An extremely wearing business
Anita Brookner
THE FASHION CONSPIRACY by Nicholas Coleridge
Heinemann, £12.95
The extent of the conspiracy is indi- cated by the photographs, which show beaming and prosperous designers accom- panying women who may or may not be their wives (designers are in great demand as escorts) but who on the whole look awful. Mr Calvin Klein accompanies Mrs Calvin Klein who wears a short belted strapless dress that makes her look like a Christmas cracker. Valentino accompanies Nan Kempner who wears a disastrous blouse with the shoulders ripped out and cuffs that cover the knuckles. Karl Lager- feld accompanies Princess Caroline who wears an ill-judged dress complicated by jewelled armlets. Some of the ladies prefer to go it alone, like Paloma Picasso, with half a hundredweight of mink tails on her bodice, Judy Peabody, with shoulders like an aeroplane runway, and Mica Ertegun in a copy of a dress I wore when I was 14, but for which she, presumably, paid a great deal more. Mine was made by the village dressmaker, had too much material round the waist, and fitted nowhere. Hers looks exactly the same.
I could have done with a great deal more of this, but Nicholas. Coleridge, fatally attracted by his subject, is out to prove that he is made of sterner stuff. His book is substantial and will presumably not be welcome to those in the trade or the conspiracy, because what emerges from his pages is the fact that serious money can be made in the fashion business, although outworkers, on whom the business relies, may be illiterate, confined to barrack-like sweatshops in Seoul or Stoke Newington, and useless after the age of 25 when their eyes give out.
This is to state the case baldly. There are thus two conspiracies at work here, although Mr Coleridge does not quite differentiate between them. The first is the unwearable nature of many couture gar- ments. The second is the disparity in the fortunes of those who design them and those who make them. Ralph Lauren, for example, announced a 1986 turnover of 1.3 billion dollars. He owns a 10,000-acre ranch in Colorado, a duplex on Fifth Avenue, a beach-front house on the tip of Long Island, and a house in Montego Bay. Karl Lagerfeld has an apartment in the rue d'Universite, two apartments in Monaco, a flat in Rome, and the Château de Penhoit near Vannes in Brittany. Giorgio Armani: two Milanese palazzos, a house in Forte dei Marmi, and a villa in Pantelleria.
The activity that puts all this money in the bank is entirely commendable, occa- sionally brilliant, and very occasionally inspired. It is also essentially frivolous. But a woman who wants to wear couture clothes must suffer to be beautiful, and there is nothing frivolous in the obligatory attendance at the collections, the rigour of the fittings, and the fact that the body must be kept in constant subjection in order to display the clothes. This is presumably why American women constitute the majority of buyers, since American women get thinner as they get older, whereas all other women get fatter. The garments, particu- larly the evening dresses, are needed for the great public charity balls which are such a feature of American social life and for which there is no equivalent in Eng- land. The daywear is worn for lunch, and Mr Coleridge helpfully gives a list of power restaurants in which to wear your designer clothes or to see them being worn. These restaurants may also be frequented by fashion editors and buyers, presumably out of terror that all the competitors in the field may be lunching somewhere else.
A jump suit by Liz Claiborne in Macy's (`. . something for little girls to celebrate in the terrific holiday collection by Liz Claiborne. In dusty pink and blueberry cotton') will be photographed on a model in the Seychelles but will have been turned out in a Madras sweatshop. At the other end of the scale, a £7000 Chanel suit, paid for in cash by a Kuwaiti husband, will be worn by one of his wives under a billowing black abaya. The conspiracy is one of money. Top designers live like Renaiss- ance princes, displaying more taste in their acquisitions than in some of their ideas. Mr Coleridge interviewed a number of them and has very few unkind words to say about them, even when they make women look like lampshades. This, to a certain extent, is understandable. There is a cer- tain gusto in excess, and fashion is no longer about subtle understatement. And a fashion show is about licence and frenzy, and the more excitement that is generated the greater becomes the urge to participate in the fun.
There is no point in being sensible about fashion. The money, although very real, is the equivalent of fool's gold. The timetab- ling, though hieratic and exacting, is large- ly for the benefit of the leisured. Only in Italy, with its excellent factories, does the business have an internal logic and a certain dignity. Paris is largely about repu- tation and presentation: English fashion leans distressingly on parody and cheek. But designs are so easy to copy or 'inter- pret' that the fashion scene now is largely international, and the same boutiques sell the same clothes in Chicago as in Tokyo. It is a wonder that members of the Shiny set, as Mr Coleridge dubs the largely American contingent of very rich women who make the best-dressed lists in W, can tell each other apart. But of course the Shiny set go to the couture houses. It is the possessors of just enough money to buy a suit in a Chanel boutique who may meet their counterparts in Sloane Street (to which Mr Coleridge devotes a Tom Wolfe-ish chap- ter in this amusing but exhausting book) or Madison Avenue. Presumably the solution to this dilemma is to become much much richer.
Designers of the heroic dimension of Lagerfeld or Valentino may be said to be role models of a certain type. Talent or genius must be allied to tyranny, desire, and appetite. Since these motivations are widely shared by their customers there is no reason why the business should ever decline. Yet there is a fateful decadence in the whole phenomenon, and to a sensitive palate it is overwhelmingly distasteful. I am uncertain whether Mr Coleridge is for it or against it. His journey ended in the Meshal Dry Laundry in Kuwait, where thousands of expensive garments await collection. Their owners are so rich that they hardly ever bother to pick them up again. Meanwhile, in a sweatshop in Mad- ras. .
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