New design leave an Alexis Bittar Lucite

"He is the King of Lucite," said dawn Mello, a fashion consultant. Others call him the Crown Prince of fashion jewelry.

But one thing that you do not hear that Mr. Bittar is predictable. Pieces of his newer lines were also scattered showroom: weaponlike branched metallics, Swarovski crystals and dark woods twisted and gnarled as prehistoric artifacts. That she nothing like his trademark Lucite look fits him well.

Mr. Bittar has evolved, Club kid from downtown, which he admits took its companies in $ 70 million last year, has too many drugs, a jewelry designer. And in an other great shift, he signed last month with TSG consumer partners, a private firm of equity to expand its brand of celebrity clients such as Cameron Diaz and Michelle Obama mass market.

"I feel my life like I back, together", said Mr. Bittar, 43, whose shaved head, facial scruff, blue shirt, jeans and new balance made crinkly him sneakers rather like a Web programmer as a fashion world-dandy. "I relate to people who have really been through."

Mr. Bittar said he went about it hear. He was born and raised in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, Syriac Christian father and an Irish Catholic mother, computer science professors, antiques traded and designed clothes to supplement their income.

"My father has me and my older brother on construction projects throughout the summer work, and I evil it bitter," Mr. Bittar said. "But he has also taught me that virtually everything from material might make you."

Somewhat accidentally, his father gave him also his start in jewelry. One day his father bought $300 worth of antique jewelry, which 13-year-old Alexis on St. marks place in the East Village, peddled, to sell the profits on more jewelry spending at home. "That was my seed capital," he said.

But the older Mr. Bittar was also a religious traditionalist during his son student at the Bronx high school of science, an orange-spike-haired punk rocker, who the night stole dance and drugs in downtown clubs such as the area and Danceteria, at that time. He was also gay, a revelation that went bad with his parents.

"It has very, very tense between us," Mr. Bittar said. "" My dad pulled me the dance floor at danceteria in one night say "You're it never, ever back there." "It was humiliating."

Mr. Bittar spent a year at the State University of New York at Albany - "I was stoned, all the time," he said - before returning downtown to his selling side of the road tract of North-Western. Alienated from his parents, he lived with boyfriends and plunged deeper into drugs. He said he had no particular preferred substance. "I would do whatever you before me would be," he said. "I died almost several times."

Mr. Bittar said, that he low point with only 19, to recognize that he needed to send itself to meet, support, he still attends.

And require an appointment, Mr. Bittar wondered whether could make as a jewelry designer. He bought some Lucite at industrial plastics on Canal Street and earrings carve small button in his tiny apartment in East Village, they sell for $20 of a few on the road. Aiming to go legit, he was a sales representative who could get sold in high-end stores such as Bergdorf Goodman, Barneys New York and Guggenheim Museum pieces in a matter of years.

By the late 1990s, Mr. Bittar has been estimated work among a small circle of top fashion stylist, Rachel Zoe, and Lori Goldstein. A big boost came his jewelry in an editorial spread shot by Steven Meisel, Mrs Goldstein used in August 2000 the Italian Vogue issue. Suddenly, Mr. Bittar was hugging playful work of the fashion elite.

"It was reaction against jewelry a whole Helmut-Lang-minimal at this moment", Mrs Goldstein said. "And here is Alexis with armful in delicious colours."

If it was advertising, his eye for cultural currency in time to. For a 2010 campaign, he had the actress Joan Collins from the 1980s years television series "Dynasty." Mrs Collins, almost 80, is not the only mature woman that Mr. Bittar has marked. Last year, Jack Pierson a campaign with Lauren Hutton, shot almost 70. is IRIS Apfel, 90, an employee, a familiar presence in his Blogfotos and a close friend.

And this month, he has a new campaign with the campy stars of "Absolutely Fabulous": Joanna Lumley, Jennifer Saunders, 53 and 65.

Mr. Bittar prefers older women for practical and political reasons. "Each display features models" age 16 to 22 with a blank stare he if the actual consumers in luxury fashion more like 35, 65, said. "I hate when a woman, that she is 45 says, as if it is a bad thing."

Aim for an older, perhaps richer, Ms seems to have paid off. Mr. Bittar has three stores in Manhattan and others in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago. His jewelry meets various price ranges. During the Lucite bangles around $250, are other pieces that he plans to sell upwards of $13,000.

It is another place where he experienced a development: in the original House of Bittar, his father. He now almost daily in conversation with his parents, and said that its anti gay had softened stance, especially after they met a friend a few years ago.

He said "Our relationship was long burdened". "I think my parents were waiting for me to change and not gay." "So I want to heard their consent, which the freedom really become to me who I am."

source:View the original article here