What does that look like? In Kors’s spring-summer collection (presented in Paris last October), it looks like rustic sweaters in linen and silk taffeta and pretty pastel dresses encrusted with rock crystal and amethyst. It also looks like a winner, with critics praising the designer’s tale of two cities and (at least by implication) endorsing LVMH chairman Bernard Arnault’s strategy for selling more luxury goods in America. “This is French dressing with an unmistakable American accent–and it looks great,” opined Women’s Wear Daily. Said The Washington Post, “Kors perfectly applied today’s buzzwords of elegant, easy, luxurious and youthful.”
Not to mention salable. At Celine’s eight U.S. boutiques as well as at tony department stores, the stuff is flying out the door. Hollywood is hooked, too. Celine Dion wore Celine at last year’s Oscars, and Gwyneth Paltrow wore it for the opening of “Shakespeare in Love.” “I think Michael has taken this old-lady house with no fashion sensibility and completely updated it without frightening the clientele,” says American Vogue editor Anna Wintour, who has put Celine on the cover twice since June.
Kors, a former child actor, began his fashion career at 16 as a freelance designer on Seventh Avenue. He launched his own label at the age of 21. The company stayed small but his reputation grew, and about five years ago European couture houses started courting him. “I kept thinking, ‘Are these people aware of what I do?’ " Then Celine called. “It never had a couture collection of phantasmagorical clothes that no one wore,” says Kors. “It was a sportswear house with a fabulous tradition of dressing women in real situations. For the first time I thought, ‘This makes logical sense’.”
Kors’s boss returns the compliment, praising the designer’s businesslike approach. “He talks with his clients to see what works and what doesn’t,” Arnault told NEWSWEEK. “No European designer does that.” The ones who work for Arnault may want to start.
