No Designs on TV? : The real big names aren’t coming to a set near you. Fashion’s elite is intrigued but wary of hawking clothes via the tube.
Imagine: It is 1 a.m. and you are desperate for a fashion fix. You switch on “Donna Karan Home Shopping” and for the next hour watch Christy Turlington swan around in jersey bodysuits and cashmere pullovers while the designer tosses out advice in her Noo Yawk bark.
You order a $750 cashmere sweat shirt to pair with the $500 suede jeans you bought last week from the Calvin Klein show. Before drifting off to sleep, you make a date with your best friend to watch tomorrow’s prime-time debut of “Shopping With Giorgio Armani.”
Dream on.
Despite all the hype about shopping via TV and the attempt by its two major outlets--QVC (Quality, Value, Convenience) and the Home Shopping Network--to improve their kitschy image, top designers have so far shunned electronic retailing. (Arnold Scaasi, a jewel in QVC’s fashion crown who last season pushed $150 to $225 dresses, has not been scheduled for a return appearance.) But how long can they ignore a burgeoning $2-billion-plus industry that promises to do for shopping what the automobile did for travel?
“It would be impossible for me to pretend I could sell a fabulous evening dress or a tailored suit on television,” said New York designer Isaac Mizrahi. “These things have to be tried on and fitted.”
Equally skeptical is Bill Blass: “My clients don’t really shop by TV. I can’t imagine the Bel-Air ladies sitting around watching home shopping.”
To be sure, “the mall you call” is still in its embryonic stages. As it becomes more sophisticated, fashion’s big wheels may decide to roll onto the electronic retailing highway. “I guarantee you within a year most designers will jump in,” predicted Diane Von Furstenberg, a close friend of QVC Chairman Barry Diller who has sold more than $10 million worth of her Silk Assets and accessories collection via TV. “Right now they’re waiting to see what new home-shopping networks will be out there.”
They may be lured by Catalog 1, a Time Warner/Spiegel electronic venture scheduled to premiere next month, offering items by Neiman Marcus, Williams-Sonoma and Crate & Barrel, among others. Or perhaps On Q and Q2, two QVC creations also set to air this spring, will entice them with promises of an updated format and cutting-edge products. Or maybe TV Macy’s, to debut in the fall, will snare fashion’s reluctant stars.
Just don’t expect to see the latest Seventh Avenue designs dancing across your tube anytime soon. Some well-known designers say that although they find the concept intriguing, they’re wary of selling their clothes via television. Reasons range from an unwillingness to share the airwaves with frying pans to a lack of time to a belief that sales agreements and high return rates on merchandise would keep profits too low.
“Look, QVC is basically a discount store, and the Home Shopping Network has fake designers like Vanna White and Ivana Trump,” observed Alan Millstein, publisher of the New York City-based Fashion Network Report. “It’s the wrong ambience for upper-crust designers.
“What’s more, on our current television system, most high-fashion clothes, which are heavily black, beige and gray, look very dull on screen,” he continued. “You can have the finest models and the best lighting and the merchandise will still look blah. Maybe in five years when high-definition TV comes along, things will be different. But right now, you can’t tell the difference between polyester and silk.”
Dana Buchman agreed. “The clothes I see on television are very simplified in cut, and the detailing isn’t at all subtle,” said the New York designer, whose separates are sold in better department stores. “I don’t mean to sound snobby, but they’re selling $19 blouses--which isn’t our customer.” Buchman said she might be interested in electronic shopping “once things get more focused on a higher-priced customer.”
“The possibilities are endless,” she added. “Imagine that right after watching ‘Murphy Brown’ you could turn on some home-shopping program that appeals to the woman who identifies with Murphy’s clothes. Now that would be exciting.”
Randy Kemper, a favorite designer of First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, said he had been approached about doing a home-shopping line but declined. “I’m too involved with getting my collections in the stores to spend time creating a separate line for TV,” he said. “To me, home shopping is about oversize, elastic-waist clothes. I make $650 suits for the urban career woman. I’m not convinced that the image is right. There still seems to be something tacky about home shopping.”
Even with a make-over, electronic retailers might have trouble attracting some designers, including Alexander Julian.
“My financial people say the difficulty is that you can sell a lot of merchandise but only QVC makes money,” the New York menswear designer said. “You also need more interesting programs. Men don’t have the attention span for home shopping that women do.”
Blass, who is “skeptical” about selling clothes on television, conceded that he recently had a grand time hawking sheets on QVC. “Sheets are a standard size; it’s not like a dress that you have to try on,” he explained. “And we had very few returns. But I’ve heard that returns on clothes are astronomical.”
QVC maintains that returns run about 19%, not the 50% or higher quoted in the industry rumor mill. A company representative declined to discuss QVC’s contracts with clients. “All financial deals are confidential and vary with each designer,” she said.
Not all designers are reluctant pioneers in the fertile field of electronic retailing. Those who already sell a collection in department stores create a completely different one exclusively for television.
“I think a lot of designers are being very shortsighted about ‘teleshopping,’ ” said Randolph Duke, who sells a collection of separates on QVC. “It’s part of that old ‘80s mentality of elitism. You can’t hang on to the old way of building a business through expensive prices and prestige image. You have to look for new opportunities.”
Which is just what Duke did. In 1992, after five years on Seventh Avenue, he split with his backer and closed his showroom. A year later, he introduced Style Systems, one of the hipper lines of QVC, with $150 jackets and a $48 leather-and-gold-chain belt. On his first two-hour show, he sold more than $1.1 million in merchandise.
“What I can do on television is teach women how to put together three different looks from one jacket or how to take the season’s hot silhouette and make it work for her,” explained Duke, who also designs a higher-priced collection exclusively for Neiman Marcus.
“The average woman relates to this, not the fantasy pictures they see in Vogue. How many people in middle America have heard of (Belgian designer) Ann Demeulemeester, let alone can describe the clothes she designs?”
Kay Unger also says she is delighted to be part of QVC. Her Kay Unger Desk to Dinner line of $20 to $99 washable separates features such gimmicks as snap-on beaded collars and rhinestone cuff links. Better known for her pricier, career-oriented Gillian collection sold in major department stores, Unger is careful to keep her lines entirely separate.
“I never mention Gillian on the air,” she said. “I would never do anything to jeopardize my relationship with my retailers.”
Nor would Regina Porter, who, in addition to her eponymous retail line, does a sportswear collection for QVC. “Since the lines are totally different and don’t compete with one another, the retailers don’t object,” she explained. “The fashion-forward stuff that sells in the stores doesn’t have the mass appeal you need for television. You’re not going to offer the viewer a see-through blouse that 1% of the audience would wear.”
But designers who have made their names with pricey, high-style creations aimed at Vogue readers aren’t interested in whipping up Size 14 polyester pants for the masses. “I don’t want to downscale my clothes,” Mizrahi said. “I’d rather wait until the market became more upscale.”
It probably will. The tony retailer Bergdorf Goodman recently announced that it would begin testing an interactive home-shopping system in parts of New York City. On Q plans to spotlight innovative fashions, accessories and cosmetics, while Q2 will air programs geared to a young, active, affluent audience.
“I think we’ll get the major designers on board,” predicted Candace Carpenter, president of Q2. She declined to say who they might be.
“Every big designer is waiting for someone else to be the first one to take the plunge,” analyst Millstein said. “To market on TV requires an enormous amount of planning, time and work. It’s not something you do overnight.”
Added designer Kemper, summing up the feelings of many designers: “Everybody keeps saying, ‘Go on TV and you can make a ton of money.’ It’s like the gold rush. But right now, I’m not ready to join the stampede.”
