Who doesn’t? These days, the biggest battle in fashion is not over style or design, but price. Many American and European designers have already put out “bridge” lines that try to combine a designer sensibility with reduced prices. Most women, though, find these “lower” prices ($400 for a DKNY jacket instead of $1,300 for one from the Donna Karan collection) still much too high, thank you, and many buy them only when they’re on sale. MM by Krizia, licensed by the Hartmarx Corp., aims to do better. It offers distinctive Mandelli designs (tiger-patterned sweaters, plush wool jackets) at surprisingly low price&-under $200 for any jacket, for example.
The approach is refreshingly practical. Unlike other designer companies whose representatives speak of expressing a designer’s “vision” and use fashionese (“weekend look”) to describe what are simply less expensive clothes, MM by Krizia acknowledges the obvious. “Everything we do is based on price,” says Gerry Mandry, a Hartmarx marketing director.
How does the company do it? A team of American designers interviews Mandelli and sketches out the line for her approval. Then it looks for ways to economize on the fabrics. Hartmarx, a $1.3 billion company with several clothing licenses, can get good buys on fabric by buying in bulk. Buyers also don’t hesitate to compromise. They choose pigskin instead of cal Hong Kong silk instead of Italian milled.
Pursuing fair prices is unusual, but so are the company’s goals and strategies. Hartmarx wants to reverse the trend of competitive panic markdowns. Blaming the price wars on too much of the same merchandise in too many stores, Hartmarx limited its distribution to only one store in each city–Macy’s in New York, for example, and Nordstrom’s in Los Angeles.
The upshot is that if a customer loves the beige MM by Krizia jacket, she’ll have to buy it at full price. Sales will be seasonal and scheduled in advance, as they were before the 1980s. In this best of all possible worlds, presumably, retail order-and value-will be restored. Sounds good. It always does. So does Shangri-La.
