Maxfield picked him up. Within two weeks Mick Jagger had bought a piece. Odell Beckham Jr., the Giants wide receiver, followed, and in 2016 Beckham suggested that Amiri be his date for the ESPY Awards show “and walk the red carpet, like they do at the Met Gala,” Amiri said.
A decade later, he is doing over $300 million a year in revenue; has 31 stores with six more opening this year; a 100,000-square-foot campus of assorted old steel warehouses in downtown Los Angeles; 400 employees; and one minority investor: Renzo Rosso, the founder of OTB Group, which owns Diesel and Maison Margiela.
Even though Amiri, 49, has no formal fashion education and has what he categorized as among “the most CFDA losses ever” — he has been nominated six times for American fashion awards and never won — he has learned to heed what his friend Virgil Abloh told him when he was depressed about his losing streak: “Our work is measured in the streets and people’s closets.”
“One of my first fashion reviews in Paris was kind of negative,” Amiri said. It criticized him for treating the Paris runway like an N.B.A. tunnel walk. “I was like, ‘But N.B.A. tunnels are awesome!’” he said. “Getting a stamp of approval from the old guard is cute, but the culture has to give you a stamp of approval.”
For him, increasingly, sports is the culture.
The Kelce Stamp of Approval
The athlete thing happened, Amiri said, somewhat by accident. Because his early skinny jeans came with a bit of stretch and had long inseams so they would bunch around the calves, they tended to fit people with atypical bodies.
“Amiri was one of the first brands I gravitated toward because the clothes worked with my body rather than against it,” said Kyle Kuzma of the Milwaukee Bucks. Amiri’s aesthetic, which is sort of old-Sunset-Strip-meets-“Casino,” also worked for Kuzma. His favorite look: a sparkling fringed set he wore for a season opener’s tunnel walk.
