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Logan's Style Watch
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RENZO AND ROBERTO, FASHION SUCCESS STORIES
by Logan Bentley Lessona
ROME, January 20 , 2001 -We've said it before, and we'll say it again. Fashion is Big Business. Giorgio Armani is one of the biggest taxpayers in Milan, the center of Italy's business. He's also opened up his very own department store, including a flower shop, on Via Manzoni, in the middle of Milan's "Golden Quadrangle" downtown luxury shopping area.
The renovated "Business and Finance" weekly section of one of Italy's biggest national daily newspapers, La Repubblica, now devotes several pages to the business of fashion. When you cluster under "fashion" not only big name designers but those who make shoes, stockings, handbags and other accessories, underwear, sportswear, active sportswear, active sports shoes and ski boots, hats, caps, jeans, clothes in all price ranges for men, women, children, and infants, you have a sector that is the second-highest earner of foreign currency for Italy.
Years ago Italian manufacturers in this sector, most of which are small family-owned and run businesses, realized that they could no longer compete worldwide on price. I attended a knitwear fair held in the early seventies at the Bologna Fair, and this was the word. The factories in Asia can turn out cotton sweaters for $ 2 apiece.
So the Italians turned to an emphasis on quality, technical innovation, and unbeatable designs.
I am constantly amazed at the fantasy and inventiveness of Italian designers. When I think there's nothing more to be invented in shoes, or bathing suits, or jackets, or whatever those incredible Italians manage to come up with something new. The impressive resilience and strength of the Italian economy has always been due mostly on those small to medium-size businesses that are mostly owned and run by families.
Now many of the large Italian "names" find themselves in the unenviable position: grow or die. Their "baby" is sold all over the world and to maintain a competitive position they must either buy or be bought, to put it very simply. Fendi is a good example - at the moment they are one of the biggest fashion "names" in the business, but the abilities of the five Fendi sisters and their siblings were not up to the task, so they sold 51 percent of the company to Bernard Arnault of LVMH and Patrizio Bertelli of Prada.
Giorgio Armani is playing Hamlet, unable to decide if he wants to expand by buying a controlling interest in other companies (he's already bought several outfits who manufacturer his clothes for him) or allow himself to be bought. He's such a control freak, though, that I cannot imagine him giving up control of even how the sweaters are stacked on a shelf in one of his stores.
Meanwhile, the Italian fashion "miracle" continues. New names appear and consolidate. Donatella Versace has carried on valiantly after the death of her brother Gianni, but the word is out that the rock stars and fashion fanatics who dress to be SEEN have found a new provider: Roberto Cavalli. Called a "cult designer" by Vogue, his flashy, sexy, colorful clothes mainly inspired by the hippies of the early seventies are worn by many former devotees of Versace.
First shown in 1972 at Palazzo Pitti in Florence, the animal prints on fabric and leather, patchworks, crazy embroideries and more rang up some 125 million dollars in sales in 2000 with an increase in 2001. The first Roberto Cavalli boutique opened in Venice in 1996 followed by Paris, St. Barts, Crans, New York, St. Tropez, Milan, and one about to open in Rome. It will be soon followed by shops in Los Angeles, Miami, Moscow, Jeddah, and London, Cavalli is also sold in many department stores and boutiques around the world.
Another "phenomenom" is Renzo Rossi, 46, boss of Diesel based in Molvena near Vicenza. Founded in 1985, Diesel grossed about 375 million dollars in 2000, an increase of 18 percent over 1999. Diesel's jeans, said to be favored by Chelsea Clinton, grossed 66.6 million dollars in 1999 with a profit of over 10 million. Rossi exports 80 percent of his high-quality casual clothes, with the U.S. the top overseas market.
There are 51 Diesel-owned boutiques in the world, by 2004 there should be 150. The store on Lexington Avenue in New York generated revenue of 12 million dollars in 2000. Rossi is expanding, he recently bought Staff International which produces New York Industrie and clothes for other designers.
Rossi, like Cavalli, considers himself a renegade, and fought his managers to buy and open the Pelican Hotel on Ocean Drive in Miami Beach. It's so successful he's going to reopen the nearby Hotel Carlyle when renovations are complete. Like many Italian fashionistas, Rossi produces his own ads and personally supervises Diesel's image, investing 7.7 percent of his company's gross receipts in advertising and promotion.
When time permits, Cavalli likes to do acrobatics in his helicopter, while Rossi settles for playing soccer twice a week with some of his employees, all of whom call him "Renzo."
© 2001 Logan Bentley Lessona
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Fashion and Design from Italy has been on the web since February 1995. It was the first ever web about fashion. We're working on a new section about Italian Design - industrial design that includes furniture, ceramics, bathrooms, home and office accessories, automobiles and other articles that have won prizes throughout the world and are exhibited in museums such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
