Framed: ALVIN VALLEY

Miami fashion expert LEIGH ALLISON POLLACK sits down with "The King of Pants" to discuss his recent return to sold out shelves.

“Do you know why I love you?” I ask Alvin Valley. We are leaning against the bar at Le Bilboquet on Worth Avenue in Palm Beach, and 7 people – from restaurant patrons to the employees – have interrupted our conversation to say “hello” to him. Valley’s energy is infectious. It does not surprise me that he knows everyone and everyone knows him.

“Why?” He asks.

“Because you dream bigger than anyone else that I know but somehow keep finding space to dream even bigger. You believe in yourself. And you actually manifest your dreams.”

“It’s true,” he says, confidently and matter-of-factly.

Alvin Valley is the man behind his namesake fashion – clothing, perfume, shoes, bags and accessories – brand which started in the late 1990s as a Coconut Grove atelier and boutique and grew to an international brand. His New York fashion week show was sponsored by Kathy Hilton and he designed pants worn by so many celebrities and socialites he became dubbed “The King of Pants” by magazines including Women’s Wear Daily and W. Today, his new line of jeans, retailing for about $495, are selling out as soon as they’re stocked.

I met Valley 30 years ago in South Miami and so many of the characters in Valley’s story intersected with mine. We both inhabited the South Miami fashion universe — South Miami was the South-of-Bal-Harbour Miami fashion watering hole for decades.

For this interview, Valley greets me at his new private styling salon on Worth Avenue in bare feet and well-worn jeans. He offers me a glass of Chrome Horse tequila, but first he has to hunt for glassware because he just moved in that week. He shows me around his new studio, which is a hybrid showroom and condo, and gives me a sneak peek at his newest collections of jeans, bags, shoes, lingerie, ready to wear, and more. We stroll Worth Avenue a bit before sitting down to dinner at Cafe Flora. Being around Valley in Palm Beach makes me almost forget that he is a native Miamian. Valley seems like someone who becomes the unofficial mayor wherever he is. Kenneth Bernardo, owner of Bay Crane Co, and socialite Erica Tuft Karsch both greet Alvin warmly at the aforementioned Le Bilboquet bar after our dinner. At one point, Valley points to a table in the dining room of the popular French bistro and jokes that it is “Alvin’s Table.”

If you had heard of Alvin Valley before 2021, it was probably as the King of Pants or the Pants King of Miami. If you shopped in stores like Studio LX in South Miami or IOS in Coconut Grove in the early 2000s, or even similar stores on a more national scale, you might have owned a pair of Alvin Valley low-rise pants that hugged your curves like bespoke, tailor-made pants, despite being “off the rack.” There was a moment in the early aughts where you were no one who knew anything about fashion unless you knew about Alvin Valley and his pants. I owned at least 4 pairs — black, charcoal, peach, and searsucker. The King of Pants was omnipresent.

Over 20 years and countless reinventions later, the nickname has stuck. I don’t know if Valley exactly rolls his eyes when I bring up the King of Pants moniker, but it is clear to me, as perhaps it is clear to him, that Valley is so much more than just pants. He is a talented designer. A visionary. A passionate creative. A clever businessman with a few Machiavellian moves up his well-tailored sleeves. Valley has always rejected convention.

Valley has not just survived, but thrived, reinvented himself, and thrived again, for more than 3 decades in a fashion business that he, as a college student, says now he was far too young to enter. Valley studied architecture at University of Miami and in his third year decided to open an atelier in Coconut Grove above his first boutique on Commodore Plaza. Architecture still informs his brand — he prioritizes fit. It’s why all the girls loved those darn pants — they just fit so well!

Valley left his native Miami for New York in 1999. In the early 2000s, Kathy Hilton agreed to sponsor and host Alvin Valley’s New York fashion week show at the Starlight Ballroom in the Waldorf Astoria on one condition: that Paris and Nikki Hilton walk the runway. Of course he said “yes!” and that was it — the Hiltons loved his jeans and then the world loved his jeans and pants. After that fashion show, Alvin Valley became King of Pants.

Valley is quintessentially South Florida – a Miami boy that landed in Palm Beach. “I am a hybrid between a Miami boy and a Palm Beach guy,” he says. “And it’s funny – I leave New York out of the equation, even though I spent most of my time in New York. I lived there for 24 years.”

Valley moved back to Palm Beach from New York in January 2021. “Coming here (to Palm Beach) from New York and opening a small atelier on Worth Avenue and sort of expanding creatively with the customers here — they were willing to experiment. It boosted me creatively because I was like, what do I do? I had no inventory! The factories weren’t producing because of Covid so I started doing made to order, made to measure.”

Suddenly, the story of Alvin Valley, both the man and the brand, started to center on the small and ultra riche island community. On Palm Beach, Valley found a community of women that wanted to buy new wardrobe items, but because of Covid lockdown had nowhere to shop. 30 years after his start as a bespoke made-to-measure tailoring expert, this return to his roots suited Alvin as perfectly as the suiting he was making for his new Palm Beach clientele. They were thrilled! Right away, he began to build both brand awareness and brand loyalty on Palm Beach. And then, much like with his pants 20 years earlier, the word about Alvin Valley began to spread.

“My ideal girl is Global. And that’s why being in Palm Beach is so perfect. People come here from everywhere and shop, and then they go back out into the world which spreads the word about Alvin Valley even further.”

Lately, the King of Pants is returning to his roots another way: the Alvin Valley Jean. “The Jean has surpassed everything. It’s more accessible and it’s more Global. Wherever you are, people want jeans. It has surpassed even Alvin Valley’s signature handbag, the cage bag.”

After Covid, Valley says he was interested in looking for small communities, but with Global citizens, “meaning the community was small, but these people then travel the world. I want them to tell the story of Alvin Valley everywhere. And they have!”

“That’s how you grow a brand today,” says Alley. “Not by being flashy. By word of mouth. By people believing in you.”