Post-Slimane’s Celine, 5 epic design debuts that bombed

As we step over the critical carnage of Hedi Slimane’s debut collection
for Celine, and the puzzling disappointment of Riccardo Tisci at Burberry,
let’s regain perspective by reviewing some key moments throughout fashion’s
history where the hired gun at a beloved house shot himself in the foot but
still hobbled on towards victory. In fashion no one is too big too fail.

Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel

One such example who happened to be seated front row at Celine last week
also notoriously lost 92 lbs so that he could wear clothes designed by
Slimane back in 2001. While Karl Lagerfeld can do no wrong at Chanel, it
wasn’t always so. When he joined the company in 1983 after being paid a
reported 1,000,000 dollar annual salary plus perks, he was working 16-hour
days preparing his first collection––haute couture no less–– inside the
famous rue Cambon atelier where, according to WWD there was a
“‘them against us’ friction between the Chanel regulars and the Lagerfeld
camp.” WWD’s subsequent show review wasn’t any more positive as
they complained of bulky fabrics, unpressed clothes, and that Lagerfeld
“committed too many Chanel Dont’s and not enough Do’s.” Karl’s response?
“Even if she never did it this way, it’s very Chanel, no?” Thirty years
later, having rescued the storied name from the brink of extinction he’s as
much associated with the house as its founder.

Tom Ford for Yves Saint Laurent

And what if the founding designer is still alive to witness the swearing
in of his successor as happened when Tom Ford was appointed Creative
Director of Yves Saint Laurent in 1999? The esteemed French couturier was
contemptuous of the Texan’s taste but as business grew under the newcomer,
the founder grew only more hostile, with Ford telling CNBC in 2015, ”I do
have some letters in his hand. I remember one line was ‘in thirteen minutes
you’ve destroyed 40 years of my work’ or ‘my life’s work’ or something like
that.” Ford’s vision for YSL, and previously Gucci, jumpstarted global
fashion into the 21st century, enticing a new generation of consumers to
two iconic but slumbering houses. But his opinion of Saint Laurent who died
in 2008 and his business partner Pierre Bergé? “So difficult and so evil
and {they} made my life such misery.”

Alexander McQueen for Givenchy

A similar clash between the establishment and the bold new talent
occurred at Givenchy in 1996 when 27-year-old British designer Alexander
McQueen, referred to by the press as “the hooligan of English fashion,”
took over creative direction of that post-war citadel of decorum and
politesse on Avenue George V, and promptly dismissed Hubert de Givenchy as
“irrelevant.” Having never worked in haute couture before, McQueen’s
appointment horrified the ancien regime, sales bombed, and even
McQueen himself retro-reviewed those collections as “crap.” In hindsight,
Givenchy was a critical stepping stone in the designer’s personal journey
to change the landscape of luxury fashion, which he did, but had to blow up
a few bridges along the way.

Marc Jacobs for Perry Ellis

A debut so roundly skewered as to become the stuff of legend is Marc
Jacobs’s 1992 “grunge collection” for Perry Ellis. The thrift store styling
of silk shirts mimicking flannel, floral polyester mimicking silk, cartoon
t-shirt prints, bobble hats, and Doc Martens, coincided with the rise of
Nirvana, MTV, “heroin chic,” and directly reflected what was happening on
the street. But as a result, Jacobs was put out on the street, fired, and
not only that but Perry Ellis was shuttered. Even the usually foresighted
Cathy Horyn wrote in the Washington Post, “Grunge is anathema to
fashion, and for a major Seventh Avenue fashion house to put out that kind
of statement at that kind of price point is ridiculous.”
But it cemented Jacobs’s cool, even recalling the howls which went up
around young Yves Saint Laurent’s scandalous 1971 “Libération” couture
collection which also reflected the street, not least because his models
were compared to hookers. The influence of Marc Jacobs’s collection for
Perry Ellis still resonates a quarter of a century later, he would go on to
spend fifteen years at France’s luxury powerhouse, Louis Vuitton, and in
2015 Horyn retracted her opinion.