TRIUNFADOR: Jeans Queen
— -- In New York City's Garment District, Lisa Rudes-Sandel sits in a spacious fourth-floor loft showroom with sunshine pouring through the windows onto a table covered with different colored jeans.
She picks up several pairs and runs her hand over them pointing out special features. "This is my basic style," she tells the buyer, setting a pair in front of her on table. "It's the one I began with."
Rudes-Sandel explains how all the jeans have four percent Spandex in them, more than is in typical jeans, which makes them more stretchy, form fitting and comfortable. "It's always the same fit," she says.
Rudes-Sandel, 43, is president of Not Your Daughter's Jeans (NYDJ), and is the first Latina to create and run her own jeans company. NYDJ is also the largest jeans company in the world run by a Puerto Rican woman. Her specially designed jeans, called Tummy Tuck Jeans, are targeted to women in their 40s and older who want a slimming, form-fitting look. They are among the best sellers in the industry.
When asked to sum up her success, Rudes-Sandel laughs and says, "You've come a long way, baby," quoting the famous cigarette advertisement.
She certainly has.
Rudes-Sandel was born into the world of fashion. Her father, George Rudes, was working in his family's successful textile business in Puerto Rico when he met María Teresa Colondres from the small mountain town of Adjuntas. They married soon after and started a family.
It quickly became obvious that little Lisa loved fashion. As a child growing up in San Juan, she was always tearing pages out of fashion magazines, like Bazaar and Vogue, and showing them to her father. "Can't you make this?" she begged him, holding up a page with a picture of a splendid gown.
Many mornings, she would burst excitedly into her parents' room while they were still in bed and put on pretend fashion shows for them.
Wanting to nurture his daughter's interest, George regularly took Lisa with him on business trips to visit clothes makers and managers of department stores in such places as San Juan's Plaza Las Americas shopping mall. Lisa always listened carefully to his conversations and tried to learn as much as she could. "There's nothing you can't accomplish," he would tell Lisa and his other two children, Leslie and Kenneth. "You have the talent. Go for it."
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