A runway isn’t the only way to take off
In the final moments of the Destiny’s Child concert last Friday at Staples Center, Beyonce Knowles was standing underneath a waterfall, shaking her hair and her famously curvy booty and belting out the last notes of “Lose My Breath.” The lights went down, the applause roared, and then the pop star emerged front and center to make an unusual announcement: The show’s wardrobe was by House of Dereon.
The message to fans? You can get the same look for about $100 when my House of Dereon clothing collection arrives in department stores next month.
The concert stage might seem worlds away from the New York runways, but, as the fashion establishment gears up for the spring 2006 season, beginning Friday in New York and continuing through mid-October in Milan, Paris and L.A., the strategy underscores a shift in the significance of the industry’s twice-yearly runway shows.
It used to be fashion flowed in a straight line, from runway to editor to the rest of us. But now that pop culture is increasingly transfixed by style -- on the red carpet at MTV’s Video Music Awards and countless other award shows, on Bravo’s “Project Runway” and in dozens of weekly celebrity magazines -- the runway is far from the only way to launch a label or a trend.
Now retailers place 75% or more of their orders before the first model steps onto the runway. Paparazzo photographs of Lindsay Lohan can start an oversized-sunglasses trend. Jessica Simpson’s Daisy Duke costume can create a run on cowboy boots on EBay. Oprah Winfrey can decide she likes designers Narciso Rodriguez and Tory Burch and introduce them to more than 7 million viewers on TV. Kitson, the trendy Robertson Boulevard boutique, can parlay its reputation as a celebrity hangout into a Kitson footwear label. And the popularity of the hit TV show “The OC” can lead to the launch of a clothing line.
So runway shows have become more about brand statements and celebrities getting their photos taken in the front row than about selling clothes. New York Fashion Week is still defined by a handful of must-see designers such as Marc Jacobs, Ralph Lauren and Michael Kors, but celebrity designers staging blockbuster extravaganzas pack the biggest marketing punch, when they’re not bypassing the traditional fashion system altogether and taking their product directly to the people.
“We saw the runway shows start to change as recently as a few years ago,” says Marshal Cohen, chief analyst for NPD Group, which follows the fashion business. “First, designers became avant-garde and did things that were really out there to try to get the media to cover.”
In 2000, Imitation of Christ staged a show of reworked vintage clothes at an East Village funeral parlor. Miguel Adrover mounted a Middle Eastern-themed runway show two days before the World Trade Center attacks in 2001, complete with live goats and models in head-to-toe veils. (He later said it was a statement about women.)
In 2003, Jeremy Scott showcased his collection in a short film titled “Starring,” a “Dynasty” spoof featuring China Chow, Tori Spelling and others. The next season, he created a peep show at a SoHo art gallery, with curtained-off glass booths full of models and celebrities undressed in his clothes.
Now we are seeing the next step in the runway evolution, Cohen says. “More creative artists -- not designers, but in many cases celebrities -- are finding new and innovative ways to connect with the consumer and bring their lifestyle and brand to the consumer. It’s part of our entertainment culture. They treat fashion like the entertainment business.”
Pop star and Orange County style icon Gwen Stefani is presenting the first show for her L.A.M.B. label at the Roseland Ballroom on Thursday, which will include a top-secret musical component. Kimora Lee Simmons, the model-turned-designing diva and wife of hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons, has moved her Baby Phat show from the Fashion Week tents, where she was only able to accommodate 1,200, to Radio City Music Hall, where she can present her Hollywood-themed collection to 3,000 editors, buyers, celebrities, stylists and clients too.
The shift in the significance of the runway is represented as much by who is showing as who isn’t. Although Sean “Diddy” Combs’ Sean John women’s line is one of the most hotly anticipated launches of the spring season, he won’t show it on the runway this week, perhaps to avoid competing with Stefani.
“He wanted to make his first debut with the women’s line something that would be really spectacular,” said spokesman Hampton Carney.
“When we do, we’re going to shut the city down,” Combs effused to Women’s Wear Daily.
In February, Jennifer Lopez closed New York Fashion Week with a super-hyped extravaganza rolling out her Sweetface label. She used the show to debut her Miami Glow fragrance and her album “Rebirth.” And the whole gig was filmed for a documentary on MTV. But La Lopez is not returning to the tents at Bryant Park this season.
“If you do it every season, it becomes expected,” NPD’s Cohen says. “And the minute it becomes expected, it’s no longer cultural or countercultural. This is about innovation, lifestyle and attitude. And if you are conforming to the norms of the industry, you have lost your personality and individuality.”
Instead of participating in New York Fashion Week, Andy Hilfiger, president and co-founder of Sweetface with his brother Tommy, says he’s “decided to bring Jennifer to the consumer.” Lopez will do a fashion show in Chicago on Sept. 22, when she opens her first store, and another in L.A. during the Macy’s Passport event on Sept. 29. Both will be open to the public.
“It’s great to show fashion to press and buyers, but there are only 700 or 800 of them who get to see the show,” says Hilfiger, a former rock musician who helped establish Tommy Hilfiger’s 20-year-old label in the early 1990s by recruiting rappers and other celebrities to wear the clothes. “When you do a show on TV, millions of people get to see it. That works better for us.”
So is what Beyonce wears on stage more influential than what Michael Kors shows on the runway?
Not necessarily, says Cindy Lieve, Glamour editor in chief. The magazine, she says, offers more runway coverage and designer interviews than it did even two years ago but also more celebrity coverage. “The reason readers know about Valentino is they see pictures of Gwyneth Paltrow on his yacht. For us, celebrity coverage isn’t squeezing out fashion coverage; it is creating an increased appetite.”
Michael Fink, senior fashion director at Saks Fifth Avenue, agrees. “Often celebrities are validating trends for the masses that are already happening in the marketplace,” he says. “And the celebrity-of-the-week doing a clothing collection or fragrance is more of a curiosity than anything else, because in this business you have to prove yourself. You can have all the money in the world for a show and tons of press, but you have to have talent.”
Although he does most of his buying before Fashion Week, he still looks forward to the runway as a showcase for a designer’s “pure vision.”
“The thing we forget about the shows is that they chronicle change,” he says. “Look at the fall season. You never know where the gem is going to be.”
Indeed, who knew at New York Fashion Week in February that Marc Jacobs’ darkly romantic show, inspired by the sullen superhero Violet in “The Incredibles,” would be a lightning rod in the fashion community and that all of the European shows would fall in line to create a single phrase to describe the season: “Black is back.”
As far as celebrity labels go, Saks already carries Stefani’s L.A.M.B., which Fink describes as “well thought-out.” Though he did not buy Beyonce Knowles’ line, he calls her concert rollout strategy “clever.”
“It’s target marketing for a specific customer who is very influenced by what celebrities are wearing. But there is also a fashion customer who doesn’t want to be associated with any of that because it’s too mainstream, it’s too media,” Fink says.
And moving forward into the paparazzo circus that is New York Fashion Week, there will be plenty of grist for both -- whether it’s coming down the runway or smiling for the cameras in the front row.
