Born-Again Christians

Tout le monde was talking about it. Well, tout le fashion monde anyway. Yves Saint Laurent was in the front row of the Christian Dior men's show last month, sandwiched between his business partner Pierre Berg* and LVMH chairman Bernard Arnault. It may not seem like a big deal—Saint Laurent used to be the designer for Christian Dior, and the designer having the show, Hedi Slimane, once worked for the Yves Saint Laurent label. But Saint Laurent never showed up at one of Slimane's shows before. In fact, Saint Laurent has reportedly attended only one other fashion show ever. What brought the semi-reclusive designer out to the Jardin des Plantes? Ask Sidney Toledano, president and chief executive of Christian Dior Couture, and he'll tell you: fraternit*. After all, Karl Lagerfeld, another legend who now designs for Chanel, was backstage taking photographs. And John Galliano, Dior's women's designer, was watching with actress Cate Blanchett in tow. "It was a great moment for Paris," Toledano said.

It was certainly a great moment for Arnault, who also controls Christian Dior. Neither Berg* nor Saint Laurent were at the YSL men's show the day before. (Remember, Arnault's archrival Gucci Group bought YSL for $1 billion late last year.) The debut men's collection by Tom Ford was a homage to Saint Laurent the man—a parade of lookalike models in the designer's signature glasses. That Berg* and Saint Laurent chose to attend the Dior show instead of the one for the brand they created could only be seen as a slap in the face of the new owners. Or so said the YSL trade union, which mailed an official letter of complaint to Berg* and the media after the event. Such excitement!

More subtle, but just as interesting, was the appointment of Slimane in the first place. Cerebral and reserved, Slimane couldn't be more dissimilar to Galliano, the buoyant, effusive man who has spent the last four years tearing down the image of Dior and rebuilding to fit a vision uniquely his own. Slimane achieved fame in fashion circles in 1996 with his sleek, sexy designs for the Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche men's label. His clothes are unique in men's wear—slim leather coats, narrow suits and sheer shirts—subtle and elegant pieces that focus more on the cut than on styling flourishes. Critics labeled him either modern or feminine—the latter characterization supported by the fact that the stars he has dressed include Madonna.

"The framework of men's wear is so narrow, that when you play at the edges you get labelled," Slimane says. Universally recognized as one of the most talented designers working today, Slimane was bombarded with offers after the YSL sale—reportedly from Prada Group to design the women's collection for Jil Sander and from Gucci Group to set up a collection in his own name. Signing Slimane was a major coup for Arnault in the battle between Gucci and LVMH. Slimane said he chose Dior because he wanted his own atelier and was intrigued by the idea of creating a men's collection more or less from scratch. "Men's is a white page here," Slimane said. "There's nearly no presence for the collection in America. The licenses have been cut off, so it's a clean name. That was appealing to me." Dior Homme had previously consisted of traditional suits that sold mainly in Europe and Asia.

While the Dior men's business was sleeping, women's has been rocking and rolling, forcing everyone around it to pay attention. Since 1997, Galliano has been working to create a house of Dior that is racy, loud and, most of all, fun. Where Hedi sees simple shapes, John sees lavish layers. Where Slimane sees minimalism, Galliano sees extravaganza. Galliano, the postmodernist, takes the world and its history as his inspiration—creating collections that revisit the aesthetic of, say, the Amazons or the trailer park, and presents them in a whole new light.

Arnault's appointment of Galliano—the first of the so-called bad-boy British designers to invade Paris—to the House of Givenchy outraged many of couture's stalwarts. These included, ironically, Berg*, who saw the early collections as a death knell for haute couture. Others saw him as its savior—the man who could bring excitement, and maybe even paying customers, back to the parlors of the couture houses. Excitement? Headlines? Galliano got both in droves. After a year, Arnault promoted him to Dior and moved another British bad-boy, Alexander McQueen, to Givenchy, arguing that good press is paramount and sales secondary.

Galliano's first collection for Dior coincided with the house's 50th anniversary. The 50 dresses he presented were inspired by Christian Dior, and the collection was deemed worthy of the house's reputation. Subsequent efforts—including the denim collection, the homeless collection and the S&M collection—baffled and even insulted many who wondered if there could possibly be a customer for these clothes. Rumors that Arnault would replace Galliano surfaced regularly. But instead, Arnault renewed Galliano's contract in 2000 and increased his responsibilities, granting him creative control over things like advertising and accessories. "The impact of these shows is realized though sales of accessories and perfume," says Dior ceo Toledano. "The correlation between a good show and good sales of those things is very strong."

Even Galliano's most outrageous stunt—dressing models in newspapers and bags as part of his homeless collection—failed to sway Toledano's faith in him. "Some haute couture people are doing stuff that's not creative," the executive sniffs. "They're doing ready-to-wear." In the days after the collection, Toledano met with the groups representing the homeless who had protested the show to explain to them the importance of creative freedom.

The controversy-first strategy is slowly paying off. Dior lost $1 million in 1998, the result of cutting off a myriad of licenses. But in 1999 it was back in the black, with profits of some $8 million. In 2000, sales increased another 35%—most of which is credited to Galliano's involvement.

Slimane's collections for Dior, the first of which was seen in January, will likely continue to receive raves from the fashion press. But they're unlikely to shock the media as a whole into paying attention. The controversy created by the presence of Berg* and Saint Laurent was of a sort that is lost on anyone outside fashion's inner circle. Sure, Arnault scored points there, but the larger question remains whether Dior Homme's stark ads, minimal styles and boyish models make sense in the house of Dior that Galliano has been remodeling. Is it logical for two strong yet vastly different designers to coexist—let alone cocreate—for the same brand? Wouldn't it make more sense to have a single unified image? After all, the Gucci man and woman look more or less alike. Same with the Prada couple. The Burberry pair can be spotted blocks away. Galliano himself told reporters in 1999 that he'd be interested in designing his own men's collection for Dior.

Now Galliano laughs when the subject is raised, pointing out that he was the one who recommended Slimane for the post. "I was rooting for him because I want something to wear," he says. And Dior executives argue there's room for a variety of Diors. "We did a study and found Dior can be a brand with several different talents," says Toledano, pointing out that his firm's fine jewelry is designed by Victoire de Castellane and will get a new store on the Place Vend™me this spring. The brand-management theory? Separate but equal.

Slimane's first task was to design his own office and atelier—sleek and modern with hidden tall narrow doorways and wood floors and just down the street from the historical home of Christian Dior and Galliano's team. Next, he produced ads featuring a black-and-white portrait of a young, bare-chested boy shot by Richard Avedon. And by the end of 2001, the first Dior Homme stores will open. Rarely, if ever, will the men's and women's clothes hang side by side. "All they share is a logo and the color gray," Toledano says.

Also the seeds of chaos? From now on, all eyes will be on the Dior runways to see whether this diversity produces profits or simply more headlines.