Bressler: Montana Still My Man
WWD | February 09, 1990
PARIS - Seldom has a fashion house had more riding on a single roll of the dice than Lanvin did when it sent its spring couture collection down the runway.
Its banker/chairman, Leon Bressler, bet big - some say bet the company - on Claude Montana's ability to deliver a riveting couture performance that would win the house the attention and excitement it needed to galvanize a new image and a new future.
Unfortunately, the dice came up snake eyes.
The collection was widely viewed as a debacle, and it was one that unfolded with everyone in Paris watching. It raised questions about the wisdom of trying to inflate ready-to-wear designers into instant couturiers, and about the very validity of so-called avantgarde, or just plain odd fashion at the highest couture and rtw prices. Not the least of the questions right now is, what can Lanvin do to stay in the game?
In the center of the storm, Bressler himself the other day was maintaining a posture of serene confidence about how things are developing at Paris's oldest couture house.
"I was surprised neither by Claude's collection nor by the reaction to it," Bressler said in an interview Tuesday. "I didn't want fashion that looks back to the 1920s and Thirties. And it's obvious that really new things in haute couture are going to provoke a very strong reaction. What's important is that the collection leaves no one indifferent."
Bressler likens the reaction to Montana's debut collection for Lanvin to public outcry over I.M. Pei's glass pyramid in the Louvre courtyard.
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