If you’re going into the fashion business today and want to be successful, you have to have money behind you … It’s not just about talent anymore. Ten years ago you had to have an idea; today it’s not enough. If you want to be global and have a viable business, you have to marry yourself to a group.
– Jean-Jacques Picart, fashion consultant.
This is true, if, that is, a designer wants to be a Celebrity Designer. Isabel Toledo didn’t and her business is doing just fine. There are plenty of others who are content to stay small and perhaps a bit under the radar. It’s hard but possible to be a successful fashion designer and NOT join forces with big conglomerates. Anyway, many who did are now getting out and complaining that it’s all too much – too many shows, too much pressure to create, not enough time.
On the flip side, from what I have read designers working for corporate brands are given pots of money and free rein to design whatever they like. Even outrageous clothes that don’t sell. As long as there is spectacle, marketing and brand name recognition the CEOs are happy. (The bucks come from handbag and perfume sales.) Still there is a demand for more and more product and that’s burning out everyone – designers, editors, and even consumers.
Perhaps fashion has become unfashionable. Time for a change.
OverDressed for Life 
check out Sept. issue of Vanity Fair….for article on Charivari….which I had never heard of…BUT, it really gives an overview of what happened in the 60’s in terms of clothing designs going off in so many directions (other than classical) and makes me realize even more that we have to be true to our OWN style because if not we can be thrown for a LOOP ! ..
Same issue……Good article of Francios and Betty Catroux (she was YSL muse and he in interior design…some very interesting comments about YSl and his own personality….versus what we often have heard? JG
Thank you, Jacquelyn.
I enjoyed this one, nice to hear analysis of it all. Any reading recommendations on the topic?
Thanks, Abbie for reading OverDressed for Life. Yes, I do have a book recommendation – Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster by Dana Thomas. This book explains what happened to the fashion industry starting in the late 1980s.