LVMH: daring to ditch the runway circus

OK, I know that’s a bit of a misleading headline: LVMH LOVES a show. But between the extreme foot-dragging about signing a new creative force at Dior (which, technically, actually owns Paris-based LVMH, as opposed to the other way around, but for efficiency’s sake let’s acknowledge that those initials have come to stand for both), and today’s news that Celine, one of the group’s hottest brands, is not having a runway show during the upcoming ready-to-wear season because their designer, Phoebe Philo, will be eight months pregnant with her third child, it’s hard not to think that perhaps the luxury world’s biggest group may be itself rethinking the whole runway circus, and the cost/benefits involved.

After all, they haven’t had a designer at Dior to trot out as the official face of the brand for a year now, and it hasn’t hurt sales a bit; ditto the lackwarm reviews (this season’s couture, fyi, which I saw yesterday and will be reviewed on Saturday, was unquestionably better than the team’s first attempt last July, but still ultimately a shadow of an idea). Maybe they don’t need a high-cost, high-maintenance, high-salary, star at the helm? What an idea!

Ditto the decision to scale back Celine to a presentation so as to lessen the pressures on Ms Philo, which may be ultimately even more significant. The first time the designer was pregnant, during her tenure at Richemont-owned Chloe, she became the first female designer to ever take maternity leave, and missed a season, which was largely designed by her team. Later she watched the show, like her executives, from the front row, but soon after she left the house.

The Celine move marks a conscious decision to choose the designer over possible marketing returns from the runway pictures (front row, celebs, backstage) that benefit brands every season, and is the first time I can remember that an LVMH house has done anything like this. Even after John Galliano’s fall, they continued to have major shows for Dior, refusing to miss a season – though it’s also true that yesterday, for the first time in the three seasons they have shown post-Galliano-firing, the show took place in the brand’s headquarters on Avenue Montaigne in Paris, as opposed to the enormous cube they have recently used in the gardens of the Musée Rodin, so that’s another scaling down. Cameron Diaz was there, though.

However, when I emailed Marco Gobbetti, Celine’s chief executive to ask about all this, he wrote back: “We could miss some marketing opportunities, however we do not believe it would represent a significant impact in the scope and term of our project. In the end, all we do is made by people through their talent and skills. It’s all about humans, isn’t it?”

So what does it mean? Is this a subtle effort to shift the LVMH corporate image from one of big executives putting outsize pressures on designers to one of cuddly-wuddly executives who sympathise with designers? Will it have a domino effect on the industry, as most brands are just waiting for someone else (someone big) to lead the way toward change in what has become an inefficient and unworkable runway schedule? Either way, it’s opportunity. Carpe diem.