The best ideas tend to be born of necessity. For Alice + Olivia’s Stacey Bendet, that necessity was a trouser that was as flattering at it was comfortable. The self-taught designer, then partnered with a former college classmate, put together a small collection that was shown at the Russian Tea Room, a midtown Manhattan fixture. Theory CEO Andrew Rosen was in attendance, and was so impressed he invested in the fledgling label. His enthusiasm was warranted—the brand has grown exponentially, now boasting nearly 30 retail locations globally in addition to a wholesale business that puts Alice + Olivia in the world’s finest shops, from Neiman Marcus, to Isetan, to Harrods, to Net-a-Porter. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Alice + Olivia is in the midst of a pretty major international expansion. You’re going into several markets simultaneously, which is no small undertaking. Can you talk me through that process a bit?

We’ve set up joint venture partnerships. We have a partnership with a group for Hong Kong, China, Singapore, and Taiwan, and then we have a separate partnership for Japan, and then we have another partnership for the Middle East.

They’re really helping us identify the spaces and the locations we want to open and operate those stores. Were we doing it all in house, we wouldn’t be able to do it at the speed that we’re doing it, right? Our team in the U.S., obviously, we completely operate all our own retail stores here. In total now we have 28 or 29 stores.

The authenticity of the brand, our image, is still so important to me. Sometimes we’ll plan on opening five more stores in the U.S. [in a] year, but if I didn’t find a space that I really love yet, I’d rather wait a little for that space to come up than to open something I’m not going to be proud of. In Japan, for a second location, we’ve waited because I want to find the right space. Egypt’s a little bit easier, because a lot of it’s a little bit more mall based.

What is the right space to you?

It depends. I tend to like spaces that have a little more character. It partially has to do with the location. On Melrose in L.A., it wasn’t even built yet, and we got to really create the architectural layout ourselves. In SoHo I wanted a space that I really liked feeling. It really varies from space to space. Hold on for one second.

We don’t open 5,000 square foot flagships. Our model is to have very profitable retail stores. We like spaces that are between 1,000 and 1,800 hundred square feet, in locations that are really prime, have great window frontage, and, when possible, high ceilings. Our desired spaces are a little smaller than some brands. We like high traffic locations. No space is ever going to be completely perfect. I look for a four out of five, right?

Sure. What do they say, perfection is the enemy of great, or something like that? Why did you and your team feel that now was the right time to expand internationally?

We were ready for it as a company, we were ready for it as a brand. The clothes were ready for it, there was a demand for it. We had a very strong business with Lane Crawford in China before we started opening stores in Hong Kong. We have great businesses in London, we have great businesses in Russia, the Middle East, everywhere. People were coming to us saying, “We want to open stores.” We had enough experience running, operating, and buying for our own retail stores that as a company we felt ready for it.

Opening stand alone stores has been a big focus for you guys over the past five years. Correct me if I’m wrong, your first standalone was opened in 2010?

No, we actually opened our first store in East Hampton, in 2005. It was a little pop up. And then in 2006 or 2007 we opened on Robertson, in L.A.

Why do feel it’s so important for you guys to have your own retail space?

First of all, it’s profitable. These days, I think your own stores and your online stores are the model. It’s becoming harder and harder to be a wholesale business, with the department stores and everything else. You need to have the majority of your business as a brand in your own stores. You’re making double the margin, right?

It’s also branding. Your stores are you. You create the visuals, you create the experience, you create the interiors. They’re not just retail locations, they’re an advertisement for what your brand is.

How important is e-commerce to your business?

It’s increasingly important. It’s one area where I don’t think we are where we should be, but we’re putting much more of an investment into it. We put much more investment lately into the creative, into redoing it and rebranding it. What happens for us, I think, is we have such big businesses with all the other online retailers that at times we’re almost competing against ourselves online.

We’re really right now just starting to make our site its own experience, so it’s not just another place to buy our clothes. We want it to really feel like you’re walking into our world when you go on the site. I think that any brand who wants to exist ten years from now needs to have such a huge emphasis on their digital efforts. It’s so important. I think it should be every brands largest store. It’s not our largest yet, but within a year it will be.

It’s almost like every brand today is almost it’s own media company, right? Ten years ago you didn’t have an outlet to share your vision and your messages with the world. Our Instagram account is me. I’m the only one who touches Instagram and we’ve never advertised for it. We’ve never done anything like that and we have 450,000 followers, which I know, compared to the Kardashians, is not a lot, but for a brand who has done no marketing or advertising around it is pretty impressive. It’s this voice where we’re directly speaking to our customers. That’s a very powerful tool.

I think those follower counts might be misleading too. I feel like there’s a chance that your 450,000 followers, maybe more of those are actual people.

Yeah, I feel like they are. Just because I’ve seen when the numbers go up and why. It’s not like we placed an ad somewhere or whatever, it’s really just because we were trending, people liked things, other people reposted. It’s exciting, it’s such a great insight into things. I’ll post stuff all the time to see what the feedback is and see if people like it when we’re thinking about whether to run it.

Would you say it feeds back into your design process?

A little bit. It’s not a literal thing, but there are times when sales will be like, “Oh, we’re thinking of dropping this style,” and I’ll be like, “Let’s see what happens when I post it.” We definitely do that.

To jump back a little bit to the genesis of your brand, it all seemed to start happening for you after that first show you did at the Russian Tea Room.

Mm-hmm. That’s when we started selling to Barney’s.

From what I understand that’s how you and Andrew Rosen connected—

I met him a little bit before that, and then invited him to the show.

Andrew Rosen’s a guy who had been around the industry for a long time. What do you think he saw in your work that made him think, “This is something?”

I think the pants were really cool. The show we put on was really sexy. A lot of times you’ll see a young designer put something together and it’s all over the place or it’s not focused. This is literally, I was like, “I am just making pants.” That was how Theory started. They started out, the whole concept was pants that stretch. I still tell this to designers today—I’m not saying this is what Andrew saw in me—but I say start with an item. Start with something that’s going to put you on the map. For Donna Karan, it was the body suit. For Ralph Lauren, it was ties. You need that item that when people say the name of your brand are gonna go, “Oh, the pants.” I always ask him, like, “I was so crazy, what did you even see in me?” I think I was ambitious and excited and I was passionate. People loved the pants and the stores, as soon as we showed them, they wanted them. He just took a little leap of faith there.

It certainly seems to have worked out well for him so far.

Yeah, I think he’s pretty happy.

He’s just the most incredible, incredible partner. He’s my best friend, he’s the godfather of my daughter. He’s been there for me in every area of my life since I was twenty-three years old.

Do you recall a particular moment that you felt that the brand really turned a corner? That you felt like, “Wow, we’ve really found our customer?”

I think it was when my president came on, Deanna Berkeley, that gave me the freedom to really grow the line. When we opened our Robertson store, that was an exciting moment. That was our third store at the time. There are just these moments when you’re like, “This is real, this is a real business. We’re not just playing around, making clothes.” There are all kinds of touch points. There’s the moment where you see Michelle Obama in your skirt and top. There’s the moment when you see a celebrity with one of your bags where you’re like, “Wow, this has come so far.”

Do you think your lack of experience in design, at the beginning, was a benefit?

In some ways. In some ways, when you look at actually the evolution of the company, the first three years were my design school.

I would go to our production company everyday and I would get there at 7AM because that was the only time the pattern maker would spend any time with me. I would work with her on whatever styles we working on. Those first two years were really like me learning. Did I have to get a crash course on production and pattern making and everything else? Yes, but I also wasn’t confined by textbook, right? They’d be like, “Well, you’re not really supposed to use that kind of fabric for that kind of pant.” I’d be like, “Well, try it. Like, I’m paying for the pattern, just try it.” I was a little bit out of the box in everything I did because there was nothing really that I felt was right or wrong. I don’t know if that’s the way to describe it, but I think in some ways it did benefit me.

For better or worse, my whole life I was never the type to be like, “Oh, I don’t know how to do that.” I was always like, “I can learn it, I can figure it out.” It was a lot of pure will, I guess.

What is your design process like these days?

It always changes. We actually deliver one to two collections every month.

In some ways, it’s this evolution, stream-of-consciousness process. I always tend to start, even back when I was first doing the pants, every little capsule I would do was based around a color story. Whether I was doing stripes, or polka dots, or prints, or jacquards, or whatever, I always start with a color story, and then from there it will start to evolve it into some sort of theme. If we’re doing a story that’s more bohemian, who’s our icon, where are we with it? There’s no format to that sort of creativity, right? It’s almost like it’s different with every capsule that we do. Minus starting with fabric and color story. Since I’ve started, even with the pants, so much of our collection was about fabric and texture—it still is now.

Has the customer, in terms of demographics, remained pretty constant since you’ve started, or have you seen that evolve over time?

No, I think she’s grown up with us. When we started we were known for being young, and whimsical, and fun, and then there came a time where I was like, “I really want to elevate this. I want it to mature.” We spent a really good amount of time taking the brand up a level. Not letting it just be little party dresses or cute flirty things but really focusing on making beautiful clothes for a woman that feel very timeless. That you can see a twenty year-old in and a fifty year-old in. I’m wearing a vest today that my mom could wear and my little sister could wear. I like things that are versatile that way.

In the Business of Fashion profile on you from this January, there was was one line that really stuck out to me. They mentioned your “lack of aesthetic ego.” Do you think that’s an accurate description?

Maybe! I never read articles that are written about me. I really don’t. I came up with that rule a few years ago. It’s too easy to let things kick you up or down, so I don’t read anything. I just look at the picture.

I’m more of an aesthetic dictator. I don’t know if that involves an ego or not. I’m very particular about how I like things, how they need to look. I’m crazy about colors and the way they work together. I also am very versatile in the things I love. I’ll love a room that’s completely bohemian and I’ll love a room that’s completely modern, because I see the beauty in both.

You mentioned earlier that you handle the interiors for your new stores. You seem to have a really clear sense of your aesthetic in terms of interior design and furniture and art. Does that feed into your clothing design process as well?

It does sometimes. When I was working on my apartment, I had an architect who’s also the most amazing interior designer. I’m actually, I think, going to bring him in to help with some of our stores. His name is Robert Couturier. So many of the things that we created for the apartment, I ended up turning into prints or using as inspiration for something. Again, the creative process is really about just being inspired by everything around you. You never know what that’s going to be. That’s what makes it ever changing and interesting.

Q&A by Adam Wray, Curator of FashionREDEF. You can follow Adam on REDEF and Twitter (@FashionREDEF, @terminal_avenue), or reach him at adam.wray@redefgroup.com