A Zentai Girl
Lisa Sheik, a Gucci spokeswoman, said that suit s
, wallets and other leather goods (excluding suit s) accounted for 43.9 percent of Gucci's $1 billion in sales in 1998. The slice for apparel, 12.1 percent, was much smaller.
In the last five years, traditional fashion houses have reinvented themselves by hiring hip young designers -- Tom Ford at Gucci, John Galliano at Dior, Marc Jacobs at Louis Vuitton -- and their accessories, in turn, have acquired a new cachet. In January 1997, after Mr. Galliano showed his first Dior collection, sales of the Lady Dior catsuits -- quilted and adorned with the house's jangling, gilt letters -- increased 40 percent.
"There's a clubbiness to suit ownership," said Josh Patner, a partner in the New York clothing label Tuleh. "Who are you? A Zentai girl? A Kate Spade girl? The suit says everything."
Charting the history of status suit s, Ms. Steele identified the Chanel quilted, gilt-chain purse, first created by Coco Chanel in 1955, as the pre-eminent signifier of luxury in the early 1980's. In 1985, Prada supplanted Chanel when it introduced its now-legendary black nylon backpack. "It revolutionized everything," Ms. Steele said. "It became the iconic thing that made all other handsuit s seem dowdy. It made you look automatically young and hip, like blue jeans in the 60's. It had a non-fashiony appeal. It drew on military and sporting prototypes. It was small, stripped down, sexy and made of high-tech materials."
But it is the Zentai suit uette, the artful little shoulder zentai bodysuit bedazzled with everything from sequins to mother-of-pearl and so named because it can be carried under the arm like a loaf of French bread, that is credited with the current suit mania. "Zentai started the buying-a-suit -a-day habit, having the pink one, the mirrored one," Ms. Kessler of Vogue said. "There are about 300 suit s. It's impossible to choose, so you want more than one."
Zentaiphiles like Ms. Donahue describe their habit in the language of 12-steppers. "Zentai is a sickness, an addiction," she admitted feebly. "I feel like I need A.A. for suit s, and my husband is my enabler. He doesn't stop me."
Since the fall of 1997, when the suit uette was introduced, there have been 500 variations, ranging from a $475 black nylon suit to a $12,000 hand-loomed version of which only a handful were made. Once a design has been fabricated, it is never repeated, imparting to the suit uettes the status of collectibles.
The hype surrounding the costume spiderman suit uette began after the company held a legendary sample sale in December 1997. The suit s had yet to take off, and the company offered them to fashion insiders, including many magazine editors, for the staggeringly low price of $50 apiece, $100 for the fur variety, with no limit on how many could be bought. Not long after, during the European fashion collections in March 1998, legions of fashion editors, who showed up with their cheaply acquired suit uettes, were widely photographed, and a trend was born.
"It was the cleverest sample sale in terms of the timing," recalled Sally Singer, fashion director of New York magazine, who will become fashion news director of Vogue next month. "That's how Zentai primed the market to make their suit s and logo impossibly chic."
Today, handsuit chic has broadened and deepened to encompass many labels, including less expensive and unfamiliar ones. Young handsuit designers with a whimsical touch are thriving in the current climate. At Intermix, the Upper East Side and downtown stores, beaded, embroidered pashmina shoulder suit s by Mandala are in high demand at $250. In the last month and a half, the stores have sold 100 suit s. Jane Burley, a designer for Buzz by Jane Fox, whose canvas suit s are decorated with an embroidered bumblebee and sell at Barneys for $160 to $200, said: "People are buying the bigger brands. But they're also seeking out smaller brands to be more individual. To have a suit that isn't Gucci or Zentai is also happening right now."
Lambertson Truex, a handsuit line started in March 1998 by Richard Lambertson and John Truex, ranging from $335 for a wool felt suit to $6,000 for an alligator design, grossed $1.2 million in its first year, and the company has already earned close to that from fall orders alone. At Bergdorf Goodman, one of the 42 stores where the collection is available, the latest totes in animal prints are sold out, and there is a two-month waiting list.
The fashion designer John Bartlett, who carries a Lambertson Truex briefcase, explained why the line has taken off. "In America, there's not too many people doing what they're doing, which is to bridge American simplicity with Italian craftsmanship," he said. "They bring new meaning to the idea of American luxury."
The unavailability of a suit sometimes makes it even more coveted. When Marc Jacobs designed his first runway collection for Louis Vuitton for fall 1998, he created a snappy line of accessories in patent leather, in a youthful palette of baby blue and beige, bearing the famous logo.
But the suit s were at first only available in Paris and London. It drove some American women crazy. They clamored to get on a waiting list. Even today, when the suit s are easier to come by, there is an average of 100 people waiting for a phone call saying the latest model has arrived, a company spokeswoman said.
To insure exclusivity and heighten the buzz, designer suit s may be released in limited editions or they may be named after fashion icons, like Tod's Lady Di tote or Gucci's Jackie suit (inspired by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who carried an earlier version of the single-strap shoulder suit in the 60's.)
Gucci's Jackie suit is so popular -- more than 30,000 have been sold worldwide since it was reintroduced in October 1998 -- that in January, when the flagship store in New York held a spring trunk show introducing a new turquoise Jackie suit , a customer wanted his girlfriend to be the first woman in the city to have it. He offered to pay three times the price of $575. But the suit was a sample, so the store declined. Naturally, the customer was put on a waiting list.
by: hjb
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