Cruise control
This season sees the Resort/Cruise collections go mainstream. As customers are increasingly fashion-aware and exposed to newness 24/7, the onus is on designers to give them more fashion, more frequently. Whereas Cruise used to be something of an also-ran (see this article from 1988!), this season it’s become an event in itself with proper celebs – witness Jennifer Lopez, Charlize Theron and Christina Aguilera at Dior – and coverage in the dailies.
This quote from Karl Lagerfeld on Style.com sums it up:
“It’s not Resort anymore. It’s another collection—in the story of Fall, pre-Fall, Paris/London, pre-Spring, Spring—called “cruise.” It’s like a code name, but the thing is that Chanel needs six ready-to-wear collections a year, every two months completely new things at the shops. There are hundreds of shops all over the world that have to have something new all the time or else there’s no reason to go back. Or else you go to a place like Colette where they see 100 labels. If it’s one label, this label needs to have something new all the time.”
Pic: Style.com
16 May, 2008 @ 11:24 am
This is interesting … The Cruise thing has gone into overdrive in the past few years and I find it crazy that brands are now having to meet demand by creating new products constantly. Chanel is becoming like a chain factory offering novelties incessantly.
16 May, 2008 @ 5:48 pm
See, no one is saying that labels should only have 2 shipments of clothes and leave them on the racks for 6 months and have no change. The thing that bothers me is, why do you need to make a big hoopla about it? It’s nice to just go into a store and buy something that no one’s ever seen before and perhaps won’t be automatically identified as “ooh look she has the chanel shoes” as opposed to “wow, those shoes are cute”.
I dunno, I’m not a designer but I just think it’s a waste of time, money and effort to put such elaborate shows between the collections that really matter.