Daniel Hechter was one of the first designers to recognize the commercial viability of lifestyle dressing and has marketed the concept with enormous success, today exporting to some 47 countries and licensing goods in the U.S., South America, Europe, Australia, and Canada. In many ways, he provided the inspiration for the 1980s' explosion of lifestyle concepts in retailing.
Hechter identified his particular market as including the young, sometimes married with children, upwardly mobile 20-to 30-somethings, who may not have the income to finance the designer lifestyle and fashionable appearance to which they aspire. As a mass market designer, it is essential to be able to perceive what is right for the moment, particularly when dealing with the fickle youth-oriented market. Hechter's taste and style have often been directed by the unpredictable forces of pop, club, and street culture, and his business rapidly prospered because of his adaptability and speed.
Born into a family who owned a ready-to-wear company, Hechter was brought up in an environment sympathetic to fashion. He worked for designer Pierre d'Alby from 1958 before opening his own house in 1962 with friend Armand Orustein. The company opened with a womenswear collection that captured the developing need of the 1960s - young, fun, and sometimes throwaway. He produced sweaters, maxi coats, trouser suits, smoking jackets, gabardine raincoats, and boot top-length divided skirts. His casual jersey and ribbed duffle coats and greatcoats emphasized his skills for sophisticated unisex outerwear, sporty yet wearable and stylish.
The business grew to incorporate many areas of fashion and clothing design, producing shoes, sunglasses, school uniforms, corporate wear, and tennis and ski clothes. He also moved into designing for the home, broadening his lifestyle concepts by producing household linens furniture, crystal stemware, and patterns for china place settings. Other additions to the Hechter line were men's fragrances: Caractére in 1989, promoted as a simple, warm scent, and XXL in 1996, said to have a woodsy, energetic character.
During the 1980’s Daniel Hechter was launched in Truworths.
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