The darkest forces of fashion converged upon Cannes in the last few days turning the place into a bulimic carnival of clothes (let's face it, if you only read the main fashion publications, you would probably never guess what all these celebrities are bloody doing in Cannes, apart from strolling down a red carpet and going to parties…).
Yet, while your average fashion journalist is too busy commenting about floor-length gowns, pondering about cascades of ostrich feathers and crystals on dresses and wondering why female actors are immaculately and impeccably dressed while male actors look extremely scruffy (answers: sexual politics, gender models, and the fact that fashion houses do contracts with female rather than male actors…), Prada and Polanski managed to come up with an entirely new hybridic format, a short film (well, technically a commercial…) described at last Monday’s premiere in Cannes by Polanski as an “anti-commercial”.
Strangely enough, though, the anti-commercial had a strong impact on the financial markets.
But let’s try to analyse the situation from the beginning: as you may have seen/read all over the Internet, Prada got in touch with Polanski who directed for the Italian fashion house a short entitled "A Therapy" featuring a rich and frustrated lady (Helena Bonham-Carter), who visits her psychoanalyst (Ben Kingsley).
While she talks about her problems, the therapist, bored and mesmerised by her soft fur coat hanging on a hat rack, stands up, starts caressing it and then tries it on. Final message: “Prada Suits Everyone”.
In a way, if you had called your average film and media student you would have probably got something better and funnier, but the film wasn’t meant to be a moment of unforgettable cinematic pleasure. In fact it wasn’t about cinema at all. It was essentially about money.
The day after the film was screened in Cannes HSBC Research upgraded Prada SPA from “neutral" to "overweight", and raised its target price to HK$53 from HK$48 (Barclays raised it to HK$60 and Goldman Sachs to HK$82,3).
Obviously the upgrade is mainly the consequence of the positive results the company had in this past financial year.
The first Italian company who went public in Hong Kong, Prada scored a net profit (for the year to January 31) of 432 million euros ($574 million) and more positive results are expected to come in the future from fast-growing markets in Asia and the Middle East.
Such positive results were the consequence of a clever pastiche of drive, commitment, retail expansion, the recently opened Met exhibition with long-forgotten Schiaparelli, and befriending the right artists, architects, celebrities and high profile bloggers (do your own little research, you will hardly find anybody on the Internet and in the fashion media saying bad things about Prada fashion-wise…).
Yet it’s extremely interesting how what the director considered as an “anti-commercial”, so something not meant to sell anything, indirectly had a positive financial impact on the market on the day after it was screened.
So maybe, while in the past wealthy and powerful fashion houses picked an artist or an architect for a collaboration, now it's more fashionable to use a short to deliver a message to banks, investors and shareholders rather than just to film and fashion fans.
Many directors worked for fashion houses - among the others David Lynch, Giuseppe Tornatore, Baz Luhrmann, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Kenneth Anger, and, more recently, Bruno Aveillan (with his visually epic "L’Odyssée de Cartier", aimed at celebrating the brand’s 165th anniversary) - and while some of them claimed they had directed short films rather than commercials, none of them ever claimed they had shot an "anti-commercial" (and none of their adverts/films had such immediate consequences on the financial markets).
This said, apart from the financial impact, there are some tragicomic connections here: the funniest one is the "devilish" connection (The Devil Wears Prada/Polanski’s heroine in Rosemary’s Baby giving birth to the devil’s son...); the most disturbing ones are instead more complicated and include the fashion industry being often blamed of sexualising children and currently claiming that grown up women should look like children or extremely young girls to be sexually attractive to men, and Polanski being charged in the late ‘70s with rape upon a 13-year-old girl (while working on a photoshoot for an issue of French Vogue that he was guest-editing).
Yet the fashion industry is quick to condemn (think about Galliano…) and even quicker to rehabilitate, especially when rehabilitation brings money.
You wonder, though, what kind of results Prada would have got if, rather than Polanski, they would have picked Ken Loach (Angels’ Share(s) Vs Devil’s Shares?) to shoot this new short.
Guess then we would have got a genuine "anti-commercial", maybe with some social (rather than financial) impact, that would have ultimately proven that Prada maybe doesn’t really suit everybody’s style and taste and, above all, it definitely doesn't suit every pocket.
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Very amazing article and very much informative blog, must say you have shared a very nice blog.
Posted by: oilatum | August 23, 2012 at 09:30 AM
Nowadays everyone have financial problems. Thanks for giving this real one.
Posted by: Boob | August 24, 2012 at 12:34 PM