I'm not shocked that the MICHAEL line has done so horribly. I was in Bloomies and tons of it was on sale...it's just gross, no if ands or butts.....I found my mom a skirt on sale this weekend for $18, marked down from $108. The mens stuff is just as bad, and in Bloomies NYC, they have it located next to John Varvatos 
I don't even think its priced too high...it's just an awful line, period..I don't even know if the typical better collection shopper is very name conscious, so banking on his name for crossover appeal seemed like a recipe for diaster...did I mention how awful the line is???.ditto for the H by Hilfiger line....
The Calvin bridge line is also crappy for men, but I did see some OK pieces for women....I agree with the author saying that it was way too fashion forward for the old ladies who shop at Lord and Taylor....
I don't even think its priced too high...it's just an awful line, period..I don't even know if the typical better collection shopper is very name conscious, so banking on his name for crossover appeal seemed like a recipe for diaster...did I mention how awful the line is???.ditto for the H by Hilfiger line....
The Calvin bridge line is also crappy for men, but I did see some OK pieces for women....I agree with the author saying that it was way too fashion forward for the old ladies who shop at Lord and Taylor....
November 9, 2004
A Disappointing Fall for Some Big Names in Clothing
By TRACIE ROZHON
The department stores were ecstatic last spring, as new moderately priced clothing lines designed by some of America's biggest names in fashion - Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger and Liz Claiborne - started appearing.
Customers responded to the refreshingly stylish clothes and rushed in to buy the big-name separates, among them boldly colored silk or linen jackets that sold for an average of $150 rather than the $1,500 for the designers' runway collections. Sales for Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein and the Jones Apparel Group, which also introduced a slightly cheaper, but similarly positioned line called Signature, were higher than projected.
But a terrific spring season turned to a disappointing autumn, as another big name, Michael Kors, jumped in, providing still more competition in the clothing category known in the garment trade as better apparel.
Now, retailing executives are talking about survival of the fittest, wondering aloud which will still be around next spring. In the end, retailers said, there were too many entrants in what has become an overcrowded market.
The designers' performances have been uneven. In fact, this week, several companies turning out these lines said they planned to tinker with the mix. In general, the designers pledged to design fewer career-driven outfits and more casual clothes. Some said they would improve fit and quality - two of the major complaints from retailers about some of the lines.
Although the companies will not break out sales figures, the Lauren clothes by Polo Ralph Lauren seem to have emerged as the overall winner for the summer and fall, although Roger Farah, the president, conceded that there had been an autumn slowdown.
"Everybody can talk about weather and hurricanes and Republican conventions and all that stuff, but I think in general, fall has been softer in the better categories," he said in a conference call last week in which he announced strong overall earnings for Polo.
"I think the retailer is going to be forced to make some edit decisions, who they want to place their long-term bets with," he said.
"There's been a lot of new players entering the marketplace, some more successful than others, so the pie is being shared in a lot of senses," Mr. Farah said.
Calvin Klein, the most expensive of the new department store lines, was praised by merchants for its sophisticated and well-made fashions, but the styles were, perhaps, a little too edgy for shoppers in some regional malls, company officials conceded last week. Now the company is "adjusting the mix," bringing in more casual clothing, said Tom Murry, the president. Jones, too, is changing its percentages, raising the volume of casual clothing in its Signature offerings.
In his own conference call on Oct. 13, Peter Boneparth, the chief executive, lowered expected earnings for Jones, citing a more difficult retail environment.
Nevertheless, Lauren, Calvin Klein and Jones Signature, its spokesmen say, are on track to meet their sales goals issued last year. For Lauren that is $800 million, for Calvin Klein $100 million and for Jones Signature $400 million. Calvin Klein is a unit of Phillips-Van Heusen.
According to retailers, Michael by Michael Kors, introduced this fall, and H by Tommy Hilfiger, introduced in the spring, are two of the most troubled of the high-profile additions to the field. The Michael line has been plagued by poor delivery, the retailers said. In late October, Mr. Kors laid off a significant percentage of those working on that line - 25 people out of 160, including the president of licensing and retail, according to Women's Wear Daily.
Last night, Anne Waterman, a spokeswoman, said she had no comment on employee changes.
While conceding that the Michael line had delivery problems, Ms. Waterman said there was still a long-term commitment and goal "to reach a billion dollars - we never put a time limit on it."
The H line - with its stunning black-and-white advertisements of Iman and her husband, David Bowie, both wearing the new clothes - has also had problems. "We were too heavy on wovens - we're working to get the balance right," said Caren Bell, a spokeswoman for Hilfiger, referring to shirts.
Another line introduced in the spring, Realities by Liz Claiborne, has almost disappeared. Because of weak sales, Bloomingdale's cut back the amount of space in its stores and moved Realities to the back in the Manhattan flagship store.
"In all honesty, Realities wasn't brilliant coming out of the box," said Trudy Sullivan, the executive vice president in charge of the better department store business at Claiborne. "We've tweaked it, we've improved it - we made it softer, we added more color and pattern - and we've improved distribution.
"But keep in mind - this was one of five brand incubations for us last year," she added. "We never intended it to be a megabrand."
There is a silver lining: the company's core department store line, Liz Claiborne, has arisen to take back space from a disappointing Michael and other lines, retailers said.
Liz Claiborne's sales for its core brand were down for 2004, said Virginia S. Syer-Genereux, who covers department store apparel business for Merrill Lynch. "Now they are projecting flat sales."
As a brand, the traditional Liz Claiborne line - once wildly popular with the baby boomer woman - fell from grace, no longer sold by Lord & Taylor and some Macy's stores, Ms. Sullivan said. But now that brand is projected to be up in the fourth quarter, she added. "Some of the other brands went too young," she said. On Friday, Michael Gould, the chief executive at Bloomingdale's, said that the combined business for this "better" sector was up a little from the period last year, measured in dollars.
"But it is true that, for both men's and women's, there has been an enormous shift toward contemporary clothes," he said, defining the group with brands like Theory, Juicy Couture as well as so-called premium (read: three-figure) jeans.
Of the "better" brands, Mr. Gould said, "some are doing better than others - they will get weeded out." He declined to be more specific.
Ms. Sullivan of Liz Claiborne said that Realities was going forward.
So is Realities alive and well? she was asked.
Ms. Sullivan hesitated. "Realities is alive," she said.
