Nicolas Ghesquière to Launch LVMH-Financed Fashion Brand

[Lola701]

How much did LVMH launch Lacroix with ?

8 Millions of dollars in 1987 but add to that the investment for the launch of the RTW, the fragrance, the lower priced line…All of that while maintaining the Couture activities. They sold the brand in 2005.

Lacroix was a fantastic designer but sometimes, fantastic designers needs for their own platforms, to evolve in a smaller environment.

I often think about Hervé Leger. He build that big brand and unfortunately he was fired from his own brand. He bounced back, created Herve H. Leroux, had his little operation and worked wonderfully.

 

[philophile]

I hope someday this will became a reality and a dream come true (though a nightmare for my bank account). I honestly don't think there's a bigger waste of talent, than for someone with a true gift to be enslaved by a big fashion conglomerate. Their energy, their vision, and creativity is being sucked out just for the sake of endless profit and so much of it will be dismissed and unknown to the world that it's endlessly sad. No talented designer should be a slave to anyone.

 

[Nimsay]

Yah but we need clothes. The timeframe its on: that is due to actually dressing customers who have needs to be met. If you arent putting out 8 collections a year then youre losing to Chanel who is. Karl started that because he thought Chanel was the only brand who could show that many collections a year. he also thought Chanel needed it to meet their customers expectations. Even I have come to be grateful for the current distribution schedule because it fits my life better.

As far as being a slave goes. It comes down to time management skills really….


Also this label would be owned by LVMH not NG.

 

[Drusilla_]

Hmmmmm. I wonder how it'd work. Like Phoebe?

 

[Lola701]

I hope someday this will became a reality and a dream come true (though a nightmare for my bank account). I honestly don't think there's a bigger waste of talent, than for someone with a true gift to be enslaved by a big fashion conglomerate. Their energy, their vision, and creativity is being sucked out just for the sake of endless profit and so much of it will be dismissed and unknown to the world that it's endlessly sad. No talented designer should be a slave to anyone.

I don’t personally like that narrative of « being a slave » when you are a big designer, working at the higher stage, on a big platform with amazing infrastructures.

Running an independent brand is another job.

I’m not sure NG could be as free at this stage of his life, at a namesake brand as he is at Vuitton for example.

I think that someone like Phoebe launched her own brand because she loves fashion but maybe also simply because she wants to do clothes she loves, that feels close to her life and not about experimenting for example.

At some point, your work became the essence of your aesthetic in a way.

I’m not sure every designer wants to have an independence that looks like CDG for example….It feels very corporate.

We sometimes under-estimate that. Which is a conversation about design and fashion and not so much about branding in a way.

Designing for a big brand has it challenges but also provides a whole lot of comfort today. Karl didn’t like having a brand of his own. And for the brief time he owned his brand, he was quick to sell it to Tommy. And at one point it didn’t served his creative urges so he stopped designing for his brand all together.

When Nicolas starts his own brand, I expect him to keep it as small as possible for a longtime.
I think about someone like Pierre Hardy. I have been a regular customer there for years and they have purposely kept the brand small. Hermes has invested in the brand but their growth has always been very slow. And I think that PH has always been aware that the Balenciaga customer wasn’t his.

He did the crazy shoes, experimented at Balenciaga but his own brand, while playful was never about crazy creativity. The reality is that Balenciaga’s business model could support designing a Lego shoe, selling few units worldwide…Something his own brand couldn’t.

I really think trajectories are different. So the idea of being a slave to corporation is not really that when the corporation is used at your advantage.

 

[tricotineacetat]

I don’t personally like that narrative of « being a slave » when you are a big designer, working at the higher stage, on a big platform with amazing infrastructures.

Running an independent brand is another job.

I’m not sure NG could be as free at this stage of his life, at a namesake brand as he is at Vuitton for example.

I think that someone like Phoebe launched her own brand because she loves fashion but maybe also simply because she wants to do clothes she loves, that feels close to her life and not about experimenting for example.

At some point, your work became the essence of your aesthetic in a way.

I’m not sure every designer wants to have an independence that looks like CDG for example….It feels very corporate.

We sometimes under-estimate that. Which is a conversation about design and fashion and not so much about branding in a way.

Designing for a big brand has it challenges but also provides a whole lot of comfort today. Karl didn’t like having a brand of his own. And for the brief time he owned his brand, he was quick to sell it to Tommy. And at one point it didn’t served his creative urges so he stopped designing for his brand all together.

When Nicolas starts his own brand, I expect him to keep it as small as possible for a longtime.
I think about someone like Pierre Hardy. I have been a regular customer there for years and they have purposely kept the brand small. Hermes has invested in the brand but their growth has always been very slow. And I think that PH has always been aware that the Balenciaga customer wasn’t his.

He did the crazy shoes, experimented at Balenciaga but his own brand, while playful was never about crazy creativity. The reality is that Balenciaga’s business model could support designing a Lego shoe, selling few units worldwide…Something his own brand couldn’t.

I really think trajectories are different. So the idea of being a slave to corporation is not really that when the corporation is used at your advantage.

This brings us back to the point I made in the Louis Vuitton Shanghai collection discussion - Perhaps the thing some people (like myself) were missing the most from Nicolas were not the Lego shoes and the crazy handpainted latex jackets but maybe more of what his earlier shows consisted of, roughly between 2001 and 2006 - Wearable clothes with inventive cutting, mostly in neutral colors - modernized takes on urban wardrobe staples that looked great on Emmanuelle Alt, Kate Moss or Irina Lazareanu. The way those women wore their Balenciaga outerwear and shoes had an ease, although the design was ambitioned. I lost interest the more his later collections had that 'trying-very-hard-to-raise-the-bar' air about them.

 

[Lola701]

This brings us back to the point I made in the Louis Vuitton Shanghai collection discussion - Perhaps the thing some people (like myself) were missing the most from Nicolas were not the Lego shoes and the crazy handpainted latex jackets but maybe more of what his earlier shows consisted of, roughly between 2001 and 2006 - Wearable clothes with inventive cutting, mostly in neutral colors - modernized takes on urban wardrobe staples that looked great on Emmanuelle Alt, Kate Moss or Irina Lazareanu. The way those women wore their Balenciaga outerwear and shoes had an ease, although the design was ambitioned. I lost interest the more his later collections had that 'trying-very-hard-to-raise-the-bar' air about them.

Yes fair enough…
But maybe at the end it’s really about taking part of a creative journey of a designer. And it is a love it or leave it situation.

And it’s totally Ok to fall out of love of someone’s work. It’s a question of sensibility after all.

And maybe my take on it is due to the fact I have the luxury to wear it and therefore, choose whatever I take from it.

But to really go back to the point you was making, what I meant was that, the Balenciaga that was displayed on the internet was women wearing pieces. Even if the styling was always relatable it was never about look 10 on one woman…Which is different to the approach celebrity stylists have with their clients today.

 

[tricotineacetat]

But to really go back to the point you was making, what I meant was that, the Balenciaga that was displayed on the internet was women wearing pieces. Even if the styling was always relatable it was never about look 10 on one woman…Which is different to the approach celebrity stylists have with their clients today.

That's a whole other problem we are experiencing since maybe the early 2010s when designers started to insist full runway looks to be displayed in magazines and on brand ambassadors - I used to enjoy the eclectic stylings in magazines like i-D, people like Melanie Ward who mixed shredded jerseys and army surplus with designers - Work that would clearly later inform the direction of design Helmut Lang and also Nicolas Ghesquiere went for in the post-9/11 years. Back in those years, it used to feel like something when we saw a model like Hanne Gaby or Vanessa Traina in a Tommy Ton street style image wearing a Balenciaga jacket, it made the clothes become alive in a way they are not these days!

 

[Lola701]

That's a whole other problem we are experiencing since maybe the early 2010s when designers started to insist full runway looks to be displayed in magazines and on brand ambassadors - I used to enjoy the eclectic stylings in magazines like i-D, people like Melanie Ward who mixed shredded jerseys and army surplus with designers - Work that would clearly later inform the direction of design Helmut Lang and also Nicolas Ghesquiere went for in the post-9/11 years. Back in those years, it used to feel like something when we saw a model like Hanne Gaby or Vanessa Traina in a Tommy Ton street style image wearing a Balenciaga jacket, it made the clothes become alive in a way they are not these days!

I hate the Brand Ambassadors thing. It was fine when Karl started it because for the most part, they signed people based on their style and there was something genuine because it was women who were wearing the clothes in their daily lives anyway.

At Balenciaga, Nicolas was very strict though. It was full look policy for magazines, they were very strict on who was able to get the clothes too. They had 2 official ambassadors ( Charlotte and Jennifer) who by the way wore Nicolas’s clothes in their daily lives. They dressed some French actresses in runway and commercial collections and editors. That’s it.

I love Brune Buonomano (the sister of Florent). She has a terrific style and she wears Nicolas’s edgiest pieces like no one else. Jennifer Connelly has the charisma to wear the runway stuff but in her candids she looks good too. I love that Lous and The Yakuza is an ambassador because she has a terrific style too. The same for Doona Bae.

Someone like Marina Fois has always worn Nicolas’s clothes. From Balenciaga to Vuitton, the majority of the time it’s not successful but I love how she is commited. And she wears his stuff in her daily life too.

Even the Felix guy is well dressed and is a clever ambassador.

But the reality is that everything is very manufactured today and there’s no sense of real personal style displayed on the internet because it’s always seen through the eyes of a stylist.

And in reality, a lot of those stylists are super lazy or thinks that the designer will be happy if the celebrities wears H2T runway looks.

Lous looks perfect each time and I have yet to see her in a full runway look (but I don’t think she works with a stylist).