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Amour Comme Hiver
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Part I
They can’t sketch, drape, or sew, but celebrities do have opinions on fashion. How clothing lines went from dowdy to dynamite for a new flock of A-listers
She’s always late,” says Rigoberto Casillas. The fey 22-year-old with bleached blond hair and a Spanish accent had woken up at 3 a.m. to drive from Temecula to the South Coast Plaza Macy’s to wait for Paris Hilton’s appearance in February. His T-shirt bears the likeness of his idol, and his hoodie, which is also from the heiress’s sportswear line, is printed with the Old English lettering favored by gangs and rappers. At such events you expect to see suburban kids like Casillas. You don’t count on a 58-year-old woman buying Hilton’s $79 leopard-print “Glitzy Cheetah” pumps, but she’s here, too. As the afternoon wanes, high school students in uniforms join a line that curves around cordoned-off reporters from Fox, E!, the Associated Press, In Touch, Riviera, and The Orange County Register. ¶ While the fans wait, Paris Hilton, wearing a slinky minidress and yellow heels, sits on a couch in a converted Macy’s administrative office. Her skin is perfect, and there’s a dreamy look in her eyes. Samples from Paris Hilton Shoes, her new footwear line, are displayed on a table. A PR person advises a reporter, “You might have to prompt her about the shoes. Like, they all have pink soles.” ¶ Hilton is asked how the project came about. “I got approached with the script a couple years ago,” she says in a placid voice, referring to The Hottie and the Nottie, her movie that was released the same day. ¶ One of several handlers calls out, “We’re talking about the shoes.”
“The shoes,” Hilton says, shifting gears. “I have always been a big shoe fan, of course, like every girl.” She owns “like, a thousand” pairs. “I already have my own clothing line, and we do fragrance and purses. It seemed like the next step would be to do shoes.”
Forty miles away, in a downtown L.A. factory against which homeless people sleep, Paris’s sister, Nicky, is busy with her own two apparel lines. Sweaterdresses, checked miniskirts, and tweed blazers trimmed in patent leather from the Nicholai line’s fall collection hang on racks. The clothing will arrive in stores this summer with price tags of $100 to $800. Nicky selects an eggplant-and-black baby-doll style with a pleated bow. “Evening dresses were big,” she says, referring to orders from Kitson and other boutiques. She wears a black T-shirt, denim shorts, flat shoes, and a heart-shaped diamond pavé pendant. Her manner is more laconic than media polished. On the wall, inspiration boards with pages cut from magazines and books indicate that her next collection, for spring 2009, will have a watercolor palette and an island vacation feel.
Nicky’s less expensive line, Chick, is made in a more dingy wing of the factory, which has a dirty gray carpet. Chick consists of brightly colored T-shirts and hoodies aimed at what the fashion industry calls the “junior” market: teenagers and young women. “I come here about four days a week,” Nicky says. “Most celebrity lines, it’s an actress or singer, and the clothing line is their fourth or fifth priority. This is my number one priority. I’m not off promoting a film.” Doesn’t that describe her sister? She shrugs and says, “Paris does licenses.”
Celebrity-fronted apparel lines take either the Paris approach, in which a star licenses his or her name for a cut of sales, usually around 10 percent, or the Nicky approach, in which the star owns all or part of the company and is more hands-on. Few famous people in either category can cut a pattern or sew intricate seams, but that is also the case with a good number of professional clothing makers. By the time designers reach the level of a Donna Karan or a Ralph Lauren, they typically employ design teams and specialists to execute their ideas.
A commonly held notion is that personalities sell the use of their name for a fat check and don’t contribute much to product development or publicity. Jessica Simpson lives up to this stereotype by frequently wearing True Religion jeans instead of denim from Princy or JS by Jessica Simpson, two of the lines for which she was paid $10 million up front. (The company that manufactures the clothing sued Simpson in 2006 for failing to promote the lines and settled out of court.) Increasingly, though, stars are teaming up with fashion companies, or forming them, and throwing themselves into the business. Elle Macpherson, for instance, stopped taking lucrative modeling jobs from lingerie companies to pose in ads for her own. “I took a pay cut because I wanted longevity and creative input,” she says of Elle Macpherson Intimates, which is sold in department stores. “I don’t sit there on the floor cutting fabrics and patterns, but I work profoundly on concepts and the voice of the brand—and of course the fit, color, and palette.”
Other stars see fame as a tool for fashion goals. Amanda Bynes, who launched a line for teenagers last year at the national chain Steve & Barry’s, has always wanted to be a fashion designer. “My dad said, if you get famous, you can sell your art,” she says.