It may not have been the queen staying in London during the blitz, but it was fashion’s version of a stiff upper lip. “This kind of war has never existed before. It’s glob-al and different,” Karl Lagerfeld, the designer for Chanel, said backstage. “We have to behave as if nothing has happened, because we don’t know what to expect. People want to dress, people want to forget. And our job is to help them do that.”
Not everyone approved. “Isn’t there enough aggression in the world without models snarling at the audience… stomping out with what looked like cartridge holders attached to their boots?” wrote Suzy Menkes, fashion critic for the International Herald Tribune, of the Dior show. In retaliation, Bernard Arnault, head of the luxury group Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton and owner of Dior, banned Menkes from covering any of his other houses’ shows. The message was clear: fashion lives in another world, and don’t you ever forget it! (By the end of the week, he had rescinded the ban.)
The Sept. 11 attacks have taken their toll on the luxury industry. Sales of high-end goods have plummeted. Major companies like Gucci and Prada have trimmed their profit forecasts. When the terrorists struck, fashion was in the throes of its New York show season. Instantly, the multibillion-dollar business, like the city itself, came to a halt. But within days designers such as Calvin Klein and Michael Kors began to stage intimate, informal presentations in their Seventh Avenue showrooms for top editors and buyers. They had to let the world know that they were still in business, since these are clothes for six to nine months from now.
London Fashion Week, which follows New York’s, was subdued. Nerves were still rattled, and most foreign editors and buyers shunned traveling and stayed home. Two weeks after the attacks, only a handful of leery editors attended the Milan shows. But by the time the Paris shows rolled around, the fashion set had regained its bearings. Anna Wintour, the editor of American Vogue, announced to her staff that she was going to Europe, as she had during the Persian Gulf War. The implication: so should they.
And there they were in Paris in full glam, sitting in the front rows of Valentino, Givenchy and Dior, sunglasses perched on their noses to block paparazzi flashes. Though the star quotient was lower than normal, celebs Jude Law, Paul McCartney and Dennis Hopper were on hand. So were the reps of major U.S. retailers, despite suffering from the U.S. slowdown–and a bigger expected drop in sales in the coming months. “I couldn’t ignore fashion in Europe and call myself a fashion director,” said Kalman Ruttenstein, senior vice president for fashion at Bloomingdale’s. “When the lights go down and the girls start coming out, that’s your focus.”
It wasn’t the first time the fashion world had stood tall in the face of war. During World War II, when the Nazis occupied the City of Light, about two dozen houses, including Lelong and Chanel, remained open, showing primarily for the wives and mistresses of wealthy collaborators and German officers. Everywhere the oppressed Parisiennes dressed in their finest, even when their finest was in tatters. Like Scarlett O’Hara turning her plantation drapes into an antebellum gown, dressing well before one’s enemies was a show of strength–and pride. As Colette noted in February 1942, “Standing in line for milk, rutabagas and mayonnaise with no oil or eggs, Paris brought forth its most characteristic feats, producing a figured velvet dress and a very dressy pink lame blouse.”
Of course, for Parisians, bombing Afghanistan is not as… intimate… as Hitler’s establishing his headquarters on the Place Vendome. But in this ever-shrinking global village, the war on terrorism didn’t seem very far away. After the attacks on New York and Washington, Galliano said, “It’s going to be hard to be creative and positive.” And though Cyprus-born designer Hussein Chalayan called his wasp-waist 1950s silk party dresses shredded in tatters “an unfortunate coincidence,” some editors wept at the sight of them–a poignant commentary on the beauty of the Towers and New York’s shattered innocence.
Which is why Paris’s designers felt compelled to flaunt their wares. After all, fashion is about image. And nobody was going to let terrorism hijack style. “We employ 10,000 people,” Domenico De Sole, CEO of Gucci Group–which includes Yves Saint Laurent, Alexander McQueen, Balenciaga and Stella McCartney–told NEWSWEEK before McCartney’s signature debut on Monday. “This is our business. We must go on.” And with ear-shattering hip-hop, blinding lasers and nearly naked models, go on they did.
