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Jean-Paul Gaultier was one of the first fashion designers to cross over into the realm of the pop star. Indeed, back in 1989, he actually made a record – How To Do That (‘Ow To Do Zat’). His boundless energy and inventiveness have always appealed to the media and the public alike. The press has only just managed to stop calling him an enfant terrible (it had become a tradition to use the term in every article about him). But Gaultier is also a businessman, having created an array of subbrands, fragrances and – in his latest coup de théâtre – a range of cosmetics for men. His company employs around 175 people and Hermès has a 35 per cent stake in it. In 2003 it announced its first loss for 12 years – blamed on the economic downturn and Gaultier’s costly move into haute couture – but it expected to break even in 2005 after a restructure. (‘Gaultier fashion house plans restructuring’, Agence France Presse, 2 November 2004.)
All successful designers, from an icon like Gaultier to a young tyro emerging from the backstreets of New York, understand that they are running a business. Tom Ford, when he was at Gucci, took pride in it. ‘I don’t understand people who say that business and creativity aren’t compatible,’ he says in the (2001) book Visionaries, a collection of profiles by Guardian fashion writer Susannah Frankel. Ford points out that he started working in New York, where ‘if the collection you designed didn’t sell, you were fired the next day’. He goes on to explain, ‘What some fashion designers do is art and I have an incredible respect for it, but I don’t pretend to be anything other than a commercial designer and I am proud of that.’
Others have a more conflicted attitude. Miuccia Prada told the French edition of Vogue (not without a hint of irony), ‘I want to rule the world . . . I want the name Prada to be immense. But I also want to be free to create.’ Later in the piece, she explained her feelings, that ‘[the clothes] need to be fashionable. . . but also commercial. It’s there that I really suffer. Because there are three fundamental questions I must ask myself:
Do I like these clothes? Will they sell? And are they original?. . . If I try to transform [a garment] into something that’s perhaps easy to wear, it becomes banal. . . And that’s my problem. Do I make clothes that people want or clothes that I think they should wear?’ (‘Drôle de Dame’, September 2004.)
The big difference between Prada and Ford is that, by and large, Miuccia stays in the background and lets her clothes do the talking. On the other hand, during much of the time he worked at Gucci, Ford had a very public image that could not be divorced from his designs. He became fused with the Gucci brand – very successfully so. As an article in Le Figaro notes breathlessly, ‘The standard-bearer of Gucci. . . [was] Ford himself. . . The three-day beard, the impeccable suits, the white shirt open at the chest, the burning gaze: Tom Ford inspired desire in men as much as he did in women.’ (‘Quand les créateurs incarnent les marques’, 4 August 2004.)
Ford joined Gaultier on the list of designers whose fame transcends the close-knit world of fashion. Also on the roster are Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney, Paul Smith, Marc Jacobs, Karl Lagerfeld and, of course, John Galliano; that great showman whose runway shows are renowned for their entertainment value. Galliano’s clothes are flamboyant – and so is the designer, who resembles a swashbuckling Salvador Dali.
Galliano and Ford are perfect examples of designers whose personal image has helped to transform brands. A dead or dormant brand, whose founder has passed on or ceased to be involved, often needs an identifiable figurehead to incarnate it in the eyes of consumers. The designs must be compelling, of course, but that’s only part of the job. Just as Ford became linked with Gucci, Galliano breathed new excitement into Dior when he was installed as its womenswear designer in 1996. Over a decade earlier, Lagerfeld had achieved much the same transformation at Chanel. Until certain chain stores began adopting the same strategy, a glamorous star designer – parachuted in for a huge fee, like a successful soccer player – was the main factor that separated a luxury brand from a high-street one.
These days, the process has become so familiar that it is beginning to sound formulaic. With each new appointment, we read that the incoming designer has foraged in the archives of the brand, uncovering a system of codes and values that they can use to inform their own vision. In this way they don’t reproduce the original designs, but reinterpret and remix them in order to arrive at something entirely new – while at the same time giving a respectful nod to the owner of the name they are about to inherit.
British designer Ozwald Boateng arrived in Paris to design Givenchy’s menswear collections in 2003: ‘I looked in the archives. I took inspiration from the elegance of Hubert de Givenchy. . . That’s how I discovered the emblem of the tulip, a flower that could often be seen in a vase on his desk. The polka dots that you can see in the linings of suits and hats or on pocket handkerchiefs recall the motif of his favourite ties.’ (‘Ozwald Boateng: Paris-Londres’, Le Monde, 8 October 2004.)
After being named artistic director of Kenzo Woman in September 2003, Antonio Marras ‘immersed himself in the archives of the House, discovering points of similarity with his creations, notably the taste for a métissage of cultures and styles’. (LVMH.com article, 23 February 2004.)
When Nicolas Ghesquière became head designer at Balenciaga in 1997, he was forbidden access to the archives by their imposingsounding guardian, Madame Jouve. As he recounts, ‘They must have thought I’d make poor use of them. I discovered [Balenciaga’s collections] by another means, in the museums of the United States and in Irving Penn’s images, which at the same time meant that I was not overloaded with references, didn’t end up making reproductions.’
(‘Nicolas Ghesquière sort de l’ombre’, Le Figaro, 28 September 2004.)
When a brand decides to make the most of its designer, the media is only too happy to play along with the game. After all, in the fashion press as well as in the newspapers, a people story is a good story. When the talented Antonio Marras took over at Kenzo Woman, articles appeared establishing him as the perfect embodiment of the brand’s vagabond deluxe positioning. French Vogue (November 2004) waxed lyrical, telling its readers that Marras has ‘never imagined living anywhere but Alghero, in Sardinia, where the faces of his childhood, the smile of the sea, the colours of stone, the grace of the olive trees and the games of his sons mean real life’. We heard how the designer started out working in the family fabric store. We learned that his sources of inspiration range from the Far East to South America, embracing Japan along the way. He loves art, museum and movies, particularly Visconti, Pasolini, Kubrick and Truffaut. In short, the press office of LVMH (the group that owns the Kenzo brand) could hardly have done a better job. However, on 3 March 2004, something happened that may call into question the wisdom of associating a designer too closely with a brand. The story in The Wall Street Journal Europe was headlined ‘Gucci launches makeover of its designer strategy’. Underneath, in smaller type, the sub-head read ‘No-name team to succeed fashion celebrity Tom Ford: can the brand alone sell?’
Can it indeed? At the time of writing the results were not yet in, but responses to the latest collections have been lukewarm, and Gucci certainly lacks excitement now its star designer has gone. It may be that Ford’s legacy is strong enough to keep the brand ticking over until another celebrity is recruited, or until an equally potent personality emerges from Gucci’s own ranks. (Yves Saint Laurent, Ford’s other responsibility at Gucci Group, may fare rather better. The prestigious French label never took quite as well to Ford’s hard, dark and coruscating aesthetic; its elegant new designer Stefano Pilati – who worked quietly behind the scenes during Ford’s tenure – seems to capture quite successfully the refined, classic quality of the brand.) What might happen if Galliano were to leave Dior? He’s such a thorough incarnation of the brand. And what will happen to Paul Smith, the brand, when Paul Smith, the designer, decides to retire? Mulling over this question recently, Smith said, ‘I always have a hard time thinking of myself as a brand, even though I occasionally talk about this entity called “Paul Smith”, as if it’s not my own name. I got into this business because I loved it, then woke up one day and realized I was locked into this system of marketing. I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see. The business is structured so that everything is taken care of, except my own personality.’
The star status of designers has had an unexpected corollary. When, in July 2004, the US magazine Elle Girl asked more than 1,000 adolescent readers what they thought was the coolest profession, ‘fashion designer’ came out on top – ahead of film star or musician. ‘For teenagers, fashion designers are the new rock stars,’ said the magazine’s editor, Brandon Holley. (‘The coolest profession in teen dreams: designer’, International Herald Tribune, 13 September 2004.) Adolescents are also inspired by genuine pop stars’ forays into fashion:
Beyoncé and Gwen Stefani both have clothing lines, and Kylie has her own brand of lingerie, Love Kylie.
But the showmanship of a Galliano and the insouciant elegance of a Ford put a smooth façade on an abrasive industry. As a choice of career, fashion designer makes even freelance journalist seem a responsible and financially secure way of earning a living. Despite Galliano’s acclaimed degree collection at Central Saint Martin’s College of Art, he struggled to obtain financial backing in London. Arriving in Paris, he was forced to sleep on friends’ floors while he created his next collection. It was only when Anna Wintour, the editor of US Vogue, helped him to secure backing that his career began to take off. Ford, meanwhile, worked as an assistant to two designers in New York before moving to Gucci in 1990 – where his clothes were barely noticed until a breakthrough collection in 1995.
In the same issue of the IHT that mentioned the aspiring teenagers, an article by Suzy Menkes compared two very different designers: up-andcoming Zac Posen, whose backers include Cartier and music mogul Sean ‘P. Diddy’ Combs; and Miguel Androver, a thoughtful, multicultural designer who bounded on to the stage at the end of his New York show in a T-shirt bearing the question ‘Has anyone seen a backer?’ As well as being talented, you have to be lucky, on a mission, and skilled at the art of self-promotion. Only a few have it all.

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