Luxury brands stretch season for shoppers
Rebecca Voight IHT
[Rebecca Voight is the executive editor of Dutch magazine]

PARIS When does the fashion industry get its first look at next spring's trends? If you said right now, you're way off the mark. Customers have changed their buying habits and in the time it takes for a key piece to become old news, the world's major fashion houses have turned their schedules inside out to cater to them. Once the launching pad for trends, the biannual runway shows now fall well into the second half of the season. Those eager for the first look at spring were in Paris back in late June.

That's when Christian Dior and Chanel unveiled their pre-collection and cruise lineups to buyers, press and a smattering of devoted consumers.

Once considered an afterthought, the pre-collection business is now generating up to 70 percent of a season's sales for major fashion houses whose customers expect to find something new in the store every time they drop by.

At Christian Dior they prefer to call it part one rather than pre-collection and it generates between 60 percent to 70 percent of total season sales currently. "It's delivered in mid-November and stays in the store until the end of the season so it has a much longer sales period than part two which begins in late January," says Sidney Toledano, Dior's president and CEO.

What was considered less than a decade ago to be the ho hum part of the business in terms of style is now being groomed like the main event. And that's where John Galliano comes in.

"When I first came to Dior one of the major motivations for Arnault [Bernard Arnault, chairman of LVMH, parent company of Dior], and me was coherence. Everything has to have a modern edge. There are pieces from part one in the show. And I'm thinking about part one while I'm working on the couture," he says. "I might take a fantastic ribbon dress from the couture and use it as the inspiration for a jacket and then see if we can produce it industrially for part one."

On the eve of Paris's runway shows, the main windows of the style mecca, Colette, were dressed for the event in head to toe Dior. In fact, the store is featuring "Funky," the red top and thigh-high tube skirt covered with gold ethnic embroidery, which is the house's best seller for fall. Behind that is a wall-size blowup of Dior's current ad campaign featuring "Street Chic," the sexy bustier with a wide belt across the chest which is the number two seller for the season.

"We used to call it cruise when I was working in the United States," reminisces Alber Elbaz, who is in his second season as designer for Lanvin. "The idea was that these clothes were for women who were going on a cruise in January and needed hot weather clothes, but then it became the bread and butter of the commercial side."

Today, Elbaz says he doesn't really know what the word "commercial" means anymore. "Is it a little black dress? Is it cheap or expensive? Elaborate or simple?" he asks. "Women will go for something if they can get the mileage out of it and it's often the most unique pieces that sell the best. Pre-collections today reflect that. The important thing is that everything we produce has to work. There is nothing here just for the show."

Ralph Toledano, president and CEO of Chloe, agrees. "Pre-collections have been around for 20 years, the difference now is that they include strong pieces. Anything Chloe shows in the pre-collection could be on the runway."

Toledano thinks the change began two years ago when sales of key fashion items began to gain sales over basics in the United States. "We show what we sell," he says. "The runway reflects the showroom. It's cohesive."

At Stella McCartney, sales of the pre-collection began in early July and ran right through the shows in Milan when the house, based in London, set up a showroom for buyers to view the latest breaking news from the pre-collection wholesale right up until show time in Paris.

For CEO James Seuss, the wholesale sales period for fashion now is nonstop. "We continue to sell and when it's time for the show, Stella just picks what she wants from the entire collection."

The strategy at Chanel is similar and based on the fact that loyal customers expect to find something new in the store every two months. Chanel produces six collections a year. For spring this includes a cruise collection presented in June to buyers, press and clients with a full fashion show in Paris. For the collection that will arrive in stores in mid-November, Karl Lagerfeld was inspired by Parisian café waiters with their tailored vests and long white aprons with lots of black and white and a mix of tailoring and curve revealing draping.

"The strength in these collections," said a spokeswoman for Chanel, "is that they are all on the same level. These aren't less expensive bridge collections. Everything is for the same customer."

And so the good old days when fall included a ritualistic shopping spree where a woman updated her wardrobe from shoes to coat are over. In this chaotic era where the rule of order seems to be "whenever wherever," luxury labels and their customers are reinventing themselves every day and nobody is sure what tomorrow will bring.