Bend Sport Couture

I’m on the look out for an Asian woman in a grey puffa. It is how Susan Lu, the woman behind the brand new label, Bend Sport Couture, described herself in a scrawled email. Turns out Susan is entirely too self-deprecating. I spot her in an instant, rushing across the road, slim-line, knee-length grey parka draped over a gorgeous silvery knit, charcoal silk Japanese-style slip and chocolate brown cords. Her skin is clear, her sleek black hair straight from a L’Oreal hair commercial and her manners impeccable. She is, in other words, exactly the type of stylish, elegant woman one can imagine launching her own sport-meets-style fashion label to immediate industry interest.

“Am I late? I’m late, aren’t I?” Brushing aside her apologies, we take up a table at Lézard Café on the rue Etienne Marcel, still jammed at 2pm with lunching groups reluctant to head back out in to the cold and grey Paris day. This is only Susan’s third interview since the label’s launch in October and – with two years of work having gone in to creation of this first collection – the American-born, 18-years-Paris-based designer is clearly devoted to ensuring the success of her business.

“I started two years ago with my sister who lives in Hong Kong,” Susan explains over Perrier and herbal tea. “She was really in to this yoga idea, and I like to do sports as well, so we started this label but about 18 months ago decided not to continue together.” But Susan, by now excited by the idea of a sport-focused clothing line that didn’t forsake fashion, continued with the project. Between jobs doing costume design on international film sets, videos and commercials – her profession for the past decade – the persistent designer successfully assembled a collection that owes as much to good design as it does to sporty comfort.

The 25 piece collection covers everything from sophisticated bathing suits and elegant yoga ensembles, to sleek parkas and slouchily sexy post work-out cover-ups. They are the sort of work-out outfits the well-kept women of Southern California go wild for: clothes that easily make the transition from morning gym session to lunch date to afternoon manicure appointment. Herself born and raised in the LA area to Chinese parents, Susan admits she sees more than a little of her LA-self in the designs. “That’s where I grew up,” she says of the strong visual Californian link, “and I don’t know what happens when you design clothes but it sort of just pops out, what you’ve been around most of your life, I guess.”

Still, almost two decades in the French capital has clearly made an imprint. Whereas so many LA-born labels trade in simplistic fabrics and candy-bright colour (think Juicy Couture), Susan’s European experienced has leant Bend Sport Couture an adult thoughtfulness and sophistication difficult to find in other sport/lifestyle brands. “I had the idea to do something that was sport oriented and for sport, but something much more prêt-a-porter than you’d find in a sport store,” she muses. “I find that everything in sports clothing is very, you know, performance, it’s like you have to be an athlete or you have to have Nike or Adidas written on you and have some stripes. And I thought that in the market there was a place for something else, something a bit chicer, something a little more luxury.”

While Susan completed the first collection last year, dissatisfaction with some of the pieces meant heading back to the drawing board for an additional 12 months before the creative perfectionist felt ready to release the label on to the commercial market. And the wait has apparently paid off. Though her October second launch missed the recent Paris fashion week, she has been gratified by interest in Paris, the US and Thailand. By February her first summer collection will be hanging among racks of Marc Jacobs, Vivienne Westwood and
Alexander McQueen in two or three independent boutiques across Paris. In Thailand, the luxe Amanpuri resort has picked up pieces for sale in its resort spa and – across the Pacific – both Neiman Marcus and Bloomingdale’s have expressed an early interest.

Clearly the brand is aiming for the luxury market. Prices range from 150€ to 600€, courtesy of the well-fitted designs and sophisticated-yet-easy-care technical fabrics. Not small change, she admits, for clothing that is sold primarily as flexible sporting gear. Susan’s decision to fabricate the clothing in France must also invariably add to the finishing price, though she is apparently immune to the seduction of cheaper production offered by China or Turkey. In France, she says, she has more control and is assured of a high-class product. “So it’s important for me to keep my collection stylish and upmarket otherwise, well, it would become something else otherwise.”

And the next collection looks to be even more on the side of sport/casual wear, with the introduction of a parka in a mink Tencil mix and the addition of 10 more pieces to further the versatility of her brand. “What I’m doing is creating pieces that can fit underneath that are much warmer, either in wool or cotton or mixtures,” Susan explains. “And I try to stick with shapes that you can put one on top of the other: you can wear them in summer as separates, and you can wear them together if it’s cold and you need something more wind proof. The thing is it’s all about climate control. If you are working out or if you are busy and running around and you are very hot, then you want to be able to alternate what you have on your body.”

As for the future, Susan has big plans. First there is talk of the addition of knitwear, accessories and leather, her plans to hit the lucrative international spa and resort market (“it’s really targeted towards women buyers that have that kind of schedule – rushing from gym to work to lunches”) and her musings on the suitability of Australia and Asia as possible marketing targets with their warm climates and – at least where Australia is concerned – sporting lifestyles.

For the moment, however, she is keeping busy with promotion and press, not to mention a spot of Parisian sight-seeing with a couple of New York friends in town for a visit.