Dior

Maria Grazia Chiuri to Dior: A Bittersweet Split

Hmmm, is the framing of this photo of Valentino Co-Creative Directors telling? Maria Grazia Chiurri is positioned in front of Pierpaolo Piccioli and staring up, while he looks squarely at the camera. If today’s news is any indicator, then yes, this 2015 photo might tease that Chiuri was considering moving on a over year ago. And that my art history classes paid off and that I paid attention to the body language episode of Tyra circa 2008.

In a completely stunning move, Dior appointed Maria Grazia Chiuri as its new creative director following the departure of Raf Simons earlier this year. Usually whispers trickle around before an appointment, but that wasn’t the case with Chiuri—I stared at my email inbox completely agog with surprise when the news broke this morning.

Surprised I may be, but I am also delighted. Maria Grazia Chiuri is an incredible designer, and has co-created some of the most beautiful, intricate, and feminine pieces of ready-to-wear and couture humanly conceivable during her nine-year tenure at Valentino—pieces so simple in line yet opulent in fabric so as to make one gasp.

Chiuri will be brilliant at Dior; she understands the pressures and rigor of working at a mega-house, and is a near-perfect match in terms of aesthetics with her appreciation for simplicity and graceful femininity. Beyond the tulle and Roman richness, she also knows how to make money. Chiuri and Piccioli pioneered the incredibly commercially successful Valentino Rockstud accessory line, which, six years later, the public is still hungry for. She knows how to walk the fine line between accessibility and exclusivity, and realizes the importance of refreshing and building on cult items each season to maximize their relevance. Chiuri will also be Dior’s first female creative director in its 70 year history—ironic for a label whose image is so tied up in femininity.

As exciting as this news is, it’s not without a scoop of bitterness. I’m so sad to see this harmonious era of exquisite design and seamless execution of Valentino’s sensibilities come to an end. It never occurred to me that Chiuri was even being considered for this role because I figured that she and Piccioli were a package deal and firmly ensconced at Valentino for many years to come.Why did Dior pick only Chiuri and not the pair? Will Chiuri and Piccioli be any good without the other? Perhaps Dior execs had special insight into their creative process to be able to make that call. We will have to wait and see on these. But as to the question of whether or not Valentino is upset that his natural heir has chosen to go elsewhere, well, I think we have our answer from Giancarlo Giametti’s Instagram today. No one does Italian drama quite like Valentino!

By the difference in picture length, he appears to have deleted the left image and reposted it with a new caption.

What a dream team.

Spin Class: Dior and J-Law in the Post-Raf Era

I never thought this day would come. The day when I say that Jennifer Lawrence not only looks great in Dior’s new Mario Sorrenti-shot ads, but also actually looks like a fitting representative of the world’s premiere luxury fashion brand. Has hell frozen over? Apparently not — Dior’s marketing team has just finally realized they should play to JLaw’s (relative — let’s not get gushy) strengths, instead of putting her into an archetypal mold that doesn’t fit. Let’s first recap the long and tragic history that is Dior: the JLaw Years.

Jennifer Lawrence became the face of Dior in 2012, when Raf Simons took over the label. This was a terrible choice for both parties. It was a bad move for Dior because Lawrence is unsophisticated and too relatable, with her “down to earth” lifestyle choices and penchant for crude humor and childish antics — this is the woman who engages in walrus pantomimes with chopsticks and wears jackets with “perv” emblazoned on the back. Dior, as one of the most elegant and storied fashion labels, needs a spokeswoman who embodies their sophisticated values — I loved what they did last spring with Rihanna, who, while not Grace Kelly, still fits the bill because of her impeccable fashion instincts and comfortability in her own skin, and adds an appealing edge to a label that can quickly get too feminine. The Dior partnership was a terrible choice for Lawrence (aside from the 7-figure payday) because it’s locked her in to Dior for all red carpet appearances until 2017, which doesn’t suit her in the least — she hasn’t looked good since the 2011 Oscars where she wore the blood orange Calvin Klein.The contract has robbed her of the chance to form any kind of sartorial identity and confuses her cultural coding — she’s photographed cracking open beers with bottled water caps and wearing double denim one minute, and looking awful in a frilly cupcake mess on the red carpet the next. It’s a complete mismatch for both parties.

Unless you can spin it, which is what Dior has done for this season’s ad campaign, to great effect. These ads are about laid-back glamour, which is much more Lawrence’s speed. She looks chic and refined, (in a borderline Olsen way — I can’t believe I’m saying this) and finally looks comfortable as the face of the brand, bringing a warmth to the photos. This campaign capitalizes on her approachability while still situating her as aspirational, (the placement behind the bags and couch visually helps with this) instead of trying to cast her as a Hitchcockian ice queen like Raf did during his tenure, a role that didn’t fit her and made her look wan and deeply uncomfortable. But in these new ads, Dior and Lawrence have hit a sweet spot where both of their brand codings are in synch — easygoing-ness meets Parisian chic — which makes this campaign not only work, but succeed exceptionally well.

A mismatch, especially a contractual and expensive one like this, doesn’t have to be the end of the world if both the brand and the representative can be strategic and thoughtful about where their Venn diagrams overlap. I hope Dior can keep this momentum until they can get a more natural fit for their brand, (2018, please come quickly). But in the meantime, dare I say…I look forward to see how they meet this challenge? I never thought I would be capable of uttering those words, and yet here we are. That’s the power of good marketing, I suppose.

The new S/S ’16 ad. The Row-chic.

So Olsen!

This shot I’m not as wild about — they should stick to softer angles when trying to draw out her laid-back nature.

An unfortunate Raf-era ad. She looks she’s terrified and breaking a fever.

Another Raf-era ad. A study in awkwardness and premature aging.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is your face of Dior.

Lawrence, a 25 year old woman, finds humor in this display.

And this one.

Yeezy: A Marketing Miracle

We all know how a great match between product and brand ambassador can result in great sales and even iconic advertisements — Kate Moss for Calvin Klein, Isabella Rossellini for Lancome Trésor, etc. But what happens when a great match is made initially, but then the ambassador’s reputation falters or becomes uncertain?

You know what I’m getting at in this case — Kanye and Yeezy resell madness. How is the popularity of Yeezy sneakers still so explosive when Kanye has committed painful schadenfreude after painful schadenfreude on social media in the last two weeks? Why do consumers want to associate themselves with someone who at best displays incredibly poor judgement when speaking, and at worse is tens of millions of dollars in debt and on the verge of a complete nervous breakdown?

I think the answer here is two-pronged — an instance of absurd good luck that paired a good product and its narcissistic personality disorder Frankenstein with a forgiving public with an appetite for rarity and athleisure.

First, the product is remarkably good and strategically scarce. The Boost 350, which was released exactly a year ago, originally retailed for $200, but now are as much as $1,500 new for certain colors on Ebay; around 500 pair of the new Boost 750 were released to lucky fans last weekend, and have been sold for as much as $5,400 online. It’s a great looking shoe and scarce enough to stir up hype independent of Kanye: it’s a Yeezy before it’s an Adidas or Kanye West product. It appears that if the product is truly good and can create its own identity in pop culture, it doesn’t matter if the face of the brand is in a period of uncertain personal brand coding: sales will remain strong.

Secondly, I think perhaps people think of the face of a brand in more of an archetypal way, taking his or her entire career into consideration when deciding what the ambassador means in the culture, rather than deploying an up-to-the-moment pop-culture analysis of his or her actions. Consumers and Yeezy fans look at Kanye as someone who has been a successful, if megalomanic, entertainer for ten years, who courts controversy as part of his personality — and this recent series of stunts will be an inconsequential blip on his oeuvre.

Another example of this long-term archetypal thinking is Johnny Depp being selected to serve as the face of Dior’s Eau Sauvage cologne this fall. Once the embodiment of a filthy strain of cool, in the last two years or so has become a punchline, a bloated caricature of himself hurtling toward a midlife crisis all pistons firing. And yet, I thought to myself, who else could be Dior’s elegant savage? Only Depp, or at least, the legacy of Depp (and the photoshopped version of Depp in the ads) fit the bill. It turns out the public agrees with me — Eau Sauvage was the number one men’s fragrance in most countries where it was distributed in 2015 after its launch in September of the same year. Even though he’s making a fool of himself in the tabloids just right now, his archetype remains intact in the public’s mind.

And the media doesn’t care as much about the embarrassing antics of West and Depp because the two are male entertainers. Although they aren’t representing the brands they are fronting well, they’ve faced no consequences from sale outcome or industry bosses. When Kate Moss was photographed doing cocaine in 2005, the speed with which the axe fell was incredible: not only did she loose nearly all of her contracts, but was blistered in the media for months. (I did benefit from this incident by writing about it in my SAT essay, which, if memory serves, garnered a perfect score,) Men certainly have it easier when representing a label — their personal brand archetypes aren’t subject to as much scrutiny as women’s are. Depp is a walking advertisement for substance abuse and overindulgence, but faces no consequences except for ridicule on gossip sites.

The success of Yeezy is a special case, a marketing miracle, because it’s a perfect storm of a great product that has taken on a life of its own beyond its creator, and a product that is fronted by a man whose long entertainement legacy can make up for his current actions. If even one of these layers were not intact, I don’t think Yeezy would see the kind of success that it currently –and will continue to–experience. I don’t recommend this combination of insane marketing elements for any other label, but for Yeezus, it’s only fitting.

Yeezus at MSG

Johnny Depp for Dior Eau Sauvage

https://stockx.com/sneaker-analysis/2015/02/20/yeezy-boost-madness-before-the-next-drop/

December 2005 Vanity Fair Cover

Raf Steps Down: What it Means for Dior, the Designer, and His Successor

Another designer leaves a major fashion house after only a short tenure. Raf Simons is unexpectedly out at Dior. I was initially astounded to hear this news, but the more I thought about it, it the more it made sense to me. He did beautiful things at Dior, but it never truly felt like he was comfortable there. You can see it in some the clothes, especially later on in his tenure – they’re ladylike, but feel cold and vaguely discomforted. Still, I’m surprised to see him leave so soon, especially after the publicity boost due to the recent release of Dior and I, the documentary charting the making of his first collection at the company.

Hopefully, this also means the end of Jennifer Lawrence as the face of the brand; a completely baffling pairing that benefits Lawrence’s personal brand, but hurts Dior’s. The house desperately needs to re-focus its brand identity, because as it is, they’re gunning to look like Giannini’s Gucci. Under Raf, Dior didn’t stand for anything – I don’t know who the customer is, or what kind of world she inhabits, because all of the advertising was restrained, empty, and faced by a bland big-time movie star — I had to get all of my information about the brand from the runway shows, which, admittedly, were stunning. The ads need to be a more sophisticated (but not boring) version of the vision so perfectly executed by their fragrance campaigns, especially Miss Dior and Dior Addict – French, ladylike, and daring.

What’s next for Raf? I wish he would go back to Jil Sander, an all-time favorite of mine that has crumbled since he left in 2012, but he won’t loop back around to the same company. He will focus on his own label, and perhaps another smaller line. I don’t ever see him returning to one of these mega-houses, even if the fashion cycle slows down to fewer collections per year.

But the even bigger question is who will replace Raf. Will Dior follow the current trend among big houses and pick an unknown? Perhaps, but that move would look trite after the recent Balenciaga appointment. I personally would love to see a woman at Dior. Cathy Horyn teased the possibility of Phoebe Philo on The Cut, which would be sublime; however I don’t think Philo would be willing to split her time between Céline and Dior, especially, as Horyn noted, because she has so much creative control over every aspect of Céline. Nadège Vanhee-Cybulski at Hermès might be a good choice, as would Stella McCartney, although I think, like Philo, McCartney is more invested in her own label at the moment. Kate and Laura Mulleavy would be a unexpected choice, but I think the sisters behind Rodarte are too media-shy to want to helm a major house like Dior. If I were Mr. Arnault, however, I would be pursuing Jonathan Anderson. He’s ultra-talented, young, a media darling, and not afraid of helming a big fashion house. It may be strategically savvy for Anderson to stay at Lowe, though, and build a mega name for himself, much like Philo did at Céline.

I’m sad to see Raf go — I was looking forward to see how he evolved as a designer at Dior. But in any case, I’ll be extremely interested to see who gets the appointment, and what they do with the brand. Stay tuned.

Veni Vidi Vesti

Intellectualizing Fashion, Brand, Art, and Celebrity