How Do You Spell Hype?
This week, British fashion designer Phoebe Philo--the "Chanel of our times"--finally unveiled her long-awaited namesake brand. Will she be able to break the LVMH start-up curse?
In the spring of 1997, the French fashion brand Chloé announced it was replacing longtime designer Karl Lagerfeld with 25-year-old Stella McCartney. I immediately called Chloé to request an interview with McCartney for Newsweek, where I was the European fashion and cultural correspondent. They invited me right over, and I met with fresh-faced McCartney in her new office. In the corner sat a shy, lithe blonde in a T-shirt and well-worn denim overalls. “This is my assistant, Phoebe Philo,” McCartney told me. Philo smiled, revealing a gold apparatus on her upper teeth. “We were at Saint Martin’s together,” McCartney explained.
This week, 25 years after that first behind-the-scenes gig at a major luxury company, Philo unveiled her namesake brand on phoebephilo.com.
The direct-to-consumer line—in part backed by LVMH, the conglomerate that owns more that 70 luxury brands, including Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, Tiffany, and Moët et Chandon champagne—is high fashion at stratospheric prices: $8,500 leather tote bags, $8,900 leather jackets, $6,200 trench coats.
LVMH has a dismal record when it comes to fashion start-ups: the two before this one—the Christian Lacroix couture house and Rihanna’s Fenty clothing line—were failures.
Will Philo break the streak?
