Fashion has a new mantra: Looking out for number twoOr so says Women's Wear Daily today with the announcement that fashionista favorite Chloe has picked a relative unknown, Paulo Melim Andersson, to head the fashion and accessories firm.
Increasingly firms are choosing talent from within over the fancy big name design talent that reigned over fashion in the nineties. Call it the "Tom Ford" effect but more and more fashion houses appear to prefer the quiet designers. Chloe chairman and chief executive officer Ralph Toledano might very well be on to something. His choice of Phoebe Philo, then the unknown assistant to Stella McCartney (herself a celebrity designer) made Chloe into the signature brand that it is today.
This could very well represent a sea change in the way the fashion industry views itself. The diva-fits and rivalries of the past no longer make sense in a global, hyper-competitive fashion marketplace. With consumers being savvier and fashion information diffusing faster than ever before it makes sense that fashion is finally getting its ego in check.
Toledano characterized Melim Andersson as part of a generation of designers who have convivial, not rival, relationships with fashion peers and who have a "very professional and down-to-earth approach" to the business. "He's very intelligent, very cultivated and very low profile," Toledano said. True to form, Melim Andersson declined interview requests until he gets settled. Toledano said the designer would start immediately on Chloe's pre-fall collection and his runway debut in Paris in March.
