 |
 |
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
E-mail your letter to the editor
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
Designing Men |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Paris prides itself on being the fashion capital of the world. But few of the designers working there are French. LAUREN GOLDSTEIN finds two who are |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
Posted Sunday, April 14, 2002; 15.05GMT
Forty-four years ago, when a 21-year-old
Yves Saint Laurent presented his first collection for the house of
Christian Dior, headlines in Paris screamed "Saint Laurent Has Saved
France!" But now Christian Dior women's wear is designed by an Englishman.
As is Givenchy's. Ready-to-wear at Louis Vuitton, Céline and Yves
Saint Laurent is in the hands of American designers. Paris is still
the center for creativity in fashion, but the most exciting shows
have been those put on by foreigners. Until now. Two more French houses
are ripe for turnaround — and this time the talent behind them
is French.
Nicolas Ghesquière
When the then-owners of the legendary couture house of Balenciaga,
Groupe Jacques Bogart, decided they wanted to turn the brand around
in 1997, they did a very un-chic thing. They gave the job of chief
designer to one of their current staffers.
Nicolas Ghesquière had been at the company since 1996, designing
unglamorous things like uniforms for a Japanese license partner. Suddenly
he was in the hot seat. Sort of. The owners gave him six months, then
a year, then three. By the time Gucci Group became interested in buying
Balenciaga in 2000, Ghesquière was the hottest young designer
working in fashion. "They hired me as an accident," Ghesquière
says of Groupe Jacques Bogart. "I was not famous. I was an assistant.
I didn't have my own collection." And he still doesn't. When Domenico
De Sole, CEO of Gucci Group, came calling Ghesquière was the
core property. "The main idea was to have Nicolas join us," says De
Sole. Balenciaga didn't have the recognition of an Yves Saint Laurent
or a Gucci. The investment needed to make it profitable would be substantial.
Almost as substantial as that required to build a Nicolas Ghesquière
brand from scratch.
"The key driver was Nicolas," says De Sole. "Nicolas made it clear
he loved the brand and that he had an attachment to it." So Gucci
made an agreement with Ghesquière that said he would join the
group no matter what and, if possible, Gucci would buy Balenciaga
for him too. If not, they would launch a Nicolas Ghesquière
line. Groupe Jacques Bogart eventually realized that without Ghesquière,
Balenciaga wasn't much. A license agreement in Japan made negotiations
difficult, but eventually Gucci Group completed the acquisition, which
was announced in July of 2000. "Balenciaga is fascinating because
now we have both the novelty and excitement surrounding Nicolas and
the history of Balenciaga," says De Sole. Still, it's not every designer
who would give up the chance of his own label in order to revive someone
else's brand.
But Ghesquière's motivation was fashion, not himself —
or France. "When I started at Balenciaga I was trying not to think
French but globally," Ghesquière says. His designs are based
on the spirit of Balenciaga, not the archives. The early collections,
famous for their '80s references, were noticed first by the British
and American press, and sold primarily to Italy, Britain, the U.S.
and Japan. But not the French. It's not a unique problem. Marie-Christiane
Marek, host of Paris Mode, a Canal Plus TV show about fashion, recently
produced a program on young designers from around the world. "Every
one of them said, 'We sell to the Japanese. We sell around the world,
but not in Paris.' The stores here are very cold to the idea of new
designers." Ghesquière showed his most recent collection in
New York because he had the freedom to do so. But it's no coincidence
that the U.S. is Balenciaga's biggest market, making up some 35% of
the brand's sales. The show was deemed by many as the creative highlight
of a rather dull fashion week. The world's only Balenciaga store,
on Avenue George V in Paris, is in the midst of a renovation and De
Sole says the next priority is a second Balenciaga store in —
where else? — New York City.
Hedi Slimane
Hedi Slimane's first big break in fashion came in 1996 when he was
named designer of the Yves Saint Laurent men's collection. The obvious
benefit of working for such a well-known brand is the ease with which
a designer's work can attract attention. There's another benefit,
less obvious to outsiders, in working for such an established French
name — the opportunity to work with the atelier: the men and
women who had been making clothes for the Yves Saint Laurent company
for over 30 years.
But when Slimane began he found a bit of French resistance. "They
don't let you in very easily," he says. "They have to accept you."
And the fact that Slimane was French didn't help one bit. "I'd ask
for a correction and they would not do it. They wanted to see if I
would react." He did, of course, and his men's collections for Saint
Laurent attracted the attention of fashion editors and store buyers
around the world.
So when Slimane left Saint Laurent to become the designer for Christian
Dior Homme in 2000, he decided to build his own atelier from scratch.
He invited not only some of the tailors he had worked with before
at Saint Laurent Homme, but also some of the workers from the Saint
Laurent haute couture atelier. "I wanted that mix of high fashion
and traditional tailoring," he says. That mix has made his designs
for men popular with women also. Slimane says there's no way to know
exactly what percentage of his customers are women, but it's enough
to spark an interest in the possibility of launching a separate line
for them.
But Slimane's fondness for French techniques and French technicians
doesn't make him a full-fledged Francophile. He divides his time between
Paris and Berlin and travels frequently to New York. It's the differences
that entice him. "I was amazed at how the city recovered" after the
Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, he says. "I don't think the same would
have happened in Paris. Here we have a more individual spirit. There
people are more civic-minded."
Slimane is also spending a lot of time in Los Angeles these days.
In late March he went there to personally supervise the production
of clothes for Oscar-bound stars. "Hollywood is the projection of
the American dream," Slimane says, adding that he could live quite
happily in the U.S.
Just as Ghesquière was discovered first by the press outside
Paris, so too was Slimane. "The French don't comment so much on French
creativity," he says. "Every French designer has been recognized first
by others. It's very typical. And not just in fashion."
|
|
