The Creative Class | Maria Lemos, Showroom Director

LONDON, United Kingdom — Maria Lemos believes it's crucial that young designers understand that magic moment of retail chemistry, when a consumer's initial desire for a product aligns with good fit and the right price to trigger a sale. So much so that if a designer, whose raw creative talent may have caught her eye, does not take an interest in the final result of their work — namely, the sale — "then it's a red flag and I don't want to go near it, even if I love the product," says Lemos, founder of integrated sales and communications agency Rainbowwave.

Launched in 2002 as a multi-label showroom, Rainbowwave has since sprouted a Paris presence, a PR division and a concept store on London’s trendy Chiltern Street. And with a current client roster that includes fast-emerging names like Lucas Nascimento, Ostwald Helgason, Peter Pilotto and Rachel Comey, Lemos has built a solid reputation for spotting and nurturing promising young fashion talent.

“The aesthetic has to speak to you. A lot of people approach us who we don’t take on because the aesthetic isn’t quite right,” says Lemos, explaining how she picks the designers she works with. “Each designer has to offer something special. It could be that, commercially, they are really viable businesses, but we try to have a certain creative vision of our own.”

Everything I have done in life has been organic. It was all very people-led.

Lemos is also wary of creating too narrow a focus. "If I look at showrooms that are known for, say, American contemporary, there's line after line of product that is quite repetitive. We're the opposite of that. We want it to be almost like a multi-brand store… You couldn't have Peter Pilotto and Mary Katrantzou in the same showroom, even though they're very different designers, because to the consumer, they are very close at times due to the print element… We don't want crossover in the showroom, otherwise you'd be cannibalising the designers and you wouldn't be servicing them all properly." Indeed, part of the genius of Rainbowwave lies in the rigour of a highly curated edit that allows each and every designer to stand out.

The Greek-born Lemos was first drawn to the fashion industry in the 1980s by her passion for Azzedine Alaïa. "Alaïa was my obsession," she says. After studying French and classics at Oxford, Lemos went to Paris and tried her darndest to get a job at the designer's Marais atelier. She promptly failed. But she didn't give up. "Instead, I got a job with a designer called Nikos, who was doing underwear and swimwear, and his wife was the commercial director of Alaïa — so I thought that was the way in. I was totally an Alaïa stalker!"

Lemos later became a PR and worked at Sonia Rykiel when Tomas Maier designed the brand's menswear. But when she moved to London, Lemos, again, targeted one of the designers who most captivated her: John Galliano.

“A position with John came up in sales. I’d never done sales in my life, but I got the job with zero experience. It was 1988 and he was backed by Peter Bertelsen. But the economy turned sour and we were soon out in the street and jobless,” recounts Lemos. “Then, John moved to Paris, where he was helped by new backers and Alaïa gave him a place to show for free. We had a set designer who made the showroom like a stage set, and we’d wear long dresses and work really, really hard.”

“It was a different time in fashion,” she reflects. “People were very human and they stood together. You did it for love. Stores never talked about sell-through: they came in and they bought because they loved something.”

Rainbowwave was born quite naturally out of Lemos’ work with designers. There was no master plan. “Everything I have done in life has been organic,” she says. “After John Galliano, I worked with Clements Ribeiro and they asked me to consult for Cacharel, and so I represented them in the UK. And then Tomas Maier asked me to sell his swimwear collection. It was all very people-led. I represented an eclectic mix of products that I had come across.”

Initially, without a physical showroom, Lemos sold out of hotels. Then, in 2004, she secured a showroom space in the London neighbourhood of King's Cross and steadily began representing a number of rising young British designers. "We had Erdem in 2006. When we took him on, he only had five stockists, so really tiny, and we worked with him for two years, then Marios Schwab, then Peter Pilotto, then JW [Anderson]."

"You have to pick them at the right time for growth," says Lemos. "If you do it too early, it's disappointing to them. I remember looking at a JW Anderson collection — maybe his second — and not being quite sure it was right yet. And then I went to the next show and was really impressed. You have to be sure that they're in that moment where the collection is ready to take the leap; you don't want to expose the brand to 400 stockists if they are not ready."

When evaluating potential clients, Rainbowwave looks carefully at "the personality of the designer and the infrastructure of the company," says Lemos. "Are they together? Are they organised? Will they have enough money to buy their fabric on time? Do they have a production person?"

Lemos says she longs for design schools to integrate more commercial awareness into their programmes and thinks a good dose of business sense — of the kind that could be acquired from a year of working at a big house — is still missing from many young designers. “Getting designers to focus on the [customer] who will wear their clothes is important. And, sometimes, it’s totally absent. Stiff fabrics might look cool on tall, Amazonian women on the catwalk, but who is the woman that can wear that? We also talk to them about specifications for different markets relating to climate and culture,” she says.

“When they’re young, [designers] think their creativity is beyond climate and body shapes and it’s all about their vision. We say to them, if you want to develop Asia you have to have shorter lengths, you need to have sleeves. That’s how you help them grow. It’s partly like product development.”

Sales figures are a vital input to Lemos’ work and every week, Rainbowwave harvests and analyses this information. “We get sell-through information from the stores, so we are on the pulse of how a collection is selling and we know in advance, hopefully, the budget that stores will be allocating next season.”

“I have learned a lot from working with denim, which is all about product, and the business is so big you can really analyse it,” adds Lemos, referring to one of Rainbowwave’s larger clients, J Brand. “J Brand read our weekly report like a bible and the minute they see something trending, they put it into the next collection and do it in more washes, because they know that’s a moneymaking exercise. Sometimes you sell products to a store and they don’t sell out at the store. It’s not enough to know what sells to the store.”

As for growing Rainbowwave, “where we are going to take it is lifestyle,” says Lemos. “We’ve launched a brand called Laain and it’s activewear, but it's beautiful and chic. And we also have Atea, which is very easy, very toned down clothes that are adaptable.”

“We’re putting that together with jewellery,” she continues, “because women still have a budget, but they want to know why they are spending. Jewellery doesn’t have a shelf life. There’s a whole breed of fashion jewellery designers that are working with fine jewellery and stores are giving it the space — jewellery is one of Net-a-Porter’s fastest growing categories.”

Menswear is high on her agenda, too. “There is such a growth in menswear, so we are looking at menswear as part of the showroom.” A New York office is also said to be in the cards.

Looking back at her career, Lemos advises: “Just follow your instincts,” adding that building the right team is crucial to success. “Pick the right people with the same outlook and goals as you. Personality is key. We are in sales, so look for positive people with clear, precise communication skills and a great head for numbers. Of course, we work with designers, so staff have to relate to their creative needs, but we’re also trying to drive the business, so an understanding of finance and solid back-office administrative skills are really important too.”