Paris Fashion Week Designs Reflect Recession-Induced Inner Turmoil Of Designers

They’re clearing up the discarded albatross feathers and platinum gauze from Paris fashion week, where couture soldiers on amid the recession. With the world now turning megawatt scrutiny upon anything involving conspicuous consumption – Davos, Lil Wayne’s birthday – and attempting to shame it into prudence, fashion week duly followed suit (pun intended) and pegged back the insanity, albeit to a still pretty insane level.

For every uncorked champagne bottle, there was a Kanye saying he should be referred to as “Martin Louis Vuitton the King, Jr”; for every missing Jewish princess there was an Uzbeki one to take her place; for every Jean Paul Gaultier refusing to talk about the recession, there’s a Karl Lagerfeld channeling the downturn into his collection.

Lagerfeld made dresses from paper (nice way to keep your material costs down), and said that couture was only the preserve of the truly, forever-and-always wealthy with this crisp quote: “[The collection] is not for the nouveau riche. It is for the very rich.” His recession-flavoured designs, dubbed “New Modesty”, were cut in sober lines and coloured in downbeat monochrome; “This whole crisis is like a big spring housecleaning — both moral and physical…Bling is over. Red carpety covered with rhinestones is out.” But it appears his modesty is purely cosmetic, with one of the outfits taking 800 hours to complete, prices in six figures, and a budgetary policy explained with typical Lagerfeld brevity: “We have no budget, we do what we want and throwing money out the window brings money back in through the front door”.

Lagerfeld’s confused image for Chanel is symptomatic of an industry that is having to adapt itself to its main consumer base – aspirational nouveau richers – having much less spending power. Bruno Pavlovsky, their president of fashion, is trying to force the dream of couture to trickle down into the mass market’s consciousness in order to flog their perfume – “The message of couture is creativity…Couture exists to keep our customers dreaming”. 

Is anyone going to buy that dream? Isn’t a copy of Vogue cheaper? There’s a definite note of desperation from CEO of Christian Dior Sidney Toledano when he says: “We are saying in these times, it is important to dress as elegantly as possible”.

It’s going to be interesting as the fashion weeks head back towards the real world away from the rarified zone (and tiny revenue percentage) of couture, and seeing the plans for the rest of us. Milan’s menswear week has been and gone, with a parade of funereal tones and colours; New York is next week and London starts on the 20th. Will we see designers parading more gloomy clothes, saying “yes, my collection is inspired by the mood I feel when I see my projected 2010 profit forecasts?” Watch this space!

Posted by Ben Beaumont-Thomas in Creative Economy | February 3, 2009 1:59PM |