Alumni

Business Management Grad Talks Designing For Garrett Leight in Coveteur

Current Head Product Designer and 2012 Business Management Graduate Elena Doukas has been with the Los Angeles-based optical brand Garrett Leight for nearly a decade. She recently chatted with the style and culture website Coveteur about the transformative nature of eyewear, learning to sew as a child, and how she initially turned down the chance to be a designer at the famed company. 

With the California brand for nine years, Elena first applied to Garrett Leight's Abbot Kinney store in Venice Beach back in 2010. After a short stint working on the sales floor, Garrett himself requested she take a stab at designing. In the early days, she spent a considerable amount of time traveling and working alongside her boss, who is the son of Larry Leight, the founder of Oliver Peoples. Elena considers Larry, who she sees about once a week, her design mentor. 

Elena told Coveteur she learned to sew as a child out of necessity. "If I wanted to buy something, first I had to try to make it. We lived near a Joann fabrics, and I would walk there and complain about everything—the fabric wasn’t quite right, or the patterns were not the shape I wanted," she said. "My mom would help me alter them, but I never was quite happy with what I came up with. I was super envious of girls at school that could buy new outfits."

Growing up, she saw sewing and creating as a chore, not a career. A last-minute decision to move to Los Angeles and attend FIDM, where she earned a degree in Fashion Design in 2007, gave her additional experience, as did a job at a small apparel company where she did everything from pattern making to packing orders. 

She initially turned down Garrett's offer to be an Assistant Designer since she would also have to work at the store full-time and Elena was enrolled in FIDM's Business Management Program. "He finally convinced me to do all three, and I would work at his store and go to school during the day, and work on his eyewear line at night," she explained. "About four months later we took a trip to our factory and selected the final assortment for the first collection. From there, I was hooked.”

 

Categories:  Business Management Fashion Design Alumni