March 17, 2012 |
There are two approaches to the Chinese as a fashion-consuming nation. They can either be seen as the angel Gabriel – who announced the birth of John the Baptist – or the Big Bad Wolf – who gobbled up Little Red Riding Hood. In other words, good news or bad. And they could be either, or both.
Certainly, the Chinese are beginning to show an interest in Western fashion at the highest level. They are buying couture and, at least on the surface, that sounds good. Rumours, hints, but no solid figures are increasingly heard in Paris that suggest that the Chinese are inclining towards spending their very new shiny money on all the very best the West has to offer and, in fashion, they believe that to be high fashion.
Is this surprising or inevitable in a nation forced to accept stereotyped conformity for so long – or is it, in fact, another form of stereotyping in the Chinese who now have considerable wealth to buy expensive clothes and handbags from the West but still all wish to look the same? And the look they are after is the look of international wealth – with the label to prove it. As Angelica Cheung, editor-in-chief of Chinese Vogue says, “We don’t always have to live within a reality”, and what is more escapist than couture, the privilege of a very few, lusted after by many more?
If it is true that there is an upsurge of interest in the world’s most expensive garments, can Paris really cheer or do the CEOs and couturiers have – as I do – just the faintest sense of déjà vu? After all, we have been this way before. Even in the 1950s, in many ways the high point of couture with Dior, Balmain, Balenciaga, Saint Laurent and Givenchy in the lead, there were intimations of trouble to come. In that period, many of the second-level couturiers went to the wall and never came back, and ready-to-wear was becoming stronger, encouraged by the daring originality of Cardin, Courrèges and Ungaro, who were creating clothes not for the traditional couture customer (rich and not young), but the young women who preferred to look like Françoise Hardy or Brigitte Bardot rather than like their mothers.
But couture still survived. Saint Laurent very publicly closed his couture ateliers, saying that modern fashion could not be about exclusivity and privilege, a point of view held by Chanel, who purported to welcome the fact that her designs “went down into the streets” and were copied at prices “shopgirls” could afford. The fact was that both were wrong. Couture was not yet dead and Saint Laurent reopened his couture very soon after his bold statement. Yet it was definitely dying, slowly and gracefully.
Then, tripping modestly onto the fashion stage, came the Middle East princesses, awash with money and excited by the possibility of sharing Western glamour, even if it had to be hidden under their burkas for all appearances away from home. Their money had a galvanising effect on Western taste, changing it forever. The new customers were neither aware nor interested in the finer points of French fashion. Refinement and cut were less important than embellishment – as glittery and obvious as possible. Louis Scherrer became one of their stars, with his bejewelled and heavily furred garments (for the Gulf!) being absolute winners. The coarsening effect of this dealt a body blow to French couture, from which it has never fully recovered.
But still it survived, even though the Gulf War caused a cold tremor as the princesses melted away, having encouraged the couturiers to abandon the very things that had kept their traditional audiences loyal. They, of course, had moved in considerable numbers to high-end ready-to-wear, not only very much cheaper but also easier, as it required none of the boring fittings that were the basis of couture’s perfect fit.
However, just when the panicky whispers predicting the death of couture began to be spoken in public, it was saved, rather surprisingly, by Hollywood. Adapting very quickly, couturiers cut back on the huge ball gowns with their complicated drapes that had been for so long their major money-spinners and jumped on board the red carpet bandwagon, providing evening gowns for stars to wear at the Oscars. By now, of course, the old guard such as Balenciaga had gone, saying on the day he closed his house, “it’s a dog’s life”, and designers he had influenced and trained, such as Ungaro, had taken over, along with Valentino and Givenchy, both of whom had powerful muses, respectively Jackie Kennedy and Audrey Hepburn, to act as exemplars and cheerleaders for the ladies who lunch, as well as the top star.
But the refinement those names conjured up was atypical. The Gulf princesses had introduced bling to couture – long before black rappers such as P Diddy – and its very vulgarity helped couture to survive by serving the needs and aspirations of high fashion and, of course, any oligarch’s wife worth her salt did not go to the great houses of Paris looking for a perfectly cut black dress. Oh no. She wanted the full works, just as in the 1920s and 1930s, when the Indian maharanees used to insist that their Paris gowns were liberally covered in real jewels – that they provided.
The glitter and gloss were replayed yet again for the Russians as the top houses threw everything shiny that they could get their hands on in their admittedly beautiful collections. It is a mood that has continued, even though the numbers of Russian buyers have shrunk considerably.
But couture still survives because there is enough money about to keep the ateliers busy. Couture sales have always been countable on the fingers of one hand, but houses such as Chanel and Armani are currently credited with sales in double digits and it could well be true. And that could be the beginning of a whole new wave from the latest country. Yes, we’re back to China.
The population of China currently hovers around 1.3 billion, which is 20% of the world’s population (which means that one in every five people on the planet is Chinese), and over 48% are women. But in basic terms, 623m Chinese are women. Even if only one in a million will have money to buy couture, that would produce figures not seen for 80 years. Such numbers must affect the taste of Paris – for two reasons. The couture houses have already shown that they will always trim their taste in order to please rich customers and, even more interestingly, although hard to predict with any certainty, those rich customers will surely want to dress in ways that are acceptable to Chinese society.
So, will the Chinese initially save French couture and then go on to transform it? Both possibilities seem likely. The interesting thing – indeed the problem for CEOs – is to decide how un-French couture can become and still remain attractive to the rest of the world, including the Chinese. There are, of course, already signs that Paris is looking to the East. Riccardo Tisci, the only one to watch at this point, has already moved to Asia in his choice of models for couture. Barely a Caucasian face interrupts the line of Chinese beauties. And, in my opinion, this is very important, as Tisci has the youth, assurance and creativity to slowly (or maybe not so slowly) introduce Chinese culture into his couture – and the rest would almost certainly follow his lead. After all, the exoticism of the Orient has always stimulated French designers, not least the marvellously eclectic Jean Paul Gaultier, who is the only couturier currently working in couture who actually trained in couture.
But the fulcrum of the couture-China conundrum is volatile. At the time of writing, Dior is without a design director, a job that includes responsibility for couture. If rumours are to be believed, by the time you read this, Marc Jacobs might be sitting in the chair. Which way will he be allowed to jump? It requires careful thought. Couture is on the edge of what could be called “an awfully big adventure”. Wouldn’t it be interesting if the Chinese were able to make couture powerful again? Stranger things have happened in the history of Western culture, after all. And let us not forget that Hermès (high-end, but not couture) already has its own “stand-alone” Chinese label, Shang XIA. Doesn’t that tell us which way the wind of change is blowing?
by Colin McDowell
