In Seoul, it is virtually impossible to walk through the makeup mecca known as the Myeongdong district and not notice that there are life-size cardboard cut-outs of Korean men in front of nearly every store, each of them winking and smiling, and beckoning shoppers into any one of the hundreds of cosmetics stores that line the streets.
But who are they beckoning, men or women? Probably both. That’s because here in Korea, appearances matter – a lot.
In fact, men are the fastest growing consumer segment. It is estimated that men in their twenties use an average of 13 cosmetics products per month. The cosmetics industry for men alone has grown nearly 70% in just the past five years, rising to roughly $1billion in 2015 alone.
It’s not uncommon to see young men wearing full makeup and shopping for more products with their girlfriends. Known as “flower boys,” they are revered for their beauty rather than mocked (and in a country that still does not openly accept homosexuality, it is never assumed that these men could also be gay.) More common, however, is ordinary working men who use maybe just pencil in their eyebrows, use BB creams, or tinted powders. On YouTube, there are dozens of Korean tutorials directed at men on how to apply makeup.
Celebrities are universally worshipped in Korea and Kpop production house like YG, SM, and JYP manufacture a steady stream of boys who are unified in their vanity and instrumental in commodifying beauty.
These companies are a kind of propaganda machine for Korea’s power with all things cool and beautiful, whether its electronics from Samsung or movie star Kim SooHyun. YG Entertainment even launched its own cosmetics brand called Moonshot, which showcases pop acts Big Bang and 2NE1 in their image campaigns. More men in makeup.
And now international brands want in. U.S. brand Clarisonic hired male actor Ahn Jae-hyun, while Mary Kay engaged Yoon Park to represent its skincare products.
But men also feature prominently in advertising for electronics, liquor, food, and just about any other category you can think of. Unlike the West where female models are the norm, it’s impossibly attractive men who rule Korea.
So how does one decode this male power of attraction, and why do they figure so prominently?
Some theories suggest that rigidly Confucian societies like Korea use advertising as yet another mouthpiece to reinforce the hedgemony that is endemic to the culture’s strict norms of male power and status over women.
In an academic journal, Professor Michael Prieler from the School of Communications at Hallym University in South Korea puts it this way:
Advertisements are sources of meaning in a culture because they tell the audience not only stories about products but also about social roles, goals, and values…. advertising images are constructed as part of larger social processes that construct and encourage some meanings of dominant groups over others. For example, advertisements construct and represent gender in accordance with traditional hierarchical gender relations in society. Thus, they recreate stereotypes and hamper change because once such practices become habitual, others expect such behaviors, which are perpetuated by society [citations omitted.][1]
But it may be far more complex than that.
While the West overtly puts women in stereotypical sexualized roles, here it is men who perform the role of “feminine” beauty. The difference? They still maintain their masculine power.
Of course, not all men in Korea look anything remotely like the men in advertisements, but the message is clear: their power is not just in being men, but in being beautiful men in a society where they are already omnipotent.
South Korea is a fiercely competitive culture when it comes to family status, academic achievement, an impressive job, and a marriage that increases the power of that family.
In Korea, beauty can be an important entrée to opportunity. The right looks can get you a job.
For instance, resumes must include a photograph which is always scrutinized. Beautiful people can get good jobs while less attractive people do not. Beautiful people get married. Unattractive people go to Gangnam to get plastic surgery so they can get married.
So it’s no wonder that Korea’s obsession with external beauty explains the nearly neurotic desire for any product that can promise a better status in life.
Enter the men who promise this — even if they’re just a cardboard cut-out on the sidewalk.
It’s a Sunday afternoon. Korean couples walk arm in arm through a neighborhood lined with Hanoks, the traditional houses made famous in dozens of soap operas. For many of these couples, it is the only time they have for romance and intimacy in a country famous for 60-hour work weeks.
Many dress extravagantly, a show of prosperity. One couple pauses to take a selfie in front of a charming little teahouse. They stare at the photo and then, the girl turns to the boy and adjusts his makeup with her fingers. They pose again.
This time, perfection.
Every once in awhile we come across a fantastic legacy business that is in danger of being demolished and we just wish we could find the right person to rescue it.
In Italy, a narrow little shop in the center of Florence called Old England is just one of those places.
One enters and feels as though one has stepped back in time. It’s a store that is just begging to be discovered by a smart and savvy hipster: Old England has the pedigree and all of the trappings to be polished into that genre of “authentic” retail that is usually painfully imitated.
Here, it’s the real deal, a store where generations of Florentine expats and aristocrats came to stock up on fine imported goods from the British Empire.
Courtesy I. Miel Ventagli
Old England is a sliver of a store located on Via Vecchietti, that has somehow managed to survive 92 years – until now.
With barely a month’s notice, the owners announced that they must close; yet another casualty of Italy’s struggling economy and the seismic shift in how people shop. The news of its closing has stayed remarkably off the radar making it a slim chance of finding the right candidate who would respect Old England’s DNA. And while becoming another hipster establishment is not our first choice, it’s certainly a viable one for keeping the store alive.
“The generation that understands and cares about this kind of quality and these kinds of goods is getting smaller,” says Susanna Marcacci, wife of Antonio Marcacci whose great-great grandfather founded the store in 1924. “We cannot survive. The city is changing.”
Indeed it is: the center of Florence is increasingly becoming home to major luxury brands and the kinds of stores meant really for the constant flow of foreign tourists.
There are no big brand names in Old England. Only old ones. Needless to say, nothing in this store is labeled with anything but “Made in England.”
British sartorial style has always had a place in Italian consciousness, beginning with the golden age of what was known as the “Grand Tour,” a phenomenon that began in the 17th century when wealthy English families made the fashionable pilgrimage to Italy to see its famous ruins and classical art.
The British fell in love with the ruins of the Roman Empire and Italians fell in love with all things English — minus the food, probably: the polished purity of fine saddle leathers, Irish linens, Savile Row tailoring, and the quaint elegance of “British Style.”
What evolved was a series of “Anglo American” shops that popped up throughout Italy and France. Most of those stores have long since closed and now, so will Old England.
“Everything has become more expensive here in Florence, and we are finding that there just aren’t as many people who appreciate this kind of merchandise,” says Susanna. “People who want to touch, to feel the quality. They know.” She uses that word to underscore the kind of clientele who shops at the store.
Tuscan nobility (or those who simply had a second home here) shopped at Old England because — pre-internet and jet aeroplane — it was the only place where you could buy a few hundred meters of top-notch double-faced cashmere or genuine Scottish tweed. Or perhaps some Liberty of London printed cottons with which to make a summer frock.
In those days, the store doubled as a social hub, with foreign newspapers and a daily afternoon tea. That ended in 1960.
Now in its last days, the front of the store is still brimming with English groceries: biscuits, jams, teas, canned goods, and the requisite Pimm’s Cup, Balvenie whisky, and Beefeater Gin.
On the first day that the store’s closing was announced, a hundred or more people waited in long lines to get into the store. Shoppers left with armloads of Shetland wool sweaters, silk bathrobes, and even some remarkable dead-stock merchandise that was discovered in the store’s basement: classic duffle coats, a Burberrys cashmere coat(with the old label) , and stacks of scarves and driving caps.
Old-fashioned Christmas “crackers” (a cardboard tube that explodes when two people pull on it together) are stacked on the floor, waiting for the store’s last loyal customers to bring home and celebrate the end of 2016.
But for Susanna and Antonio Marcacci, there will be no celebration. “Old England was born here, and now it will die here,” says Susanna.
Antonio stands behind her, arms crossed, stoic in his effort to hold back emotion. Old England is a family legacy which he must let go. Efforts to campaign the city of Florence to save the store have gone nowhere. All that will be saved is the building itself.
“The city will not even allow us to take the furniture, even though it is ours — my family’s. Everything, the lights, the chairs, the cases, have been here forever. And now we must go and leave them all behind.”
Celebrity endorsements are aplenty, especially in the realms of alcohols and other beverages. A bevy of Hollywood stars have lent their name or image to promote an ever-growing range of liquor.
Tequila is a hot property right now with both Justin Timberlake and George Clooney each producing their own brands, while Ludacris and P. Diddy dabble in cognac and vodka. Marilyn Manson prefers absinthe, appropriately called Absinthe Mansinthe.
But what about when dead celebrities sell their spirits to… sell spirits?
At an estimated $3billion dollars annually, they actually make more money than celebrities do when they’re alive.
Across a spectrum of products, the big four earners continue to be Michael Jackson ($170m), Elvis Presley ($55m), Marilyn Monroe ($27m), and oddly enough, cartoonist Charles Schultz ($25m).
Liquor, however, is perhaps the most lucrative of all licensing deals – even more than fragrances, which are certainly up there. With liquor, we are talking high volume, high-ticket products targeted at the affluent, predominantly male consumer, aged 18-49.
And while living celebrities may be getting their attention, it’s time they raise a glass to the some new contenders: the “Chairman of the Board,” Frank Sinatra and the “Duke,” John Wayne.
Do they have the cachet to capture the 21-percent of those men who say they favor liquor? Their estate attorneys certainly hope so.
Sinatra and Wayne are fronting liquor brands designed to capitalize on their iconic personalities and perhaps by default, their association with boozing it up. That both (along with Monroe) were to some extent alcoholics doesn’t seem to faze their estates. Sinatra, with his links to the mafia and Las Vegas – not to mention songs that still get rotation in commercials and movies – is our bet for a winner, while Wayne is a bit more questionable. If anything, he could certainly go down well with an older demographic of conservative Republicans and NRA supporters.
Sinatra’s estate first hit the beverage market with a Napa Valley wine called Sinatra Family Estates, and this year partnered with Jack Daniel’s to manufacture Jack Daniel’s Sinatra Select – which frankly (no pun intended), is much more in keeping with this legend’s boozing preferences.
As for Monroe, her estate was first-to-market with an alcohol beverage, with Marilyn Wines which was launched back in 1981. She is still high on the list when it comes to a premium celebrity brand: her image licensing recently sold for a reported $20-30 million to Authentic Brands Group.
There are eight different Marilyn wines, each with unabashedly bold images of Monroe on the labels. Nevermind that there’s not even a hair’s breadth of a story behind the wine brand. This is pure licensing for image and image alone, but boy does that image sell wine. Conservative estimates show that Marilyn Wines takes in up to $5million a year, including the licensing fee they pay to use Monroe’s name and image.
Still, I can’t help think of a Marilyn Monroe wine as appealing only to bachelorette parties or gay men.
The point with all of these brands is that even after death, a celebrity’s brand equity can continue even more than a half-century after their death. Fans and social media along with image licensing help to solidify their value as cultural icons.
CMG Worldwide is an agency that handles dozens of dead clients; from headliners like James Dean to perhaps less marketable Hollywood stars like Helen Hayes and Al Jolson. The agency deliberately sets up and manages websites dedicated to their deceased stars in order to maintain the cultural value.
But in the case of celebrities where alcohol was a personally debilitating part of their lives, is it right to use them to sell alcohol? The truth is, most consumers don’t bother to pay attention to that detail and instead, focus on their glamour and their rich association with an era when heavy drinking was as seemingly innocent and fun as chain smoking.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art gala is perhaps one of the world’s preeminent social events and since 1995, when Vogue’s Anna Wintour took over as chair of the event, it has boasted more star-power and glamour than any other, most notably Vanity Fair’s Oscar’s gala.
The First Monday in May is a documentary about 2015’s event and the museum exhibition, China: Behind the Looking Glass. The film is directed by Andre Rossi and produced by Conde Nast Entertainment, Vogue, and Relativity Studios.
Those cozy partners make for an all-access pass to the machinations that go into creating a gala event that is usually nothing more than a celebrity showcase — in this case, heavy helpings of Rihanna, Kim and Kanye, Beyoncé and Bieber.
More interestingly, however, is getting to see the making of the museum exhibition itself.
Early on in the film, Andrew Bolton, curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, sets up an important premise for the film and the conflict of egos within the institution: “There are people within the museum who still dismiss fashion.”
Can fashion be art? It’s a question that the film poses but doesn’t quite know how to answer.
In the film, we meet some who are clearly uncomfortable with that question, such as Douglas Dillon, who oversees Asian art at the Museum and who, in several instances, stonewalls Wintour and her team when they want to re-arrange the furniture, so to speak, such as blocking a sacred temple on exhibit or adding too much Asian kitsch.
Indeed, the film reveals the stereotyping and racism endemic to how the West still views the East, and the challenge of designing an exhibition that balances art, history and culture with dignity and respect. In many cases, however, priceless art works become mere backdrops for the fashion. “Orientalism” is easier to understand than the culture itself.
“No-no-no, now it’s looking like a Chinese restaurant,” says Wintour, when presented with a set of presentation concepts, one of which includes giant green dragons on either side of the Met’s grand staircase.
Film director Wong Kar Wai, who’s iconic film, In the Mood for Love is just about every Western designer’s inspiration for a “China collection,” is visibly disturbed when the idea comes up for room inspired by the Mao suit and the Cultural Revolution.
And with Baz Luhrmann as the exhibit’s creative consultant, there is no shortage of Chinese-inspired razzle-dazzle, which somehow manages to make it past the scorn of the Museum’s more academic curators.
The film does lose its way at several points as it juggles the social politics of the gala event (where will Beyoncé sit? Do we really want to see Harvey Weinstein in the front row?) and the brokering of private loans from the world’s top design houses.
For fashion lovers, however, the film is a feast for the eyes.
We visit the Fondation Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent, which loaned the designer’s epic 1977 China collection, and see a lifetime of work hanging silently in a climate-controlled safe.
In one scene, we see the arrival Galliano’s 2003 China collection, with a stack of coffin-like boxes from which emerge massive gowns, most requiring up to four people to lift them out and lay them gingerly on a table, like a cadaver.
The First Monday in May devotes the last quarter of the film to the glitz and glamour of the exhibition’s famous opening night. “It’s the Superbowl of fashion events,” says Vogue Editor-at-Large Andre Leon Talley.
And that it is, as we watch the celebrities ascend the grand staircase, most in gowns and jewels they didn’t pay for and fulfilling their role as fashion brand ambassadors. Is fashion art? I still don’t have that answer.
>> The First Monday in May (2016). 91 minutes. Directed by Andrew Rossi. Featuring Anna Wintour, Wong Kar Wai, Baz Luhrmann, Andre Leon Talley, Jean Paul Gaultier, Karl Lagerfeld, John Galliano and Ricardo Tisci, along with cameos from a laundry list of People magazine regulars.
It was only in the early part of the 20th century that there evolved an entire philosophical and psychological approach to the design of children’s toys. Most recently this was explored in the stunning 2012 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, Century of the Child: Growing By Design 1900 – 2000.
The idea that toys could be attractive, and even artistic is one that is distinctively modernist. By the 1920’s, German and Scandinavian designers, architects, and artists began experimenting with new ways of designing “play”.
We’ve always loved the purity of design that is inherent with classic wood toys, whether Kay Bojesen’s iconic monkey or early works from Frank and Theresa Kaplan’s Creative Playthings, such as the “Rocking Beauty” (both part of MoMa’s permanent collection.)
Founded in 1911, The French toy company Vilac is renowned for its cheerful array of wooden toys that are too beautiful to hide in a toy chest.
A brilliantly colored container ship is the latest addition to Vilac’s collection, with its mosaic of cargo blocks rendered in navy, green, white, yellow and red. For us, it was love-at-first-sight: the rich colors, the novel use of building blocks, and the bold typography that delivers an authentically “vintage” industrial vibe.
Vilac toys are made from sustainably farmed wood from the Jura Mountains in France, which is also the location of the company’s headquarters in Moirans-en-Montagne.
Their newest piece, however, wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for the creative spark that occurred when executives from CMA-CGM, the world’s largest container shipping company (and also French), crossed paths with the heads of Vilac.
Together, they hatched the idea of making a co-branded toy.
“The design & development team at Vilac created a prototype that was decorative and artistic yet playable too,” says Estelle LaCroix, Vilac’s export manager.
“At first, this small, co-branded product was only shown to various executive groups within the CMA-CGM Company, and then given as gifts to high-ranking personalities in France and various people around the World.”
Which “high profile personalities”? Our imagination toys with the the sight of Catherine Deneuve or Nicolas Sarkozy pushing their cargo ship across the living room carpet. Nevertheless, suddenly there was overwhelming demand for a toy that was never officially meant for the retail market.
“No one, neither at Vilac nor CMA-CGM predicted the huge demand there would be for this new toy,” says LaCroix. The stock was so depleted that there was no way they could complete any orders in time for Christmas 2015.
But now it’s back and next month it will be available here in the United States. Order yours now… before they’re gone.
> >The Vilac “Porte Conteneurs” will be available beginning May 1, 2016, at the following specialty retailers.
Bonjour Petit
BonjourPetit.com
844.369.1119
(online only)
Norman & Jules Toy Shop
158 7th Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11215-6633
http://normanandjules.com/
347.987.3323
The Red Balloon
417 15th Avenue East
Seattle, WA 98112
http://www.redballoon.com/
206-467-0318
It was Target Corp. that started the whole concept of the limited edition designer collection sold to the masses, products that caused customers to queue up for days in advance just to get their hands on some strange designer interpretation of a pot holder, candlestick, or beach towel.
Come April 17, it’s Marimekko’s turn, a Finnish brand best known for big bold prints that make their way onto towels, plates, and clothes.
It’s hard to believe that Target’s first experiment with designer exclusives was 17 years ago (1999’s Michael Graves collection) but it was 2011’s Missoni partnership that revealed what a profitable marketing concept they had.
Products flew off the shelves in a matter of minutes (while online shoppers were met with a crashed website), and even weeks later, there were lines of people waiting to see if anything made its way back as a store return.
That hasn’t always been the case. A disastrous Neiman Marcus collaboration reminded Target executives to choose those partners carefully.
Overall, the collaborations renew brand awareness (Target’s) and have a ripple effect on other store products and departments. More importantly, they help underscore Target as “cool” — even if a lot of that cool has, er, cooled off.
Let’s face it, seventeen years ago – even 8 years ago – a lot more people talked about shopping at Target than they do now.
My question is, who is really benefiting from these collaborations – Target or the guest brand?
I’d say Target, simply because the guest brand probably isn’t looking to establish a long-term relationship with the Target customer. Instead, it’s about recognition.
Do you think very many of the people who bought Missoni at Target went on to become Missoni loyalists, buying from the brand’s seasonal collections at full retail? Not likely.
For them, the goal is to leverage the mass retailer’s marketing and build on an image of being an “iconic” or “cult” brand (ergo, why Target only chooses cult or heritage brands with whom to partner with).
So should brands jump at these collaboration opportunities?
I’d say sure, but plan carefully the product concepts you hand off to Target (or H&M, or Uniqlo…) and consider the backfire potential: will your loyalist feel disappointed and even disgusted that their “real” designer goods could be mistaken for a replica? What’s your long-term plan for reaching the mass-market customer – is it because you want to launch a bridge line or some other opportunity to grow a lower-priced product category?
In the meantime, get ready to see a lot of people wearing flowered muumuus, because they were pushing that hard at the press preview.
>> Brian Valmonte is partner and business strategist with b. on brand. email him at brian@bonbrand.com
“Newness” is one of those words that fashion directors like to use a lot, especially when things aren’t going well.
There’s not a lot of newness this season.”
That usually means that designers presented collections with no coherent message or obvious best sellers with which to tell a story on the sales floor.
In an effort to fan the flames against an increasingly fragile consumer economy, luxury brands are producing collections that are either vaguely arty or downright cartoony, and consumers love it.
From Valentino to Saint Laurent to Gucci to Prada, every label is creating the kind of kawaii (“cute” in Japanese) characters and graphics that typically appeals to the… Japanese.
Two years ago, Fendi found wild success with its Peekaboo bag and all of its iterations of furry “bag bugs,” that retail for up to $700 (after you already spent up to $5,000 on the bag.) Now the Fendi monsters have become its own category for the brand.
Or take Saint Laurent’s new intarsia T-Rex sweater, which looks vaguely like something we would have worn to elementary school. It retails for over $1,000 – if you can find it. It’s completely sold out.
Saint Laurent’s designer, Hedi Slimane, who’s obsession with the L.A. rock scene is well documented, shocked many when he not only changed the name of the brand moved all of its creative to Los Angeles instead of Paris.
Even Valentino succumbed to this genre of children’s fashion for adults, with a 2014 Snow White collection. Winsome, isn’t it? But that’s the point.
So what’s the motivation?
With so many aspirational and bargain brands elbowing into luxury territory and offering the same or similar looks at a fraction of the price, luxe leaders are once again, co-opting the downtown cool of club kids in an effort to make their brands feel more authentic and earnest.
More importantly, with Millenials being such a key market, why bother with ordinary suits and gowns? Now more than ever, “youth” is a fashion look, and it starts with being ironic.
The young, upwardly mobile fashion consumer seeks edgy urban looks that say, “it might be from a thrift store, but if you’re cool, you’ll know it’s Hedi.” Why else would Jennifer Lawrence wear a Alexander Wang denim jacket that says PERV on the back (other than to give the paparazzi a piece of her mind)?
This spring it’s Gucci that’s getting the biggest buzz, all thanks to designer Alessandro Michele. He shrewdly made the strategic move of adding a huge dose of irreverence and Italian loucheness to the formerly ho-hum brand.
Gucci’s blatant grab for the respect of the bourgeois glitterati is largely thanks to graffiti artist Trevor Andrew, who’s “GucciGhost” can be found in all of the fashionable alleys of New York’s lower east side. Michele even went so far as to make Andrew an official member of the Gucci design team.
For luxury brands, this kind of street-savvy bravado is fairly typical and it works – for a while, at least. Just ask Louis Vuitton, who scored all kinds of cred thanks to its collaborations over the years with Stephen Sprouse, Takashi Murakami, and Yayoi Kusama. But admittedly, that stuff always felt too corporate, especially when you saw your secretary carrying a bag with cherries all over it.
At it’s core, however, these self-consciously irreverent pop culture collections become more marketing exercise than anything, since in the end, there’s still a much larger collection of other merchandise that needs to sell in order for a brand to turn a real profit. An iconic look may get them in the store, but will they really buy more than what they came for?
In the field of branding and strategy, we talk a lot about the customer experience and how the brand extends itself into the marketplace, and into the hearts and minds of consumers.
In their new book, Holistic Retail Design: Reshaping Shopping for the Digital Era, authors Philipp Teufel and Rainer Zimmermann challenge segmentation of the branded experience in today’s retail. The book is equal parts theoretical, pragmatic, and experimental in its approach to modern retail.
That the world of retail has undergone seismic shifts is true, but the authors do not lament such a fact.
“The old school principle of the retail industry is defined by compartmentalization: architects don’t talk to visual merchandisers, who don’t talk to brand managers or public relations or the interactive department,” says co-author Zimmerman, in an interview with b. on brand.
“Today we have a need for holistic shopping experiences across all touchpoints, which requires people who are able to judge, plan and develop design and communications in digital media as well as in a spatial context. Architecture, design and communications for retail must be organized in an integrated way.”
Zimmerman and Teufel, both doctorate scholars in the fields of strategy and communications and graphic design (respectively), ground their design insights in richly documented case studies that offer compelling examples of global best practices across all retail channels.
All too often, it is still the architect who sweeps in and create their “vision” for the brand’s three-dimensional expression, even if quite often, they have little to no knowledge of the strategic and operational goals of a retail store. For them, the store is showplace more than holistic brand value system, one that must – if it’s effective – be harmonious with all the spokes of the brand wheel.
“While verticals like H&M or Zara are heavily addressing the average consumer, a growing number of hipsters are looking for individualization and differentiation,” says Zimmerman.
“I think it is good news for independent and small retail players that their market potential is arguably rising. Mainstream retail is still determined by scale and mass, whereas independent retailers are successful with a business model of margin and scarcity.”
The hunger for an individualized experience is a key driver for millennial consumers, which is why from high luxury to mass market, brands are engineering bold design concepts to further elevate the customer experience.
Zimmermann and Teufel’s book goes in-depth to explore the tangible strategies for holistic brand design, from stationary to temporary to digital customer touch-points. The crux: no successful brand can avoid expanding their vision for how they engage with the consumer.
A beautiful store is just that, but in the end, what’s the ultimate expression of the brand?
“Most of the retailers have not yet started to reinvent their personnel and service quality,” cautions Zimmerman.
Case in point, sales associates regularly complain that stores lack efficient stockrooms, rest areas, or selling spaces that make cross-selling easy. The sales associate is typically back of mind. Add to that a lack of adequate training and the store — no matter how lavishly appointed — is but a shell.
Great retail is a performance, one in which the customer plays the starring role. So why don’t brands take more care in hiring the supporting players?
“Most of the sales staff is still under-qualified and underpaid. The fluctuation of personnel is still high, so that a lasting human-to-human customer loyalty is impossible to install. Abundance and oversupply is the main problem for the consumer. He needs advice not in adding possibilities, but in reducing them. Maybe the retail industry should start not to recruit, but to ‘cast’ their staff.”
It’s just one of countless provocative points raised in this lavishly illustrated book that lifts the veil on an industry that is still, alas, begging for innovation.
>> Holistic Retail Design: Reshaping Shopping for the Digital Era by Philipp Teufel and Rainer Zimmermann (Frame Publishing, 2015). Get the book for 15% off the list price. Click here and use the discount code BONBRAND at checkout.
If you’re not from Tulsa then chances are you would have never heard of Miss Jackson’s, a store that, in the words of one Tulsan we met, “was our little secret.” This Tulsa secret had miraculously survived for over a hundred years – that is, until now.
Rumors had circulated since last summer that the institution would be closing for good. Just before Christmas, the truth was disclosed on the store’s website.
What kills the independent luxury retailer?
The truth is, stores like Miss Jackson’s simply can’t compete with larger chains like Nordstrom or Neiman Marcus.
Perhaps Miss Jackson’s was too much of a secret, and as has happened to other iconic stores (most notably I. Magnin and more recently, Wilkes Bashford — which was saved at the 11th hour), it became victim to investors who had no real intention of keeping it in their portfolio. The store did not evolve or keep up with changing demographics and tastes. The truth is, stores like Miss Jackson’s simply can’t compete with larger chains like Nordstrom or Neiman Marcus.
Nevertheless, a generation of women speak of Miss Jackson’s in reverent tones. “They made you feel like a princess,” says Beverly Anderson, a business consultant who was born and raised in Tulsa.
She began shopping at the store over forty years ago with her mother. “You’d be led into a large, comfortable dressing room, given a coke or a glass of wine – always with a straw — and then someone races around the store and brings you gorgeous designer clothes to try on.”
The store could almost be a set piece for a scene from Mad Men, a gleaming white-brick-and-concrete ode to midcentury suburban life.
“Just such a loss,” says Boofy Flint Seay, also from Tulsa. “The end of an era, the end of a glorious time we shall never see again — it literally hurts.”
Like so many midwestern cities, the booming oil years have long since departed Tulsa, Oklahoma and stores like Miss Jackson’s can’t compete with the larger chains or fast-fashion stores.
We first visited Miss Jackson’s several years ago and immediately fell in love with how beautifully forgotten it was; lost in time, but in the most elegant way.
The store, located in Tulsa’s upscale Utica Square Mall, could almost be a set piece for a scene from Mad Men. It’s a gleaming white-brick-and-concrete ode to midcentury suburban life with manicured trees and a polished brass sign reading “Miss Jackson’s” in cursive.
Inside, it’s all suburban colonial, with white columns and moldings, Chinoiserie wallpaper, and brass fittings. The store has the kind of “tasteful” décor that was de rigueur with the country club set. The store experience defined why women loved it.
Sales associates addressed customers by name, and always with a “Miss” attached to it. “Good afternoon Miss Beverly,” says one, which is then echoed by the others scattered about the store.
Compared to the Saks Fifth Avenue store just across the parking lot, Miss Jackson’s is relatively small – only 33,000 square feet of selling space (compared to Saks’ 48,000), but in its heyday it managed to stock a formidable array of top-tier designers. The store regularly held trunk shows, many hosted by the designers themselves.
Back in 1964 (when the Utica Square store was built) the store was designed to be the kind of one-stop-shop for women to while-away the day, shopping for gifts, home décor, or getting pampered on the third floor Penthouse Salon (the name alone puts you firmly in the sixties.)
On the second floor, one of the largest fur salons we had ever seen, with fur wraps dyed to match jewel-tone gowns, fur hats, and the kind of huge, sweeping fur coats you only see in places where wearing fur isn’t frowned upon.
Beverly Anderson’s closets are testament to the power Miss Jackson’s once had on Tulsan women, where buyers made purchases with specific customers in mind.
Her closets are stuffed with several decades worth of carefully preserved clothes – her mother’s as well as her own — all with a distinctive Miss Jackson’s label sewn into it as prominent stores used to do: here an early Thierry Mugler and Halston, there, an haute couture Issey Miyake and Ungaro.
“Some of these clothes were my mother’s and I just can’t bear to part with them,” says Beverly, carefully returning an aqua-colored satin and beaded gown to its box. It is spot-on Jackie Kennedy, circa 1962. “This one I have to keep for a museum… or something.”
For Beverly, the dress is like an old friend. A bit, perhaps, like Miss Jackson’s.
It’s not often that a pair of shoes stops me in my tracks but Yves Saint Laurent’s now iconic Jonny Boot managed to do just that to me, back in the golden age of Tom Ford.
When I first saw them they looked far too louche to be taken seriously. Uh.. are you wearing high heels?
“It’s a Cuban heel,” I was informed. Indeed, according to Kenny Abiog,former YSL’s men’s buyer for the U.S., the shoe was not exactly a runaway success for the brand when it was launched in 2004.
“Even I looked at it and thought it was the kind of shoe my hairdresser would wear,” said Abiog, who we met in San Francisco while he attended to the funereal task of packing up the shuttered YSL boutique on Maiden Lane.
However in very little time the Jonny Boot became one of designer Tom Ford’s most coveted products and at one point the Jonny Boot accounted for the lion’s share of the label’s men’s wear profits. The Cult of Jonny.
“A store would get a shipment of 24 pairs on a Friday and by Monday there would be only eight left,” recalled Abiog.
I tried on a pair and for a brief moment I had the uneasy feeling of wearing a pair of stilettos. But after a few awkward struts, I was smitten and bought one of the last Jonny’s available: a buttery soft, leather wing-tip in a limited edition of 142 pairs, with mine being number 78. Back then, they sold for $795, which in today’s dollars would be closer to $900. On eBay, a pristine pair now sells for close to $2,000; those in an exotic skin, a good deal more.
Mind you, these are not shoes for the shy or timid: to stand in these shoes, one must stand T A L L. Comic relief can be had in watching the uninitiated try to walk in them. Some slouch, others stumble, and then there are those who walk very slowly, as if on stilts.
Under Tom Ford, the Jonny was a runway success, such that even under subsequent creative director Stefano Pilati’s reign, the Jonny Boot continued to be available at select boutiques. But shortly after Pilati was shown the door, his successor was quick to pull it off the shelves.
That would be Hedi Slimane, who clearly wishes he had thought of the Jonny himself, which is why he’s literally put his own mark on the shoe. It is now called the “Hedi.” It’s lower than the Jonny but if you still want to get high — I mean with your shoes — then ask for the “French 85”: yup, that’s 85mm of heel, honey.
On a recent stop at one of the mausoleum-like Saint Laurent boutiques ( part of Slimane’s new “vision” for the brand), the sales associate practically scoffed when I mentioned the Jonny boot. “Oh no, that’s gone. The new creative director has made his own boot,” as he gestures towards the Hedi boots that line a wall. He looked at me as if I was Rip Van Winkle. “We do get some people who ask about the Jonny from time to time, but not that often.”
Along a back wall full of Punk-inspired attire like creepers and studded belts sat a pair of silver Wonder Woman-style boots emblazoned with red stars and blue stripes. Hardly something I could imagine myself in — let alone the brand’s namesake, Yves Saint Laurent. Then again, who knows? I didn’t think I’d wear Jonny’s either. “The Chinese love these,” reported another store associate. “Don’t ask me why, but they’ve been selling really well with them.”