Public School was founded in 2008 by Maxwell Osborne and Dao-Yi Chow as a brand that represents both inclusivity and convergence. Since 2012, Alan Mak has been part of the team as Managing Partner. We caught up with Mak about how his own past influences, his present and the valuable lessons of being a child of a Chinese immigrant family has taught him.
How did you get into the industry?
I’ve been in the apparel industry for basically all my life and learned from the ground up, helping my parents from a young age with various tasks in their fashion business. My studies as an economics major, experience as an investment banker on Wall Street and in technology gave me a strong business and retail foundation. I learned about production, sourcing, and operations by building multiple womenswear brands prior to Public School.
What led you to Public School?
In 2010, I knew menswear was going to have a moment, and men were starting to be more comfortable thinking about fashion and taking on their own identity. Around that time, a mutual friend introduced me to the guys, and we clicked from day one. Dao-Yi and Maxwell both have a good sense of what is “cool” which they convey through their designs and I have a good sense of what the math and supply chain needs to look like to produce and deliver the product on time.
What is your role at Public School?
I handle the behind-the-scenes work i.e. partnerships, merchandising, operations, finance, and all-around “putting out fires”. The challenging part about this industry is that fashion has a shelf life and a lot of work and planning is involved. At Public School, we all know what our respective goals are, and we keep a strong team by having the mindset that no one role is more valuable than the other.
How has your heritage and upbringing influenced your work?
Being a child of an immigrant family has shaped who I am. In the 1970s, my parents immigrated from Hong Kong to New York where I was born and raised. Both my parents grew up pretty poor. My mother was part of a family of seven squeezed into a 400-square foot apartment and my dad, along with his 9 other siblings, was the son of a fisherman. Like most immigrant families, my parents worked very hard with the hope to create a better life and opportunities for their children that they did not have growing up.
I heard many stories from my grandparents’ generation who lived through World War II. My grandmother would tell the story of how she had to carry my infant mom on her back as she sought shelter from enemy bombing. When they came to the States, they also had an entrepreneurial mindset and started a laundromat, which was a big deal as an immigrant family because eventually, they were able to purchase a home through the success of that business.
Seeing the struggle, desire, and belief [that] you must roll up your sleeves and do whatever it takes to get the job done and succeed to provide a better life for your family was instilled in me from a young age. I hope to instill my work ethic and my family values in my two boys, who are two and a half and 11 years old.
What project have you recently worked on that was meaningful to you?
I take a lot of pride in Version Tomorrow – the sustainable blanks platform that we developed as part of the CFDA + LEXUS FASHION* INITIATIVE. Version Tomorrow provides a turnkey way for brands and designers to easily create sustainable product without doing any of the R&D and heavy lifting because we’ve already done it for them. More than ever, we hope to move the industry toward a more sustainable path and create impact that reaches farther than Public School.
