up to me to deliver Mother's wedding dresses."
The first garment Tyler designed was a gray flannel skirt for his sister to help her get through her home economics class. "She probably doesn't even remember that," he says.
Attending a Catholic school, Tyler planned to become a missionary. But he dropped out at 16, announcing to his mother he wanted to sew.
Tyler promptly launched his career as apprentice to a tailor for the Australian prime minister.
"We didn't have running water, so my main job was filling buckets of water," says Tyler, who also tried his hand at alterations and stitching some lapels. "It wasn't very glamorous, but my mother said I needed experience."
In 1968, the 18-year-old Tyler was itching to set out on his own. With the family's help, he opened Zippety-doo-dah, a store filled with clothes made by his mother.
"I designed a little bit, but I couldn't sew as well she did," he says.
Yet by the early '70s, his custom tailoring, inspired by his mother's costumes, attracted such theatrical types as Cher, Elton John and Alice Cooper.
Tyler's wife at the time, Doris, was Rod Stewart's tour manager. Introductions were made, and Stewart hired him to design the wardrobe for his "Blonds Have More Fun" tour.
One tour stop with Stewart was in Los Angeles. "You either love LA or hate it. And I loved it," he says. "I still do."
Tyler moved there in 1984, after he and Doris were divorced. He launched a successful business designing for musical acts such as The Electric Light Orchestra, Super Tramp, Shaun Cassidy and Andy Gibb.
But by 1987, he tired of this type of work and began phasing it out. Home beckoned, and so did his son, Sheridan, whom he dearly missed. With airplane ticket in hand, Tyler planned to head back to Australia.
But his plans changed the night before his flight.
"I met Lisa at a dance club. A friend of hers introduced us, and that was that. I spent my last $100 on dinner, but it didn't matter because I was in love.
"I thought I could somehow make money doing alterations and odd jobs. I'm that sort of person. I never really worry. I'm very optimistic."
That year, Lisa Trafficante became his partner, and the team produced Tyler's first menswear collection. They later married.
The whole was greater than the sum of the parts, says Trafficante.
"There was something about the chemistry together that made us able to do anything," she says. "We're like the old-fashioned relationships where two people make a better pair than they do two individuals."
The two toiled seven days a week in a miniscule workroom. "We did everything - even the janitorial work," says Tyler. "But that was the beginning of the company, and it was quite exciting."
As business grew, Lisa recruited her sister, Michelle Trafficante, as a third partner.
In 1988 they opened a retail store in Los Angeles, Tyler Trafficante. With Tyler's form-fitted silhouettes based on classic 1940s English menswear, the store soon became a haven for film stars and musicians.
Women admired the tailoring and fabrics so much that they'd buy the men's suits for themselves and have them altered - by Tyler, free of charge. That forced his hand.
His women's collection was born in 1989.
"I really didn't want to do women's clothing," he says. "There were too many people already doing great clothing.
"I went into it not because I wanted to, but because the logistics made it so. It was a massive job to cut down a men's jacket into a women's jacket - and it never looks the same. Besides, it was costing a fortune."
Today he leads a peripatetic life, dividing his time equally between two coasts. He designs his women's and menswear labels in Los Angeles and Anne Klein in New York.
There's an element of costume in his designs, Tyler says.
"Anyone who knows my clothing can look back and see theatrical references in the stitching and embroidery, the cuts, the silk velvets, the nipped-in waists.
"I've always done that, ever since I started sewing. You can only design a certain way.
"It was, after all, my mother who taught me."
by CNB