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"After spending most of his undergrad years interning nonstop (at Givenchy, Lanvin, Barneys, the Guggenheim, and W to name a few), Benjamin Fainlight was about to enter his senior year at NYU when he struck serious style gold. The idea? Athletic-inspired shirts that feature designers' names and birth years on the back. The result? Too-cool tees the fashion set went gaga for. \u00A0\n\n \"As students, most of us don't have the means to get the $3,000 Rick Owens coat that everyone knows is Rick Owens because they saw it on the runway,\" 22-year-old Benjamin explains. \"I thought you should be able to\u00A0show\u00A0you love\u00A0a\u00A0designer\u00A0in\u00A0a\u00A0more affordable\u00A0and direct way.\" In fact, direct might as well be LPD New York's middle name\u2014not only is its message loud and clear, the line's rise to success has been extraordinarily uninterrupted. Just this past week the brand launched on Net-a-Porter, following partnerships with Browns in London, VFiles in New York, and Tuchuzy in Sydney. \"I went to London last Thanksgiving, and by the time I got to Browns, they had already put one of my tees in the window. Seeing this big display with my design was the most unbelievable thing, and then two guys came in and asked if they had that shirt!\" \u00A0\n\n But with the cult following Benjamin quickly amassed (Rita Ora was one of his first fans), so too comes competition\u2014and in the world of fashion, this frequently means fakes. \"It's a double-edged sword,\" Benjamin explains. \"There's that old saying that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but it's also really aggravating.\" Lucky for him, Net-a-Porter sifted through the knockoff brands and stumbled upon his original designs; \u00A0soon he was meeting with their buying team. \"I rolled up to the NoMad Hotel with a bag of shirts, and over coffee I was like, 'So here's everything.'\" Not many&amp;amp;#8212if any\u2014other labels sold on the revered e-commerce site can claim to be a one-man operation. \"I can't really imagine Azzedine Ala\u00EFa is sewing his own belts or anything like that,\" he adds with a laugh. \u00A0\n\n So, how'd he get from sitting in an NYU classroom to inking a deal with the industry's top buyers? \"People ask how I got here, and it started with a Tumblr,\" he explains. \"I would blog things I liked and then put up ads for my shirts and release them every few weeks.\" A strong vision helps, too: Benjamin's first T-shirts sold out in a matter of hours. Back in those days the brand was called Les Plus Dor\u00E9s, French for \"the most golden\", a phrase that evokes the team spirit inherent in LPD's jersey-like duds. \u00A0\n\n Feeding off the interest in the tees (Celine's Phoebe Philo was his first subject, by the way), he released mesh jerseys, hoodies, and crewneck sweatshirts during his final year at NYU. \"I would be in class and have to answer emails and editorial requests,\" says Benjamin. \"I also worked during school, so I'd get up early in the morning and answer as many emails as I could, go to work, answer emails on my lunch break, and \u00A0stay up until 3 in the morning responding to even more emails or doing homework. I drank a lot of coffee, that's for sure.\" \u00A0\n\n Benjamin's been spending his post-grad summer in Los Angeles, where he's working on his first ready-to-wear collection, though he's already got fashion month on the brain. \"I hope people represent, especially during Paris Fashion Week where most of the designers I use show,\" he says. \"I want there to be a mob of people in Slimane shirts at Saint Laurent! That would be pretty great.\" And before that, Benjamin's launching a project with model Jessica Stam's foundation, Many Hopes. The collab will consist of Team Stam tees with proceeds benefitting her charity. \u00A0 \u00A0\n\n So, whose team are you on? We're totally Team Fainlight. Click through to see all of the cool LPD goods!"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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