Fashion Industry Brand Creative Director Frequent Exchange Of Blood, The New Fashion Scene Has Already Begun To Prototype Chanel What Is The Future?

French media reported that LVMH boss Bernard Arnault was meeting with the Chanel family Wertheimer family to try to acquire Chanel.

Over the past 20 years, the structure of the fashion industry has been relatively stable, and now it seems to usher in a new turning point. There is no doubt that once those traders who build traditional power system quit, fashion will become another scene.

Rumors about the retirement of Anna Wintour, the editor in chief of the US version VOGUE and the director of Kangtai Nash group, are rampant. Although Nash official of Kangtai has denied the news from various channels, the heat of the topic remains high. After a period of intense exchange of blood from the creative director, people have frequently witnessed the rumours of violation of common sense, and thus began to re examine the fashion that has been accepted and the future direction of this fashion.

Few people realize that the "fashion" that people are accustomed to nowadays is exactly the concept built in the past 20 years by Anna Wintour and a lot of brands and designers. Fashion is not necessarily necessary.

New York Times fashion director Vanessa Friedman published an article entitled "fashion world after Anna Wintour" last week. She pointed out that the rumors of Anna Wintour's departure undoubtedly inspired people's imagination. What would the fashion world be like without Anna Wintour?

Karl Lagerfeld, the creative director of Chanel, known as Lord Buddha, recently has a beard. Some people think this may be a prediction.

She also mentioned that Karl Lagerfeld is still the most stable person in the fashion industry today, and he signed a lifelong contract with Chanel. Karl Lagerfeld has been the creative director of Chanel since 1983 and has been the creative director of Fendi for more than 50 years. Earlier, he said in an interview, "why do I have to stop working? If I don't work, I may die."

But can Karl Lagerfeld really sit on the floor of Chanel creative director?

As early as 2010, Karl Lagerfeld said in an interview with Numero magazine, "I signed a lifelong contract, so it mainly depends on who I want to take over. At the moment, I would say that Haider Ackermann is more suitable." Subsequently, Karl Lagerfeld decided to Haider Ackermann for the news of creative director.

Karl Lagerfeld (left) and Haider Ackermann (right)

But this statement was denied the following year. Karl Lagerfeld told us magazine W that he thought Haider Ackermann could go to Givenchy, and denied the idea of adding Haider Ackermann to Chanel. "I don't think that's his world."

Since 2016, the news that Karl Lagerfeld is about to retire has gone wild again in the industry. The reason is that the US gossip tabloid Page Six quoted sources as saying that Karl Lagerfeld is very tired and unsatisfactory at work. He is ready to retire. The message also says that the Cuban holiday series will be his last series.

The news was then clarified in Karl Lagerfeld's interview with us Harper 's BAZAAR magazine. But despite the signing of a lifetime contract, the fashion industry's speculation about the retirement of the 85 year old Karl Lagerfeld has never stopped. Last year's Hamburg vacation Series in Germany was once the last of its series.

In fact, whether from the industry environment or Chanel's own performance, Karl Lagerfeld's position is not as stable as people imagine.

From the perspective of the industry environment, the fashion industry is undergoing structural changes, and brand designers are constantly exchanging blood. The new fashion scene has already begun to take shape. Since Kai Yun group's Gucci won the battle with Alessandro Michele, LVMH has been more aggressive recently.

Maria Grazia Chiuri, who took office last year, injected a new young design language into Dior for the 70 year old fashion house. Kim Jones left Louis Louis Vuitton men's creative director to replace Dior Kris Van with Dior. Left Saint Laurent's Hedi Slimane steering helm C line, leaving Riccardo Riccardo Tisci Burberry. Earlier, Givenchy, Chlo, and Marni had gone through a round of exchange for creative directors.

The purpose of frequent replacement of creative director is to bring new impetus to brand, behind which is the anxiety that fashion brands can not dispel. The pace of fashion industry continues to accelerate, consumers' preferences are unpredictable, and brands can not find a more effective way at a time. It seems that they can only respond to changes in the market by constantly changing their creative directors.

As one of the three fashion brands, Chanel has some capital in its own way. In the past half century, Chanel has maintained a solid position in the fashion industry. At the same time, as the Chanel group is mainly held by Alain Wertheimer and Gerard Wertheimer, the performance pressure of Chanel is relatively smaller than that of the listed group. But in the past two years, Nicholas Ghesquiere, the creative director of women's clothing except Louis Vuitton, is still in office. Among the three luxury brands of Louis Vuitton, Dior and Chanel, only Karl Lagerfeld is firmly in the position of Chanel.

This is a good thing and a bad thing.

　 As a classic luxury brand, the frequent internal turmoil is not beneficial to the brand. However, for Karl Lagerfeld, it has been brewing for a long time that its design has been unchanged.

Karl Lagerfeld has always been more open to new things. Whether it is in the layout of the show or in the choice of brand advertising, it is designed to keep pace with the trend of the younger generation, such as the setting up of computer room and space theme show, as well as the choice of new generation of brand friends such as Lily-Rose Depp, Kendall Jenner, Kristen Stewart, Ouyang Nana and so on.

But under the theme of a series of younger packaging, the design core of Karl Lagerfeld remains the same, and more analysis points out that many topic specific packaging is just the illusion of being younger, packing the Karl Lagerfeld outdated creative way.

Product and brand image disconnection is the most serious problem of Chanel at present. After the last time in the showroom to build a simulation rocket, Chanel built second Eiffel Tower last year. The extravagant show is obviously also due to some misunderstandings of Chanel to the new generation of consumers, especially the Millennials. 　　

The Chanel 2018 autumn winter series moved a real virgin forest into the The Grand Palace of Paris, extending the importance of the exhibition layout.

In the future, consumers' expectations of luxury brands are no longer a distant and magnificent setting, but a cultural and emotional interaction; not a carefully constructed dream of landing on the moon and a centralism of Paris, but a resonance with consumers on issues they care about; they are not the image of a brand built by the brand, but the unique personality of the consumers themselves, not the extravagant and wasteful comparisons, but the contest of taste and personality; not the slogan of "subversive innovation", but a more diverse and fresh experience. 　　

The picture is Karl Lagerfeld's fashion sketch.

What is more alarming is that few people in the industry dare to criticize the luxury goods giant Chanel. Because Chanel is spending money on advertising and marketing, it is an important customer of many fashion media. Therefore, most media commentaries after the fashion show focus on the theme show device, and this is precisely because there is not much room for discussion about the lack of changing products.

On the product side, founder Gabrielle Chanel once brought subversive liberation for women's attire. But nowadays, Chanel's clothing products have not been innovated for many years, almost every season is based on the classic tweed suit, and the deformation of each season is almost "changing the soup without changing the dressing". As the first batch of luxury brands to publicize the theme of sports, Chanel is very forward looking for the rise of sports. However, in today's street sports trend, Chanel has begun to lag behind.

The headline analysis of fashion headlines has warned Chanel that it is dangerous to rely on Chanel, an old version of the original. Brand performance continued to decline in 2016, and its sales revenue and profits fell sharply for 2 consecutive years, compared with other luxury brands.

Data show that Chanel sales fell by 9% to 5 billion 670 million dollars over the previous fiscal year, operating profit fell 20% to 1 billion 280 million US dollars, net profit fell 35% to 874 million US dollars, and the profit margin was 15.4%, a sharp decline compared with 21.5% in 2015.

However, compared with fashion business, Chanel will devote more effort to the cosmetic business and get better results. market Repercussions.

In order to compete for young people, Chanel launched an account called welovecoco on Instagram, which used to collect buyer shows on the platform for brand beauty products. In addition, in Tokyo and other places continue to develop flash shop form.

In the Chinese market, Chanel accelerated the layout of beauty and perfume business. From last year's COCO Cafe coffee flash shop to all kinds of online H5 promotion activities, WeChat sold perfume online, and then to the Coco's limited time amusement hall makeup shop in Shanghai K11 yesterday. Chanel has achieved a more direct communication with the consumers in the cosmetics business.

However, in the background of other luxury brands, the single carriage will not bring fundamental impetus to Chanel in the competitive beauty market. This brings more pressure to the creative director position of Karl Lagerfeld. After all, the current luxury business system forces creative directors to pay more attention to "business" rather than "creativity".

The current fashion industry is almost at stake, including fashion The media, including brands, are very patient with creative directors. Even brilliance such as Haider Ackermann, such as its gloomy departure from Berluti, is happening more and more frequently. You can even venture to speculate that the lifetime contract signed by Karl Lagerfeld and Chanel may be the last life contract in fashion history.

Today, the young generation of designers will be brutally replaced by things that will not happen to Karl Lagerfeld. Their friendship with Chanel for many years is a good example of the relationship between creative director and brand. But now it seems that he can continue to take the helm with a question mark.

We may also dare to predict that the creative director of the creative director has not yet belonged to the three creative directors. They are the Phoebe Philo who left the C line temporarily to return home, and the Haider Ackermann, who had been appointed by Karl Lagerfeld and just stepped away from Berluti, had earlier left the Alber Alber of Lanvin. The three creative directors have accumulated considerable popularity in the industry. Another analysis is that Haider Ackermann, which is "strategically eliminated" by LVMH, may no longer work for LVMH, so it is not entirely impossible to switch to Chanel.

Another possibility of the Karl Lagerfeld is to choose among the new generation of designers who own personal brands. But for the massive Chanel Empire built by Karl Lagerfeld, the new generation of designers may still be incompetent and do not rule out the possibility of attracting more creative directors.

It is hard to imagine Chanel in the post Karl Lagerfeld era, just as it is hard to imagine the fashion media industry after the Anna Wintour era.

However fashion Before the "top fashion is dying," the headline pointed out that the changes that are going on in fashion today will be structural evolution, involving the fundamental production relationship of fashion and creativity. Vanessa Friedman said that the idea of Anna Wintour and the idea of a person or magazine as the final arbiter of style may be the same as the paper itself.

Karl Lagerfeld is the only one who has been active since the last century. Latest fashion Designers, once handed over to the helm, represent the traditional fashion design method that represents the last century's insisting sketching of fashion sketches. It will also become the past with the arrival of the new generation of designers. Now in the central Saint Martin and other design institutes, you will find that almost no student has sketched a rough sketch on the paper.

It is worth noting that after LVMH released its first quarter earnings report, it held a shareholders' meeting in Le Louvre Museum, Paris, France recently. The chairman and CEO Bernard Arnault first responded to the rumors that LVMH would buy Chanel. At the end of last year, French media reported that Bernard Arnault was meeting with the Wertheimer family of Chanel owners to try to buy Chanel. Although Bernard Arnault said the group had never been in touch with Chanel, it still could not stop the industry from worrying about whether Chanel could maintain its independent future.

In the first 20 years, Chanel can sit back and relax, but today's world is changing so fast that sticking to rules is not an option at all. The traditional rules of the fashion industry are still being broken.

No matter when Karl Lagerfeld leaves office, for Chanel, how to innovate products should be on the agenda. After all, buy Chanel at home. Handbag People know that they are not buying practical products, but buying social distance and expression of values. Once young people start fleeing Chanel, they will get into a bigger crisis.