Many people in the fashion industry would prefer to exist in a hermetically sealed bubble, impervious to the real world, so as not to sully the red soles of their Louboutins by being brought down to earth. But there are times – and this New York fashion week was one of them – when not even the darkest sunglasses or the most expensive triple-ply cashmere can protect fashionistas from seeing and feeling what is going on around them.
On Sunday, sports fans crashed the city’s fashion party when the Giants unexpectedly won the Super Bowl. This meant that on Super Tuesday, there was a ticker tape parade through the city, as well as election fever at boiling point. Every cabbie, every waiter, wanted to talk about delegate counts or healthcare policy. In a week like that, not even Rachel Zoe can keep up the pretense that raglan sleeves are at the core of the human experience.
Fashion is much more interesting when it comes back down to earth. I hate the fashion weeks when it feels like we are living in a bubble – they are creepy, like watching grown women play with dolls. Designers might prefer the uninhibited creative freedom that comes from living in times of plain-sailing prosperity, but there is a tendency then for the fashion industry to fall back upon a lazy worship of luxury for its own sake. This is irrelevant to the vast majority of the population, and makes for shows that are both vulgar and tedious to watch.
With voters and candidates alike obsessed with an expected downturn in the economy, those in the fashion industry have markedly different interpretations of how this will affect their bottom line. Those in the business of representing luxury are bullish: Gucci this week opened a new flagship store on Fifth Avenue, which it confidently expects will do $100m worth of business in its first year. I have lost count of the number of designers who have said to me, when asked about the prospect of recession, that "the high end of luxury isn’t really affected by recession". At the very top end of luxury, that appears to be true. A Florida yacht broker was quoted in Women’s Wear Daily this week as saying that demand was "up dramatically" in the $10m to $15m yacht business.
But even very slightly down the food chain, the picture looks different. The same yacht broker said demand was "down dramatically" for yachts priced $1m to $3m. The retail business is already starting to get squeezed. The mid-market department store giant Macy’s, whose share price has fallen more sharply even than the sector-wide decline, is thought to be looking at drastic cost-cutting measures including closing three or four of its seven regional headquarters. The most high-profile buyers at New York fashion week represent stores with a much more high-end profile than Macy’s, but even they acknowledge business is going to get tough. On the shop floor and in the wholesale showroom alike, this is a time for those placing orders to "really focus on what is necessary", as Julie Gilhart, vice-president of fashion merchandising at Barneys New York, put it.
Designers’ disinclination to admit that a slowdown affects them is a marketing strategy in itself. There are 530,000 households in America with wealth of more than $10m. These are the consumers the luxury business most wants to target now, because they can carry on spending with impunity for a while yet. And if labels want to be associated with the very rich, they must disassociate themselves from their less exalted customers – acknowledging that end of one’s business sends out the wrong signals to the super rich.
Retailers are very clear about what they are looking for this season: change. When consumers tighten their belts, the best way to convince women they need to buy clothes is for fashion designers to produce a headline change in fashion direction that makes their existing wardrobe feel redundant. Before the shows even started, Linda Fargo, Bergdorf Goodman fashion director, told WWD that she was looking for "trends compelling enough to inspire us to shop even in a tightening economy". At least one designer heard her: at Diane von Furstenberg, there was not a single jersey wrap day dress. On the catwalk and on the stump, change is the buzzword of the season.
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