NEW YORK, April 30 — DKNY, the more accessible sibling line of Donna Karan International, is getting a whole new look. Given that DKNY is responsible for 80 percent of the company business, according to Pierre-Yves Roussel, chairman and chief executive of the LVMH Fashion Group, this is a big deal.
In a push to connect with the next generation of young designers and consumers, Donna Karan International, which is owned by LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, has named Maxwell Osborne and Dao-Yi Chow as creative directors of DKNY. Osborne and Chow are the founders of the haute New York street wear brand Public School.
At the same time, reflecting the increasing competition between luxury brands and technology brands, Hector Muelas, former creative director of Worldwide Marketing Communications for Apple, becomes DKNY’s chief image officer, a new position.
In a statement, Caroline Brown, the Donna Karan chief executive, said the team would “re-energise and redefine what authentic New York means for DKNY right now given today’s world of fast living, extreme innovation and global competition at the highest level.”
Yup, that means you, Apple.
(Well, if tech companies are going to poach from fashion, luring Angela Ahrendts from Burberry and Paul Deneve from Saint Laurent, why shouldn’t fashion poach right back?)
It also means that, though DKNY has been overshadowed in recent years by newer contemporary names such as Tory Burch and Rag & Bone, it is about to get back into fighting shape.
“We think it can be huge,” Roussel said, though he refrained from defining what, exactly, “huge” meant. He did point out, however, that 50 per cent of DKNY sales take place outside the United States and that DKNY accessories especially are very popular overseas (not so much in America). Digital will also be a focus for growth.
The appointment of Osborne and Chow, who will continue to design Public School, is interesting, not least because, until last season, they did not make womenswear. In 2014, they won the CFDA award for menswear designers of the year. As for the womenswear they showed in February, it had a rough, gender-neutral appeal that is very of the moment, though not necessarily very DKNY, which has tended to the more neon-tinted, young-girl-in-the-big-city side of things.
Both lines share a certain urban identity, however. On the one hand, this suggests Maxwell and Chow will be able to successfully modernise DKNY; on the other, this will make it a challenge to retain distinctions between their brands, always an issue when designers do double-duty. Roussel said LVMH was not concerned about the latter issue, though he also acknowledged that holding two shows in the same fashion week would be a challenge for the designers.
Still, the appointment is fully in line with other recent LVMH designer moves, including bringing Humberto Leon and Carol Lim of Opening Ceremony to Kenzo and Jonathan Anderson to Loewe. All the designers share the same cool, non-establishment cred — though they are now fully employed by the establishment. All also continue to design their own brands.
The moves have echoes of the last time LVMH tapped a new generation of designers to transform its heritage brands, bringing John Galliano to Dior, Alexander McQueen to Givenchy, and Marc Jacobs to Louis Vuitton back in the 1990s.
Speaking of Marc Jacobs (also owned by LVMH), the DKNY news is in direct contrast to the recent decision by that brand to fold its more accessible line, Marc by Marc Jacobs, into the main line so as to avoid aesthetic confusion and to better serve consumers at all price points in one collection.
As you may recall, much hoo-ha was also made back in 2013 about the decision to “focus” on Marc by Marc Jacobs by giving the line its own team of dedicated, supercool designers: Katie Hillier and Luella Bartley.
That apparently did not work out as planned, but it clearly has not deterred LVMH from trying again.
According to Roussel, it makes sense as the two houses have a different “brand architecture.”
“DKNY is not a byproduct of the main line, but a stand-alone brand,” he said.
Indeed, Roussel said LVMH “knows for a fact that most people who buy DKNY did not even know it was by Donna Karan,” whereas Marc by Marc Jacobs was always closely associated with Jacobs.
Karan will officially become an “adviser” to the new-look DKNY, according to a brand spokesman, though it is hard not to wonder whether the plan is to reinvent the younger line and then at some point do the same for the more mature collection?
We will have to wait and see (Osborne and Chow’s DKNY will be unveiled during New York Fashion Week in September), but what is clear is that all of this adds up to lots of action and change in the contemporary sector.
In fact, there’s more: This week Diane von Furstenberg also announced she was appointing a new chief executive, Paolo Riva, who was poached from the rival Tory Burch, where he had been vice president of apparel and visual merchandising.
Let the games begin! — The New York Times
