Open Dior for Marc Jacobs?

By Marion on September 1, 2011



Open Dior for Marc Jacobs?

Louis Vuitton’s in-demand designer may be up for the top job, says Marion Hume

The Daily Telegraph | 31 Aug 2011

by Marion Hume

Those with even a fleeting acquaintance of Bernard Arnault, the chairman and CEO of LVMH, know never to second-guess this canny business titan. So while it may look certain that Marc Jacobs will move from the creative helm of Louis Vuitton to grab the top job at Dior, let’s wait until the signatures are dry.

That said, the smart money has been on Jacobs since Galliano’s meltdown in a Paris bar. For all the heat about Haider Ackermann and Givenchy’s Riccardo Tisci, Jacob’s only credible competitor is Alber Elbaz, who, perhaps not forgetting how it felt to be hung out to dry at Yves Saint Laurent in favour of Tom Ford in 1998, says he is staying at Lanvin. As for longtime Dior and Galliano staffer Bill Gaytten, who created July’s Dior Haute Couture collection, not for him a Sarah Burton at McQueen- type transformation. His role remains that of understudy, forced into the footlights only until a bigger star ushers him back into the wings.

Jacobs is already the consummate LVMH designer, delivering buzz and business in equal measure. On buzz, this is the designer that sets the agenda- right now, fashion editors are busy changing flights to and from the New York shows in a fortnights time, following an announcement that Jacobs’s show for his eponymous label must shift backwards by four days, after hours lost in the workroom due to Hurricane Irene. You don’t miss Marc. Though the collections he shows in New York are edgier that his work for Louis Vuitton in Paris, where he has been creative director since 1997, no fashion editor would dream of missing Vuitton, such is the importance of getting the first look at the new shoe or bag that will be copies all over the high street.

Just how influential Jacobs has become is evidenced by collections that at first, provoke the response, “You have got to be joking!”, only to shift the silhouette later. One recent example is the Vuitton show for spring/summer 2011, where a return to decadence was spelt out by three stuffed tigers posited on the faux marble runway. While we haven’t seen many animal-head sweaters elsewhere, Jacobs’s larger message-move over minimalism it’s time for bold clothes-is writ large.

Marc Jacobs is one of very few designers who have changed the course of fashion. The story of his grunge collection for Perry Ellis of 1992, influenced by what was bubbling up on the Seattle music scene, parallels a fashion moment in the life of Yves Saint Laurent. In 1960, the precocious Saint Laurent, who had taken over at the world’s most famous fashion house following the death of Christian Dior, was edged out after showing bomber jackets and thigh-high boots in crocodile in a beatnik collection that shocked the bourgeoisie, because-sacre bleu!-rich women would never be influenced by the look of the street, would they? Decades Later, fashion editors wore badges trumpeting “Grunge is Ghastly”, after Marc Jacobs was sacked from Perry Ellis because of his mismatch of floaty dresses over waffle knit T-shirts teamed with beanie hats. If Jacobs does go to Dior, Saint Laurent’s legacy there of busting down the barriers of assumed good taste is likely to gel with him far more than the arch New Look.

As for business, no one else-not even Karl Lagerfeld at Chanel-can pump out the products that pop. That Louis Vuitton now does $5 billion in annual sales certainly looks good on Jacob’s CV. And as a bonus, when you hire him, you get Robert Duffy, whose steady business savvy has backed up Jacob’s creative cool since 1984.

Jacobs, at just 48, is held in such esteem both in France and America he has both a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters and is the recipient of several Council of Fashion Designers of America awards.

But why would he want to move? After 14 years of reinterpreting the LV monogram, he might be board. The new challenge at Dior is the chance to create haute couture. In 1996, when the job was last up to grabs, Jacobs told me: “If Christian Dior wanted me, why would they want me to be what to was? Haute couture can be about a t-shirt as much as a ballgown. The ballgown is obsolete.”  Might the chance to reinvent glamour in a truly modern way still entice?

As for Arnault, there are some other considerations. The top jobs at Chanel and Giorgio Armani must surely come up within the next five ears/ Having lost Galliano forever, he can’t risk losing Jacobs. Then there’s the issue of the stress of the Dior job; in a year, the creative director must produce two ready-to-wear collections, two couture collections and a cruise collection- a demand equalled only at Chanel. Whoever gets the Dior job hardly gets a weekend off, and the constant scrutiny could drive a fragile talent to drink or drugs. As a reformed heroin user, Jacobs has proved able to face his addictions, which might perversely, work in his favor. He’s already been to hell. His support system is in place to stop him going back.

If Jacobs is the new man at Dior, this creates a vacancy that could be fortuitous at a time when the Louis Vuitton mega-brand risks becoming the victim of its own success. These days, it’s all about China, yet hip Beijingers dub LV “a second-tier city brant”; in otherwords, if those hicks from the sticks living in Urumqi can get it , we’re over it. What do the desire instead? Celine, of course, like all the other chic young women.

The other big rumor now? That Phoebe Philo, all grown up into a major mature talent will reboot Vuitton. But then who goes to Celine? Or does Philo juggle both? Get ready for the next round of musical chairs.

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The Critical Choices

By maddy on September 1, 2011

The Critical Choices

AFR Hume Column | September 2011

Cultivating Concierges at the best hotels has its rewards when a crisis ensues.

by Marion Hume

There are various choices one must make in a crisis. For me, as the privileged holder of two passports, the first might be “what nationality am I today?”. I know this is a cliché but, were I in a situation which required guts and muscle (these possessed not by me of course, but instead by some taciturn yet decent bloke, possibly to be played in the true-­life movie by Russell Crowe) then I’d be Australian. I suppose if the crisis required sneaky diplomacy issued with velvety vowels, I’d be British. After all, they do say the greatest skill of British diplomats is they can tell people to go to hell and make them believe they will enjoy the trip.

In a smaller crisis; which is to say one not involving fleeing to an embassy and being helicoptered off the roof, there are also choices to be made. Mine, if possible, is “head for nearest five-­star hotel”. Now, to be clear, I do budget. I’m the expert in ‘charming’ hotels where I have to haul my suitcase up the 18th­ century stairs to the attic. But, when budget allows, I’m there at the desk making a friend of the five-­star concierge with four crossed keys on his lapels.

The elite, global band of Les Clefs d’Or concierges was founded by the 11 concierges of the grand Paris hotels in 1929. Today, members must pass challenges far trickier than getting you a table at a restaurant or tickets to a show. A micro-­crisis, such as volcano ash, brings Europe to a standstill? The concierge at the Gritti Palace, Venice, not only booked every minivan in northern Italy to transport guests home, he worked out who would get on with whom with the skill of a society hostess planning a gala, packed posh picnics and made those who had arrived via the splendour of the Orient Express believe three days in a van would be an awfully big adventure.

Suddenly stranded in Hong Kong? The concierge at Lanson Place (a surprisingly tranquil and intimate hotel despite being housed in a 26­storey skyscraper) won’t just tell you a morning walk will help you get things in perspective, he will literarily lead the way – the hotel offers ‘wow walks’ free of charge or tip, to help guests feel at home in the neighbourhood.

So when my flight home from Geneva was cancelled recently, the first thing I did was phone the concierge at the lovely Le Richemond. “We’re completely full but don’t worry,” Emanuel soothed. The queue to get any flight information was long, the atmosphere charged – not surprising given airspace was closed due to an electrical storm. At times like this the choice is to behave well or not. Showing how not to do it, the bloke with the Brietling watch flashed his frequent-­flier gold card, even though this was Geneva where everyone is wealthy and frequent fliers are thick on the ground.

When the woman in front of me finally reached the desk, she did the ‘sobbing act’, protesting she could not possibly fund another hotel night (for which she would be refunded) and where could she sleep at the airport, sob sob? The tantrum didn’t wash with me. This season’s Celine, Manolos and a Roger Vivier handbag, and you don’t have a credit card? OK, so I was surprised I couldn’t get on any flight for 24 hours, but just then Emanuel called, a reservation had been cancelled, I had a room as well as a dinner booking somewhere not expensive “because perhaps you had not budgeted for this evening?” And as to my surprise free day? Les Bains des Paquis, entrance fee €2, is at the end of a pier in the middle of Lake Leman. You can swim then enjoy a set lunch. That I got to dry off on plush mongrammed towels kindly lent by Le Richemond was a very nice touch.

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A Lesson Learned

By Marion on August 1, 2011

A Lesson Learned

A gaggle of women in full-on African dress were utterly perplexed by a moving staircase going up to the stars. One gingerly places a foot on a tread, shrieked and fled.

AFR | August 2011

by Marion Hume

Before reaching air-side at Kenyatta International Airport, I was halted at a security desk manned by those doing something most unusual for their rather serious job; they were giggling. It’s true the scene ahead was, in a purely slapstick sense, rather funny. A gaggle of women in full Africna dress were utterly perplexed by a moving staircase going up to the stars. One gingerly places a foot on a trend, shrieked and fled. Another started slapping the rubber handrail as if it were a snake she must kill to stop it moving-at which point the immigration official who had raised his arm to stamp my exit visa bit into his sleeve to stop himself laughing out loud.

Passport stamped at last, I walked towards the high escalator and stepped on to it to gasps of astonishment. Next, a young girl was behind me, shrieking with glee. “See, it’s OK,” I said, before raising my right leg slowly , indicating how to step off again. While I was running late for the Nairobi-London night flight, I hung around just long enough to see others of the group emerge over the top from what. by the look on their delighted faces, has been the ride of their lives.

We all travel so much these days, it’s a struggle to remember our own first time. But to travel, to transit your fist airport, to fly, when you come from a country mired in poverty, is an even more extraordinary thing. Of course not even Kenyan is poor- far from it- but my sense was these women were certainly not Nairobi cosmopolitans. By the time they reached the top of the escalator, their eyes were sparkling with both astonishment and a sense of achievement. They’d conquered something and they hadn’t even left the country.

Still, one must always be wary of stereotyping. I recently worked with a Kenyan cameraman who told me how an international director had shown him some footage shot by his foreign team. Seeing a filthy little toddler digging in the mud with a stick, the cameraman suggested it might not be a great idea to use that sequence but was ignored.

Months later, a mother watching her flat screen TV was furious when she spotted her son being used in one of those bulletins urging us to flex out credit cards for charity. “Don’t those people’s kids ever sit in the yard?” she shouted. (That, and demanding to know why, when the images of kids from rich countries are protected, no one though to so much as ask whether a mother might be equally protective of her little boy). The cameraman said he’d heard that parents in New York and London have become so scared, they never let their kids just be kids, sitting in the sun digging for worms.

Wherever my escalator ladies were headed, I hope there are people to guide them through the subtleties of their new location. For while I was only able to teach them the not wildly complicated skill of how to ride an escalator, what they gave me in exchange was more profound.

If we are lucky in our working lives, we are forever fronting up to new experience. Yet sometimes, I know that makes me nervous and now I now realise that the terminology we use is partly to blame. Why would I relish risking going ‘out on the wire’ when I lack the balancing skills of a circus performer? But stepping on to an escalator, going up? I can do that. So from now on, I’m going to remember the Kenyatta escalator ladies when I need reminding that the new isn’t always to be feared. It can be fun.

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