Mochila bags featured in NY Times' "Mochila Bags: In the Moment, and Long Gone"

Apparently the latest ‘It Bag’ fought over by ‘It Girls’ isn’t coming from the usual logo ladened corporate conglomerates.

It takes the women of the Wayuu tribe of Colombia and Venezuela up to a month to weave a mochila bag, working eight hours a day, every day. It took no time at all for J. Crew, which featured the strappy satchels in its June catalog, to sell all of them. In fact, they were gone before many customers had even flipped open the issue.

But however wonderful it might seem to be supporting ancient indigenous artisanal craft,  what happens to this new mini industry once the fashionistas abandon these for the next big trend? Karin Nelson writes for the NY Times:

Recently, the mochila has become something of a cult item, toted around town by fashion editors and It girls, and the subject of chatter on style blogs. “It seems to be the iconic tribal bag,” said Anne Slowey, the fashion news director of Elle, who has picked up a few on her travels. “The perfect mix of practical, exotic and chic.”

The PR folks at J. Crew offer the following explanation for the bag’s popularity.

“Craftsmanship is something rare and very valuable,” said Jenna Lyons, J. Crew’s creative director, who was not at all surprised by how quickly the bags went. “There are few things that are still made by hand, much less in a technique that is handed down through generations and is a means of support for a community.” On top of that, she added, “It’s a beautiful bag.”

It’s not entirely untrue, of course, but completely neglects the obvious fact that these amazingly crafted items have been around since long before J. Crew… why now are they all of a sudden so hot? Nelson writes:

Much of the craze can be traced to November when the Vogue editor Lauren Santo Domingo organized the Mochila Project. For it, 40 designers, from Alexander Wang to Oscar de la Renta, were each given a traditional bag and asked to rework it in their own style. The extraordinary results — the Calvin Klein was trimmed in snakeskin; the J. Mendel, in fur — were then auctioned off at a charity event in Miami that left those nowhere near South Florida somewhat envious.

Ah yes, the real truth. Craftsmanship is one thing, but when the fashion cabal creates an elite insider event, carrying around the signifier that marks you as in the know? That’s what the ‘It Girls’ will shell out the big bucks for.

And who knows, given the shift away from corporate symbols and towards the status of individual quality crafts, perhaps some entrepreneur might find a way to enlist the work of of the Wayuu tribe into the next great thing.

Christina Binkley writes for the Wall Street Journal:

Towering brands like Gucci and Louis Vuitton may dominate ad pages and storefronts, but small designers are gaining a bigger foothold in fashion.

What Sundance did for indie film—showcasing it for a bigger audience—Web sites like Etsy are doing for the little guys of design.

from Smashingdarling.com

She explains how technology is helping the little guy (gal) rise at the same time the giants slide:

At the same time, consumers are increasingly hungry for independent designs. In part, brand fatigue is to blame. Big fashion labels sell the same products the world over, diminishing their logos’ cachet.

Ah yes, brand fatigue. The corporate conglomerates bought out something with actual heritage and promptly proceeded to kill the goose that laid the golden egg.

Their designers work on collections a year or more in advance of the clothes’ appearance in stores and rarely—if ever—meet the people who eventually buy them. Moreover, many consumers lost faith in luxury brands after watching prices soar during the boom, then plummet during the crash in the fall of 2008. The slashed sales prices raised questions about the true value of branded goods.

Ah yes, that pesky 08 crash that caught high end retailers with their designer pants down. Kind of hard to regain that snooty image after that season of bargain bin desperation.

Indie designers offer pieces that not everyone has, allowing consumers to create their own style. I’ve noticed that the clothes and jewelry of mine that garner the most compliments are those that come from indie designers. They’re not the same old trendy looks.

’same old trendy looks?’ Talk about inverting status.

Plus it doesn’t hurt your reputation for shopping savvy to admit that you bought something from a young, up-and-coming designer. These days, the “buy local” movement has whetted shoppers’ appetite for a greater sense of connection with their goods’ creators.

Now, even the huge brands are striving to establish authenticity—sometimes trying a bit too hard. British authorities recently banned Louis Vuitton ads that showed an artisan laboring on a bag, saying the ads suggested, falsely, that its bags are handmade.

And how many more potential LV customers saw the blogosphere light up with that juicy story rather than the bullshit ad they wanted them to see? How many of those customers are instead connecting with the actual artisan of the ’statement jewelry’ they’re investing in?

Trish Ginter, co-founder of SmashingDarling, which sells products from nearly 700 indie designers, identifies the site’s typical shopper as “a very professional woman,” she says. “They’re purchasing things that set them apart.”

The luxury fashion industry took a sharp blow following Financial Crisis ‘08 not because the rich stopped buying (they just slowed down a little bit) but because the people that were acting like they were rich, the ones cleverly squeezing the most they could out of that much, much narrower disposable income margin, panicked in the tumble. When you’re all of a sudden underwater on that McMansion, (you know, the one who’s value could only go up) you might give pause to blowing four figures on a handbag or the latest ‘it shoe’ you can only wear if you valet park.

From members only discount luxury site, gilt.com

Reuters gives an excellent analysis:

The world’s wealthiest consumers kept their taste for expensive goods through a global downturn, but their more middle-class compatriots still striving for the good life may take years to return, if ever.

Sales of luxury goods, such as designer clothes, fine jewelry and high-end handbags, slipped last year as conspicuous consumption fell out of fashion in the recession.

They explain the difference between ‘wealthy’ and ‘aspirational:’

Many in the industry view buyers of luxury goods in two different camps: those who are truly wealthy and those who sometimes shop like they are.

“The wealthy haven’t really changed their shopping patterns other than frequency,” said investment banker William Susman, chief operating officer of boutique firm Financo Inc. “It’s that aspirational shopper that we think has really shifted.”

Milton Pedraza, CEO of the Luxury Institute, said “aspirants” are generally shoppers with an average household income of about $150,000 to $300,000. They helped prop up the industry during the economic boom of the previous decade, many by living beyond their means. They cut back suddenly and dramatically after the financial crisis erupted in late 2008.

He said they will only come back fully once unemployment reaches 5 percent, a level he admitted could take five years.

And I’ll bet that 5 year figure is an optimistic one that does not factor in the possibility that the worst isn’t over and we might very well be on the verge of a double dip.

Still, some executives believe there has been a permanent change in the consumer psyche.

“It will be interesting to see five years from now what people say they don’t do anymore, or what they do differently as shoppers,” said Susan Lyne, CEO of Gilt Groupe, which operates a members-only website selling deeply discounted high-end goods. “I’d bet you it will be fairly profound.”

“You can talk to any hundred people on the street and they will tell you they think differently about buying full-price because they’ve seen so many opportunities to buy at a discount,” she said.

The steep markdowns seen in 2008 and 2009 caused many consumers to question the intrinsic value of certain pricey goods, said Coach Chief Executive Lew Frankfort. Now they look for better quality at a better price, he said.

“Consumers are smart and they have long memories,” Frankfort said. “I’m of the view that things have changed forever.”

The customers that can actually afford to pay full price to cover the overhead of glamorous showrooms on high rent streets staffed with armies of sophisticated sales associates (and security guards) are dwindling in comparison to those desperately striving for the appearance of such status. Not to mention the fact that even a lot of those who are flush prefer a bargain… that’s how many of them ended up wealthy in the first place.

All of this is part of the ongoing fallout as schrapnel from the ‘08 meltdown delivered some critical cracks in the hype chimera of the branded luxury logo industry.

Wordsworth Boot in Moss Green - John Fluevog, from Libby's Steampunk Gift Guide at Steampunkworkshop.com. Someone buy these for me! *covet*

For buyers, designers, retailers and marketers wondering what the new face of consumption might look like in a post meltdown economy, Jake von Slatt and Bruce Sterling offer a vision of steampunk philosophy so eloquently stated I had to include it in its entirety. It’s a challenge to voluntary simplicity, which he claims as boring. And can be a lot of work. (no kidding!) The steampunk philosophy allows us to embrace and enjoy and even spend a lot of money on beautifully functional well crafted things things in our daily lives. What is disdained is the excessive, the filler, the junk, the disposable.

I stumbled upon this on the Steampunk workshop site:

The definition of steampunk is still a fluid and flexible thing, and that’s exactly how I like it.  When we talk about what steampunk is we talk in generalities and we leave a lot open for interpretation and thus creativity. But there are some memes in steampunk which are recurring. One of those is the rejection of a disposable economy, a belief that there is value in the finely made, and that participation in today’s race to the bottom, to the lowest price, to quantity over quality, is ultimately injurious.

Bruce Sterling (a steampunk icon in his own right) wrote about the value of fine things in his Last Veridian Note:

It’s not bad to own fine things that you like. What you need are things that you GENUINELY like. Things that you cherish, that enhance your existence in the world. The rest is dross.

Do not “economize.” Please. That is not the point. The economy is clearly insane. Even its champions are terrified by it now. It’s melting the North Pole. So “economization” is not your friend. Cheapness can be value-less. Voluntary simplicity is, furthermore, boring. Less can become too much work.

The items that you use incessantly, the items you employ every day, the normal, boring goods that don’t seem luxurious or romantic: these are the critical ones. They are truly central. The everyday object is the monarch of all objects. It’s in your time most, it’s in your space most. It is “where it is at,” and it is “what is going on.”

It takes a while to get this through your head, because it’s the opposite of the legendary of shopping. However: the things that you use every day should be the best-designed things you can get. For instance, you cannot possibly spend too much money on a bed – (assuming you have a regular bed, which in point of fact I do not). You’re spending a third of your lifetime in a bed. Your bed might be sagging, ugly, groaning and infested with dust mites, because you are used to that situation and cannot see it. That calamity might escape your conscious notice. See it. Replace it.
…
Get excellent tools and appliances. Not a hundred bad, cheap, easy ones. Get the genuinely good ones. Work at it. Pay some attention here, do not neglect the issue by imagining yourself to be serenely “non-materialistic.” There is nothing more “materialistic” than doing the same household job five times because your tools suck. Do not allow yourself to be trapped in time-sucking black holes of mechanical dysfunction. That is not civilized.

'Lily et Cie' interior from coolspotters.com

Cintra Wilson’s description of the icy snobbery at Lily et Cie in Beverly Hills, is yet another indicator of how vintage clothing continues to increase in value and status while serving as an iconic vocabulary of 20th century sartorial elements to be continually referenced and recombined by modern designers. The inaccessibility to the masses - in both attitude and price - supports the notion of a new definition of luxury for the 21st century:

As luxury seeks to redefine itself in the wake of the conglomerate takeover pandemic, there is, in certain (rich) circles, an increased demand for swanky vintage couture, the rarity of which essentially guarantees that when you sashay down the red carpet, there is no way in tarnation you will be wearing the same dress as Kim Kardashian.

…Even for a Teflon robo-cobra like me who has spent enough time in high-end establishments to have retail nerves like bridge cables, it’s a little hard to breathe in this joint.

It struck me, after my escape, why Lily et Cie has a half-million pieces: Ms. Watnick isn’t selling her formidable collection so much as hoarding it. One senses that she looks upon this mountain of untouchable fashion as her children and is loath to see any of them go.

Leather for women becomes mainstream everyday wear while young men rebel against their parent’s generation by… wearing a jacket and tie?

http://crossanda.blogspot.com/2008/07/look-of-week.html

Two NY Times articles side by side offer a telling glimpse not only into the generation gap, but into shifting gender roles as well. From David Coleman’s Dressing for Success, Again:

“Today the well-off 55-year-old is likely to be the worst-dressed man in the room, wearing a saggy T-shirt and jeans. The cash-poor 25-year-old is in a natty sport coat and skinny tie bought at Topman for a song. Young men are embracing the “Mad Men” elements of style in a way that the older men never did, still don’t and just won’t. The result is a kind of rift emerging between the generation of men in their 20s and 30s and those in their late 40s and 50s for whom a suit was not merely square but cubed, and caring about how one looked was effeminate….

Between those schlubby baby boomer guys delaying retirement, the fact that Gen Y twentysomethings are the largest demographic group in history and thanks to the successes of feminism young men also have to compete for jobs with their female counterparts in a way their fathers never imagined, the boys motivated to make it in this economic climate have to use every tool they can to distinguish themselves and get ahead.

But what are the girls up to? Ruth la Ferla writes,

Hermes Fall 09 from Style.com

A disdain for such sweetly conventional trappings of sex appeal has trickled down of late from tastemakers like Ms. Watson to scores of followers who are swapping their baby-doll dresses, spindly heels and lace for the flinty attractions of studs and leather, mannish jackets and rock-star jeans. Their embrace of a pointedly aggressive, street-smart style suggests that the more adventurous are rethinking the tenets of female allure.

Hallelujah! I’m having a flashback to my teenage years,

Women now want to project a “more powerful sexuality, not a damsel in distress,” said Sharon Graubard, a senior executive with Stylesight, a trend forecasting firm in New York. The look, streamlined and armored for tough times, reflects a distrust of trends and a skepticism toward traditional gender roles. Most tellingly, perhaps, it also represents a pragmatic response to a hobbled economy.

“So-called luxury — people are tired of it,” said Tatsugo Yoda, the owner of Aloha Rag, a fashionably progressive Honolulu boutique with a New York outpost. “They want more utilitarian pieces — military jackets, track pants and classic white shirts — that they can wear more than twice a year.” The look is assertive, Mr. Yoda said, but recognizable at the same time.

Actually, I’d like pieces that I can wear twice a week, and if my male counterparts can have it, why can’t I? As the propects of a banker boyfriends financing fussy fashion habits grow thin right along with jobs in the fashion industry, it’s not surprising that those still standing carry a survivalist chic aesthetic about them.

These notions of sexual allure can be traced to the utility gear adopted by self-styled survivalists, the funky regalia of old-school rockers, even the lingerie-and-leather of Parisian streetwalkers. More Patti Smith than Fergie, current variations on sultriness are thorny and faintly androgynous. These rebellious, antifashion messages, blunted over decades of exposure, have been picked up, inevitably, by the world of high style.

Today shapeless, and sometimes shredded, T-shirts, combat boots and aviator caps reminiscent of a Mad Max epic, are proliferating on runways, as are leggings, fatigues and bicycle shorts.

Of course, no talk of Mad Max survivalist style would be complete without a nod to Burning Man. But how interesting that while the girls are moving towards the rugged and shredded tough girl look, the boys are getting cleaned and pressed. These two phenomenon side by side also indicate to me another nail in the coffin of a world where modern young women could automatically assume that finding a man as a breadwinner was the rule and not an exception. Given that most of the jobs lost in this recession have been to men and thus women outnumber men in the workplace for the first time in history, young men have another reason to dress for success and it ain’t just in the office. Their dating pool might very well consist of women who are doing better financially than they are, and now it’s role reversal time - they’re the ones playing the looks card.

One thing both genders share is a rejection of disposable fashion. Back to Coleman:

“There’s a sense that this return to style, or to a consciousness of how you look, is an attempt by young men to recover a set of values that were at one point very much present in American society and then lost,” he said. “It strikes me as being of a piece with the way young people buy their coffee or their food: paying attention to authenticity or quality, and to whether something is organic or local. They stand for a rejection of the idea that all consumer goods are ephemeral and inevitably made in China and bought at Wal-Mart.””

Photo found at Trendhunter.com, believed to be from a Michael Kors campaign

For several months I’ve been collecting articles about the luxury industry’s contraction and resulting mandate for a new strategy if they’re to survive. Sameer Reddy writes for Newsweek, Luxury’s Image Problem: Having Lots of Fancy Toys is Suddenly Not So Chic:

Until now, the luxury world has represented an ideal lifestyle that the masses aspired to achieve. The models in advertising campaigns for companies like Michael Kors and Jimmy Choo are perpetually stepping off private jets or lounging poolside in five-inch stilettos.

The luxury industry will still represent an ideal lifestyle that the masses will aspire to achieve, it will just have to adjust to the new ideal.

But the economic meltdown has left luxury with an image problem. Signifiers of social status are suddenly out of fashion…

The old signifiers are out of fashion. What will be the new ones? (more…)

Coinciding with the revival of swing dancing over a decade ago, there has been a continual stream of articles alerting us to the popularity of vintage clothing in contemporary fashion. Unlike trends that disappear in a season or two, the interest in and demand for quality vintage has only increased. Given the fact that there is an absolutely finite supply of clothing made in 1955 (or any other year), it was inevitable that archival remakes would appear on the scene.

House of Vionnet 2007

The fashion industry right now seems poised in a moment of cognitive dissonance - watching the hype machine formula that served them so well contract and crumble around them, nervous about committing to a new direction while knowing that their survival depends on it. While there are no doubt many independent designers who relish striking forward into new visions for 21st century, the business machinery who back the vast majority of manufacturing and distribution are groping for a sure thing.

In her article for the Financial Times, Nicola Copping explains “fashion’s love affair with reinventing its own past:”

“The demand for archive pieces is huge in the fashion market,” says Jean Bousquet, managing director of Cacharel, which launched a vintage collection, in collaboration with Liberty, to celebrate its 50th anniversary in April. “We are arriving at the end of a fashion cycle; there has been nothing very new for a long time and a general tiredness has been established. The comeback of vintage testifies to a passion for the renewal of the past. We look at past successes to create the new. We might do several more archive collections in the future.”

It seems contradictory that the antidote to tiredness and lack of newness would be to remake old pieces rather than innovate new ways of dressing. But perhaps the sameness and monotony lamented refers more to what’s hanging on the racks in the mall right now - hundreds of thousands of similar versions of the same WGSN trend dictated pattern blocks. Against that backdrop, an dress from the fifties seems intricate and novel by comparison. Not to mention nostalgic:

“With all the recent concerns in the economy, people are feeling a bit nostalgic; they are looking to brands they can trust, who have a significant heritage and who offer great quality and value,” says Sir Stuart Rose, executive chairman of M&S…After all, when the future is uncertain, why not rely on the stability of the past?

It makes me wonder, though, how this demand for archival quality vintage remakes fits in with Cathy Horyn and Simon Doonan’s observations I quoted in an earlier post:

“It’s impossible to think of something you can drag out from the land of naffness and make cool,” Mr. Doonan said, referring to the process by which banal or out-of-date styles are brought back and, after much analysis and decoding and finally brand approval, become fashionable. He offered up the drop-waist denim dress, a wholesome style from the ’80s, saying it was rife with ironic potential.

I laughed. That was really scraping the bottom of the barrel.

When the term ‘vintage’ has reached the point where it is applied to intricately tailored designer suits from the forties and the pilled rayon floral drop yoked dresses from the early nineties all over the racks of ‘vintage’ stores on South Congress alike, it’s time to dig deeper and get more specific.

At which point I venture into subjective commentary that threatens to reveal the inner old lady I’m cultivating, who’s ever so sure that things were much better in her day… (more…)

From Michael Bastian's Fall/Winter 09 collection

Luxury you say? But this guy here on the runway, it looks like he just piled on the vintage clothes. And forgot to button his shirt cuffs… But according to David Coleman of the NY times, Michael Bastian’s clothes are quite in demand, recession notwithstanding.

In the four years since he left his job as the fashion director of Bergdorf Goodman Men to start his own label, Mr. Bastian has found surprising success with an agenda so modest it almost seems radical: to give men slimmed-down, spiffed-up versions of the all-American clothes they have long loved. Military shirts, khakis, wool tweed trousers, rugby shirts, ski sweaters, two-button suits, polos, Western shirts, swim trunks. A lot of designers toss around the phrase “classics with a twist,” but Mr. Bastian delivers: the right classics and the right twist.

His semiannual shows are not wildly produced fantasies of tomorrowland or yesteryear that send the fashion press into raptures. At his informal runway presentations, the clothes just look … good. You don’t think: Yes, it really is all about the 19th-century samurai right now. You think: I want those pants.

Let’s repeat that: “the right classics and the right twist.” This is why you want those pants. And those who purchase said pants aren’t just being practical…

The closest Mr. Bastian comes to a signature look is that apotheosis of laissez-faire wear: cut-off shorts. He has carried them every season, priced at roughly $600.

He is, at least, open about his prices. “It’s crazy,” he said. “I can’t even afford my clothes.” A dress shirt from his line can cost $425; pants, $550; a sport coat, $1,150.

I don’t care how amazing they are - $600 cut offs are NOT practical. But when they are selling out they must be insanely desirable to a target demographic with money to burn.

From Michael Bastian's Fall/Winter 09 collection

This is stealth wealth my friends, it reflects a post-meltdown anxiety when investment dressing questions include “Will I this come in handy in a post apocalyptic Mad Max world?”

“It was about escape,” he said. “I was designing that collection when the world was falling apart, and I thought, ‘God, what are guys possibly going to want?’ So I had this idea of getting just those things you love, things you’d stuff in a duffel bag, and just going. The things you’d save if your house was on fire.”

But you know what I think the real secret to his success is? His focus on his clientele as he eschews the celebrity ego:

He himself has heard people describe him as “a merchant” more than a designer.

“Is that supposed to be a slap?” he wondered. “A compliment? The hardest thing is to take something familiar and make it better. The easiest thing is to create something no one has ever seen before. There’s a reason no one’s ever seen it — because someone tried it, and it didn’t work in the real world.”

Aspiring designers everywhere need to read that. A few more ideas to consider…

“What he does just nails it,” said Dr. Lawrence Piro, a physician in Los Angeles. “He takes these iconic things, like Nantucket reds or an old ski sweater, and he makes the cut and material newer and fresher. He doesn’t eliminate the iconic thing the way designers often do. They’ll go too far to make it their own thing, and Michael gets it just right and stops.”

“Gets it just right.”

At Bergdorf, Mr. Bastian adopted the store’s practice of making lists of things he thought should be in the store. When he couldn’t find them at fashion shows, he had them made for the store’s private label. After working at Bergdorf for almost five years, he took a solo idea — a line of plain, nicely tapered khakis — to Mr. Burke, who encouraged him to go out on his own.

The backbone of the new venture was simple: that list of things he knew guys wanted.

Here’s a phenomenon to debate in future posts - design to fill a market niche, anticipating consumer desires versus design to explore and play with one’s sartorial visions and convincing the customer to buy.

Vanessa Friedman writes for the Financial times, Bernard Arnault: How to manage the transition into quality:

Bernard Arnault, chairman of Möet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the largest luxury company in the world, does not like the word “luxury”.

“I prefer to think of it as quality,” he says, a caveat that may seem semantic, but is, in fact, significant: it speaks to the permanent change in the industry that he sees occurring post-recession.

Why is the word ‘luxury’ so problematic? Couldn’t have anything to do with the past decade or so that his illustrious company spent courting the aspirational upper middle class with celebrity bling associations, could it? The photo to the right was pulled from a blogger named Behonce in Malaysia. I thought the text notable as well:

this bag is like a Christmas ornament or a Chinese New Year fortune cookie; the few things you just wanna show off! Combining the richness of gold and the luxurious nature of Louis Vuitton, this bag screams “I am rich, bitch!”.

Forget about being practical. Forget about not being Over the TOP! Honey, it is all about the bling! Paris Hilton has it. So does Kim K. Why not Behonce B? Costing at about USD2080, that is the reason why NOT, Mr Behonce B!

This is why Stealth Wealth has had an underground appeal all throughout the bling decades. But the fact that it’s rising to the forefront is a strong indicator of a seismic shift in culture and values. Back to Arnault:

“The availability of money not just for consumers but buyers will disappear for a very long time – maybe 10 years, maybe until the next bubble,” says Mr Arnault, who believes sector growth will be driven by the real economy, and will not be much more than 2 per cent a year in developed markets – half the rate of the past. What this means for the luxury industry is more competition, not from more brands, but from a – permanently – more discerning consumer base: one that demands legitimacy in all its goods, from history to conception to manufacturing, along with all the information and communication that implies.