The Demise of Fashion
More than anything, though, this was the era of the yuppie, the young upwardly mobile professional, whose clothing signified success. In the UK, while providing flashy City boys with eccentrically reworked interpretations of the tailored suit - his trademark 'classics with a twist' - Paul Smith also discovered the Filofax, a leather-bound 'personal organizer' manufactured by a tiny East End company. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, Ralph Lauren had been steadily building one of the ultimate fashion makes. His rag-trade-to-riches story has been told many times before, but it's worth briefly repeating here. Lauren's shops were definitely movie sets, and his advertising campaigns - shot by Bruce Weber - have been being stills from films that acquired by no means been built. Levi's, Nike and Gap seemed a lot more connected to quotidian reality than some ethereal vision on a runway. Even supermodels began to look less 'super'. Kate Moss, in her first incarnation as a grungy teenager, had nothing of the femme fatale about her.
The Rebirth of Fashion
There is one name you can't escape when you attempt to write a history of fashion branding: Tom FRD. He was not a snob about his work - he wanted to sell. With him, it became black, hard, and square. As Roitfeld observes, '[Ford] created clothes people wanted to wear, and then he explained to them that if they couldn't afford the dress, they could at least buy the sunglasses. Ford was not the only one giving the rarefied world of fashion a much-needed kick up the rear. Gucci, Prada and Dior's formula of young, inventive clothes and affordable accessories, plus aggressive marketing, seemed to reanimate the public's inner fashion victim. Ford and Galliano were personally photogenic and exciting - as entertaining in their own way as rock stars.
Surviving the Demise
In their latest incarnation as dream merchants, fashion manufacturers seem to be curiously resilient. He also acquired beauty and cosmetics company Sanofi, which owned Yves Saint Laurent. In a couple of swift moves, Pinault had created Gucci Group, a potential rival to LVMH. It seems almost churlish to try to place an event as tragic and far-reaching as 11 September 2001 within the context of fashion.
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