Smythe blazers are a staple for Gossip Girl’s Blake Lively and a fave of both Rachel McAdams and Anne Hathaway. The homegrown label has been featured in Nylon, InStyle, TeenVogue and is sold at Saks Fifth Avenue, Barney’s, Bloomingdale’s, Bergdorf Goodman and London’s Harvey Nichols – to name a few. You can pick yours up at Holt Renfrew.

Celebrating their fifth year in business, Smythe is a huge Canadian fashion success story – that happened without the help of LG Fashion Week.

It was 2003 and Andrea Lenczner was a busy buyer at Holt Renfrew while her long-time friend Christie Smythe was churning out designs at New York City’s Gap headquarters. Like many of us, they’d meet for dinner and gush over the business they would start together one day. This is symptomatic of most women who have an entrepreneurial itch – oh the ideas that come from red wine. However, unlike most women Lenczner and Smythe actually ditched their jobs and began toiling away at their design fantasy: to make great jackets. In 2004, Smythe was born.

In tremendous awe of their success, we decided to give them a ring:

SDTC: First off, why jackets? Why no skirts? Pants? Breezy scarves?

SMYTHE: We decided on jackets as they were the one staple in our wardrobe that we loved whether it was a vintage one we found in Montreal while we were at McGill or something passed down from our mother. We always loved that particular piece in our wardrobe and appreciated it. We wanted to choose one thing and do it really well. That was the strategy. (Take note ladies – that’s how you start a business, find a niche and be the best.)

LENCZNER: Jackets five years ago were not easy to come by. It’s hard to remember but you kind of had to buy a suit from Theory to go with your designer jeans. There were t-shirt options cause TNT was around and Juicy started off with t-shirts but there were no blazers – unless you were wearing a suit blazer. It felt wrong. I think we owe a lot of our success to trends that were happening at the time – jean and t-shirt trend, you needed a third piece and no one was paying attention to it. It’s a different ball game now but at the time no one had really focused on it.

SDTC: Big ideas that all sound great, but how was the actual designing of the jackets to begin with?

SMYTHE: Outside of a bra, a jacket is the hardest piece of apparel to design because the patterns are so complicated in comparison to other categories. It was a huge learning process for both of us.

LENCZNER: Christie taught me how to do it. I was a frustrated buyer; I would look at something and think, “Now why did they do that?”

SDTC: How do you divvy it all up? Is one of you the creative lead and the other the brains of the biz?

SMYTHE: A lot of people ask us that and predominantly because my name is on the label. We do every single piece of design together, from the initial concept to final button choice. I find that she’s a little bit more polished than I am. But the friction always ends up as a nice looking jacket. In terms of finance, Andrea is certainly more specialized in that than I am.

LENCZNER: We toyed with [the name] Lenczner-Smythe but it sounded like a law firm. We divide the administration shit up but the design is both of us. You touched on my sore spot as people don’t think I have to do with the design, because of my name, but I very much do the design with Christie. I remember we went to see Joe Mimran when we started out and he said, “Well, who’s doing the designing” and we said, “We both are” and he said, “That will change.” And it hasn’t!

SDTC: Not many people could have their best friend as a business partner, but you’ve made it work.

LENCZNER: We share the victories, the failures – in a team, failures don’t devastate as much – we can rationalize together.

SMYTHE: It’s more fun!

SDTC: How on earth have you managed to succeed so well, in such a short time, while also having children? (Lenczner has THREE young ones and Smythe a litte girl)

SMYTHE: Andrea always said to me that she couldn’t have three kids unless she had the business. What she means by that is that she feels personally fulfilled. I think that feeling personally fulfilled in her career allows her to be a better mother.

LENCZNER: It’s not easy.

SMYTHE: We endeavour to be good mothers and good business partners

LENCZNER: But we are really shitty wives though.

We all have a good laugh.

LENCZNER: If I go away, Christie is here to put out fires, respond to e-mails and vice versa. That’s where it helps. It’s hard – I’m not going to say it’s not hard – it’s a big juggle and I do feel like I’m never finished at the office and I feel like my house is a disaster when I leave the house. I feel like I should be doing lunch at my kids’ school.

SMYTHE: We never feel like we’re finished but we always do leave. When we started the business we always made a point of working balance into our schedules. When it’s five o’clock we leave or if the girls have a ballet class or swimming – then we leave earlier to go to that. We might not feel finished at the office but you have to compromise one thing for the other. Like Andrea said, when she goes on March break she doesn’t have to look back and call me every day – cause I’m here.

LENCZNER: We have some awesome employees now too.

SDTC: How many employees do you have?

LENCZNER: We have two employees and then we outsource a lot of things – our sales. We have someone who manages distribution here but we also have an agency in NYC and LA. We outsource marketing and PR – and hopefully shipping soon. We try to outsource things that are not our core competency. (Note #2: This is also how you succeed, figure out what you excel in best and designate the rest to those who do it best)

SDTC: You’ve been featured in Vogue, are in all the highest-end department stores, Gossip Girl’s got you on her back – what milestone has brought you the most excitement? You’ve got lots to choose from!

SMYTHE: When we finally thought we designed something that was cute. And the first time, in different experiences, we saw somebody wearing it. Somebody chose it! Somebody we didn’t know.

LENCZNER: We are just starting to do celebrity placement now – we haven’t actively done it – it just sort of happened. Blair, my husband, and I were watching the MMVA’s and saw Fefe Dobson wearing our jacket. It took me a second to realize it was ours. We were watching it in bed, not expecting anything, and then she said “I want to give a shout out to Canadian designers Smythe.” That was really fun. What else? Getting into Barney’s was massive.

SDTC: No shit. How did that happen?

SMYTHE: When we first started we had a little suitcase that we were trying to sell out of at the Park Plaza before it became condos. We were going to Barney’s with our bag and presenting to Julie Gilhart – the fashion director of Barney’s. It was a terrifying and exciting moment. When they picked it up – we thought we were going to burst.

LENCZNER: When they had it in their front window…being on a window in 5th Avenue in New York City – and we didn’t pay! Lenczner whispers: You know, people sometimes have to pay for that.

SDTC: You’ve accomplished it all without the help of LG Fashion Week. Can you tell us about the decision not to participate?

LENCZNER: That agenda was born out of a budget. We never did Fashion Week because it’s expensive to do it well. We thought, “Well, we’re in Holt’s’” – so we kind of bagged the elephant for Canada. Is it worth spending twenty grand on a fashion show or is it smarter to market ourselves into stores? If money wasn’t a concern it would be a smart thing to do. I think we are also sort of chicken when it comes to fashion week, it’s pretty daunting.

SDTC: So, not being a part of Fashion Week was a business decision.

LENCZNER: We are here to fulfill a passion but also to make a buck – we weren’t going to proceed if we weren’t turning a profit. We have quite an ego about that – as it is not easy to do in this business. We want to make sure we are here next year, and the year after – and we make decisions accordingly.

SDTC: Now, the most important question – if you could have any celebrity wear your jackets, who would you pick?

LENCZNER: It’s not the most original answer but I think we’d say Kate Moss. Kate Moss is our ideal.

SDTC: Interesting, I thought you’d go for Gwyneth.

LENCZNER: I like Kate cause she smokes, she’s a bit raunchy. When a Ryerson student interviewed us she didn’t get it and asked, “Why do you guys like Kate Moss?” I told her, “I can’t explain that to you. Who do you like?”
“Lady Gaga.” She’s not an inspiration.

SDTC: She’s a Halloween inspiration.

BOO! And there you have it. These two have effing nailed it!