Journals

Fashion is not usually my subject, but design and creativity are often the topic of my posts. I heard, unfortunately, about Eric Gaskins when he closed his company, and discovered his blog , along with 35,000 other new readers, thanks to the Styles section of the New York Times. That was about  one year ago : My personal experience working in the fashion world lasted 5 years, in the retail/wholesale area—it was not an easy time, as I felt out of place, despite my best efforts.  However, I retained my interest in the field, keeping an eye out for interesting designers, and following fashion news. I enjoyed Eric’s blog: The Emperor’s Old Clothes , as it is  a  mix of snarkiness and kindness.  He covers news from the fashion world, in a broad sense, mixed in with reports from foreign travels, movie and book reviews, and more. I finally built up my courage to ask him whether he’d accept to be interviewed for my “ New York ” journal. He kindly accepted and I visited him in his Brooklyn apartment, filled with travel souvenirs and books about fashion. Rather than “Emperor Eric,” I met with a warm and engaging person. Having read a recent blog post about his days as a young college graduate interning at Givenchy in Paris , I asked him how did he end up there without even having majored in fashion design in college? Eric was an art major at Kenyon College  in Ohio , after initially majoring in literature. He had always been involved in creative activities: he was a competitive figure skater and a flutist in high school; his father was a music teacher. At Kenyon, he dabbled in costume design (Kenyon did not have a fashion design department); as a result, his start in design was as a “creative” without any knowledge of the technical aspects of clothing, such as pattern-making and sewing. During his senior year he applied for, and won a Watson Fellowship  which is somewhat similar to a Fulbright Fellowship, but exterior to the academic world: a proposal to practice an activity outside of the United States , and outside of an academic environment. His theme was “American, Italian and French Culture through Fashion.” He sent out requests to several fashion houses in Italy and France . It was Mr. Hubert de Givenchy who answered him, inviting him to visit him at the Carlyle Hotel in New York City the following August. On the set date, in 1980, Eric traveled to New York to meet with Monsieur de Givenchy and showed him his portfolio of sketches. Mr. de Givenchy told him that he had to be in Paris the next Monday, in a few days! Eric scrambled to get on a flight to Paris ; landed on a Saturday, knowing not a single soul. He found a hotel and on Monday at 8:30 a.m. arrived at the Maison de Givenchy studio, on the Avenue Georges V, to report for duty. He was given a card table and a chair near the doorway between the first and the second room; all in all, the studio had three rooms. In the first were several assistants, of whom Eric wrote in this post . He had a direct view of Givenchy’s desk, in the second room. There were other assistants in the third room. The boutique and the showroom, as well as the Haute Couture dressing rooms, were on the ground floor; sewing of samples was done on the third floor. In the second floor studio, everyone sketched furiously, all day long, whether for Haute Couture, ready-to-wear (prêt-à-porter), or the myriad licensees. Givenchy would either say “yes” or “no” to the sketches he was presented with. Eric learned enormously about the upscale fashion industry during his year in Paris . By the time he left, he could sketch in proportion and express his ideas with precision. He returned to New York , and applied to a variety of fashion houses. This took a year—he was told that his designs were “too French” i.e. probably too dressy, not sporty enough for American companies in the eighties. Finally, he went on to work as an assistant designer for a number of design houses: Koos van den Akker, Scott Barrie, Bob Evans and Jack Mulqueen. In 1987, he started his own business, with a few small items he sold in West Village boutiques.  Friends helped him along the way, including a pattern maker. The “real” start was, as he writes: “After a year and a half of designing sportswear for men and women I landed my first account at Barney’s Coop doing luxury sportswear for women. From there I designed a capsule collection of cocktail dresses and evening gowns that were bought by Bergdorf Goodman, which sent my career on its way. In the beginning, I worked from my apartment and showed the clothes to stores at the more glamorous apartment of a close friend. I eased my way onto Seventh Avenue taking part of a space of a friend’s loft. A series of 3 showrooms took charge of selling the collection so that I could focus on the design and production of the clothes, adding a team of people to help me in that process. In the beginning I cut, sewed and delivered the clothes. Then I added a sewer and freelance patternmaker, in a 20’x20’ space in a factory building on 35 th Street (in Manhattan ). “ Later he took charge of operations and rented a floor in a better building with a workroom, 6 people on staff, and a showroom with 2 offices. The company grew between 1991 and 2000. One of the highlights of those days was when three Manhattan department stores had his clothes in their windows simultaneously (in 1997 or 1998): Saks Fifth Avenue , Henri Bendel, and Bergdorf Goodman. His designs were featured in many magazines.  After September 11, and the post-dot.com boom days, business declined. Eric Gaskins’ designs were carried in major American department stores (Saks, Bergdorf Goodman, Barneys, Henri Bendel and Neiman Marcus) and about 25 specialty stores, but the burden of a large overhead became increasingly difficult to bear, with decreasing sales. The 2008-2009 recession made it impossible. So it was with a heavy heart that he decided to close his company of 23 years.   Photo album   This is life: one chapter closes, and a new one opens. The new chapter has started for Eric Gaskins: the article on the NY Times about the closing of his fashion house and his blog, brought him new notoriety (not always of the loving kind), and he is now actively working on a book and television projects, amongst other plans. He showed me a few of the dresses he had designed over the years, which informed me visually of what he had told me of his aesthetics: “I love beautifully made, richly fabricated, deceptively simple luxurious clothes from a coat to an evening gown. The best fabrics I could afford and the finest workmanship I could produce all were the hallmarks of my collections. (…)My passion was fabrics: silks, lace, cashmere, matte and wool jerseys ... Embroideries, which I designed myself, were a special indulgence.” One of the dresses I was able to admire was embroidered with natural stones.  How does he see the evolution of the fashion business over the years? He says it is a wide-open field but very ageist, denoting a “throw-away mindset” where youth and looks are often chosen over know-how and experience. Some people such as Karl Lagerfeld are able to keep up their “coolness factor” despite their age, but he is an exception who was already well-known and a leader in the field. Fashion is a glamorous field (viewed from the outside, anyway), where thousands are vying for attention, and those who know how to manipulate and abuse get to the top of the heap rather than those who are still convinced it’s about the work. This is why Eric created his blog in the first place, in 2008. www.henribendel.com “The blog started a year or so before I closed as an outlet for my increasing disillusionment with the fashion industry and the politics that built people up and knocked or kept others down. What used to be a business (press and retailers) that valued creativity, individualism and skill became one that was interested much more in itself and notoriety. Notoriety that was more concerned with the cult of celebrity and not beautiful design. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself and damage the company by writing under my name, so I created a pseudonym, Fluff Chance and titled the blog, The Emperor’s Old Clothes . It was a way to tell my truth as I saw it and to draw attention to the fallacies that have become the accepted truths of the fashion business. The more I wrote the more I had to say, but always tried to express myself with humor and irony. I never wanted to be read as a griping, envious, sour grapes-riddled bitch. Sometimes that was hard to avoid, but I worked hard to avoid it so that people would read and make up their own minds as to their views of fashion and popular culture. I became a writer and critic by accident. I had no idea the attention I was getting from the blog until I decided to close the company and asked the New York Times if they would be interested in talking about my career as so many small design houses were suffering the same fate. Through the process of preparing that story I learned that I had an avid audience within the Fashion industry and lots of people outside of it as well. One of the conditions of the Times printing the story would be to discuss this “scathing” blog and to come out as its author. As I no longer needed to protect my company, I agreed. “ Links :  Eric Gaskins website     1989 NY Times article   Credits :  Photos of dresses: Courtesy Udo Spreitzenbarth Photography Photos of magazine covers, windows, actresses provided by Eric Gaskins