DosViolines
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source: nytimes.com
September 7, 2006
Critic’s Notebook
The End of the Affair
By CATHY HORYN
IT’S astonishing when a fashion star becomes a bystander, a shadow.
“Oh, it’s you.”
Startled, this is what you say, all you can think to say, when you encounter a Displaced Fashion Person at a glamorous industry party, your sense of shame manifest in the little jerk of surprise his head makes.
Well, it happens. Fame lasts for no one.
But when the roster of DFP’s includes Tom Ford, Helmut Lang, Jil Sander, Miguel Adrover, Phoebe Philo (late of Chloé) and Olivier Theyskens, who was recently cut loose from the Paris house Rochas by its corporate parent, Procter & Gamble, you have to think that something more than Darwinian theory is at work.
These were — are — great designers. They changed the way we dressed. And I don’t mean load-bearing fashionistas, pillars of Frenchy chic and obscure fads. I mean you. Mr. Theyskens’s extreme shapes for Rochas, however ugly duckling they looked at first, set in motion the trend for dressy fashion, and makers of midprice suits can thank him as well for helping to put the kibosh on casual Fridays. Ms. Philo established Chloé as a stylish baseline, the Chanel of her generation. Mr. Lang gave men a sleek, fashionable uniform that still retained a masculine roughness. And Mr. Ford did more than make sexy fashion: he made fashion a sexy topic.
As another runway season begins with New York Fashion Week tomorrow, a tide seems to have turned against designers and even perhaps against talent. To be sure, we writers are notoriously uneven when it comes to predicting fashion’s demise. We’ve got it wrong so many times that reparations seem in order for all the trellises we’ve collapsed. Fashion has never touched more lives than it does at the moment, and by so many different means — reality television shows like “Project Runway,” Web sites and blogs, corporate sponsorships (like those that underwrite many of the shows in Bryant Park), design competitions and international trade fairs.
A sufficiently motivated individual could find a Fashion Week on virtually every continent except Antarctica. As Julie Gilhart, the fashion director of Barneys New York, said from her office, where boxes of unsolicited designs wait for her review, “We’ve opened the floodgates.”
Yet the busyness and excitement surrounding fashion are not proof of any genius, only of a talent for seizing opportunity. In point of fact, some very gifted designers are idle, and at relatively young ages. Ms. Philo was 31 when she left Chloé last year to spend more time with her family. Other designers’ reasons are as varied as they are familiar. (Businesses were sold, financial backers disappeared.)
What feels less familiar is the lack of interest in the talent they represent — for skillful cutting, a refined color sense or for communicating emotion. These gifts, along with a strong sense of identity, are probably a designer’s most valuable assets. Yet lately they have been devalued, like an out-of-date sweater, as much by a jangling, “what do I get out of it” culture as by a greediness and mistrust that seem to exist between designers and corporate owners.
Far from landing smoothly on his feet, Mr. Theyskens may have trouble getting a job or, at any rate, one that allows him the creative freedom he had at Rochas. As it is, the top houses are well fixed for talent, and there’s no rush to invest in new ventures, one clue being the apparent reluctance of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton to give Hedi Slimane, its Dior men’s designer, his own women’s label. Wherever Mr. Theyskens goes — speculation favors Nina Ricci — his new boss will probably approve of artistry, in principle.
But if he is like any number of chief executives in Paris these days — the exasperation breaking through the polished surface — he will want clothes that sell. As Ralph Toledano, the chief executive of Chloé, said, referring to the popular strategy of creating runway drama in order to sell bread-and-butter purses: “The problem is that formula has a real limit, and we’ve reached the limit. At the end of the day, our garment must be sold. It can’t just create drama among 500 people, including you and me.”
Mr. Ford has plans for a new men’s line, along with other products. He may well be successful, given his track record at Gucci, but fashion, like Hollywood, isn’t producing blockbusters the way it once did.
Until two or three years ago, executives at publicly traded luxury-goods companies were willing to have their faith in creativity tested by designers, few more so than Bernard Arnault, the chairman of LVMH, who seems to relish the risk-taking of his top impresarios, the couturier John Galliano of Dior and Marc Jacobs of Vuitton. Other executives insist that nothing has changed, despite heavy business pressures.
“You need the most outstanding talent possible,” Robert Polet, the chief executive of Gucci Group, said, adding that the worst things for a brand were “complacency, a lack of consistency and becoming too greedy as well.” At the same time, he suggested it would be a mistake to start coddling a semi-sacred brand like Balenciaga, now that its designer, Nicolas Ghesquiere, has fully reinvented the house. “We believe the brand can grow fast for quite some time,” Mr. Polet said.
Still, there are signs of fraying nerves. One reason is plain. “Business is tough,” said Bryan Bradley, the designer of Tuleh, an independent company in New York. “I just don’t think women are in a mood to splurge and buy expensive things.” Besides, he added: “There are a lot of good clothes out there. Go to Zara, APC.”
Fashion, once a cartel of practical imperatives — this shoe! that hemline! — has had to accept a lesser role in women’s lives, as a kind of girlfriend-procurer of style tips and celebrity news. “We’ve lost our power,” said David Wolfe, the creative director of the Doneger Group, which forecasts trends for stores like Nordstrom. “I can’t remember the last time I saw someone on the street and thought, ‘Oh, you’re hopelessly out of style.’ Everything is equal.”
Even the number of students in design schools does not necessarily signal a wave of creative talent. “If every fashion school graduated one talented person each year,” Mr. Bradley said, “I don’t think there’s room even for them in the business.”
Given this reality, maybe design schools should think about offering a separate career track, with classes in the study of demographics, shopping patterns and store leasing. You could have an internship at Star magazine, observing the editors’ choices or as Paris Hilton’s assistant. True, you won’t get a seat at the Costume Institute gala — well, you might — but at least this approach reflects something contemporary and actual.
Considering the almost promiscuous views we have had into the lives of designers, and the assumption that such publicity helps to sell clothes, it was surprising that several chief executives expressed concern about the high salaries being paid to designers. The inference was that the practice — in Europe, some salaries are in excess of 2 million euros a year — has soured things.
“I think it’s a big issue,” said Robert Duffy, the president of Marc Jacobs, pointing out that when he and Mr. Jacobs first began to work with LVMH, in the late 1990’s, they purposely did not seek a large salary. “We felt we had to prove ourselves.” He suggests the celebrity of fashion, especially in the 90’s, may have created unreasonable expectations. As he put it, “You can’t be a niche designer and still do expensive shows, and get the big salary, and hire the big stylists.”
The audience for fashion is real. “The public loves designers right now,” Mr. Duffy said. But like many creative fields, fashion faces the challenge of how to be not just exciting but also meaningful. “You need to have some conscience, because people are going to get bored,” Mr. Adrover said by phone from Majorca, where he runs a cafe. For a few years in New York, Mr. Adrover challenged the conventional thinking that avant-garde fashion could be found only in Europe. He was also one of the few designers anywhere who addressed cultural diversity. “From the outside, I can tell you fashion doesn’t look that interesting,” he said. “It’s all related to business, and ad campaigns and parties. It’s not related to the world.”
Actually, it just may relate to the world, but with issues like diversity and technologically smart clothes largely ignored, designers will have to decide if it’s the world they want.
This article is nothing more than an exercise in idle speculation; I think CH just wrote it to filll a quota or something. There is really no point in comparing Tom Ford (who quit because he wanted more money) to Helmut and Jil (who quit because they couldn't stand the management) to Phoebe Philo (who quit because she wanted more personal time) to Theyskens (who was fired) to Miguel Adrover (who went bust), and from thence to predict the end of creativity in fashion. It's just meaningless.
