Mike Eckhaus has always done things his own way, but he’s not unaware of the consequences. If anything, he finds them amusing.
When he was a 16-year-old high schooler in Westchester, New York, he and a friend (who now produces Eckhaus Latta’s fashion shows) assigned themselves themed days that they would dress to. The looks were loud. Everything backwards. Too many layers. A broken mirror glued to the front of a shirt. One look, procured from the hardware store, involved a big rope tied in knots around his body. A teacher mistook it for a cry for help. “When you’re a teenager in the suburbs, it’s fun to freak people out a little.”