LUXE IN FLUX
Suzy Menkes reflects on the third Condé Nast International Luxury Conference, held this year in Oman.
Suzy Menkes reflects on the third Condé Nast International Luxury Conference.
LUXURY REQUIRES MORE THAN JUST A SALES PITCH
Apretty package, a satin bow, a flurry of white tissue – and inside lies an object of desire. But is the traditional view of luxury being challenged, as its essence shifts from product to experience? Beauty lessons on Instagram, sophisticated fragrances and “wellness” vacations have seeped into the mind-set of consumers from Europe to Asia and the Middle East, while the many different ways to shop in the new millennium are thoughtprovoking for consumers and suppliers.
“Mindful Luxury” was the theme of the third Condé Nast International Luxury Conference, held in Muscat, Oman. The setting was intentionally calm: a sultanate with a history of looking out from the Gulf across the oceans, and a history of aligning with other countries, such as nearby India, and the historic Silk Route to the Far East.
With time to contemplate the stormy political and social universe, the question facing speakers and delegates from the luxury world was whether consumerism still means an object you hold in your hand, or whether the 21st century is moving beyond that time-honoured vision.
The speakers seemed to have one of two different attitudes. There were futurists such as Sophie Hackford, Stefan Siegel and Lapo Elkann, looking with confidence at a fast-changing world. For them, technology is not just a facet of what is happening in the industry, but the essence of the creation of objects and contact with customers.
Others embraced the concept of man (or woman) rather than machine. Elie Saab, the fashion star of the Middle East, was not only proud of the global expansion of his family business: he also spoke up for the fine couture handwork made in the studios of his native Lebanon.
Another true believer in handcraft was Alessandro Sartori, the artistic director of menswear giant Ermenegildo Zegna. He counted the 500 hands – 250 experts – it takes to put a perfect outfit together, proving, in his view, that luxury should have the human touch. But Paul Andrew, the first-ever design director of women’s footwear at Ferragamo since founder Salvatore died in 1960 (previously a creative director oversaw all of the label’s various collections), put hands versus machines in perspective. “High tech, high craft, high touch” was his design mantra – in that order.
And Cem Boyner, CEO of Turkish luxury group Boyner Holdings, emphasised that in his country’s troubled times “the customer needs a lot of investment every waking hour, in every corner, from 360 degrees”. The big debate is between objects and experiences, as luxury – even in the shop-till-you-drop consumer markets of China – requires more than just a sales pitch. China’s position is in flux in its other role of making cheap, fast-fashion clothes. According to economist Dr Pippa Malmgren, while costs spike in Asia, Mexico is the new hot spot for creation and consumerism.
Perhaps jewellery has a special relationship with luxury because of its charismatic hold on those who receive it – or buy it for themselves. Designers from India to Lebanon to the UK seem to see the size of stones as less significant than the message they communicate.
Other immaterial treasures are fragrances, where Oman, historically famous for its frankincense, is a leader. The power of perfume was shown by the working relationship between fashion designer Alber Elbaz and fragrance specialist Frédéric Malle.
Among the many fascinating speakers, beauty blogger and e-tail entrepreneur Huda Kattan (of the 20 million-plus Instagram followers) captivated the audience. There is the proof that people are eager to shop – but on their own terms. And that “mindful” luxury can be all in the mind.
Ms Lloyd worked with Yves Saint Laurent both when he was Monsieur Dior’s protégée and when he was appointed head of the house when Dior died in 1957. Saint Laurent was just 21 years old and had been a “mate” to many of the mannequins, recalls Ms Lloyd. So to suddenly have him as their boss and having to address him formally as “Monsieur” was an odd transition.
“Whereas Monsieur Dior was deferential, he was decisive but always expressed it in a soft, careful and respectful way, so was Monsieur Saint Laurent,” says Ms Lloyd. “Except he was even quieter, he was very shy and even more distant, so for us, the only difference was that he had been a mate and suddenly he became king. But that’s how it was: the king is dead, long live the king.”
Ms Lloyd – who, like all the house’s top mannequins, was allowed to keep one sample couture outfit per season – was asked by Saint Laurent to model his Trapeze dress from his first Dior collection in spring/summer 1958. “It was the star of the show; it sold 9,000 times in fabric and in pattern. It’s now in the storeroom of the Met,” she says. “And it made me some money! I would get three pennies every time it sold. But its success was amazing. The day of its unveiling, the police had to close the street because of the number of people standing in the street to applaud Monsieur Saint Laurent, who came onto the balcony just like a king.”
Saint Laurent led Dior for only two years before being called up for military service in 1960. Marc Bohan (“the ultimate quiet achiever”, says Katie Somerville, the NGV’s senior curator of fashion textiles) took over until 1989, when Gianfranco Ferré brought an Italian flair during his 1989–1997 tenure. Then in 1997 came John Galliano, the enfant terrible whose extraordinary (often risqué) vision brought modern drama and spectacle to Dior. “Galliano tapped into the heritage of Dior with his remaking of feminine ideals, deep knowledge of fashion history, eclectic sources of inspiration, spectacular shows and cultivation of the couturier as a public figure,” says Somerville.
Galliano was widely applauded until an infamous drunken episode in 2011 saw him fired and replaced by Raf Simons in 2012. Simons’s first Dior couture collection, autumn/winter ’12/’13, brought a sleek minimalism with references to the 1950s, A and H lines, and the Bar suit. He resigned in 2015, making way last year for Maria Grazia Chiuri to make history as Dior’s first female creative director. Her debut collection, ready-to-wear spring/summer ’17 – with its whimsical embroidered tulle skirts juxtaposed with edgy “We Should All Be Feminists” slogan T-shirts – referenced fencing, female equality and superstition. She has been revered for mixing a modern feminist aesthetic and attitude with the refined heritage of the Parisian house.
“Couture has to be a dream, but a wearable dream,” Chiuri tells Vogue. “To confront oneself with the heritage of a fashion house like Dior means to confront oneself with fashion itself,” she says. “Such a myth can only be tackled by constantly questioning it. ‘Respect tradition and dare to be insolent,’ Dior declared. Such a rich heritage cannot remain static or immutable, because it’s an ever-changing medium that feeds the imagination of all those who confront it. I reflected on the influence that Dior’s heritage has had on popular culture, so as to freely connect the past to the present, but especially to outline the future. My work has been to synthesise all these juxtaposed influences from the house archive and to combine them with my own sensibility, thoughts, aesthetics and my contemporary personality as a woman.”
The NGV exhibition showcases works from all seven head designers of Dior, with standouts including the Bar suit (spring/ summer ’47); the Aventure coat (spring/summer ’48) shown at the David Jones Dior shows in 1948; the Zou Zou suit from Saint Laurent’s first Dior collection in spring/summer ’58; John Galliano’s mink-trimmed chartreuse dress worn by Nicole Kidman to the Oscars in 1997; and Raf Simons’s red Bar coat, which brought a modernist spirit to his first collection in autumn/winter ’12/’13.
The exhibition brings together key works spanning 1947 to 2017 in a thorough survey, supported by the house of Dior, telling the story of an extraordinary fashion empire and the man who created it. It will also examine four design codes that define the house: the New Look, the Line, the Flower and the 18th Century, and explore the early Australian connection to the house and its lasting legacy: David Jones’s distinctive hound’s-tooth emblem was created when Charles Lloyd Jones, heir of the store dynasty, spotted Christian Dior’s Miss Dior fragrance on his mother’s dressing table.
Somerville, who spent three years combing the Dior archive in Paris and sourcing items from museums and private collections around the world, said one of the more remarkable discoveries was a framed sample of fabric embroidered with spring flowers she viewed in the Dior archives. Monsieur Dior’s passion for flowers was surpassed only by his love of fashion; the sample was created in the early 1950s for Christian Dior by the embroidery house Rébé and is not known if it was ever used in a dress. Yet this past January, nearly seven decades after the sample was created, it was reimagined and contemporarily rendered into a raffia and silk gown named Essence d’Herbier (Spirit of Herbarium) by Chiuri in her debut haute couture spring/summer ’17 collection for the fashion house.
The modern interpretation of the embroidered swatch highlights a synchronicity that perfectly encapsulates the DNA of Dior. It is this DNA of both the house and of couture itself, that, while telling the story of a man and his dream to create a global empire, helped transform fashion as we know it today.
“Hopefully this understanding will become part of people’s experience in the exhibition, realising there is such a strong lineage, such a strong foundation that he built in that first 10 years, which has endured and been revisited and reinvented numerous times in multiple ways in the subsequent 60 years since his death, and the value and strength of what makes a house like Dior so enduring and relevant,” says Somerville.
“There are so few true couture houses left … I hope this exhibition will prove the value in this art form and bear witness to the creativity at its core,” she adds. “But equally, instead of seeing Christian Dior as simply a figurehead and a caricature of the white-coated artist/creator, it will foster an appreciation of just how extraordinary he was in the kind of top-to-toe vision he had from the beginning. He was deeply respected by the people around him, and this exhibition will help people to understand why the Dior story is so influential, in terms of the art and business of fashion and how much the central traditions at the heart of haute couture are still valued and worth maintaining.” As Mr Dior used to say: “Fashion is evolution and revolution.” The House of Dior: Seventy Years of Haute Couture, National Gallery of Victoria, August 27– November 7; www.ngv.vic.gov.au.