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In 1975, sold his Volkswagen. The money went into a pool of US$10,000 that Armani and his partner Sergio Galleoti had got together to open their Milanese fashion house. Having left medical school to enter the fashion business in 1957, Armani had worked as a buyer for the department store La Rinascente. But it was as a designer at Cerruti, which he joined in the early 1960s, that he learned the techniques that were to make his career. The charismatic Nino Cerruti was a master of marketing: he once convinced Lancia to paint a fleet of cars in the same shade as his new range of suits, and then enlisted the curvaceous actress Anita Ekberg to break a bottle of champagne over one of them for the cameras. The effectiveness of such publicity coups was not lost on Armani, who would use relationships with celebrities as the cornerstone of his marketing strategy.
Armani’s clothes alone were impressive enough – although the casual deconstructed look of his suits is familiar today, it was revolutionary at the time – but it took a movie star to transfer the designs from the fashion press to the public eye. The star was Richard Gere, and the vehicle was a film called American Gigolo (1980). Designers had been dressing stars for years – Hubert de Givenchy was famous for outfitting Audrey Hepburn – but this was arguably the first time a set of clothes had played such a prominent role in a film, almost becoming an extension of the main character. After Gere wore his suits on screen, Armani’s sales soared. Since then, by nurturing a close working relationship with Hollywood, Armani has provided the wardrobe for more than 300 movies, always ensuring that his name appears in the credits. His marketing department has also seen to it that movie stars are regularly invited to his shows and outfitted in Armani for high-profile events –especially the Oscars. For a long stretch of the 1990s, Oscar night was Armani night.
According to Armani’s communications chief, Robert Triefus, ‘Certainly, Armani can be considered as having pioneered the link between fashion and Hollywood. His dressing of American Gigolo was a milestone that led to an enduring relationship. It’s part of the brand value –our customers appreciate the association with stardom.’ Armani is not alone in developing such relationships. Designers such as Valentino and Versace have also displayed a knack for deploying star firepower. At Louis Vuitton, the brand’s artistic director, Marc Jacobs, has moved on from using supermodels to pop stars and actresses in its advertising. In the UK, as we’ve heard, Matthew Williamson makes no secret of the fact that dressing a string of well-known young women has enhanced his profile. Male fashion is not immune, either (see Chapter 15: Targeted male). During the run-up to Oscar night, designer brands begin a mating dance with stars and their publicists, often sending racks of free clothing in the hope that a garment will make it on to the red carpet.
The benefits are as blinding as a spotlight: stars give brands a welldefined personality for a minimum of effort, and bring with them a rich fantasy world to which consumers aspire. In addition, consumers have a ‘history’ with stars. Even though they’ve only seen them on the screen or in the pages of magazines, they form an attachment to celebrities, regarding them as friendly faces and reliable arbiters of taste. Models, with their distant gazes and alien bodies, can’t compete. April Glassborow, senior buyer for international designer collections at Harvey Nichols, recalls, ‘When Victoria Beckham was photographed in a green satin Chloé dress by the Sunday Times Style section, it created a demand. It’s not a theory. When a celebrity wears something, it has a direct impact on sales.’
By now, there must be few readers of glossy magazines who still believe that, when an actress is photographed carrying the latest ‘musthave’ bag, she has actually paid for the item. Celebrities occasionally go shopping like everyone else, but generally they are bombarded with free gifts and offers of sponsorship deals. Designers will practically slit one another’s throats to get a dress photographed on a star during Oscar night or at the Cannes Film Festival. ‘When Nicole Kidman wore Pucci in Cannes, it was huge,’ confirms Joseph Velosa, managing director of Matthew Williamson. Almost as huge, in fact, as the actress’s engagement to be the face of Chanel No. 5.
In terms of cost-effectiveness, a public appearance that might lead to a photo in a magazine is far more desirable than a multi-million-pound contract. Agencies such as Exposure in London offer brands the possibility of rounding up stars for events, or placing clothes on influential figures, as part of their service.
Such deals can work both ways, too: the actress Liz Hurley’s career skyrocketed after she wore ‘that dress’ – a daring low-cut Versace number held together by safety pins – to the premiere of the film Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994).
The relationship is a delicate one, however – for both parties. The designer’s marketing adviser must ensure that the chosen celebrity flatters the brand. And the stars, aware that their every move will be made in the full glare of the media spotlight, must be absolutely sure that the garment flatters them. Just as many fashion brands hire agencies to develop relationships with celebrities, the stars themselves seek the counsel of professional stylists.
Andrea Lieberman counts among her regular clients Jennifer Lopez, Gwen Stefani, Kate Hudson, Dido, Drew Barrymore and Janet Jackson. ‘A star’s image is today their major asset,’ she told Elle magazine (‘Styliste de Stars’, 6 September 2004). ‘With the music industry in transition and piracy undermining their income, they’ve expanded into other fields like designing lines of clothing, launching their own perfumes, and tours. To be credible, they have to maintain a certain style. And they’re under a lot of pressure: the slightest fashion faux pas and they’re skewered by the media.’
At the beginning of her career, when she left Parsons School of Design in New York, Lieberman was forced to take a job as a waitress before finding a post with the designer Giorgio Sant’Angelo. Later, after being inspired by her travels in Africa, she opened a jewellery and ethnic accessories store called Culture & Reality. Soon she found herself styling upcoming New York rock bands, and was eventually introduced to the hip-hop performer Sean ‘P. Diddy’ Combs. This led to a meeting with Jennifer Lopez. It was Lieberman who put Lopez into a much-photographed diaphanous green Versace dress, split to the navel, for the Grammy awards.
One stylist who has achieved star status is Patricia Field, who styled Sarah Jessica Parker for the fashion-fixated television series Sex and the City. Field is in fact a professional costume designer with several TV and film credits to her name. She opened her eponymous boutique in Greenwich Village in 1966 and started designing for television in 1980, creating the costumes for a series called Crime Story, about the Las Vegas Mafia. By putting SATC’s Carrie Bradshaw in a combination of designer labels and pretty thrift-store finds, Parker and Field created a bohemian mix-and-match look that resonated with consumers. How many pairs of Manolo Blahnik shoes were sold thanks to Carrie’s love affair with the sleek sling-backs? At the beginning of 2004, The Telegraph commented, ‘The fictional character. . . has had more influence on the way we dress than many designers could hope for.’ (‘What treats has Carrie got in store?’, 20 January 2004.)
Sex and the City has finished its run, but it helped to convince imagemakers that the buying public related more to the perceived ‘realness’ – however illusory – of actresses than to the unattainable beauty of models. Stars began to replace models on the cover of fashion magazines. Interviewed by Time magazine’s Style & Design special edition (September 2003), Grace Coddington, the creative director of US Vogue, hinted that this might be a bone of contention: ‘There are no models on covers any more. They’re all actors because they’re what sells. An actor often dictates what you’re going to get. I find that annoying. And I’m incredibly shy, so they scare the pants off me. But I feel perfectly comfortable with the models. They’re like my kids.’ Designers such as Matthew Williamson, Zac Posen and Marc Jacobs have been lucky enough to attract the attention and friendship of celebrities, who wear their clothes and attend their shows as a gesture of appreciation and support. Brands that don’t have such an appeal merely dig into their wallets to ensure that the right people are seen in their front row. For upcoming and mid-range designers, however, celebrities aren’t always an option.
There are signs, in any case, that the celebrity craze might be dying out. Upmarket brands, particularly, have started wondering when glitter becomes kitsch. In the view of Lanvin designer Alber Elbaz, ‘The red carpet has gone from elitist to popular. Everyone has access to it, even if only on the internet or through magazines. Since fashion is an integral part of celebrities’ lives, it’s become a kind of permanent red carpet despite itself. But I don’t think this phenomenon of identification is going to last much longer.’
It’s worth noting that Lanvin’s print ads, created by Elbaz himself, show no faces at all – merely clothes.

‘We don’t wake up for less than $10,000 a day,’ Linda Evangelista famously told Vogue in 1991. The quote was the defining phrase of the supermodel era, when the clothes faded into the background and the women wearing them became stars. Things are different now. Fees have settled down – for most models they were never that high in the first place. Dawn Wolf, of the agency IMG/France, told Le Monde, ‘I’ve never read an article about the price of models that was right.’ Linda Evangelista is now on the books of Models 1, although agency boss John Horner agrees that the supermodel craze has faded. ‘Versace really put supermodels on the map. He decided he’d pay whatever it took to get the best models, which started the whole inflation process. Eventually, though, they became too expensive. It began to be debatable whether they added enough value to the brand in relation to the price the advertiser was paying.’
But Horner also hints that, in terms of sheer professionalism, those few supermodels might have been worth it. ‘We did a campaign with Linda Evangelista for Wallis, and it was as much about us selling her to Wallis as it was about the brand wanting a model of that calibre. They did the shoot in America. Normally you do a test day, with a fitting and so forth. But in this case they just turned up with the clothes, and she’s such an amazing model that the second they were on, they looked a million dollars. Erin O’Connor is another one: quite unusual-looking, very tall; but the second you put a garment on that girl, she’s instantly into model mode.’
Cindy Crawford calls her model persona ‘The Thing’. The writer Michael Gross describes the process as follows: ‘She fluffs her hair and strikes a pose, and suddenly The Thing is in the room.’ Crawford tells him, ‘I’m becoming this other character, and all of a sudden – I don’t know why – all of a sudden I’m brave, I’m telling jokes, I become much more theatrical. . . and then I wash it off.’
Perhaps it takes a bit of pantomime to create a fairy-tale. Horner dislikes the term ‘clothes-horse’, but admits that models play the role of a blank canvas. ‘They are there to interpret and enhance a product. The more flexible their face or body, the more easily they can create a distinctive image for the client.’
How much digital trickery goes into moulding that image is open to debate. Horner says that the very best photographers disdain re-touching, as they can achieve the desired effect through lighting, make-up and their own skill. But he admits that cosmetics advertisers and fashion magazines remove blemishes with a few judicious clicks of the mouse. One of the things a computer can’t change is ethnicity. The pages of fashion magazines are far more cosmopolitan (no pun intended) than they used to be, but black models are still a comparative rarity. Veronica Webb, Grace Jones, Iman, Naomi Campbell, Waris Dirie and Alek Wek are memorable partly because they broke through the barrier. According to one fashion journalist, who wishes to remain anonymous, ‘It’s simple practicality. When you put a model on the cover of a magazine, you’re promoting cosmetics as well as clothes. And if most of your readers are white, they want to identify with that image. The black community has its own fashion magazines.’
Yet L’Oreal has chosen Noémie Lenoir (who is also on the books of Models 1, along with Iman) as one of its faces, while Ethiopian beauty Liya Kebede is representing Estée Lauder alongside Carolyn Murphy and Elizabeth Hurley. ‘The European market is opening up and following the American example,’ said Vicky Mihaci, of Ford Models’ Paris office. ‘In 2004 we noticed a growing demand for black models for the collections, when previously only Yves Saint Laurent systematically used them.’ (‘Où sont passés les mannequins noirs?’, Stratégies, 28 October 2004.)
Colour is one thing – but how about shape? In the same way that fashion models are young for practical reasons (energy, clear eyes, smooth skin), they are also skinny. When designers create clothes for their collections, they make items in one size. Therefore, models also come in a standard size. And the received opinion is that a dress is flattered by a slender frame. But John Horner strongly refutes allegations that modelling provokes eating disorders. ‘Anorexia begins before modelling. We have never had an anorexic model on our books, and if we believe somebody may be veering in that direction, we send them away to get help. If models are skinny, it’s often because they’re born that way. They eat perfectly healthy meals. We even considered putting paid to the myth by producing a book called Model Food, in which they’d list all their favourite recipes. Of course, if they get overweight, they don’t work. But we certainly don’t want them to be all skin and bone. Some photographers like fuller figures.’ Yet various groups, from the British Medical Association to the National Eating Disorders Association in the United States (whose public face is the former model Carré Otis), have expressed concern that fashion magazines promote unrealistic body shapes. It’s a case of supply and demand. In the western world, where a growing percentage of the population is officially obese, slenderness has become idealized. Horner observes that an agency must have, within reason, models of all shapes, sizes and racial backgrounds on its books: ‘And even ages. Some models have a short working life, often because they decide to pursue other careers or raise families. But Yasmin Le Bon has been working for 20-odd years. We also have a model called Daphne Selfe, who is in her 70s. [She featured in a Dolce & Gabbana campaign.] There is a market for different types of look.’ Lately, though, fashion brands have been favouring well-known faces over the blank canvas of models. Celebrities, while not always perfect, are undeniably powerful.

It’s not my intention here to explore the seamier side of the modelling business, which is thoroughly described in Gross’s book. (Milan, particularly, is portrayed as a morass, in which playboys circle modelling agencies like sharks.) Perhaps the profession’s darkest hour was the aftermath of investigative journalist Donal MacIntyre’s BBC documentary about agencies in 1999. As part of the series MacIntyre Undercover, the reporter used an array of bugging devices to present an industry riddled with sexual predators and drug abuse. There were recriminations and legal action – but by then the programme had confirmed what many members of the public already suspected. The subsequent poor image of modelling agencies upsets John Horner, managing director of UK agency Models 1. ‘I deplore the way the industry is represented by the media,’ he says. ‘In the UK, we have one of the most professional businesses in the world. [Internationally] the industry is badly let down by a few grubby agencies that sully its reputation. Most of the UK agencies are managed by women, so they’re not the ones doing the damage. And men in the business have a responsibility to behave professionally. You have to be protective – I mean, most of the time these are young, vulnerable kids. When we send them to shoots in Italy – which even within the business has a poor reputation – we make sure that they are professionally chaperoned. Often their parents go with them.’
Horner, particularly, understands the value of models to marketers – after all, he worked in advertising for more than 30 years. He started out in 1965, wrapping parcels stuffed with promotional products at an agency called Dorlands. Over the years he went on to work for some of the most famous agencies in the ad industry – including Leo Burnett and J. Walter Thompson – start two businesses, sell both of them at a profit, and play a key role in high-profile mergers. In 1998 he began advising the two head bookers (modelling-speak for agents) at Models 1, Karen Diamond and Kathy Pryer, who had been offered a management buyout by the agency’s founders.
‘Gradually they realized that they didn’t have the necessary business skills; they weren’t sure how to raise the money or write a business plan. But the future [of the agency] looked bright enough, so we did what is unfortunately called a BIMBO – a buy-in management buy-out –because I joined the team by buying into the business. And so, in January 1999, I became a model agent.’
Horner says that, as the managing director of the business, he works behind the scenes. ‘On arrival, I did exactly what you’d expect a marketing guy to do, which was to re-establish the brand identity. Obviously we had a great brand name, because the agency had been going for 35 years. It also had a number of brand values, which I kept and strengthened. It’s very important that we behave correctly as an agency – that’s a key part of our positioning. We pay our models on time, there’s no misbehaving or impropriety whatsoever. It’s absolutely vital that we are second to none in that regard. It’s an interesting challenge because you have to reassure the parents [of teenage models] while making the brand funky enough to appeal to youngsters too.’
Models 1 has an illustrious history. Founded in 1968, it has played an instrumental role in the careers of models such as Twiggy, Jerry Hall, Yasmin Le Bon and current favourite Karen Elson. Today it’s the biggest model agency brand in the UK (in competition with Select) and has a database of 7,000 clients, some 2,000 of which are active. International clients count for 25 per cent of the business. The operation is divided into four divisions: women, men, new faces and classic. The ‘classic’ division handles personalities – notably Patsy Kensit and Faye Dunaway – and established or mature models. ‘New faces’ is obviously looking for beginners.
While he was working on the brand repositioning – a process that involved, among other things, interviewing key clients and every single member of staff – Horner discovered that the agency was known as ‘reputable, but a bit dusty’. ‘We had to make the place a little more dynamic. We wanted to become exciting enough so that youngsters would aspire to being part of Models 1. At the time, our new faces division was not doing as well as it should have been. It was one of the reasons we relocated from the wrong end of the King’s Road to the heart of London [in offices near Covent Garden].’
Horner points out that, because the fashion industry thrives on novelty, attracting fresh faces is critical to the performance of a modelling agency. With this in mind, Models 1 ran a press relations campaign targeting the youth media, organizing a number of events that brought together journalists, photographers and representatives of the new faces division. The result is that now, when schoolgirls dream about becoming a top model, Models 1 is again among the agencies they consider approaching.
Modelling agencies are also famous for their ‘scouts’, the talentspotters who cruise the gathering places of adolescents, as well as constantly keeping their eyes peeled for suitable candidates. Horner admits that this is by no means his field. ‘I don’t have an eye – but fortunately my job is to run the business rather than to find models. It’s very instinctive: a scout “knows” when somebody has potential. We’re not after a particular look – it’s rare that we set out to find a redhead or a quirky look or whatever. We don’t create trends. The photographers do that.’
Whether a walk-in or one of the scouts’ finds, the potential model is invited to the agency, always with a parent or guardian. Polaroid photos are taken, after which the agency’s experts debate the candidate’s potential. If a genuine talent is thought to be present, test photography is done. On the basis of the results, a decision is made. Models are not expected to contract to the agency for their entire working life, or even for a set period. They sign an agreement that they will not work with any rival UK outfits, but as their career develops they are free to fire their existing agency at any time. Horner says, ‘If you think about it, we’re taking on youngsters between 16 and 18, mothering them, looking after their careers, so the relationship between model and booker becomes very close. For them to change agencies is quite a wrench.’
In the earliest days of their new career, the young saplings are sent on ‘go-sees’ – they show their face at magazines and meet photographers with the hope of being hired for a shoot. For those who live outside London, the agency keeps a ‘model flat’, sleeping six at a time for twoor three-night periods. (‘They always wreck the place,’ jokes Horner. ‘Don’t forget – they’re teenagers.’) The newcomers stay in the new faces division for up to a year before moving on to what is called ‘the main board’. There is also a separate ‘image’ division for what Horner calls ‘high-profile, fast-track models’ – the kind who end up in Vogue. But what outsiders don’t realize is that they may be better off working for catalogues.
‘A fast-track model can burn out quickly, sometimes inexplicably –she has such a strong image that she goes out of fashion. A bread-andbutter model working for catalogues and mainstream brands can have a solid career for years. And the simple fact is that Vogue only pays about £75 a day. Working for the fashion media in general, you’ll only earn a maximum of £350 for a shoot. But the media know it’s important for the model’s career, because then she might get access to a big brand name.’
And that’s when the bigger fees start – not only because the model is expected to commit to the brand for a long period of time, ‘but also because she is contributing to that brand’s essence’. Horner agrees that the right model can transform the fortunes of a brand. He cites the example of Christy Turlington, who became the face of the cosmetics brand Maybelline in the United States (a contract said to be worth £1.8 million a year).
A brand in its own right, Models 1 is among the best known in the fashion industry. ‘In the client community, awareness is as high as it could be. But of course we keep in constant contact with our clients, by mail and telephone. My advertising background means I know roughly when clients are going to start thinking about their next campaigns. We make appointments to go and see them. Alternatively, they may ring us to say they are casting for a project, so we send them cards [photographs and statistics] either by mail or online. Each model also has a book of photographs that is constantly updated.’
The agency has about 2,000 models on its books, with a nucleus of 600 who get a steady turnover of work. The decision about which model to use can be made by various parties: the advertising agency, the art director, the photographer or the client, depending on the situation. Often, it’s the photographer – and their choices can make or break careers.
Mathilde Plet, in charge of casting models at the French magazine Numéro, has cited celebrated photographer Steven Meisel as one of the greatest talent-spotters in the business. ‘His mastery of fashion gives him an enormous influence with the agencies,’ she said. (Le Monde magazine supplement, 20–21 June 2004.) Meisel played a key role in the ‘supermodel’ phenomenon, shooting Christy Turlington, Naomi Campbell and Linda Evangelista.
John Horner comments, ‘Photography is a deceptive process. You can look at a girl and think “she’s going to make it”, but the photographs tell a different story: exaggerating a jaw, making a nose look too big. The camera is the ultimate judge.’

Other, more pragmatic industries might have shied away from the idea of artistry to promote a product. In fashion, however, it has traditionally been seen as a brand value. But Vincent Peters fears that, in the advertising field, photographers now have fewer opportunities to take risks:
‘The fashion business, like Hollywood, is increasingly controlled by people who don’t come from the creative tradition. It’s a stock-market product.’ This, he believes, encourages blandness and fuels criticism that all fashion advertising looks alike. ‘Nobody wants to throw money away, so of course they’re going to look at what’s worked before and go down a similar route. Fortunately, there are still enough clients left who want something challenging.’
In terms of trends, he believes that fashion photography has become less narrative and more conceptual: ‘[Advertising clients] are looking for the big idea. This is a huge challenge for the photographer, because sometimes you’re called upon to invent a brand with a single image. At the same time, it’s good for us, because it makes us indispensable to the process.’
Art director Thomas Lenthal would agree. During our conversation about his work for Yves Saint Laurent, he said, ‘I’ve always advocated the fact that if you’re working for a brand, you’ve got to build a visual alphabet for it. Within that framework you can tell a great many stories, but I think it makes sense to link them through that visual alphabet – and the easiest way of doing that is to use the same photographer.’ Having said that, a fashion photograph is a collaborative effort, requiring the participation of art directors, stylists, make-up artists and assistants, all bustling around the central figure of the model. As Vincent Peters confirms, ‘It takes an incredible amount of time and finesse, almost like making a movie. A lot of money is being spent on this one key image, so you have to get it right. Is the sun shining, is the hair and make-up the way you want it? Every detail counts. When people outside fashion say that all the advertising looks the same, they aren’t paying attention to the details. But at the luxury end of the market, where I tend to work, consumers notice details.’
He adds that the life of a fashion photographer is not always an easy one: ‘Don’t forget, we’re all freelances, and in fashion your fortunes can change very quickly. There’s always somebody standing behind you. To a certain extent, you’re only as good as your last piece of work. It’s a delicate balance, because you want to maintain a personal style, while striving to provide something different each time. If you do three shoots in the same way, people think you’re getting lazy. So we’re under a great deal of pressure.’
For a while, it looked as though photographers might be losing ground to fashion illustrators. Established artists such as François Berthoud, David Downton, Charles Anastase, Jordi Labanda and Yoko Ikeno became increasingly influential, both in publishing and advertising circles. In 2002, Stella McCartney engaged the artist David Remfry to create an advertising campaign, sparking numerous articles about the trend. One of them, in The Observer, opined that this approach was ‘valued for being warmly personal’ and went on to explain that ‘the expressionist, abstract aesthetic of illustration is increasingly seen as a fresh, more subtle – and attention-grabbing – alternative to computer graphics and photography’. (‘Sketch show’, 29 June 2003.) In the same piece, Alice Rawsthorn, director of London’s Design Museum, commented, ‘It’s part of the general trend towards a richer, more romantic aesthetic. We’re yearning for the individuality of hand-drawing at a time when our lives are more automated.’
For now, though, the yearning seems to have passed. Although fashion illustration has rightfully regained the respect it had lost over the previous decades, it is unlikely to replace photography as the medium of choice for fashion branding.
Fashion photographers, in any case, often take their cues from artists. Although Vincent Peters’ work is frequently artistic – his prize-winning 2002 ad for Dior’s Poison scent, for instance, was a painstaking recreation of a 19th-century Gothic illustration – he sees no contradiction in using his skills for commercial purposes. ‘Quite honestly, when I was involved in the art scene, I found it more superficial and pretentious [than fashion]. Again, I don’t think people realize how much effort we put in to what we do. The people I work with have a real appreciation of beauty. It’s something of a paradox. When you shoot a fashion picture, whether for an ad or a magazine, you’re trying to create something beautiful. That depends, of course, on what your concept of beauty is, and we all have different sources we’re feeding off. My own are quite classical, because my mother was an art teacher and I take a lot of inspiration from paintings.’
He adds that, in any case, great art has often been commercial: ‘Look at Renaissance painters, or look at Mozart: their best work was commissioned by wealthy patrons.’

‘Fashion photography is about translating a brand into a concept,’ says Vincent Peters, the German-born, London-based photographer whose list of credits includes British, Italian and French Vogue, Arena, Dazed and Confused and Numéro, as well as ads for Dior, Bottega Veneta, Celine, Miu Miu and Yves Saint Laurent. ‘Often, when a client comes to you, they have a product and a brand identity, but they aren’t certain how to combine the two. Your job is to achieve that transition; to create the image that brings the brand to life. Sometimes the client has a reasonable idea of how you’re going to do it – after all, that’s why they’ve hired you – but in my experience they like to be surprised. This means that the photographer has an enormous influence on the branding process.’
Peters began taking pictures on a trip to Thailand in the 1980s, with the results being published in a travel magazine. In 1989 he moved to New York, where he got a job as an assistant photographer. Soon he branched out on his own, moving into fashion photography. After a while, though, he developed an ambition to become an artistic photographer, and relocated to Paris to pursue his goal. Although his work was exhibited throughout Europe and published in leading art photography magazines, he grew disenchanted with the scene and decided to refocus his efforts on fashion photography: ‘I remember I had a season when it all suddenly began happening for me. I shot a campaign for Miu Miu, and that made a difference.

Things evolved quite quickly after that.’ Fashion photographers have always combined commerce with art. The earliest practitioner with something of the star status accorded today’s snappers was one Baron Adolphe de Meyer, nicknamed ‘the Debussy of the camera’. (Although he was not from an aristocratic background, he married into nobility.) From 1913 to the early 1930s he brought an other-worldly lustre to his photographs of socialites, actresses and dancers, first for American Vogue and then for Bazar (which later evolved into Harper’s Bazaar, picking up an extra ‘a’ along the way).
In 1923, de Meyer was replaced at Vogue by another pioneer, Edward Steichen, whose pictures already looked more crisp and modernist than the soft-focus confections favoured by his predecessor.

Steichen may have taken the first colour fashion photograph, but he was far more interested in the art of photography than in fashion. In the early 1900s he’d been a friend of the sculptor Auguste Rodin, and he later cofounded, with Alfred Stieglitz, Photo-Secession, an organization whose sole aim was to elevate photography into an art form. Between 1947 and 1962 Steichen was director of photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York Another founding father of fashion photography, whose background was almost as aristocratic as that of de Meyer, was George Hoyningen-Huene. Born in Russia, he had escaped the revolution with his family and pitched up in London before moving to Paris after the First World War. He started out as a backdrop designer for shoots before moving on to photography with the encouragement of French Vogue’s editor, Main Bocher. Hoyningen-Huene, too, was later lured away to Harper’s Bazaar.

His photographs of Josephine Baker, Joan Crawford and the model Lee Miller – eventually an influential photographer in her own right – have a frosty monochrome poetry about them. In this respect, Hoyningen-Huene’s work resembled that of his protégé, Horst P. Horst, who was inspired by Greek statues and Renaissance art. Technology had not yet freed the camera from the studio, so their pictures inevitably look stiff and enclosed, and reliant on props and backdrops for atmosphere. Cecil Beaton, the final member of this precursory quartet, used props to sometimes surreal effect, deploying sculptures of papier-mâché and aluminium backdrops. Born in London in 1904, Beaton had been captivated as a child by postcards of glamorous society women; and this influence is still apparent in his costume designs and art direction for films such as My Fair Lady, for which he won an Academy Award in 1964.

By the Second World War, Leica was producing cameras with faster shutter speeds – an advance that urged fashion photography outdoors and encouraged breezy spontaneity. This ushered in the era of Irving Penn, Richard Avedon and Norman Parkinson. There is the gulf of a generation between Horst’s stony goddesses and Avedon’s early photos of models frolicking on a beach; or Parkinson’s exotic, sun-drenched location shots.

Parkinson, known to one and all as ‘Parks’, formed a stylistic bridge between the pre-war practitioners and the emerging generation of the 1960s, who added sexual liberation to photography’s physical freedom from restraint. Working for British Vogue, Parks brought an impish spirit to his pictures of strong, provocative women, which did not look at all out of place beside the images being turned out by the rebellious trio of David Bailey, Terence Donovan and Brian Duffy (see Chapter 9). With their unambiguous, cool-yet-accessible aesthetic, these photographs look as innocent now as they must have seemed decadent at the time. In the 1970s, a seismic shift caused tremors that are still being felt today. It was provoked by Bourdin and, of course, Helmut Newton.

Vincent Peters cites Newton, who died in early 2004, as one of a handful of icons who sought to change fashion photography in particular, as opposed to photography in general: ‘Guy Bourdin’s world was not about fashion. What makes Helmut Newton so irreplaceable is that he really was about fashion photography – he was determined to push it as far as it could go, to make it sexy and dangerous rather than cold and bourgeois. He did for dresses what James Bond did for suits. In the 1970s there were no rules, no formulas, so if you had the talent you were free to experiment.’
In the 1980s, fashion photography benefited from an evolution within the fashion media itself. New magazines such as Blitz, The Face and i-D – the latter started by Terry Jones, a former art director at British Vogue – had an irreverent, slash-and-paste style that owed far more to punk than to catwalk shows.

They proved fertile ground for photographers like Nick Knight, Corinne Day, Juergen Teller and Terry Richardson, whose pictures pushed clothes – and sometimes models themselves – further into the background, relegating them to mere ingredients in entertaining tapestries. Photography took on a hyper-real, snapshot air, with the merciless light of the flashgun illuminating seedy domestic scenes, drug-fuelled nightclubs, or parties that seemed to have dragged on far too long. These pictures were personal and observational, pulling the viewer into the world of the individual who had taken them.
Corinne Day became notorious for creating the so-called ‘heroin chic’ look, with a series of photographs featuring Kate Moss.

The pictures, which appeared in the June 1993 issue of British Vogue, showed the model looking wan and undernourished, clad in vest and knickers and posing in a dingy flat. The shoot, which spawned hundreds of pale facsimiles, contributed to the ‘grunge’ fashion trend. Richardson’s lurid, funny, blatantly sexual pictures – famously shot on an old Instamatic – continue to provoke controversy today. In an interview with online fashion magazine Hint, he refers to his playfully erotic advertising work for the fashion brand Sisley. ‘We tried to put a picture of a girl with pompoms over her tits on a poster in Soho [New York]. They said no, because a little of her areola was showing. . . They said it was too sexy and it would be too close to a church and a school.

It’s all so silly and conservative.’ Despite his involvement in fashion, the photographer’s attitude to clothes has a timeless ring about it: ‘To me, photographs are more about people than clothes. I’m not one of those photographers who says, “Ooh, that dress is just making me crazy.”’ (www.hintmag.com/shootingstars/terryrichardson) Photographers can take comfort in the existence of magazines such as Visionaire, a format-shifting blend of fashion publication and portable art gallery in which clothes definitely take second place to ideas. It has occasionally provided a setting for the work of photography duo Inez Van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, who utilize digital technology to produce the kind of images Bourdin might have come up with, had he used a computer.

Disturbing and disorienting, the pictures are filled with digitally contorted limbs, manipulated expressions and artificial landscapes. All of these photographers have lent their talents to advertising, as well as contributing to fashion magazines. And with their peers, they continue to blur the boundaries between art, fashion and marketing.

Flashback to June 2003. I’m standing under the portico outside the Victoria & Albert Museum, sheltering from a summer storm that has raced in from nowhere to dash the streets with raindrops the size of boiled sweets. Beside me, tourists mutter exclamations and unfurl umbrellas, or haul vivid cagoules over their clothes. Frankly, I’m grateful for the enforced pause in the day, because it gives me time to think. I’ve just seen an exhibition of fashion photography so disturbing – so downright weird – that it has shaken up my idea of what the alluring metier of snapping models in dresses is all about.

A couple of days earlier, the photographer’s name, Guy Bourdin, had been only vaguely familiar to me. But a friend recommended the show, and I’d found the promotional poster intriguing. It was at the same time compelling and repellent, showing a girl’s long white legs splayed over a sofa as if she had collapsed face down. She wore scarlet high-heels. The sofa was orange, and so was the bottom of her very tight, very short dress, which along with the curve of her buttocks was all that remained visible before she was cut off by the frame. The image was strongly ambiguous: could this be a corpse; or was she in an alcohol-induced coma? It certainly didn’t look like standard fashion photography. The other pictures reinforced this idea.

They were often erotic, frequently perverse and mostly eerie; reflections in TV screens in cheap hotel rooms; the suggestion of unseen figures lurking outside the frame; latent violence. Bourdin seemed to be equating fashion with lust, and imagining its potentially terrible consequences. Elsewhere there were hints of dark satire: a group of models striding past a shop window display looked barely more human than the mannequins trapped behind the glass. Each picture was lit with the icy clarity of a crime scene; an idea taken to its logical conclusion with a picture of a discarded pair of shoes next to the chalk outline of a dead body. Some of Bourdin’s work resembled that of another ground-breaking fashion photographer, Helmut Newton; but to me the images had more in common with Hitchcock and Edward Hopper.

Bourdin worked for French Vogue and shot a series of advertisements for Charles Jourdan shoes – a project that allowed him to give full reign to his fetishist imagery. Despite the fact that most of the pictures in the exhibition dated from the 1970s, they had hardly aged. This was not surprising, because I discovered that, although Bourdin died in 1991, his influence continues to saturate fashion advertising today. Contemporary art directors such as Thomas Lenthal and photographers such as Nick Knight acknowledge a huge debt to Bourdin. He is generally regarded as the first fashion photographer to have shifted the focus away from the product and towards the imagery. Before Bourdin, fashion advertising used fairly conventional depictions of female sexuality to sell products. Bourdin subverted the form. Instead of entire bodies, he showed fragmentary images of limbs. Models and actresses were dismembered by his lens, or mutated by make-up into ashen-faced cartoons of femininity.

His fashion spreads were narratives, resembling stills from surreal thrillers. Bourdin realized that fashion advertising was not just a picture of a dress or a pair of shoes; it was an imaginary universe. In doing so, he placed the photographer at the forefront of the process that transforms a garment or an accessory into an object of desire.

The relationship between fashion brands and other product categories is rather like the one between celebrities and normal citizens: they are aware of one another’s existence, they occasionally share the same space, but they rarely mingle. While other brands hire international advertising agencies such as J. Walter Thompson, Saatchi & Saatchi or BBDO, fashion brands tend to work directly with a narrow pool of freelance talents.
According to art director Thomas Lenthal, who has worked for brands such as Dior and Yves Saint Laurent, ‘In fashion, there are probably only about a dozen well-known art directors, great photographers, stylists, make-up people, and so on. You don’t need an advertising agency: you just need an address book with a handful of names in it.’
Many upmarket fashion brands don’t have a marketing department; or even a person with ‘marketing’ in their job title. The designer – often known as an ‘artistic director’ – is responsible for advertising imagery too. For instance, while Louis Vuitton works with the advertising agency BETC Luxe on several aspects of its communications, its fashion imagery is entirely under the control of the brand’s designer, Marc Jacobs.
With this in mind, a few years ago Hervé Morel set up an organization in Paris and New York called ADM – Art Direction Management. Morel does not have an agency, but he is an agent, handling a group of art directors and other creatives that includes Thomas Lenthal, Donald Schneider (H&M, Van Cleef & Arpels, Vogue Hommes International), Mathieu Trautmann (Oscar de la Renta Perfumes, Issey Miyake Perfumes, Jalouse magazine), Steve Hiett (Kenzo Perfumes), and Laurent Fétis (Cacharel Perfumes, Bless), among others. According to Morel, it was ADM that introduced Donald Schneider to H&M, which eventually led to the store’s publicity-generating partnership with Karl Lagerfeld. Morel says, ‘Designer brands may employ an agency to buy their advertising space, but they don’t work with agencies on the creative side. It’s more cost-effective to work directly with an art director, who can then bring together the other elements – the photographer, the model and so forth. Agencies tend to put forward teams that include a copywriter. But international fashion brands, which use the same images worldwide and work purely with visual stimuli, don’t need copywriters. Plus, art directors have usually gained experience on fashion magazines, so they are comfortable in that world.’ Lenthal echoes his views: ‘The structure of an advertising agency makes it an unwieldy vehicle. The one thing an ad agency fears above all else is losing a client, and in order not to do that it ensures that the creative process is as risk-free as possible. There are a lot of meetings involving eight people sitting around a table with somebody making notes, so everything is agreed with back-up in writing. The agency has a huge team consisting of the creative director, the art director, the copywriter, the account director, the strategic planner. . . they try to mirror the structure of the large corporations they are working for. But a fashion house is a much smaller unit.’
Robert Triefus, executive vice president, worldwide communications, at Giorgio Armani, confirms the approach at many fashion houses: ‘We decide the communication themes, the imagery and the overall strategy at our head office here in Milan. We don’t have an ad agency – we have our own graphics studio covering advertising materials as well as point of sale and store windows. We do, however, collaborate with famous photographers and art directors. It boils down to the fact that fashion is a very particular arena, and the creation of an image that is relevant and appropriate to the fashion world, given that it is a very aspirational product, requires the involvement of people who can really get under the skin of the brand. While I don’t wish to criticize advertising agencies, historically fashion has not been their domain –much to their disappointment. Agencies don’t necessarily have people who understand the nuances of a fashion brand. I’m sure a person from an advertising agency would have thrown your tape recorder at me by now; and certainly it’s a long-running argument. They often claim we don’t know what we’re doing. We disagree.’
Advertising agencies say that the cliquish fraternity fashion brands work with means that their ads are often indistinguishable. And indeed it’s doubtful that many fashion images could pass the marketing test that involves taking a bunch of print ads, covering up their brand names, and seeing which of them has a recognizable visual identity. Advertising for designer brands – whether clothing or accessories – is frequently sensual and elegant, but it can also be clichéd, humourless and chokingly pretentious.
In late 2004, Chanel spent a reported €26 million on a television commercial (the press office called it a ‘mini movie’) and print campaign to re-launch its No. 5 perfume. The TV ad starred Nicole Kidman and was directed by Baz Luhrmann, who was also behind the actress’s hit film, Moulin Rouge. To some, the ad looked spectacular. But was it entirely a case of sour grapes when Trevor Beattie, the well-known adman, wrote in The Guardian that the ad ‘sucks so hard it vacuumed my living room carpet’? (‘The ads that stole Christmas’, 6 December 2004.)
Beattie, the chairman and creative director of London agency TBWA, has had considerable experience in fashion, having helped to create one of the most successful British high-street brands: French Connection UK. The acronym ‘FCUK’ had been used solely on internal mail until Beattie spotted and unlocked its marketing potential. ‘FCUK fashion’, said the store’s advertising, and young consumers quickly bought into the message. Media outrage only fuelled demand. Lately, however, it seems that over-familiarity with the logo has blunted its shock appeal. Experiencing a sales slump, French Connection is downplaying its appearance on clothes and in advertising, at the same time insisting that it hasn’t dumped the brand completely. Nevertheless, FCUK had an impressive run, and is a good example of what an advertising agency can achieve for a fashion brand, as long as there’s a sharp creative at the helm.
And it is by no means the only example. The UK-based agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty has created consistently award-winning campaigns for Levi’s in a relationship that stretches back to the 1980s. Its ability to constantly refresh the brand in the mind of the fickle young consumer – and in a highly competitive market – is certainly admirable. Diesel is another company that has worked with a series of advertising agencies. However, the brand’s creative director, Wilbert Das, has ultimate control over its advertising messages, and admits that he prefers to work with ‘small, energetic agencies’. ‘We’ve worked with one large agency, Lowe Howard Spink, and, while it was an interesting process, I found their structure just too large for us,’ he says. ‘You should really feel that an agency is part of your brand, which is not always possible with a big international network.’ There is also a considerable gulf between a largely British chain store, a hip jeans brand, and a global luxury giant such as Chanel or Yves Saint Laurent. Here, perhaps, a more elitist approach is required.

I find the prospect of meeting MTV’s cool hunter rather daunting. After all, as somebody who mixes with rappers, graffiti artists and Mexican gang members to get a line on youth trends for a music television channel, Claudine Ben-Zenou has got to be one of the coolest people on the planet. Accordingly, I fix our rendezvous at the trendiest bar I know, and go along dressed in ancient jeans and a black T-shirt advertising the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, as purchased on a market stall there a few months earlier.
I needn’t have worried: Ben-Zenou is not some thrusting style maven in shades, but a friendly, discreetly well-dressed woman in her mid-20s. However, for somebody so outwardly normal-looking, Claudine has some very specialized areas of interest that have made her invaluable to MTV.
‘I’ve always been immersed in subcultures and youth trends,’ she says, without pretentiousness. ‘I’ve been involved in the hip-hop scene for more than 12 years – I was part of a hip-hop collective called Sin Cru when I lived in London. I was also into skateboarding from about the age of 14 and had a lot of friends involved in that culture. Later I got interested in the urban music scene and the rave scene. But, while I found all this fascinating, I didn’t have a clue that I could put it to any practical use.’
She studied marketing and advertising, but at the age of 19, while still at university, she got a job at a small marketing agency in Hoxton. At the time, the area was beginning to emerge after years of neglect as one of London’s most vibrant districts, a veritable Petri dish of trends. ‘The agency specialized in underground and youth marketing, and as I got more involved I realized that I had inside knowledge and connections that could be very useful,’ she recounts. ‘We were working on [beer brand] Fosters Ice and doing lots of stuff with street art and graffiti. It really opened my eyes to the possibility of using subcultures for marketing. Collaborations between mainstream brands like Nike and Adidas and underground designers are very common today, but we were among the pioneers.’
Since that first job, Ben-Zenou has acted as a consultant for global brands such as Levi’s, Casio G-Shock, Pepsi and even Disney, always providing them with the inside track on street culture. ‘The way I position myself is that I’m equally at home in the boardroom and on the street. I’m the connection between the two. I can talk to kids on their own level without coming across as a suit. What they’re doing is not some abstract concept to me – it’s very real.’ She also describes herself as ‘a huge geek’, and she has forged many of her underground connections via internet chat-rooms. ‘A lot of the people I got close to in the early days have since become quite famous in their fields. I’m able to pick up the phone and talk to a friend who’s a graffiti artist or a hip-hop MC. And, as they’re my mates, I’m not trying to interpret these quite complex scenes as an outsider. Youth brands that try to connect with these communities have a habit of getting things wrong and basically getting everyone’s back up. I feel strongly about trying to avoid that.’
Brands who try to target niche opinion-formers without doing their homework often find themselves exposed to ridicule. ‘You can miss a step very easily. The key is to work closely with influential people within the communities, and listen carefully to what they say. Graffiti is a good example. I hear all the time about brands that’ve plucked some random kid off the street. If you’re using somebody who’s not a respected artist, the result may not be obvious to you, but it’s extremely obvious to people within the scene, which undermines your credibility as a brand. It’s very important to develop long-term relationships, rather than just latching on to a scene in the short term and sucking everything you can out of it in a parasitical way.’
I ask Ben-Zenou if she ever feels in danger of being regarded as a sort of double agent – a suit in hip-hop clothing. ‘Most of the people I deal with know exactly what I do,’ she replies. ‘I’ve always tried to make a positive contribution, encouraging brands to create events that will bring money back into these scenes and elevate artists who might not have been able to make it in other circumstances.’ For a while, she acted as an agent for a group of graffiti artists and breakdancers, liaising with brands on their behalf. ‘A common attitude among marketing executives was that they were just dealing with a bunch of kids doing graffiti, so they didn’t need to pay them or even particularly acknowledge their contribution. But these people are extremely talented and often do a lot for brands, so I’m keen to get them the recognition they deserve.’
She originally worked for the MTV website, but talked the broadcaster into creating her current role after observing that ‘although we were very good at mainstream research, we didn’t seem to be monitoring trends’. (And yet the stars of MTV’s music videos have always had an impact on trends – brands such as Tommy Hilfiger and Dolce & Gabbana swear by the access the channel provides to a young, logooriented public.) She is now based in Chicago, although she travels frequently. In addition to providing regular email newsletters, she writes a quarterly trend report called ‘Switched On’, which is sent to MTV’s advertisers and their agencies, as well as acting as an internal primer for staff. ‘It’s a creative tool designed to inspire people and give them a snapshot of what’s happening out there. I pick up on micro-trends rather than huge shifts in behaviour.’ Following her own rule of working within cultures, she often gets hip-hop artists and DJs to write their own articles. ‘I think it’s important to get people to talk about their scenes in their own voices.’
Although she’s one of the global elite of cool hunters, Ben-Zenou doesn’t feel part of any such group. ‘I’m aware of people who do a similar job and I’ve met a few of them, but I always have the impression that I’m taking a somewhat different approach. They tend to come from a research background, while my training is in marketing. I suppose the main difference is that I’m not approaching it objectively – I’m deeply, passionately involved. I still go to hip-hop events, my boyfriend is from that community. . . What some people don’t realize is that you can’t just turn up one day and break into these scenes. I get a lot of respect because I’ve been involved for years. If I didn’t do this for a living, I’d be doing it anyway – always reading magazines, going online, chatting to people at parties and trying to find out how they think.’ Hence her recent brush with Mexican gang members. ‘I met them at a party and got talking to them. It wasn’t a work thing – I just found them interesting. I’m like a cross between a journalist and a sociologist.’
Perhaps because I’m a decade older than Ben-Zenou, it occurs to me to ask if there’s an age limit for being a cool hunter. Isn’t there a danger that, one day, she’ll no longer be able to relate to icons of hip? She says, ‘I’ve occasionally wondered about that myself, but I think attitudes to age are changing. I’ve got lots of friends who are older than me and who are still very much involved in the scene. There’s a graffiti artist called Futura 2000 who’s 50 years old and still considered an icon of cool. He’s recently done some work with Nike. Then you’ve got someone like Vivienne Westwood, who’s still very influential. As for me – let’s face it, I’ve got 200 pairs of trainers. I can’t see myself suddenly giving up everything I love and dressing in beige anoraks.’

With fashion in constant flux, there is a strong argument for producing a trend book that can be updated not every season, but every day. An online service called the Worth Global Style Network (www.wgsn.com) has dramatically changed the way trends are monitored. Created in 1998 by the brothers Julian and Marc Worth, WGSN is the Bloomberg of the fashion industry. Based in London, it has more than 150 staff, and outposts in New York, Paris, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Los Angeles, Milan, Barcelona and half a dozen other cities. As well as daily fashion business news, it delivers interviews, analyses, surveys, city reports, coverage of trade shows, and thousands of photographs of stores, runway shows and street life from around the globe. With a click of the mouse, its subscribers can see what fabrics were on show at Première Vision the previous morning, or what teenagers on the streets of Shanghai are wearing today. Not surprisingly, its extensive client list covers everybody who is anybody in fashion and retail, from Abercrombie & Fitch to Zara.
The WGSN headquarters on London’s Edgware Road resembles the bustling editorial floor of a major newspaper, with dozens of journalists tapping away at keyboards. And I’m assured that there are many others, out snapping the latest trends with digital cameras. ‘It’s amazing that [the traditional style bureaux] let us into the market without a fight,’ observes Roger Tredre, WGSN’s editor-in-chief. ‘Most of them still don’t have an online service to speak of, while we’ve been around for more than six years.’
But WGSN is no fly-by-night dotcom – it sees the web merely as a means to an end. ‘We’ve never used the term dotcom internally,’ Tredre says, ‘because it has all the wrong connotations for us. We perceive ourselves as a research and information company that just happens to use the internet as the quickest means of diffusion. With the everchanging nature of fashion, speed is of the essence.’
He adds that WGSN does not so much predict trends as provide vital intelligence for a multi-billion-pound industry: ‘But of course, part of our job is to monitor cutting-edge trends, and to explain how these might be interpreted for the mass market.’
Other trend-trackers act not so much as consultants to the fashion industry, but as observers of cultural shifts that may have an impact on product development. One such agency is Style-Vision, founded in 2001 (www.style-vision.com). Alongside its bi-monthly ‘mega-trends’ reports, it produces surveys of individual industries (not just fashion, but also food, personal care and technology, among others) and regularly holds round-table conferences on evolving consumer trends. Usually staged at exclusive hotels or villas in the south of France, these events attract leading marketing directors, advertising creatives, designers, architects, branding experts and journalists.
Style-Vision’s business development director, Genevieve Flaven, says, ‘Our goal is to provide a rational analysis of societal changes, as well as forecasting developments that may have an impact on design. We’re also interested in mixing consumer insights and expertise from different industries. We’re very practical – there’s no crystal ball, and we’re not gurus. The main thing we strive to avoid is treating consumers as if they’re malleable and somewhat naïve. We realize that we’re all consumers – intelligent human beings with highly complex responses to the world around us.’
In fact, says Flaven, the agency is less concerned with predicting trends than in getting inside consumers’ heads. ‘We’re interested in individuals in the context of society. Through our research among consumers and opinion-formers, we imagine future scenarios, how consumers will react to them, and what kind of products and services they might require within those scenarios.’
Ironically, though, the only people really in touch with the latest trends are those who create them – on the streets. Consumers themselves, particularly young ones, are more iconoclastic, inquisitive and inventive than any designer armed with a WGSN password and a stack of trend reports. No sooner has a marketing executive told adolescents that this is the correct way to wear a pair of jeans, than they’ve torn off the waistband and started wearing them differently. The classic argument runs that, once a trend has crossed over into the mainstream, it is already out of date.
The fashion industry is the ultimate fashion victim.

Sitting in front of me is a man in a sky-blue V-neck sweater. He is casually yet stylishly dressed – but not particularly trendy. And yet he runs one of a handful of companies that, ultimately, have a significant impact on what we wear.
Pierre-François Le Louët is chief executive officer of Nelly Rodi, a ‘style bureau’ (www.nellyrodi.fr). Based in Paris, the company has offices in Italy and Japan and a network of affiliates worldwide. Its clients come from the fields of fashion, textiles, beauty, retail and interiors. They include, in one category or another, L’Oreal, LVMH, Mango, H&M, Liz Claiborne, Agnès B, Givenchy, and a clutch of brands across Asia. There are other, similar agencies, including Promostyl, Peclers and Carlin International, but Nelly Rodi (Le Louët’s mother) was one of the pioneers of trend counselling in Europe. She remains chairman of the company, while he handles the day-to-day running of the business. In the early 1970s, she looked after communications for the designer Courrèges before being appointed in 1973 as manager of an organization called the International Fashion Committee, which had been created by the French government two decades earlier. Nelly Rodi’s son takes up the story: ‘In the 1950s, ready-to-wear was an American phenomenon, and it was felt that the French offering was disorganized and behind the times. Following a trade mission to the United States to see how the industry was structured over there, the French government created the committee, which was essentially a state trend co-ordination agency financed by the textiles industry. Why coordinate trends? Simply, to reduce incertitude: if you give the same intelligence to those who sell the clothes, those who design them, those who buy the fabrics and those who supply them, there are enormous economic advantages for the fabric manufacturers, because they know what material will be in demand and where to concentrate their efforts. Similarly, if the retailers are all stocking violet that year, it inevitably creates a demand for violet, so they sell out their stock. The idea was to reduce the margin for error in the extremely risky field of fashion.’ This was the organization Nelly Rodi joined in 1973, and where she learned many of her skills before quitting to form her own agency in 1985. In 1991, she purchased the newly privatized International Fashion Committee, ensuring beyond a doubt that she would become the trend counsellor of choice. Today, inevitably, the company has a team of trend-trackers who jet around the world monitoring social phenomena, observing the emergence of youth tribes and taking note of obscure trends, which they might pluck from the streets of Rio or Tokyo to turn into global fashions. As well as supplying such information to its clients, the agency can advise on brand strategies, produce marketing materials, organize events, provide stylists, and even design entire collections (its 30-odd staff come from both design and marketing backgrounds). ‘We are the mercenaries of fashion,’ Le Louët smiles. But Nelly Rodi’s most celebrated products are its ‘trend books’. These hefty tomes, filled with photographs, illustrations and fabric swatches, as well as explanatory texts, resemble luxurious scrapbooks. They round up the agency’s predictions of forthcoming trends and act as inspirational tools – or, more accurately, as prompts – for designers looking for the next big idea. Every season, the agency produces a dozen separate trend books covering categories such as ready-to-wear, knitwear, lingerie, colours, prints, fabrics, lifestyle and beauty. It even provides a ‘perfume trend box set’ containing little bottles of notes, blends and scents. Each book costs around €1,400 and only about 200 are printed in each category. Retailers and the beauty industry are the biggest buyers. Le Louët says, ‘The luxury brands don’t often buy them, because they see themselves as trendsetters. Nevertheless, I know that photocopies can be found in many designers’ studios.’ To illustrate his point, he opens a trend book at a page detailing a ‘heritage’ theme. It features an atmospheric photograph of a handsome tan Chesterfield sofa on a carpet with a muted paisley pattern. Then he leafs through a recent copy of Vogue, and shows me an ad for a wellknown Italian designer label. There is the moody photography, the carpet and the Chesterfield sofa – only this time with a lithe model reclining on it. The resemblance is striking. Le Louët grins. ‘And, as I say, they are not one of our clients.’
A team of independent experts helps to create the trend books. Each October, the agency rounds up 18 personalities from the fields of fashion, design, sociology and the arts for a brainstorming session. Smaller meetings, aimed at strengthening the resulting theories and synthesizing them into text, last a month and a half. As Le Louët explains, ‘There is a regular core of contributors, and an outer circle that changes from year to year. We are careful to choose people who can look beyond the media of today and give us an original perspective on the future, without relying too much on their personal opinions.’ The theory is that these people are constantly creating and absorbing fashion shows, art events, exhibitions, literature and social phenomena, and can divine which of these will have an impact on consumers’ appearance and lifestyles in the near future. It’s like watching stones being thrown into a pond, and analysing how far the ripples will spread. As a fictitious example, let’s say we know that a major exhibition about Art Nouveau will be staged at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York next summer. In all probability, as designers often attend such shows, we will see fashions inspired by the style of the early 1900s emerging on the catwalk a season or so later. Visualizations of the resulting fabrics and designs will appear in the trend book. Another trend could just as easily be sparked by street kids in Mexico City personalizing their T-shirts by hacking complex patterns into them. Once all these theories and insights have been gathered, a team of photographers and illustrators brings them to life. The resulting books, as plundered by Nelly Rodi’s clients, have an impact that may trickle down to consumers a year and a half later. Chain stores such as Zara and H&M, with their quick turnaround, can act on the prompts much earlier than designer brands, which is why their clothes are ‘trendier’ than those of their more expensive counterparts.
‘I’m not saying we’re indispensable – some brands are perfectly capable of anticipating or creating trends by themselves,’ stresses Le Louët. ‘But we’re one of the many ingredients that have an impact. It’s also important to note that trends, particularly colours, have expanded beyond fashion to take in beauty products, interiors, and even electronics – what colour is your mobile phone this season?’