Fashion : Road to Paris Paved With Foreign Style
As Europe’s top designers begin showing their spring styles over the weekend, first in Milan, then London, then Paris, the Italians are making the big news, but not in their own country.
Many believe the most important show of the season will be staged in Paris by Italy’s Gianfranco Ferre. It is his first ready-to-wear collection for Christian Dior, among the most successful names in all of French fashion.
His appointment as chief designer for the collection last spring caused a furor among the French, who felt the job should have gone to a countryman. Now the pressure is on, especially since Ferre’s first couture collection for Dior, previewed last summer, got decidedly mixed reviews.
Just a day before the shows begin, people are talking about another concern as well, this one far more serious. Earlier this week, designer Patrick Kelly pulled out of the Paris events. His spokeswoman, Linda Wachner, CEO of Warnaco Inc., which licenses Kelly’s collections, said it is due to illness. Rumors are that the illness is life threatening. But Wachner refuses to confirm this, saying, “I don’t know what the illness is. We’re all just hoping and praying that his convalescence is a short one.”
When he launched his premier collection in 1985, American-born Kelly was among the first to encourage the intercontinental drift that is so much a part of fashion right now. Another of the trend setters was Italy’s Romeo Gigli, who abandoned Milan’s fashion runways for Paris last March. And some now believe that Giorgio Armani will be next to make the move.
Several weeks ago he was offered the top design position at the French house of Jeanne Lanvin, replacing Maryll Lanvin, who abruptly left the job in May when the house was acquired by the Midland Bank.
Characteristically, the introspective Armani replied that he will “ponder” the option. But informed sources now believe he won’t accept it. With his several women’s and men’s collections as well as a children’s line to watch over, he has more than enough to do.
Instead, they predict, the job will go to Paris-based Claude Montana and Lanvin hopes to announce the change during the Paris collections.
This new enthusiasm for “outside” talents is atypical of the French, who have a reputation for more chauvinistic attitudes. But apparently, they haven’t abandoned the old way entirely. London designer Katharine Hamnett, who has announced that she will be the first from her country to join the Italians in Paris, as of this season, says the transition hasn’t been easy.
“The French organizers have not been terribly helpful,” she explains. Hamnett says the time slot she was offered under the exhibition tents in the Tuilleries gardens was several days after the main events. “By then everybody will have gone home.”
She figured at these prices ($48,000 to rent the smallest of the three tents) she could do better, and has since found a space in the Cirque d’Hiver.
Despite her reception there, Hamnett says she will return, and expects to be joined by several British compatriots next time. In fact, she predicts, as do others, that soon, all designer roads will lead to Paris.
The more liberal trade agreements that go into effect across Europe in 1992 are part of the explanation. Just as important is the convenience of one central location.
Still, Hamnett and others worry about the implications. “How can I explain without being disloyal to my country?” she fusses. “It just works better, going to Paris.”
“Better” means better exposure. Already, far more retailers and members of the fashion press attend the Paris shows than those in Milan or London. And while they don’t all hold formal shows, most designers now send their collections to showrooms in Paris, if not New York, during press week, so that store buyers can place orders.
Part of the musical chairs game going on now in Paris was created by the dizzying number of recent buy-outs and take-overs in the French fashion industry.
Not only has Midland Bank acquired Lanvin, Citibank is now a major investor in the Ted Lapidus and Olivier Lapidus companies. And entrepreneur Bernard Arnault, the Parisian equivalent of New York’s Donald Trump, took over Dior five years ago, financed Christian Lacroix’s solo career two years ago, and this year acquired Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy, parent company to French designer Hubert de Givenchy.
In the changing of the guard that has followed, some new designer names have emerged. Martine Sitbon, who designs ladylike styles under the Chloe label (she replaced Karl Lagerfeld when he went to Chanel) and more bohemian looks under her own name, is a leader of this new group. Myrene de Premmonville is another. But the big names--Valentino, Emmanuel Ungaro, Chanel--still pack the wallop for specialty-store buyers.
“These newer designers aren’t as strong, or as talented,” Rose Marie Bravo says of Sitbon and company. But Bravo, CEO of I. Magnin and Bullocks Wilshire, doesn’t dismiss them entirely, explaining, “We’re looking for new stars.”
Herb Fink, who owns Beverly Hills boutiques for Claude Montana and Sonia Rykiel, as well as Theodore and several offshoots of the Rodeo Drive shop, sees it another way. He has carried both Sitbon and Premmonville in his store, but their labels didn’t sell. Now, he says, “I’m not sure their clothes are right for Southern California. Too formal, too structured.”
There is one newer fashion name, however, that Fink and everybody else in town seems to believe is very right for L.A.--Franco Moschino, the latest sizzler from Milan.
Having entertained and impressed the fashion world last spring with his playful pastiches and surreal images on jackets and evening dresses, he now insists he’s going to tone it down.
Yet, he plans to show at least one jokey outfit--a heavy-handed knock-off of a Chanel suit, complete with two-tone jacket, insignia brass buttons and lots of gold chains.
“This time,” he says of the collection he will unveil on Sunday, “the jokes are more subtle. Before, your Moschino jacket was talking for you. Now, you have to talk for yourself.”
Beneath the glitzy, gossipy surface of this fashion season, held in place for the moment by Moschino, Ferre and a few others, the serious business of creating modern clothing goes on. One-time wunderkinds--Gianni Versace in Milan, Thierry Mugler in Paris, Zhandra Rhodes in London--continue to invent, test limits and do exceptional work. And it is they, more than any designer of the day, who keep retailers and the press coming back for more.
Not unlike a Ferrari, or a Mercedes-Benz, and the dozens of also-rans that later turn up on the road, the fashion prototypes that Europe’s top innovators create today will be imitated by others tomorrow.
