Fashion Designers Vie to Bring Designer Jump to Women's Midpriced Clothes > Back To Resources Main

By Becky Aikman, Newsday, Melville, N.Y. Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

Mar. 29 - Robin Howe, the designer of a line of clothes from Calvin Klein, was scouting fabrics in Paris earlier this month when her cell phone rang. It was her office in New York with a bulletin.

At a Bloomingdale's in California, a woman shopping for something to wear to a wedding had just bought a pewter-gray sequined tank top and a pearl-gray satin skirt with a drawstring waist. "It was pretty cool when we heard it," Howe said.

Fashion designers don't always think a single sale is cool. But the gray ensemble was the very first purchase from a new, more affordable Calvin Klein line that arrived in stores this month. It joins some of fashion's other biggest names, all competing this spring to bring a jolt of designer excitement to women's midpriced clothes.

Makers from Polo Ralph Lauren to Tommy Hilfiger, Jones Apparel Group, Liz Claiborne and Perry Ellis are offering new or reworked better-priced collections this season. In the fall, Oscar de la Renta and Michael Kors will present even lower-priced lines. But Calvin Klein, an American fashion icon, is turning heads by entering the mid-priced market for the first time.

The goal for all the designers is to win back fashion- savvy customers who love a good label but love paying less. In the past few years, those shoppers might have made a few choice investments in designer clothes or snapped up disposable fashion from mass-market stores like Target or H&M.

Meanwhile, the so-called "better" category in department stores, a step down in price from bridge fashions and two steps down from top designers, languished with humdrum sales and, many would say, humdrum style. Sales in the $89 billion women's clothing market dropped 6.6 percent last year, according to the NPD Group, a market research firm, with midlevel departments in stores leading the decline.

This spring, though, "the buzz is intense," said David Wolfe, creative director of The Doneger Group, a consultant to retailers from Wal-Mart to Nordstrom.

"Suddenly, the industry is waking up to the fact that women who may not want to pay a lot of money for their clothes want a lot of style bang for their buck. Why should good design have to cost a lot?"

For a designer like Howe, the question poses a double challenge. She has to keep prices down. She also needs to adapt the Calvin Klein aesthetic -- sleek, sexy and sophisticated -- for a typical better- price customer, a 35- to 55-year-old who may have a career, a couple of kids and the more curvaceous figure that often comes with them.

That means offering Calvin's signature slip dress, for example, in less see-through fabric and with wider, "bra-friendly" straps. "So many clothes out there at this level just aren't for normal, real women -- our peers," Howe said.

There are plenty of them out there, though. Phillips-Van Heusen, which bought Calvin Klein Inc. in 2002, has said that the new label could generate retail sales of $1.2 billion to $1.4 billion a year within five years.

That would be quite a boost for Calvin Klein, whose licensees worldwide made $3.5 billion last year on products like jeans, underwear, home collections, fragrances and the money-losing designer wear, called Calvin Klein Collection. It means the new line, labeled simply Calvin Klein, has to sell a lot of jackets priced at $250, T-shirts at $65, pants at $135 and leather jackets at $495.

After she got back from Paris, Howe, the design director for G.A.V., a company licensed to produce the better-priced clothes, joined Kevin Carrigan, creative director at Calvin Klein, to show off their wares at the just-opened boutique at Lord & Taylor in midtown.

"These are our babies, Robin," Carrigan said. Like eager shoppers, they pulled out pieces in gray, white and a bright coral called tigerlily. "The whole history of Calvin, the soft, the hard, the casual, the sexy -- it's all here in one line," Carrigan said.

Howe found a version of that first purchase, the gray drawstring skirt, priced at $125. "It's actually satin but in a sporty style," said Howe, "and the bias cut gives you that special sort of sexy drape." Not too sexy, though. The flared shape is forgiving, and the silk is less diaphanous than it might be in couture.

Color is big this spring, but Calvin Klein is known more for neutrals, so the line mixes brights with understated tones.

"In this case we played it against a very, very pale gray, giving the whole look of color a freshness," said Howe. "I think that's the way Calvin would use color, not in the obvious way."

A leather biker jacket shown with a silk georgette skirt in a vintage floral print was another typical Calvin look, mixing a tough jacket with a feminine piece. This line, however, uses perforated or crinkled leathers rather than exotic skins like lizard.

There's also a selection of office-worthy suit jackets that mimic the sharp tailoring of the designer line. "We're known as a house for a very slim cut," said Carrigan, so the trick was keeping the look for a customer with a different body.

"She's fairly voluptuous, but in a modern kind of way," said Howe of the woman they had in mind. "She's toned."

Giving her the essence of Calvin is considered key. "The past sluggishness experienced in the better-priced segment has been brought on by a lack of innovation, newness and focused product," said Tom Murry, president of Calvin Klein. "There's a need and definite opportunity for great design with a strong point of view, which is what this collection embodies."

The Calvin brand, well-known since the days when nothing came between Brooke Shields and her jeans, hadn't capitalized on its image, as Ralph Lauren had with its better-priced Lauren line.

"The Calvin Klein company spends about $100 million a year in advertising," said Andrew Vreeland, president of G.A.V., "but there really hadn't been any women's clothes available at this price point."

But how to achieve the haute look without the corresponding pricetag? G.A.V. hopes to strike deals for the best fabrics and sell to only a small number of stores -- 125 this season, including Bloomingdale's and Lord & Taylor in New York City and Long Island -- that the company expects can sell the clothes without markdowns. Results won't be certain until those crucial end-of-season sales, but Phillips-Van Heusen has said it expects retail sales of about $150 million this year.

"I think the line looks terrific," said Robert Jezowski, executive vice president of Macy's East Coast stores, which did not get the label this season. "I would hope to carry it in the fall. I know Macy's West is carrying it right now, and they're doing very well with it."

"It looks and smells and feels like Calvin, which is a really important thing," said Marshal Cohen, fashion industry analyst for the NPD Group. "In the past, a lot of licensed product lost its core identity. Now the consumer who aspires to the Calvin Klein brand can step up and get it."

Some in the industry think Calvin Klein will appeal more to East and West Coast shoppers than middle Americans. And Wolfe of The Doneger Group said that the brand may have trouble maintaining its high profile since Calvin Klein himself no longer designs the top collection. With its modern minimalism amid this season's frilly feminine fashions, "the high-priced Calvin looks a little bit boring at the moment," Wolfe said.

But on the day the label's designers visited Lord & Taylor, Susan Lyman, an advertising representative in her 40s, made a beeline to a bright coral jacket from the new line. "I love the colors," she said. "It's not what I usually expect to see here, which is conservative classics. This has some sophistication.