agency: IN-HOUSE client: CORTEZ GROUPE industry: 360 AGENCY

BACKSTORY

Christopher Cortez, Founder and CEO of Cortez Groupe, is an accomplished graphic artist and fashion designer with a focused creative ambition and demonstrated entrepreneurial spirit. Inspired by the talented community of people in his network he amassed throughout his career, Cortez established the Groupe with the mission of creating a design-focused company that permitted these individuals to work together in an environment that shared and offered the same ambition and spirit.

 Prior to forming Cortez Groupe, Cortez gained swift notoriety amongst fashion aficionados as the winner of “The Cut”, a primetime reality show designed by Tommy Hilfiger to discover “The Next Great American Designer”. Hired as head menswear designer to create a new label under the Tommy Hilfiger umbrella, Hombre, Cortez went on to design four collections with features in Women’s Wear Daily, New York Times and Entertainment Weekly.

CHALLENGE

Ready to fulfill his own vision, the Groupe needed a brand strategy capable of supporting and unifying a potentially boundless network of creative disciplines and expressions, along with a demonstrated sense of purpose and point of differentiation.

INSIGHT

Workshops exploring Cortez’s vision for the Groupe harkened back to the original Design Houses in Europe, like the House of Dior, where experts of many crafts were housed under one roof, and called upon when the work required their unique skill set. The difference here was the nature of its residents and residence.

Rather than including pattern makers, sample makers, seamstresses, tailors and couturiers in a fixed space, House of Cortez would become a virtual home to architects, musicians, photographers, writers, illustrators, engineers and other artists of many kind.

The concept for the House of Cortez gave way to the company’s blueprint, simulating an architect’s floor plan, in which Cortez is the architect. With the floor plan as the sitemap for the Website, the Groupe can share new perspectives by expressing what each room represents in their unique ‘blended language’ - mindfully combining artistic expression, to elevate the form and function of communication.

And with the ability to open new doors or raise the roof as the business grows and the times change, the House of Cortez could be as boundless as its occupants.

RESULTS