(The cheapest pair of Plein Sport sneakers is a hundred and twenty-five dollars.) Plein has high expectations for the new venture, which he hopes will become a premium alternative to brands such as Nike and Puma. The designer also owns a men’s high-end tailoring brand called Billionaire, and he just launched a third line, Plein Sport, offering sneakers and activewear at a lower price point than is available in his main collection. The goods are sold in ninety-five dedicated Philipp Plein shops and in more than five hundred multi-brand luxury boutiques worldwide. (The kids’ collection includes faux-leather biker jackets retailing for more than twenty-one hundred dollars and leopard-print leggings retailing for two hundred.) Last year, the Plein brand had a net global revenue of two hundred and fifteen million euros, on a par with luxury brands such as Thom Browne and Dries Van Noten. The Philipp Plein line comprises men’s, women’s, and children’s clothing, along with timepieces, eyewear, perfume, and a recently unveiled home collection. But a certain kind of customer just loves him.” The New York magazine writer Matthew Schneier told me, “The press has never really liked Plein. “I like underdogs.” A menswear-magazine writer I spoke to referred to Plein as “the Andrew Tate of fashion,” comparing the designer to the oily former kickboxing champion and men’s-rights media personality. It’s for people who want to make sure everybody can tell that they’ve spent a thousand dollars on a bedazzled T-shirt.” There are important antecedents to Plein’s maximalist style, especially among Italian designers-Versace, Dolce & Gabbana, and Roberto Cavalli, to name a few-but the fashion world isn’t where Plein looks for inspiration. “It’s the rhinestones, the skulls, the gaudy T-shirts with huge logos. “The Plein look is very West Coast aughts,” the fashion podcaster James Harris said. “Which hetero guy in the world wouldn’t want to look like this?” his global wholesale director, Fabien Girardi, asked me.Ĭelebrity fans of the brand include the actor Nicolas Cage, the soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo, and New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams. His naughty-playboy look combines elements of well-off hair-metal rocker in his dotage, white hip-hop impresario, and “Jersey Shore” cast member. He mostly wears clothing of his own design: skinny leather pants with a wealth of zippers skull-emblazoned sweaters chunky sneakers with a prominent Philipp Plein double-“P” logo slim-cut jackets in exotic-animal pelts oversized crystal-studded watches. Plein serves as his brand’s best living advertisement. For that show, which was opened by the rapper Azealia Banks, Plein had a roller coaster (which some of the models rode) installed on the catwalk, leading to media speculation that the event may have been “the most expensive fashion show ever.” “I’m trying to fuck your mind tonight,” he told an audience in Milan, in 2015. His runway shows are elaborate affairs, featuring pyrotechnics and, occasionally, Jet Skis. Since founding his eponymous clothing brand, in the late nineteen-nineties, Plein has become an effective hawker of loudly luxurious wares, beloved by customers with a taste for the extravagant, if often sneered at by the fashion establishment. Philipp Plein, the forty-five-year-old German fashion designer, is thin and muscular, with stiffly gelled hair, a stubbled jawline, and arms covered in tattoos (the word “Billionaire” in fat lettering a cross with “Veni Vidi Vici” a sad-faced Jesus).
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