Ho Ho Ho Couture

In a past life as the art director of several glossy women’s magazines I was involved (on the periphery) in the creation of the fashion pages. This sometimes involved having to suffer trips to sunny places to shoot summer fashion a couple of months in advance of the arrival of sunshine in Australia, one such trip was to Vanuatu which is when my enduring love affair with the island nation began.

The importance of fashion to these magazines was integral to their brand image, the models had to reflect the reader demographic and the locations had to include an element of glamour and sophistication concomitant with the masthead’s market position. In other words the fashion photographs had to align with the audience’s aspirations while not always being affordable or attainable but certainly if not todie- for or buy-for then at least lust-worthy and wearable.

So what’s changed? Probably not much in female fashion but when it comes to menswear it appears there may be some interesting photo opportunities among the blokes at the next board meeting if executive types are taking their couture advice from some very upmarket titles pitched at sophisticated male professionals’.

In a recent edition of Executive Style which is inserted quarterly into both the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age and claims to embrace ‘Smart men. Cool things’ I came across a story tagged Suburbia and headed Yard Work in which a heavily tattooed young man with an expression best described as bemused insolence was photographed hanging around a Hills Hoist in a particularly prosaic Aussie backyard.

I’m not sure quite what branch of industry or commerce he purported to inhabit but given his age and the amount of ink on display he may have been the proprietor of an after-market muffler business for Subaru WRXs or Nissan GTRs, whatever he didn’t exactly measure up to my idea of the typical ‘engaged’ and ‘sophisticated audience’ claimed by the title.

Here’s a brief summary of his summer wardrobe – picture
1: Benny is wearing what looks like a pair of shortie pyjamas emblazoned all over with the Dior logo in a pattern possibly designed to induce an epileptic seizure, in fact they are described as a short sleeved twill Hawaiian shirt and matching loose Bermuda shorts. This cosmopolitan little ensemble topped out at AU$3900 that’s without the sneakers priced at $1650 and white socks with blue trim which cost a mere $310! So for the bargain price of $5860 you too could look like a man emerging from a nightmare dressed in his night attire, a delegate at an APEC conference … or a complete goose.

In another shot Benny is smiling in a conspiratorial way, as if he’s in on the joke, while pushing a lawn mower wearing a totally appropriate outfit for a bit of gardening. This time it’s voluminous matching trousers and jacket which are crafted by Gucci in green-multi colour washed denim with web and nylon intarsia (or knitting) these two pieces can be had for the combined cost of $4670 and are teamed with open-toe slides (perfect foot protection when using a motor mower) and spectacularly conventional or ‘garden variety’ white socks at the knock-down price of $280. Frankly Bozo the Clown would have tried to flick pass this outfit to Ronald McDonald. But that’s the menswear scoop for this year’s executive-goes-casual summer mode.

Who am I to judge what Gucci and Dior have on offer when luxury brands are worth billions, indeed the total worth of the global apparel business is estimated to be US$1.5 trillion by next year. Some of the richest people in the world have made their stash from fash. Bernard Arnault, head of super luxury brands conglomerate LVMH which owns Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, Givenchy, Kenzo and any number of other labels spanning fashion and booze, is the world’s third richest man with a personal fortune of around US$106 billion.

Another rich rag trader at the other end of the price spectrum is Amancio Ortega who is the man behind the Zara chain of fast fashion stores, his wealth is estimated at about US$70 billion and rising. And there’s obviously money in clown clothing as the company behind Gucci (and a few other notable brands like Yves Saint Laurent, Balenciaga and Bottega Veneta) which is thought to be the world’s second most expensive brand is worth 23 billion euro.

I suppose when a Hermes Birkin bag was sold at auction for US$203,150 there are people out there who probably don’t think twice about turning their grass into lawn while wearing nearly five grand’s worth of green-multi colour denim but I would have thought they were the sort of homeowners who might stretch to a gardener or two.

While we do have fashion in the Pacific, apart from the occasional Dior ‘Hawaiian’ shirt, it’s mostly of the more affordable, and wearable, variety although I’m sure one of the European labels could whip you up a sarong for a few grand if you really wanted one.

Or maybe we just set up a sock manufacturing facility for those that want to spend $310 on an item you can buy in the supermarket for $2.30, as I did last week. I could have bought 134 pairs for the price of one!