Pardon me if this week’s round-up comes across as a bit scattered, but I can’t think for all the screaming.
You see, fast-fashion chain retailer H&M announced that its latest PR blitz designer collaboration was going to be with Lebanese born Alber Elbaz of uber-riche French label Lanvin. The resulting response among the not-so-riche (yet oh so *very* aspirational) fashion fiends was such a ruckus that you’d have thought every four year old girl in the Western Hemisphere just got a pony for Christmas . . . in September.
Writes Elle Blogs: “Alber Elbaz even addressed the fact that he’d spoken out against fast fashion, twisting the idea on its head to suggest that he in fact is introducing luxury to H&M instead of H&M lowering the Lanvin bar: ‘I have said in the past that I would never do a mass-market collection, but what intrigued me was the idea of H&M going luxury rather than Lanvin going public.’”
Whew. He’s so knee deep in B.S. I can smell it all the way over here.
But I think what surprises me most is the naive, hyperventilating reaction from fashion blogs. Uhm, hello? Have you all forgotten every single past H&M designer capsule collection? You’re not getting Lanvin for less, in any way shape or form. What you’re getting is higher priced H&M with a sort-of runway friendly look — which means cheap fabrics and assembly line production quality (i.e. a subsistence-wage factory labor in Cambodia) with certain over-obvious touches (bows, ribbons and pearls) that will serve as short-hand for a type of Lanvin style, but only if you squint real hard, hold your breath and die from dreaming first.
“We are thrilled about Lanvin’s collection for H&M, it is such an exciting moment. Lanvin will bring to H&M a luxurious French tradition that is also modern and playful. It is very much a Lanvin collection, using their cut and tailoring, with lots of focus on form and details for both women and men. The launch in November is going to be full of wonderful surprises,” said Margareta van den Bosch, creative advisor at H&M.
Others, however, are not so “thrilled”:
Amen to that.
And the Lanvin people are crazy if they think this won’t tarnish their cred with their existing clientele. What loyal Lanvin client is going to happily greet the news that urban 20-something working girls are soon to be stalking the city streets with what will amount to officially sanctioned brand knock-offs?
Although if this NYTimes story is any indication of the Lanvin customer base, perhaps it won’t really matter as much as I think it might: “When societies become too rich and civilized, they decline and dissipate around the edges, and they begin to adopt as new and luxe signifiers normally associated with the peasantry. The rich seem to grow nostalgic for entropy after a few decades of being too shiny and clean. Even Marie-Antoinette built her Hameau de la Reine because she needed to dress like a dirty little milkmaid once in a while.”
Now, I’m fully of the Tom Peters school of thinking in that just because something’s inexpensive doesn’t mean it has to be ugly, and perhaps designers like Elbaz are repeating this mantra to themselves as they cash their H&M checks, genuinely believing that they’re offering a service to mass-market consumers by at least injecting some welcome style into the mix, but I also believe that such mass-market moves are a kidney-punch to a brand’s highly-skilled and specialized tailors, seamstresses, leatherworkers and jewelry designers, not to mention a slap in the face to existing clientele: “Oh, you like our fifteen thousand dollar pearl, diamond and tulle-wrapped necklace? They’re selling a twenty-five dollar version at H&M, with the Lanvin name on it, too!”
So with the high-end brands themselves eagerly bastardizing and street-styling their own good names, who can really blame the EU for telling them to shove it where the sun don’t shine when it comes to spending taxpayer dollars on policing for fashion counterfeit items:
Fake goods are fine, says EU study: “A new EU-funded report has declared that it is OK to buy fake designer goods . . . It also rejects the complaints of designer companies, claiming that losses to the industry as a result of counterfeiting are vastly exaggerated . . . It disputes claims that the counterfeiting of luxury brands is funding terrorism and organized crime, and argues there is little public appetite for tough law enforcement measures as consumers enjoy the bargains offered by the illegal trade . . . Professor David Wall, who co-authored the report and advises the government on crime, said the real cost to the industry from counterfeiting could be one-fifth of previously calculated figures. ‘It’s probably even less,’ he said . . . ‘We should be focusing on the trade in counterfeit drugs, dodgy aircraft parts and other stuff that really causes public harm.’”
I was talking with my partner about this the other day. I said, “I don’t know how I feel about this — the big brands spend an enormous amount of money battling counterfeiting, and if you’re a smaller brand, you don’t really have the resources to fight this kind of thing if the police task forces are taken off the job.”
He snorted in reply. “It’s called the cost of doing business, and if you can’t afford to fight the counterfeiters, then it’s not a viable business for you to get into.”
“But but but . . . the jobs that will be lost if we give the counterfeiters carte blanche!” I wailed, doing my best impersonation of a CEO under pressure from stockholders.
He snorted again. “Why should taxpayers subsidize private business? Because using public police and crime fighting forces to go after fashion counterfeiters is exactly that: a taxpayer subsidy of the fashion business. The EU guys are right — there are more important things for investigative task forces to be doing.”
Made even more the case when you take into consideration that these very brands have been eagerly and willfully exporting all their production skill and know-how to the developing countries that are now ripping them off. It’s not like those handbag factories in China sprang up all on their own. It’s hard to feel sympathy for the fashion industry when they so casually sowed the seeds for their own destruction.
But, and this is an intriguing “but” — part of me has a sneaky suspicion that these kinds of mass-market collaborations are the first steps for high-end fashion brands to take control of the knock-off trade that their outsourcing competitions created. After all, if you can’t beat ‘em, then you may as well figure out a way of profiting from the activity yourself. If a young fashion consumer can trot on over to TopShop, Target or H&M for the latest Lanvin, Lagerfeld or Cavalli rip-off, at least the designers will get a cut from the sale.
Though such thinking (and collaborating) completely explodes the myth of any participating brand’s exclusivity. Or maybe these tougher economic times have forced fashion brands to get a little more honest — after all, it’s a business, right? And you can’t afford to ignore a huge customer segment for some high-flying heritage that has nothing to do with your 21st century factories. Because once mass-market production technologies infiltrated the luxury brands, the days of clinging to an artisanal past were numbered.
But as far as keeping production local and supporting native talent, it looks like China just might beat all the Western brands at that game, too: “I think Asian designers, especially Chinese ones, are ready to take their rightful places on the world stage. They have been widely exposed to the West and they have their own ideas on fashion,” says Huang Hung, an author, television talk show host and magazine publisher. “Local designers and brands have been sidelined and fighting an uphill battle against Western imports, which have long dominated the Chinese market. (But) BNC (Brand New China) is a platform for young designers who share our culture and are pioneers with their own ideas.”
Now that we’ve exported nearly our entire textile manufacturing industry to China, we’re kind of screwed when it comes to supporting local.
Speaking of screwed, can I get cranky for just a minute about what’s happened to Twitter? Just a year ago, Twitter was a terrific resource for succinct, no-nonsense, on-the-go info about the fashion industry, but within the past two to three months, there’s been an explosion of fashion spam disguised as tweets from magazine editors, brand representatives, PR gurus and fashion portals.
In the article, Should luxury brands use twitter?, Paurav Shukla writes that, “Funny enough, I came across a recent study carried out by an analytics company in the US, called Pear Analytics2. The study was conducted by looking at the content of 2,000 randomly sampled twitter messages from the public stream of Twitter. The analyst then separated these messages into six buckets: (a) news; (b) spam; (c) self-promotion; (d) pointless babble; (e) conversational and (f) pass-along value. The striking result of this study was that more than 40% of the total twitter posts were put in the category ‘pointless-babble’.”
And nothing says “pointless babble” (if not downright spam) like a fashion magazine editor’s Twitter feed. I’ve been delinking from numerous feeds as the noise ratchets up about Fashion’s Night Out and the upcoming global fashion weeks. It’s all become a blur of “I love these (insert important advertising client’s brand here) shoes!” and “Can’t wait for (insert important advertising client’s brand here)’s runway show — it’ll be super-cuters!” and “I’m at the pre-show party for (insert important advertising client’s brand here) and having a fabulous time!”
Okay okay, we get it, you’re an industry cheerleader/whore, now could you save the advertising for your magazine and use your Twitter feed for something useful? Like, I dunno, talking about what it’s like to be a fashion magazine editor and run an essentially non-essential business during an extended recession? That’d be fantastic, thanks.
It’s as if Twitter has become a scrolling billboard, made worse by marketing gurus dispensing advice about how to increase traffic to your ad and affiliate-link heavy site/fashion portal. I swear, if I see one more “Top Ten (blanks) You Need!” or “Our Favorite (blanks) for Fall!” list, I’m going to crawl through the fiber-optic cables and strangle someone.
*And now a few words from our commercial sponsor: “Oh, I’m sorry dear consumer, did you tune-in to social media for real opinions and real talk about real-world experience with real products from real people? Too bad, so sad. Twitter has now been co-opted by moi, the industry, the very self-serving, self-interested and bottom-line motivated voice you were hoping to escape. Come gaze upon the latest Terry Richardson photo-shoot and despair! Here’s the twitter link: http://3k67.u.cc.”
Not that there’s anything wrong with a business being self-serving, self-interested and bottom-line motivated, but interacting through social media was supposed to be a way for consumers to talk to each other or to real faces behind the brand names, increasing transparency while diminishing the silky smooth insinuations of marketing departments. Pfffft. Talk about naive hyperventilating — who was I kidding? The genuine interactions lasted about six months, tops, before everyone figured out that Twitter could be utilized as a free marketing and branding mechanism, and that’s when the gloves came off and the brands, editors and PR groups jumped on.
*And now for a word from Me: Oh Twitter — we had a good thing going. But then you started changing, you know, putting on more makeup, hanging out with a wilder crowd, giggling with your new friends over the way I pronounced “Nicolas Ghesquiere” and “trompe l’oeil“. You’re all pushy and demanding now, telling me what I should like and how I should look, when you used to like me for what I am. I still have faith though, that you’ll come back to me, once you’ve ridden that merry-go-round of high-style and big money and found that it gets you nowhere. I’ll be sending you little love notes about artisan chocolate houses, DIY perfumers, indie jewelry designers and leatherworkers in the meantime. Love always, Nathan.
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