Jānis Sils

As a teenager in the Soviet Union, Jānis joined a collective of young avant-garde fashion designers and musicians and developed two underground clothing collections in Riga, Latvia. These collections captured significant local and Western media attention and helped Jānis to build the creative foundation for his fashion career in the West. He also managed a small clothing manufacturing business concentrating on designing and producing jeans and military surplus apparel.

Later, Jānis moved to Chicago to attend the fashion design program at Ray Vogue College of Design (Illinois Institute of Art) and worked for a local designer, Louise Lasky, designing protective civilian outerwear for the Chicago Police Department. He also designed innovative casual sportswear for several local celebrities including lead players on the Chicago Bulls NBA team.

In the mid-nineties, he then moved to May Merchandising Co. in St. Louis, MO to design for May Department Stores Men’s Private Label.  Shortly thereafter, Jānis relocated to New York City where he joined up with Donna Karan to start the DKNY KIDS clothing line as head designer for DKNY Boys’ collection.

In 1999, Jānis took over designing woven and denim products for the Tommy Hilfiger children’s line and won a Designer of the Year award.

The following year, Jānis joined Gap Inc. where he began as a senior designer for boys’ wovens, denim, outerwear and shirting and then took over Gap Kids boys as a director of design in 2007.  Eventually, he secured a global director position that continued through April 2014. His responsibilities included helping to evolve the Gap Kids line aesthetics and grow it into a successful, globally recognized brand.

In 2014, Jānis joined The Children’s Place as VP of design for global boys’ apparel. There, he helped to elevate the aesthetic of the product as well as implemented new technology to create a seamless product development process while managing manufacturing costs. Immediately after joining the company Jānis restructured the design team by bringing in the top talent in the children’s apparel industry. His decisions related to design, product development and staffing resulted in an exponential increase in product demand and business growth.

Currently Jānis lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and works as a men’s and children’s apparel design and brand development consultant.

In summary, Jānis Sils is an SVP level candidate for an apparel, accessories or home furnishings design, concept and product development position. He brings 20+ years of global apparel design and management experience from having worked at leading American apparel brands.

He has in-depth knowledge and experience grounded in men’s, boys’ and children’s fashion with superb business effectiveness. Jānis is challenging himself to expand his apparel design innovations further with accessories, home furnishings and women’s and girl’s apparel. Ultimately he intends to evolve it all into one cohesive and fashionable customer lifestyle experience. 

Jānis invents relevant fashion collection concepts by drawing parallels between themes of modern color, pattern, raw material and consumer trends in fashion, art, industrial design, home furnishings and architecture. He draws inspiration from art and music subcultures as well as fashion and vintage clothing. Jānis maintains an extensive knowledge of major global retail hubs and current shopping districts through his travels and research.

He demonstrates attention to detail, knowledge of garment construction, textiles, wash and finish and  ensures the delivery of quality product within the given cost and expected brand aesthetic parameters. In particular, Jānis possesses a strong knowledge of knit and woven materials including denim processing.

In the workplace, Jānis is accustomed to fast-paced environments and is able to lead teams to meet deadlines without sacrificing morale and creativity. He advocates for technology usage in design and presentations and guides design teams to be creative, productive, cost-effective and mobile. Jānis exhibits strong presentation skills and approaches tasks analytically and avoids future roadblocks by solving problems in advance. His hands-on design and management experience inspires design teams and guides them through the product development cycle from concept to finished collection.

Jānis has been recently working on developing his lifestyle brand, Silstils, by collaborating with artisans of other crafts such as jewelry, furniture and interior design.