some of my favourite parts from the book 'The Fashion Conspiracy' by Nicholas Coleridge:
i wondered why it was, alone in world fashion, that the Japanese inspired introspection. the idea that one might discuss Georgio Armani's design and its relationship with the Holy Spirit was absurd, and yet the distance between trousers and theology in Japan seemed to be a matter of punctuation.
- p85
'the egos of these people are really quite staggering, especially the hat people. half the things they're doing are like Valentino twenty years ago but they're too ignorant to know it their heroes are Body Map and Galliano but it's all been said and done by Vivienne Westwood.' - Scott Crolla
'on the other hand, the British have never quite understood what we've got here. it's like British pop music all over again. you have to go abroad to realise we're bloody influential.' - Katharine Hamnett
- p130
'my job takes up all my time and energy. creating is a harrowing business. i work in a state of anguish all year. i shut myself up, don't go out. it's a hard life, which is why i understand Proust so well; i have such an admiration for what he has written about the agony of creation.' - Yves Saint Laurent
- p192
when the Milanese chide Alaia for having no tailoring, they are really chiding him for its simplicity. Armani's tailoring is complex in structure but made to look easy; Alaia's tailoring is simple in structure but flawlessly cut his clothes appear to follow the contours of the body very closely, but actually create their own shape, inventing curves where there actually are none. it is this ingenious and counterfeit sexuality that so greatly incenses the Italians.
- p227
in Anna Piaggi there is a puzzle. mention her name in fashion circles, anywhere at all from Tokyo to Manhattan, and people say, 'ah, Anna Piaggi. but of course she is brilliant. great friend of Karl Lagerfeld's. eccentric, but very important.' and that, give or take the odd detail of her odd appearance, is just about it. for someone so much discussed, remarkably little is known about Anna Piaggi. her fame is underpinned by her rumbustious cameo roles.
- p239
right around the block from where the editors sit, way across the metaphorical Berlin Wall in the commercial zone of the fashion audience, sit the store buyers. six factors distinguish them from the fashion editors.
1 - they are dressed in newer, more powerful clothes
2 - they manager to have their hair combed out every single morning for the shows, even on the 21st dawn of the 25 day tour, 4 capital circuit
3 - their underlying paranoia is 2 or 3 points higher than even the fashion editors'
4 - they have tens of millions of dollars to distribute in orders between New York, Milan, Paris and London (and spend it in that sequent to this percentage: New York 82.3%, Milan 9%, Paris 8.5%, London 0.2%)
5 - they stay in enormous, expensive suites at the Crillon or the Bristol in Paris, or Claridges or the Berkeley in London. their rooms are three times as comfortable as those of the editors
6 - they are irritated by their bad seats at fashion shows. they feel discriminated against, and cannot understand why even quite mediocre fashion writers, whose influence they doubt will shift so much as a single trapeze-line skirt, should be given priority vantage points, when they - the store buyers - are there with their massive corporate cheque books and a combined 'open to buy' (as they call their bugdget) of $700 million a season.
- p258
'people who intellectualise fashion, it makes me sick. history and fashion, thought and fashion, i hate it, my god i hate the talk. all those buyers are so serious, i can't believe it, they're so fickle those stupid buyers.' - Manolo Blahnik
- p269
a strange phenomenon of people in fashion is that, paranoid about each other though they are, the impulse to eat together at the same few restaurants is overriding. they will fly from one seam of the globe to another - from Milan to New York for collections, from London to Tokyo for a Hanae Mori showcase of designers - and no sooner have they arrived than they're checking out the fashion restaurants. these are by no means always the same places as fashionable restaurants. fashion thrives on shortages: shortages of tickets for the shows, shortages of front-row seats, shortages of available clothes to photograph from the designers' public relations offices. the competitiveness, the potential for humiliation, the worry and paranoia over the availability of a table for four is only another station in the fashion victim's descent into mania.
- p298
what is striking about the new generation of the copyist, is the speed and cynicism with which a designer collection moves into un-designer labels in peripheral markets, and of increased designer consciousness.
'South Africans are the worst of the lot and impossible to sue. they have the pictures of your show over there within three days and they're ready to swing. they turn the stuff round in seconds and in the townships, especially dresses. there's one company in South Africa that specialises in ripping of Kenzo, line for line, seam for seam. they make a fortune - more than Kenzo i reckon - and there's nothing that Kenzo can do about it.' - Jasper Conran
overnight couriering of catwalk photographs to pirate manufacturers is the Archilles' heel of designer copyright. it is difficult to prevent, since the photographers themselves are not always aware of their part of the conspiracy. a bogus South African or Far East news agency asks for second rights on catwalk pictures the photographer is taking for an accredited magazine. a price is set, not on the number of pictures published, but at an inclusive rate for three sets of transparencies of the show. the photographer then has no way of knowing that his pictures are never published at all. instead they are parcelled up in a Jiffy bag together with sketches from the designer's publicity portfolio, and directed to the factory. what is new is the widespread counterfeiting of designer clothes, including the label sewn inside, and the attempt to pass them off as the real thing.
- p287
i wondered why it was, alone in world fashion, that the Japanese inspired introspection. the idea that one might discuss Georgio Armani's design and its relationship with the Holy Spirit was absurd, and yet the distance between trousers and theology in Japan seemed to be a matter of punctuation.
- p85
'the egos of these people are really quite staggering, especially the hat people. half the things they're doing are like Valentino twenty years ago but they're too ignorant to know it their heroes are Body Map and Galliano but it's all been said and done by Vivienne Westwood.' - Scott Crolla
'on the other hand, the British have never quite understood what we've got here. it's like British pop music all over again. you have to go abroad to realise we're bloody influential.' - Katharine Hamnett
- p130
'my job takes up all my time and energy. creating is a harrowing business. i work in a state of anguish all year. i shut myself up, don't go out. it's a hard life, which is why i understand Proust so well; i have such an admiration for what he has written about the agony of creation.' - Yves Saint Laurent
- p192
when the Milanese chide Alaia for having no tailoring, they are really chiding him for its simplicity. Armani's tailoring is complex in structure but made to look easy; Alaia's tailoring is simple in structure but flawlessly cut his clothes appear to follow the contours of the body very closely, but actually create their own shape, inventing curves where there actually are none. it is this ingenious and counterfeit sexuality that so greatly incenses the Italians.
- p227
in Anna Piaggi there is a puzzle. mention her name in fashion circles, anywhere at all from Tokyo to Manhattan, and people say, 'ah, Anna Piaggi. but of course she is brilliant. great friend of Karl Lagerfeld's. eccentric, but very important.' and that, give or take the odd detail of her odd appearance, is just about it. for someone so much discussed, remarkably little is known about Anna Piaggi. her fame is underpinned by her rumbustious cameo roles.
- p239
right around the block from where the editors sit, way across the metaphorical Berlin Wall in the commercial zone of the fashion audience, sit the store buyers. six factors distinguish them from the fashion editors.
1 - they are dressed in newer, more powerful clothes
2 - they manager to have their hair combed out every single morning for the shows, even on the 21st dawn of the 25 day tour, 4 capital circuit
3 - their underlying paranoia is 2 or 3 points higher than even the fashion editors'
4 - they have tens of millions of dollars to distribute in orders between New York, Milan, Paris and London (and spend it in that sequent to this percentage: New York 82.3%, Milan 9%, Paris 8.5%, London 0.2%)
5 - they stay in enormous, expensive suites at the Crillon or the Bristol in Paris, or Claridges or the Berkeley in London. their rooms are three times as comfortable as those of the editors
6 - they are irritated by their bad seats at fashion shows. they feel discriminated against, and cannot understand why even quite mediocre fashion writers, whose influence they doubt will shift so much as a single trapeze-line skirt, should be given priority vantage points, when they - the store buyers - are there with their massive corporate cheque books and a combined 'open to buy' (as they call their bugdget) of $700 million a season.
- p258
'people who intellectualise fashion, it makes me sick. history and fashion, thought and fashion, i hate it, my god i hate the talk. all those buyers are so serious, i can't believe it, they're so fickle those stupid buyers.' - Manolo Blahnik
- p269
a strange phenomenon of people in fashion is that, paranoid about each other though they are, the impulse to eat together at the same few restaurants is overriding. they will fly from one seam of the globe to another - from Milan to New York for collections, from London to Tokyo for a Hanae Mori showcase of designers - and no sooner have they arrived than they're checking out the fashion restaurants. these are by no means always the same places as fashionable restaurants. fashion thrives on shortages: shortages of tickets for the shows, shortages of front-row seats, shortages of available clothes to photograph from the designers' public relations offices. the competitiveness, the potential for humiliation, the worry and paranoia over the availability of a table for four is only another station in the fashion victim's descent into mania.
- p298
what is striking about the new generation of the copyist, is the speed and cynicism with which a designer collection moves into un-designer labels in peripheral markets, and of increased designer consciousness.
'South Africans are the worst of the lot and impossible to sue. they have the pictures of your show over there within three days and they're ready to swing. they turn the stuff round in seconds and in the townships, especially dresses. there's one company in South Africa that specialises in ripping of Kenzo, line for line, seam for seam. they make a fortune - more than Kenzo i reckon - and there's nothing that Kenzo can do about it.' - Jasper Conran
overnight couriering of catwalk photographs to pirate manufacturers is the Archilles' heel of designer copyright. it is difficult to prevent, since the photographers themselves are not always aware of their part of the conspiracy. a bogus South African or Far East news agency asks for second rights on catwalk pictures the photographer is taking for an accredited magazine. a price is set, not on the number of pictures published, but at an inclusive rate for three sets of transparencies of the show. the photographer then has no way of knowing that his pictures are never published at all. instead they are parcelled up in a Jiffy bag together with sketches from the designer's publicity portfolio, and directed to the factory. what is new is the widespread counterfeiting of designer clothes, including the label sewn inside, and the attempt to pass them off as the real thing.
- p287
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