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The reception at Inditex is very big and very white. It is, in fact, a glistening expanse of white tiles, with a horseshoe-shaped reception desk way over there in the distance. The walls are pale too, and entirely picture-free. I’m later told that this minimalism is for the benefit of employees: we’re in Galicia, in grey and rainy northern Spain, and these spacious, pristine, light-deluged surroundings keep staff cheerful and motivated during the winter months.
Less than an hour ago, a taxi picked me up outside my hotel in La Coruña, the faintly raffish port that is the nearest large town. It feels a long way from cosmopolitan Barcelona or frenetic Madrid. This is the kind of place where fishing boats pull into the harbour every morning; where lunch is a slice of tortilla and a beer; where couples promenade in the square at dusk, surrounded by kids kicking footballs and observed by creased oldsters nursing coffees. The shopping district is a grid of well-preserved streets dotted with affordable boutiques, many of which belong to Inditex. One of them, in Calle Juan Flórez, is the first-ever Zara store.
It was in a shop window in La Coruña, so the story goes, that Zara founder Amancio Ortega and his fiancée saw a beautiful silk negligée with a barely believable price tag. Ortega, then working at a local shirtmaker, ran up a variation on the high-priced number. His fiancée loved it, and Señor Ortega started his own business producing glamorous but affordable nightwear. He later moved into general fashion, with the affirmed aim of bringing catwalk style to the street. He opened the first branch of Zara in 1975. Originally, the store was to be called Zorba, after the character played by Ortega’s favourite actor, Anthony Quinn, in the film Zorba the Greek. He couldn’t obtain permission to use the name, so he played with the letters until he arrived at Zara, which sounded feminine and exotic. (The name should be pronounced the Spanish way: ‘Thara’.)
The chain grew steadily throughout the 1980s, but did not open its first store outside Spain until 1989, when it hopped across the border to Oporto, Portugal. Paris followed, then New York. The store didn’t reach London until 1998, by which time the fashion pack had carried news of the brand back from shopping excursions to Barcelona. On opening day, the place was mobbed. In May 2001, the brand launched on the Madrid Stock Exchange – and Amancio Ortega’s billionaire status was assured. Today, the Inditex group embraces Zara – which provides 70 per cent of its income – and a clutch of other brands: Bershka (young mainstream fashion); Pull And Bear (urban streetwear and accessories);
Oysho (lingerie); Massimo Dutti (classic fashion); Kiddy’s Class (children’s clothing); and Stradivarius (fashion and accessories). Zara Home, which aims to do for interiors what Zara has done for fashion, launched in 2003 as a separate chain. The Inditex group has more than 2,100 stores across 54 countries, 40,000 employees and a turnover of almost €4.6 billion a year, with profits of €447 million. The secret to Zara’s appeal is that, although shopping there is cheap, it doesn’t feel cheap. The stores are large, swish and centrally located. The clothes are given room to breathe and usually – unless it’s a Saturday afternoon during the sales – so are the customers. And then there are the clothes themselves. Zara is renowned for whisking budget interpretations of catwalk styles into its stores with breathtaking speed. A designer dress photographed on a model during fashion week won’t arrive in department stores for months – but something very like it can be spotted hanging in Zara in a couple of weeks. This infuriates the designers, but delights customers who can’t stretch to the originals – or no longer see the point of trying.
‘I am sorry, but I don’t think it will be possible for you to interview any employees,’ apologizes Carmen, the press officer who will be my guide at Inditex, after greeting me in the blinding-white reception area. This is not entirely surprising, as the company is famously enigmatic. Before its stock-exchange flotation, few journalists had set foot in the Inditex headquarters. Even today, Señor Ortega never, ever gives interviews. (I glimpse him during my tour, though: a sturdy, tough-looking figure with the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up, as hands-on as he has always been, even though he is one of the richest men in the world. Later, I spot him again – this time in the staff canteen.) The company prides itself on having spent hardly a penny on conventional advertising throughout its history. No posters, no print and certainly no TV. Carmen tells me, ‘The reason for not spending money on publicity is that it doesn’t bring any added value to our customers. We would rather concentrate on our offering in terms of design, prices, rapid turn-around of stock and the store experience. That’s why we have stores in the smartest locations and devote a lot of attention to façades, interiors and window displays. Our stores are our way of communicating.’
Everything about Zara is streamlined for efficiency. The building I’m standing in is the hub of the brand, and there are very few stages between here and the customer. Design, purchasing, pattern-making, samples and visual merchandizing are all handled in-house. More than 50 per cent of the clothes, particularly high-fashion items, are made in Zara’s own factories in Spain, most of them close to its headquarters. An enormous 480,000-square-metre logistics centre is capable of handing 60,000 garments an hour, whizzing orders twice a week from the green suburbs of La Coruña to stores all over the world. ‘Each order contains our latest items as well as those requested by the store managers,’ Carmen explains. ‘The store managers are a vital part of our strategy. They monitor the tastes and demands of their customers, and tailor stock accordingly. That’s why different Zara stores in different cities – or even two stores in the same city – rarely stock exactly the same products. The clothes reflect the profile of the customers.’ Zara’s product managers keep in touch with stores, seeking feedback from customers and monitoring the popularity or otherwise of items. Tills are computer-linked with headquarters, providing a constant stream of sales data: ‘We know within a day or so whether or not a product is successful.’
The tour takes me through each element of the production process. In the design area, I comment on the pile of fashion magazines next to a designer’s computer terminal. Carmen says, ‘We don’t invent trends, we follow them. Styles, colours, fabrics – we don’t guess any of these things. We are a business catering to a demand, and we’ve never made any secret of that. But we need to know what the trends are, so we follow them through magazines, fashion shows, movies and city streets. We use trend-trackers and forecasting companies. We keep our eyes open.’
Zara has been accused of flagrant piracy, which it denies. And there’s perhaps a certain amount of snobbery in the implication that a company from an obscure corner of northern Spain has no right to ape catwalk styles. In fact, the region has a strong fashion tradition, and is home to leading Spanish designers such as Adolfo Dominguez, Roberto Verino and Purificacion Garcia. It is true to say, however, that Zara specializes in ‘fast fashion’, cranking out some 11,000 different models a year. As I continue my tour, we come across a visual merchandizing specialist laying garments flat on the floor, then standing to see how the colours look together. When she’s happy with the arrangement, she transfers the clothes to shelves that mimic those in the stores. (‘That’s another reason for the white floors,’ remarks Carmen.) Nothing about the stores is left to chance. Passing through a doorway, we emerge into a ghostly street of ‘pilot stores’, where window and interior displays are mocked up before being transmitted to branches around the world. Although it is June, the windows are dressed for winter. (I make a mental note to snap up a dandyish black corduroy jacket.) The posters inside the stores – the closest Zara ever gets to advertising – are the responsibility of the corporate image department. Breaking for lunch in the Inditex canteen, I can’t help remarking on the college refectory atmosphere. In fact, with its modernity, bustle and hordes of scrubbed, trendy young people, the entire building resembles a college campus. Carmen tells me that the average age there is 26. There are romances, relationships, even marriages. Apparently, Señor Ortega approves: ‘He likes the idea of a family atmosphere. He tries to make working conditions pleasant because he wants to attract talented people, and to keep them here. After all, it’s not an obvious place to live and work, compared to Barcelona or Madrid.’ We hop into a car to tour the peripheral buildings that make up the Inditex estate. Our next stop is a factory floor, where four cutting tables can cut as many as 8,000 garments a day. The highlight, though, is inevitably the logistics centre, whose immense size defies description. It works rather like a mail-sorting office, except that the envelopes and parcels are boxes or hanging plastic sheaths of garments. Each of the system’s 1,200 slots corresponds to an individual store somewhere on the map. ‘Everything is computerized, and there are very few errors,’ says Carmen.
After what seems like half a lifetime of writing about advertising, I’m slightly numbed by Amancio Ortega’s achievement: a global fashion brand with barely a photographed pout in sight. But it’s not entirely accurate to say that Zara’s stores are its only form of communication. There are also those dark blue paper carrier bags, dangling smartly from wrists on buses and trains and in the street, in every city, everywhere.

‘What is it with you Swedes?’ I ask Jörgen Andersson, the marketing director of H&M. ‘First Ikea democratized interior design; now you’re doing the same thing with fashion. Are you lot on a mission, or something?’ Andersson – who is, as you might expect, tall, good-looking and fairhaired – smiles at the thought. ‘It’s part of our heritage. We’ve been brought up with a Social Democrat government. Since we were young we’ve always been taught that everyone should have an equal choice. It’s not just a business idea, it’s a political one. Ikea was born out of the theory that you don’t have to be rich to appreciate good design. We have the same standpoint on fashion. You can dress from head to toe in Gucci if you like – that proves you’re rich, but it doesn’t prove you have taste. It’s more imaginative to wear your Gucci with some H&M. That’s why Vogue readers are among our most loyal clients.’ H&M’s base at Regeringsgaten 48, Stockholm, is certainly democratic in appearance. Located in the commercial centre of the city, just up the road from an enormous H&M flagship store, it is blocky and practical. The lifts, to be quite honest, could do with a bit of a makeover. Annacarin Björne, the company’s press officer, tells me that this nofrills look is quite deliberate: ‘We pride ourselves in being costconscious, so we can pass those savings on to our customers. We don’t see the point of flashy offices.’
Company founder Erling Persson opened his first store in Västerås, a small town one hour south of Stockholm, in 1947. Persson had been inspired by a trip to the United States, where he had marvelled at a new kind of ready-to-wear boutique offering fashionable garments at affordable prices. He called his concept simply Hennes, or ‘hers’. In the early 1960s, the chain expanded into Norway and Denmark, and in 1968 it acquired the Stockholm store Mauritz Widforss, which specialized in hunting apparel and equipment. Crucially, the fusion allowed the newly created Hennes & Mauritz to add a masculine dimension to its collection. The first UK store opened in 1976.
In 1982, when Erling Persson’s son Stefan took over as chief executive (he is currently chairman), the company entered a period of international expansion that continues to this day. At the time of my visit, H&M had just added Canada and Slovenia to the map, with Hungary and Ireland due to follow at any moment. The brand has been present in the United States since 2000. In total, it has more than 1,000 stores in 20 countries, selling over 600 million items a year. It has an annual turnover of more than 56.5 billion SEK (US$7 billion). Sales outside Sweden account for 90 per cent of this figure, with Germany adding the biggest chunk at 29 per cent. ‘We see the United Kingdom, the United States, France, Germany, Spain and Poland as expansion markets,’ says Björne.
H&M says that it owes its success to three factors: inventive design, the best quality at the best price, and efficient logistics. The team of 100 designers is based in Stockholm – and Björne stresses that, contrary to popular belief, they do not copy styles that have already appeared on the runways of Paris and Milan. ‘They travel all the time and pick up any number of influences, from street trends, exhibitions, movies, magazines and trade fairs. We’re a bit tired of being accused of copying famous designers. If we did that, we’d be up to our neck in court cases – and that’s money we’d rather save.’ The company’s basic products have long lead times – from six to eight months – but it aims to have high-fashion items in stores two to three weeks after the pattern has left the designer’s PC screen. The company’s 21 production offices (10 each in Europe and Asia, another in Africa), with a total of more than 700 employees, are responsible for liaising with around 750 factories. About 60 per cent of these are in Asia, the rest in Europe. H&M does not own any factories, but it has a lengthy code of conduct that all its suppliers must sign, as well as a team of quality controllers who can swoop in unannounced to ensure the rules are being followed (see Chapter 20: Behind the seams). According to Jörgen Andersson, ‘Over the past 10 years, [H&M] have become preoccupied with the question of quality. We expect our suppliers to provide products of the highest possible standard at a very fair price, because that’s our promise to the consumer.’ In terms of logistics, no fewer than 3,200 people are devoted to the task. The completed garments pass through a transit warehouse in Hamburg before being dispatched to distribution centres in individual markets. Only transportation is contracted out; otherwise, H&M conWhen trols every step of the process, acting as importer, wholesaler and retailer. Computerized stock management ensures that new items arrive in stores every day.
This logistics approach is at variance with Zara’s centralized distribution model (see page 51), and there are other points of difference between the Swedish giant and its Spanish rival. One of them is marketing strategy. Unlike Zara, H&M has never shied away from advertising. Its simple but effective posters – showing models in casual poses against plain white backgrounds – have become a familiar part of the urban landscape. And, until recently, its Christmas lingerie campaign, featuring provocative shots of the hottest models, was a festive tradition attracting frank stares of appreciation, mutters of disapproval and free media coverage in equal measure. (A 1993 series of posters featuring the voluptuous Anna Nicole Smith in retro pin-up mode – right in the middle of the skinny-girl ‘heroin chic’ period – is regarded as a landmark in the brand’s development.)
But all that has changed. In accordance with the new era of ‘massclusivity’, H&M is going upmarket. Jörgen Andersson says, ‘What we have done very well throughout the 50 years of our existence is to keep our focus on the customer. We have a lean organization and a constant eye on the market, so, as soon as tastes change, we change with them. We don’t dictate style. Our style is whatever our customers demand.’
What the customers want now, according to Andersson, is glamour:
‘Fashion always mirrors society. Many people today can afford a lifestyle that was previously only available to the rich. With low-cost airlines, they can travel to places their parents only dreamed about. You want to be famous? What’s fame, today? You only have to go on a reality TV show to become famous. Celebrity seems just around the corner, so why not live it out while you’re waiting?’ Enter Karl Lagerfeld. A decade ago, it would have been hard to imagine H&M’s young customers evincing much interest in either Chanel or its courtly, white-haired designer. The launch of Lagerfeld’s collection for H&M was promoted worldwide with giant posters and a two-minute TV commercial, all of which replaced the traditional Christmas lingerie campaign. Andersson says, ‘We had been running the underwear campaign for 10 or 12 years, and we felt that it had lost its relevance. We said to ourselves, “Hold on, we’re supposed to be a contemporary company, a fashion company, we need to do something different.” The underwear posters were very much focused on “this year’s most famous model”. But consumers don’t care about that any more. They have become interested in design. They want to know what the new collection looks like.’
H&M linked up with Lagerfeld through the Paris-based freelance art director Donald Schneider. Andersson recalls, ‘Donald created our new customer magazine and worked with us on our advertising. Through his work for Vogue he got to know Karl, and we had a conversation about whether Karl might be interested in doing something with us. A short time later, Donald called to say that Karl would like to meet us. So we flew to Paris and after sitting and chatting for a while, Karl said, “Let’s do it – when can we get started?”’
Andersson says Lagerfeld was attracted to the ‘youthful and creative’ elements of the H&M brand. Lagerfeld himself confirmed as much in a flurry of interviews. He told French news magazine L’Express, ‘One day I was in the elevator at Chanel with one of the girls who worked there. She looked very pretty in her tweed coat, and I complimented her on it. She told me, “It comes from H&M – I don’t have the money to buy one here!” Obviously, I hadn’t seen the buttons or the lining up close, but it had a lot of style; modern and well-cut.’ (‘Karl Lagerfeld, couturier chez H&M’, 20 September 2004.)

In the same article, Lagerfeld mentions that when H&M sent him a suit for publicity photographs, ‘I didn’t have to make a single alteration.’ He adds, ‘Naturally, the fabric and the finish make a difference, but it’s honest work – certainly more so than the second lines of some designers, [which are] criminal in their condescendence and dullness.’ It doesn’t take a marketing genius to grasp the value of quotes like that to H&M. Partnerships with leading designers have now become an important component of the retailer’s strategy. Not with Lagerfeld, though, who complained to German magazine Stern shortly after the line’s launch that not enough of the clothes had been made available, adding for good measure the suggestion that H&M’s larger sizes did not flatter his designs. The statement did no harm to either party: the Karl Lagerfeld for H&M line remained a rare one-off, collectible for ever more, and Lagerfeld retained his dignity; H&M was the overall winner, in terms of publicity and prestige.
But Andersson observes that a shift in perception is not enough – the upward sweep must be visible at every intersection with the customer. ‘As well as the qualitative aspects of the garments and the production process, we have been working very much with the appearance of stores. We’ve begun to radically rebuild and redecorate. We know that our customers love to shop – they consider it entertainment. And if the store is the main contact with the customers, we have to enhance that experience.’
Aware that its slick new image could create a distancing effect, H&M is building closer links with consumers in other ways. It has tentatively launched a Web-based loyalty scheme, available in Sweden and Denmark at the time of writing. Those who sign up receive the H&M magazine – a cross between a catalogue and a traditional glossy – as well as email bulletins, special offers and discounts. In Andersson’s view, ‘If there’s a group of loyal consumers who love H&M, we should foster that relationship. Mass communication is not always the answer – it’s more efficient to address those who are the most receptive to the message.’ Above all, Andersson believes it is crucially important to keep sight of the brand’s core values, which he lists as ‘fashionable, exciting and accessible’. ‘Traditionally, fashion has been aloof and superior. You look at the advertising; it takes itself very seriously. H&M is not like that at all. I want people to come to the store because they’re going out that night and they need a new top. And they don’t hesitate – they buy something for 10 euros, because, let’s face it, why not? For that price, you can give it to the Salvation Army the next day if you want. It hardly costs more than a couple of glasses of wine.’

Upmarket brands may have begun stalking mass consumers, but the trend labelled ‘massluxe’ (or ‘masstige’, take your pick) is more about chain stores smartening up. Gap, for instance, went one step further than H&M by naming Domenico De Sole, the former chief executive of Gucci group, to its board, and hiring designers who had previously worked with Marc Jacobs and Calvin Klein. To underline the change, a subsequent print advertising campaign starred Sex and the City’s Sarah Jessica Parker, a style icon for millions of women. Gap is in better shape right now than it has been for years. Back in 2002, the company was limping as customers turned their backs on a brand that looked bland and baggy next to trendy newcomers from Spain and Scandinavia. The turnaround has been attributed to Paul Pressler, who took over as chief executive in 2002. The former Disney theme-park executive halted expansion, closed underperforming stores, and strove to redefine the chain’s brand identity – along with that of its sister brands Old Navy and Banana Republic. Although Gap still has some work to do, it emerged from the revamp looking younger, sharper and more fashionable, and is about to start expanding again. Even Laura Ashley is in on the act, having appointed Alistair Blair –who previously worked with Lagerfeld, Givenchy and Dior – as its design director. ‘I walked into the store, saw the cut and quality of the clothes and thought, “This is so un-high street. I cannot believe how good these clothes are,”’ marvelled Joan Rolls, a ‘fortysomething former Vogue staffer’, in The International Herald Tribune. The article quoted Rolls as saying that the clothes had ‘the same ethos as, dare I say it, Burberry, but at a fraction of the price’. (‘Massluxe, the buzz on high street’, 23 September 2004.)
In a variation on the theme, at around the same time that H&M was counting the press clippings from its Lagerfeld coup, French clothing catalogue La Redoute brought out a line designed by Jean-Paul Gaultier.
Several elements combined to drive this evolution. The post-9/11 economic fall-out forced luxury shoppers to tighten their belts, while casting around for a viable alternative that would fool as many observers as possible. High-street shoppers, having spent years soaking up articles about Ford, Galliano, Jacobs, Prada and the rest of the fashion firmament, became design-savvy and demanding. And the retailers wanted to distance themselves from the flood of bargain-basement supermarket labels that was lapping at their heels – a tendency that has been accelerated by the end of textile-trade restrictions at the end of 2004 (see Chapter 18: Brave new market).
The emergence of supermarket brands and ‘value-led’ fashion is worth a brief detour. The reference in the sector is Wal-Mart, the world’s biggest store group. When Wal-Mart acquired Asda in 1999, the British supermarket chain was already famous for its cut-price clothing brand George, created by Next founder George Davies in 1990. Although the store didn’t offer a dramatic retail environment or imaginative marketing, it sold jeans for £4 – along with other cheap and cheerful garments that, while not exactly fashion-forward, were perfectly wearable. Wal-Mart has since taken the brand global, and by the end of 2004 was promising stand-alone stores. In the UK, Asda began crowing that George now sold more clothes than fallen British favourite Marks & Spencer. Asda is not alone in this growing niche. Tesco has two brands, Cherokee and Florence & Fred, which are edging ever closer to the type of ‘fast fashion’ items sold by the likes of H&M. These brands are given space in fashion magazines and sold in separate sections of the store, giving them an increased legitimacy. Away from the supermarkets, ‘value’ outlets such as Matalan, TK Maxx and Primark are nibbling away at the mid-market retailers. One of the first into the sector, Matalan has been selling discounted high-street brands for 20 years. Customers must become ‘members’ of the organization before they can shop at its 170 or so outlets across the UK. With a loyal customer base thus assured, Matalan saves money by locating its stores out of town, buying clothing in bulk, and selling it in no-nonsense environments. But Matalan faces major competition in the form of TK Maxx, which stocks genuine designer brands at rock-bottom prices. It’s part of the American group TJX, which was founded in 1976 and now bills itself as the world’s largest ‘off-price’ retailer. The magazine Management Today explained its approach as follows: ‘Like others in the sector, [TK Maxx] keeps costs low with little in the way of merchandizing or advertising, although, as its fame has spread among the more wellheeled shopper in recent years, it has started advertising in magazines such as Heat and the Sunday Times Style supplement.’ (‘The low-cost retail revolution’, March 2005.)
In the same article, Geoff Lancaster, head of external affairs for Primark’s parent company, Associated British Foods, reveals that his chain has a similar strategy: ‘We don’t have a glossy headquarters. . . Nor do we spend on advertising; it’s word-of-mouth. But we are not cheapskates when it comes to distribution; we’ve invested heavily in logistics.’
As the writer of the article goes on to comment, ‘The tills are buzzing. Primark’s prices are so low, there’s simply no comparison with [Marks & Spencer].’
The seeming inability of Marks & Spencer to respond to these various threats is in large part the cause of its current woes. M&S, which prided itself for years on the fact that it never had to advertise to attract customers, appears to be locked in a protracted and painful decline. Despite closing stores, cutting staff and promising time and time again to get its design act together, the once-respected store is struggling to rejuvenate its ageing clientele.
Fortunately for the other high-street chains, not everybody wants to buy cheap clothing in Spartan surroundings. For fashion-led stores, the rise of bargain-basement brands represents an opportunity as well as a threat. If they continue to develop exciting shopping environments, creative advertising, hawk-eyed buying and cutting-edge design, they can retain customers and justify their prices. ‘Masstige’ is their not-sosecret weapon. A whole range of previously uninspired retailers – Oasis, New Look, Target in the United States (fashionistas have taken to giving it an ironic French inflection, as in ‘Tar-jay’) – have ramped up their creativity with the aid of young designers. Topshop is way ahead of the game, in the United Kingdom, at least. Even before H&M and Zara came along, its flagship store on London’s Oxford Circus was the haunt of beady-eyed stylists and model agency scouts; which led to winking ‘you didn’t hear it from us’ references in the glossies. And although its design has been a cut above the rest for some time, Topshop now has a massluxe range, positioned at a slightly higher price point as a signal to the discerning. However, when writing about the democratization of fashion, there’s no escaping the twin titans of high-street style.

There may have been a time when fashion was constructed like a pyramid, with haute couture at the apex, designer ready-to-wear just below, challenger brands in the middle, and a big slab of mass retail at the base. This is no longer the case today – if, indeed, it was ever that simple. Hovering around the structure are streetwear, sportswear and semicouture, among others. Consumers, too, rather than being content to stay in their allotted sectors, scurry promiscuously from one to the other, picking up a Louis Vuitton bag here and slinging it over a Zara jacket there; wearing a Topshop T-shirt and Gap jeans under a coat from Chanel.
‘It’s not enough to look fashionable – one wishes to appear intelligent as well,’ remarks fashion guru Jean-Jacques Picart. ‘There are two different shifts happening at once. First of all, Chanel, Dior, Gucci and the others will continue to develop luxury as a business. At the same time, we are seeing a complementary reaction, which is that a consumer may accept paying for the latest Dior bag, very trendy, that she’s seen in all the magazines and advertisements; but she’ll see no shame in going to Zara and buying a T-shirt for 10 euros, because it’s pretty and it’s a fair quality for the price. Then she may go to another store, a bit more expensive but not as well known, perhaps run by a young designer, where she’ll buy a skirt. And these items, when brought together, reassure her and send a message to others that she’s an intelligent consumer, not dazzled by marketing, in charge of her own image.’ In other words, the era of slavish brand worship is over. Just as everyone today is to some extent a marketing expert, we are also our own stylists. The designer Alber Elbaz, of Lanvin, recently commented, ‘We’ve reached a turning point. Nobody wears logos any more. People aren’t hesitating to mix Lanvin with Topshop. Everything is becoming more democratic.’ (‘Mr Nice Guy’, Numéro, August 2004.) The thinking behind the partnership between Lagerfeld and H&M was simple: if the mass market was attracted to the rejuvenated luxury sector, even to the extent of saving up for the occasional pricey item, and if upmarket customers were getting their kicks from unearthing fashionable fripperies at inexpensive stores, then why not formalize the relationship? Luxury brands could show they knew how to talk street, the chain stores would benefit from the glitter, and there would be lots of free publicity for everyone.
The trend can be compared to a parallel evolution among sportswear brands. Rappers have long enjoyed mixing solitaires and sneakers, and multi-brand lifestyle stores such as the pioneering Colette in Paris have been selling sports shoes alongside designer dresses for years. So it’s not surprising that names previously associated with the rarefied world of the catwalk have started hooking up with sportswear brands. Perhaps the most successful of these chimeras is Y-3, the partnership between Yohji Yamamoto and Adidas. The collaboration began when Yamamoto contacted Adidas to ask if he could produce a customized version of the brand’s classic Stan Smith sports shoe. Talks led to a cobranding exercise that now has its own identity, complete with standalone outlets. The collection runs not only to trainers, but also to clothing, accessories and swimwear. Many of the items utilize the threestripe Adidas logo. As a whole, the collection resembles a futuristic take on vintage sportswear, as if somebody has strapped a bundle of 1970s Adidas gear to a time machine and hurled it into 2020. Michael Michalsky, global creative director of Adidas, describes it as a ‘win-win situation’. (‘Teaming up from arena to runway’, International Herald Tribune, 10 October 2003.) He has good reason to do so. A sportswear brand that forms this kind of partnership gets the kudos of working with a major design talent, while the designer gains an extra layer of gritty credibility. Adidas is clearly pleased with the outcome, because it has since teamed up with a second top-name designer, Stella McCartney, to create a ‘functional sport performance range’ for women. Other designer/sports collaborations include a Fred Perry shirt by Comme des Garçons and a Reebok dress designed by Diane Von Furstenberg.
Taking a slightly different (and arguably more imaginative) tack, Puma has embarked on a partnership with French designer Philippe Starck. Starck is best known for architecture and interiors, although he is increasingly branching out into other areas, from eyewear to beer bottles. In a press release announcing the alliance, Puma’s director of global brand management, Antonio Bertone, explained the thinking behind the collaboration: ‘The objective of Puma’s co-op projects is for an outside designer to share a different perspective so that we can learn from one another.’ He added that the project was all about ‘pushing the boundaries of design’. But the venture also adds sheen to the brand’s image, pushing it further from the locker room and closer to the loft conversion.

In the end, the New York Daily News summed it up best of all. ‘Fashion king Karl Lagerfeld is a mega-hit for the masses from Manhattan to Milan,’ the newspaper gulped, the day after the pillage (13 November 2004). ‘Throngs of style-seekers stormed H&M stores around the world to scoop up the first moderately priced collection from the worldfamous Chanel designer. By the end of the day, the Karl Lagerfeld for H&M line had sold out at the chain’s seven Manhattan stores and across the Atlantic in cities from London to Milan, Munich to Stockholm.’ It was the same story in Paris, where Lagerfeld lives and works. The great man may have even cast a bemused eye upon proceedings from the shadows as shoppers ransacked a store in Les Halles. ‘I reckon I’ve got a collector’s item now,’ 34-year-old Fabrice told Le Journal du Dimanche (‘Razzia chez H&M’, 14 November 2004), after snapping up a €150 Lagerfeld suit, clearly unaware that six-Euro pairs of sunglasses from the collection were already being hawked on eBay. Fabrice confessed that, rather than selecting his size and waiting for a changing room, he’d wrenched armfuls of jackets and trousers from their hangers and tried them on in the corner of the store. The newspaper opined that we could expect to see a lot more of these ‘new adepts of low-priced luxury’.
The launch of Lagerfeld’s ‘capsule’ collection for H&M was the consummation of a long-time hot and heavy flirtation between haute couture and high street; the two disparate worlds had been moving inexorably towards each other for some time.

The connection between Dr. Martens, Burberry, Lacoste and Dior is that they have a lengthy heritage to rely on. They may choose to highlight or mask different aspects of their past depending on prevailing trends, but the elements are readily available – a pick-and-mix bag of anecdotes and attributes. But what if you’re starting from zero, without access to a resonant name, a dusty archive, or a famous designer? How do you give your brand a compelling story?

There are two instructive – and very different – examples from Italy. The first is Tod’s, the footwear and accessories brand. There is no Signor Tod, and there never has been. When company chairman Diego Della Valle created the brand in 1979, he invented the name JP Tod’s to give his ultra-comfortable loafers an air of Anglo-Saxon classicism. But his real stroke of genius was an advertising campaign featuring black and white photographs of Cary Grant, Jackie and John F. Kennedy, Audrey Hepburn and David Niven, with a single Tod’s loafer superimposed at the bottom of the image. Della Valle was not claiming that these people had actually worn his shoes – let’s be clear – he was simply linking the brand with a certain insouciant style. Add a high price point to underscore a suggestion of luxury, and the legend falls smoothly into place. The second example is perhaps even more impressive. It concerns a young man from rural Italy who ran up a pair of jeans on his mother’s sewing machine, and went on to build a global brand. On the day I went to meet that young man, we were barrelling down the autostrada in a functional four-by-four, when my driver pointed out a gleaming flame-red car. ‘Look at that – a Ferrari,’ he said. ‘Now that’s what I call a car. Che bella!’ He looked on with envy as the Ferrari roared to a pinpoint in the distance.

Diesel founder Renzo Rosso wouldn’t be quite so impressed. He’s more of a Harley Davidson, rock and roll sort of guy. He likes things beaten-up, frayed and oil-stained, preferably mixed in with a bit of retro kitsch. The Diesel universe frequently resembles a 1950s sci-fi movie, sometimes the attic of a junk shop, occasionally an Easy Rider psychedelic road trip, and very often a blend of all three. Mostly, it looks like the contents of Rosso’s own head.

‘I bought a sports car once, when I was younger,’ confesses Rosso later, over lunch in the small town of Molvena, where Diesel is based. ‘It was a Dodge Viper. I drove it maybe twice. The second time I was sitting at the traffic lights and I became aware of the fact that everyone was looking at me. I didn’t like that feeling. I sold the car not long after that.’
Rosso has come a long way from his parents’ farm – but, in a sense, he is still in the same place. Diesel’s surprisingly small light industrial unit is tucked within the folds of the hilly Bassano del Grappa region in northern Italy, not far from where he grew up. He remains close to his native soil, with the major difference that he now has his own farm, as well as a vineyard producing the red wine that we are currently sipping. ‘I have some luxuries,’ he says, ‘a beautiful home; but I’m still the same person. Basically, I’m a meddler. When I was a kid, I used to take my moped apart and put it back together again, to see if I could get it to go faster. I’ve always been like that. I look at things and try to work out how they could be better, more fun, more amusing. I’m allergic to the ordinary.’
Rosso ran up his first pair of jeans at the age of 15, on his mother’s Singer sewing machine, because he couldn’t afford a pair of the flares that were fashionable at the time. ‘A couple of my friends liked them, and asked me to make some for them too. Every night I sat at home stitching jeans for my friends. But it was okay, because I charged them 3,400 lire – about two euros. I said to myself, “You know; there might be a future in this business.”’

This insight led him to the local technical college in Padua, where he studied textiles and manufacturing. Afterwards, he got a job as a production manager at a company called Moltex, which made trousers for various Italian labels. The enterprise was run by Adriano Goldschmied, who became Rosso’s mentor. Rosso is quick to acknowledge, ‘He taught me how to survive in the fashion industry.’ A couple of years later, in 1978, Rosso approached Goldschmied with the idea of starting his own jeans label. ‘So we went into business together, producing jeans for ourselves instead of other people.’ It was Goldschmied who came up with the brand name Diesel. ‘We wanted something that didn’t sound Italian; that had an international feel. Did you know the word is pronounced the same all over the world?’ The business developed slowly. By his own admission, Rosso was young, inexperienced, and unwilling to risk the future of the jointowned enterprise by trying some of the wilder ideas that lurked in the back of his mind. Then, in 1985, he bought Goldschmied’s half of Diesel: ‘That was when I started producing things that were a little more personal, a little more crazy. Everything I did was inspired by vintage. Now everyone uses that word, “vintage”, but we were the first to do that. When I began producing stonewashed jeans and jeans with holes in them, retailers would send them back, saying the quality was not good enough. I was obliged to travel – to New York, to Stockholm, to Los Angeles – to explain the concept. It’s hard to imagine today, but 25 years ago department stores weren’t stocking a great deal of casual wear, particularly in the States. It was rows and rows of suits. Imagine trying to convince them to stock jeans that already looked old.’ In addition, Rosso had set his prices high. ‘Because of the production process that had gone into ageing the jeans, I was selling them for 80 or 90 dollars, when the average at the time was about 50 dollars. I remember going into a vintage store called Antique Boutique in New York, which I thought our jeans suited very well. The guy said no, but I told him, “Don’t say no! I believe in this thing! Give me one metre of space, and if you don’t sell them all, I’ll buy the rest back.”’ Needless to say, he didn’t end up empty-handed. ‘The reason this company has succeeded is because we’re always trying to be different. We stand out from the crowd. For instance, in 1995 we started doing accessories. We produced a really strange pair of sunglasses [the cult ‘Sister Yes’ model] when there was absolutely no innovation in that market. Then we turned to wrist-watches, and gave them the Diesel treatment too. We’ve changed many aspects of fashion, although few people would give us credit for it.’

It’s impossible to talk about Diesel’s idiosyncratic style without turning to Wilbert Das, the brand’s creative director and head of design. The Dutchman joined the firm in 1988, straight out of art school, having hassled Rosso for a job. ‘I’d seen his clothes in small boutiques in Holland, and I could tell right away that what he was doing fit in with my ideas. Everyone had big catwalk dreams, but I wanted to design clothes that I would see on the streets. That’s where the really innovative stuff in fashion was happening – and it still is.’ Das joined the company as assistant designer on the men’s line, gradually working his way up the ranks to the top slot. These days he’s as essential to the Diesel image as Rosso himself, enjoying an almost symbiotic relationship with the founder of the brand. So how does he define the Diesel identity?

‘We’ve always been fascinated by things that are kitsch, colourful, decorative. Sometimes we refer to it as “retro-futuristic”, but that doesn’t quite capture it. We like to clash styles, piling references on top of one another. We go out of our way to challenge definitions of good taste. We’re not interested in fashion – we prefer to create things that are entirely our own. Diesel is anti-fashion fashion.’ Rather than attending catwalk shows, disembowelling glossy magazines or hooking themselves up to the internet, Diesel’s designers travel to urban hotspots around the world. They return with posters, postcards, CDs, club flyers – and, of course, second-hand clothes. Diesel’s design studios are cluttered with racks of unlikely vintage items in lurid colours, migraine-inducing patterns and crackly fabrics; all of which might resurface in a mutated form as part of a Diesel collection. ‘We have a lot of freedom because we design our clothes on an itemby-item basis, rather than by co-ordinated “looks”. We’ve always considered our consumers to be intelligent, not brand junkies who go to a single store for an entire outfit. We expect them to mix us with other brands, with vintage clothes, with anything they like. These are people who expect a lot of choice. For that same reason, we offer them a huge range of jeans: something like 45 styles and 67 different washes in each collection. Multiply that by lengths and waist sizes and you can see that it gets quite insane.’

Insanity, or at least eccentricity, doesn’t seem to be a disadvantage at Diesel. The company traffics in irony, a rare commodity in the fashion world. This is evident in its widely acclaimed advertising, which has played a crucial role in establishing the brand’s notoriety. Although Diesel employs an advertising agency, which is unusual for a fashion brand (see Chapter 7: The image makers), Das oversees the creation of all marketing materials: ‘This is vital, because we look upon communications as one of our products. The same standards that we apply to our clothes, we apply to our external communications.’ Diesel’s decision to embark on an international advertising campaign in 1991 was a turning point in its history. Its first agency was a small Stockholm-based outfit called Paradiset. The relationship lasted until 2001, by which time Paradiset had racked up shelf-loads of advertisingindustry awards and Diesel had exploded into a global brand. ‘Our distributor in Sweden recommended the agency to us. It was tiny, maybe four or five people,’ Das recalls. ‘As soon as we met them, we loved what they were doing. In our sector there are not many people who are brave enough to try different things. And in the advertising industry as well, people are not very courageous. But Paradiset really had balls.’
Paradiset came up with the slogan ‘Diesel: For Successful Living’, which referred to the improbable advertising promises of the past, while utilizing the company’s trademark irony. Print ads resembled the centrefolds of ancient porn magazines, Bollywood movie posters, army recruitment campaigns, ads for superannuated domestic appliances –anything but fashion spreads, in fact.
Renzo Rosso says, ‘Once again, we broke through by doing something completely different. If you think back to 1991, fashion advertising was all black and white: Donna Karan, Calvin Klein. . . Tasteful, beautifully shot, black and white. And then we came out with these ads that were colourful, brash and surreal – it’s not surprising people noticed us.’
The company has switched advertising agencies a few times since then, but the strategy remains the same. Diesel’s ads delight in causing offence, combining the garish and the beautiful, the twisted and the sublime. One ad, showing an improbably leggy model perched on a giant cigarette, was emblazoned with the words ‘How to smoke 145 a day’. But the skull at the foot of the image indicated that this was an offthe-wall anti-smoking message. Rosso has often used Diesel’s advertising to make acerbic observations about western society. A poster showing a pistol-toting male model, a comment on gun culture in the United States, caused uproar in that country. A more recent campaign portrayed consumers as ageless, wrinkle-free drones. The images were accompanied by instructions offering the keys to eternal life. Whether Diesel’s advertising carries a genuine message, or whether it is merely designed to provoke, entertain and draw attention to the brand, it has certainly been effective. Diesel began as a small Italian jeans maker with 18 staff and a clutch of sewing machines. Now it is present in more than 80 countries, with almost 6,000 points of sale and 255 branded stores. Alongside the main product line, the company embraces Diesel Kids and the younger, sportier 55DSL line. Through the Italian manufacturing company Staff International, which it acquired in 2000, it obtained licensing agreements to make clothes for designer brands Vivienne Westwood, DSquared and Martin Margiela. (Rosso has since become the majority shareholder of NEUF Group, the owner and operating company of Maison Martin Margiela.) It even owns a hotel, the Pelican in Miami’s South Beach, which, with its Art Deco façade and eyeball-frazzling interior, perfectly captures the Diesel vibe. In fact, when studied carefully, all these elements remain true to the brand’s skewed, avant-garde outlook.
The rise of Diesel proves that building a fashion brand is as much about communication as it is about clothes. It’s about creating a playground, a diverting fiction. Renzo Rosso is often quoted as saying, ‘Diesel is not my company, it’s my life.’ But his real genius has been to sell the world the product of his imagination.

But if consumers are invited to play a part in the story of a brand, what happens when they subvert it? Throughout the history of fashion, consumers have had an irritating habit of sweeping aside carefully constructed marketing strategies and bending brands to their own will. It is doubtful, for example, that Dr. Martens encouraged the skinhead movement to adopt its shiny black boots. To its credit, however, the brand does not try to bury the association. Its website has its own explanation: according to its narrative, the original skinhead was a ‘multicultural, politically broad-minded and fashion-conscious individual’ with a liking for ‘reggae, soul and ska’. It was only later that the look was ‘hijacked by right-wing racists’.

Burberry faces a similar problem in the United Kingdom. Some time ago, it joined the pantheon of brands adopted by label-conscious but not particularly upmarket British youth, notably soccer fans. As a direct corollary, and most damagingly of all, Burberry – and particularly its iconic check pattern – has become associated with ‘chavs’. The etymology of the term ‘chav’ is unclear – theories range from the Romany word for ‘child’ to the straightforward acronym of ‘Council Housed and Violent’ – but it has been widely adopted by the British media to describe a certain type of downmarket consumer. Chavscum.co.uk, the website that first identified the group, uses the definition ‘Britain’s peasant underclass’. In the section of the site headed ‘How to spot a chav’, the first item is a baseball cap in Burberry check. The plaid fabric has become so closely associated with hooliganism that some pubs and clubs have instructed door staff to refuse entry to young people wearing it. An article in The Guardian (‘The two faces of Burberry’, 15 April 2004) cites a picture of a soap opera actress ‘clad top to toe in Burberry check: the hat, the skirt, the scarf, her baby dressed up to match’ as the moment when Burberry became ‘the ultimate symbol of nouveau riche naff’.

The ‘chav’ association clearly goes against the grain of Burberry’s status as a luxury brand. It also threatens to unravel the work Rose Marie Bravo has done to rebuild the label since joining the company as chief executive in 1997. Making the brand younger and more accessible has left it open to re-interpretation.
And yet Burberry has emerged relatively unscathed. For a start, ‘chavs’ are a purely British tribe, and the UK market accounts for only 15 per cent of the brand’s sales. In Europe and Asia, Burberry has successfully maintained its official positioning as English, quirky and fashionable – a ‘classic with a twist’, à la Paul Smith. It has also toned down the trademark plaid, now using it on only five per cent of its clothing, as opposed to 20 per cent a couple of years ago. Bravo told The Guardian, ‘We had this issue of logoism that was rampant across the industry. But we knew that these things run in cycles, you can have too much of a good thing. We moved on, and we got into a mode of being more discreet with the logo.’ The company has also placed more focus on its check-free upmarket label, Burberry Prorsum, which is a step above the largest range, Burberry London, in both positioning and price. The current face of Burberry Prorsum is the aristocratic English model Stella Tennant.

Burberry’s non-executive director, Philip Bowman (the chief executive of Allied Domecq), skilfully handled the potentially difficult issue by at first laughing it off – brandishing a copy of a book about chav culture during a press conference – and then suggesting that most of the Burberry items worn by the clan were fakes. He told the world, ‘I think the genesis of it is rather sad. In this country there is not an insignificant amount of counterfeit product at the low end.’ (‘Bowman keeps the chavs in check’, Financial Times, 22 October 2004.) In short, Burberry has trodden a delicate line between nonchalant acceptance and ingenuous denial of the phenomenon. In any case, the chavs have done little to undermine the company’s performance. At the time of writing, it had just announced a year-on-year sales rise of 14 per cent.

Lacoste has faced the same challenge in its native France, where the prestigious sportswear with the crocodile logo has been adopted as a uniform by tough teenagers from the banlieues, or suburbs. In 1925 tennis ace René Lacoste was standing in front of a shop window in Boston with Pierre Guillou, captain of the French tennis team, shortly before a vital qualifying match for the Davis Cup. ‘If I win,’ Lacoste said, indicating a crocodile-skin suitcase, ‘you can buy me one of those.’ He lost the match, but an American journalist who had heard about the bet reported that ‘the young Lacoste [did not win] his crocodile-skin suitcase, but he fought like a real crocodile’. From then on, Lacoste wore a crocodile embroidered on the breast pocket of his shirts. And when he launched a range of sportswear in 1930, it naturally bore the crocodile logo). Today, more than 30 million Lacoste products are sold annually in over 110 countries, generating revenue in excess of €800 million.

With its emphasis on quality and its roots in the exclusive domain of tennis, Lacoste had all the ingredients it needed to seduce upmarket consumers – and it did so, for decades. But when French hip-hop fans began casting around for a home-grown version of the sports brands worn by their American counterparts, they naturally turned to Lacoste. The logo implied performance, taste, and money to burn. Plus, what could be more rebellious than that snappy little croc? At first, Lacoste observed this turn of events with grave concern, fearing that it would lose its traditional older, wealthier French client base. Soon, though, it recognized an opportunity – one that, after a false start, it utilized with considerable subtlety. While a blatant attempt to target these new consumers might have succeeded in distancing both loyal customers and suburban kids – whose very fascination for the brand lay in the fact that that they had ‘hijacked’ it – Lacoste adopted an oblique approach. It used the trend as a springboard to rejuvenate the brand. It hired a new designer, Christophe Lemaire (formerly of Thierry Mugler and Christian Lacroix), who introduced a range of ‘elegantly functional’ clothing: ‘Though Lemaire was not allowed to touch the polo shirt – the company still regards it as a perfect classic – he used it as a reference point for his collection of sharp pullovers, hip track jackets, soft pants and sexy pleated skirts.’ (‘Courtoisie on the court’, Newsweek, 27 May 2002.) Lacoste showed on the catwalks in New York and Paris, and opened smartly minimalist concept stores in France, the United States, Germany and Japan. Cult film director Wong Kar Wai was brought in to direct a globally-screened commercial in the languorous style of his movie In the Mood for Love, raising the brand’s profile among culturally savvy consumers while simultaneously catering to the important Asian market. Even the crocodile logo was given a subtle retouching by the design agency Seenk, becoming simpler and more streamlined.
Bernard Lacoste, company chairman and the founder’s oldest son, refers to the strategy as ‘evolution rather than revolution’. The brand regained control of its identity, while giving a ‘merci’ nod to the influential group that had helped perk up its flagging relevance. As one French lifestyle magazine noted, ‘In the past regarded as little more than vandals, the “crew” from the high-rise blocks have become sought-after opinion leaders, whose cultural and stylistic codes are scrutinized by trend-trackers. In short, they are the people who define tomorrow’s fashions.’ (‘Comment Lacoste a rendu accros les ados de banlieue’, Technikart, 28 May 2002.)

It’s certainly not the last time a luxury brand will be forced to tackle the issue of over-accessibility: at the time of writing, there are reports that Dior intends to drop some of its lower-priced accessories, such as the bracelets sported by teenage girls from the Paris banlieues, in order to re-establish its exclusivity. A myth is a fragile entity, easily tarnished.

Exploring the fashion world occasionally feels like gate-crashing an exclusive club. At least, that’s the sensation I experience as I climb a spiral staircase in a building near Place Vendôme – the grand Parisian square that is home to the Ritz. César Ritz opened his celebrated hotel on 1 June 1898, and its rich patrons attracted the attentions of Cartier, Boucheron, Van Cleef & Arpels, and the other jewellery and luxury goods boutiques that crowd the square.
This particular building is the headquarters of a publishing firm, but its location is entirely appropriate. Over the past ten years, Assouline has published a series of glossy books, each minutely dissecting the history of a legendary designer label. With offices in Paris, London and New York, it has become a luxury brand in its own right. I reckon that here, at least, I should get my first insight into what makes a fashion icon.
As so often on these occasions, the claustrophobic staircase and labyrinthine corridors of the old building lead to a large office, with a bright picture window overlooking the potted trees and shrubs in the courtyard. Martine Assouline, an elegant French woman, sits me down at a glossy slab-like table and considers her response to my question. ‘At the moment we are in a period where the brand has an exaggerated importance,’ she tells me. ‘Designers like Tom Ford, John Galliano and Marc Jacobs injected new life into fashion. They fused it with the music and film industries in a manner that seemed very new, very attractive. This was not always the case – in the era of the supermodel, nobody really cared about brands. Naomi Campbell and Claudia Schiffer were the brands; the clothes were immaterial. But fashion has come down to earth – it appears more accessible, more affordable, even when this is not the case. People identify with Prada, Dior and Louis Vuitton in a way that they never did before.’
But do these brands have anything in common? What’s the uniting factor that has enabled them to succeed and survive? ‘It’s a heritage that makes customers daydream, and the strength to live up to it. The question of succession is important: Chanel was lucky to have appointed Karl Lagerfeld, just as Dior was resuscitated by the arrival of Galliano. The wrong designer can wreck a brand. It is also vital to achieve the correct balance between marketing and creativity. I don’t think it is fair to say that fashion is based entirely on marketing. You can do as much marketing as you like, but if the final product does not deliver, the brand loses its power. Pierre Cardin made millions licensing his name, but the products were not always of an acceptable quality. And so. . .’ She shrugs.
A few days later, in the rather different setting of a shabby-chic café called Chez Prune near the Canal Saint Martin, I’m sipping coffee with a trend-tracker called Genevieve Flaven, co-founder of Style-Vision, a company that specializes in monitoring and predicting consumer behaviour (see Chapter 6: Anatomy of a trend). Like Martine Assouline, Flaven believes that few consumers are convinced by marketing alone. ‘Every consumer can now decrypt advertising messages, so traditional marketing has become less and less significant. Consumers want to know what’s behind the brand – what it can give back to them. Sometimes it’s just a question of value: the best quality for the price. When people buy a very high-priced garment, they want to see the patience and the craftsmanship that has gone into it. They are paying to possess a beautiful object. And sometimes, when it’s a famous brand, they are paying to be part of the story.’
Flaven explains that iconic brands create – and occasionally rewrite – their own narratives.
‘It resembles a novel that you, the consumer, can enter. Chanel is a good example. First, through her talent and the power of her personality, Coco created her own myth. And now the legend of Coco is inexhaustible. It’s the thread that pulls us into the Chanel universe. Every time Chanel launches a new product, it emphasizes a link with Coco, urging us to own a little piece of the legend. When the jewellery range was launched [in 1993] we were told it was in the spirit of Coco – but in fact she disliked jewellery. In a lot of ways, branding is simply telling a story.’
Few people can create a myth from scratch, which is why many fashion entrepreneurs have chosen to buy in to existing stories. (See Chapter 14: Retro brands retooled.) Take Lambretta, for instance. Like the Italian scooters themselves, the name has plenty of retro buzz: Mods and Rockers battling on Brighton beach, natty suits, sharp haircuts and Cool Britannia all rolled into one youth-friendly package. The scooter launched by Ferdinando Innocenti in Lambrete, Milan in 1947 had long been out of production by the time a UK licensing company acquired the name. In 1997, Lambretta re-launched as a British menswear label with a flagship store in London’s Carnaby Street – Swinging Sixties Central. Playing on Lambretta’s connection with British Mod culture, the store contained a scooter, a Union Jack-patterned sofa and a range of sleek but street-smart clothing. Womenswear followed in 1999, two more stores opened; by 2003 the brand could claim ‘ongoing approval from celebrity wearers in the worlds of film, music and TV, including members of Stereophonics and Groove Armada, Ewan McGregor and Vernon Kay’ (Cool Brand Leaders, 2003). The clothes, the store design and the advertising skilfully edited the Lambretta story, downplaying the brand’s Italian heritage and favouring its role in British popular culture.
Other brands have even more unlikely roots. How to explain the success of CAT, the US-based footwear company that is an offshoot of Caterpillar, maker of lumbering earth-moving vehicles? In fact, the evolution makes perfect sense. CAT boots were originally launched in 1991 as protective footwear for Caterpillar machinery operators. (The Caterpillar brand dates back to 1925, when two tractor makers merged to form Caterpillar Tractor Co, based in California. The name Caterpillar derives, of course, from the ‘crawler and track’ mechanism that allows the vehicles to traverse rugged terrain.) Licensing companies in the United Kingdom and the United States spotted the potential of the brand’s early designs, especially the honey-yellow Colorado work boot, which gelled perfectly with the mid-Nineties ‘grunge’ aesthetic of plaid shirts and cargo pants. Today, a US-based company, Wolverine World Wide, holds the global licence for CAT Footwear. Since 1994, it has sold nearly 50 million pairs of CAT shoes.
‘The fashion aspect of the brand is more pronounced in Europe,’ says Shannon Jaquith, brand communications and international marketing manager. ‘In the US we’re predominantly a work boot business, which makes sense given our heavy machinery heritage. In Central and South America we provide non-slip footwear for people who work in the shipping industry – and there’s a connection because Caterpillar makes marine engines. We didn’t set out to become a fashion brand, which ironically helped us develop into one.’
Jaquith says the brand’s values remain consistent across all its markets. ‘We’re gritty, blue-collar and authentic. People like us because we haven’t tried to portray ourselves as trendy. Our brand image begins with our work shoes – we’re here to protect you. In a world where there are a lot of greedy brands clamouring for a slice of the fashion market, we strike consumers as grass-roots and honest. For instance, when we came out with a vintage collection, it really dated back to the 1920s –it was based on our original designs.’
CAT positions itself as a genuine American icon alongside brands such as Budweiser, Levi’s and Harley Davidson. A typical extract from one of its catalogues tells the story thus: ‘Whether it’s a builder swinging a hammer, a musician strumming a guitar, or a student studying from his local café. . . The toughness, honesty and uncompromising nature of CAT is a badge that represents their preference for cargos over khakis, the warehouse loft over a metro high-rise, and their local garage band over the hottest new dance club.’ It is a perfect piece of branding narrative, together with the slogan ‘No guff since 1904’. This tinkers slightly with historical fact, as the date refers to one of the two tractor firms that later merged to create Caterpillar. However, the core brand ‘promise’ is genuine, because CAT continues to provide robust protective footwear across a number of industries.
‘We don’t have a huge marketing budget, so our main focus right now is in enhancing our retail presence; communicating the lifestyle of the brand at store level,’ says Jaquith. Thus, heavy machinery becomes the perfect backdrop for a fashionable brand extension. The message is clear: the more convincing the story, the more attractive the brand.

In their latest incarnation as dream merchants, fashion brands seem curiously resilient. In September 2001, a minor war had been preoccupying industry-watchers for several months. The conflict ranged Bernard Arnault against another French businessman, François Pinault, owner of the retail and mail-order conglomerate Pinault-Printemps-Redoute (PPR). The disputed territory was Gucci. Arnault had been stealthily buying shares in Gucci with the intention of taking over the company. By 1999 his stake had reached 34 per cent. But neither Tom Ford nor Gucci CEO Domenico De Sole liked the idea of being swallowed up by LVMH, where they suspected they would lose control of the brand. Their white knight arrived in the form of François Pinault, who snapped up 40 per cent of Gucci’s shares. He also acquired beauty and cosmetics company Sanofi, which owned Yves Saint Laurent. In a couple of swift moves, Pinault had created Gucci Group, a potential rival to LVMH.
The flurry of acquisitions that followed on both sides looked like a duel between billionaires – Monopoly played for real. As LVMH continued its rapid expansion, the Gucci Group took possession of Boucheron, Bottega Veneta and Balenciaga, and signed partnership deals with Alexander McQueen (who left LVMH’s Givenchy amid considerable tongue-wagging) and Stella McCartney. Meanwhile, the bitter dispute over who had the right to take control of Gucci was tied up in court in the Netherlands, where Gucci’s shares were listed. Finally, in the economic dip provoked by the dotcom crash – and almost as if he sensed that he needed to conserve his resources for the difficult period ahead – Arnault gave up the fight. On 10 September 2001, he sold his Gucci shares, allowing his arch-rival François Pinault to take full ownership of the company. The guerre du luxe, as the French press had termed the conflict, was over.
We all know what happened the next day. In New York, the fashion carnival was in town for the spring-summer collections. The huge marquees that would be the setting for many of the shows had been erected in Bryant Park, practically within view of the Twin Towers. The industry was therefore witness to the horror that was to cause its latest nervous breakdown.
It seems almost churlish to try to place an event as tragic and farreaching as 11 September 2001 within the context of fashion. But the interesting fact is that, after a dramatic slump, the industry emerged from the disaster in rather better shape than anyone had a right to expect.
On 19 December 2001, an article in The Independent reported, ‘Profits fall by half at Gucci and Italian fashion giant predicts no upturn until late 2002’. Fast-forward to 16 October 2003, and a headline in The Guardian: ‘Fashion back in fashion as Gucci sales surge’. Later (23 January 2004), again in The Independent: ‘LVMH’s luxury defies the downturn’. In Time magazine’s autumn 2004 Style and Design supplement, an article headlined ‘Luxury Fever’ commented, ‘Despite rising interest rates, staggering energy prices. . . and the general state of unrest in the world, conspicuous consumption is back.’ And it’s not just the luxury brands that have weathered the storm. In December 2003, market researcher Mintel pointed out that high-street fashion brands H&M, Zara and Mango had all managed to double their sales between 1998 and the end of 2002, despite slowing growth. At the time of writing, the ‘fast fashion’ brigade continued to announce healthy sales increases and new store openings.
Such is the magnetism of fashion. We need to take a break from it occasionally, but sooner or later we come back for more. And if they’ve been smart enough, our favourite brands are waiting for us.

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.