Closing the final chapter...

 

When Mark Keighery lost his nine-year battle with cancer in 2008, the Australian fashion industry plunged into mourning. Aside from being a strong and charismatic man, Keighery was also a big player in the local rag trade.

As everyone knows, he was responsible for launching the iconic unisex brand Marcs in 1980, but he was also a pioneer in the importation of labels such as Diesel, Dries Van Noten, Helmut Lang, Yohji Yamamoto and Issey Miyake into Australia.

Whether you loved him or questioned him, his presence was, and evidently still is, very much missed. When www.ragtrader.com.au broke news that domestic license holders for Diesel were planning to sell off their rights, the full story was only just starting to emerge.

At first, it seemed pretty straightforward. Business partners Lisa Keighery and Theo Onisforou were to relinquish their rights after some 20 years of Diesel Australia. Two decades is a long time and as regular readers of this magazine have come to know, the local denim market is forever exploding with fresh competition.

Diesel today is not the same as it was in the ‘90s. It’s beating off the likes of Bettina Liano, sass & bide, Ksubi, Nobody denim and more mass market rivals such as G-Star Raw. Onisforou, who describes himself as the silent partner to Lisa and Mark, knew this and had Diesel HQ’s support to slash retail price points for the brand here.

The strategy started a couple of seasons ago with reductions of around 10 per cent, and continued on into future collections. The quality remained the same, the marketing genius continued. It was just lighter on the piggy bank. But the market wouldn’t budge, and Onisforou, one of the few rag traders who calls it as it is, has at last admitted defeat.

I considered this to be a simple case of market competition. It’s tough out there. Crowded. In fact, prior to writing this, I received an email announcing King of Nothing will launch its first complete collection later this year. The emerging label is moving on from basic tees. Attached to the email? A Kings of Nothing denim logo.

But Onisforou, whilst acknowledging this, puts his decision in different terms entirely.

“I just can’t do it without Mark.”

And there, the end of a remarkable era.