How Zac Posen Defined The 2000s

Born and raised in New York City, Zac Posen was constantly surrounded by art. He grew up in a SoHo loft that housed his father’s painting studio and where the streets were lined with discarded boxes of fabrics from the textile factories of the neighborhood. He took these scraps home with him and thus his first designs were born onto stuffed animals and dolls. But the real start of his career came when he began attending Saint Ann’s School in his high-school years, where he met the children of New York elites and designed clothes for them. 

Since the 2000s were all about the well-connected It girls (what Gen Z calls "nepotism babies"), this gave him the perfect opportunity for exposure. When he moved to London to attend Central Saint Martins, he took his friend and muse Lola Schnabel for whom he created dresses in their basement apartment/studio hybrid. One of these dresses caught the eye of Naomi Campbell, who became a long-time supporter of the brand. 

Taking London's punk-rock influence back to New York and still having his designs photographed on his famous friends, he was getting calls from buyers at Henri Bendel, so he left school early to officially start his design house in 2001. By the time his first official collection came around, Posen already had a list of private clients and industry professionals interested in him. His debut runway show was opened by supermodel Karen Elson and attended by Anna Wintour (whose son went to school with Posen). 

Posen's designs quickly became a regular presence in Vogue and other editorials, but his red carpet presence was limited (Natalie Portman was one of the early champions of his work). Everything changed for him when Sean “Diddy” Combs approached Posen to invest in the brand. They took an equal stake in the company, allowing Posen to have more funds to funnel into his brand, while Combs brought in a whole new clientele. Posen's shows became the hottest ticket at New York Fashion Week. People would line up outside the tents hoping to see a glimpse of the stars who filled the front row. There was no other event where you could see Jay-Z and Ashanti sitting next to Hayden Patteniere and Paris Hilton besides a Zac Posen fashion show. 

After his 2004 contract with Combs, Posen's designs became more luxurious and his reach became more universal. There wasn’t a 2000s icon who wasn’t seen wearing a Zac Posen dress at some point. From Beyoncé and Rihanna to Lindsay Lohan and Nicole Richie, if there was an event, Posen would be there, either through his designs or his actual personage. Posen became a celebrity himself, attending red carpets on the arms of the women wearing his designs and going out dancing with his famous friends from his school years. 

While some critics raised concerns over his extravagant lifestyle, no one could deny that he was still respected in the fashion industry. Not only did he have some of the most iconic models from the '90s in his shows (like Elson and Campbell, alongside Karolina Kurkova and Carmen Kass) but his runways also featured some of the biggest 2000s models of the time too. Gemma Ward, Natalia Vodianova, and Natasha Poly were regulars in Posen's shows. During this time, he even mentored Ashley Olsen, who would later go on to create the luxury fashion label The Row with her sister, Mary-Kate.