Abstract
In this chapter, Mary Lisa Gavenas investigates the widely acknowledged, but previously unexamined status of Première Vision, a French trade show, as the single greatest arbiter of color trends for fashion and allied industries. Tracing its growth from an ad hoc assemblage of 15 weavers in 1973 through its 2005 incorporation as Première Vision Pluriel, a powerful producer of trade fairs on four continents, Gavenas demonstrates how this insiders-only event upended conventions of fabric buying, fabric production, and trend forecasting, became a fixture on the fashion calendar, changed the role of the designer, and became a major force in the globalization of fashion.
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Notes
- 1.
Anne M. Platoff, “Where No Flag Has Gone Before: Political and Technical Aspects of Placing a Flag on the Moon,” NASA Contractor Report 188251, August 1993, Johnson Space Center, NASA, http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/flag/flag.htm.
- 2.
In The Color Revolution (Cambridge, MA, 2012), 286, Regina Lee Blaszczyk estimates that, before World War II, the life cycle of a color trend originating in Paris was about 7 years, adding, “By the mid 1970s, there wasn’t ‘time for a new color to filter down from the top.’”
- 3.
Jacques Brunel, then president of Première Vision Pluriel, in an e-mail message to the author on April 16, 2008, dated the first gathering to October 1973.
- 4.
Although this paper is based on interviews and historical research conducted in the Première Vision archives in Lyon, it also draws on my experience as an editor at Glamour, InStyle, Mirabella, and industry trade publications, especially my 2002–2007 position as Senior Textiles Editor at Fairchild, the publisher of Women’s Wear Daily and Daily News Record, as well as my 2007–2012 stint as a consultant to Supima, an exhibitor at Expofil.
- 5.
Lise Skov, “The Role of Trade Fairs in the Global Fashion Business,” Current Sociology 54 (September 2006): 764–83.
- 6.
Sabine Le Chatelier, interview with author, May 25, 2012. Le Chatelier joined Première Vision in 2004 after 16 years at Peclers Paris, a trend forecasting firm.
- 7.
Première Vision president Robert Brochier quoted by Sophie d’Aulnay, “The Postwar French Revolution: 1945–1995,” Daily News Record, December 7, 1995.
- 8.
Ibid.
- 9.
D’Aulnay, “The Postwar French Revolution: 1945–1995.”
- 10.
A brand name that joined the prefix for “international” with Stoff, the German word for “material.”
- 11.
Claudia Maurer, a press coordinator for Messe Frankfurt, in an e-mail message to the author, April 2012, explained that trade show producer Messe Frankfurt traces its lineage through the 1907 foundation of the Ausstellungs- und Festhallen-Gesellschaft mbH and situated itself in the tradition of the first documented mention of a trade fair in Frankfurt in 1150.
- 12.
Andrew Olah, discussion with author, December 2007.
- 13.
Attendance figures obtained from Maurer for Messe Frankfurt, e-mail to author, April 2012.
- 14.
For an historical overview of how color cards for the apparel industry gained wider cultural capital, see Blaszczyk, Color Revolution, 39–43.
- 15.
Andrew Olah in discussion with the author, December 2007.
- 16.
For an overview of the overlapping seasonal production cycles in the U.S. fashion industry, see Irene Daria, The Fashion Cycle (New York, 1990), which follows several American designers as they develop and produce collections.
- 17.
Maurer, e-mail to author, April 2012.
- 18.
Brunel, e-mail to author, April 16, 2008.
- 19.
Ibid.
- 20.
In the decades following World War II, small fabric fairs, sponsored wholly or in part by national trade bureaus, were a frequent feature of the fashion textile market. See, for example, Frank Stuart, “Portuguese Offer Fabric Show,” Daily News Record, March 21, 1986.
- 21.
Première Vision Paris: History, http://www.premierevision.com/history/, accessed July 25, 2016.
- 22.
Unlike haute couture shows, which were exhibitions of custom-made clothes for a rarefied clientele, French prêt-à-porter shows were regularly attended not only by the press but also by manufacturers, retailers, merchandisers, and an assortment of people in businesses related to fashion production (e.g., beauty products)—in much the same way that the contemporary New York Fashion Week remains, at its core, a business event.
- 23.
Information on PV show dates, programs, and presentations is based on the author’s research in the uncataloged archives and unsorted ephemera of Première Vision Pluriel (as it was then known), conducted in the basement of its Lyon headquarters in September 2006.
- 24.
Frank Stuart, “Fabric Shows Add Fashion Services,” Daily News Record, November 10, 1989; J. Russell Kraus, “Interstoff Mulling Early Spring Show,” Daily News Record, May 11, 1983 (but Interstoff did not close the gap until 1996).
- 25.
Frank Stuart, “Première Vision’s Success Attributed to Its Strong Position on Fashion,” Daily News Record, November 16, 1987.
- 26.
Frank Stuart, “NAFTA Pact to Play Key Role at Fabric Show in New York,” Daily News Record, March 17, 1993.
- 27.
The same publisher’s precursor to Women’s Wear Daily (WWD), covering the menswear industry as a Monday through Friday daily newspaper from 1892 to 1997, then on a reduced frequency basis until its demise in 2008.
- 28.
Due to the collapse of the U.S. textile and apparel manufacturing industries and the concomitant loss of advertising revenues, Fairchild News Service was disbanded and, by 1997, Daily News Record was cut back to three-times-a-week frequency, then to its weekly format in 2001 before being discontinued altogether in 2008.
- 29.
Andrew Moreton, “Paris Textiles Weave a Spell,” Financial Times, October 8, 1986.
- 30.
Nina Hyde, “From London,” Washington Post, March 22, 1987.
- 31.
Woody Hochswender, “Patterns: Buying What People Wear,” New York Times, March 21, 1989.
- 32.
Dominique Szabo, interview with author, November 20, 1997.
- 33.
Aerin Lauder Zinterhoffer, interview with author, November 20, 1998.
- 34.
Ginia Bellafante, “Front Row: A Jam-Packed Seventh on Sixth,” The New York Times, September 17, 2002.
- 35.
In its early years, European PreView (renamed Première Vision New York when the main show began accepting exhibitors from other continents), ran concurrently with textile shows that included the Turkish Fashion Fabric Exhibition, PanTextiles, Yarn Fair International, and the Lenzing-sponsored Innovation Asia.
- 36.
Marilise Gavenas, “Third edition planned for March,” Daily News Record, November 22, 2004. This followed “mini shows” in Japan and would be followed by efforts in Beijing and Hong Kong, although only Shanghai maintained a regular place on the show calendar.
- 37.
Le Chatelier, interview with author, December 11, 2014.
- 38.
Le Cuir à Paris was renamed Première Vision Leather in late 2014. See the chronology on the Première Vision Paris website, “History,” http://www.premierevision.com/history, accessed July 25, 2016.
- 39.
Former PV president Daniel Faure, discussion with author, September 21, 2006.
- 40.
Former DuPont forecaster Roseann Forde, discussion with author, April 2003.
- 41.
Ibid.
- 42.
Le Chatelier, interview with author, December 11, 2014.
- 43.
There were, for example, 18,864 visitors to its March 1982 edition, a figure that climbed to 42,437 by October 1992.
- 44.
Stuart, “Fabric Shows Add Fashion Services.”
- 45.
Le Chatelier, interview with author, May 25, 2012. At the time, Le Chatelier had been observing PV since her student days in the early 1980s and had been on staff since 2004.
- 46.
Le Chatelier, interview with author, May 25, 2012.
- 47.
Ibid.
- 48.
Ibid.
- 49.
Le Chatelier interview with author, May 25, 2012.
- 50.
Véronique Nichanian, interview with author, February 2004.
- 51.
A New York Times brief published in 1918 announced the Textile Color Card Associations’ intended March distribution of its Fall color card. Update the grammar a bit and the announcement could have appeared in this morning’s Women’s Wear Daily. See also Chapter 10 of the present volume.
- 52.
Frank Stuart, “Première Vision Generates a Bright, Vivid Color Message for Spring’89,” Daily News Record, March 22, 1988.
- 53.
Fairchild News Service, “Plan Attractive New Format for Spring’90 Première Vision,” Daily News Record, July 6, 1989.
- 54.
Research conducted by author in PV storage facility in September 2006.
- 55.
Quotation: Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge, MA, 1984), 279.
- 56.
As in the color card for the Fall/Winter 2004/2005 season.
- 57.
[PV], Autumn Winter 05/06 Press Kit: Fashion Info September 2004 Salon, 3, author’s personal papers.
- 58.
This was for the Spring 2005 season.
- 59.
Marilise Gavenas, “Time to Shine,” Daily News Record, March 21, 2005.
- 60.
Forde, interview with author, September 2006. Regina A. Blaszczyk reports that national organizations such as the Color Association of the United States (successor to the Textile Color Card Association discussed in Chapter 10) and industry-specific groups such as the leather-oriented Modeurop (Chapter 11) saw their influence wane in this context, although I never encountered them in the course of my coverage of fashion trends and markets.
- 61.
Sophie d’Aulnay, “Interstoff’s Late Timing Inhibits Men’s Business,” Daily News Record, April 12, 1994.
- 62.
As it did in the Fall/Winter 2005/2006 edition held in February of 2005; Marilise Gavenas (unbylined), “The Lavender Mob” and “The Purple Gang,” Daily News Record, January 17, 2005.
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Gavenas, M.L. (2017). Who Decides the Color of the Season? How a Trade Show Called Première Vision Changed Fashion Culture. In: Blaszczyk, R., Spiekermann, U. (eds) Bright Modernity. Worlds of Consumption. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50745-3_12
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