In June, the fashion designer Scott Sternberg made plans to vacation in Hawaii in October. He wasn’t sure if the trip would be a celebration or a consolation. If things went according to plan, he would have sold his company, the cult leisure-wear brand Entireworld, to a larger apparel company, and stayed on as creative director. But if the sale didn’t fly, he would run out of money and be forced to shut down the business.
The second scenario happened. On October 13th, Sternberg’s forty-seventh birthday, he announced on Instagram that Entireworld was closing. He had been trying to find a buyer or investors for months, and now the anticipated deal, he wrote, “disappeared in a flash.” He took off for Hawaii.
“It wasn’t like I was dying to be acquired by this company,” Sternberg said, after his trip. He was in his silver Audi, driving on the freeway in L.A., where he lives. His Brussels griffon, General Zod, snoozed on his lap. He explained that the deal’s terms kept getting worse. “My intent was always to land the plane, not crash the plane,” he said. He is now facing all of the unglamorous duties associated with shutting down a business: communicating with creditors and factories, and getting rid of as much merchandise as possible in a half-price liquidation sale. In the future, Sternberg may venture outside of clothing. “I don’t want to sound egotistical, but I think I do well giving brands a sense of purpose,” he said. “And by that I mean, like, why are you here? Why should anybody care?”
Sternberg has an unusual résumé for a garmento. An Ohio native with a degree in economics, he was an agent at C.A.A. (clients included Diet Coke and Sprite) before launching the fashion brand Band of Outsiders, in 2004. The label became a fashion-world favorite, known for skinny ties and a clever take on preppy classics. Although he won two C.F.D.A. awards, a bad investment deal forced him to shut down, in 2015. In 2018, after a stint with Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop, he launched Entireworld, which specialized in affordable but elegantly designed basics in vibrant hues—T-shirts, underwear, socks, and sweats.
When the pandemic hit, Entireworld’s signature monochrome sweatsuits ($176) became the unofficial W.F.H. uniform for cosmopolitan office workers. Sales were up six hundred per cent; the business brought in almost five million dollars in the span of a year, and items were often sold out. Selena Gomez and Aidy Bryant were fans, as was the fashion editor Eva Chen.
Sternberg parked and strolled into the high-fashion department store Dover Street Market, which was almost empty, the boom-boom of electronic music echoing off its concrete walls. An employee dressed in casual goth cooed at General Zod.
“How’s it going?” Sternberg asked.
“Not much to do,” she said. “We’re just kind of moseying around, dancing a little bit. Trying stuff on. You know?”
Sternberg is disillusioned about the luxury business and what he considers its crazy-making price points. Like a lot of designers, he prefers to wear nondescript casual clothes, and that day he had on oversized drawstring canvas pants and an Entireworld T-shirt. Still, he enjoys surveying the market. “I love coming in here and touching everything,” he said. “I come here to be inspired. ”
In a store full of outlandish garments, he was instantly drawn to a rack of duds that resembled his Entireworld line. He held up a pair of cropped twill trousers. “They’re by some guys called Evan Kinori?” he said, peering at the tag. He fondled a dark-green hoodie. “Two hundred twenty. Not insane.” He shrugged. “This, I like. It’s honest. It’s pure. It feels special but anonymous.”
He picked up an asymmetrical women’s blouse in a baroque print, by Junya Watanabe. “Like, that shirt is an idea. Don’t let anybody order that,” he said. He grabbed a white lineny dress by Jonathan Anderson. “So pure,” he said. “It’s not an idea.”
Consumers might assume that Entireworld went under because people have returned to their offices, but that’s not the case. Sternberg said, “Listen, once you get people into sweatpants, it’s hard to get them out of sweatpants.” The truth, he went on, is that a company like Entireworld was simply not sexy enough for investors. “I found myself not really putting the gimmick over.” He curved his fingers into air quotes and said, “We’re a circular economy,” mimicking a Silicon Valley pitch. “Fuck you, no, you’re not.”
He stared down the Gucci rack. “This is all in the realm of costume,” he said. He touched an embroidered linen dress ($3,500). “This is just Gucci trying to fill a SKU plan.” But a pale-green pleated skirt ($1,800)? “Chic as shit.”
“What I love is that it’s everybody’s little arts-and-crafts project, in a way. Even Gucci,” he said. “But where I get lost is, you just look at a price tag and it doesn’t make sense. The values of the marketplace just don’t seem to align.” ♦
