DALLAS — January 24, 2019 — J.Hilburn today announces design leader Simon Kneen has joined the company as chief creative officer. This newly created role will ensure creative vision across all customer touch-points from collection design, styling, and showroom presentations to retail stores.
Kneen previously lent his design vision to two leading iconic brands in the United States. First, he served as creative design director for the Retail Brand Alliance setting the direction for Brooks Brothers and Adrienne Vittadini. Then he was recruited as executive vice president of design and creative director for Banana Republic, the GAP owned brand where he remained for six years leaving in 2013 marking an era of successful designer collaborations with brands such as MadMen, L’Wren Scott and Narciso Rodriguez, to name a few. Kneen’s early work in Europe included luxury designer brands, and he was head designer for the French pret-a-porter house, Balmain in the late 1990s.
“Simon is an innovative and experienced leader of men’s design and is a perfect fit for our disruptive brand,” said J.Hilburn CEO Andy Janowski. “I am excited to have his creative vision and leadership as we build the future of custom-made total lifestyle fashion.”
Kneen joins the already heavy-hitting leadership team consisting of CEO Andy Janowski (former COO of Burberry and CEO of Smythson), COO Joe Dixon (former CEO of Size Stream and senior vice president of Brooks Brothers), and newly promoted James Burgess as vice president of Stylist development.
“I’m thrilled to be joining the leadership at J.Hilburn with their modern approach to servicing the customer through one-on-one tailoring experts,” explained Kneen. “I look forward to building a strong collection point-of-view across the various price points, using my extensive knowledge of Italian fabrics and tailoring.”
J.Hilburn started with one mission: to guarantee fit and eliminate unnecessary markups in menswear. Led by an expansive network of nearly 2,000 expert Stylists across all 50 states and a mix of online and retail sales, these leadership changes continue to position the brand for strong future growth.
“I was attracted to J.Hilburn’s unique direct-to-consumer business model that provides a very high-quality and customized product at a much more accessible price point,” continued Kneen. “This marries to one of my own philosophies around design that everyone should be able to wear beautiful pieces without breaking the bank and that can be worn well beyond one season.”
Kneen also will continue in his role as creative director of his own brand Grey New York Grey New England, a luxury accessories collection exclusively made in Italy.
Posted January 24, 2019
Source: J.Hilburn
