Back in 2005, as design director of Ralph Lauren's Purple and Black menswear labels, Simon Spurr was handsomely paid and even more handsomely dressed. But, like most guys watching their salad days wilt, he fantasized about blowing off the job and striking out on his own. Unlike most men, Spurr, now 33, actually took the leap, launching a jeans line and then leaving the security of a steady paycheck to focus on his own fledgling label, Spurr. "I didn't want to go down the road I saw myself going down," he says, noting that in quick succession after loosening his ties to the office, he got a dog, got a girl, and got engaged. (The bride-in-waiting is Justine Kahn, a second-year medical student at Mount Sinai.)
Spurr's clothes bear the stamp of not only his time at Polo but also the guiding hand of his other notable mentors. His first job out of design school was at Nautica, working with yachting outfitter turned member of the yachting crowd, David Chu. Then, while designing the diffusion label Saint Laurent, he got a lesson in proportion from Hedi Slimane before coming back to the U.S. to toil alongside Calvin Klein, running the CK license. "If you look at Spurr, there are elements of all that," he says of studying at the elbow of nearly every living fashion legend and pouring their best ideas — and a few of his own — into the new brand.
His biggest source of inspiration are the lean suits his father used to wear as a village banker in Borough Green, Kent — about an hour southeast of London — even as butterfly collars migrated across the U.K. "I come from a very humble background," Spurr says, noting that his parents, who still live in his childhood home, make a fuss whenever they see the Spurr name stitched into his jeans.
A vintage enthusiast, Simon has also mined the Camden Market, eBay, and shops in Amsterdam for cuts and techniques. His fall line, a play on the British sixties film If.... spliced with Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid, includes his first suits. The tuxedo, $2,895, is slim, but not so nipped and tucked that it doesn't look classic. A pinstriped three-piece, $2,545, handles a conservative button-down and dark repp tie without seeming stuffy, while a black worsted wool blazer just fits over a thin leather jacket. (Bergdorf Goodman, Louis Boston, and Barneys New York are among the 15 U.S. stores that carry the line.) "When you take away the huge backbone of Ralph Lauren, it's very difficult," Spurr says. "But being there, I got to make a lot of connections and find resources that I've been able to use now." As they've expanded, Spurr and his business partner, Judd Nydes, have contemplated heading to Milan for fashion week. "It seems somewhat hypocritical," Spurr worries. "We need the institutions of fashion to come back here to New York, and we need to have new brands stay here. But there's just so much more exposure over there."
For now, he'd be content with an extra pair of hands. "I'd love to hire an intern, but where are they going to sit? In my apartment?" says Spurr, who still works from home, on the Upper West Side. He concedes that even when you are your own boss it can be difficult to find balance: "Now it's like Pandora's box. I think I've got a busy next 40 years.".
