Word: gucci
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...days leading up to his recent Gucci spring 2004 runway show, Tom Ford was distracted. Contract negotiations with Pinault-Printemps-Redoute (PPR), the French retail group that controls Gucci Group, were not going well. But that didn't stop the designer from interrupting a fitting to ask an assistant to dash over to a nearby restaurant with a Polaroid camera. Ford was meeting some journalists there, and he wanted to make sure the restaurant had the right look. When it comes to image, Ford likes to control every detail, right down...
...perhaps not surprising then that control was the issue at the heart of the decision last week by Ford and his business partner, Domenico De Sole, to leave Gucci. It was what the duo had been fighting to maintain for the past year as they negotiated the terms of their contracts with Serge Weinberg, the low-key but firm chief executive of PPR. The pair's departure, if inevitable, was still the most cataclysmic thing to happen to the fashion world since Gianni Versace's murder in 1997. It rocked the luxury-goods business from Madison Avenue to the Place...
...reason. In just 10 years he and Ford had engineered a miraculous transformation of Gucci--from a dying label with $200 million in revenue into a flourishing, $3 billion luxury conglomerate with subsidiaries that include such brands as Yves Saint Laurent (YSL), Stella McCartney and Alexander McQueen. With his eye for louche glamour and his movie-star image, Ford, 42, redefined luxury, giving it a sexy, provocative edge. For most of the '90s it seemed as if he and De Sole could do no wrong. Ford had an unerring eye for reinterpreting what the public wanted; De Sole's managerial...
...down-market. Designers like Isaac Mizrahi and Todd Oldham have taken refuge--and found success--at Target. And even brands like Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein are playing catch-up with Banana Republic and J. Crew, introducing new, inexpensive lines. As one industry insider put it, "None of the [Gucci brouhaha] matters because we'll all be wearing Target and Abercrombie & Fitch in two years...
...four seconds to tell our clients. A mall clothing store can take down designer fashion within the next season. You see it in September on the runways. Then you've got it at Rampage and PacSun and all those places the same time you've got it in the Gucci stores, which means that it's going to be over much more quickly...