Material World

Here is a Christmas wish, courtesy of Diane von Furstenberg, who issued it during a conversation with me on Friday: Bernard Arnault should take his place as the elder statesman of fashion (after all, he pretty much invented it as an industry) and solve the fashion week date problem once and for all.

Consider, after all, the latest development in what has been a multi-month brouhaha over the timing of the big fashion weeks. Just days after France’s Chambre Syndicale announced it was mad that the CFDA (which manages NY fashion week) and the Camera Nazionale (which manages Milan) had not consulted it about the show dates tussle next September, and it was not agreeing to anything (I’m paraphrasing here), the same Chambre Syndicale also announced it was welcoming Giambattista Valli, an Italian, as a fully-fledged member of that most elite (and French) fashion group, the couture.

In one canny manoeuvre it thus demonstrated its:

1) willingness to embrace Italians who work with it (instead of ignoring it); and

2) position as the hautest of the haute — the table where everyone, even the non-French, wants a place. Nice bit of territory-marking, don’t you think?

Anyway, this comes in the wake of the moment this autumn when the Italians got mad that the Americans were planning to start later than usual in September 2012, and said it would keep its dates as planned, which meant overlapping with London; the Americans said they had all agreed; etc. It was finally resolved, but now Paris is threatening to overlap with Milan. All of this matters because editors and buyers can’t be in both places at once (duh) and may be forced to choose, which frankly is good for no-one except maybe one city’s ego gratification. Which it seems to me is really what all is this is essentially about.

Anyway, DVF is also head of the CFDA, and she said she thought Mr Arnault would have to put his foot down to resolve this, given that he is chairman of Dior, which owns LVMH, and has more brands at stake than anyone, and clearly understands the business implications (or losses thereof) of two conflicting fashion weeks.

Plus, think what it could do for the Arnault-Hermès-raider image if he became the peace-maker, or saviour of the fashion cycle (this is my thought, anyway). It would be a present, really, for us all.