Anna Kosturova: Queen of Less
Anna Kosturova is a household name in the close-knit world of swimwear designers, with her teeny-weeny crochet bikinis gracing the covers of Sports Illustrated and FHM. While other designers might seize on this opportunity to expand rapidly, for the blunt-speaking Slovak immigrant, less is definitely more .
“First off,” says Anna Kosturova, “love the tits.”
The bikini designer, dressed in faded and ripped black jeans, black high-heeled boots and a grey off-the-shoulder H&M top, has pulled up a picture on her laptop of Kate Upton, the young model wearing one of Kosturova’s skimpy crocheted creations. It’s early February and the image is from the forthcoming Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, that teenage boys’ wet dream – and, to those in the multibillion-dollar swimwear business, the industry’s pinnacle showcase. This year marks Kosturova’s sixth appearance in either the print or online edition of SI. Her work hit the magazine’s cover in 2008 and for 2011 she has a dozen pieces online and Upton – wearing a light blue bikini with shells and tassels – featured prominently on the magazine’s contents page. The swimsuit issue, which sells millions each year, was one half of a blockbuster month for the Slovak immigrant. As SI arrived on newsstands in mid-February, the romantic comedy Just Go With It, starring Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston, hit No. 1 at the box office. The movie poster features Aniston in a Kosturova dress.
With all this publicity, Anna Kosturova Lucid Design Inc. could be a very big deal – if its principal wanted it to be. Instead, Kosturova maintains a bare-bones operation, with only one other full-time employee, business manager Marnie Cochrane, to keep her company at the firm’s Downtown Eastside headquarters. A wider cast of about 40 contractors, from accountants to sales reps and the workers that hand-make Kosturova’s wares at a factory in the Philippines, support the enterprise.
Kosturova imagines that eventually she’ll produce an entire lifestyle brand for beach resorts, but she actively tries to keep the business smaller than it might be. Even as her work garners attention, she shuns it, refusing to disclose more than a hint of the size of her business. Kosturova says there’s “simply no advantage” to talking numbers, lest it spark the attention of government auditors. “We have nothing to hide,” she says, but “all we can say is that the business continues to grow.”
Her fans rave. “She’s a phenomenon, to make SI every single year,” says Heather Carlos, co-owner of New York City wholesaler 3 Femme, which connects Kosturova to retailers such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Victoria’s Secret and also hosts editors hungry for hot new pieces. 3 Femme signed on Kosturova two years ago and has made the brand its largest offering.
“Even though she’s a niche brand, editors know her, consumers know her,” says Carlos. “And she really did it on her own, started it from nothing.”
Anna Kosturova was born in 1968 in Roznava, a small city on the Slovak side of the former Czechoslovakia. A life-long hockey fan, she broke her nose as a child playing the game. Oceans and beaches, however, were her real dream. “The ocean is just – it gets me high, every time I look at it.”
She attended university in Liberec, on the Czech side of the country before it split, and earned a master of science degree in mechanical engineering, specializing in textile technology.
That engineer’s rigour and precision have served her well. While Kosturova’s effusive personality is infused with an artist’s passion – she jumps to the next sentence when only halfway finished her current thought, swears as often as an X-rated comedian, and laughs heartily and easily – creation is an exacting process: “There’s no – Whooo! – crazy-ass inspiration that shows up out of nowhere. It’s a very technical procedure for me. It’s not so glamorous. It’s literally: The brain is a computer, pack it with data, and something will fall out.”
At the age of 24 and with university finished, Kosturova decided to finally seek out the ocean, moving to Vancouver to join friends. She remembers, growing up, “something strangely whimsical about Canada” and, compared with the electric but violent culture of America, “it seemed peaceful.”
Her first job in the city was in the kitchen at The Railway Club, the downtown Vancouver music and booze institution. After rejection from the MBA program at SFU – her English wasn’t yet up for it – she enrolled in fashion arts at Vancouver Community College. After graduating, she was hired by a local clothing wholesaler as a designer to oversee two collections a year. She was introduced to the potential of crochet and, crucially, to a factory in the Philippines that supplied the wholesaler.
- Tags
Save over 50% off the newsstand price with a subscription to BCBusiness Magazine
