Read Online Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster by Dana Thomas - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Dana Thomas
Tags: Social Science, Popular Culture
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shredded lace dresses were splattered with blood. But as he proved during his studies at Central Saint Martins in London and his apprenticeship on Savile Row, McQueen had great talent and, if he could direct his rage, even greater potential. That’s what Arnault was banking on. More than once during negotiations, McQueen stood up and told Arnault off.
“Look,” McQueen’s lawyer said, trying to calm his client down, “they’re the cart, and you’re the only horse who can pull it.”
“I’m not their horse !” McQueen exploded. He turned to Arnault.
“I don’t need you!” he blasted.
Then he stormed out of the room.
McQueen later changed his mind and took the job.
I met McQueen a few weeks before his Givenchy ready-to-wear debut in Paris for a cover-story profile for Newsweek International . He sat at Hubert de Givenchy’s desk, which overlooked the avenue George V. He had just shaved his hair into a Mohawk for the cover picture, and the trimmings were scattered across the white Formica desktop. During our talk, McQueen told me, “My clothes are out there on a limb, and I get slagged for it. It’s like Hitler and the Holocaust. He destroyed millions of people because he didn’t understand. That’s what a lot of people have done to me because they can’t understand what I do.” He quickly sought to shift away from the house’s longtime muse: “[Audrey] Hepburn is dead,” he told another reporter.
Arnault was just as cold-blooded when reorganizing the executive offices. In 1996 , he replaced Parfums Givenchy’s longtime head Jean Courtière with former Procter & Gamble executive Alain Lorenzo, and Parfums Christian Dior head Maurice Roger, known as the “Philosopher-King” for his disavowal of marketing studies, with Patrick Choel, a no-nonsense executive who had worked for Unilever for thirty years, most recently as CEO of Chesebrough-Pond’s in the United States. Not surprisingly, the press dubbed Arnault the “Terminator.” “For a European, I have a U.S. approach,” Arnault explained. “That is, I face reality as it is and not as I would like it to be. I build for the long term.” A longtime colleague put it more succinctly: “[Arnault] is 100 percent capitalist in a country that has never accepted capitalism. And he has rubbed everybody the wrong way.”
The new designers fulfilled their mandate—they grabbed headlines with crazy stunts like the Dior collection of newsprint dresses inspired by the homeless—and the new marketing executives made the most of the hoopla. Not surprisingly, many longtime old couture clients fled to more traditional houses such as Yves Saint Laurent and Chanel.
“There I was sitting in a row of the Dior show with French first lady Bernadette Chirac and former first lady Claude Pompidou, and they looked like they had been hit in the face with a cold dead fish,” New York socialite and lifelong Dior client Nan Kempner told me after a Dior couture presentation of Edwardian-style getups in 1997 . “They couldn’t believe what they were looking at: this conservative house where they’ve all bought their clothes for years. How much was there that Madame Chirac or Madame Pompidou could wear?”
Arnault didn’t care; couture lost money, heaps of it. A new generation of Dior customers flooded the LVMH brand stores to buy something linked to the newly hip brands. Perfume and handbag sales doubled, tripled, and that’s where the big profits were. “Selling to the right clients isn’t an issue anymore,” couture client and American socialite Susan Gutfreund conceded. “When it’s all filtered down, it sells to the masses. You walk through the airport and buy a pair of Dior sunglasses that you can afford and you feel like you have a bit of the magic.”
F OR MUCH OF THE 1990S , Arnault’s only real competitor on the group level was a conglomerate now known as Richemont, the Swiss-based firm that owns Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, Dunhill,
“Look,” McQueen’s lawyer said, trying to calm his client down, “they’re the cart, and you’re the only horse who can pull it.”
“I’m not their horse !” McQueen exploded. He turned to Arnault.
“I don’t need you!” he blasted.
Then he stormed out of the room.
McQueen later changed his mind and took the job.
I met McQueen a few weeks before his Givenchy ready-to-wear debut in Paris for a cover-story profile for Newsweek International . He sat at Hubert de Givenchy’s desk, which overlooked the avenue George V. He had just shaved his hair into a Mohawk for the cover picture, and the trimmings were scattered across the white Formica desktop. During our talk, McQueen told me, “My clothes are out there on a limb, and I get slagged for it. It’s like Hitler and the Holocaust. He destroyed millions of people because he didn’t understand. That’s what a lot of people have done to me because they can’t understand what I do.” He quickly sought to shift away from the house’s longtime muse: “[Audrey] Hepburn is dead,” he told another reporter.
Arnault was just as cold-blooded when reorganizing the executive offices. In 1996 , he replaced Parfums Givenchy’s longtime head Jean Courtière with former Procter & Gamble executive Alain Lorenzo, and Parfums Christian Dior head Maurice Roger, known as the “Philosopher-King” for his disavowal of marketing studies, with Patrick Choel, a no-nonsense executive who had worked for Unilever for thirty years, most recently as CEO of Chesebrough-Pond’s in the United States. Not surprisingly, the press dubbed Arnault the “Terminator.” “For a European, I have a U.S. approach,” Arnault explained. “That is, I face reality as it is and not as I would like it to be. I build for the long term.” A longtime colleague put it more succinctly: “[Arnault] is 100 percent capitalist in a country that has never accepted capitalism. And he has rubbed everybody the wrong way.”
The new designers fulfilled their mandate—they grabbed headlines with crazy stunts like the Dior collection of newsprint dresses inspired by the homeless—and the new marketing executives made the most of the hoopla. Not surprisingly, many longtime old couture clients fled to more traditional houses such as Yves Saint Laurent and Chanel.
“There I was sitting in a row of the Dior show with French first lady Bernadette Chirac and former first lady Claude Pompidou, and they looked like they had been hit in the face with a cold dead fish,” New York socialite and lifelong Dior client Nan Kempner told me after a Dior couture presentation of Edwardian-style getups in 1997 . “They couldn’t believe what they were looking at: this conservative house where they’ve all bought their clothes for years. How much was there that Madame Chirac or Madame Pompidou could wear?”
Arnault didn’t care; couture lost money, heaps of it. A new generation of Dior customers flooded the LVMH brand stores to buy something linked to the newly hip brands. Perfume and handbag sales doubled, tripled, and that’s where the big profits were. “Selling to the right clients isn’t an issue anymore,” couture client and American socialite Susan Gutfreund conceded. “When it’s all filtered down, it sells to the masses. You walk through the airport and buy a pair of Dior sunglasses that you can afford and you feel like you have a bit of the magic.”
F OR MUCH OF THE 1990S , Arnault’s only real competitor on the group level was a conglomerate now known as Richemont, the Swiss-based firm that owns Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, Dunhill,
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