As the international fashion shows reach their climax this week, there’s a common thread weaving through the runway’s eclectic offerings: storied designers are on the way out.
Distribution network is key in the industry, say experts
LONDON: As the international fashion shows reach their climax this week, there’s a common thread weaving through the runway’s eclectic offerings: storied designers are on the way out.
When couturier Valentino steps out in Paris it will be his last ready-to-wear show before the designer to Jacqueline Kennedy and Audrey Hepburn retires, handing his atelier to the relatively unknown Alessandra Facchinetti.
In Milan, Gianfranco Ferre executives last week named another little-known designer Lars Nilsson to head up its creative team after larger-than-life Ferre’s death in June.
No one expects the careers of Nilsson, Facchinetti or myriad other new designers to come close to rivaling their flamboyant predecessors whose extravagant parties and A-list friends meant their lives as well as their designs made the headlines.
In fact, consumers aren’t even expected to remember their names because in fashion’s brave new world where spreadsheets and distribution networks are key they are no longer the story, says Bain & Co luxury industry specialist Claudia D’Arpizio.
“Brand names are much more important than single creative talents,” D’Arpizio, a Bain partner, said. “The brand is much more powerful.”
To illustrate her point, D’Arpizio relates an anecdote from a recent Chanel store in Shanghai, one of the booming new capitals of luxury goods whose handbag happy consumers are behind the tidal shift of changes in the industry.
One Chinese client, enquiring after Chanel’s famous founder who died in 1971, asked management: “Where is Coco?” “People had no idea Coco Chanel is dead,” D’Arpizio said.
It is fashion’s growth into a $127 billion industry that is making the old guard extinct and — however much it may make fashionistas shudder in their Jimmy Choos — demanding a new breed of designers who often have more in common with brand managers at Procter & Gamble than Va-Va Valentino.
Louis Vuitton, the world’s most powerful luxury brand, rose to 17th place in this year’s Interbrand list of the best global brands putting it ahead of Google, Pepsi and Nike.
Gucci, Chanel, Rolex, Hermes and Tiffany all figured in the top 80. In this environment, D’Arpizio says fashion houses need to select someone who can interpret the brand without trying to substitute the brand name with theirs:
“They need a corporate man who will put the brand in front of every decision.”
More important than the designer’s flair with a drawing pencil is an ability to spot the brand’s heritage, what separates it in the increasingly crowded luxury goods world and make its wares something a consumer actually wants to buy.
Now the old school designer is in fadeout and the luxury brand manager is taking charge, D’Arpizio predicts it even will be a breeze filling what will be the biggest job in fashion when Giorgio Armani, 73, decides to retire.
“You can easily find a creative team that will interpret the Armani brand with a different creative approach,” D’Arpizio said.
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