Merrill Lynch and Cap Gemini issued the 2007 edition of their annual World Wealth Report last week and the Financial Times and other media took notice, remarking on the dramatic growth of high-net worth individuals and the risky investment strategies that have helped make the world's rich even richer (subscription required). And then, today's WWD reported on the dramatic rise in Haute Couture sales experienced by houses from Dior to Chanel to Givenchy. Was Haute Couture's death knell premature?
Conventional wisdom says that the Haute Couture lines of famous Parisian fashion houses are more like publicity machines and creative R&D playgrounds. For the price of a collection of hand-made, intricately designed dresses, the maisons of Paris get millions of dollars worth of media coverage that helps build the mystique and exclusiveness of their brands. In this way, couture is the single most important method for communicating the individual persona of a luxury fashion brand.
Selfridges in London held an event tonight celebrating the launch of a new Surreal Things exhibit at the Victoria & Albert museum. Anyone walking down Oxford Street over the past week has probably seen the designer windows commissioned by the Oxford Street emporium, showing the creative work of Victor & Rolf and John Galliano, among others. [If you haven't seen the windows, you can see photos of them on Susie Bubble's site]. Another window has been designed by the dynamic duo of Rich and Phil, also known as Rodnik, who were the real stars of tonight's launch event.
I first met the Rodnik guys during New York Fashion Week in September 2006. I had been introduced to them via email by a business mentor of theirs, Maria Stammers, from the Portobello Business Centre in London. I had been exchanging text messages to arrange a meeting with Rodnik during Fashion Week in New York, but when I spotted two guys after the Peter Som show in cool webbed black wool cardigans with matching peach-coloured ties and that je-ne-sais-quoi English dandyism, I knew it was them. I tapped Rich on his shoulder and asked if they were Rodnik. At the time, they looked amused that someone would actually recognise them (or, at least, had heard of them). When I explained that I was the one whom Maria had referred, any awkwardness
disappeared and we nipped off for an afternoon coffee in Bryant Park where I learned all about their budding business and their vision for where they wanted to take it.
Since then, we have kept in touch regularly and I have watched as they have faced various business challenges (Production!), declared major fashion victories (Barneys! French Vogue! Lily Cole!),
and shared their charm with the fashion world (Anna Wintour! Karl Lagerfeld! Julie Gilhart!), who have simply fallen head over heels for these two quintessential non-designer designers. With their brilliant marketing skills (Parasols! Spoof fashion show! FT Column!) they have built the beginnings of a brand.
Their latest adventure has been to put together an entourage/band/posse that includes the illustrious Peaches Geldof, maven of the London social scene (although Rich says posses are for cowboys not rockstar fashion designers). Tonight the Rodnik band gave its debut "concert" at Selfridges and the guys put on an inspired performance in line with evening's surreal theme using a miniature piano, a child-sized set of drums, an old school record player pumping out The Doors and for lead singer, a mannequin with a top hat dressed in Rodnik
. The entourage provided requisite levels of vocal support and cool factor throughout while the photogs were all leaning into capture the moment.
Does this sound like a luxury fashion label? Well no, not really. But it
is brilliant marketing and will continue to weave interesting stories around which the Rodnik lifestyle brand will be built.
Yes, this blog is a commentary on the Business of Fashion. But, it is also a blog, more generally, on how you can take artistic and creative ideas and channel them in a way that is economically sustainable (and commercially lucrative) over the long term; how you can make the worlds of creativity and commerce co-exisit and feed off of each other harmoniously, without worrying about "selling out." Yes there is always a tension between the creatives and the corporates, but if the right balance is struck, the results can be magical.
For example, when John Galliano takes his fantastical ideas from Haute Couture origami and oriental dreams and declines them for his RTW show in a way that is sumptuous, beautiful and (just slightly) more accessible to a larger audience, he understands the realitities of the business, but does not compromise his creative energy for this. He just finds a way for them to co-exist. In this way, the high costs of designing and showing a couture collection are justified not only by the brand-building and awareness of the Dior brand that comes from these spectacles, but also because his couture collection acts as a creative playground from where he can take the most extreme creative ideas and then use the same raw material to adapt them for RTW, fragrance and accessories which are huge money makers.
Today, I was reading an article from the New York Times on one of my favourite Indie bands, The Arcade Fire whose balance of creative and business sense, one could argue, is equally astute as Galliano's. I first came to hear of the band through word of mouth a few years ago from friends in Montreal and New York. Intrigued, I showed up outside the venue for Arcade Fire's intimate sold-out European debut concert in a tiny venue at King's College in central London, without a ticket in hand. With a bit of patience and some luck, I managed to snag a ticket from someone who had an extra one to sell and walked into this concert, knowing almost nothing about the band. There was a palpable sense of expectation in the air. The room was filled with important European music industry execs who wanted to see what all of the trans-Atlantic fuss was all about, hard-core fans who had been following the band's progress on blogs and music media like NME and pitchforkmedia.com, and many former Montrealers like me who wanted to share in the excitement of a homegrown Montreal talent creating waves in the global music industry. I walked away that night knowing I had witnessed a magical creative moment.
Since then, The Arcade Fire have gone on to play sell-out shows all over the world, their debut album Funeral has sold 750,000 copies, and they now count Bono and David Bowie among their biggest fans. Not bad for a bunch of former McGill University students who were signed up to an independent record label. Expectations have therefore been even higher for their second album Neon Bible. which comes out on March 6th.
The Times article today struck a chord (really, I swear, no pun intended) with me as it was clear from the article that it is not only their creative talent and vision that has propelled them to success. It is also their common sense approach to business, aptitude for marketing and PR (while still remaining somewhat mysterious), and the strong collaborative and consensus driven leadership style of Win Butler and Regine Chassagne.
First, the common sense. This isn't a band that went on alcohol-binge-benders bashing up hotel rooms and burning through cash like the paper it is. This is a band that paid for the recording of its own albums, bought a studio-cum-Church to record its second album, retained rights to its master recroding and brand, and then licensed it to music companies Merge and Universal. Furthermore, they are constantly pushing the creative envelope (another similarity to Galliano) but do so in way that is still reasonable (which Galliano has learned though the year). For example, they shipped themselves off to Budapest to work with a 60 piece orchestra there because it was more financially realistic to do so than doing the same in North America. In short, they have kept control of their affairs, their cash, and themselves so that they can shape their creative output in a way that is consistent with their values and insipiration, but that also allows them to reap financial rewards. To be clear, these are not ascetic idealist types who think that commercial success somehow invalidates the value of their creative success. They have found a way to be comfortable with both.
When it comes to marketing, these guys have combined the use of edgy new media and traditional mainstream media platforms to create a huge profile and awareness of their music and brand. First, they seize the zeitgeist of their target audience and deliver marketing messages that resonate because they are authentic and true to what Arcade Fire stands for. As the NYT article points out, instead of a 'professional' marketing strategy for their new album they produced instead an iMovie for distribution on YouTube, complete with a toll-free 1-800 hotline number for fans to call in to hear material from the new album. What the article fails to mention is that their professional marketing strategy has also been built on venerable media outlets like TIME Magazine and the New York Times reporting on the band's curious modus operandi and cult following as a cultural interest piece, while at the same time giving them another important audience to reach: the audience who will pay for their music because it is perceived as cool and hip by those in the know. Broad media coverage like this is priceless, but the band manages to do it without losing their creative edge. To top it all off, their penchant for theatrics is not just a little similar to Galliano's use of spectacle and fantasy in his runway shows. Both Galliano and the Arcade Fire understand that conjuring up and delivering dreams that people want to be part of is always the making of great marketing.
Finally, they also seem to have the management of their ever-growing cast of musicians and complex business affairs under control. And, while its seems that the band is driven by consensus and shared values of what feels right and consistent with what Arcade Fire is about, there is also clear leadership in place in the form of Win Butler and Regine Chassagne. Butler strikes me as a visionary leader who knows where he wants to take things and inspires others to come along with him. Regine pushes people to test the limits of their creative energy and this brings the most out of her bandmates. Even if the results arent always spectacular, she encourages risk-taking. At a recent London show that didnt go off as they wanted, she improvised and brought the audience outside the concert venue and fired up one of their hits from the first album. Leadership in innovation, clarity and vision is something this band has in spades.
And so, I think Arcade Fire is a great case study for any young designers who want to be true to their creative selves while still recognise the need for commercial success. You can check out a video of their impromptu performance in London's Porchester Hall lobby below to witness the almost religous fervour that captivates the audience as they launch into one of Arcade Fire's best songs from the first album. If you look carefully you can see Coldplay's Chris Martin amongst the Arcade Fire faithful.
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