Fashion Gets Its Feelings Back
NEW YORK--Catherine Malandrino is busy pinning a cascading, floor-length skirt onto a mannequin at her Midtown studio. She pauses for a few moments and looks out at the skyline from her 12th-floor window on West 39th Street on a cold and rainy Thursday. “It’s a different world now, and as a designer I feel like a pioneer in a new world,” she says in her French-accented English, then returns to her wool jersey creation. She is surrounded by racks of the cowboy-inspired fall collection called Wanted that she will show during Fashion Week, which begins today. “This season it’s all about the customer, what the customer wants,” she says.
Meanwhile, at the 7th Avenue offices of Michael Kors, the designer--in khaki trousers, long-sleeve T-shirt and sneakers--couldn’t agree more. “This will be the most consumer-friendly collection week we’ve seen in years.” He also predicts that many, if not most, of the collections will be all-American in theme.
Indeed, Carolina Herrera is calling her collection American Woman. Donna Karan says her is “all about Manhattan.” Jeremy Scott has planned a finale that salutes New York.
Five months after this city’s last Fashion Week was cut short because of the attacks on the World Trade Center, designers return for their biannual ritual of unveiling new creations in a chastened mood--subdued, reflective and newly attuned to shoppers. Gone for now, many say, are the days of the lavish, over-the-top runway shows and such parties as the one hosted by Marc Jacobs and attended by celebrities at Pier 54 the night before the attacks. Several designers, including Herrera and Karan, will present their fall collections in their showrooms, opting for a more intimate, old-fashioned setting.
Kors says the mood within the fashion community is “quieter” than in the past. “It’s time we’ve stopped tap-dancing with people. This week is not about the high jinks involved with shows, not about the 500 celebrities in the audience. It’s going to be about wearable clothes,” Kors says. Though his business has been solid, “it’s going to be a difficult year.”
At Bryant Park, where most shows will be staged, there are only two tents instead of the usual four. Other shows will be held at SoHo’s Puck Building, which is a less expensive venue for designers. Audiences will be smaller, but about 1,500 have officially registered to be part of Fashion Week.
“Fashion had become so much more about spectacle,” says Jaqui Lividini, Saks Fifth Avenue’s senior vice president of fashion merchandising and communications. “We had lost fashion’s simplicity and sense of beauty. I think that’s coming back. This season, beauty will be the core response to the aftermath of Sept. 11.”
That could well mean less avant-gardism and less ostentatiousness--”less” being the operative word.
“Less this, less that, it’s all about a certain rebirth in the fashion industry that has emerged from the disaster,” Karan says. “I think fashion is in an interim period right now. People will still shop. But the time right now is not about telling women or men that you must wear this or that to be in fashion.... Let’s face it, people have tons of clothes in their closets. They don’t need anything, really, which is why my desire at this moment is to connect with the consumer the way a good meal at a restaurant does, the way a good movie does.”
The designer, who is optimistic about the week ahead, says, “I want to touch people emotionally with my work. But fashion also has to have a purpose and a reason. It can’t just be another piece of whatever. We have to give the customer a reason to buy. And after the pain of Sept. 11, the only way we are going to get through this is by talking to one another and not going into our separate worlds.”
That new sense of connecting appears to be spreading. Fern Mallis, executive director of 7th on Sixth, producer of Fashion Week, says, “There has been a kinder, gentler and more sensitive industry. But the fashion industry also is a little leery because business has not been great.” (Even the animal-rights group PETA, which stages anti-fur demonstrations, has called a truce on crashing shows to protest.)
Designers, mindful that sales are what count, are spending more time building relationships with both business contacts and clients.
Since fall, Malandrino, who moved her Paris-based business to West 39th Street four years ago, has been working directly with buyers and others who normally deal with her business staff. She says the industry “has changed from a cold, hard business to one that is much more human. Everyone is much more open to feelings now--who they are, what they do and what they’re going to do--and it doesn’t always have to be about fashion.”
For Herrera, fashion more than ever is about connecting with customers. She recently traveled throughout the country hosting luncheons and other gatherings to meet shoppers in stores. She was inspired to present her collection at her Madison Avenue showroom for the first time--”it’s essentially my office”--after watching 10 young designers use the space last fall.
“It was such a personal way to show clothes, for buyers and the press to see the details of a garment, to chat with the designers. The showroom venue was perfect.”
Designer Ralph Rucci will create a showroom atmosphere at Bryant Park to give each of his 350 guests a front-row seat “so they can see the clothes up front.” That’s if he finishes his collection, Chado Ralph Rucci, in time, he jokes, adding that fabric deliveries from Europe, as usual, are late.
“I’m stressed. I don’t see an end in sight to the work,” he says. “But my mood is optimistic because there is a clear degree of camaraderie among those of us in fashion, and that’s an emotion that is always almost nonexistent.”
To take advantage of the friendly ambience, several designers will be showing here for the first time, including L.A.’s Rick Owens, new L.A. transplant Jeremy Scott, London’s Matthew Williamson and Balenciaga’s Paris-based designer Nicolas Ghesquiere.
“I feel like everyone got robbed last season and that’s why people are feeling strong about this season,” says Scott. “Fashion Week is gonna be a real kick in the pants.”
Lloyd Klein, formerly of Paris, who will show here, says, “This is the place where you have to show right now. New York has soul.”
New designers think so too. Gary Graham, who will present his first show as part of the Gen Art collective, says the tragedy has propelled young designers to move ahead, not retreat. “A lot of young designers that were reluctant to go on or even get started in the business are, like, ‘I should do it now’--that’s across the board. And if you’re in New York, fashion is part of the lifeblood of the city. I don’t ever want to move to Paris. New York is where it’s at.”
He has plenty of company, including fellow designer Oliver Christian Herold, who also runs a small operation. By day, Herold is a full-time stockbroker who works for Quick & Reilly/Fleet Securities Inc., three blocks from where the World Trade Center once stood. He saw the towers go down and recalls “the smell of death” when he returned to Wall Street weeks later.
“It wasn’t a sign to quit my dream,” he says about his off-hours designing career. He’ll take vacation days to stage his show Tuesday that will pay homage to the military nurse with a collection called Loose Lips Sink Ships.
There’s less whimsy, however, among veteran designers such as BCBG’s Max Azria, who admits to being in a “skeptical mood” with the economy in a recession and America at war.
“Retailers are concerned. They, like us, have taken a big hit in the last four months. Everyone is trying to recover, trying to reorganize their operations, but I think a lot of the smaller companies will disappear,” says Azria, whose global operations are based in L.A. “Only the big companies will get stronger. You have to be a fighter in this climate.”
Barbara Dente of the New York advertising and public relations agency Dente & Cristina, which handles several fashion clients, says many fashion businesses “are very timid about committing to financial situations right now. No one knows where the market is going. We cut back on our salaries, on our expenses. But you have to keep a positive attitude about things like New York’s Fashion Week. To turn our backs on the week is really the wrong message to send.”
On Thursday, construction crews worked in the rain at Bryant Park to complete the set up of the tents. Passersby often stopped to watch the construction and the plastic fliers posted on the park’s ornate, wrought-iron fence. “Please pardon our appearance and sorry for any inconvenience. We are in the process of turning New York City into the fashion capital of the world again!” Flags around the park, decorated with a drawing of a woman in red striking a Lady Liberty pose, also proclaimed the city as the premier place for world fashion.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg officially opens Fashion Week today with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at Bryant Park, where the tents are painted with the American flag as interpreted by designer Stephen Sprouse.
“Fashion Week will be a rebirth of sorts for us,” says Peter Arnold, executive director of the Council of Fashion Designers of America. “A lot of attention will be paid to what happens in the next several days. The world’s eyes will be on American fashion.”
