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The glamour factory had been plotting its resurgence all along, humming away in the background throughout the late 1990s, while industry observers fretted about the rising tide of ‘smart casual’. The next wave of upmarket fashion brands would come from Milan and from Paris; clearly, reports of the death of the French capital had been greatly exaggerated.
There is one name you can’t escape when you attempt to write a history of fashion branding: Tom Ford. As Carine Roitfeld, the editor of French Vogue and a one-time collaborator of the American designer, says, ‘In the history of fashion, there’s definitely a pre-Tom Ford and a post-Tom Ford period. He was one of the first contemporary designers who really understood the power of marketing. He was not a snob about his work – he wanted to sell.’

The story of Gucci resembles an opera, replete with glamour, envy and murder. More on that later, but for now it’s enough to say that Ford realized (like all the smartest designers, from Worth to Lauren) that the key to a successful fashion label lay not just in the garments, but in the ‘universe’ surrounding them. Or, as Roitfeld puts it, ‘He created a dream world.’

It was fine that in winter 1995 Ford showed a collection of sexy, sophisticated clothes that attracted the attention of Madonna and Gwyneth Paltrow. Even better that he reintroduced the bamboo-handled bags that had been the making of Gucci back in the 1950s. But he also redesigned every aspect of the brand, from print advertisements to stores, ensuring that everything gelled to create an ‘ideal’ of what the Gucci name meant. According to Guillaume Erner, ‘The Texan turned the style of the brand upside down: previously everything that bore the Gucci name had been brown, soft, and rounded. With him, it became black, hard, and square.’

So what did the Gucci name mean, exactly? It meant sex. Ford brought lust back into fashion with a series of overtly erotic ads that were quickly tagged ‘porno chic’. A famously over-the-top example showed a crouching man gazing at the Gucci logo shaved into a woman’s pubic hair – beautifully photographed, of course. While outwardly deploring the trend, the mainstream media had great fun with fashion’s filthy new image. Sex, as everyone knows, always sells, and many consumers wanted in. Even those who could only afford to buy their jeans from Gap found some extra cash for a Gucci belt. As Roitfeld observes, ‘[Ford] created clothes people wanted to wear, and then he explained to them that if they couldn’t afford the dress, they could at least buy the sunglasses.’

Ford was not the only one giving the rarefied world of fashion a much-needed kick up the rear. At the same time, Miuccia Prada – with the aid of her husband and business partner Patrizio Bertelli – was blowing the dust off the old family luggage firm in Milan. Prada, too, understood that the brand message had to be carried right through from advertising to clothing to store. Taking the opposite stance to Gucci’s sex-drenched imagery, Miuccia positioned her brand as creative, sensitive and politically engaged. New York intellectuals and London businesswomen loved it. The Prada bag replaced the Filofax as the status symbol of choice, and the shoes and clothing quickly followed. But what was happening in Paris? By the end of the 1990s the city was a shadow of its former self, its image as the world’s fashion capital eroded by the slow decline of haute couture and the rapid ascent of Milan, not to mention the dominance of US pop culture and the influence of American designers. As unlikely as it may seem, the resurrection of Paris as the world’s most glamorous city can be credited to one ascetic, understated businessman.

Bernard Arnault was already on the rise in 1984, when he acquired Christian Dior. Two decades later, he is president of both Dior and LVMH, with a glittering portfolio of brands that includes Céline, Kenzo, Thomas Pink, Givenchy, Loewe, Fendi, Pucci, Marc Jacobs and Donna Karan – not to mention Louis Vuitton itself. And although the two men have radically different personalities, Arnault’s tactics are not dissimilar to those of Tom Ford.

‘I met Bernard Arnault in 1985, and he was already nurturing the idea of a luxury brand that would be, at the same time, relatively accessible,’ recalls the fashion marketing consultant Jean-Jacques Picart, who is also Arnault’s personal communications adviser. ‘Dior now has 310 boutiques around the world, so it can’t be described as a luxury brand in the classic sense of the term, which implies exclusive. [Arnault’s] stroke of genius was to bring marketing techniques to a world that had previously claimed to have no use for them.’

As far as Dior was concerned, Arnault’s most inspired move was the appointment of a charismatic designer named John Galliano. (Legend has it that Arnault made his choice by arranging a meeting of the world’s top fashion journalists, and asking them who they thought was the world’s most creative designer.) Galliano didn’t arrive at Dior directly: he was first appointed at Givenchy, following the reluctant retirement of the illustrious Hubert de Givenchy. But it seemed as though he was being groomed for Dior all along; when the Italian designer Gianfranco Ferré left the fashion house, Galliano was brought in to replace him. Rebellious Londoner Alexander McQueen then slid into the hot seat at Givenchy, further illustrating Arnault’s penchant for shaking up the conservative world of French high fashion, and reaping plenty of media exposure in the process. Arnault would repeat the trick by bringing in hip New York designer Marc Jacobs to revamp Louis Vuitton. In the opinion of Jean-Jacques Picart, ‘One of the things that can enable a fashion brand to stand out is transgression. At the end of the 1990s, when fashion leaned towards the minimalist, John exploded on to the scene with a personal vision inspired by history and costume. It was baroque, excessive, warm, rich, flamboyant, brimming over with decadence and sex. It was also completely at odds with the existing image of Dior. It had the effect of a firework display.’ Gucci, Prada and Dior’s formula of young, inventive clothes and affordable accessories, plus aggressive marketing, seemed to reanimate the public’s inner fashion victim. Ford and Galliano were personally photogenic and exciting – as entertaining in their own way as rock stars. Fortuitously, their makeover of previously moribund brands coincided with the media’s increasing obsession with the cult of celebrity, and the rise of magazines like Heat and OK! When the paparazzi captured Victoria Beckham or Jennifer Lopez swathed in designer brands, millions of young women wanted to imitate them. Of course, as we’ve already pointed out, few ordinary folk could afford a Prada suit or a Dior dress. Even if they could stretch to a handbag or a pair of sunglasses, where did they get the clothes to match? Enter Zara, H&M and Topshop – high-street brands employing talented young designers who produced fun, fresh creations that wouldn’t look out of place on the Paris runways, and were sometimes directly inspired by them. By the end of the millennium, fashion was glamorous again.

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