Draft Fashion Essay
Upmarket brands may have begun stalking mass consumers, but the trend labelled ‘massluxe’ (or ‘masstige’, take your pick) is more about chain stores smartening up. Gap, for instance, went one step further than H&M by naming Domenico De Sole, the former chief executive of Gucci group, to its board, and hiring designers who had previously worked with Marc Jacobs and Calvin Klein. To underline the change, a subsequent print advertising campaign starred Sex and the City’s Sarah Jessica Parker, a style icon for millions of women.
Gap is in better shape right now than it has been for years. Back in 2002, the company was limping as customers turned their backs on a brand that looked bland and baggy next to trendy newcomers from Spain and Scandinavia. The turnaround has been attributed to Paul Pressler, who took over as chief executive in 2002. The former Disney theme-park executive halted expansion, closed underperforming stores, and strove to redefine the chain’s brand identity – along with that of its sister brands Old Navy and Banana Republic. Although Gap still has some work to do, it emerged from the revamp looking younger, sharper and more fashionable, and is about to start expanding again.
Even Laura Ashley is in on the act, having appointed Alistair Blair – who previously worked with Lagerfeld, Givenchy and Dior – as its design director. ‘I walked into the store, saw the cut and quality of the clothes and thought, “This is so un-high street. I cannot believe how good these clothes are,”’ marvelled Joan Rolls, a ‘fortysomething former Vogue staffer’, in The International Herald Tribune. The article quoted Rolls as saying that the clothes had ‘the same ethos as, dare I say it, Burberry, but at a fraction of the price’. (‘Massluxe, the buzz on high street’, 23 September 2004.)
In a variation on the theme, at around the same time that H&M was counting the press clippings from its Lagerfeld coup, French
When Haute Couture Meets High Street
clothing catalogue La
Gap is in better shape right now than it has been for years. Back in 2002, the company was limping as customers turned their backs on a brand that looked bland and baggy next to trendy newcomers from Spain and Scandinavia. The turnaround has been attributed to Paul Pressler, who took over as chief executive in 2002. The former Disney theme-park executive halted expansion, closed underperforming stores, and strove to redefine the chain’s brand identity – along with that of its sister brands Old Navy and Banana Republic. Although Gap still has some work to do, it emerged from the revamp looking younger, sharper and more fashionable, and is about to start expanding again.
Even Laura Ashley is in on the act, having appointed Alistair Blair – who previously worked with Lagerfeld, Givenchy and Dior – as its design director. ‘I walked into the store, saw the cut and quality of the clothes and thought, “This is so un-high street. I cannot believe how good these clothes are,”’ marvelled Joan Rolls, a ‘fortysomething former Vogue staffer’, in The International Herald Tribune. The article quoted Rolls as saying that the clothes had ‘the same ethos as, dare I say it, Burberry, but at a fraction of the price’. (‘Massluxe, the buzz on high street’, 23 September 2004.)
In a variation on the theme, at around the same time that H&M was counting the press clippings from its Lagerfeld coup, French
When Haute Couture Meets High Street
clothing catalogue La