Jean Paul Gaultier sponsored by ice creams - New York mag mistakes them for condoms

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Well so far this week at the Paris haute couture shows we have seen Christian Dior downsize its usual big bucks runway spectacle to a low-key presentation in the rooms above the Dior shop – and hack off half the outfits to send models out in their underwear. Christian Lacroix present what may have been his very last collection, after declaring bankruptcy. And now on the closing day of the haute couture schedule, the pièce de GFC résistance: Jean Paul Gaultier's show not only appears to have been sponsored by Streets’ Magnum ice creams, he actually walked down the runway to take his bow holding one. And if that wasn’t absurd enough, then this just-posted report in New York magazine’s The Cut blog, provides the following, hilarious, coda. Evidently Magnum ice creams are not well-known in the US. Because when The Times of London Tweeted that Magnums were being handed out to showgoers – New York magazine assumed The Times was talking about “Magnum condoms".

And didn’t seem to think much of it really. Even though a condom brand sponsoring a presentation of six figure ballgowns isn’t, well, something you see every day. Particularly when it's not your garden variety condom, but a brand of extra-large frangers that are marketed by Trojan.

Things aren’t quite that bad yet but who knows what the Spring/Summer 2010 Ready to Wear season will bring.

Ready-to-wear is one matter. That is, mass-produced, off-the-rack clothes that you can buy in boutiques and department stores.

By the same token however, up until now, you never saw much sponsorship collateral at shows in the big fashion cities - as distinct from RAFW in Sydney and London Fashion Week, where the brands are much smaller. This is because, presumably, the companies behind the big brands a/have the marketing budgets to spend on fashion shows and moreover b/consider that additional sponsorship collateral would only serve to undermine their branding.

Haute couture is a little different.

To begin with, the sample collections are far more expensive to produce. These are hand-crafted, often heavily-embellished garments that will be sold on a made-to-measure basis only. The more elaborate dresses - for example, Erica Packer's Christian Dior haute couture wedding dress - involve hundreds of hours of handwork. Hence the six figure price tags.

With money no object and, theoretically, no practical/commercial restraints on a couturier's imagination, haute couture is supposed to represent the absolute "dream" or essence of French fashion.

Yes, there are super-rich clients who can afford it and who keep the business going (as mentioned on Monday, Chanel reports that 2008 was a record year for its couture division). However haute couture is essentially an image proposition: a glamorous, and terribly expensive, loss leader that is used to promote the more lucrative volume divisions, ie the ready-to-wear, the accessories and of course, the far more accessible fragrances and beauty products.

But while the former president of the ice cream division of Unilever now runs one of the world's biggest luxury conglomerates - Gucci Group's Robert Polet - so far not even Gucci, which is ready-to-wear only, has considered aligning itself with ice creams.

You have to wonder what the very image-conscious Paris shows organising body, the Chambre Syndicale de la haute couture Parisienne, thinks about Gaultier's flagrant Magnum sponsorship - and whether it enhances the image of the struggling haute couture industry, or in fact cheapens it.

Moreover, what does Hermès think about it?

Not only is Gaultier creative director at the French luxury leathergoods brand, last year Hermès increased its stake in Gaultier's own company from 35-45percent. If Gaultier is flush with funds, why did he seek assistance from Streets?

Click here to see the Jean Paul Gaultier collection, which included the week’s omipresent power shoulders, trench coats – including a nifty trench bodysuit – bodycon, fur, Sydney native Alexandra Agoston-O’Connor in a pair of croc overalls and Melbourne native Emily Trimble in a mullet version of the trench. That is, miniskirt at the front, party at the back - a trend also witnessed at Chanel. Given that it means less ultra-expensive, hand-embellished haute couture fabric overall for the dresses in question, perhaps we can also blame this trend on the economic climate.

New York Mag, pls see below for some Magnum comparisons.

A Magnum ice cream:


wikimedia

Not to be confused with a Magnum condom:


allcondoms.com

Snubbed by Coca Cola, supported by Schweppes

maticevski backstage/sonny vandevelde

As many may already be aware, Melbourne couturier Toni Maticevski will stage a presentation in Sydney tonight at The Ivy. It’s not a Spring/Summer 0910 collection per se, more a collection of 30 unseen looks (above, below) from the past two years. The presentation is being sponsored by Schweppes. As it happens, Maticevski’s Schweppes show comes a week before Diet Coke is to play a pivotal role at Rosemount Australian Fashion Week – an event which, of course, owes its current existence to the naming rights generosity of a beverage. In addition to the multibrand Diet Coke Little Black Dress show, frockwriter hears that Diet Coke is also sponsoring at least 10 other shows at the event. This is interesting, considering that Maticevski himself says that he approached Coca Cola for sponsorship several years ago, only to be informed “We don’t associate ourselves with fashion or celebrities”. Or so he told me on Sunday night when we bumped into each slap bang in the middle of Sydney’s Kings Cross – and amusingly, just a few metres from the suburb's iconic Coca Cola sign.



maticevski backstage/sonny vandevelde

As to why he’s not showing at RAFW proper, Maticevski told me that, beyond his representation in Myer, he’s just “not doing wholesale” at the moment. Given how hard it has proven of late for many designers to extract monies out of retailers - and notably in the US market - this is not difficult to understand.

Maticevski's private order business is, he reports, travelling well – even in the US. Maticevski is in fact planning to return to New York Fashion Week in September and reports that he self-funds all his shows.




all three studio images: justin ridler

Here are also two quite beautiful mid century Schweppes posters, illustrators unknown (even though the red one bears some resemblance to the style, and signature, of venerated French illustrator René Gruau).




Schweppes has plucked these illustrations from its archives, from an era when the brand was actively involved in the fashion business. A selection has been made into postcards, to be distributed tonight.

Wouldn’t it be nice if big commercial brands – and, yes, fashion magazines - once again became the champions of hand-rendered fashion illustration?

RAFW develops a Diet Coke habit

patricia field for diet coke/the budget fashionista

Well we know Karl Lagerfeld is a Diet Coke addict. According to sources now Alex Perry and nine of “Australia’s best designers” may be about to make a DC hookup as well. In further developments to the RAFW SS0910 schedule – which frockwriter has been tracking ahead of its official April 15 release – it emerges that a big bucks sponsor-driven show is in the pipeline for the event, at this stage mooted for a Tuesday night time slot (UPDATE 02/04: now confirmed for Tuesday 28th April @ 8.00pm). Contracts are still being locked in, but frockwriter hears that 10 big Australian fashion names have been approached to create three little black dresses apiece for the show, inspired by the Diet Coke bottle.

For anyone who finds the concept bizarre, just a reminder that this is the type of sponsor-driven show which is often seen at New York’s Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week – which, like RAFW, is also operated by IMG.

The most recent incarnations of these sponsor shows include the Barbie 50th anniversary celebration show, sponsored by Mattel and The Heart Truth’s Red Dress Collection, sponsored by Diet Coke - both staged at the FW0910 event in February.

America’s biggest fashion names participated in both shows and the Red Dress Collection was later auctioned for charity.

Diet Coke has also been heavily involving itself with the cream of the fashion business, having commissioned special bottle designs from names such as Patricia Field (pictured above) and Roberto Cavalli:


roberto cavalli for diet coke/catwalkqueen.tv

The Diet Coke show is one of no less than four projects via which Perry is expected to be hands-on at RAFW's SS0910 event – in spite of the fact that, as frockwriter already reported, he is not doing his own standalone runway show for the first time in AFW’s 14-year history.

Perry already presented his SS0910 show on February 26th aboard the Queen Mary, when the luxury superliner berthed in Sydney:


alex perry SS0910/getty via daylife

What else will Perry be doing at RAFW?

Filming Australia’s Next Top Model Cycle 5 girls at five RAFW shows according to Perry: Ginger & Smart, Wayne Cooper, Anna & Boy, Nicola Finetti and a New Generation show.

ANTM Cycle 5 kicks off on April 28th on Fox 8, with Sarah 'Face of Bonds' Murdoch in the host driver’s seat, following the 2008 exit, in disgrace, of incumbent host Jodhi Meares.

Filming is underway and Perry reports that the show is currently down to the last three girls.

For those who have not yet seen the campy ANTM Cycle 5 trailer, in which Murdoch flies a lippie-shaped space craft, watch it in highres on the ANTM site.

Perry will also be filming for Nine’s nightly prime time current affairs show A Current Affair.

Perry recently slipped into the role of ACA’s defacto fashion reporter, filing two stories during the Melbourne Fashion Festival and one earlier story on the David Jones 2009 collections launch.

Perry is also likely to be involved in a fourth project at the event. Yes, it does involve a show – just not a show featuring his clothes specifically.

Of the lack of a more traditional Alex Perry runway presence at the event, the designer told frockwriter:

“Look, it [Fashion Week] is what it is – do you spend $100,000 doing that or do you do other things throughout the year that are sales-driven?. If we hadn’t sold [the SS0910 collection] then we would have done it. I feel OK about it because I’m going to be doing stuff down there, it’s not like I won’t have a presence at the event. Hats off to people that are actually doing it. I’m fortunate that I don’t need to at the moment and I can sail through”.

As for Perry’s little black Diet Coke dresses, apparently we can expect at least one of them to rival the designer's infamous pubis-grazing micromini of SS0708 – which, via this journalist's second-last blog at smh.com.au, earned the nickname of "The Toukley Skirt".

Quipped Perry, “It might well be a reprise of The Toukley Skirt - more brazen than ever before”.