Michael Kors claims his fashion career highlight was even better than his bar mitzvah.
The 52-year-old designer – whose eponymous fashion empire went from bankruptcy in 1993 to its current billion-dollar Stock Exchange listing – says finding out he had the highest ever IPO for a US fashion brand topped his bar mitvah as the best moment of his life.
He said: ”It beat my bar mitzvah. Although, as I was just about to ring the bell at the New York Stock Exchange, I looked down and saw my mother say, ‘Straighten your tie.’
”I love what I do. I certainly never planned on ringing that bell. If you keep your eye on the ball, you do what you do and you do it well.”
Michael – who is a judge on long-running reality show ‘Project Runway’ alongside Heidi Klum and Nina Garcia – added that taking over as director for Celine in 1977 was the best career move he ever made.
He reflected: ”It was an interesting time because Marc [Jacobs] got Louis Vuitton and Narciso [Rodriguez] went to Cerruti. A lot of people in Paris thought it was the invasion of the Americans…
”The Concorde made it doable but I was still fried – off the plane and onto a meeting. Certainly with a behemoth company like LVMH, suddenly people said: ‘Wait a minute. Michael Kors isn’t just an American brand. It’s global.’