March 16, 2009
Fashion Directors Being Phased Out
By Tom Ryan
If merchandising is a mix between art and
science, art has recently been losing some ground. According to an article
in the New York Times, the fashion director position at some department
and luxury stores is being phased out. This is partly due to ongoing
cost-cutting measures but also because many other avenues have opened up
to offer fashion direction.
The article comes as fashion directors at
Saks and Lord & Taylor have been let go in recent months, but the position
overall has lost its stature over the years.
"I would not say that the fashion director
is obsolete," Howard Davidowitz, the chairman
of Davidowitz & Associates, told the Times.
But in recent years, "the role has been greatly diminished."
In their heyday, fashion directors influenced
the look of windows, floor displays and advertising, and served as the
authority on fashion for the public in magazines. While not physically
writing orders, they steered buying decisions. Often relying on instinct,
they were counted on for spotting trends and finding emerging designers
to help establish an exclusive image for the store.
Legends such as Dawn Mello of Bergdorf Goodman
played a critical role in launching the careers of Giorgio Armani, Donna
Karan and Michael Kors. Kal Ruttenstein of Bloomingdale’s,
who earns credit for discovering Mark Jacobs and Sean Comb,
"could forge a career on finding a single hot item like rhinestone jeans
and send crowds flocking to a store’s flamboyantly theatrical windows,"
according to the article.
Fashion directors began to lose their influence
as cost-cutting has become more important and retailers have recently begun
favoring more conservative looks over progressive ones.
"The priority for these stores is to
save money and provide better profit margins," Mr. Davidowitz said.
The other reason is the arrival of trend
reporting TV (including reality shows like Project Runway) and websites
such as style.com.
"Today, information flows so fast that
there is no need to wait for pronouncements from fashion directors," said
Ed Burstell, a former Bergdorf Goodman executive
and now the buying director for Liberty of London. "It’s already out
there and presented with authority."
At stores still carrying the position, the
fashion director job is now about communications and becoming the
"ambassador" for the store through magazine and TV coverage, as
well as through e-mail, webcasts and store appearances.
Spotting trends and design talent is left for the buyers.
"Today it’s the merchandise manager
who carries the weight," said Marvin Traub, who headed Bloomingdale’s in the late seventies and
throughout the eighties. "He has an eye to the numbers."
Discussion Questions: Is the diminishing
role of the fashion director harmful to department and luxury stores?
What can stores do to develop the trends and designer talent that fashion
directors had been responsible for?
BrainTrust
Recent Discussions
Discussion Questions
Poll
Department/Fashion Apparel stores are in survival mode now, like everyone else. With margins narrowing, and markdowns increasing, there is little room for “art.” The science has taken over and the CFOs line of business is calling the shots. Have the fashion directors been out of touch lately anyway? Yes, for the majority.
There are some great exceptions who don’t follow the trends, but set them. We can all think of those retailers. And it’s funny how those are typically in less financial trouble than others who have refused to evolve from literally the past fifty years and keep pushing the same old stuff. Operators think there is less risk in following the trends, however, it ends up being the largest risk because of the lack of differentiation. All that separates them is the depth of the markdown.
Without doubt, this issue represents the horns of dilemma for any retailer associate with or dependent to any degree on fashion. On the one hand, differentiation requires that the store have a unique perspective on fashion, and that this perspective be consistently implemented throughout the organization (from differing buying areas to in-store displays to public-facing media). On the other hand, by staking out a unique perspective, in an time when fashion has very little in the way of compelling perspectives of any kind, creates extraordinary risk.
Best practices suggest that fashion commitment is an all or nothing proposition. Moderate spend, with limited cross-departmental and cross-functional coordination and synergy, generally results in poor results with limited upside. Heavy spend, on the other hand, also often results in poor results.
That’s simply because fashion-right is a difficult to sustain metric. Like major league baseball, an All Star bats .300. Which means he fails 70% of the time. My experience has been that fashion interpretation follows a similar relationship.
Is this the time to be abandoning differentiation? No. There is no time when that is an effective strategy. Is fashion currently a “safe” bet in building differentiation? No. However, lacking any other form of effective differentiation, it becomes something upscale and luxury retailers must continue to invest in.
The “science” behind trend interpretation isn’t just in the numbers of what is selling. It’s also in the processes, formats, people skills and organizational support brought to bear. There is a science to managing programs well, and a definitive science to managing product development, trend identification and tactical execution well. Unfortunately, retail organizational structures rarely allow for the application of this type of science.
A better reason to make the position obsolete is the fact that they’ve been doing such a poor job. The real art in this position or anything like it at larger chains, like the Gap or Ann Taylor, is that you’ve got to understand what the fashion is AND what it is about it that sells. And for the past decade, the selling part has been the lost art.
It’s one thing to be ‘fashion-forward’ and to understand and project trends, but at the end of the day, it still has to SELL. It has to be be understood and desired by customers, not just you and your co-horts. And that’s a big miss lately.
Another factor is the overwhelming reliance on the ‘science’ factor in fashion. Rarely do you see anyone taking an adventure with color or style anymore (thus making it not really fashion, but more like doing what consultants are telling you to do). How can I tell? Take yellow as an example. If you walk into a fashion retailer today and see vivid pieces of yellow inventory, you can bet that when you walk into the competition right next door, you’ll see that exact same yellow and perhaps even the same style. Is that fashion? Or is that doing what you’re told?
Coach is an example of how to do it right–they’ve got fresh looks and styles in a very engaging environment, and lo and behold, they’re doing quite well. Subsequently, I’ll bet their fashion director still has a job. Hopefully, the upside of this downturn will be the weeding out of the fashion scientists and the re-birth of great fashion merchants.
Fashion directors aren’t dead; however, in some cases, they’ve been re-titled. Nordstrom went to great lengths to bring Jeffrey Kalinsky (owner of cutting edge Jeffrey boutiques in New York and Atlanta) in as its “EVP and designer of merchandising,” a role that has him trend-spotting all over the globe and taking a heavy hand in the design oversight process. So invested was Nordstrom in this role that they took a majority stake in Mr. Kalinsky’s boutiques to ensure that he’d stay put. With Nordstrom’s enviably well-developed private labels and ongoing need to balance them with truly differentiated brands, they made a great choice.
Isaac Mizrahi recently ditched his design-a-line role at Target for a larger role as “creative director” for Liz Claiborne, one that will help the brand realize its full lifestyle brand potential beyond designer apparel (let’s not forget that Claiborne IS a retailer as well as a wholesale brand).
And…if you need some actual “fashion directors,” there’s Steve Cardino, Russell Orlando, and Nicole Fischelis (and that’s just Macy’s), Colleen Sherin at Sak’s, Anne Watson at Henri Bendel….
A fashion director by any other name….
While we’re at it–doesn’t having the right fashion director also give a retailer a strong base for differentiation? If everybody follows the same trend data, won’t most people end up featuring similar items? And, if that happens, won’t most fashion retailers look the same? Oh wait…maybe that’s already happened.
I had a chance to have dinner with a fashion director in a major middle scale department store chain. I came away afterwards thinking that sometimes a fashion director can be as out of touch with Main Street as anyone. Fashion should be for everyone, not just for manikins, the red carpet crowd, and magazine ads, at least if the retailer has interest in making sales and profits.
It’s like firing the person that best understands your customer. High end luxury and apparel retailing are the only areas of retail that benefits from having middle management. If my business is reliant on trendy merchandise, I want as many opinions as possible. And having more people in the field can give you an advantage in getting the latest product.
For a relatively small cost, fashion and trend directors can help steer department stores and luxury retailers toward “big ideas.” Most national companies drive their apparel product development a year in advance, and it seems a small price to pay if fashion directors can help galvanize their stores (and, in turn, their consumers) in a particular trend direction.
If anything, this role might be more important for the Macy’s of the world rather than a store like Neiman Marcus, where so much trend direction is set by individual designers anyway. One of the underlying causes of the current retail slump is the lack of a “big idea”–it’s not just about the economy–so this trend looks short-sighted to me.
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Department/Fashion Apparel stores are in survival mode now, like everyone else. With margins narrowing, and markdowns increasing, there is little room for “art.” The science has taken over and the CFOs line of business is calling the shots. Have the fashion directors been out of touch lately anyway? Yes, for the majority.
There are some great exceptions who don’t follow the trends, but set them. We can all think of those retailers. And it’s funny how those are typically in less financial trouble than others who have refused to evolve from literally the past fifty years and keep pushing the same old stuff. Operators think there is less risk in following the trends, however, it ends up being the largest risk because of the lack of differentiation. All that separates them is the depth of the markdown.
Without doubt, this issue represents the horns of dilemma for any retailer associate with or dependent to any degree on fashion. On the one hand, differentiation requires that the store have a unique perspective on fashion, and that this perspective be consistently implemented throughout the organization (from differing buying areas to in-store displays to public-facing media). On the other hand, by staking out a unique perspective, in an time when fashion has very little in the way of compelling perspectives of any kind, creates extraordinary risk.
Best practices suggest that fashion commitment is an all or nothing proposition. Moderate spend, with limited cross-departmental and cross-functional coordination and synergy, generally results in poor results with limited upside. Heavy spend, on the other hand, also often results in poor results.
That’s simply because fashion-right is a difficult to sustain metric. Like major league baseball, an All Star bats .300. Which means he fails 70% of the time. My experience has been that fashion interpretation follows a similar relationship.
Is this the time to be abandoning differentiation? No. There is no time when that is an effective strategy. Is fashion currently a “safe” bet in building differentiation? No. However, lacking any other form of effective differentiation, it becomes something upscale and luxury retailers must continue to invest in.
The “science” behind trend interpretation isn’t just in the numbers of what is selling. It’s also in the processes, formats, people skills and organizational support brought to bear. There is a science to managing programs well, and a definitive science to managing product development, trend identification and tactical execution well. Unfortunately, retail organizational structures rarely allow for the application of this type of science.
A better reason to make the position obsolete is the fact that they’ve been doing such a poor job. The real art in this position or anything like it at larger chains, like the Gap or Ann Taylor, is that you’ve got to understand what the fashion is AND what it is about it that sells. And for the past decade, the selling part has been the lost art.
It’s one thing to be ‘fashion-forward’ and to understand and project trends, but at the end of the day, it still has to SELL. It has to be be understood and desired by customers, not just you and your co-horts. And that’s a big miss lately.
Another factor is the overwhelming reliance on the ‘science’ factor in fashion. Rarely do you see anyone taking an adventure with color or style anymore (thus making it not really fashion, but more like doing what consultants are telling you to do). How can I tell? Take yellow as an example. If you walk into a fashion retailer today and see vivid pieces of yellow inventory, you can bet that when you walk into the competition right next door, you’ll see that exact same yellow and perhaps even the same style. Is that fashion? Or is that doing what you’re told?
Coach is an example of how to do it right–they’ve got fresh looks and styles in a very engaging environment, and lo and behold, they’re doing quite well. Subsequently, I’ll bet their fashion director still has a job. Hopefully, the upside of this downturn will be the weeding out of the fashion scientists and the re-birth of great fashion merchants.
Fashion directors aren’t dead; however, in some cases, they’ve been re-titled. Nordstrom went to great lengths to bring Jeffrey Kalinsky (owner of cutting edge Jeffrey boutiques in New York and Atlanta) in as its “EVP and designer of merchandising,” a role that has him trend-spotting all over the globe and taking a heavy hand in the design oversight process. So invested was Nordstrom in this role that they took a majority stake in Mr. Kalinsky’s boutiques to ensure that he’d stay put. With Nordstrom’s enviably well-developed private labels and ongoing need to balance them with truly differentiated brands, they made a great choice.
Isaac Mizrahi recently ditched his design-a-line role at Target for a larger role as “creative director” for Liz Claiborne, one that will help the brand realize its full lifestyle brand potential beyond designer apparel (let’s not forget that Claiborne IS a retailer as well as a wholesale brand).
And…if you need some actual “fashion directors,” there’s Steve Cardino, Russell Orlando, and Nicole Fischelis (and that’s just Macy’s), Colleen Sherin at Sak’s, Anne Watson at Henri Bendel….
A fashion director by any other name….
While we’re at it–doesn’t having the right fashion director also give a retailer a strong base for differentiation? If everybody follows the same trend data, won’t most people end up featuring similar items? And, if that happens, won’t most fashion retailers look the same? Oh wait…maybe that’s already happened.
I had a chance to have dinner with a fashion director in a major middle scale department store chain. I came away afterwards thinking that sometimes a fashion director can be as out of touch with Main Street as anyone. Fashion should be for everyone, not just for manikins, the red carpet crowd, and magazine ads, at least if the retailer has interest in making sales and profits.
It’s like firing the person that best understands your customer. High end luxury and apparel retailing are the only areas of retail that benefits from having middle management. If my business is reliant on trendy merchandise, I want as many opinions as possible. And having more people in the field can give you an advantage in getting the latest product.
For a relatively small cost, fashion and trend directors can help steer department stores and luxury retailers toward “big ideas.” Most national companies drive their apparel product development a year in advance, and it seems a small price to pay if fashion directors can help galvanize their stores (and, in turn, their consumers) in a particular trend direction.
If anything, this role might be more important for the Macy’s of the world rather than a store like Neiman Marcus, where so much trend direction is set by individual designers anyway. One of the underlying causes of the current retail slump is the lack of a “big idea”–it’s not just about the economy–so this trend looks short-sighted to me.