It started as a spat amid the superheroes rather than the supermodels. Giorgio
Armani, the Italian designer with a £1 billion fashion empire, and Anna
Wintour, the British-born doyenne of catwalk journalism, had come together
at Milan fashion week to announce a collaboration on an art exhibition in
New York this summer.
They posed together smiling against a backdrop of statues of such caped
crusaders as Batman and Superman and mannequins wearing the haute couture
costumes and cowls they had inspired. Wintour wore her usual Prada; Armani
sported a characteristic blue jacket.
But then the flak hit the frocks.
As Wintour, who this year celebrates 20 years as editor of American Vogue, sat
tight-lipped beside him last week, the ever-tanned Armani announced that she
meant nothing to him.
“I cannot understand why so many people dislike her,” he said. “I am
indifferent to her.”
He carried on: “I hear she said the Armani age is over. I hope that she
didn’t.”
And then he issued the gravest insult to a fellow fashionista: “What she
thinks is a beautiful dress, maybe I don’t think it is a beautiful dress.”
Onlookers gasped.
“Wintour didn’t speak but you could feel the tension among the two dozen or so
foreign reporters on hand,” said Booth Moore, an American style critic who
was present.
“In fashion terms it counted as a salvo,” said Giles Hattersley, editor of
Arena, the men’s magazine. “They usually try to be so polite.”
In less cultured circles the furore might just be written off as an outburst
from a grumpy old man. But this is being seen as far more serious. New York
Magazine’s online dispatch from the Milan runway caught the mood, with a
touch of hyperbole. Its headline read: “Are Anna Wintour and Europe slowly
going to war?”
THE trigger for the conflict lay in the question of just who wears the
trousers in the fashion world. In a few angry words Armani had broken the
unspoken code between designers and magazine editors that has kept the
industry purring along.
For years, magazines such as Vogue have given top billing to designers such as
Armani, Valentino, the murdered Gianni Versace and Maurizio Gucci. In return
the designers have kept the magazines going by placing expensive adverts for
their ready-to-wear ranges of clothes, perfumes and sunglasses, which now
count for a much bigger part of their income than their haute couture. The
runway collections represent only 20-30% of revenues a season for a typical
fashion house.
The mutual back-scratching arrangement is surprisingly open. Wintour, whose
magazine is the most influential in the industry, has admitted that if she
has to choose between two equally impressive dresses to feature, she will
pick an advertiser over a non-advertiser. “Commercial is not a dirty word to
me,” she has said.
While accommodating to the fashion houses on some occasions, Wintour is also
not afraid to throw her weight around. When grunge failed to help
advertisers sell beauty products and accessories in the 1990s, she told the
designers to return to glamour. “This is what we’re shooting. If you don’t
do that, you’re not going to be shot,” she said. They all obeyed.
The present spat started when Wintour complained about the length of Milan
fashion week. She stands accused by the Italian fashion houses of trying to
dictate who shows when and where.
Last week’s Milan shows were the fourth leg in a twice-yearly round of catwalk
shows; first Paris, then New York, next London, and finally Milan. Wintour
wrote to the Milanese organisers last year asking them to condense their
shows into four days instead of seven. She said it would reduce the time
fashion editors had to spend there and the expense of staying in a European
city when the dollar is plummeting against the euro.
“You’re running all over town, and nobody’s thinking through how much time you
spend in a taxi or car,” Wintour said in New York this month. “I wish
somebody would sit there and make it a little bit more cohesive.”
The designers reluctantly agreed but do not like to be trifled with. Armani
took delight in showing first last Sunday, ruining the weekend for
fashionistas who had to fly from London to Italy with barely a chance to
catch air.
Wintour was there in her usual seat, front row and centre, but she had got her
revenge in early. The February issue of Vogue was filled with French
designers instead of the Italian grandmasters. Battle was joined.
Armani was not alone in his criticism of her last week. His fellow countryman
Roberto Cavalli issued a stark warning to Wintour and her colleagues in the
fashion press.
“I don’t need her [Wintour] in my front row,” he said. “If we Italian
designers pull our advertising, editors are sure to be less in a hurry to
leave Milan and more willing to put up with any schedule.”
Cavalli’s threat was naked, but the editors of the world’s fashion magazines
have had to put up with much more subtle intimidation for years. Be negative
about a show and you will be cast into the darkness beyond the front-row
seats or excluded altogether. Colin McDowell, the Sunday Times fashion
writer, labours under a lifetime ban from Armani and shorter ones from
Balenciaga and Chanel.
Some houses are believed to film the reactions of fashion critics at their
shows to see if they are smiling.
For Armani the surveillance starts at the door. As fashion editors arrive, a
special name tag attached to their ticket is ripped off to be checked later.
Not accepting an invitation is not tolerated.
Editors less powerful than Wintour are expected to go to the showrooms of
labels for a closer look at the clothes. This is called a “re-see”. Then a
few weeks later they are expected to look for a third time. This is the
“re-re-see”. Again attendance is compulsory. It is a not-so-subtle way of
monopolising their time.
There are signs, however, that, led by Wintour, the fashion press is rebelling
against these practices. She was not the only one in the doghouse last week.
Cathy Horyn, a fashion critic from The New York Times, found herself banned
from the Armani show. Her crime? Armani says she belittled his family by
saying his niece smiled all the way through a show in Paris.
More likely it was Horyn’s damning review. “There will never be a jewel of a
dress coming out from a huge beige hub of an Armani jacket,” she concluded.
An Armani spokesman said: “Her couture review contained remarks that were
simply gratuitous and offensive to friends and family.”
Horyn was told about her ban only the day before the show by a letter
hand-delivered to her hotel when she arrived in Milan. Armani said it was
“convenient” to inform her this way.
“I don’t really buy any of it,” Horyn said. “Not the delay and certainly not
the old-fashioned practice of restricting journalists in a digital age from
shows.”
Peculiarly, the growing importance of eastern markets means that magazine
editors in the established fashion centres of the West can afford to throw
their weight about.
On the eve of the fashion week there was a meeting of the Altagamma, the
Italian association of luxury goods companies, in Milan. It reported that
sales in the United States — which now accounts for less than a third of the
global luxury goods market — were expected to grow by only 6% this year.
Asia, however, is forecast to expand by 15-20%.
“This is why the fallout between Armani and Anna is not just bitchy
fashionistas having a pop at one another,” one female fashion magazine
editor explained.
“There is a symbiotic element to this. The great fashion houses are now
targeting the Middle Eastern and Asian markets where super-luxury is what
sells, and the cost be damned. So you get incredibly expensive dresses with
furs, leather and diamonds that wouldn’t be worn by western women, but sell
to the bling-obsessed easterners.
“However, the fashion houses need the approval of western magazines to give
them cachet — so when Anna Wintour says ‘the Armani era is over’ it is
serious news for Armani, because your shopper in Dubai will be influenced by
such pronouncements.”
Asia is already Dolce & Gabbana’s most buoyant market with sales growth of
30%. Asia, excluding Japan, accounted for almost a quarter of Gucci’s 2007
revenues.
This year Armani is opening two flagship stores in New Delhi where the growing
market for luxury goods is valued at £2.3 billion. Last year he attended the
launch party for Vogue India. It is a trend that will get only stronger. As
the credit crunch in financial markets hits western pockets, countries such
as India and China, with their still rapidly expanding economies, will
become more and more important to those selling luxury products.
PUTTING such real-world issues to one side for the time being, the fashion
scene is glorying in a good old bitching session.
Some have taken the opportunity to settle scores with Wintour, who was the
inspiration for Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly, the magazine editor from
hell in the movie The Devil Wears Prada.
In New York, forums such as the Fashion Spot runs polls on who will replace
her at Vogue. A film entitled Marie Antoinette and posted on YouTube
ridicules Wintour in hysterical French for wearing the same outfit on
consecutive days during Paris fashion week. Her critics have also noted she
has worn the same tablecloth-check Prada dress she wore in Milan, Paris and
New York.
“Call the fashion police. For someone in her position it is the ultimate
crime,” said one New York fashion commentator who asked not to be named.
“She will arrive back here a wounded animal but still able to strike.”
She might not wait until then. On Tuesday she is speaking at the Oxford Union
debating society, where the assembled students should be prepared for
fireworks.
Additional reporting: Claudia Croft in Milan
