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Trouble backstage in the fashion world
[font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]Has a clash between business and creativity caused Lacroix and Lang to leave their companies?[/font]
[font=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Hadley Freeman, deputy fashion editor
Saturday January 29, 2005
The Guardian
[/font][font=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]With the French menswear shows rolling on in Paris, and the womenswear shows kicking off next week in New York, the fashion season is in full swing. But the polished glamour of the catwalks and their smoothly striding models looks pale as soon as you move backstage.
In the past week alone two high-profile designers have parted ways with their parent companies. On Monday Helmut Lang announced that he was leaving his eponymous label just three months after the Prada Group bought it in its entirety.
This is the second embarrassing loss for the group after Jil Sander left her label in November, like Lang owing to clashes with Prada's colourful chief executive, Patrizio Bertelli. Sander had already left her label in 2000, a year after it was bought by Prada, but rejoined in 2003.
Then, just a day after Lang's announcement, the luxury behemoth LVMH announced it was selling Christian Lacroix to a company with a little less fashion cachet, the Falic Group.
These public fallouts are a sorry end to fashion's period of optimism that began five years ago when conglomerates such as LVMH, the Gucci Group and the Prada Group hoovered up small labels with a carefree enthusiasm that would rival any It girl's shopping spree.
Then, it looked like a mutually beneficial relationship: the labels gave the companies cachet and the companies gave the labels funding. But the difficulties in marrying big business with creativity now look to be coming to the fore. "This is like the bursting of the internet bubble - things moved too quickly and this is the result," says Sarah Mower, a style writer.
[/font]
Lorna Hall, features editor of the fashion trade magazine, Drapers, agrees: "These conglomerates have had four or five years of looking at these labels that they bought and now realise they overextended themselves. Places such as LVMH are saying they're going to concentrate on core brands, and Lacroix isn't a core brand. It'll probably do better with someone else as it will get more attention."
LVMH is the parent company to some hugely lucrative labels, including Christian Dior and Louis Vuitton. Last year Lacroix made losses of several million pounds. The designer kept his upper lip defiantly stiff this week in the face of the sell-off: "I'm not sad, it's a relief," he said.
"There have been a lot of misunderstandings and a lack of chemistry between us. LVMH have rules and formulas that do not suit my method of design. They don't see that creativity does not stop at the entrance to the design studio. I always felt like the poor boy."
On the face of it, these three instances look like a simple case of designers refusing to bend their creativity to the more pragmatic needs of business. Since the Prada Group bought a 51% stake in Helmut Lang in 1999, the label has consistently failed to make a profit, and the group bought the remaining 49% in October last year. The Wall Street Journal claimed that it had lost several million euros in 2004 on sales of €30m (£21m).
"As soon as Helmut went to Prada there was too much of a concentration on luxury over the original appeal of the label," says Mower. "Before, it had been an edgy label based on jeans, vests and masculine jackets. Then it became a much more luxurious label and the basics were impossible to find."
Lacroix will continue to design his own label, but Lang and Sander will not, and this presents a potential problem for Prada. Both designers are closely allied to the appeal of the labels and they are arguably the best adverts for the clothes: the Viennese Lang embodies his label's severe and striking aesthetic and, similarly, Sander is the image of the quiet, intellectual figure to whom her customers aspire.
When Sander left the label in 1999, Bertelli appointed another designer, Milan Vukmirovic, and said: "A brand as strong as Jil Sander doesn't need to rely on the name of a designer. It's not the name that counts, but the quality of the product."
Others disagreed. Vukmirovic's collections were derided by the press, and Sander's return in 2003 was met with relief.
Lang and Sander will now be stuck in a hinterland where they will see clothes with which they have had no involvement manufactured in their names.
One designer in that predicament is Elizabeth Emanuel, who designed Princess Diana's wedding dress. In 1997 Shami Ahmed bought the company that bore her name and, after a disagreement, she lost the right to sell Elizabeth Emanuel clothes.
She says she now sees her name on "cheap, badly made clothes, and I just feel gutted". She not only cannot design under her name but struggles to find a backer because of the confusion caused by Shami's label.
She took her case to a trademarks court arguing that people were being misled into thinking she had designed the clothes. The case is to be heard by the European court of justice. The label, once widely known and respected, is little heard from.
Hall says: "It's rare for a business mind and creative mind to be compatible, and there is a real danger of the labels losing their appeal without their personality."
Mower agrees: "[The conglomerates] should just be careful they don't end up with an empty shell, because there's no equity in that."
Corporate couture
LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy)
Christian Dior, Louis Vuitton, Sephora, Berlutti, de Beers, Loewe, Celine, Kenzo, Givenchy, Marc Jacobs, Fendi, Pucci, Thomas Pink, Donna Karan
Gucci group
Gucci, Sergio Rossi, Yves Saint Laurent, Boucheron, Bottega Veneta, Stella McCartney, Balenciaga, Alexander McQueen
Prada group
Prada, Miu Miu, Helmut Lang, Jil Sander, Azzedine Alaia, Car Shoe, Genny, Church's (which is owned together with private equity fund Equinox) </FONT>
[font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]Has a clash between business and creativity caused Lacroix and Lang to leave their companies?[/font]
[font=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Hadley Freeman, deputy fashion editor
Saturday January 29, 2005
The Guardian
[/font][font=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]With the French menswear shows rolling on in Paris, and the womenswear shows kicking off next week in New York, the fashion season is in full swing. But the polished glamour of the catwalks and their smoothly striding models looks pale as soon as you move backstage.
In the past week alone two high-profile designers have parted ways with their parent companies. On Monday Helmut Lang announced that he was leaving his eponymous label just three months after the Prada Group bought it in its entirety.
This is the second embarrassing loss for the group after Jil Sander left her label in November, like Lang owing to clashes with Prada's colourful chief executive, Patrizio Bertelli. Sander had already left her label in 2000, a year after it was bought by Prada, but rejoined in 2003.
Then, just a day after Lang's announcement, the luxury behemoth LVMH announced it was selling Christian Lacroix to a company with a little less fashion cachet, the Falic Group.
These public fallouts are a sorry end to fashion's period of optimism that began five years ago when conglomerates such as LVMH, the Gucci Group and the Prada Group hoovered up small labels with a carefree enthusiasm that would rival any It girl's shopping spree.
Then, it looked like a mutually beneficial relationship: the labels gave the companies cachet and the companies gave the labels funding. But the difficulties in marrying big business with creativity now look to be coming to the fore. "This is like the bursting of the internet bubble - things moved too quickly and this is the result," says Sarah Mower, a style writer.
[/font]
Lorna Hall, features editor of the fashion trade magazine, Drapers, agrees: "These conglomerates have had four or five years of looking at these labels that they bought and now realise they overextended themselves. Places such as LVMH are saying they're going to concentrate on core brands, and Lacroix isn't a core brand. It'll probably do better with someone else as it will get more attention."
LVMH is the parent company to some hugely lucrative labels, including Christian Dior and Louis Vuitton. Last year Lacroix made losses of several million pounds. The designer kept his upper lip defiantly stiff this week in the face of the sell-off: "I'm not sad, it's a relief," he said.
"There have been a lot of misunderstandings and a lack of chemistry between us. LVMH have rules and formulas that do not suit my method of design. They don't see that creativity does not stop at the entrance to the design studio. I always felt like the poor boy."
On the face of it, these three instances look like a simple case of designers refusing to bend their creativity to the more pragmatic needs of business. Since the Prada Group bought a 51% stake in Helmut Lang in 1999, the label has consistently failed to make a profit, and the group bought the remaining 49% in October last year. The Wall Street Journal claimed that it had lost several million euros in 2004 on sales of €30m (£21m).
"As soon as Helmut went to Prada there was too much of a concentration on luxury over the original appeal of the label," says Mower. "Before, it had been an edgy label based on jeans, vests and masculine jackets. Then it became a much more luxurious label and the basics were impossible to find."
Lacroix will continue to design his own label, but Lang and Sander will not, and this presents a potential problem for Prada. Both designers are closely allied to the appeal of the labels and they are arguably the best adverts for the clothes: the Viennese Lang embodies his label's severe and striking aesthetic and, similarly, Sander is the image of the quiet, intellectual figure to whom her customers aspire.
When Sander left the label in 1999, Bertelli appointed another designer, Milan Vukmirovic, and said: "A brand as strong as Jil Sander doesn't need to rely on the name of a designer. It's not the name that counts, but the quality of the product."
Others disagreed. Vukmirovic's collections were derided by the press, and Sander's return in 2003 was met with relief.
Lang and Sander will now be stuck in a hinterland where they will see clothes with which they have had no involvement manufactured in their names.
One designer in that predicament is Elizabeth Emanuel, who designed Princess Diana's wedding dress. In 1997 Shami Ahmed bought the company that bore her name and, after a disagreement, she lost the right to sell Elizabeth Emanuel clothes.
She says she now sees her name on "cheap, badly made clothes, and I just feel gutted". She not only cannot design under her name but struggles to find a backer because of the confusion caused by Shami's label.
She took her case to a trademarks court arguing that people were being misled into thinking she had designed the clothes. The case is to be heard by the European court of justice. The label, once widely known and respected, is little heard from.
Hall says: "It's rare for a business mind and creative mind to be compatible, and there is a real danger of the labels losing their appeal without their personality."
Mower agrees: "[The conglomerates] should just be careful they don't end up with an empty shell, because there's no equity in that."
Corporate couture
LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy)
Christian Dior, Louis Vuitton, Sephora, Berlutti, de Beers, Loewe, Celine, Kenzo, Givenchy, Marc Jacobs, Fendi, Pucci, Thomas Pink, Donna Karan
Gucci group
Gucci, Sergio Rossi, Yves Saint Laurent, Boucheron, Bottega Veneta, Stella McCartney, Balenciaga, Alexander McQueen
Prada group
Prada, Miu Miu, Helmut Lang, Jil Sander, Azzedine Alaia, Car Shoe, Genny, Church's (which is owned together with private equity fund Equinox) </FONT>
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