The Gucci Mantle: Women Need Not Apply, It Seems
By CATHY HORYN
Published: December 9, 2003
"I think women are better than men at everything they do," the designer Diane Von Furstenberg said. Yet she does not think a woman should design Gucci, a startling admission from one of the architects of 1970's fashion, whose simple wrap dress sold 300,000 models at its peak and became something of a status symbol.
"You wouldn't want a woman to design Gucci, would you?" she said doubtfully. Her comment may prove that women are no more immune to sexual stereotyping than men, but, in this case, Ms. Von Furstenberg was making a fairly logical assumption. "Historically, it's not a feminine brand," she said. "Gucci is a cheap Hermès — that's how it started out. Leather from Florence, the double G's. It was a man's view of a woman. Tom made it modern and sexy."....
..... what is striking about the speculative list of contenders — who include the likes of Alexander McQueen and the Dutch team Viktor & Rolf — is that it has no women on it. "We've all mentioned this," said Daryl Kerrigan, who a few years ago was up for the design job at Celine, which went to Michael Kors. "It's kind of the back-room talk."
For women, who wield enormous spending power — who hold the highest positions at fashion magazines, who as retail buyers influence what millions of women will wear — this must be galling. "It does seem very regressive," said the fashion historian Valerie Steele, pointing out that women have not just occasionally but consistently been among fashion's great innovators. One can think of Coco Chanel, Jeanne Lanvin, Elsa Schiaparelli, Claire McCardell, Alix Grès, Anne Klein, Mary Quant, Rei Kawakubo, Vivienne Westwood and Norma Kamali. The list is long.
Yet in recent years, the conglomerates that dominate the global luxury market — the Gucci Group and LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton — have tended to favor men over women, at least in the star roles. "It's become a boys' club," said Anna Wintour, the editor in chief of Vogue. Donna Karan is the only woman who is a star at LVMH, but Ms. Karan was a star before she sold her company, and she made it on her own. Gucci has Stella McCartney, but once you get past the other obvious names — Miuccia Prada, Phoebe Philo of Chloé, Carolina Herrera, Ann Demeulemeester — the star power of female designers fades drastically.
"Why do financial backers feel that male designers have an edge?" Ms. Steele asked.
The reasons are complex, and not a little sexism may be involved.
What most of the great women in design had in common is that they created their own universes, often without the help of men, and usually during periods of emancipation, especially the 1920's and 70's. But though designers like Ms. Kamali have continued to be innovative, they have watched fashion shift its emphasis to stardom and image. And that may work against even the most talented women.
"We don't have star personalities," said Ms. Kamali, who often reminds her young design staff that she was in business 14 years before she made any money. "Even among the stars that you can think of, we're not really a prima-donna group. We're quirky — we have these other names. I may be original, but original is rarely used to describe me. It's always, `She's walking her own path.' "
Men, it can be argued, play more roles in fashion than women do — as escorts to the stylish women they dress, as social arbiters, even (if one thinks of Yves Saint Laurent and Calvin Klein in their prime) as sex symbols. One cannot overestimate the part that good looks and charm played in the early success of Bill Blass and Oscar de la Renta. "When I go with a girl to an event, it's completely different," said the designer Behnaz Sarafpour, who dressed the actress Selma Blair for this year's gala for the Metropolitan Museum's Costume Institute and accompanied her to the party. And even Ms. Kerrigan admits that women she knows tend to believe they look sexy if they hear it from a man rather a girlfriend.
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