Widely viewed as one of the best-connected people in fashion and among its most successful brand builders, Frame cofounder Erik Torstensson never envisioned himself as an apparel industry entrepreneur.
Torstensson and Grede, both Swedish natives, met more than 20 years ago while working at Wallpaper, the interior design magazine and media agency based in London.
At the same time, he and Grede were spending a lot of time in L.A. and started brainstorming. “You know, we advise all these amazing brands,” he recalled saying to Grede. “We should do something on our own. But we really don’t know anything about how to make product — and product is king.” Taking some pages from the books of the luxury brands they worked with at Saturday Group, they made the jeans “super chic with very nice branding. We behaved in the denim space like a luxury brand because that’s all we knew how to do. The first run of jeans came in individual boxes and all the original campaigns were with supermodels.
Within two years, Frame had expanded from that one skinny jean into a larger range of fits and core washes along with seasonal washes, establishing what he said are the brand’s “core” fits: Le High Straight, Le High Flare, Le Garcon, Le Original, Le Skinny de Jeanne and others. “We sold our agency business, opened our first store on Melrose Place in L.A. and built a C-suite of people who knew better than us how to run an apparel business.”
Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit. While the world was shut down, Torstensson continued to work on his grand plan to build Frame into a global fashion brand. In June 2020, he hired veteran fashion executive Nicolas Dreyfus, who had been global chief executive officer of the Kooples, as CEO of Frame. He was charged with launching new products, adding brick-and-mortar stores in the U.S. and overseas, and developing a more sustainable business model.
Currently, Dreyfus added, the most popular items include the Jetset jean, designed to be comfortable for travel, along with cashmere sweaters, leather trousers and outerwear and silk blouses. “We’ve had great growth every year but brands need to evolve,” he said. “You have to change the view on the way up because it’s almost impossible to change the view on the way down. Frame 4.0 will be different and will be a new chapter with new energy.”
Torstensson believes Frame has carved out a niche for a variety of reasons. Although it’s known as the supermodel brand, Frame also has a following with people in a range of ages: from 60-year-old grandmothers to teenagers. Its marketing also sets it apart because the company follows the path laid down by luxury brands, which is to be “aspirational and elevated at all times,” he said.
“Our mission is to build Frame into a global brand that is highly regarded, and for that, you need top talent,” he said.
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