Fashion designer Kenneth Cole had a rule when his kids were growing up. “They could wear other brands in the house,” he tells The Post with a twinkle in his eye. “But no logos of other designers.”
When one of his girls wore a Calvin Klein shirt emblazoned with “CK,” she reasoned that it was OK because it was just Cole’s initials backwards. “So that’s how she got around it,” says the 59-year-old designer.
Though he finishes the story with a sly “cool dad” smile, Cole knows the impact letters and words can have. After all, he’s a provocateur, with cheeky ad campaigns designed not just to sell shoes, but raise awareness for everything from AIDS to homelessness to civil unrest.
“In business, you can write your own book. The more unique it is from anything written before, the more likely it is to succeed,” says Cole.
To commemorate his 30 years in the business, the designer has literally written a sleek coffee-table tome, “This Is a Kenneth Cole Production.” It offers a look back at the occasionally controversial career of the Brooklyn-born Cole, who aspired either to be a lawyer or to play shortstop for the Mets.
But a funny thing happened on the way to becoming a legal eagle. He did some sole searching — at the El Greco shoe factory, owned by his father in then-rough-and-tumble Williamsburg. The longer he worked with his dad, the deeper Cole’s fascination with production and creation grew. He ended up deferring law school, permanently.
“I was intrigued by the ability to make something happen overnight.” Father and son struck gold when they developed wooden platform shoes and marketed them under the Candie’s brand. Cole was eager to explore the “cool” side of the business and left to form his own company. His father was supportive, but told Cole he’d keep his office warm just in case.
A mere three days after opening a “mobile” showroom — a k a a rented trailer on Sixth Avenue and 56th Street — Cole racked up orders for 40,000 pairs of shoes. Two years later, in 1984, he opened his first store, on Columbus Avenue.
Cole had more on his mind than just feet, though. In 1986, “The stigma, the fact that nobody was talking about AIDS was arguably killing more people than the virus itself,” he says. “So I did an ad about the fact that nobody was speaking about HIV/AIDS.”
He enlisted a gaggle of supermodels — including Christie Brinkley and Paulina Porizkova — and paired each with a child. The ad read, “For the future of our children. . . support the American Foundation for AIDS Research. We do.” It ran in 23 magazines between March and December of that year.
“It changed me in many ways,” Cole says. “It redefined me individually, it changed the company, it changed the brand.”
From there, he took on other hot-button topics: homelessness, a woman’s right to choose, war. And his approach evolved from just making a statement to invoking a certain cheekiness, with slogans like “If Gas Prices Continue to Rise, Why Not Switch Pumps?” One ad depicted Oliver North with the slogan, “Isn’t it time America focuses less on Arms, and more on feet?”
Cole shored up his activist cred when he married then-governor Mario Cuomo’s daughter, Maria, in 1987, at the Governor’s Mansion in Albany. The two live in Purchase and have three children: Emily, 25; Amanda, 23; and Catie, 19. Cole admits he was drawn to his wife’s political pedigree.
“It’s part of who we both are. There’s a relative consensus around the dining-room table,” he says. “When I married Maria, her father was governor at the time, and I was in awe of his progressive message.”
Though the Council of Fashion Designers of America honored Cole for humanitarianism in 1997, his words have sometimes landed the designer in hot water.
In 2011, as the Arab Spring began heating up amid protests and rioting in Egypt, Cole took to Twitter, writing, “Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online.” And as the US government contemplated military action in Syria this September, Cole tweeted, “Boots on the ground or not, let’s not forget about sandals, pumps and loafers. #Footwear. Both were highly publicized and criticized.
“I don’t have any regrets because it’s what I’ve always done . . . I have been talking about these same issues for 25 to 30 years,” he says. “This was interpreted the way it was by some people who use Twitter as a bully pulpit.”
Cole says he does think before he speaks, and that inspiration comes to him anywhere and everywhere — sometimes even in the shower, “depending on the water temperature. When I started this business,” he adds, “I never anticipated this would become a platform for me to talk about things that I personally believe in.”