Who What Wear with Hillary Kerr: Celebrating 15 Years of Clare V. With Clare Vivier

Welcome to Who Up Where With Hillary Kerr, your direct line to the designer's stylist, beauty experts, editors, and tastemakers who are shaping the ever-evolving world of fashion. I'm your host, Hillary Kerr, and today I'm joined by beloved bag and accessories designer, Claire Vivier. Claire started her brand, Claire V, in 2008, when she was a journalist for French TV and found herself in need of a stylish laptop case. Unable to find a product that was both functional and chic, she began designing and handsowing them herself out of her home, and thus, Claire V was born. Today, we're celebrating 15 years of the brand, with an inside look at Claire's upcoming book, Lovey De Claire V, Parachique L.A. Cool, which comes out on September 12th. It's all coming up on Who Up Where. So, Claire, welcome to the show. I am so excited to have you on, to help in one small way, help you celebrate 15 years of your incredible brand, Claire V, of which I owned so much of it. It's like one of my go-to presents for girlfriends, etc. You have a book coming out to celebrate the brand's anniversary. How did you decide to do a book as the pinnacle of this massive milestone in business? First of all, Hillary, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be sitting here talking to you and seeing your cute face and your amazing smile. Thank you so much. Yes, we have this book coming out with Rosoli and Jazella Aguilar, who's an editor at Rosoli contacted me out of the blue. I got an email from her. Wow. And she asked if I'd be interested in doing a book. And I was like, what? Of course, I emailed her back immediately. And that started the conversation rolling. And then we figured out that when the book would be coming out, it would be our 15th anniversary. So I was like, well, this is a great milestone. So it kind of turned out to be a perfect marking point over our 15 years. So the book is phenomenal. But for our audience, how would you describe it and what part are you most proud of? Okay, so it's called La vie du Claire V, Paris chic et la cool. And as you know, Hillary, the brand is very much influenced by my French, by marriage heritage and our culture here in Los Angeles, where I formed the brand 15 years ago. And I've started the brand out of my house in Silver Lake. And there's a kind of grittiness to the east side of LA. It's beautiful and wonderful. And there's so much gorgeous nature and sunshine. But there's also grittiness that I kind of love. That's kind of my style. And I feel like that comes across in the book in so far as this brand as lovely and wonderful as it is and the beautiful products that we make. There's also a perfectly imperfect aspect to it. And we have a sweatshirt in our collection that we've had for at least 10 years. And it says bourgeoisie sauvage. Yes, it's been very hard to translate that phrase. But if you kind of know what bourgeoisie means, it's kind of like middle class, aspiring class. And then sauvage means wild. And Lizzy, Swift and I, Lizzy's my art director. We came up with this phrase because we are so infatuated with fonts and lettering and typefaces and just how letters look in certain words. And the letters of bourgeoisie looked so beautiful together. It's a beautiful word. But we couldn't just use bourgeoisie because that's like snobby and weird. So we needed to mess it up a little bit, knock it down. You know, it's kind of like a perfect mix of the high low. And so I came up with sauvage and the two words look really nice together. The way that Lizzy said it and the typefaces that she used is really beautiful. And I figured out and doing this book that it kind of represents the brand. In a way, there's this perfectly imperfect high low aspect to the brand that bourgeoisie sauvage kind of encapsulates. And I personally, not to tell you about your own brand, but I've always thought of like this great marriage of form and function. These are very useful and practical things that you make, but that they also have a luxury to them. You don't feel overly precious using it on a daily basis, but it also is special. And there are so few brands in this world that understand how to marry those two things. And it's one of the many reasons why I've always loved everything that you do. Thank you so much. I really love that you say that because you're my perfect audience, because you are the working girl. You're the person who I created this brand for. I started with a laptop case and it was creating the perfect work bag. And I started the company with one factory in Los Angeles. And what I learned very quickly when I was go to this factory every day to get my samples made was that producing in Los Angeles is very expensive, especially if you wanted to use beautiful materials. And I did, I wanted to use leathers from Italy and beautiful canvases and beautiful silks and things. So using beautiful materials, I had to figure out how to make beautiful objects, beautiful functional bags for working women that didn't cost an arm and a leg. And the way that I was able to do that was by creating just simple designs. And the marriage of the beautiful materials with simple designs and made in California make it so it feels special, but it doesn't feel precious. It's beautifully executed. And it's probably why it resonates with so many people. So going back to the book and going back to early days, you wrote about the fact that you moved to France right out of college to be in the fashion capital of the world. Even though is this true, you barely spoke French at the time? That is very true. Yeah. Ma'am. That was rave. I love that. It's the best thing I've been so young and naive. I mean, you really have to be very young and very naive to do something like that. And God bless us at that age because I don't think I would ever do that again. It's so hard and so humiliating, especially at the time there was no internet. I couldn't email my family. I had to buy a phone card to call them. So yeah, I moved to France right after college. I wanted to go live in Paris. I had never been to Paris. I just knew that it was fashion capital and that I would probably love it. So I bought myself a ticket and I think I had like, you know, a couple hundred dollars. And my goal was to live there for a year and just hustled, sink or swim situation. I found a job waiting tables at a cafe and I did not know how to speak French. The only thing I knew how to say is, have you ordered? I would go up to each and every table and speak to them. In the past tense, I would say, I would say, even if they had just arrived in the restaurant and I would say, hello, have you ordered? And they would look at me like, I was crazy with, I had no idea. And then I could kind of phonetically hear what they were ordering based on the menu and I would write that down and give it to the kitchen. So I was doing for money and then I found an internship at a documentary film production company. I love everything about this. And clearly it had an impact because you can see all of this amazing French influence in every facet of your company. Why do you think that the culture had such an impact? Because I know a lot of people who have lived a lot of places and it doesn't always necessarily infuse them with the spirit of the culture, the way that it seems to have done with you in such a organic and thoughtful way. I think it's twofold. I think it is because Paris is the fashion capital of the world. I did want to go there for that reason. But then also meeting my boyfriend who would later become my husband, it was important that I would learn to speak French fluently so that I could communicate with his family. And also just important that I would learn to appreciate his culture. And it was not a sacrifice because I'm completely a francophile and I love French cultures. So it was a good fit. Let's say. So one of the things that I love about the book is all of the imagery and how it feels so personal and almost scrapbook like it's a love letter to to some of the early days of the brand. You mentioned working on that laptop bag and figuring it out. I'm wondering if you can tell me what point did you start thinking like, oh, I think this is actually a thing. I think this is working. I think this is going to thrive. You were part of the first internet generation of bloggers as well. So you knew all about this. We would start brands by blogging back then and finding community that way and posting pictures of ourselves. There was no Instagram at the time. It was only blogs. So I didn't have any money to start my brand. I completely bootstrapped the entire thing and never knew if it was going to turn into anything. I only had a dream and knew how to sew. So I was sewing my own samples and started with a website and a blog at the same time to market it and tell my story and try to get people interested in what I was doing because I knew that there had to be a reason that people were purchasing ClareVee because you can go buy a bag anyway. You've got a million places. So why were they going to purchase ClareVee at the time now, ClareVee? And so I had to do that by telling my own story by taking pictures of myself and telling stories about my life as a mother of a young boy and married to a French guy and living Los Angeles and all that. So the book does feel a bit scrapbooky and I know it's going to be funny to look back at because I did include like three or four pages of mirror selfies because it is just a part of how I built the brand and I had to kind of include that. Your question of when I thought it was actually a thing. There were certain milestones because I started out of room in my house all by myself then I hired a part-time employee and was so completely impressed by how fast things grew and it wasn't just myself. So hiring my first employee was one I think moving out of my house and taking the risk of taking on an actual office space which was a slash retail space with my neighbor Catherine Bentley the jewelry designer and we immediately had great success because there weren't a lot of cute stores to shop in and so we're like and so immediately we had all of our neighbors who were coming in and buying things and we were like oh my god look at us. We thought we were just taking an office space with a little tiny bonus space of retail and it turned out that it was like no no no we could have our own retail spaces. So after a year I moved into my own retail space two doors down on the corner of Mitchell Turing and Sunset. So to answer your question I'll say when I opened my first store that's when I felt like things might be real. This might be a real business. So we talk quite a bit about creative process on the show and yours is beautifully documented in this book. Obviously you have scaled tremendously from just you to now having 14 retail locations wholesale partners across the globe not to mention a thriving econ business. But I'm wondering like what has remained the same? Are there certain aspects of design that remain the same? Are there elements that you're like wow that's changed so much more than I would have thought. Talk to me a little bit about the evolution. Well it's interesting because so many of my designs have been with me for a long time. So in 15 years of business some of my best sellers I've had around for seven eight years that we keep iterating on and we keep renewing with different leathers and different beautiful fabrications and things but I feel like because I'm still creative director and because I still have a vision I'm still the same person I still have the same taste and point of view. The creative process and the product that we turn out still feels like us. So I think it's a combination of like having a beautiful foundation of gorgeous designs that we can keep iterating on and then just having a clear vision because it's coming from someone who loves design and loves fashion and loves wearing what we make you know and loves seeing my friends wear it and I want to make things that people who style I look up to if they carry my bags and I think that's it that's a win. I love that. So there are lots of stunning photos let's call the environmental they are street signs there are walkways there are murals there are pamphlets there ribbons and so on and they're side by side with products that you design that share a similar color palette or personality spirit in the world if you will. Can you tell me a little bit more about your process for finding and collecting design inspiration and also just inspiration in general because I love it when you're packing and Instagramming what you're thinking about putting in your suitcase or you're shopping somewhere talking about the jacket and here's the jacket and I'm still thinking about should I go back and get it how does all of this work together Claire? It's all just part of my life it's just the daily existence that I have and I'm constantly taking pictures as I said before I'm completely enamored with fonts and type faces especially hand painted signs and I love ones that are perfectly imperfect so you can tell that it's done by someone with a lot of skill but you can also see that it's done by a human hand yeah yeah and I share that love with my art director Lizzie and so I'm constantly traveling around the world and I'll take pictures of signs wherever I am and Lizzie has turned any number of signs hand painted signs into entire alphabets to be proprietary fonts for us so that's one of the things and then the other thing is I'm constantly at flea markets in France I'm constantly at vintage stores I'm so in love with again fashion and quality of goods I love the quality of old clothing and accessories so all of those Instagram stories that I've done have been at vintage stores on all my travels when I come back from travels I'll go through all my photos with Lizzie and it'll be fun to go through with her because she has a different eye and I have to say Lizzie did an amazing job of laying out this book because she is really responsible for the layouts that all look really cute together and like a suitcase full of ribbons and then a bag that has woven leather through it that she has put together of like these two things look like one another I'm just constantly inspired by traveling and signs and color and beautiful ribbons and things that I see do you ever have moments when it feels like the well has run dry or you're just not feeling engaged by anything and if so then what do you do when I'm feeling uninspired or down the one thing I know that always brings me back to a good place is doing things with my hands so I go into the design room and I'll start cutting up materials and I'll start thinking about design and I just need to start cutting things and start making shapes and objects and dreaming about designs and the reason I started this company is because I loved making things I had a perspective of a certain bag that I wanted to make and I wanted to carry and I think just having confidence in my own vision and my own design perspective is the thing that brings me back and makes me feel good again because that's the funny thing that people don't always talk about right that the more successful that company is the less you're doing the thing that brought you so much joy that you started doing it in the first place that's very true I think people don't realize that there's no way that I would have thought about that I also happen to love the running the business part of this it's all a puzzle to me but I had no idea that it would leave so little time for design yeah so one of the things that I've always really loved about your brand and your company is that it's unquestionably personal and reflective of your real life in so many ways I know that there have been a handful of products over the years that continue to thrive and grow but I'm wondering if you could tell me a story about an item in particular or product in particular that feels magical to you in some way something that had a resonance that you weren't necessarily expecting I always love a backstory Latropesian tote for me still holds a very special place in my heart it is one of my very first totes and I made it myself when I had a blog and I was just starting to sew on leather and I was contacted by a woman who had previously a bag line in Los Angeles and she contacted me out of the blue and said I've got some leather to sell would you be interested in coming to see my studio I've closed at my business and I'm selling leather so I was like sure I'll go to your studio and I bought a few hides of this beautiful vegetable tanned Italian leather and I made the first sample of the tote called Latropesian and to me it just epitomized like a lovely tote from the south of France so it's just why I called it Latropesian and it's just very simple it has the two straps at the time I didn't attach them I let them fly free how do you say hang freely so it was like a little twist on the classic boat tote and I made the tote and then I put it on my blog and I said I've got your summer tote knowing that I could probably make another 10 out of the materials that I had purchased and just based on that one photo sold the 10 immediately so it was the first time that I had like wow it was kind of like internet wildfire I was like oh my god what am I gonna do I've sold out of that and then I was like oh I'm gonna go back to that woman and then buy the rest of it so I bought the rest of her hides I made I don't know 50 totes and sold out of them all so quickly and it's so funny because then I was like well now I'm done with that leather well that's a bummer now what do I do and my husband's like find that leather what do you have to do you know ask her where she bought it and I was like oh okay great so I found a vendor in New York City that sold the same leather and started to make let's hope his end that's lovely I love that you're like all right I'm done no go get more I know I know so I can only imagine that as you went back through archives and old photos that you also had a huge sense of rediscovery I'm wondering if you had any moments like that any buried memories come to the surface yeah I was so surprised by how emotional it all was to go back in time and look at all that we have done over the last 15 years because it's really been non-stop I've really put my entire being into this business I'm not a very nostalgic person I don't usually go back and look at things and this really forced me to do that at the same time it was difficult because 10 years ago my dad died and it was like going through photos of seeing my dad and then when I was just finishing this book my mom passed away just as I was supposed to turn in the final text for this book so that was really a marking point as well of this not only chapter of my life that was done but kind of like a closing chapter on these first 15 years so it was extremely emotional memories transport you back it's like a wormhole the sense memory of it is so overwhelming at times it is it's overwhelming to see you know my son so young and like drawing pictures of bags and writing bag copy you know because our children are so influenced by what we do and he was making bags with me and seeing that he's now 20 years old it's crazy what is time so looking back are you surprised by big risks that handout are there things that you look back and go well that was not for us good to know we kept moving yeah to be an entrepreneur you really have to have a risk gene you have to trust your gut and things that stand out that were well worth it were like when I moved out of my house and took on rent for the first time when I moved down to the corner of metal train and sunset and opened my first store that same year I sold 40% of my company to partners and that was a huge risk I didn't know anything about private equity I didn't know anything about venture capital I just was introduced to a man named Tom Cartos who's still my partner it turned out to be one of the best decisions I ever made because we've been talking about how I started as a creative person I really wanted this business to work and I didn't have a business background so I wanted to have partners who could help me grow the business in a really sustainable intelligent way so I think of that and I think even to this day everything is a risk signing leases on new stores it's always a big risk we're opening Georgetown that's our 14th store so we just signed a lease on a pop-up in Paris for the last three months of this year so I can't really recall and it's so stupid because I'm sure there are millions of them but I can't recall things that just didn't work like it's all just learning experience and we just keep moving I would agree with that wholeheartedly so another part of your brand's ethos is the advocacy work that you do with organizations like Planned Parenthood, every mother counts, Giffords and every town for gun safety, less we forget one of my favorites also I am a voter I have a clutch that I love and I wear all the time yes great so can you walk me through a little bit how you decide on collaborations or why that give back piece of your business is so important to you yeah so about 10 years ago my business was doing pretty well we were profitable and we were kind of rolling along and kind of growing and I was like oh okay I want to start giving back my parents were very socially active my father was Mexican and grew up very active in the civil rights movement and my mom was always active in civil rights but also in you back in the 70s there was an organization I think it still exists called La Leche League it was an organization that still exists promotes breastfeeding which women had stopped doing in the 50s and 60s so anyway those were my parents I was introduced to Christy Turlington through her sister Kelly we were having coffee one day and I was saying that I wanted to start giving back interested use to meet my sister and sure enough that day I was in Christy's office talking to her about what kind of products Claire Bee could possibly make for them and how we could help so for almost 10 years now I've known Christy and have been giving back to every mother counts and that's been such a major gift in my life not only because of the work that I've been able to see firsthand with them of traveling the world and seeing the programs that they've been funding but also just being a mom and feeling like I wanted to help other moms in this world the things that we give back to I feel like are all very personal to me so plan parenthood was of course I'm very interested in being an advocate for women's reproductive health the same with every town for gun safety that was just a moment of like he got to be fucking kidding me with those guns and like sandy hook and it was just the moment of like what can we do and Gabby Giffords reached out to us a few years ago and I was thrilled we're happy to help and whatever way we can so is there a different process when you are working on a piece for a specific cause versus something that's strictly for your brand yeah the product that we tend to do for organizations you know for sure we'll do a t-shirt or sweatshirt and it will have some kind of french phrase what's the point of being on the nose and doing something in English you know so for every town for gun safety we have a t-shirt that says sassu-fi which means that's enough and sassu-fi is a great phrase in french it's like what you hear all the parents shouting at their kids all the time it's sassu-fi that's enough it has a good sound to it and the letters are all great but it also was just a perfect message for it's fucking enough okay like can we get rid of these guns on our streets so if we are working with them for a long time like we have with every mother counts we'll also branch out and see what other items we could do so we've done some jewelry for them we did a locket that says liberté gallite maternité this is a play on the french national slogan which is liberté gallite fraternité so we changed fraternity to maternity a good update yeah so as you look back and as you look forward as a not particularly sentimental person how do you think you'll evolve we have a lot of growth planned for the next three years and we see us continuing to open boutiques i'm a big proponent of the community aspect of opening boutiques and walking communities people love shopping in their own neighborhoods you know walking on the weekends or walking home from taking your kid to school or any of that stuff we loved to be part of those communities so i'm hoping to open more stores in the us the store in paris that we're doing for the last three months this year will be a testing ground for our first international store i hope to one day have a permanent store in paris well i just want you to know that i am here thrilled for you supporting you and just so delighted that we got a chance to celebrate the milestones because that is such an important piece of this and i think something that i personally have struggled with over the years and i think that women in particular have a hard time acknowledging all of the hard work because there's also that fear of like if i acknowledge this then it'll go away which doesn't even make any sense it's so stupid and we miss so much enjoyment but i wanted to say thank you so much for having me and i really appreciate talking to you in particular because you're such a big part of this Los Angeles community of creatives and you really get it and you're really like a proponent of us creative community and that's what has made this success is the fact that in LA we've been cheerleaders for each other and i just really want to say thank you because i'm being fan of yours all that means so much to me thank you because we're all outsider insiders in LA i feel like especially to be in this fashion space not quote unquote the fashion capitals you get it you get it it's its own different world yeah and it has so many great advantages and disadvantages but one of the great advantages is this wonderful community that we have beyond okay wait last but not least where can everyone pre-order your gorgeous but like not just gorgeous but also like uplifting and inspiring and joyful beautiful book gosh hiller you get it i'm so happy to be talking this is what we wanted we wanted this book to be joyful thank you so much you can pre-order on clarev.com you can pre-order on risolee.com you can go to that big old site called amazon runs a noble strand bookstore powells all the big ones have it that's amazing and i've said this before on this podcast but i'll say it again pre-orders are so important on so many levels it signals to the booksellers and publishers how much demand there is the more pre-ordering you can do the better and this is not only going to be perfect for everyone's home but it's also an incredible gift and another way of supporting women and great businesses and independent businesses and all of the good things so if you do one thing today anyone who's listening to this please pre-order this book i promise you you will not regret it i do not make that recommendation for everyone you're the best hillery thank you so much a huge thank you to the founder and designer of clarev clarevivier make sure to subscribe to our show wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss an episode and while you're there i'd also be so grateful if you would rate and review us if you have any guest suggestions or any other feedback drop us a line at podcast at huatware.com or you can find us on social at huatware see you next Wednesday on huatware with hillery cur this episode was produced by hillery cur summer hammeres and natalie thurman our audio engineers are at treehouse recording in los angeles california and our music is by johnathan lehi