The young woman standing in a queue is a walking billboard for about a half-dozen luxury brands, from her LV belt to her Gucci bag, not to mention a couple of barrettes in her hair that probably don’t come from Chanel but have the double-C logo. She’s not waiting in line to buy another luxury handbag, though, she’s actually waiting to buy a ticket to see a fashion exhibition on the late Alexander McQueen.
Only a few years ago, boosting attendance at museums was a heady challenge for curators, faced with a generation less accustomed to going to museums to “see a bunch of old paintings,” as one friend characterized it.
Until now.
Museums around the world are suddenly reaping the benefits of major funding from some of the world’s top fashion brands and developing flashy exhibitions designed to showcase their heritage. Last year’s McQueen show was a phenomenon all its own, drawing over 5 million visitors. On its last night the Metropolitan Museum, which mounted the exhibition, stayed open until midnight.
In Beijing, Louis Vuitton’s exhibition, “Voyages” at the National Museum in Tiananmen Square drew throngs who stood in line for hours to see iconic pieces from the archives, as well as some of the more sensationalistic concepts dreamed up for the brand’s nouveau riche clientele.
Quick on their heels are nearly a dozen other brands who have or will soon mount major exhibitions, including Ferragamo, Van Cleef and Arpels, Prada, Valentino, Jean Paul Gaultier, Dior, and Vivienne Westwood — all eager to boast of their esteemed heritage of craft and design. Many of these very same brands are opening their own museums. Louis Vuitton, for instance, is currently building a massive space designed by Frank Gehry in the Bois de Boulogne and slated to open in 2013.
So how did fashion become such a sure bet for museums?
Thank technology and the Internet for bringing fashion to the masses, not to mention the scores of magazines that carefully note what each celebrity is wearing. Now more than ever, there is a hungry and educated audience for what once was the rarefied world of the very rich. The craft of haute couture and bespoke accessories has captured the imaginations of a public which now is even more keenly aware that the humble craftsman has become nearly obsolete. Ah, but luxury marketing tells us it is alive and well, with magical things seemingly made by magical elves. All for a less than magical price. More importantly, now everyone knows that the ultimate status symbol is a something from one of the big 4 luxury brands: Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Chanel, and Hermes.
Fashion exhibitions are essentially marketing exercises masquerading as high art — which is not to say that fashion is not art, however it is an art specifically designed with commerce in mind. Monet and Van Gogh didn’t paint pictures and think about how an exhibition might help extend their brand into tote bags and dentist office posters.
In the retail business, we call them “heritage” exhibitions, which is a more dignified way of saying “we need a new vehicle to build our audience.” Exhibitions not only help communicate the brand story, they also showcase the signatures and trademarks that signify authenticity. In a world of counterfeits and knockoffs, that’s important.
“It is a way of speaking about the savoir faire, the creator, the house and its history,” explains Sydney Toledano, CEO of Christian Dior, in a recent New York Times article. The Dior exhibition in Russia was a huge hit with record-breaking attendance. “The 150,000 people who go to the Pushkin understand that Mr. Dior was an artist and that there is a way of contemplating the dresses with fine art.”
Fashion exhibitions also grant the hoi-polloi temporary access to a world they probably will never come in contact with while elevating the modest purchase of, say, a bottle of Chanel No. 5. It’s no secret that fragrance and cosmetic sales are key sales drivers for luxury brands, garnering more profit share than the sale of a dozen or so haute couture gowns.
More importantly though, these exhibitions bolster the image of luxury brands which tend to come under attack in harsh economic times – hence the sudden flurry of exhibitions in the past two years. An exhibition removes the context of social class and instead displays the more benign image of craftsman and designer.
But when is it “art” and when is it just a glorified advertisement? Who is truly the curator with such an exhibition and at what point is a commercial brand subject to the same scrutiny and criticism as any other retrospective exhibition of fine art?
It’s hard not to point fingers at Louis Vuitton, which has taken the heritage exhibition model and made it a major part of how it gathers its disciples together to worship — and shop — in its temples of luxury. Nowhere have they done that more than in China, but the rest of the world is just as much of a target.
A Vuitton exhibition of trunks and bespoke mallerie at Paris’s Carnavelet Museum drew over 60,000 visitors while one at the Shanghai World Expo saw an estimated 11 million visitors. Consider what the conversion rate might be for that oh-so-important Chinese customer — imagine how many ended up buying a bag or wallet after seeing that exhibition.
“Exhibitions give us the possibility to invent innovative ways of storytelling,” says Pietro Beccari, executive vice president at Louis Vuitton, quoted in a story for WWD. Storytelling, as many of you who read my blog know, is the foundation to great branding.
I would concur. An exhibition must have integrity and highlight a clearly defined focus that has weight regardless of who the designer or brand might be, and offer a view into the world of creativity, purposeful design, and the visionary mind of an artist and his material.
Read More: “Fashion’s Exhibitionist Streak,”WWD, 5/27/11; “Is Fashion Really Museum Art?” New York Times 07/05/2011.
Upcoming Exhibitions: “Louis Vuitton – Marc Jacobs,” 9 March – 16 September 2012. Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris.”The Fashion World of Jean-Paul Gaultier:From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk,” 24 March – 19 August 2012. De Young Museum San Francisco. “Van Cleef & Arpels: l’Art de la Haute Joallerie,” 20 September – 10 February 2013. Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris.
You might have thought I was in Las Vegas for March Madness, a time of year when the Strip is not paved with gold, but instead a seemingly endless stream of bud light bottles and “dudes” drinking from big bongs they’ll be sure to take home with them.
Did I mention it was also St. Patrick’s Day? That made for even more merriment, with thousands of no-longer-in-college-bro’s wearing giant green top hats while their girlfriends, stuffed in sausage casings, teetered behind them on broken heels. But I digress.
St. Patrick’s Day in Las Vegas brought out all the bros.
The lobby of the Vdara features a commissioned work by Peter Wegner
In fact I was in town to check out some of the latest retail offerings and see just what the high rollers are spending their recent winnings on. We stayed at the Vdara in City Center, which was originally supposed to be condo apartments but when the economy tanked, so did the Vdara. It is now a hotel with no casino and barely any retail. You know what that means in Las Vegas: no customers.
The Vdara hotel features the now infamous “death ray” pool
Barely a year old and already its one “hip” bar/club has closed. It doesn’t help that soon after opening it was discovered that a design flaw in the building caused guests by the pool to get burned by a “death ray” of magnified sunlight reflecting off the side of the building.
After years of soaring success, Las Vegas has suffered a major hit in our national economy, with more foreclosures than any other city in the country. The Strip’s megaresorts have posted an alarming two-year loss of over $6billion along with a 14-percent unemployment.
Which is why hotels like the Vdara and others along the Strip are offering all kinds of incentives to fill those rooms. The Marriott’s impressive effort in modern boutique hoteling, several years in the making, the Cosmopolitan is really one of the most impressive hotels on the strip — despite all you’ve heard about the Wynn and the Encore, which are just tired re-treads of an old formula (gold, mirrors, red carpet, etc.)
The Cosmopolitan has some great design features, but what really stands out is the multimedia exhibition in the main lobby. Designed and developed by the Rockwell Group’s LAB, it features eight columns of monitors deliver a rotating exhibition of video art on 384 monitors. The monitors are so gorgeously glassy and liquid that they beckon you to stand quietly and watch — and that’s really something in a place as noisy as Las Vegas (and with the Casino only steps away.)
The lobby of the Cosmopolitan Hotel with a unique video art installation designed by Rockwell Group’s LAB
Despite the economy, luxury retailers have continued to make Las Vegas a key part of their rollout strategy. A reportedly $28.2billion market, Vegas continues to push shopping as the fait accompli to the casino experience. With 40 million annual visitors it’s no wonder that stores continue to open here — maybe that’s because twelve percent of all visitors are from overseas.
The Wynn is a standard casino retread of the “baroque pleasure palace”
The third part of the City Center Triumvirate is the Crystals, which has become the newest luxury retail destination on the Strip, featuring the now ubiquitous Louis Vuitton store, the Starbucks of luxury destinations (always call yourself a “destination” if you want to create the assumption that you are one.) As you know, LV doesn’t play around when it comes to cornering the market: they have four stores here (Tiffany & Co., Dior, and Chanel all have three.) The brand’s boutique (more like a supermarket) at the Crystals is North America’s largest Louis Vuitton: three stories and 14,000 square feet.
Tom Ford monolithic retail experience at City Center
But I feel like the real star of the Crystals is probably the Tom Ford boutique, which is less a boutique and more a sleek penthouse. We were met at the door by a uniformed butler serving champagne, while impossibly handsome men lingered at the counters.
Like Ford himself, the store is an obsessive-compulsive’s dream of such meticulous and refined luxury that even a whore for lavish details like me would exclaim: ”Tom, honey, you need to up your meds.”
White leather luggage (hard-sided of course) is trimmed in black and features tortoiseshell detailing. A gold moustache comb. A pair of crocodile spectator shoes (if you must ask: $7,000). And suits and shirts that appear to have been sewn by very nimble midgets capable of only the tiniest stitches.
I was ready to move in and sit in front of the fireplace, even if it didn’t actually function.
After the second glass of champagne you’re suddenly saying to yourself: I do need that and it’s really not that expensive.
Interior view of the Reed Krakoff store, which strangely did not have any branded signage inside.
Just down the road is the Forum Shops at Caesars that still has the highest sales per square foot — $1,400 – of any shopping mall in the United States. Hard to know why really, since when we were there we couldn’t help but notice it felt a bit ragged around the edges and that kitschy fountain feels played out. The edgiest store there was maybe Reed Krakoff, which perhaps gets the prize for Most Misguided Store Design. The exterior signage and windows nod to Tom Ford while the interiors; all bleached wood flooring and dove grey walls, felt like Marie Antoinette’s linen closet. We couldn’t find the designer’s name anywhere in the store, such that one forgot where one was. Caesar’s overall felt like one long bachelor party — the one you want to escape.
The fact of matter is, since C.D. left the building Las Vegas hasn’t been the same.
That’s “Celine Dion,” who from 2003 – 2007 sold out more than 700 shows and raked in more than $400 million at the box office. When she left, so did countless jobs and plenty more tourists. Which is why Caesars is now throwing $100 million at her to come back and do it all again. Please. Please.
Celine Dion’s return to Caesar’s Palace is a strategic effort to impact the local economy. Celine’s economy is just fine.
At the Forum’s Celine Dion boutique (I know…) fans were snagging Celine flip-flops, and $3,000 Judith Lieber purses. The hottest selling item? An “I Love Celine Dion and Celine Dion Loves Me.” Now imagine two Florida retirees wearing that and standing next to a gay couple from San Francisco wearing the identical t-shirt. That’s the picture I wasn’t able to get.
With L.L. Bean joining the fray of brand collaborations, I’ve been asked about whether the world really needs any more one-off fashion collections and “updated classics” from another earnest, fashion “collective” or style savant. But it continues, brands and retailers continue to seek out the whiz kids of fashion to help them bring customers back into their stores.
From big box retailers (think Target) to the small heritage brand (think LL Bean), everyone is joining the collaboration club. The majority of the time, though, it’s the fuddy-duddy retail giant who is looking to garner some street cred.
So does it work, and do consumers really respond to it?
Yes and no. The fact is, the goal should not only be to sell product. Most of the time the brands who mate for one night (or one collection) don’t make much profit when it comes to collaborations. But what they gain is consumer insight and awareness. In other words, it’s a relatively cost-effective experiment in brand development.
The aim should be for the major players to gain a different perspective on their business and smaller brands to dip their toe into the waters of mass-market retail.
In the best scenarios, a great collaboration lets both brands share resources and brand equity, and in this economy, who doesn’t need that?
The novelty of say, Sonia Rykiel and H&M, or Thom Browne and Brooks Brothers means customers are inspired to shop, especially when it’s in a store they wouldn’t normally be caught in.
Collaborations also bring a sense of authenticity to a brand because suddenly it isn’t quite so mass-market. It seems special and exclusive. A Goliath like Target gets some boutique brand sincerity and the cachet of “designer” without the sticker-shock.
Of course both brands hope to gain something from the relationship without cannibalizing their audience. There are certainly cases where that’s been true, most notably with sportswear brands. In the late 1990’s Puma elevated its profile when they collaborated with designer Jil Sander.
And in 2005, Puma opened multi-branded stores where they featured collaborations with Christy Turlington, Philippe Stark, and others. I think the point here is that it spoke of the brand’s stance in terms of innovation: that collaboration is truly collaborative — not dictatorial. Nike kind of missed that bandwagon preferring to be the ne plus ultra of sportswear, “i.e., we don’t need anyone else’s help.” The right move? Well, with so many athletes endorsing their products, I guess they really don’t need any help.
Karl Lagerfeld got to see just how much of a household name he had become when he collaborated with H&M on a capsule collection. Fans lined up around the block (other H&M collaborations weren’t quite so well received, such as the Madonna collection in 2007.)
Brief and copious one offs — like Levi’s and Opening Ceremony — are a bit more difficult to quantify, because they are so short term and in the case of Levi’s, they just happen a bit too often. Levi’s has been a bit garrulous about chasing the collaboration train, and it can make some wonder if they’re investing enough in their own heritage and equity. In other words, collaborations shouldn’t replace a company’s ordinary business model. It should be a tool that is used sparingly and carefully to enhance what you already have.
Collaborations are strategic experiments in new business development. That’s already proven itself with Brooks Brothers which has quietly taken Brown’s ideas and integrated silhouette and detailing into its classic label collection.
If the cost of producing an additional collection is daunting, consider media budgets and the cost to launch new products on your own. The cost of producing these collaborations can often be off-set by the amount of pro bono buzz as opposed to traditional advertising channels — buzz from previously, unavailable channels, such as opinion leaders and early adopters. This kind of presence goes a long way in growing a new customer.
Questionable payoffs do exist though. Consider the Gap and Paris’ trend-setting Colette store. What was the latter’s gain in opening a pop up shop at the Gap’s New York flagship (or Paris’ Merci, who also opened a pop up the following year at the Gap)?
Frankly, I’m really not sure either one got what they were looking for. Instead it felt like a charity case on the part of Colette for the Gap; a brand which has been frantically trying to rebuild its image after too many years of self-sabotage. It was a collaboration that felt more like desperation than innovation.
(NEW YORK) – The woman who conceived of Fashion’s Night Out did her best to encourage New Yorkers to shop.
After a circus of media and screaming fans at Bergdorf Goodman, Anna Wintour zipped over to the Meatpacking District in a black Cadillac Escalade, which paused in front of the Stella McCartney boutique.
By this time the crowd of press photographers had grown unruly and desperate for anyone who was even remotely a celebrity. Inside, a rather rumpled and ordinary assortment of guests waited for Something To Happen — anything — especially since they weren’t shopping and the bar was holding back on the champagne until some auspicious moment.
But it was Kate Hudson who made her entrance first and a sea of cellphones were raised as everyone tried to score an image of Ms. Hudson before the bodyguards ushered her into a fitting room in the back of the store.
Vogue Editor Anna Wintour at the Stella McCartney Boutique.
It was Ms. Wintour, though, who sent them all into a true frenzy with some simply frozen in their tracks. She waded upstream through the photographers and citizen journalists, her trademark bob gleaming in the spark of flashbulbs. It appeared that her visit was unclear and unscheduled: was she to visit Kate in the dressing room? Where’s Stella anyway? And who do you have to &%$ to get a drink around here?
The decision was made after some murmers into a cellphone. We’re leaving. I managed to present her with a copy of my book, Branding the Man, which she carefully examined as if it were the cover of a magazine, and then thanked me, her eyes flashing beneath her bangs.
With Actress Lucy Liu at Alexander McQueen
The scene was more or less the same throughout the Meatpacking District, with revelers behaving like it was New Year’s Eve, but with better liquor. Indeed, the longest lines weren’t at the fitting rooms or cash registers, but at the bar. At Christian Louboutin, I half-expected people to start drinking out of the floor sample shoes. It was a blase group of young things who clearly had no intention of buying shoes, only of clearing out what was left of the mini-bottles of champagne.
Meanwhile at Alexander McQueen, Actress Lucy Liu looked stunning in head-to-toe McQueen. “It’s fierce, isn’t it?” she said to all who admired her, which was pretty much everybody. As Hostess with the Mostess, she did her best to talk about the clothes — in-between requests for a picture.
By Midnight the irritating drizzle sent everyone scurrying into any restaurant that would take them, while others just huddled in the hopes of finding a taxi.
A cunning clutch does double duty.
A group of girls clutched ingenious little clutches with the word “Taxi” inscribed in neon letter (the purses, designed by Regine Bash, are available at www.2enlight10.com). They didn’t really seem to help them get a cab, but they sure looked cute trying.