Jewellery (jewelry)

By Lisa Lockwood and Bridget Foley NEW YORK ? If there’s one thing Oscar de la Renta wants to make perfectly clear, it’s this: His company isn’t for sale.

Squelching rumors he’s seeking new investors, de la Renta, 75, and Alexander Bolen, 40, the fashion house’s chief executive officer, are busy making plans for the future that involve an international rollout of retail stores; the continued growth of eveningwear; a greater emphasis on daywear, accessories and home furnishings, and a bigger push into fragrances.

In an interview at the designer’s opulent Park Avenue apartment, the two men sat down to discuss the state of de la Renta’s $100 million wholesale business and their desire to be considered on par with world-famous European houses, the difficulties with licensed partners and where they see the company headed over the next several years. The word “retirement” never seems to enter de la Renta’s vocabulary. “Not really, no. No, I have too much of an ego to think in those terms.”? Oscar de la Renta, on grooming a successor.Here’s what they had to say.

WWD: There’s been a rumor in the market that your company is for sale. Could you address that issue?

Oscar de la Renta: Let’s make it very clear that certainly our company is not for sale. I mean, five years ago, before Alex came into the mix, if somebody were to come up and say, “We’d like to buy the company, we’d like to buy the name,” probably I would say, “Gee, I’m not going to live forever, perhaps this is something I envision doing,” but now I look at it in a different way.

Alexander Bolen: The company is absolutely not for sale. At this point, over my dead body. I have talked with Oscar about it and if Oscar tells me he wants to do something, which he has not, obviously I’ll pursue his instructions, but our best days are ahead of us. You know, we’ve been fortunate to date that we’ve been able to execute our plans with the capital budget that we have. We don’t have a big balance sheet, but we have a clean balance sheet and we have enough money to do the things that we want to do. If we were to get to the point that we didn’t have the money to do the things we want to do, we might consider bringing on a partner. But I want to emphasize that we have no discussions of any sort going on at this point.
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