Issues on the Recent Collections
On this January and February, a number of fashion brands showed their 2016 F/W collections. In the collections, some issues attracted significant attentions from media and public who were interested in fashion including myself. One major issue was Burberry and Tom Ford said goodbye to the traditional fashion calendar that introduced their collections aligning with seasons (F/W & S/S). By using a new fashion calendar, they aimed to make “seasonless” collections and to reduce budgets being spent on the pre-season collections. The other issue was a rumour whether Hedi Slimane would say goodbye to Saint Laurent. The rumour speculated Hedi Slimane would leave Saint Laurent as Alexander Wang and Raf Simons left Balenciaga and Dior Homme, respectively, to set and launch their own brands.
Hedi, Christian, and YvesHedi Slimane has been famous for his signature skinny silhouette that was introduced in the mid-2000s, when he was a creative director of Dior Homme. Musical and youth subcultures in his design also have been well-known from the periods. With Hedi Slimane, Saint Laurent broke its highest sales record and doubled its sales revenues. The first thing that he had done, after he came back to the fashion industry as a creative director of Yves Saint Laurent in 2012, was changing the brand name to Saint Laurent Paris. In one interview, he revealed the reasons why he changed the brand name were to do re-branding and re-positioning. He pursued to reintroduce couture and escape from the brand’s systematized formalism on design by going back to the historical roots of Yves who sought modern ready-to-wear garments. Some people have criticized him for changing the brand name that was named after its founder, and said his design works are biased to the feminine silhouette and the subcultures. However, the skinny trend that he made has been lasted longer than any other trends throughout the modern fashion history and it is no exaggeration to say that Dior Homme and Saint Laurent have derived great success from his efforts and designs.
Category Management and Keeping Balance
The strategic re-branding and re-positioning helped to set new balances among the brand’s categories, and between men fashion and women fashion. Even though markets are getting categorized into the smaller segments, majority of retailers are doing mix-managing or space-managing that are inefficient to manage many categories. Slimane’s strategic reform has led the brand to do category management and kept the balances among its categories. Furthermore, music subcultures such as rock’n’roll and rock-star cultures trickled up to his designs once again to create new brand images which has brought skyrocketing growth of the brand in the market.
Leave? Stay?
Even though Saint Laurent denied the rumour, Hedi Slimane did not give any comment about the rumour. As a huge fan of Hedi Slimane, I wish I could have a chance to see his own label sooner or later because many designers who resigned from luxury brands have shown their signature designs in somewhat different ways from what they had done in the brands. Let’s see whether or not he is going to leave Saint Laurent and set his own brand.
Reference
http://fashionista.com/2016/02/fashion-week-overhaul-burberry-tom-ford-vetementshttps://www.yahoo.com/style/exclusive-hedi-slimane-on-saint-laurents-126446645943.html
http://fashionista.com/2016/01/hedi-slimane-exit-saint-laurent
http://fashionsoundtrack.com/2013/05/15/daft-punk-yves-saint-laurent-music-project/
http://www.vogue.com/fashion-shows/spring-2016-menswear/saint-laurent/slideshow/collection#11
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