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International Herald Tribune

10 Tuesday, September 25, 2007 Fashion

Armani and Burberry: A question of identity

By Suzy Menkes with stomping, hefty high heels, Monday’s nating this season. But this safari was a tribal
spring/summer show had plenty of attitude. trip where the designer Roberto Cavalli kept
he identity card of Giorgio Armani But in his travels, Bailey seemed to spend the wild under control — give or take dresses

T would surely be sleek silver gray; Bur-

C’N’C
Photographs by Chris Moore/Karl Prouse
KR IZIA
For Krizia,
opposites attract
rizia tried to see if the old saying that
K opposites attract could translate itself
to the fashion runway. Pairing stiff and soft
fabrics, long and short pieces on the same
outfit and an overall two-tone theme to the
collection. For the most part it worked,
creating a youthful assortment of clothing
that included smart metallic kimono fol-
ded cocktail dresses and cleverly sliced
white tuxedo shirts. But the short shorts
with elastic cuffs and the jumpsuits with
industrial-zipper pockets will do better in
the world of fashion magazines than that of
the modern woman.
— Jessica Michault
berr y’s, printed with that iconic check.
But the challenge to a strong fashion
image is to break the stereotype — without los-
ing the essence of the brand.
Arma ni’s invitation to Monday’s show was a
silken wash of a dark ocean reflecting ripples of
sunset color. It was called ‘‘Sud,’’ or ‘‘South.’’
And the sense of peaceful summertime, so far
from the city stress where the women in pant-
suits dress for success, was a sweet departure
for the designer.
Although he has been inspired in the past by
open sky and sea, he has never let the waters lap
so far over his useful tailoring. The mannish
jackets beloved by his front-row clients Samuel
L. Jackson and Spike Lee were replaced by tiny,
shrunken female versions that were often
scattered with a scaly mermaid sheen or made
from mesh layers like some celestial fishing net.
Then there were the pants. And were they
pants or just loose pieces of fabric knotted like a
pearl fisher’s garb? Or — as evening came on
with a parade of decorated black dresses — a
hemline just caught between the ankles? The
show was a little heavy on the bloomers and
sa rong–tie pants. The handkerchief hems on
dresses also floated on too long. But it is good to
see a designer dream.
There was something lovely and gentle in
this soft and liquid version of the more rigid and
tailored Armani. It went from the mesh head
scarves (replacing more familiar berets) to the
fringed stoles that wrapped and draped, often
with the painterly prints that sometimes drew
the collection from shoreline to garden. And it
was all quintessentially Armani, as even his
most loyal clients would recognize and might
even learn to love.
No pantsuits then? A designer should never
get stuck with his own image. Armani is right to
push himself, as he has done before. But this
was a particularly gentle and elegant version of
the tropical isle theme from which he has taken
many inspirations, but none so becalmed.
‘‘I’ve been traveling a lot – to the U.S., to
Chicago to Dubai – and I think of the Burberry
woman as a luxury warrior,’’ said Christopher
Bailey, referring not just to the hefty knock-you-
on-the-head handbags and miniature military
medals that covered everything from a trench
coat belt to a ruched dress in the Burberr y
Prorsu m line. As another nod to travel, Bailey
declared: ‘‘Everything is super-super light-
weight.’’ That manifested itself in the silken
ruching that looked like there was enough to
deck out an entire Odeon cinema in the 1930s.
As slim dresses with the medallion belts and
BA LLANTYNE
more time with his voiles and gauzes than he
did on British territory. Although the trench
coat in many featherlight versions, worn half
open under the belts, was a strong presence,
that sense of cool young London meeting the
historic army uniforms had gone from the col-
lection. And while the men’s show had been a
luxury fest for hedge fund types to spend their
money (with the gilded male alligator trench
also in this show), the women’s version seemed
dark for summer. There was a sudden splash of
turquoise and petrol blue at the end. But there
was also a lot of black among the khaki and
beige. Where Bailey scored was in the built-in
decoration, like gilded shoulder fringing and
laced-up inserts in the trench coats.
Burberry has rightly moved a long way from
those checks – represented in the show only as
vast geometric squares. But up until now it has
kept that English sense of irony and a certain
scruffy swagger. The models in their skimpy
ruched dresses were ultra glamorous, with
swinging hair and dark glasses de rigeur. But
something was lost on this international travel
itinerary. Maybe Bailey needs to migrate to his
homebase to fulfil Pete Townsend’s words on
the soundtrack: ‘‘I Put a Spell on You.’’
Sandals instead of killer heels and sweet
ruffles of flowers, as well as cotton shirts worn
with sweaters and jeans, showed D&G cha ng-
ing its course from night to day. And with its
new spirit, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gab-
bana freshened their identity in the most de-
lightful way. By adding a spoonful of sugar to
their racy clothes, the sex quotient went down,
the cute factor came up and the collection
offered a pert take on schoolgirl dressing.
Posh schoolgirls, of course, with a hint of the
baby doll in their nightgown-style dresses and of
the 1970s in straw hats and gilded fringing. These
hippie-de-luxe ideas are not so new. But the
show looked very ‘‘now’’ in its mixes, with just
enough modernity in the cuffed shorts and free-
flowing frills to make the familiar seem current.
It was time for the design duo to get out of the
club-and-logo world and this show took a step
forward on its gladiator-strapped sandals. The
ending of multi florals flowing downward be-
low the loose hair re-created the ‘‘Summer of
Love.’’ But by making it cheeky rather than
dreamy, D&G moved the look 30 years on.
Africa was the inspiration for Just Cavalli,
where bold prints on sophisticated little dresses
created a perfume of escapism that is impreg-
iht.com/style
Photographs from Milan Fashion Week
D&G
with mini-skirts of feathers and a bobbly sequin
top and flirty leather skirt that looked more
Alaïa than Africa.
Out of the dramatic set with a mud wall, a
carved stone map of Africa and a grass green
backdrop, came Cavalli’s youthful, sexy look
but with decoration like embroidery done as tri-
bal beading and with ruffled shoulder pieces
looking like bird feathers. Even the designer’s
signature animal prints were ringed with
purple to give them a more sullen and moody
effect. Yet at the heart of the show it was, well,
just Cavalli, with the shrunken blazer of the
season, the romper shorts or the long floating
1970s-turned North African caftan, tricked out
with appropriate bangles. It was a picture post-
card Africa (forget Darfur, President Robert
Mugabe of Zimbabwe, war and famine). But it
was a striking show for all that.
Taking sportswear as a theme but using fra-
gile fabrics, Ennio Capasa had a new take on the
man/woman thing in his C’N’C collection. Ev-
erything from a multistrap dress to a bouffant
blouson had a sporty silhouette but an opales-
cent transparency to gazar and chiffon. Used as
layers, the clothes suggested an athletic spin on
street wear. Even the shoes — a laced-up open-
work version of a high-heeled sneaker — f itted
the smart/sport theme and looked like a sum-
mer take on winter’s shoe boots. Small jackets
with cuffed shorts or a gray satin dress with
bright yellow followed a general trend of neu-
tral colors revved up with primary shades of
red, yellow and blue.
It is a long stride in pretty pink shoes from ADIDAS by
the heathery heart of Scotland to the cocktail STELLA MCCARTNEY
lounge. But Ballanty ne has made that leap
since it was bought by the Italian equity group
Charme Investments. Now the core collection
of cashmere, mostly as lightweight Intarsia
sweaters and as lounging wear for the summer
Stella and Adidas —
season, has been joined by cocktail dresses, a
resort collection, urban clothing and that signal
getting her sport on
of brand development: the outsized bag. This
one is discreetly decorated with the diamond By Suzy Menkes
pattern that is part of Ballantyne’s heritage.
Among the new are sprinkled the more fa- LONDON
miliar symbols of the Scottish knitwear com- aul McCartney, looking slim
pany: sweaters with a circle pattern in lavender
and green; other silk knits as fine as a stocking
and made by a sock company; and silk and
cashmere knits modernized with Lycra. For all
the fine pieces, it is hard to read a coherent mes-
P and trim, stood on the green
golf lawn checking off the
boxes of his sporting activities.
Gym? ‘‘Not really.’’ Running? ‘‘Not
much.’’
sage in a collection that has turned into a Scot- ‘‘But I am going to start now,’’ sa id
tish marriage, Italian style. the music superhero, looking as though
he was about to leap into the golf cart,
Suzy Menkes is fashion editor of the Interna- careering past spectators and around
tional Herald Tribune. the blue paddling pool, draped with
models in cut-away swimsuits.
Stella McCartney, expecting her
third child, was not about to demon-
strate personally the energetic
sportswear that she designs for adidas
by Stella McCartney. For spring/
summer 2008 she added golf wear to
the yoga and gym pieces, tennis
clothes and the post-workout cover
ups.
‘‘For me — I have never understood
why women have to sacrifice their
style for their sport,’’ said the designer,
whose sleek black polo shirt, loosely
belted jacket and roll-cuff shorts were
shown off against the green grass im-
ported to a London sports stadium.
Shorts with a rounded romper shape
and a tennis shirt with tucks and a scal-
loped collar were just two examples of
the femininity that McCartney brings
to the Adidas range, with even a semi-
sheer nylon parka in the ‘‘r unning’’ cat-
egory looking cool as well as ultra-
light.
McCa rtney’s idea of bringing ‘‘a bit
of an edge’’ to women who play golf
might sound like a task as tough as hit-
ting a hole in one. But the collaboration
between the giant German sports
brand and the British designer from a
rock dynasty has proved a smash hit.
The product manager, Heiken Leibl,
said at the London launch last week
that, although the percentage may, as
yet, be tiny, the Stella McCartney range
is helping to grow Adidas apparel,
which now has a 50 percent share
JUST CAVALLI alongside the brand’s sports shoes.

Tightening credit, jittery markets — but is it really 2003 all over again?
By Matthew Saltmarsh One of the most important reasons for
the relatively positive outlook, analysts
PARIS said, is the continued growth in high net
f purveyors of the fine things in worth individuals — the consumers of
global sales at ¤200 billion in top-end again this month. And there are reports
High-end spending fashion, accessories and jewelry. of slower sales of top end U.S. property
Since the 2002 to 2004 slowdown, an- in places like Long Island in New York.
Annual sales growth of luxury goods Consumers of luxury goods, nual growth has been 8 percent and 10 Cynics also point to warning signs of

I life need evidence of how fast sen-

timent in their industry can turn,
they do not need to look too far
back. Between the 2002 and 2004 fi-
nancial years, revenue at the Swiss lux-
Lanvin bags and Patek Philippe watches
from New York to Dubai to Tokyo.
Their deep pockets insulate them
well from economic shocks and they
tend to base their purchases around
30 %

25
by country/region of origin, 2006

ury company Richemont fell by about
12.5 percent.
It was not the end of the world; de-
mand recovered. But for a sector that
had become used to almost seamless
growth, it was a reality check and
showed specific events could conspire
to turn sales on their head.
Richemont, which owns Cartier, Al-
fred Dunhill, Chloé and Montblanc,
was not alone. Sales at competitors
from Hermès to Hugo Boss lurched
from comfortable double-digit growth
rates to static, or worse. The main cul-
prit then was the downturn in tourism,
triggered by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks and the outbreak of SARS in
Asia, although the dot-com hangover
and a sluggish economy in Europe also
played their parts.
Fast forward to the fall of 2007.
Tightening credit, edgy equity markets
and the anticipation of declining prop-
erty prices are casting a pall. Could it
be 2003 all over again, with purchases
of jewelry, high-end fashion and ac-
cessories taking a knock?
The answer is unclear but it is early
days in this new financial cycle.
‘‘It’s a complicated period we’re go-
ing through now,’’ said Marc-André
Kamel, a partner and head of European
retail at the consultancy Bain & Co.
here. ‘‘I feel you have to keep the faith.
There are reasons to hope that this
time, things would be less severe.’’
brand strength and trust, rather than
price. And the inhabitants of the king-
dom of Richistan, a term coined by the
journalist Robert Frank, have an in-
creasingly separate economy from the
rest of society.
Datamonitor, the business intelli-
gence firm, estimates that the growth of
high net worth individuals and their
holdings in Britain and the United States
was 10 percent to 11 percent a year from
2002 to 2006. It defines such individuals
as those with ¤300,000, or $423,000, or
more in liquid, onshore assets.
A similar rate was seen for what
Datamonitor calls the ‘‘liquid wealthy’’
— those with ¤50,000 in such assets.
From now until 2010, Datamonitor
estimates, growth might slow to 2.5
percent to 3 percent, before picking up.
Meanwhile, demographics and soci-
etal changes also augur well. The baby
boomer generation, those born between
World War II and the mid-1960s, are
now approaching retirement and reach-
ing their prime earning age. ‘‘Genera-
tion X,’’ born in the 1960s to early 1970s,
and ‘‘Generation Y,’’ born since the mid-
1970s, appear to be more ‘‘aspirationa l,’’
seeking more and better luxury goods if
they have the means to acquire them.
The closing of the gap in men’s and
women’s employment and pay rates also
is a trend that could favor purchases of
fashion, jewelry and luxury services as
women take more high-skilled, non-
20 2007 FORECAST:
+11.1%
15
10
5 South Korea
0 India
’97 ’99 ’01 ’03 ’05 ’07
Source: Ledbury Research, Merrill Lynch
manual jobs, particularly in Europe.
In Britain, the gender pay gap has
been narrowing over the last decade.
Measured by the median hourly pay of
full-time employees, the gap closed in
2006 to 12.6 percent, its lowest since re-
cords began, from 13.0 percent the pre-
vious year, according to the country’s
Office for National Statistics.
A slowdown in the U.S. and Euro-
pean economies, meanwhile, should
not be as critical as it would have been a
decade ago, according to Denis Moris-
set, executive director of the master’s
degree program in International Lux-
ury Brand Management at ESSEC Busi-
ness School in Cergy-Pontoise, France.
A breakdown of sales at the jeweler
Bulgari shows the importance of newer
markets. Europe now represents 37 per-
cent of all sales, down from 41 percent a
United States
Japan
24%
24
Europe 21
China 15
Russia 6 MasterCard Advisors, the services
Middle East 5
3 sales activity. Kamalesh Rao, its direc-
1 mand after what he called an ‘‘unsus-
Other 1 spending on luxury surged 11 percent,
decade earlier; the Americans are 17
percent, down from 23 percent, and Ja-
pan is fairly stable at 21 percent. But the
rest of Asia is 19 percent, up from 12
percent; and the Middle East and oth-
ers are at 6 percent, from 5 percent.
For Morisset, travel and tourism are
more salient barometers of industry
health than are growth rates or equity
prices as so many luxury goods are
bought in hotels, airports or exclusive
shopping districts frequented by tour-
ists. ‘‘For the moment it’s nothing like
the situation after 2000,’’ Morisset said.
Offering reliable data for the indus-
try is not an exact science; it all de-
pends on which companies, services
and sectors are included. Scilla Huang
Sun, who manages the $400 million
Luxury Goods Equity Fund at Clariden
Leu Bank in Zurich, estimates annual
percent. For coming years, a similar
trend is expected, even if today’s turmoil
produces just a moderate slowdown.
Huang Sun was encouraged by the
most recent comments from compa-
nies like Bulgari, the watchmaker
Swatch and Richemont, which all gave
‘‘quite strong’’ assessments of July and
August sales.
arm of the card issuer, compiles a broad
survey based on aggregate U.S. retail
tor of research, cited a softening of de-
tainable’’ summer peak. In July, retail
slowing to 6 percent in August, although
the figure is much less, only around 2
percent, if you exclude jewelry. Septem-
ber, Rao said, is on course to see growth
of 5 percent — a good month, but far
from the blockbuster of July.
While all of these factors represent
strengths, there are still nagging doubts
amid signs that the most conspicuous of
consumption in Richistan, emboldened
by rising asset prices, has peaked.
Take hedge funds, which have driven
much of the recent splurge. In August,
these funds showed a negative return of
2.5 percent, the largest monthly fall
since 2000, according to the HRFX in-
dex of leading funds compiled by
Hedge Fund Research.
And the most recent auctions of
trophy wines and art have not fetched
the prices seen early in the year or last
year. An index that shows prices for the
best wine vintages, the Liv-ex 100,
dropped in August and looks set to fall
a bubble in luxury like the recent intro-
duction of faddish investment tools
from new mutual funds to indexes
from banks and exchanges to follow
their progress; these often coincide
with a top in a market.
Marc Cohen, director of the London
luxury goods research agency Ledbury
Research, is upbeat overall, but he high-
lighted potential weaknesses to watch.
Firstly, the bonuses that are given out by
banks tend to be decided in the fall.
Based on the market’s performance over
the summer, these will be far smaller
than the bumper handouts of early 2007.
Other analysts, like Bryan Roberts of
the Planet Retail consultancy in Lon-
don, said that the brands that have
traded down, albeit inadvertently,
might be vulnerable to belt-tightening.
A corollary of this trend has been
that real wealth has become far more
discerning and seeks exclusivity, expe-
rience, value and originality. This phe-
nomenon has been called ‘‘stea lth
wea lth,’’ or inconspicuous consump-
tion. That has prompted some buyers to
turn away from the High Street in favor
of more distinctive brands. In men’s
watches, it might mean a Vacheron
Constantin, or a wacky design con-
ceived at Franck Muller’s Watchland
chateau in Genthod, Switzerland.
Overall, said Huang Sun of Clariden
Leu, the medium-term outlook remains
strong, albeit volatile. ‘‘There will be
bumps in the road, but the risk is
mostly on the company level.’’
‘‘As long as people remain vain, the
sector will still be strong. And I don’t
think human nature is changing.’’