Designer Clothes Go on the Road : These Fashion Shows Reap Trunks of Money

When Celeste van Myers was growing up in Hollywood, she made a habit of keeping up with the latest offerings of European and motion picture clothing designers. Now that her husband has retired and willingly supports her interest in staying fashionable, she still does.

“I attend about every fashion show there is; I think everyone likes to be first,” she said as she sat on a bench outside the flagship Bullocks Wilshire store near MacArthur Park one morning last week.

Half an hour later, she and 125 other invited customers were seated in the store’s elegant tearoom, eating breakfast as statuesque mannequins strolled between tables modeling colorful woolen garments from the fall collection of the Milan design house Genny. When the orders were counted, the Bullocks Wilshire staff figured that they represented more than one-third of the business that the store expects to do in Genny clothing for fall--an “outstanding” performance, according to a spokeswoman.

Welcome to the rarefied world of designer “trunk” shows, where a couturier shows off a season’s collection to a group of well-heeled clients and where those customers, in turn, get first crack at ordering the fancy duds, weeks before they hit the stores. This is how the other half--or, more likely, the other less than 1%--lives.

“For our business, it’s essential,” said Bill Blass, whose trunk shows--so called because the garments arrive at stores in well-traveled trunks--generate 30% to 35% of his company’s volume each year. “The only way to truly expose your clothes is to take them on the road.”

Given the lofty prices of designer ready-to-wear clothing, it is small wonder that this time-honored tradition works out well for all concerned. By inviting a designer to present a trunk show, stores that would not have the money to buy a full collection or the space to adequately display it are nonetheless able to entice customers by showing an entire line. Designers win increased business and get immediate feedback from their most loyal clients. And customers respond to the special coddling--such as being able to order suits in mixed sizes or special colors--by placing big orders.

“They’re a vehicle for all specialty stores,” said Shirley Wilson, a spokeswoman for Bullocks Wilshire and I. Magnin in Southern California. Department stores use them occasionally for moderately priced lines. The Broadway, for example, will feature Liz Claiborne’s line during a weeklong promotion this fall.

“No store in America, when they carry merchandise at $3,000 to $5,000 retail (per piece), will buy a total collection,” said Susan Rolontz, executive vice president of Tobe Associates, a New York-based fashion and retailing consultant firm. “Therefore, a lot of things that stores buy, they buy with a more conservative bent.

“When a designer goes out with a trunk full of goodies, he usually takes the whole line,” she added.

That might include a beaded coat that retails for $12,000. Los Angeles designer Michael Novarese, whose clients include prominent women in Washington, has sold at least 25 of those coats for the fall season, more than half of them through trunk shows at I. Magnin and other specialty apparel stores.

“You try to sell it to the store, and there’s a bit of hesitancy on their part,” Novarese said. “Only when I or the representative goes into the store and we sell it directly to the customer can I say, ‘I told you so.’ ”

All told, trunk shows--of which Novarese personally attends five for each spring and fall collection--account for as much as 40% of his company’s annual business. They are held not only in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco but also spots such as Lubbock and Beaumont, Tex.

That is far different from two or three decades ago, when the first trunk, or designer, shows were simply prestigious “happenings” that upscale stores promoted to create excitement. In those days, stores did not carry couture lines as they do today. Such shows were “a special topping on the birthday cake . . . an extra added attraction that was not intended as a real money-making business,” said Syd Shaw, executive vice president and director of sales for Oscar de la Renta Ltd. in New York.

But customers took to them, and now a season’s take from trunk shows can total from several hundred thousand dollars to more than $1 million for noted fashion houses such as De la Renta, Blass, Adolfo, Geoffrey Beene, Donna Karan, Mary McFadden and Anne Klein. Today, such shows are distinct from the usual fashion shows that might feature the work of several designers and might not offer the opportunity for customers to special-order garments.

According to Shaw, De la Renta’s haul exceeded $200,000 in a recent show at Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills. Last May, five shows at stores in Texas netted $1 million. This is at a time when the rest of the women’s apparel industry is only now showing faint signs of life after nearly a year of sparse sales.

“This season has been incredible for us,” she said. “The customer is open to buy, anxious to buy.” Witness this season’s sale of nearly 500 wool crepe dresses with satin collar and pin, costing about $1,500 at retail. “Twenty to 25 years ago,” Shaw said, “if they sold 50 it would have been a lot.”

For Shaw and other designer representatives, traveling the trunk show circuit can mean weeks or months on the road. De la Renta’s staff does 120 shows a year in stores from Seattle to Florida over four seasons, with fall and spring showings the largest. This year’s fall shows began in May, after the lines were presented to the press in New York, and will run through August.