The end of fashion
12/09/2016
The End of Fashion
How Marketing Changed the Clothing Business Forever
The time when "fashion" was defined by French designers whose clothes could be afforded only by elite has ended. Now designers take their cues from mainstream consumers and creativity is channeled more into mass-marketing clothes than into designing them. Indeed, one need look no further than the Gap to see proof of this. In The End of Fashion, Wall Street Journal, reporter Teri Agins astutely explores this seminal change, laying bare all aspects of the fashion industry from manufacturing, retailing, anmd licensing to image making and financing. Here as well are fascinating insider vignettes that show Donna Karan fighting with financiers,the rivalry between Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger, and the commitment to haute conture that sent Isaac Mizrahi's business spiraling.
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Dispensing with the idea that fashion designers are unpredictable geniuses sequestered in creative isolation from vulgar commerce, Agins, who covers the fashion industry for the Wall Street Journal, has taken a long, hard look at style in the '90s and come back with a compelling report on why big business has forever altered what we wear. In seven superbly researched essays, she explains that the designers are currently being challenged to sell essentially the same clothes to a public with increasingly homogenized tastes. "Today's 'branding' of fashion," she writes, "has taken on a critical role [when] just about every store in the mall is peddling the same style of clothes." Brands, in this context, are the designers themselvesAa woman doesn't go shopping for a particular style of dress, but for a "Calvin" or a "Ralph"Aa lifestyle distillation that denotes professional and severe urban minimalism (Calvin Klein) or athletic, American conservatism (Ralph Lauren). The casualties of this trend are the craftsmanlike members of the Old School, as Agins ably demonstrates in essays on fading Parisian haute couture. Liveliest by far is Agins's chronicle of the rivalry between Lauren and the upstart Tommy Hilfiger, who sells clothes nearly identical to Lauren's, but with a hipper edge, captivating black city kids. The influence of Armani on Tinseltown and Donna Karan on Wall Street are also analyzed with verve and clear-sightedness. As glossy fashion magazines increasingly offer fantasies illustrated by advertisements far more often than they deliver journalism, Agins's penetrating dispatch from the rag trade is especially welcome. Photos. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
Agins, a veteran fashion reporter for the Wall Street Journal, has written the first factual book on the fashion industry from a business/cultural/social journalist's view. She traces the beginning of couture from the early 20th century in France through all the stages to the present, when consumers set the fashion rules and designers must follow them. Major components of her story include retailers like Marshall Field, Federated Department Stores, Dillards, Nordstrom, and the Gap as well as designers Giorgio Armani, Bill Blass, Ralph Lauren, and Donna Karan. In the end, this story is about the triumph of marketing; Agins demonstrates how changes in our culture, e.g., more casual dress, have changed the fashion business. Filled with insider details and descriptions of the fickle nature of consumers, this book belongs in academic business and fashion collections.ASusan C. Awe, Univ. of New Mexico Lib., Albuquerque
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Booklist
In one of the oddest industries ever to be chronicled, CEOs of IPOs clash with the wishes of their majority shareholders, and luxury conglomerates exist solely by the avarice and greed of fans of their labels. What else but the incestuous fashion world--and who better to chronicle its rise and fall and rise and fall than an independent, objective Wall Street Journal reporter? Agins tells the tales well and thus captures readers' attention, narrating the stories of the Ralph Lauren-Tommy Hilfiger rivalry, the power of celebrity dressing, and the four reasons for the decline of "true" fashion. (One reason is that "people stopped dressing up." Duh!) All of the gossipy details are here, like Donna Karan's legendary hissy fits. So, too, is the business side, such as the wheeling and dealing pre^-Wall Street. Many of the stories, though, remain semidetached, without much of a connection except the names and the rags industry itself. Barbara Jacobs --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Kirkus Reviews
The heady days of haute couture are passing, says Wall Street Journal reporter Agins, and are being followed by name-brand mass marketing. The great fashion houses, one gathers from her report, are fading in an excess of hauteur. In a text that is more knowing than it is dishy and more respectful than it need be, Agins shows that some emperors of the garment trade are not that well decked out. She gets down to business in the odd world of $10,000-a-day supermodels and wealthy fashionistas, garmentos and knock-off artistes, beginning with the fall of Paris, the capital of high fashion, where style, not substance, had been all. But baby boomer career women let go of fashion; most people eschewed fancy dress; fashion was valued less than before; and top designers abandoned originality. ``Bridge'' goods (less pricey apparel) took hold. Boutiques replaced the top ateliers. Widespread licensing of T-shirts, briefs, and fragrances and the sale of signatures was followed by street vendor forgeries. Now, to express individuality, everyone may wear the same garments, on which only the names are changed. And the names drop like confetti. The story is traced through various players, from Armani to Ungaro and Zoran. Tweedledum and Tweedledee (Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger) try to capture the flag for their own logos. As Donna Karan discovered when she went to Wall Street, fashion's connection to the real world is frequently tenuous. It is chi-chi and edgy, frou-frou and funky and up-to-here with arrant snobbery. Businesslike and entertaining as the discussion of the upscale rag trade is, the real contribution of high style practitioners is simply assumed, not made evident. A reader may want to call for a pox on all the fashion houses (which is probably not the author's plan). Here, backstage in a special industry, is a knowledgeable reporter's tale of marketing ... la mode. (8 pages photos, not seen). -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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