Ever lasting
WEEKENDER | Fri, 04/23/2010 4:06 PM |
Coco Chanel: A Woman of Her Own
In the 1920s, Coco Chanel employed thousands of artisans to produce her stylish, elegant but uncomplicated creations of haute couture that were destined for a very select group of customers.
“It was a made-to-measure luxury trade … whose core clientele was no more than two hundred women,” biographer Axel Madsen writes in Coco Chanel: A Woman of Her Own.
A decade later, the Wall Street crash devastated the couture industry, and especially Chanel, whose designs were then the most expensive in Paris. This epitome of class and luxury changed with the times, using the more economical fabric of cotton and zippers to keep costs down.
“It was considered bad taste to even look rich,” Madsen says. “The women who were still wealthy wore plain dresses, furless wool coats, sweaters and slacks.”
The economy eventually revived, and Chanel went on to greater explorations of fashion; her couture house’s name and its logo (and her suit) endure today as iconic symbols of coveted products. She would be pleased and proud to note that her designs – as well as those from fellow couturiers such as Balenciaga, Valentino and Dior – have found new life as vintage attire worn by the affluent, from celebrities on the red carpet to the jet-set. They are classic and time-honored, never old-fashioned.
Whether it is an exquisitely crafted evening gown or the most sumptuous amenities and services in a hotel, luxury always commands loyal devotees, even if the global economy is in a similar free-fall today to that of the 1930s Depression, and there are those who treat it as an elitist dirty word.
Farah Angsana, the first and only Indonesian-born designer selected to show a haute couture collection in Paris, says there is no likelihood of luxury withering away. It’s the middle-range brands that are at risk when consumer spending plummets in times of crisis.
“Luxury is always luxury, it will never die. It will never go away, because it has that tradition of hundreds of years,” the Zurich-based designer said last week during a visit to Jakarta. “It means timeless and classic.”
Farah is expanding her couture and haute couture collections into resort and bridal wear. She regrets that the term luxury, once bespeaking something to be coveted and desired, has been cheapened to refer to everything and anything. It’s the other L word on everybody’s lips.
“Unfortunately, people use the term luxury and couture so easily, but luxury isn’t a US$300 pair of jeans. It is about craftsmanship and service.”
In the world of hotels, mention of such luminous names like the Ritz and the Savoy immediately connotes the very best in accommodation. Amadeo Zarzosa, the general manager of the St. Regis Singapore, says that while some enterprises have adopted an everyman policy of trying to reach out to all customers, and are thus vulnerable to the vagaries of the market, luxury services always stand tall.
“When it comes to the success of luxury, survival is all about the classic. It always comes back to the fact that luxury is classic,” says the Spaniard.
The St. Regis tradition dates back to the landmark New York hotel founded in the 1900s by John Jacob Astor. Although the scion of the wealthy family met an unfortunate end on the Titanic, his hotel’s classic traditions live on, including at the group’s property in Nusa Dua, Bali.
From his many years of experience in the hotel industry, Zarzosa says it is imperative to recognize and meet the special concerns of high-end customers, who are willing to pay a premium for the best service but are discreet about their lifestyle.
“They’re not flashy, they are born into it,” he says. “As hoteliers, these are the people we have to be most careful with, because they are the most educated about luxury. They have cotton bedsheets, they have marble bathtubs, they have the finest amenities in their homes.”
“And we cannot compromise on luxury.”
+ Bruce Emond
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