Grad & Former Head Designer for J.Crew and Original Penguin Strikes Out on His Own
FIDM Graduate Christian Arkins worked for mega brands such as Speedo, Ralph Lauren, J.Crew, and Original Penguin before entering a new chapter in his career as an entrepreneur.
Where were you born and raised? I was born in Boston, but I grew up in Connecticut.
How did you hear about FIDM? I was living in Aspen, Colorado after I graduated from college and had a friend from the LA area who was in school at Pepperdine. I had visited LA and found the school during my visit. I knew I could do well in fashion, and I wanted to be a designer, but I wanted to spend as little time in school as possible since I already had a BA degree.
What was your major and grad year? I was in the Apparel Industry Management Program and graduated in 1998.
How did FIDM help prepare you for your career? Well it gave me the exact foundation I needed. I was there for one year and read a bunch of extra books, took some extra design classes, and did design-related extra work. The program was great because it was well rounded and gave me enough to get out there fast and learn in the industry.
Tell us about your career prior to becoming an entrepreneur? Thanks to the school I was fortunate enough to go straight to England and work for Speedo on a new concept they were working on related to board sports; I worked between design and marketing. Then I moved to New York City, worked for RRL at Ralph Lauren in design, and I was a designer at J.Crew for a few years as well. A friend of mine from RL called me about a new project he had started through Perry Ellis which was for Original Penguin. I came on in the very beginning and over about four to five years we were very successful with building that brand. I was the head designer for the brand in its heyday. I still see my polos on the street allover the world from those days, I just saw two the other day down here in Lima, Peru, where I am right now. That makes me proud.
Then I consulted for a while in New York and after a short time ended up in Europe as the Creative Director of McGregor, an old 1920s brand that's now Dutch-owned. My same friend and mentor from Original Penguin called me for a consulting project for another brand in Amsterdam and while finishing that, I met the billionaire owners of McGregor and they offered the job as the Creative Director and I stayed in Holland. I was there over seven years and we transformed the brand top to bottom. I returned to New York in 2016/2017 and decided to have a full-time go at being an entrepreneur and it's been crazy, but awesome.
What was it like living and working in Europe? It was life-changing to be honest, and I have a super international family as a result. My wife is Peruvian, and our kids were born in Amsterdam and they speak three languages. Culturally, Europe is hard to beat. It's a different life; the Europeans live first and work second and for this they are rich with life--something a New Yorker can only learn a ton about. Until the day I left, every weekend seemed like a vacation. Traveling from country to country is a normal lifestyle for most modern working Europeans and especially in our industry. My teams and I were in London, Paris, Florence, and Milan regularly.
Tell us about your E-commerce businesses. Right now I live between New York City and Lima and I am building my client list in Europe so I am back regularly as well. We have built two successful E-commerce businesses and a growing consulting business. One of the shops we have sells women's accessories, My Beauty Cartel | Quality Fashion Accessories At The Best Price, and the other is a thriving Amazon business. I have also proudly created "The Road To Creative Freedom" where we help ambitious creative professionals take huge career steps, and secure their financial futures (among a few other things) with a couple awesome intensive four- and eight-week programs we offer, one-on-one consulting services, very effective mentorship, and value-packed creative community that is unmatched industrially.
It's been amazing and deeply fulfilling to really help these talented creative people make changes in their lives and careers for the better. The three of these businesses are exploding now and a huge part of the reason for it is because we have learned the science of success online (unique to each business concept since they are all very different) and we have become true digital ninjas as a result, this has made a huge difference in our results. We actually even teach social media mastery in part of our programs to help people help themselves from a purely results driven and technical perspective based on their goals.
Categories: Apparel Industry Management
