Observer - October 2015

How Parke & Ronen Started as a Street Vendor and Became a Swimwear Mainstay
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In the past 6 years, if you’ve found yourself backstage at a Parke & Ronen fashion show during New York Fashion Week, it’s likely that you’ve drooled in public. That wonderland is characterized by the rippling muscles on models of every complexion, lounging around in branded underwear. It’s a glorious sight to behold.
“For our first show, we walked into the backstage and hair and makeup was down in the basement,” Ronen Jehezkel told the Observer in an interview during fashion month about how the company first started dressing runway models in the brand’s underwear. “We went down there and opened the door and there were all of these flawless, gorgeous bodies and the crazy drama of fashion week with all the flashes. And we look around and they are all wearing all this baggy, nasty underwear. This is free advertisement to all the companies they were wearing,” he said.
“So the next show, we made the Parke & Ronen underwear. And that was that”
Until this fall, fans of the brand, which is known in the swimwear space for tailored, fashion conscious men’s styles, have only been able to behold those designs in backstage photos. But now, the brand has launched into the category with two styles which marks a milestone of growth in its 18-year story. That growth sees the company, run by Parke Lutter and Ronen Jehezkel, moving even further from its street vendor beginnings.
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