MICHAEL VOLLBRACHT Designer is drawn back into field of fashion

After more than 15 years of obscurity he is once again in top form.
SCRIPPS HOWARD
The top of the world for Michael Vollbracht is the 12th floor of an art deco building in lower Manhattan's garment district. The new perch places Vollbracht back in the upper reaches of the rarefied atmosphere of high fashion, an Everest he is climbing for the second time.
After more than 15 years of obscurity, the once-hot designer, who closed his design house in 1985, is back. In February, he was named head designer for Bill Blass Ltd., a $600-million operation. It's a stunning ascent that has surprised many fashion insiders.
Until his abrupt departure from New York, Vollbracht's life was fashion.
He was hired by big names in the industry, first Geoffrey Beene, then Donald Brooks, designing secondary lines for their labels. He turned to fashion illustration because it was more lucrative, and he was hired by two of the best retail stores in New York at that time, Henri Bendel and Bloomingdale's. When he designed a Bloomingdale's shopping bag, it bore his sketch and his name -- but not the store's logo. An error had eliminated it, and the mistake was discovered only after 9 million bags had been printed. It was a great story that made him a sensation.
He designed his first collection under his own name in 1978, using bold colors and graphic shapes on sleek, fluid evening dresses. Women's Wear Daily, the industry bible, gushed, calling him "Seventh Avenue's newest, brightest star." In 1980, he won a Coty Award for his second collection.
Troubled times
He hit a small bump in his ride to the top when he and the company backing him disagreed over licensing deals. The squabble was resolved, and Vollbracht resumed designing in six months, more popular than ever. He hooked up with new backers Johnny and Joanna Carson.
By the middle 1980s, Vollbracht had licensing contracts for mass-market retail products such as bed linens and bathing suits.
After his seventh season as a designer, everything fell apart. The Carsons had a very public split, and neither of them wanted to continue underwriting the designer line.
Instead of trying to keep the doors open, Vollbracht closed them. He stayed in the city for a year, writing and illustrating a book, "Nothing Sacred," about his life in the fashion industry and return to illustration. His bread-and-butter account was New Yorker magazine, which used him as its chief illustrator, commissioning collages and drawings.
Then he left New York.
"When you leave New York, you are dismissed," he says. "I understood that. I left to reinvent myself."
Vollbracht was also close to being broke. An acquaintance who managed a spa in Florida, which had fallen into some neglect, invited him to come down and help with redesigning the place, in return for free room and board.
When his life seemed to be back on track, spa ownership changed hands and he was fired. Again.
He bought a cottage on a creek and transformed it with thrift-sale finds.
There Vollbracht began to paint full time.
He had shows at local galleries, and his work began to sell. By the end of the '90s, he was supporting himself with painting.
Helping hand
His climb back began with Bill Blass, who first met Vollbracht in 1969 when he presented Parsons' Norrell Award to the graduating student. He became a friend and mentor to Vollbracht and wrote the introduction for "Nothing Sacred."
After Blass sold his business in 1999 and retired, he asked Vollbracht to assist with a retrospective of his work for Indiana University and to help edit the glossy coffee-table book to accompany it.
Blass died in 2002, shortly after the project was completed.
In the meantime, the partnership that now owned Blass' design business was struggling to keep the Bill Blass name alive. It hired and fired two designers in three years.
No one alive understood the "Bill Blass look" better than the former designer turned artist who had immersed himself in the Blass aesthetic for two years.
By early March, Vollbracht was in New York, ensconced in the elegant gray offices of Bill Blass Ltd.
He was back.
"I didn't just get a design job," Vollbracht says. "I got the design job."
"I'll design for Bill Blass, not Michael Vollbracht. And I have to cultivate the clientele. To make Saks, Bergdorf (Goodman) and Neiman Marcus happy," he says.
Those are the stores that have always sold the most Bill Blass clothes, clothes that can cost thousands of dollars, usually to wealthy women of a certain age.
Facing reality
"This is the toughest business," he says. "Worse than advertising or politics. The reality is, if you don't make the clothes pretty enough you're fired. There are people who can't wait to see me fail. I have one season, maybe two, to succeed."
He's designing his first collection for spring 2004; it will debut on Sept. 13 during Fashion Week.