[piano intro] - Hello, I'm Nido Qubein.

Welcome to "Side by Side."

My guest today has modernized traditional men's wear and he has won every major award in design.

He also has designed uniforms for the Charlotte Hornets, the Charlotte Knights, and the men's basketball team at his beloved alma mater, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

Today we'll meet Alexander Julian, a man well known worldwide.

- [Announcer] Funding for "Side by Side" with Nido Qubein is made possible by - [Ashley's announcer] We started small, just 30 people in a small town in Wisconsin.

75 years later, we employ more Americans than any other furniture brand.

But none of that would've been possible without you.

Ashley, this is home.

- [Budd Group announcer] For 60 years The Budd Group has been a company of excellence.

Providing facility services to customers, opportunities for employees and support to our communities.

The Budd Group.

Great people, smart service.

- [Coca-Cola announcer] Coca-Cola Consolidated is honored to make and serve 300 brands and flavors locally.

Thanks to our teams.

We are Coca-Cola Consolidated, your local bottler.

[upbeat music fading] [upbeat music] - Alex, I welcome you to "Side by Side."

Everywhere I go, people remember you, people talk about you.

You bleed Carolina Blue.

That's for sure.

- [Alex] That's true.

- You went to UNC.

Your family has had stores on Franklin Street for what seems like forever.

And you've contributed so measurably to so many areas, including athletics.

Designing the basketball uniform at Carolina, the ones you did for Charlotte Hornets, on and on the story goes.

And then besides clothing, you entered the furniture world and you designed furniture and you just have so many elements to what you do.

And here you are today, still very active and very engaged and very involved and you've defined fashion on your own terms.

And it worked for you.

What is it about you that makes you so artistically talented?

- Oh, I have absolutely no I idea of that.

That's in the genes.

Designer genes is what I call 'em.

I grew up watching my father design.

He had seven competitors on the one block in Chapel Hill for his store.

And so he did what he thought was the best thing to do by designing special things for his store, so people had to come to him.

I grew up watching my father design articles of clothing.

And so to me, that was what dads did.

So I needed to do that too.

- How does a person design clothing?

Do you draw it on a piece of paper and then you go find the fabric?

Run us through that process.

- Everyone has a different approach to that.

I will tell you that my mentor, after my father, was a guy named Ralph Lauren, who was very helpful to me.

Ralph can't draw a straight line and neither can I. Calvin is a very good sketcher.

What I do is I see it in my mind's eye.

And I always credit my studies in English, in the English department at Chapel Hill, to be able to articulate to someone exactly what it is that I want.

Being able to explain that is key.

- The design or the color or what?

- Every single bit of it.

I mean color is visual.

You can choose that.

One of my stepping stones that was key, was I was the first American to design my own textiles, my own fabrics.

And I couldn't find, in the market, what I thought the market needed.

What I thought men's wear in those days.

'Cause I went on to women's and children's and small cats and dogs.

But I wanted to do something special and I didn't know how to weave when I started designing fabric.

But I could see it in my head and I could describe it to someone who could then weave it for me.

I could choose the colors.

- What does weave mean?

- Weave is is what puts the yarns together to make a cloth.

- Yes.

But I mean, you literally do that?

You don't just draw it on a piece of paper or today on a computer screen.

- No.

Now it's on a computer.

It's very easy.

But I taught myself to weave, after I had been successful designing fabric for about five or six years.

I thought it might help, but it slowed me down.

And by that time I could do a hundred designs in my head by the same time I could get one of them woven.

So I stuck to just imagining - And then communicating it to someone who can do it.

- Yeah, communicating it to somebody who could then execute it.

- And so what did you do?

You get up in the morning, you worked all day?

How did you do that?

What does your day look like?

- Well, sometimes it's what does the night look like or the morning before, because often the best ideas are something that awaken you at four o'clock in the morning.

And I would keep a special pen by my bedside that had a light on it when it came on, so I wouldn't wake my wife up.

So it didn't illuminate the room, just my notes.

And you make a thousand ideas and it comes down sometimes to one, sometimes you get 10 out of that.

But it's, I've taught design.

The first time I went to design school was to teach at Parsons New School and a long, long time ago.

And the thing is creativity is inside of everyone.

Everybody can imagine something.

And you just have to release yourself from looking at things as they are and look at things for what they could be.

Everything could be changed in a different way.

Colors can be different.

Patterns can be different.

Shapes can be different.

And that's led me to, I've designed, I believe it's 154 different product categories now.

- Categories?

- Categories - Like shirts would be one category, - One category ties, which, you know, used to be the most prolific, because men's ties were one of the few ways you could strut your stuff.

You'd do a hundred ties a season of different designs.

But so over the course of 50 years, there's a lot of tie fabrics.

I have a library, an archive of approximately 50 to 55,000 original textile designs.

- Wow.

Wow.

So Alex, it strikes me that your work is risky.

[Alex laughing] You see it in your mind's eye, you bring it to life, you get someone to weave it, you manufacture it, you put it on the shelf.

Figuratively speaking in one store or in distribution channel.

It may work, it may not work.

- Well, that's what separates some of us from others.

You have to be right.

You have to understand and I am a hundred percent convinced that where I grew up, which was not in an ivory tower.

I grew up in a retail store and I grew up listening to consumers and it's the needs of the consumer that I've always tried to improve.

To give them what they want.

You have to figure out what somebody wants a year later, before they know it.

[chuckling] It's a little prognostication.

- Yes, yes.

- But it's instinct.

- And what about the days?

I mean I remember the days when new products were everywhere.

You couldn't go into a nice store and not see Alexander Julian's stuff there.

That's a tough and mean and competitive business.

- I was very lucky.

I was very lucky.

And I had a lot of help.

It certainly was not anything that I did on my own.

I had some very, very, very good times.

I remember when I was first starting out and a guy in New York, a manufacturer said, "You know, I think you could do a million dollars "worth of business."

And okay, we did over a billion, but I didn't get the money.

[chuckling] - Yes.

You got some of it.

- Some of it.

- Yes.

- That's a very tiny, tiny bit.

- How does that business work?

You design it?

- Yeah, well.

- Do you manufacture it?

Or you sell your design to a manufacturer?

- Mostly a hybrid of that.

The industry term is licensing.

Where I did a version of that, where I actually, I didn't sell my name, I sold my ideas.

But I wanted the flexibility to be able to do a lot of things and not get tied up with the manufacturing parts of things.

So I oversaw it and I had key people that oversaw it for me.

I still do.

But I wanted to be free to go on to the next thing and do what somebody else couldn't do.

- [Nido] I see.

- And I got a small percentage.

- What about the, by the way, I understand small percentage 'cause I've written books and cassette programs and CDs over the years.

- Yes, I know you know.

- Where someone would pay $60 to buy it, but we got $3 in royalty out of it.

But it can add up, if you're do enough volume.

So Alex, but you also had a retail store, which in and of itself is an organism.

- Well I had 10, I had 10 Alexander Julian Stores around the country.

- Oh, you did?

- And then there are still some in Japan.

- [Nido] Is that right?

- We had shops in Europe too.

I was in 14 countries.

I was partners with the Taka-Q.

In fact, I just resigned a contract that will take us to 50 years of cooperation with the same retailers in Japan, Taka-Q.

I was partners with the Emenegildo Zegna family in Italy for I guess it was nine countries of Europe.

- So that means your product was in those stores?

- Oh my product was, we were all over the world.

- [Nido] But you also had stores that said Alexander Julian?

- Yes.

10.

- [Nido] Really?

- They were 10.

Yeah.

- And what cities were those in the states?

- First one was in Georgetown, in Washington, DC then Dallas, Phoenix, San Francisco.

Actually the first one was in Beverly Hills.

- It's a tough business, Alex.

- Yes, it is.

[chuckling] - It's a tough business.

- It's not easy.

- What does one do with excess inventory?

Reduce price.

I get that.

- Yeah.

- [Nido] But then what?

- Well, you try to be careful with that.

But let me jump to a point that I think is relevant to today.

We have too many throwaway clothes.

And when you're speaking of excess inventory.

I think people need to learn that buying something good, that lasts you and that is versatile enough to wear in a lot of different ways is better than having a lot of cheap stuff that you throw away.

Because the dumps these days, I'm an environmentalist, and consumer overproducing clothes, all this cheap and fast fashion to me is anathema.

- You're saying individuals discard their clothing.

- Yes, discard.

And the programs where they're trying to get you to buy something of the moment, every moment.

I hate things that go in and out of style.

I want you to have something that you invest in that makes you feel good about yourself, because you know, you look good.

You get reinforced by people saying, "Oh, Dr. Qubein, look at you today.

Don't you look great?"

And that makes you feel better.

That makes you perform better, because when we have that kind of feedback, then we turn out better.

- So I'm gonna ask you to unveil some secrets for me.

- [Alex] Oh God.

[chuckling] - To the extent that you're comfortable.

A jacket selling on Rodeo Drive, you said Beverly Hills or on Worth Avenue in Palm Beach tends to be significantly higher priced than what appears to a consumer to be the same jacket in maybe in Raleigh or Charlotte or somewhere.

- I mean, sometimes.

- Is there a real difference?

Or is it because the rent is so high?

The human power's expensive, et cetera.

- Those stores that have those exorbitant rents in those two locations for a fact.

And a lot of other ones, they have to turn a certain amount of dollars per square foot and so they buy things intentionally.

It not the same jacket that you see on Main Street in other places.

- I see.

It's made differently.

- It's made differently.

- It's hand made.

It's fabric different.

- The fabric cost is very different.

It's rare air.

And I like selling to those places and those consumers for sure.

But I started, I was the first American to actually design my diffusion line back when we started colors.

- [Nido] What does that mean?

- Well, my clothes, when I started out, were the most expensive men's wear in America.

More expensive than- - Maybe that's what made you the youngest designer ever inducted in the Coty Hall of Fame.

- I don't think it was price.

[both chuckling] But I didn't like the idea of legislating taste by income.

- [Nido] I see, I see.

- And some people are lucky, some people are less lucky financially.

- Yeah.

So you made it affordable.

- And so why do people with less money, why couldn't they afford to look great?

- [Nido] To look great?

- And so I realized that mass production was the key to that.

And this is a very expensive shirt fabric that I have on, and we make 500, 600 yards of something like this.

But if you make a million yards of it, the cost for the very same fabric is less than half.

- [Nido] I see.

- And so the Colors by Alexander Julian, which is what really swept the nation was fully designed by me and my associates, but mass produced.

Whereas these things we make half a dozen, you know.

- So the most expensive stores, a la my examples earlier, don't necessarily make a much bigger markup.

- Well, not necessarily a bigger markup, but there's a multiple, because the base price is so much higher.

- I see.

Yeah, yeah.

So the profit is greater, because of the multiple.

- They need the dollars per square foot, because of that rent.

- Yes.

Do do clothes that cost more last longer?

Or is that a myth?

- No, I think it's true.

The better something is made, although I- - Is made?

Or it's made of?

- Both, because both are a factor of that.

The base material has to be good.

And this is true of rugs and furniture and anything.

It's you put the best materials in and sometimes they're the best, because they feel the best and they're not necessarily, I mean something like cashmere, it's soft and it'll wear out.

So you don't make rugs outta cashmere, unless you are Mr. Bezos.

[both chuckling] - You've gotten so many honors, it would take us an hour to list the honors you've gotten, but one of them is that the Smithsonian National Design Museum in their permanent collection features your textile design.

- Yes.

Well, I wouldn't say featured it.

It was featured as part of their permanent collection, of which I was very, very honored by that.

- And many other things.

Tell me about two or three things like that, that the average one of us does not know about you.

We know you to be a very creative guy.

We know you as a person who has modernized men's wear for sure.

A person who stays up with the times.

A person who travels the world and knows east, west and south and north.

- The whole sports thing I spent- - How did you get into the sports thing?

You did for Carolina first.

- I spent 20 years of my life slaving all day hours and hours a day.

12 hours a day to try to bring a little tasteful color into modern American men's wear.

Everybody forgets that now.

And I'm the sports guy.

And it started with my friend Paul Newman, the actor, when I designed his race car uniforms.

And I was the 1988 Motorsport Designer of the year.

I beat Billy-Bob and Billy-Bob and we had a great time.

Mario Andretti, Michael Andretti won the National Championship in my uniform, so did Nigel Mansell.

I call them fast colors.

- Most of us don't know this, by the way.

We'd have to dig into your bio to find all this stuff.

- And then the next thing I know, I get a call and George Shinn, who founded the Hornets wants me to do the Hornet's uniforms and it was a clean slate.

We didn't even have a name for the team at that point.

And teal and purple were, you've heard of purple, right?

- [Nido] Yes.

- Great color looks good on everybody and teal and that took off.

And that's been very well received.

And having been born and raised in Chapel Hill, my father went there, I went there, four of my kids and to have Dean Smith call you, and I was in London, and say, "Alex, I love what you did with the Hornets.

"I think the Tar Heels need a new look."

And I'm like, [deep breathing] my quote was, and I stand by it today.

It was like having God on the phone asking for new halos for the archangels.

[Nido laughing] It was the weightiest design decision I ever had to do, because if I messed it up, I couldn't go home.

So, the Bouncing Bulldogs is one of my favorite sports designs.

It's a wonderful kids competitive jump roping team outta Chapel Hill.

- Yeah, I know the group, yes.

- I did their uniforms for them.

They're international champions.

I mean, I'm - - But you did those things for fun.

- [Alex] High Point University was one of my most recent.

- But you did it for fun it wasn't such a commercial venture as much as it was- - Well, I didn't make anything on it.

- Yeah, yeah.

You just, you like to do that to contribute.

- It's I love sports.

You grow up in Chapel Hill, you have to or else they leave you on the edge of, what's that town?

Durham.

[Nido laughing] Sorry.

- So as you look forward, Alex, what do you see?

- Well, - You sold your store to your nephew - My nephew.

My nephew Bart Fox - He runs the store now.

- He's the third generations, and it wasn't my store, it was my parents' store.

And I was the steward for 15 years and Bart is the future steward.

My sister, his parents, my sister Missy, dear sister and her husband Michael, were the stewards previous to me.

And he's got a beautiful young daughter.

Maybe she'll be the steward after that.

We hope to keep the family traditional going.

So future is always fascinating and surprising in what you make out of it.

I'm working on a couple of books.

One one of which is, "A Hundred Ways to Eat Carolina Barbecue" - It has no relationship to designing clothing.

- I'm a foodie.

You know, I've done wine.

Designed wine before.

The book is is called "Alexander Julian Hog Wild."

[both laughing] Who knows, I'd like to do more movies and TV stuff.

That was fun.

"The Player" was very well received.

- Yeah.

You've done that in a number of movies.

- [Alex] Oh yeah, yeah and a lot of TV stuff.

- As you travel around the world, do you find yourself going into shows, stores, to see what's there and- - The good news and bad news about being in so many product categories.

We have a very successful eyewear business, now that is in specialty stores.

But Costco is the, it's a Colors by Alexander Julian product.

It's well designed and mass produced so that it's very affordable.

You look everywhere for stimulation, for ideas and when you're involved in so many different product areas, you keep looking and you keep looking and you keep looking and suddenly Meg says, honey, it's dinner time.

[both chuckling] - And you get inspiration from, is there any particular part of the world that gives you more inspiration than others?

- Yes.

Art museums.

- Art museums.

- Particularly contemporary art museums.

But impressionism, impressionist too.

- Because color?

- Because it's color and color relationships.

I never intended to, I never copied a painting, but I'm trying to, when I see a color relationship in a piece of art that is stimulating and you don't know exactly why and you try to learn from that and get that energy going into something that people can wear and enjoy.

I got Color Marketing's top award a hundred years ago, and they had a color scientist that had a new program on a computer, that you could find out how many colors are in actual nature and an oak tree in full foliage at noon on a clear day, how many colors do you think?

It's over- - 20?

- It's over 350,000 colors.

- [Nido] Really?

Really?

- Nature, you look at a field of grass, you're looking at a hundred thousand colors.

- [Nido] Oh come on.

- Nature is incredibly complex.

- You'd have to have a microscope to see that.

- And men's and women's clothes need to, what I realized, that what I've been trying to do all my life is to capture, not copy, but to capture the beauty of nature and make clothing that looks natural and that feels natural, because nature ain't beige.

- Mm-hm, very interesting.

It's really intriguing to get into your mind, understand what- - [Alex] It's a little dangerous.

[chuckling] - What turns you on, what tunes you in and what tones you up.

And the magical thing about you is that you have sustained your success and your creativity for a long time.

You didn't burn out.

You constantly look for new ways and you've constantly produced.

And therein, my friend, lies a really good lesson for all of us about life, about living, about innovation, about dealing with the future, about understanding humanity and what makes humanity tick.

Alex, I'm so glad you joined me on "Side by Side," today.

It's fascinating to talk with you and it's fascinating to hear about your success of the past and more so about your anticipatory views of the future.

Thank you, my friend, for being here today.

- Thank you so much, sir.

[upbeat music] [upbeat music fading] - [Announcer] Funding for "Side by Side" with Nido Qubein is made possible by, - [Ashley announcer] We started small, just 30 people in a small town in Wisconsin.

75 years later, we employ more Americans than any other furniture brand.

But none of that would've been possible without you.

Ashley, this is home - [Budd Group Announcer] For 60 years, the Budd Group has been a company of excellence.

Providing facility services to customers, opportunities for employees and support to our communities.

The Budd Group.

Great people, smart service.

- [Coca-Cola announcer] Coca-Cola Consolidated is honored to make and serve 300 brands and flavors locally.

Thanks to our teams.

We are Coca-Cola Consolidated.

Your local bottler.

[upbeat music fading]