With a brand-new luxury fashion collection, we see denim connoisseur Jeff Lubell finding inspiration within personal space. A dynamism is seen in his Fall 2020 launch, perfectly elaborating on Coût de la Liberté style cues. A fashion world superstar, Lubell is famous for having founded the True Religion Brand and building it into a billion-dollar denim conglomerate. For Lubell, building a denim brand was about taking careful measures of the market and customer base. His new venture, a full men’s and women’s luxury fashion house, is about living up to something more internal, fulfilling a passion that comes from the heart.
“Coût de la Liberté is really personal for me,” explains Jeff Lubell from his California design studio. “It’s about freedom and expression. And the truth is, it comes from wanting to design clothes for my beautiful wife.”
The brand, which was a part of both the 2020 Fall New York and London Fashion Weeks this September, is also stoked to participate in Paris Fashion Week at the beginning of October. The team’s aim is high, and they are set to sell the lines to only the creme-de-la-creme of retailers globally, and currently does at the Montaigne market in Paris and Jades in Düsseldorf.
Set to produce signature aspirational products in parallel, these items will be highly appealing to those with a very unique point of view for the luxury consumer. If you are looking for the best fit available, only in the highest-echelon of premium textiles, then you are in luck.
Not afraid of design, Lubell creates with ‘70s sexuality and playfulness in each piece. This was framed in the brand’s latest campaign staring vixen Stella Maxwell. Fringe swings, pant bottoms bell-out wide and bejeweled fabrics dance in the sun as you see the line set against a Ranch located in Palmdale, California. Maxwell, shot in couture cowboy boots that simultaneously crumple at the ankle and tease up high to the knee, created the alluring essence of what it means to dress and be dressed in luxe. But, more than anything, there’s a certain posture, a certain demeanor as a whole that the brand conveys on the body. In a word, confident.
The brand, which was recently profiled by Vogue, had an exciting campaign launch as it also recently took over the Vogue.com homepage while it’s E-commerce platform officially opened for sales. The fall line, which consists of 60 pieces in the woman’s collection and 35 in the men’s, is curated and deeply rooted in luxurious Americana lifestyle, especially in its inception collection.
“It has to be the best,” Lubell says. “The denims, the velvets, the corduroys, the silks, picking the right ones is everything — all by how it feels, not just on the outside but on the inside too.” To Lubell, it’s important that a dress or a blouse not just look beautiful, but also feel good on the body of the wearer. The magic that is essential to great fashion comes out of a synergy between the wearer, her body, the fabric and the silhouette—adding comfort to that equation allows a certain freedom of expression. It allows one to project inner emotions and feelings through the medium of style.
All the fabrics are imported from the best mills, from Italy to Japan, but the pieces themselves are made in America, in California—“in my own backyard, where I can control my destiny,” as Lubell puts it. Aside from the value he places on supporting local manufacturing, that ability to micromanage the production process is vital to Lubell, he’s all about quality control. Everything gets produced ethically and fairly, and the quality of the cut and sew—down to the finest detail of fit—can be finessed to perfection.
And Lubell is obsessed with that process. “I love making these pieces. I love designing clothes that make people feel good about themselves, and that’s what’s missing today,” says Lubell, who does not plan on abiding by any industry rules that might interfere with his and his wife’s passion for Coût de la Liberté. “Especially right now, living in the world that we are, I’m all about optimism, letting go of negativity. We’re doing colors, even if it’s black and white that sells. We’re doing custom fabrics, even if it’s harder. There’s no season on these products; it’s a permanent collection. Look, this idea is a seed right now, but we’ll nurture it, and it will grow to become a tree, and that tree, one day hopefully, will become a forest."
Coût de la Liberté is one line that speaks to the heart of America and directly into the passion of fashion.
By: Michael J. Snell