Alexander Lewis' apartment-slash-studio is located in central London's Knightsbridge enclave, across from a pub where, on a recent 11 a.m. visit, patrons were already enjoying their pints. Around the corner from his flat is a picturesque gated garden (a local dowager controls access to the key) surrounded by row houses straight out of Mary Poppins. It doesn't get more quintessentially British than this. But while the 27-year-old de-signer has plenty of Anglo bona fides—graduating from Harrow, the prestigious boarding school attended by Winston Churchill; apprenticing on Savile Row—he's something of a human melting pot, part Brazilian, English, and American. The son of an American father and a Brazilian mother, Lewis was born in Chicago. When he was nine, after his mother remarried a Brit, the fam-ily relocated to London. And an early fashion gig gave him ultra-Americana cred: designing for Minnesota-based Red Wing Shoes while still in high school. (His father had been the managing director of the company in Europe.) He returned to the States to attend the University of Southern California, where he majored in communications and business. But it was working in sales and e-commerce for Cameron Silver of L.A. vintage mecca Decades that he calls "the most fundamental part of my fashion education," given that part of his job involved sourcing vintage treasures from auction previews—having the chance to examine, for example, an Yves Saint Laurent heirloom, "the actual piece, not a reference," he says. The designer then returned to England and worked as a personal shopper at Harrods and as a pattern cutter at Norton& Sons on Savile Row.
Lewis launched his own line early last year. In keeping with his peripatetic upbringing, the first two seasons of his namesake collection have been inspired by far-flung vacation destinations. Each season starts, he says, with the premise that "you could pack everything and know you would have everything you needed: the daywear, and the sporty pieces, and the evening-wear." Thus his debut, for resort 2013, was themed around Barra Grande, a resort he and his family frequent in Bahia, Brazil. Beachy shorts sported prints based on traditional Bahian brick structures, while a bright yellow cutout dress was drawn from the curvaceous shapes of Brazilian furniture.
Now, for his pre-fall 2013 collection, Lewis is venturing above the equator, to snowier climes, drawing upon Aspen, another favored family getaway spot. "It's not a ski collection, but there are those hints," the designer explains. He studied the locale's '70s A-frame architecture and pored over vintage ski photos of zinc-nosed beauties, becoming inspired, he says, by "the vibe of these girls that are having a great time—they're healthy, sporty, youthful, social." As a result, there's plenty of local detail baked into the line's pieces, from birch-bark prints on a cotton silk jacquard jumpsuit to a gilet with diamond motifs that evoke both ski-lodge roofs and black-diamond runs. Even the lush pile of the ultrafine mohair he uses has a shag-carpet feel. A full lineup of accessories—mod cloches, slingback-cowboy-boot hybrids, and braided-horsehair jewelry (made by Colorado inmates as part of a rehabilitation arts program)—completes the Me Decade look. (The pre-fall collection ranges in price from $280 to $2,500 and is sold on Avenue32.com.)
He's still keeping next season's destination hush-hush, but Lewis recently had a chance to test whether his travel-themed collection stood up to actual travel. He brags that on a trip to New York City, "Everything came with me in two bags, and I just hung it up." No steamer required.
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