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Young fashion designers: how to seduce Paris

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Between March and June 2013, a group of management students from the Institut Français de la Mode (their names are listed at the end of this article) took a closer look at the working experiences of young fashion designers in France. Here are the results of their survey and their interviews.
This is the english translation of an article previously published here. Translation Tresi Murphy.

“Very few actresses trust young designers, they tend to wear big-name labels. Audrey Tautou did not take the easy route, she followed me without question”, said the young French-Chinese designers Yiqing Yin after a dress designed and handmade by her (organza and silk chiffon, 400 hours’ work) was worn by the mistress of ceremonies of the opening night of the Cannes Film Festival. Yiqing Yin is the exception. Young designers, however gifted they may be, work in the background for a long time before they are in a position to shine like that night in Cannes. In France, the fashion press takes very little interest in young designers. Politicians and celebrities don’t (or very rarely) wear clothes designed by young designers.

Opening night at the Festival de Cannes 2013: Audrey Tautou, mistress of ceremonies wearing a dress created by the young French-Chinese designer Yiqing Yin.

In the United States, the rise to the top of a young generation of designers (Alexander Wang, Jason Wu, Thelon…) has been aided by the fact that Michelle Obama wears exclusively their designs: “In France, we had a model First Lady and all she wore was Dior”, says Anne Fuhrhop, a marketing consultant for young design brands. But, without press coverage and celebrity support, how can a young brand seduce buyers and in the long term find investors who are prepared to support its development? “Press brings the stores, who bring the press. If you don’t have a point of sale, journalists can’t really write about you because your stuff is not available… One brings the other, but you need both!” points out Christine Phung (IFM/Design 2002), who has just won the ANDAM’s “Premières Collections” award after having won the Grand Prix de la Création de la Ville de Paris in 2001.

In France, it is rare to see women politicians wearing young designers. There is one exception however: Here is Aurélie Filippetti wearing a dress by Céline Méteil.

The road is long and the market is very narrow. Many ex “young designers” have been forced to give up the profession and change career paths. Some have found a new profession (florist, for example), others have gone into depression. “In comparison with twenty years ago, the situation is really much more difficult for young designers. In the past ten years we have seen a drop in multi brand retailers, who are having a harder time surviving, even though a few websites for young designers have been set up” says Tancrède de Lalun, head buyer at Printemps. “Fashion is a very difficult profession, and very cruel. One has to reason like an artist and at the same time make money” (Jean-Jacques Picart).

Many young designers wonder if Paris is the right town to break through given that the big luxury and fashion houses dominate, even suffocate the city. Nevertheless, the Fédération française de la Couture, du Prêt-à-Porter des Couturiers et des Créateurs de Mode over the past two seasons (with the support of DEFI) has set up a Designer’s Apartment, that provides a space for a selection of Paris-based designers with French companies to show their collections to the press and to buyers. “The whole world comes to Paris, this is where you need to show your stuff: it is only in Paris that the international buyers and press stay on to buy after the shows. The international buyers are around for ten to fifteen days. In New York and London, the fashion weeks are really short and no one stays around after the shows” points out Tancrède de Lalun.

The designers chosen for the 2nd edition of the Designer’s Apartment in March 2013: Aganovich, Alice Lemoîne (Le Moine Tricote), Béatrice Demulder Ferrant, Céline Méteil, Christine Phung, Christophe Josse, Each x Other, Etienne Deroeux, Léa Peckre, Mal Aimée, Octavio Pizarro and Yiqing Yin.

Paris remains a unique location. As Jean-Jacques Picart points out: “You show in New-York if you have a head for business. In Paris, what counts is the emotion”. In Paris, there are salons where young designers can show their wares (Capsule, Tranoï...), but there are also cutting edge showrooms with various brands on show and who get a lot of coverage. “If a young designer creates a stir on this type of circuit, that’s a guarantee for us as buyers that the brand is interesting, that it will have followers, that it will be accompanied, that the designer is not going to be left to survive on his or her own” explains Tancrède de Lalun.

A recent edition of the Tranoï salon at the Palais de la Bourse in Paris.

A few obligatory but insufficient stages must be gone through by designers who want to break into the Paris market. Yiqing Yin provides an emblematic example: trained at the ENSAD (Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs), Yiqing Yin won the Grand Prix de la Création de la ville de Paris in 2009, her collections were presented at the Festival d’Hyères in 2010, and she won the ANDAM’s Prix des Premières Collections in 2011. The ANDAM award (Association nationale pour le développement des arts de la mode), in particular, represents “an amazing showcase” according to Alexandre Mattiussi, who has just won this year’s award.

L to R: Christine Phung, Renzo Rosso and Alexandre Mattiussi. The ANDAM awards 2013.

Most young designers do not, or not yet, have a real market and live or sometimes survive by working for more established brands. This was Christine Phung’s experience as she worked as a designer for Dior enfant, Chloé, Vanessa Bruno, Véja, and continues to do consulting work for her own brand… (see http://ifmparis.blog.lemonde.fr/2013/03/01/la-vie-dune-jeune-creatrice-de-mode-en-france-en-2013/).

Another young designer, Céline Méteil, worked as a petite main” at John Galliano, Alexander McQueen and Nicolas Ghesquière at Balenciaga. She won the Prix Première Vision and the Prix Public at the Festival d’Hyères in 2011. Despite these awards, it is a daily battle for Céline Méteil to keep working and she doesn’t make a living from her brand. Today, the designer/dressmaker subsists thanks to the indulgence and flexibility of her suppliers, without whom she would be obliged to get a bank loan, something she has always refused to do.

How to create accessible, coherent and commercial collections? How to avoid “the ideology of a style” (Jean-Jacques Picart)? “What is important for young designers is that they have a clear proposal, one that is complementary with the ones we already have” explains Armand Hadida, co-founder of L’Eclaireur store in Paris and founder of the Tranoï salon.  “A young designer will not succeed without an intelligent range (well-researched fabrics, shapes that stand out from what we’ve already seen…). One idea is enough. We expect designers to create their own vocabulary, to write their own tune. The range on offer is already very generous, the clientele and buyers are less and less so”.

Armand Hadida interviewed by two IFM students during the last Designer's Apartment (March 2013 in Paris).

Two years after winning the grand prix at the Festival International de Mode et de Photographie in Hyères, these are the very questions that Lea Peckre is asking herself. Today she is looking for a business partner to develop her brand. The young designer is well aware of the need to master stylistic demands and commercial reality. She is a realist: “I am Artistic Director at De Gris, a line of high-end leather goods and I also teach design at the Arts Décoratifs. The hardest thing is what I do for my own brand Lea Peckre, it is very demanding. I don’t have any private financing to back my collections. My job at De Gris helps me to develop my collections, slowly, very slowly. My budget is tight”. Being creative is no longer enough. As Lea Peckre points out: “Before, personality was the most important. Now, it has become impossible to avoid thinking in strategic terms”. It’s no longer enough to have good ideas and to be talented, you also need to know how to manage your story and above all understand the market, cash-flow, investment funding...

The designer Lea Peckre.

“There is an interest in young designers in general. The English and the Americans surf that wave, why shouldn’t that work in France? But you must have an approach that is very commercial, and an easily understood marketing take in order to give the client a reason to buy. However, young designers are often priced in the same bracket as established ones” underlines Anne Fuhrhop.

A young designer would be mistaken in trying to skip stages. “Some of them, when they graduate, think the market’s waiting for them. When in fact, no one is waiting for them. You need to be the best you can be when dealing with a market that isn’t waiting around for you. The best advice for anyone who intends to set up their own brand is to go work in the studio for a big name brand or another designer, not for a three month internship but for two or three years. Training with one brand then another, learning about the clients, retail, building a collection, buying materials, etc. From there you can leave the studio and set up your own brand, your own network of influence in the press, within the industry, etc.” (Tancrède de Lalun). Hedi Slimane worked in Cholet at Newman for years, this is where he learned so much and enabled him to get to where he is today. Setting up your own brand is not the only solution for a young designer. Great careers can also be had in the studios of the big name houses.

Tancrède de Lalun (IFM/Management 1995), Head fashion buyer at Printemps. Pictured here with Maria Luisa, "fashion editor" at Printemps, in the “Spécial Mode” supplement of Elle magazine from May 6th 2011 (n° 3410).

To gain support from investors it is essential that a brand can prove it has something the market wants: “Investors have no interest in fashion per se, what interests them is whether or not it sells. For a young brand, you need to reach a certain turnover before trying to get investors. The value of a brand relies on its sales and its sales forecast” (Anne Fuhrhop). “Some brands launch and are successful very quickly because straight from the beginning they had a good sales agent and someone who was good at getting press. If I may recommend something else, adds Anne Fuhrhop, it would be to have enough money to pay both from day one”. Having a business partner is the ideal solution for a designer: “One cannot be creative and commercial, there is no such thing, and if it happens it is rare”, according to Tancrède de Lalun.

So why are things easier for young designers in New York or London and not Paris? Since 2009 in the US, a network of corporate sponsors like Milk Made support young designers, helping them export and show abroad, notably in Paris, as Carine Bizet pointed out in an article for Le Monde  read it here (February 2013). “The English and the Americans, according to Anne Fuhrhop, have a commercial vision of their collections, and they work hard on advertising and image, sometimes harder than on the product itself. Everyone wants to produce in France, with very demanding technical specs, which means that the final price reaches 2000€ or 3000€ per dress very quickly. The Made in France label involves high production costs and a proportionately high sale cost which makes French design necessarily exclusive. In this context, and going up against the commercial might of Anglo-Saxon countries, French designers must use marketing strategies that highlight their advantages over the competition: creativity, technical brilliance and the quality that you only get with Made in France. In any case, the first thing a designer must do is sell!”.

Milk Made, a support network for young American fashion designers sponsored by corporations (American Express, Lexus, MAC Cosmetics, Google+...) has helped a number of labels develop, including Alexander Wang, Altuzarra, Proenza Schouler, Pamela Love, Peter Som, Ohne Titel...

In other words, fashion has to be practiced as a commercial activity and not an art form, it cannot be a mere question of marketing. “What made me determined to launch my own label was that I saw amazing brands fail and mediocre brands succeed. What matters is not always what you do, but what happens around you. You need to have a good team, be organised, have faith, and it works” explains Christine Phung. The reason Paris stands out from other fashion capitals is because it cultivates a taste for hard work and excellent quality materials (seen by some to be out of date). “I am looking for materials that are so beautiful that one will want to keep the item for more than one season. I am obsessed with finding the best Italian weavers for the double silk twills, heavy crepe de soie, twice as heavy as the normal crepe and also twice as expensive. I also use very beautiful satins that are horribly expensive, but that are beautiful, they seem creamy and liquid…” explains Christine Phung. As Jean-Jacques Picart says: “In Paris, what counts is the emotion”.

Survey and interviews carried out by:
Sophie Abriat, Fatoumata Bah, Marine Basset-Chercot, Zelda Citroën-Hammel, Manoela Borghi, Clelia Ceschi, Pamela Clapp, Manoela de Brito Païm, Constance Finaz de Villaine, Marion Goutière, Marina Khorosh, Céline Millecam, Geoffrey Mino, Giulia Previati.

 

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