Kenneth Cole
Kenneth Cole is an American fashion designer who founded the fashion house Kenneth Cole Productions Inc. in 1982.
Interestingly Kenneth Cole started as a shoe designer before branching into clothing. A humorous story about the founding of the company revolves around the fact that Cole did not have enough money to purchase a proper retail space when he debuted his first line of shoes on sixth Avenue doing a shoe convention. To remedy the situation Cole added Productions to the end of the company name (previously just Kenneth Cole Inc.) and rented a large tractor-trailer so he could sell shoes from the street using a movie production license.
The initial Kenneth Cole shoes sale was a resounding success and shortly thereafter call produced his first menswear line in 1998 and in the year 2000 launched his first women's wear collections.
Kenneth Cole designs are known for being trendy, elegant and cover a wide gamut of price points.
Kenneth Cole is perhaps known as well for the company's socially conscious advertisements as they are for their clothing. The company has a tradition of using topical news stories to produce socially conscious advertisements that both sell the company's brand as well as draws attention to causes deemed appropriate by Kenneth Cole. Global warming, AIDS research, women's rights, gun control and gay rights have been just a few of the topics covered by Kenneth Cole advertisements.
Today Kenneth Cole produces five different clothing and accessory line each one highlighting different price points, with Kenneth Cole New York line being the most expensive and Kenneth Cole Unlisted the least.
