Chicago Tribune - October 12, 2003
Wendy Navratil, Tribune staff reporter

With advertising one-liners that double as a platform for a progressive agenda, Cole has delivered messages to America about AIDS, voter registration, homelessness, reproductive rights, gun control and casual Fridays, occasionally with prophetic timing, almost always with provocative puns.

"What you stand for is more important than what you stand in" sums up the philosophy that has guided Kenneth Cole Productions during the last 20 years.

As part of the anniversary of his company, Cole, 49, visited Chicago a little more than a week ago to sign copies of his memoir, "Footnotes" (Simon & Schuster, $35), and to speak to fashion students from Columbia College Chicago and other area schools.

His intent has never been sensationalism, he said, but some turns of phrase have caused more drama than he expected.

One clothing ad from 1997, as President Clinton was preparing to take the stand in the Monica Lewinsky scandal, read, "Opening arguments, cross examinations . . . who gives a shirt?"

When it initially was rejected for publication by The New York Times, Cole took his case up the ladder--and, apparently, right past the deadline to swap out the ad. It ran, maybe inadvertently, Cole writes in his book.

"But I find that even if someone doesn't agree with what we have to say, they're more inclined to respect that we had the courage to say it than otherwise," Cole said in an interview in Chicago. "I'm sure we've also lost some customers as a result. But I believe we've probably gained more than we've lost."

His multimillion-dollar empire attests to that.

In step with the shift to corporate casual for men and the elevation of black for women, Cole expanded beyond shoes to clothing in the 1990s.

Sales totaled $433 million last year. The Michigan Avenue store is second only to the Rockefeller Center store in New York in retail volume, a spokeswoman said.

That's because Cole nails Chicago style, said Sacramento Santillan, 23, a Columbia College Chicago student who waited with about 200 others at Nordstrom for Cole to sign a copy of "Footnotes."

"Chicago people are always on the go," said Santillan, who owns five pairs of Cole shoes. "They want to look good and stylish, but the most important thing to me is comfort."

Cole has never strayed from an urban, contemporary aesthetic, even as he has delved deeper into what is now known as "cause-related marketing."

His first foray was in 1985-86, when AIDS was known, if at all, as a scourge of the gay and drug-using communities. Cole was a member of neither. But the "We Are the World" musical collaboration, among other movements, had signaled to him that Americans were ready for a cause that "was bigger than themselves," he said. He was, too, after three years in his own business. He had left his father's shoe company, best known for Candie's heels in the '70s, to start from the ground up.

He enlisted Annie Leibovitz to photograph Christie Brinkley, Andie MacDowell and other stars of their time--barefoot, so as not to seem exploitive--for an ad urging support for the American Foundation for AIDS Research. He still serves on its board today.

"At the time, it almost redefined me," he said. "I realized how one plus one equals three or four, and what an appropriate use of our resources this was."

Yet Cole speaks openly of missteps. He cites an ad inspired by the 2000 presidential election. It showed an intersection of Bush Avenue and Cheney Lane with a sign reading "Dead End."

"There is a fine line sometimes between what's political and what's social, and that kind of crossed the line," Cole said. "That message really wasn't meant to be political, it was meant to talk about how we'd put in office someone who had gotten less votes than the next person and kind of addressing our frustration with the process more than with its results."

Then the Sept. 11 attacks happened, just weeks after the ad was released.

"It became clearly inappropriate and we were quick to withdraw that and acknowledge our mistake," he said.

Even with the occasional controversy, he never would abandon the social agenda now.

"It's hard to ignore the hand that feeds you," Cole said, "and today our communities are far more needy than they've ever been, and governments neither have the will nor the ability in many cases to provide the services that they need to. So, if the private sector doesn't step forward, I don't know who will."

Nor would he deny that the relationship is mutually beneficial. The shoe drive he sponsors to gather footwear for the homeless, in exchange for discounts on new pairs, coincides with the traditionally slow retail month of February.

Other companies are just beginning to learn the bottom-line value of teaming style with substance, said Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst at the NPD Group, a market-research firm.

"It really comes down to this: If I'm going to spend my money, I'm going to endorse a product or brand that conveys my lifestyle and convictions," Cohen said. "That's what he is about."

And that's a core reason for Cole's endurance.

"Twenty years is a hall-of-fame run in the fashion industry," Cohen said.

Cole, incidentally, aspired to be a Mets shortstop back in his boyhood days of selling peanuts at Shea Stadium. That's not the end to his all-American pedigree. His wife is the daughter of former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, his father served as a Marine, and he even was named one of People magazine's sexiest businessmen, in 1998.

Cole has been encouraged to run for political office. But ask whether he, like Schwarzenegger, might consider doing so, and he answers with a true-to-form quip.

"I'm actually in the process of running from office," he said in Chicago. "I've got so much access and ability to do so much great social outreach and public service as a private person. I think I can do much more where I am."

1. A thought from Kenneth Cole's 'FootNotes'

"When we get up in the morning, what we put on is very much a reflection of how we see the world and how we want it to see us. . . . We can't always control the reality of our life the way we can control the perception of it. We are given an uncensored opportunity, every day, to be who we want to be. . . . I've always believed that how you look is a self-fulfilling prophecy: When you wake up, get dressed and look in the mirror, if you think you look good, most likely you will. You'll probably smile more and be more at ease."

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