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International Herald Tribune

14 Tuesday, October 4, 2005 Fashion

Photograph by Gui Paganini in ‘‘Sample’’

At left, a silk petal top by Alexandra Herchcovitch, a designer featured in ‘‘Sample’’; the
cover of Andam’s catalogue; at top right, inset, a page featuring Bernhard Willhelm in
Andam’s catalogue; bottom right, the Canadian designer Nicolas Andreas Taralis.

Nourishing fashion’s lifeblood: Up-and-coming young designers

By Rebecca Voight product that doesn’t exist. They must designers willing to pour their creativ- fashion insiders to the laid-back town signer with a fashion show this week is ‘‘I don’t work for free anymore,’’ says
be innovative, but also provide better ity into new brands are what spark the on the Côte d’Azur every spring. a press attaché whose job description is Cristofoli, whose agency includes a
PARIS service than the big names, despite ignition to change. Very few of them With a prestigious jury this year — like a cross between Mr. Fix-It and mix of new and established brands,
ome say young designers who their small size.’’ will make it beyond the first few sea- including the Tunisian designer Azzed- Mama Mia. ‘‘because we’re in a business to sell ex-

S launch their own brands are the

sacrificial lambs of the fashion
industry; others believe they are
its hidden asset. One thing’s certain,
many designers, no matter how influ-
ential today, were once struggling with
more dash than cash. And more than a
few of fashion’s current stars produced
some of their most inspiring work
when fame was still a carrot dangling
in front of their nose.
Didier Grumbach, president of the
French Fashion Federation, the organi-
zation that oversees Paris’s overflow-
ing collections week calendar, says that
a young designer can succeed ‘‘only
when partnered with an extraordinary
manager.’’ Grumbach has worked con-
tinuously to provide space on the cal-
endar for young designers. ‘‘Without
them,’’ he says, ‘‘there is no more fash-
ion industry.’’ The federation looks for
new brands that combine creativity
with a strong business plan and gener-
ate the majority of their sales in ex-
por t.
‘‘This isn’t contemporary art,’’ says
Grumbach. ‘‘We’re in the rag trade. But
designers must also be artists. To suc-
ceed, they have to come up with a
The federation reserves the first two
days of the Paris show calendar for up-
and-coming designers like Mélodie
Wolf of France and Bernhard Willhelm
of Germany, whose company is in Paris.
Willhelm is the winner of the grand
prize this year from France’s Andam, or
the National Association for the Devel-
opment of Fashion Arts, an annual
grant awarded to young designers sup-
ported by France’s Ministry of Culture
its Association of Apparel Manufactur-
ers and other high profile private spon-
sors including the LVMH Group and the
department store Galeries Lafayette.
Nathalie Dufour, director of Andam
since its inception 16 years ago, says the
association’s grant budget has grown
from ¤15,000, or about $18,000, in 1989
to ¤150,000 this year. Willhelm, who
received ¤44,000 from Andam and the
Cidic, the organization of French leath-
er goods manufacturers, will use the
funds to help finance his spring 2006
men’s, women’s and accessories collec-
tions. He and the other winners are to
be honored at an awards ceremony on
Oct. 10 at the Ministry of Culture.
Luxury conglomerates may be the
driving force in fashion now, but young
sons — some will go out of business,
while others will opt for a design post
at a major brand seeking fresh talent —
but the ones who manage to stick it out
on their own will have a profound ef-
fect on the evolution of style.
A telling sign that a designer can suc-
ceed with his own company is the Mais-
on Martin Margiela retrospective cur-
rently in the window displays on the
ground floor of the Ministry of Culture.
But there were several steps first
along the road: Margiela moonlighted
for several years as the women’s design-
er for Hermès. And Diesel’s Renzo
Rosso, the Italian jeans giant, acquired a
majority stake in Maison Martin Mar-
giela in 2002, but that didn’t happen un-
til 15 years after Margiela had been
working on his own to develop his style.
The road to success increasingly is
scattered with prizes, incentives and
hard cash designed to keep young de-
signers in the limelight, financially
solvent, and determined to continue.
The year 2005 marks the 20th an-
niversary of the International Fashion
and Photography Festival, at Hyères,
France — fashion’s answer to Cannes.
The festival attracts style scouts and
ine Alaïa, Suzanne Tide Frater of Har-
rods and Carla Sozzani of Milan and
Dennis Freedman of W magazine — to
judge the photography, Hyères has be-
come a networking springboard for new
talents, like Viktor & Rolf of the Nether-
lands who won the competition in 1993.
The Gwand festival in Lucerne,
Switzerland, which bestows an annual
grant of ¤100,000 to a designer,
sponsored by the Swiss textiles federa-
tion, can be the source of a quantum
leap. That was the case with Raf Si-
mons of Belgium, a maverick men’s de-
signer, who won in 2003.
With the money, Simons was able to
push his vision forward. His spring
2005 collection, produced in summer
2004 after winning at Gwand, was in-
strumental to his appointment as the
creative director of Jil Sander in 2005.
But before the prizes comes the hard
work and that, in most cases, requires a
leap of faith that few have the stamina
or courage to undertake. On Wednes-
day, the Canadian Nicolas Andreas
Taralis, in his third season, is sched-
uled to open his first formal show, at
the Petits-Augustins chapel at the Ecole
des Beaux Arts in Paris.
Taralis, whose clothes are now pro-
duced in Italy and who already sells to
some of the world’s top stores includ-
ing Barneys in New York, Maxfield’s in
Los Angeles and the IT in Hong Kong,
studied with Helmut Lang at the Uni-
versity of Applied Arts in Vienna and
put in three years on Hedi Slimane’s
team at Dior Homme.
‘‘I don’t own a sewing machine,’’
Taralis readily admits. ‘‘I don’t make
patterns. I develop everything with
outside companies.’’ Taralis has re-
cently moved his production from Slov-
enia to Italy. ‘‘Italy operates like a fam-
ily and they’re very good at business,’’
he says. Although the future for a de-
signer like Taralis remains uncertain,
he is confidant. ‘‘I don’t have the budget
yet to hire Thierry Dreyfus to produce
a major show, but I’m applying my
point of view in every aspect of what I
do and I think that communicates.’’
Behind every promising young de-
Watching over her nest of eight de-
signers staging fashion shows this week
— notably the American Matthew
Ames and Cosmic Wonder of Japan —
is Josiane Cristofoli of the agency Cris-
pensive clothes and ultimately this is
about making a profit.’’ But profit is rel-
ative, especially in fashion. ‘‘Of course
we don’t know what is going to happen
tomorrow,’’ she says. Of the new de-
tofoli Press in Paris. At least once a signers, she adds, ‘‘fashion is about
month, Cristofoli receives a new more than just the money.’’
dossier from a designer looking for rep-
resentation, most of them from Europe, Rebecca Voight is co-editor in chief of
but increasingly from Asia. Zoo magazine.
‘Sample’ of new heros
aking the legwork out of cool
T hunting is a new book that places
the inspirations of 100 young design-
ers at your fingertips. ‘‘Sample,’’ pub-
lished by Phaidon in July, looks like
the mood books designers use to
keep swatches of fabric, magazine
clippings and other bits of inspira-
tion.
The style compendium follows on
the heels of Phaidon’s 1998 ‘‘Cream’’
series on contemporary art.
‘‘Sample’’ is based on the selections
of 10 international ‘‘curators,’’ or
fashion experts, who each chose 10
young designers for inclusion.
The result is a world tour of avant-
garde fashion from those at the cut-
ting edge, like Olivier Theyskens, the
creative director of Rochas, to newer
names like Haider Ackermann who
won the Gwand prize in Lucerne, The cover of ‘‘Sample.’’
Switzerland, this year. He is sched-
uled to present his show in Paris on Some of the best input came from
Friday. people like Arianne Phillips.
In between figure many of fash- Madonna’s stylist for the past seven
ion’s yet unsung heroes like Isabela years, Phillips made a diverse choice,
Capeto from Rio de Janeiro and Ou- including Jeffrey Costello and
mou Sy from Dakar, Senegal. Robert Tagliapietra, a designing duo
Bronwyn Cosgrave, formerly fea- from Brooklyn known for their liquid
tures editor at British Vogue, chose jersey dresses; the New York-based
the book’s fashion curators to menswear designer Andrew Harmon
provide an international view, ‘‘and and Jeremy Scott, who took Paris by
not just the latest from the runways’’ storm with his tongue-in-cheek style
in Paris, Milan and New York, Cos- a few years back before relocating to
grave says. ‘‘I wanted to capture the Los Angeles to dress the stars.
global scene.’’ — Rebecca Voight

A poets’ corner:
Rock undercover
Continued from Page 11

on the chairs and from the ballet practice bar at the Chapur-
in show — the Russian designer’s Paris debut.
‘‘I want to give a new impression about old Russia — I
didn’t want folklore,’’ said Igor Chapurin. ‘‘The ballet aes-
thetic is still strong in Russia and that art is for ever. I wanted
to catch its intellectual emotion.’’ (Chapurin is designing the
costumes for Stravinsky’s ‘‘Playing Cards’’ at the newly re-
furbished Bolshoi ballet next month.)
The concept, which had real charm, was of a ballerina’s
day, from the first hours of practice in a draped jersey dress
with leggings and high-heeled pumps based on a ballet slip-
per shape. Then the show moved into draped dresses that
had patches of sparkle as if brushed with snow. Pleated
dresses, usually anchored at the waist, had a touch of Lanvin,
but there were original details, such as exquisitely made
pleats at the shoulder or transparent plastic globes as embel-
lishment. And the full-sleeved Cossack blouse has never
looked so upscale as in a shaded blue taffeta, giving volume
as light as a ballerina’s fouetté.
While other capital cities never seem to warm to new tal-
ent, Paris greets it with wide open arms. A young Belgian de-
signer, Cathy Pill, 24, was able to put an installation on dis-
play for one day at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs on Monday.
Looking at the intricate and graphic patterns, inspired by the
Art Nouveau architecture of her native city, Pill proved why
she has won a slew of accolades and awards since she gradu-
ate from La Cambre fashion school. Those scholarships have
financed her first collection.
‘‘It is not really Art Nouveau but its sinuous arabesques,’’
said Pill, explaining how she worked digitally on the prints
MARTIN GR ANT
Photographs by Christopher Moore/Andrew Thomas
to give them a ‘‘coup de vent’’ or wind-blown effects, so that
the pattern follows the course of the body. So did the fabric,
when Pill used jersey, making both optical black and white
patterns and vibrantly colored effects inspired by stained
glass windows.
Grant’s classic elegance
The Paris season is only 48 hours old, yet already there is beaming Lee Radziwill took in the Australian designer
the sense that a fresh wind of new talent is blowing through
the spring/summer 2006 collections.
A Martin Grant’s show on Monday. From what came down
the runway there were a lot of reasons to smile. Once again
Grant sent out a collection of deceptively simple and beauti-
Suzy Menkes is the fashion editor of the International Her- ful clothes that would be a good addition to any wardrobe. A
ald Tribune. choice of neutral colors like aqua, beige, white and midnight
blue and the only adornment, a wide headband, kept the fo-
cus on the designer’s love of tailoring and clean lines. A
iht.com wistful feel of simpler times permeated the show, as when a
Showroom: Via Sant’Andrea 18 Milano +39 02 76075111 WWW.FURLA.COM Coverage of Paris’s fashion week, including slide shows cocktail invitation’s dress code meant diamond or inverted
and an e-mail newsletter. pleats on taffeta skirts, chiffon empire dresses or a satin
evening trench. — Jessica Michault