The price tag of fame
Celebrities who dabble in the rag trade are cruising ahead of real designers, writes Georgina Safe |
August 01, 2007
EIGHT weeks ago designer Phillip Lim, 33, won the fashion industry's highest award for emerging talent. Lim had toiled at various design houses before founding his own label, 3.1 Phillip Lim, which is stocked across the world at stores such as Neiman Marcus in the US, Net-a-porter.com online and Belinda and Robby Ingham in Sydney.
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen
But his excitement at being anointed by the Council of Fashion Designers of America was dampened by the fact he was handed his trophy by two young women who also call themselves designers, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. The celebrity twins had been invited to present the rising-star award at the New York event, but they would rather be receiving it: the Olsens are introducing a high-end clothing collection that will compete directly with Lim's.
"You think: 'Wow, how unfair,"' Lim told The New York Times after reading an article in Women's Wear Daily about the Olsens' plans to expand their business empire - previously focused on tween merchandise sold in mass-market stores such as Wal-Mart and estimated by Forbes in 2003 to have sales of $US1.4 billion - into the high-end designer fashion market.
Prices of the twins' venture the Row would feed struggling fashion designers for months: a $US3220 ($3790) Tuscan lamb-fur coat, $US1700 cashmere tuxedo jackets and $US875 banded strapless dresses are among the Row's autumn-winter offerings.
Someone who could use a good meal is Victoria Beckham, who launched her own high-end jeans and sunglasses line DVB (jeans $US289, oversize sunnies $US280) at Saks Fifth Avenue in New York on June 15.
"I couldn't be the best singer, dancer, actress, but I'm actually really good at this," the petite fashion plate told Style.com. "I'm fanatical about rivets and things that most people don't even pay attention to."
Her hardware obsession - who would have thought? - may sound like a celebrity indulgence (will anyone other than VB be able to fit into her spray-on denims?) but Beckham's line is stocked at serious fashion destinations including Henri Bendel and Saks' New York and Beverly Hills flagships.
With stockists including Corso Como in Milan, Harvey Nichols in London and Maria Luisa in Paris, the Row is likewise no peripheral pet project; it is very real and direct competition to designers such as Lim.
In The New York Times article last month, Lim articulated a growing frustration among his peers as they faced an onslaught of high-end competing lines from celebrities.
The relationship between celebrities and fashion is nothing new. Fashion has courted famous people for decades, dressing them for the red carpet and paying them handsomely to endorse products and adorn advertising campaigns.
Nor are celebrity designers a revolutionary construct. Pamela Anderson, rappers 50Cent and Nelly, and even actor John Malkovich are among the stars who have put their names to a line, as have Australians Kylie Minogue and Delta Goodrem (both lingerie) and the Veronicas, who recently inked a deal with Target.
The question today isn't which celebrity has a clothing range, it's which one doesn't.
In the US Sean "P. Diddy" Combs even won the CFDA award for menswear last year, thanks in part to his notoriety but also to some handy friends in high places, such as Anna Wintour and Tom Ford.
What is different with the latest crop of celebrity designers however, is that they are boldface names who come with serious fashion credentials and, increasingly, a sophisticated product that will pit them directly against established labels.
Jennifer Lopez, Gwen Stefani, Kate Moss (for Topshop), Madonna (for H&M) and Lily Allen (H&M) are among the fashion-forward stars who have their own lines and wear them often.
Where once the Olsens might have worn Lim's designs, they wore their own to the CFDA awards. This month's British Vogue features a photo shoot of Sienna Miller wearing Twenty8Twelve, her new label in partnership with her designer sister Savannah, and doubtless Naomi Campbell will be sporting bandage dresses aplenty if her rumoured collaboration with Christopher Kane comes to fruition.
The addition of serious fashion credibility to celebrity lines marks a shift in the star-designer relationship, and some fear it will not bode well for the latter.
Lim, who expects his collection to reach $US30 million in sales this year, told The New York Times the chances of a young designer surviving in the business today are "slim to none".
By contrast, celebrity lines such as Combs's and Lopez's typically break the $US100 million mark in sales in their first or second year, according to The New York Times, thanks to the power of a famous face hitched to a huge marketing campaign.
But what about the artisanship and originality that real designers bring to their craft? Shouldn't those hours in the atelier count for something to consumers, compared with Moss rifling through her wardrobe and and copying pieces by other designers for her clothing collection?
Apparently not. Our brightest talent, Toni Maticevski, for example, hasn't sold a jot from his most recent collection to a department store or boutique in Australia (it is available only online). Instead, the designer is reliant on kitting out celebrities (usually Jennifer Hawkins, the face of Myer, where his cheaper diffusion line is stocked) to gain exposure.
Fashion's heightened focus on celebrity encourages designers to also raise their personal profiles. In a sense, they must now become celebrities to compete with them. Flick through the social pages of any newspaper or magazine and you'll see designers everywhere, pleasing their sponsors and promoting themselves.
But in the end it's about selling clothes. So, to play by the new rules of business, fashion designers are creating lower-priced lines for mass-market stores such as H&M, Topshop and Target.
Wayne Cooper and Jayson Brunsdon are designing diffusion ranges for Myer, while Josh Goot's collection for Target collection went on sale to the public in June.
The danger is that local designers doing diffusion risk diluting their brands. Although established American and European brands have enough integrity and identity to do this successfully (Issey Miyake and Stella McCartney for Target, Karl Lagerfeld for H&M), locally designers are not well known enough or have sufficient tricks in their repertoire to make it work. Goot's range for Target was fine, for example, but it was remarkably similar to his earlier mainline collection that many of his fashion fans bought for six times the price.
While they generate serious dollars (why else would a designer do one?) diffusion lines are a drain, diverting valuable resources and thinking time away from creating clothes, as opposed to commodifying them.
Fashion designers push the boundaries of what we will wear, moving fashion forward while the rest of us, including celebrities, play catch-up with our clothes. Perhaps the best way for designers to move forward is to concentrate on their strength: creating clothes that challenge the way we think, inspiring and sometimes inciting us.
After all, it's hard to imagine actor Sarah Jessica Parker giving up her beloved Oscar de la Renta dresses in favour of her new range Bitten for budget retailer Steve & Barry's (themost expensive item in the 500-piece range is $US19.98).
Ultimately the celebrity-designer relationship remains symbiotic. Despite the comments of designers such as Lim, there is surely enough fashion for everyone.
"Fashion is a business, I don't see why celebrities can't be designers," designer Zac Posen recently told Fashion Wire Daily.
"I'm happy that celebrity designers hire great young designers and design teams. I think the CFDA should link really talented young designers with great celebrities who can promote it."
But perhaps not Lim with the Olsen twins.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22166093-28737,00.html
