Timmswatch: Fashion – The Brutal Business
Last week, it was confirmed that Jil Sander will be leaving her eponymous label….Again. After returning from a 9 year self-appointed exile, for just two seasons, she will be retiring from her namesake brand for the third, and what we can assume to be final time. This is after a series of disputes with the Prada group CEO Patrizzio Bertelli, who purchased 75% of the company in 1999.
What goes on behind closed doors, no one knows, or at least the mass press don’t. We can assume the pair disagrees on a personal level, but we could also assume that they disagree on the level between a creative and a business minded person. The strange relationship between what strikes me as complete opposites that has formed within this industry. The creative side of the fashion industry cannot assume to function without the business side, yet the business side is pointless without the creative. It’s a very…awkward situation. A marriage where both parties hate each other yet can’t surly function without the other, less lovers, more dependents.
A tricky case similar to this one is the departure of John Galliano, not from Dior, but his own label. After the controversy leading up to his 
dismissal concerning anti-Semitic remarks and a drugs problem, it was almost certain that he had to be removed as the figure head of the brand. But without this fashion legends creative direction, should it have continued?? Bill Gaytten, Gallianos replacement and former assistant has undoubtedly been doing a horrendous job at the company, but LVMH who owns the brand, continue to allow Bill to design in order to make money.
This has been a grievous problem within the fashion industry, the restraints of the business side of the creative process of design. Brands producing clothes merely to make money, because of the constraints put in place by the financial forces who buy out labels that became successful due to their unique creative output. It becomes juxtaposition, the designers cannot function without financial backing, yet to please the investors, they have to alter their vision no longer being the artists they once were.
This is where important talent identification schemes like the British Fashion Councils NEWGEN, become crucial to the creative process. Spotting talent and funding young designers, letting them flourish in their individual ideas. Since NEWGEN’s inception, its roll call includes Alexander McQueen, Christopher Kane, Mary Katrantzou and Meadham 
Kirchhoff. It has become a patron for amazing young talent, without interference. As in the good old days, when fashion legends such as Dior, Chanel etc. founded their houses, they would be funded for their patrons belief in their work and the beautiful clothes they were producing, and not for the big dollar signs in the eyes of the fat cats who choke the life out of creativity with their greed for profit.
Jay Timms