The 3 Faces of Stella
By ERIC WILSON
Published: October 27, 2005
A RUNWAY used to be enough.
A few decades ago, when a handful of designers controlled the direction of fashion, getting the message was as simple as looking at the clothes. Now there are more than 500 designers in New York, Milan and Paris alone, with as many different voices and stories to sell. It's a lot to sort through, even for the professionals. No wonder more people know Stella McCartney as the daughter of a Beatle than as a fashion designer. And those who know her work still may have difficulty, even after nine seasons, describing what her clothes are about.
Pierre Verdy/Agence France-Presse--Getty Images
Stella McCartney.
"The name recognition is there for me, but people don't always know what I do," Ms. McCartney said candidly last week. "When you're caught up in the industry and all the glamour and parties, you assume that everyone knows what you do, but they don't, really."
Ms. McCartney is famous. That was enough for H&M, the Swedish retailer of fast fashion, to enlist her to design a one-time collection, which will arrive in 400 stores on Nov. 10. Clearly H&M hopes to repeat the success of a similar promotion with Karl Lagerfeld last year.
That event was a retail phenomenon, with lines forming outside stores in New York and throughout Europe and chaotic shopping scenes on the day the clothes arrived. But those customers knew very well that Karl Lagerfeld has designed expensive clothes for some 50 years, including Chanel and Fendi; they regarded the H&M collection as a deeply discounted sample sale.
After succeeding Mr. Lagerfeld as the designer at Chloé in 1997, Ms. McCartney started her own line with the Gucci Group in 2001. Her first collection was roundly drubbed, leading to industry sniping that Phoebe Philo, her assistant at Chloé who succeeded her, had done the heavy lifting.
Since then Ms. McCartney's shows have been uneven. She is perhaps more famous for browbeating
Madonna out of wearing a fur coat and for her public disapproval of the marriage of her father, Paul McCartney, to Heather Mills. Mr. Lagerfeld, who has tangled with Ms. McCartney in the past over his fur designs, once dismissed her as "a T-shirt designer."
Ms. McCartney has since been the subject of complimentary comments by Mr. Lagerfeld after she demonstrated a more assertive point of view in her recent collections. This spring's gauzy white dresses trailing with ribbons and this fall's chunky sweaters that droop to the knees had waiting lists nearly as long at her store in the meatpacking district.
There is a cult of Stella, young women who relate to her rock-chick T-shirts worn under tailored pantsuits in men's wear fabric. Part of the appeal of those designs is that they are not widely recognized outside the fashion circuit.
"Stella is like the best girlfriend you imagine yourself to have," said Kristina O'Neill, the fashion features director of Harper's Bazaar. "That translates into the clothes. She put out a trademark and stuck to it: her skinny jeans, her blouson jackets, the wash-and-go silk dresses and dusty palette. Every season she goes back to her touchstones and then pushes further."
Whether lightning will strike twice for H&M is as much a gamble for Ms. McCartney as it is for the retailer. Robert Polet, who joined Gucci Group as chief executive last year after the tumultuous departures of Domenico De Sole and Tom Ford, set a profitability goal of 2007 for the company's smaller brands, which also include Balenciaga and Alexander McQueen. Ms McCartney has been given a two-year deadline to turn a profit on her $39 million business, which has been growing quickly but operating at a loss because of expensive store openings in London, New York and Los Angeles. Luxury goods analysts have added pressure by recommending that those brands be sold off, as a report from HSBC suggested this spring, to focus on the much larger Gucci brand.
A reliable way to help achieve profitability is selective licensing. In one such license Ms. McCartney began designing sports apparel for Adidas. Now, with her H&M deal, she is approaching Lagerfeld territory in terms of prolificacy - and with valid motivation.
Some designers argue that designing for the masses, even on a limited scale or for a one-time event, dilutes the value of their signature brands. But that thinking seems so 1990's. Fashion today is one big exercise in celebrity marketing, and Ms. McCartney is using her name to get ahead.
The reported $1 million fee she received from H&M is going toward the bottom line of her company, and the multimillion-dollar advertising campaign H&M is financing to promote the collection will increase her exposure around the world. (Margareta van den Bosch, the head of design at H&M, would not discuss the company's payment to Ms. McCartney.)
"I would be lying if I didn't say this helped financially," Ms. McCartney said. "But I would never jeopardize my brand for any amount of money. We're asked to do things on a regular basis, and the majority of them have been turned down."
Little surprise, then, that Ms. McCartney is enthusiastic about promoting her work for H&M.
"The days of elitism in fashion are over," she said, recounting how customers had told her over the years that they would love to buy her clothes, if only they could afford them. Her chunky sweaters typically sell for about $1,000, and her narrow suits can cost thousands.
"It is a misconception of the luxury goods industry that the top end of ready-to-wear is not always accessible," she said. "I want people to understand what I do, instead of only seeing something in a glossy magazine."
As she talks about her work for Adidas - McCartney-esque in its loose sweatshirts with drawstrings at the neck and hem and jodhpurlike sweatpants configured with zippers at the ankles - she can sound as if she is the first designer to conceive of workout clothes with a stylish bent.
"I used to think there must be some technical reason why women's sports clothes were always pink and baby blue, as if they deflect heat or keep the sweat out," she said. The Adidas pieces are expensive for workout wear, but they have done so well since their introduction this spring that distribution has been expanded in Europe and Asia.
She described the H&M clothes as "the best of Stella McCartney," about 40 looks taken from her past collections and recreated at a fraction of the cost with basic fabrics and production in Romania. Her involvement lasted less than a week: two days selecting the designs and talking about fabrics and trims, maybe a day to work out the color scheme, and three fittings over two days. What is remarkable is that the samples, when they were shown in H&M's New York showroom last week and on a runway at a party in London on Tuesday, look very much like Stella McCartney.
An elongated double-zip chunky knit cardigan, with wide ribbing at the hem so that it can be scrunched up as a sweater or worn long as a short dress, will cost $79.90; a baggy brown trench coat with pink mesh lining is $69.90; skinny jeans are $69.90. A cropped gray plaid blazer with yellow trim on the pockets and at the buttonhole is $129, and matching skinny pants are $59.90.
There are also several T-shirts in the collection printed with graphic line drawings and embellished with chains, aged rhinestones and embroidery, a motif she uses in her signature line and on Adidas sweatshirts.
For Ms. McCartney there is more riding on such brand expansions than competitive bragging rights with Mr. Lagerfeld, should the introduction of her H&M line induce a frenzy similar to his. "If not, I'll be gutted, as they say in England," she said.
Inadvertently the line received considerable attention when the model Kate Moss, who had been photographed for an H&M advertising campaign, became the subject of an investigation for alleged drug use last month. H&M's awkward handling of the matter, first standing behind Ms. Moss, then abruptly dumping her from the campaign, reflected concerns among fashion companies that customers would be offended.
Ms. McCartney said she did not expect the controversy to affect the demand for her line. But even the complete absence of a model in an H&M ad that appeared in the latest issue of Paper magazine was fodder for followers of the Moss affair. (On Tuesday H&M announced that the model Mariacarla Boscono will appear in its television ads.) Ms. McCartney was typically outspoken on the subject.
"A lot of that was unfair for Kate," she said. "I think the majority of people felt she was unfairly treated by the media. The general public is not as stupid as the media thinks they are."
H&M, long a lightning rod for controversy among designers who complain that fast fashion, or cheap chic, has a negative impact on luxury sales, is beginning to resemble the retail version of designer Cliffs Notes. In a strange way that could benefit Ms. McCartney. Four years is not very long to develop a signature look, and her small collection for the store may be a clearer statement about her perspective on fashion than the collective work she has been selling in her own stores.
Mr. Lagerfeld's H&M collection was so in tune with his look that some customers bought his high-collar shirts, skinny ties, scrunched jeans and severe black jackets so they could dress as him this Halloween.
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TO SWEAT Adidas silver packaway jacket, $250, and running shorts, $50.[/SIZE][/FONT]
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TO STYLE H&M wool blazer, $129, and skinny pants, $59.90; silk camisole, $59.90.[/SIZE][/FONT]
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TO SPLURGE Stella McCartney multicolor chunky knit sweater, $1,665, and thighhigh boots with tie tops, $795.[/SIZE][/FONT]
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Lars Klove for The New York Times[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, San Serif][SIZE=-1]An oversize trench jacket, $129, from Stella McCartney's H&M collection. [/SIZE][/FONT]
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Lars Klove for The New York Times[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, San Serif][SIZE=-1]An oversize funnelneck sweater with zip front, $79.90, and skinny denim jeans with ankle zip, $69.90, all from Stella McCartney's H&M collection.
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Lars Klove for The New York Times[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, San Serif][SIZE=-1] A dropwaist silk dress, $99.90,from Stella McCartney's H&M collection.[/SIZE][/FONT]
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