Paul Poiret: The Walking Dead ?

PAUL POIRET: THE WALKING DEAD?

Few of you might know the master couturier of the beginning of the XXe century. He brought the orientalism in the lady’s wardrobe of this time, supressed the choking corset. But as business students we should remember him as the precursor of what we consider as being marketing nowadays. He was indeed the first one to do advertising, to promote his clothes through celebrities wearing it, or doing collaboration with artists. But the most interesting is probably that he is the first one, (and not Coco Chanel as most people think) to diversify his fashion brand to additional products as: perfumes and home decoration.

-         If he has done so much things, what don’t we know him today? Could you ask?

And the answer is very easy: the 1929’s crisis made him go bankrupted, and he died in 1944, forget of all. We had to wait the 80’s to rediscover him through exhibitions and documentaries.

-         But why I am talking about this brand, more than dead? Having not even cold ashes?

Because as a Phoenix, Poiret’s brand has reborn from the dead. That’s the bet The Luvanis society has taken. They are specialised in buying the rights of forgotten brands, to resell it to people ready to make it alive again. In 2015 Shinsegae the South Korean company of the little daughter of the Samsung’s founder, the equivalent of our Galleries Lafayettes; has acquired it. Oddly, they decided to relaunch the brand, putting Anne Chapelle as a CEO, she is already the head of Ann Demeulemeester and Haider Ackermann brands. They chose the French and Chinese, minimalist designer Yiqing Yin as artistic director. Anne Chapelle justify this choice because: she thinks that Yiqing Yin has a very close universe to Paul Poiret himself: “her soul seemed to be very close to the Poiret one’s. They both have this freedom, almost that sense of anarchy, eager to valorise the women’s beauty, understand their time. That was obvious, you can see in the fashion show: the Yiqing Yin's style combined to Mr Poiret voluptuousness.”  

Shinsegae has decided to keep the brand in his core city, Paris. When we ask to Luvanis group why choosing to wake up a forgotten brand, rather than launching new designers, they answer that this choice is very understandable in term of business: for the investors, it is always easier to puts money on a famous name, with a legacy, than bet on a new name.

I can't help myself thinking that it is a dangerous bet: if some relaunch of old brands has known some success, like Balenciaga, some others were catastrophic like Worth, or Madeleine Vionnet. Anne Chapelle has the argument for that: she said that we need more than never, brands like Paul Poiret, because we are living in a society which only privileged the product and the merchandising, rather than the creative message. We have forgotten the origins of couture, and we must reconnect with the original idea of beauty and put the stressed point on handicraft. She adds that we can digitalize everything we want, but we could never do it for the creative mind of the couturier.     

-         So, what about the show?

The show was nice. It is everything we can say, no mistake, clean, almost squeaky clean. No surprise, no risks taken, if I had not so much respect for Yiqing Yin work, I would even say “boring”. While looking at the show, I only had one thing in mind: ‘’we don’t need that”. The fashion sphere is already so much saturated, and the awakening of a dead brand, to bring nothing new, nothing interesting, nothing exciting, really, it’s not needed. I would have preferred to see something unexpected, breaking the codes of the brand, even chocking. So, my predictions for the brand are not very positive, but I hope to be wrong. We will see it during the up-coming shows.

To conclude: sometimes, is better to let the dead, resting in peace. And you, what are your predictions?

Marie-France Koua, Paris School Of Business, March 13th 2018.  

Sources : Le Figaro Madame.fr (27.02.2018) ‘’Les dessous de la Renaissance de la griffe Poiret sur les podiums Parisiens’’ par Hélène Guillaume et Valérie Guidon, Fashion Network (04.03.2018) ‘’Poiret ressuscite avec panache’’ par Dominique Muret, Le Monde (05.03.2018) ‘’fallait-il réveiller Poiret ?’’ par Elvire von Bardeleben.