The Paris 6

[faust]

Anyone noticed that Margiela was mentioned as one of the Antwerp 6, which he is not.

Yea, I forgot to post that yesterday. Isn't that insane? It should be fashion 101

 

[softgrey]

i've recently read that chloe, as of some time now, is actually profitable... i dont remember the exact figures, but i think they're beginning to expand into more accesories and even children's clothing...

yup...i believe that chloe is profitable...but i guess not on a very large scale...i guess it must really cost a lot to run a business of that magnitude...so you must need huge sales to turn a decent profit...

i think it really puts some perspective on things ...
even though fashion has become so popularized...with many more people interested in it than ever before...i'm pretty sure that most people don't really understand how tough a business fashion is...because it really looks so fabulous and fun from the outside...

i'm beginning to think it may be a lot more fun to just be a consumer of fashion rather than to work in the industry....maybe sometimes it's just better not to know too much...and to just enjoy things for what they are...without all that heavy info...

thanks for the upates on those designers scott and whizkit...

regarding scott's comment that perhaps all designers always struggle...well...that's a very sad and depressing thought for me...to think that it never gets any easier for anyone and that your life is going to be one huge struggle until the day you die...well...i really hope that this is not true...

maybe i am naive (and this is very possible....) ...but i was raised to believe that if you worked hard and payed your dues and didn't give up..that someday you would be rewarded for all your efforts...and i'm still clinging to this belief...i know life isn't always fair...but i'd like to believe that it is possible to achieve some level of comfort which requires less of a struggle...that all the years of hard work and busting your a** will not have been for nothing...and that at some point you can begin to breathe easier and relax a little...but unfortunatley, i don't really know if this is true anymore...

i think that is why i am so unhappy to hear that even the big guns are having a hard time...it's so tough out there...

although i bet karl lagerfeld is living pretty large......

 

[Scott]

I didn't mean to insinuate that it's always been like that. In fact,designers--even smaller designers--were having a pretty good time before "that date"(so I won't piss Faust off...hehe)....then the two wars. Right now,I feel fashion is still an extreme state of stagnation...depression. I know it's an easy excuse but with the economical impact of everything going on,it still isn't helping anybody.

Besides all that,I think banality is ruling the game at the moment. As said at the beginning of this article with those non-designed celebrity brands. It's just that nobody seems to care much for design nor do they feel they should want to fork it over. Cheap and easy fashion really seems to be the "in" thing right now.

 

[Scott]

But like you,I remain optimistic that it'll pass soon. If not,I suspect some of us might need to seek the help of a therapist...

You see,it's one of the reasons,I think I've been going back alot lately,to earlier collections. They seemed so much more inspiring than they are these days because of so much safeness. The emotions seemed stronger...more intense...more visually evocative than now. Maybe that's just me?

 

[softgrey]

...scott...
what you say is only too true...
i guess the emergence and gaining popularity of some actual 'designers' must be a good sign...(i hope)...

and maybe i'm just a little depressed myself...
since i am part of this industry...for better or for worse...*sigh*...

it's so different than it used to be...it's gotten so much harder...
and as you point out...rather mediocre...
it was one thing to fight and work for things you loved and really wanted...but when you have to work that hard at things you don't even really care about ...it starts to seem rather pointless and ridiculous...like i might as well go work at a bank......or any other job that doesn't require much creativity...


**oh ...nevermind me...i'm just feeling a little sorry for myself...boo hoo!......
it seems that all the people i know who have gone the corporate route are the only ones who aren't struggling these days...in the same way as the designers...
but if you're not struggling financially, then you're struggling creatively...everyone seems to be struggling in some way right now...

and i don't think the industry has ever had so many people trying to break into it before either...everyone sees all the programs and fashion features on tv and thinks it looks like fun...sooooo many people want to work in fashion...but there's even less jobs and less money than there used to be...so i just don't see how any of this is going to work...how is anybody going to make a decent amount of money...??...
too many people+not enough jobs+lower salaries=???...
i don't get it...doesn't really add up, does it...?...not a very pretty picture...

ok...i've got to stop...i'm just ranting now...sorry...


no need to reply...
everyone can just ignore this post if they choose...
but i had to get it out of my system...

 

[faust]

I didn't mean to insinuate that it's always been like that. In fact,designers--even smaller designers--were having a pretty good time before "that date"(so I won't piss Faust off...hehe)....then the two wars. Right now,I feel fashion is still an extreme state of stagnation...depression. I know it's an easy excuse but with the economical impact of everything going on,it still isn't helping anybody.

Besides all that,I think banality is ruling the game at the moment. As said at the beginning of this article with those non-designed celebrity brands. It's just that nobody seems to care much for design nor do they feel they should want to fork it over. Cheap and easy fashion really seems to be the "in" thing right now.

Thank you! Honestly, consumer spending since 9/11 has been the biggest in the history of the US. It's just, as you accurately noted, they are spending it on the wrong things. It's the masses, nothing you can do about it - they have always been ignorant boring boors, and they will stay that way. They don't have any qualms dropping $200+ on a pair of some gimmicky denim (not exactly cheap, but very "easy"). I bet you Rogan is doing just fine.

One other possible thing - designers should really reconsider their pricing strategies. I'm sorry, but I can not warrant spending $700 on a pair of black wool pants. I know $ vs. Euro is largely responsible, but even without it, the markups are a little crazy. And then the stores wonder why they can't sell. Has anyone else noticed that sales have been starting earlier with each season for the past two years?

 

[Scott]

Oh...I agree with that last sentiment totally. I remember seeing a blouse by Miguel Adrover on ebay(you guys might have seen it....was a champagne colour).....it was a beauty for sure....100% silk granted....but this seller said she paid $800 retail for this thing! It was just a simple shape at best. Tailored well but certainly not worth such a price tag. Really,it was $800 for a $2-400(at the max)blouse.

Then I see some of that Boudicca stuff on Seven....I dunno if it's got anything to do with the conversion and that Euro/UK labels just are costing more in the U.S. nowadays or not....but some of those prices are appalling.

Don't worry Softie,I feel just the same as you do. But if it weren't for so many young talents coming about I'd really be depressed. It's really the only way I've been able to remain excited about fashion...discovering interesting new talents. So much so that it's become my passion,now.

 

[PinkSunrise]

also interesting that john galliano wasn't mentioned in the 6, as opposed to pilati...i thought the fashion media loved him...

hmm it is surprising, his last collection was beautiful..

 

[Hana_N]

^ Maybe he's been around for longer than the ones mentioned.

One question, if brands like Chloe and YSL have financial problems how is John Galiano's brand surviving? Because in my opinion though I do like it very much, most of those clothes are just to crazy to wear.

 

[softgrey]

galliano's own brand is seriously funded by christian dior/lvmh...
and dior survives on all their bags, accessories, perfume, cosmetics...

and galliano may have had a couple of collecitons that were a bit more wearable recently...but he's certainly not doing anything 'new' or 'modern'...

he's stuck in a rut...imo...i think he should go back to his 'roots'...

 

[Mr-Dale]

Hmm very interesting article. It was fun to read and those six would not all have been my choices, but I don't think that they're bad choices. And softgrey, a bit of-topic perhaps, but as brian asked before: did you even see John's latest collections?

 

[softgrey]

mr dale..i responded to that in my last post...

stale...imo...old fashioned and boring...completely uninteresting to me...
just 'too much'...ott...

and i am obviously not the only one who thinks so......
i'd say the only thing he's good for is black tie at this point...
and how many serrious black tie events does the average customer really attend?...

i guess it might be good for a stage costume as well...or maybe if you're marrying a rockstar or a billiionaire...

but he's not designing for 'real' women...
that's what i mean by he needs to come back to earth...to reality...
galliano is definitely not 'cool'...from my standpoint...or in my circle...

especially when compared to the names in this article...
these are the 'cool kids'...this is what everyone loves and is excited about...
they have 'buzz'...

 

[brian]

softgrey... you're judging galliano strictly by what you see on the catwalk... have you ever even been to his boutique or a location that sells his clothes? they're hardly what you see on the catwalk, and indeed are more 'down to earth' ...

 

[Scott]

More to the point,the hype machine surrounding JG has got stale. I mean,if we've seen one circus we've seen them all from him by now.

You're argument that he might belong here...well as Softie said,CD-and even Galliano's own line-relies heavily on the accessories and cosmetics and frankly I don't think that's enough to put him into this category. At least not when you talk of Elbaz,Philo and Theyskens who actually make covetable clothes as a whole. Unlike JG.

 

[Scott]

And Balenciaga...sorry.

 

[stylegurrl]

April 28, 2005

The Paris 6

[size=-1]By CATHY HORYN [/size]

ATE last February, over lunch in a Paris restaurant, Stefano Pilati, the new designer at Yves Saint Laurent, offered a surprising motive for putting modern-thinking women in tulip skirts and high-necked polka-dot blouses, things that had struck critics as repressively feminine. "My aim was to say, 'We're a fashion elite here,' " Mr. Pilati said. And he is determined to lead. "We should. We're supposed to."

You don't have to be a fan of the reality show "Project Runway" to appreciate that fashion has become more and more populist. This is the age, after all, of the adolescent designer, the celebrity designer, the hip-hop designer, and the claimants have been as varied as Sean Combs and Esteban Cortazar, who was 18 when he held his first show.

And though fashion, like politics, is still an insider's game, with its own addicts and agenda-setting editors, nothing, it seems, can compete with the authentic judgment of bloggers and Web viewers. Ask yourself: How elitist can fashion be when the 20 most popular fall 2005 collections on Style.com received a total of 22 million hits in 12 days?

Nevertheless, by the end of the fall shows in March, Mr. Pilati's assertion had been borne out. On the strength of an exceptional series of Paris collections, a new elite had emerged, and with it a sense that every choice these designers made, every proportion and fabric chosen or rejected, represented a superior judgment. They were acting like designers, not stylists or vintage-shop pickers. Retailers, starved for direction, saw the shows as a breakthrough. In New York, despite an influx of new talent, only Marc Jacobs had the power to influence the industry, whether an editor at Condé Nast or the owner of an illicit handbag palace on Canal Street. Milan had Miuccia Prada. In Paris there were six.

Insiders may debate who belongs in this elite class, but they don't dispute the authority of Mr. Pilati, Olivier Theyskens at Rochas, Nicolas Ghesquiere at Balenciaga, Alber Elbaz at Lanvin, Phoebe Philo at Chloé and Mr. Jacobs, who designs his own line and another for Louis Vuitton.

Even fashion industry analysts, who tend to be skeptical of the pronouncements of editors, acknowledge the influence of these designers, whose average age is 35. David Wolfe, the creative director of Doneger Group, which forecasts trends for stores like Nordstrom and Wal-Mart, compares it to that of the Antwerp Six, a group that included Dries van Noten and Martin Margiela, in the early 90's. "They feel the pulse of their times the same way the Belgians did," he said. "And they have the same problem. Everybody feeds off them, except now there's an expectation that your company has to be as big as General Motors. Or Tom Ford."

Is it the air, the Gallic water, les girls? What unites these six designers, only one of whom can claim French birth, and why now? The answer, as simple as it sounds, is fashion.

For several years now, the business has followed a different set of imperatives: fashion as lifestyle, fashion as art, fashion as a spree of casual Fridays. Twenty or 30 years ago, when the Japanese avant-garde designers arrived in Paris, and before that, when Yves Saint Laurent and Kenzo were telling everyone how to dress - well, back then it was only fashion as fashion.

Gradually, though, it wasn't cool to be a dictator. And anyway, designers didn't have time. They had empires of licenses to manage, yachts to squeegee. By the time Ms. Prada and Mr. Ford exploded, in the mid-1990's, nobody except a few couturiers at the top knew about hidden seams and hand-frayed edges. And if one may say so, the whole picture of dress had degenerated to a logo bag and a pierced navel.

Nowadays people are dressing better. It's as if the entire industry has been squeezed upward. As Mr. Wolfe put it, "Even the bottom feeders of the fashion food chain have Champagne tastes." Everyone wants to look posh.

Like most mainstream trends this one started with an extreme gesture, a squawk (the sound of editors' mouths popping open) at the beginning of the fashion grapevine. You can almost pinpoint the moment: Paris, March 2003, when Mr. Theyskens, a Belgian designer then just 26, showed a weird humpback dress in French lace. Weird or not, it telegraphed a message to the rest of the industry: clothes would involve more form, and more savoir-faire.

And Mr. Theyskens wasn't alone. "They're the most daring group of designers we've seen in a long while," said Julie Gilhart, the fashion director of Barneys New York. "Alber dared to be pretty, and with clothes that a lot of women can wear. Olivier changed the way we look at luxury, by focusing on extreme proportions and beautiful craft. It's now bye-bye, bling. Nicolas has influenced the street. Look at his cargo pants. People were, like, 'Baggy pants in pink and green - what?' But those pants and their copies made stores millions of dollars."

WHAT unites these designers is that they are using details and craft, often involving old modes of construction, to make an original statement. Ronnie Cooke Newhouse, an influential art director whose clients include Lanvin, says there is a dual advantage in using couture effects like draping. It makes the clothes harder to copy, and it distances them that much further from superficial, Star magazine type of fashion. "If a dress has volume, it's because Alber found a real dressmaking solution," Ms. Newhouse said. And he is thinking how to do it in a light, modern way. "It's about both form and function," Mr. Elbaz said.

Yet each designer has a highly individual look. There is no mistaking Ms. Philo's loose, romantic dresses for Mr. Theyskens's icy towers of ruffles, or Mr. Pilati's clerical references for Mr. Ghesquiere's starved-to-near-perfection silhouette. "It's not like Nouvelle Vague in the movies in the 60's," said Mr. Ghesquiere, who was born in France. "We're all different."

Mr. Pilati, a former assistant to Mr. Ford, is the least known of the group, but before fashion magazine editors could recover from the shock last fall of seeing tulip skirts, other designers had adapted his waist-defining look for the next season. Bergdorf Goodman is eager to introduce him to customers. "I'll offer him anything - lunch, a cocktail party, the windows," Robert Burke, the store's fashion director, said.

Although one can point to designers who have achieved empire without a loss of prestige among insiders - Karl Lagerfeld and Ms. Prada for sure - and to others who have remained influential through innovation, like Rei Kawakubo and Azzedine Alaïa, members of the new group have come to the fore because their influence has derived from clothes. Not marketing campaigns, accessories or chatty celebrities, but clothes. This represents an ideological break from the late 90's, and the business model of Mr. Ford and Gucci.

"I don't want a career that's like another designer's," said Mr. Ghesquiere, who took over Balenciaga in 1997. "I think I can say we have idols but no models to follow. You have to define your own model."

Not everyone has always understood him; he was fired after his first collection, but then the buzz started, and he was rehired. And though his Princess Leia look of the late 90's set off a wave of imitations, as did his anti-luxe bags with studded straps, Mr. Ghesquiere has stubbornly avoided being predictable, even conventionally pretty. (One may recall the media bashing that Jennifer Connelly received when she wore a drab beige gown of his to the Oscars.) Still, his below-the-radar approach is paying off. Balenciaga, which is part of Gucci Group, expects to be profitable within 18 months.

Making money is still a problem for most of these brands, and the media attention they receive, while deserved, can overstate the true picture. "Selling 50 pieces at Barneys is fine, but it's not a business," Ralph Toledano, the chief executive of Chloé, said, adding that a problem for small houses like Rochas and Lanvin is that they rely too heavily on the creativity of their designers. "From a company point of view, that's totally unhealthy," Mr. Toledano said. You also need managers who can take a creative idea and turn it into a string of products.

In another sense, though, Mr. Theyskens, who showed his first Rochas collection in 2003, was probably smart to position the line at a superhigh level, with dresses that can cost $5,000. With luxury brands pushing from the top and mass merchants from the bottom, it's tough to have a business in the middle. Mr. Wolfe said there is little future in lower-priced diffusion lines because of how easily they are knocked off. Exaggerating to make his point, he said, "Marc Jacobs's diffusion line is Wal-Mart."

Few designers of his generation have understood the consumer and her impulsiveness better than Mr. Jacobs. It's a reason his look changes frequently, now a riff on Thatcherite ruffles, now an ode to Japanese volumes. In the past women stuck with the same two or three designers most of their lives. Now they simply want what's new.

The young women who work in his Paris studio are a lesson to him in this respect. "They're such shopaholics," he said. "They're into Lanvin, because it's new. This last season the one thing they wanted was YSL." Mr. Jacobs laughed. "I said, 'What happened to Alber?' "

YET while he has gained in prominence by working for Vuitton - its parent, LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, owns one-third of Mr. Jacobs's company and has helped it expand into accessories - his partner, Robert Duffy, points out proudly that ready-to-wear is still the mainspring of the company, outselling shoes and bags. And despite the popularity of its Mouse shoe (150 pairs sold each week), he and Mr. Jacobs sensed the market was tapped out, at least for them. "We were, like, 'Stop with the Mouse shoe,' " Mr. Duffy said wearily.

"It takes lots and lots of slow steps," Ms. Philo conceded, talking about the process that has made Chloé one of the most imitated labels in the business. (Derek Lam is one designer who ought to pay royalties this spring to both Chloé and Lanvin.) Through the efforts of Mr. Toledano, the company is now set to add lingerie and children's wear, and will open 30 new stores over the next three years, he said. Sales for the most recent fiscal year increased 60 percent.

But as Ms. Philo said: "If the clothes don't look good, then you haven't got anything. My focus is totally on the runway."

And in Paris or wherever talent presumes to be taken seriously, the runway never lies.

 

[Lena]

this article has been already posted -and discussed- stylegurl

 

[stylegurrl]

oops sorry...I guess I missed it because I a not here that often lately.
Could someone please provide a link?

 

[Lena]

http://www.thefashionspot.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25727

voila.. i'll merge very soon

 

[stylegurrl]

Thank you Lena!