Pity the tree that falls unheard in the forest—and the designer with a plain-Jane runway show or convivial showroom cocktail party. Making an impact with a new look or product is no small feat in a luxury fashion world populated with huge rotating Chanel jackets, merry-go-rounds, Dior runways the length of football fields (at Versailles, no less) and building-size images of David Beckham in his skimpy Emporio Armani skivvies.
“Everything these days has to occur in a bigger way in order to get people’s attention; the volume on everything has to be turned up,” says Marc Jacobs, who had Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth writhing onstage at his latest fashion show in New York—and sent radically high heels stomping down Louis Vuitton’s runway to blistering techno. “You have to build a bigger, better, faster, harder [fashion] house.”
An ice replica of Cartier’s Paris flagship in Harbin, China.
Welcome to an age of extreme marketing that has today’s biggest luxury players forever raising the bar with events, shows and advertising of the jaw- dropping ilk. Need to launch a jewelry line? How about partying with Naomi Watts and Juliette Binoche at the foot of Switzerland’s most iconic mountain as you’re serenaded by Bryan Ferry? (Hello, Montblanc!) Celebrating a relocated Paris boutique? How about an intimate concert with the astonishingly talented but mercurial, notoriously unreliable Amy Winehouse? (Thank you, Fendi!) Eager to remind people about your firm’s roots in travel goods? How about a stirring and painterly 90-second commercial with music by Oscar-winning composer Gustavo Santaolalla, of Brokeback Mountain fame? (Brought to you by Louis Vuitton.)
“You have to find a way of projecting your own distinctive voice through the background noise,” says Giorgio Armani, a pioneer in leveraging his celebrity following, from dressing Richard Gere in sexy suits in American Gigolo to having Beyoncé Knowles wail about diamonds for the latest Armani perfume. “Fashion is all about evolution and change, and so it is only to be expected that we should change the way we bring our message to the customer.”
A handful of leading luxury fashion and jewelry houses, armed with big budgets and bold ideas, are out to dazzle their clients with attention-getting spectacles that express excellence, create excitement and fan that all-important urge to spend. “We want our customers to feel inspired and aspire to engage with the brand,” says Maureen Chiquet, global CEO of Chanel, which has been one of the prime champions of the bigger-is-better trend with its massive shows and exhibition projects. “There is no hidden purpose or marketing plan behind our events; they are the modern expression of Chanel as Karl Lagerfeld sees it. I am always surprised at how effortless it all looks.”
Lagerfeld says that he spied the cinematic potential in fashion more than three decades ago. He built his first set for a runway show back in 1974, when he was still designing for Chloé; it was a re-creation of a trellis garden at the Palais de Congrès in Paris, with one model coming out holding a green parrot. Today, the designer’s sets for Chanel are monumental: a 105-foot tower shielding a winding staircase for couture one season; for ready-to-wear, a bow so gargantuan it made a Richard Serra sculpture seem puny. In February the carousel that whirled under the soaring dome of the Grand Palais in Paris weighed 10 tons and took workmen five weeks to carve and nine days to install—all for a single use. The 66-foot-tall Chanel jacket created for January’s spring couture show—with models strolling out from its placket—was also built for 15 minutes of glory, wrought from wood, plaster and polyester resin and artfully painted to look like stone.
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