LINE TAMERS
At the Pavilion Gabriel, a glass-walled building across from the American Embassy near Place de la Concorde, an array of black-clad men and women alternately lingered over a catered gourmet lunch and blinked into laptops before plowing through dozens of racks holding John Galliano’s new fall collection.
These are the power brokers of retail fashion, executives like Hila Ekelman, a couture buyer for Neiman Marcus, who decide on which, if any, runway looks will make their way to customers around the world. Ekelman was part of a 10-person buying team from the Dallas-based specialty store. These style arbiters decided back in March which items from Galliano, and other designers, would be available in the 31 Neiman stores beginning this week.
It’s a high-stakes, high-dollar ritual, repeated season after season in every design house here and in fashion centers around the world. What appeared four days earlier on Galliano’s runway--42 extravagant ensembles that could clothe an Eskimo geisha in Mongolia--is notably different from the 450 garments tantalizing buyers in the showroom.
The showroom collection offers hundreds of variations of Galliano’s runway looks, forcing buyers to piece together their purchases like an intricate puzzle. The options are so vast, that it’s unlikely that the collection will look exactly the same in any one store. Even a single garment can change for a store.
The process of editing Galliano’s over-the-top runway shows into wearable and more affordable clothes illustrates how a top designer manipulates product and perception to build an identity and a business.
Galliano made his runway bow at Theatre de l’Empire in an interpretation of the collection--shimmering gold lame pants, fur mukluks and a rugged shearling vest, but the designer is nowhere to be found among the buyers. Like any good showman, he’s loath to pull back the curtain to reveal the gritty, unglamorous and sometimes ingenious necessities of doing business.
In the showroom, a representative from his office nervously circled a freely roaming newspaper photographer. The designer had commanded that only close-up details of the clothes be photographed. It is so forbidden to publicize this more commercial side of the business that a publicist warned she could be fired for a violation.
On the runway, famous models with feathers glued around one eye to resemble an exotic mask wore layer upon layer of richly embroidered coats, dresses and pants while balancing oversized parcels on their heads like some sort of coiffure a la papoose. For the buyers, unknown models sported natural makeup and hairstyles, wore a minimum of layers and had trouble walking in 4-inch heels.
Where the catwalk is flash and excitement, the showroom is scrutiny and logic, but the two merged in a pair of suede-like salmon-skin hip-hugger jeans. Their overwhelming luxury and unmistakable craftsmanship awakened a lust for ownership in all who saw them. But this one-of-a-kind pair, made to radiate an idea on the runway, were not to be had. Like a master seducer, Galliano created desire with the exotic skin jeans and arranged to satisfy it with more salable, though still pricey, approximations in decorated cotton denim.
The runway version of a thick sweater adorned with the season’s new rustic Galliano logo and 17 handmade, fur-trimmed snow star appliques costs $3,325 retail. To allow buyers to stretch their budgets, Galliano also offered a two-star version that would sell for $1,000 less. The elaborate embroidered dragon emblem that appeared on a ball gown also was translated onto an embroidered T-shirt that is an “entry level” purchase into the Galliano world.
Those $430 T-shirts and $700 embroidered jeans arrived on the sales floor this week and are selling well. Many of the line’s most expensive pieces are destined for L.A., where Galliano’s bold designs help make the collection at Beverly Hills Neiman Marcus one of the largest selections anywhere.
“We always buy over-the-top pieces for L.A.,” said Ekelman. “The more fantasy there is in them, the better the clients love them.” With a laptop to record her purchases, Ekelman bought at least one in every size from 4 to 12 of a $4,800 (retail) hand-painted shearling jacket and a similar $4,500 skirt, and a significant number of $2,200 denim skirts. She calculated her budget from a complex matrix of wholesale prices that she was careful not to reveal.
With so many stores across the country to fill, Ekelman had a wide latitude to buy more extreme looks with their five-figure retail prices, though she concentrated the wildest looks in a fashionably thin size 6 or 8. Only one piece, a $10,000 cream-embroidered black leather jacket, was purchased with one specific client in mind, though company policy forbids naming her.
“I think of the customers as a group,” Ekelman said. “Usually, if it is good for one customer, there is another customer somewhere in the U.S. who will buy it.”
As the buyer worked throughout a long afternoon, her team shrank and swelled, with as many as 10 people focused on a single garment. Politely, they offered opinions on each item’s appeal.
“I can see someone at the Academy Awards in that,” fashion director Joan Kaner said as a model minced past in a corseted tuxedo dress. Catherine Bloom, the personal shopper for the Beverly Hills store, had flown in to study collections for her best customers, several of whom will show up on red carpets. Stars from Nicole Kidman to Cate Blanchett became awards-show fashion plates in their Gallianos; rocker Gwen Stefani became a sophisticate in his custom designs.
If history is any guide, Los Angeles customers will buy even Galliano’s heavy winter coats and jackets, including furs with five-figure price tags. “Price isn’t an issue when it’s something special,” said senior vice president and general merchandise manager Ann Stordahl.
Galliano made his name with exotic showstoppers. Now, he’s making money by infusing the air of their mystique into less expensive items. The silhouette of a huge, $13,000 mink coat is reinterpreted in a shorter black shearling coat to create a look that’s more casual and slightly less expensive. The Oriental brocade of his evening wear is interpreted as a print on cashmere twin sets or a chiffon camisole. He’s cleverly woven the roughhewn, appliqued logo he’d created for this collection into the clothes and the company’s image.
Instead of his usual gothic-lettered logo, the Galliano name was spelled out in rough suede strips across a bulky sweater, a shearling handbag and even the length of a wide belt. When that yard-long belt was scanned life-size to become his show’s invitation, perceptive fashionistas didn’t need smoke signals to get the point. The designer had revealed the direction of his show and fanned desire for his latest status logo.
Judging by the buyers’ enthusiasm for his fall collection, it is easy to understand why Galliano’s creative reach and commercial clout have never been as pervasive. He produces four collections a year for his signature label and even more as Christian Dior’s designer. Under both labels, his clothes sell in hundreds of stores around the world, including the Maxfield boutique in West Hollywood and New York’s Bergdorf Goodman. Not only has Dior become one of the few profitable luxury firms, with sales steadily increasing, the trademarks of his signature collection have also become recognized in global fashion. His way with luxury military wear, bias-cut slip dresses and powerful prints of everything from newspapers to Indian chiefs has inspired lasting trends that show up at other luxury ateliers and on $10 swap-meet styles.
As Ekelman and her colleagues bridge the fantasy of fashion and the reality of business, they seem to operate in a world that is neither. Though few of the executives wear Galliano’s exotic $10,000 and $20,000 creations, their jobs depend on knowing the women who do. It’s not a world open to many, but Galliano’s design--and shrewd marketing--make his clothes seem accessible.
When even the tamer versions of his clothes show up on store shelves or, eventually, on markdown racks, they manage to retain the electric energy of his runway spectacles. Galliano and the store buyers know that whether customers spend $300 or $3,000, they’re not just buying apparel. They’re buying excitement.
