CITYist

It’s 4 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon in the middle of July. Many of the urban elite have escaped their respective cities for some weekend retreat, but Milan Vukmirovic is on the phone in his Paris apartment trying to explain his career to an American journalist. “I’ve worked in fashion for 20 years, but it’s not always easy to follow what I’ve done,” he says. “I work with image, but I say that I’m a free spirit.”

You could also say he was one of the founders of Paris’ famed boutique Colette, Tom Ford’s right-hand man at Gucci, Jil Sander’s head designer for three years, and Editor-in-Chief of L’Officiel Hommes. And that doesn’t include his photography work, his role as Trussardi’s creative director, or his forthcoming boutique in Miami Beach, The Webster, slated to open this fall.

Despite his haute history, Vukmirovic maintains a low-key lifestyle at a time when many designers walk the red carpet and editors frequently appear in the pages of their own magazines. “I am someone who is discreet and who doesn’t like to communicate a lot,” he confesses. “I don’t want my picture everywhere. That is not what makes me happy.” But his positions with Trussardi and The Webster have him opening up about his multifaceted career, which the press-shy creative says he is finally ready to do. “There was a time when people didn’t respond well to those who were trying to do different things, like a model who wanted to be an actress,” he explains. “But now it is accepted. People understand and respect everything I’ve done and see how it is related.”

Once he starts talking about the past, it’s hard to get him to stop. He gabs about launching a small collection after fashion school that caught the eye of Colette Roussaux, who was thinking of launching a store with her daughter, Sarah Lerfel. He recalls meeting Richard Avedon at his Upper East Side studio in 2001.“I wanted him to do the Jil Sander campaign and we ended up talking for three hours in his kitchen,” Vukmirovic says. It was Avedon who pushed Vukmirovic to get behind the camera. “I’ve always had respect for the craft, but I didn’t dare do it myself,” he admits. Marie-José Susskind-Jalou approached him to relaunch L’Officiel Hommes, and he began photographing for the magazine, but under another name. (“After a while, people would ask why I had two names,” he quips.) Soon, he began receiving advertising proposals from Armani, Hugo Boss, and Trussardi.

For the Trussardi role, Vukmirovic demanded carte blanche. “I wanted to create something to put the soul back in the brand,” he says. The result is Trussardi 1911, a small menswear line that will be carried at the company’s new store in Milan, along with Fred Segal, Jeffrey, and, of course, The Webster. While breathing life into an aging brand might seem like an odd choice because of his instinct to always remain fashion forward, Vukmirovic is driven by tackling projects he’s never tried. “When we first opened Colette, there was nothing on Rue Saint-Honoré,” he says, “and when Marie-José asked me to be an editor, I told her I had no experience, and she said, ‘Well, you had never been a buyer before either!’”

It’s this kind of forward thinking that has led to frequent visits to a construction-laden stretch of Collins Avenue in Miami Beach, where work is still underway for The Webster’s permanent home. (A temporary boutique opened down the block in January 2008.) “I discovered Miami while on location for shoots. Part of Miami’s tacky image is true, but there are a lot of cool people there who love design and fashion,” Vukmirovic says. His partners in The Webster, Laure Heriard Dubreuil and Frederic Dechnik, favored Los Angeles but were swayed by Vukmirovic’s belief in South Beach. “He knows what’s going on in the fashion world before everybody else,” Dubreuil says. “I don’t know of anybody like him.”

Vukmirovic swore he would never do a store again — “I don’t like to do things twice,” he says — so his concept for The Webster is almost no concept at all. “I wanted to return to real fashion — big, luxurious brands. It’s a very personal selection, the best of the best from each collection.” Balenciaga, Prada, and Martin Margiela are just a few of the big names. “Ten years ago I was happy to have the last pair of limited-edition trainers. Now I don’t care. We don’t really need more stores with Diptyque candles and Comme des Garçons.” He says this not with distaste for the way that Colette revolutionized retail or with contempt for fashion trends, but because his personal taste has evolved after 20 years in the business. “I like to do creative things, but being commercial is a positive thing. I have this knowledge of doing a lot of things before, so I feel free in everything I do now,” he says. Spoken like a true free spirit.