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M I G U E L A D R O V E R |
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It's not easy being an iconoclast. Just ask Miguel Adrover, the New York City designer who has been hailed as a virtuoso since his debut three years ago but who lacks the
requisite funding to show at Fashion Week this season.
Adrover, 37, regards clothes as a vector for social change. Trouble is, sometimes the message gets lost in the fray. After he showed a delicious meze of Middle Eastern and African-inspired silhouettes in September 2001, two days before the Twin Towers fell, he says he was accused
by the tabloids of sympathizing with the enemy. "No one says anything about
[designers such as] Michael Kors except 'Great skirt,'" Adrover says. "We have
great skirts too. For us they say, 'Maybe there's a Taliban connection.'" To make
matters worse, the Leiber Group, the luxury-apparel conglomerate that had acquired Adrover in April 2000, withdrew its backing in early October 2001.
Adrover cobbled together the funding to show a spring line last September. It was couture lite, a witty and wearable riff on the New York immigrant experience, melding Hasidic, Latin, hip-hop and corporate styles.
Owing two months' back rent is a
constant in his life, but so is resourcefulness; this is the person who turned a discarded mattress into a ravishing coat. It's just a question of where his pluck and ingenuity will take him next.
—By George Epaminondas
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