11:19 a.m.
There’s an article in this morning’s Wall Street Journal (Why Is This Man Still Fashionable?) about the continued, and even accelerating, success of fashion designer Oscar de la Renta. With many of his contemporaries exiting the fashion stage and/or selling controlling interest in their eponymous lines to huge conglomerates such as LVMH or PPR, Oscar de la Renta is a rare fashion-business anomaly, keeping design duties in-house and controlling interests in-family.
Just one and a half years ago, de la Renta’s clothing was selling at only seven chain retailers worldwide with just another seven free-standing boutiques of his own. Today, Oscar de la Renta is offered at over 45 chain retailers around the world, and there are plans to bump boutique locations up to twelve in 2008 as the company rakes in over $750 million in annual retail sales with seemingly plenty of room to grow.
Asked to what he believes his current success can be attributed, he answers that “probably it has to do with the fact that I seriously address today a consumer who loves clothes . . . I have always done very feminine clothes, so this is my time, the time for women to really be proud to be women . . . Today a woman knows that putting on lipstick, looking great, putting on a beautiful dress, is wonderful. She can express who she is, in a much stronger way, exercising a sense of femininity.”
Below is the video of Oscar de la Renta’s Fall/Winter 2007/2008 Ready to Wear collection:
Part of the interview dealt with several political First Ladies’ penchants (Nancy Reagan, Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush) for dressing in de la Renta, with Oscar expressing his wish that Hillary Clinton would wear strapless gowns — “She has great shoulders,” he says.
