Maria Grazia Chiuri - Designer, Creative Director of Christian Dior
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VogueDisciple93
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MGC's work depresses me, not only because it lacks ANY depth, ingenuity, or brilliance but because her continued employment and popularity says a lot about the dull state and future of fashion. That all said, it is completely unfair to not give her some credit for Dior's growth and success. MGC, like any other CD, plays a huge role in a brands perception and performance. They are not just there design or else the title would just be "Designer." Are there NUMEROUS other factors that come together for a brand/business to do well? Absolutely, but the CD is a one of the bigger factors.
LVMH's strategy is to focus on a few brands at a time and funnel majority of their resources into them and Dior was one such brands when MGC came onboard. This includes everything from new stores and store designs, MASSIVE popups and installations, more celebrity spending, and expanded merchandise categories. Dior was undeniably smaller before MGC, both in revenue and scope of their marketing, to call it a "small business" is EXTREME haha but it truly was not one of the massive brands. It had huge notoriety and widely beloved but it was not the cash cow it is now. A growing global middle class with more spending power, social media introducing more people to fashion, and the commercializing of the products all contributed to this, but you still need a vision to market and promote and that's where MGC comes in. As reductive and simplistic as her ideas are, they are enough that the rest of the company (merchandisers, PR, marketing, visual merchandisers, store designers, etc.) can work with and develop. If you notice, EVERY MGC collection is launched with massive elaborate windows, popups and takeovers, sometimes even new shopping bags and store design. Dior spent over $7 million on their Saks Holiday takeover for example. This ingrains what the brand is promoting with customers and the loudness and abundance of promotion cuts through enough to connect.
Apart from having a vision that can be copied and translated easily - prints that be window backdrops, runway sets that can minimized and reproduced for popups - MGC also created and tweaked the merchandise enough to make them big sellers. The luxurious and covetable exotic bags do not keep the lights on, it's the cheap slippers and fabric handbags that pay all the bills. LVMH/Dior are only following the tried and true method of HEAVILY marketing the idea of the brand and its place as a luxury player and that will get people interested enough to purchase the crappy high-markup items to feel apart of that world and project that they are. Dior has plenty of this fodder between accessories and beauty. And it is not only the middle-class/aspirational shoppers because there are enough wealthy people who also want to be in the "in crowd." I promise the more popular a brand is the more some people need to be seen in it and hey may purchase the more expensive/rare items to be a step above others shopping the same brand.
Her predecessors' work dwarf her's in terms of creativity, talent, and intelligence, but it also made their work harder to be distilled to a wider less-discerning audience. Whether her work and vision are so commercial due to her savviness or a by-product of her limited talent is to be argued, but she does in fact play a role in the brand's success, like other CDs do as well.
LVMH's strategy is to focus on a few brands at a time and funnel majority of their resources into them and Dior was one such brands when MGC came onboard. This includes everything from new stores and store designs, MASSIVE popups and installations, more celebrity spending, and expanded merchandise categories. Dior was undeniably smaller before MGC, both in revenue and scope of their marketing, to call it a "small business" is EXTREME haha but it truly was not one of the massive brands. It had huge notoriety and widely beloved but it was not the cash cow it is now. A growing global middle class with more spending power, social media introducing more people to fashion, and the commercializing of the products all contributed to this, but you still need a vision to market and promote and that's where MGC comes in. As reductive and simplistic as her ideas are, they are enough that the rest of the company (merchandisers, PR, marketing, visual merchandisers, store designers, etc.) can work with and develop. If you notice, EVERY MGC collection is launched with massive elaborate windows, popups and takeovers, sometimes even new shopping bags and store design. Dior spent over $7 million on their Saks Holiday takeover for example. This ingrains what the brand is promoting with customers and the loudness and abundance of promotion cuts through enough to connect.
Apart from having a vision that can be copied and translated easily - prints that be window backdrops, runway sets that can minimized and reproduced for popups - MGC also created and tweaked the merchandise enough to make them big sellers. The luxurious and covetable exotic bags do not keep the lights on, it's the cheap slippers and fabric handbags that pay all the bills. LVMH/Dior are only following the tried and true method of HEAVILY marketing the idea of the brand and its place as a luxury player and that will get people interested enough to purchase the crappy high-markup items to feel apart of that world and project that they are. Dior has plenty of this fodder between accessories and beauty. And it is not only the middle-class/aspirational shoppers because there are enough wealthy people who also want to be in the "in crowd." I promise the more popular a brand is the more some people need to be seen in it and hey may purchase the more expensive/rare items to be a step above others shopping the same brand.
Her predecessors' work dwarf her's in terms of creativity, talent, and intelligence, but it also made their work harder to be distilled to a wider less-discerning audience. Whether her work and vision are so commercial due to her savviness or a by-product of her limited talent is to be argued, but she does in fact play a role in the brand's success, like other CDs do as well.
Creative
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Lmao, I will never understand why it is so hard for people to be objective. I HATE MGC as a designer, I am just saying that she brought Dior to a level nobody in LVMH expected to reach in such a short time.
A few years ago there was more fashion culture in this forum. I guess it’s also part of the democratization of fashion but still…
Creative
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It is not. At all.
There are some important brands that are generating less turnover than ten years ago. Gucci is generating 20% less TO than 2 years ago (and we have the highest inflation…
). Valentino as well. Bottega. Look at Lanvin, it was the hottest brand in 2008, like Céline in 2017 (hype wise), and where is it now? Miu Miu in 2019/2020 was having the hardest times if we compare it with the 00s. Look at Chloé. And a lot more. Five years ago, Prada was having less TO from the fashion division than in 2007.Let’s not take things for granted. Of course luck is part of the equation, but Pietro+MGC were a winning combination, even if the fashion is terrible.
Comparing is not pointless, what is pointless is saying it can’t be compared.
Which makes it more frustrating. The foremost couture houses being harbingers of blandness.
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