As Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Australia prepares to kick off next month, ragtrader.com.au revisits a roundtable with influential buyers from the 2016 edition. Moderated by Assia Benmedjdoub.
The panel
Natalie Kingham: Natalie Kingham is buying director at luxury portal matchesfashion.com.
Catherine Baba: Catherine Baba is a Paris-based stylist who works on editorial and commercial projects.
Aisha Bennett: Aisha Bennet is a buyer at iconic US department store Bergdorf Goodman.
Let's talk
Assia: Where does Australia sit in your overall business. Is it important?
Natalie: Australia falls into the top five countries shopping with us, so it’s an important market. Globally our business is very strong, so to be in the top five, it’s a good position.
Aisha: Just based on distance, Australia for us falls in the top 15. Geography is the big thing for Bergdorf Goodman.
Assia: What are your top performing Australian designers?
Natalie: Zimmermann and Ellery are not only good performing brands as Australian designers, they’re good performing brands overall. I think that is what’s important. No country should think of itself as just that: a country. When we are globally thinking of new brands to work with, we are not thinking ‘oh we need to pick that up from Paris and that from London and that from Australia’, it is just wherever you find good design or a good collection.
Assia: Camilla was the first Australian brand you introduced to Bergdorf Goodmanm, Aisha. How did that happen?
Aisha: We launched it about six years ago, after I saw it worn by a celebrity on vacation and tracked it down. I thought there was something really captivating about the prints and Camilla has done a really good job of staying true to herself. She is always going after the prints and silhouettes. At the time, there was an emerging resort lifestyle trend and the swim department was moving away from just one pieces and bikinis. ‘What am I taking away with me on vacation?’. It was an amazing launch and we’ve had such a successful business with her. It has continued to grow so for us, she’s our first foray into Australian designers. I think it really brought Australia to the forefront for us. We’ve since launched Dion Lee and Zimmermann.
Assia: How do local designers get the attention of global buyers like you?
Aisha: Dion Lee was a brand we came across in a showroom but again, we’re not necessarily looking for specific things from a specific market. If we find something that we love and we want to get behind, we’ll find a way to do it. It doesn’t really matter where it comes from but I think it’s nice that as we come across as a much more global society. That we as merchants are representing the people that are shopping with us.
Assia: Are celebrity endorsements important in your market? What do you find drives consumer purchases?
Natalie: Matches is not too worried about celebrity endorsement. Me personally, I am not too worried about celebrity endorsement either. It can help, but we actually work with a lot of fashion bloggers as well. Our online editorial content drives a lot of sales and we work with a lot of fashion influencers. They come on our site and they talk to us about their wardrobe, about their life and what they would wear on a day-to-day basis. I actually find that’s pretty successful, as well as actually collaborating with designers. Instagram is really interesting as well, so celebrities for me and for our business is less important. I would say online editorial content is more important.
Aisha: I would agree with that as well, it’s not necessarily a celebrity following that drives it. Now that we have some really powerful fashion bloggers, we have alternative ways of seeing garments other than just on celebrities.
Natalie: We have been doing a series ‘How to style with’, working with Man Repeller and I think, Margaret Zhang as well. They go through our edit of brands and items and put together their own outfits. They shoot them and then we have them up on the site. I love that because I’m like, “Oh I love that t-shirt, I would have never through of wearing it like that!." It’s their personal take on our edit and that’s been really successful. I do think these fashion influencers – not so much bloggers – are really important to how we then want to buy clothes.
Assia: When did that content strategy come into play?
Natalie: When we got investment! A few years ago, we got investment and we got together a great online editorial team. It’s a big team and they’re really talented. There’s a lot of talent in there from British Vogue, American Vogue, all kinds of newspapers around the world – I think there’s even some Australians in there. Actually, in the future, I feel like that’s going to become more and more important.
Assia: How many people are in the editorial team?
Natalie: More than there is in buying! And we work with a lot of freelancers as well for the shoots and the styling. I’d like to ram that up more and more and more. I think it would be great if every week, you went on and you had a really high calibre shoot going on.
Assia: Aisha, how does Bergdorf Goodman approach content?
Aisha: We do have our own in-house person, who is fantastic. I do think one of our biggest challenges is how do we maintain our identity as a historical brand but continue to move forward and stay competitive. So we kind of do a combination of both – we do in-house and we work with bloggers. We want to collaborate with designers, we do as much of that as we can and stay competitive with the current trend.
Assia: As a stylist Catherine, do you find work growing in that area rather than just traditional editorial?
Catherine: Yes. I remember when I first started styling, that wasn’t necessarily what I specifically wanted to do. I was working more in fashion houses and styling just happened. It was wonderful when we were playing and it was more about creating the image and the fantasy. At one point, there was that tipping point of an advertising list that was just endless. It was definitely the beginning of the end where we were just working also for the advertisers.
Assia: When did this happen?
Catherine: The 90s were great where music and fashion was concerned. I think, without being nostalgic and I don’t want to at all, but it was for me the last hurrah of fashion. Before the monopoly and the corporate cannibalism began to suffocate the creativity. I feel that there is becoming a backlash. I don’t think it’s a dirty word: recycling. The Copenhagen Summit just came to pass just now and how we can become more sustainable in fashion which is ultra, ultra, ultra important. I don’t think it needs to be something that is too organic. We can still have an aerodynamicism with everything that’s happened.
Assia: It is a tough balance. What have been some of the biggest successes for you all?
Natalie: Vetements. I picked up a few seasons ago. I remember going into the showroom and meeting the boys and seeing the collection. I was blown away like “wow, this is fabulous." I needed to go away and think about it because it’s really quite strong, which I love. So we kept in touch and I went in the following season. We were ready, I picked it up and it was quiet for a little while. The jeans that everyone is desperately after now sat online and the gorgeous trench coats too. Then something just clicked and it all just started getting a bit of a cult following.
Assia: That would have been a relief.
Natalie: That has been a phenomenal success – a really, really big success. I felt so happy for them, because they’re proper designers. They have pulled themselves up. They come from Georgia, they don’t have any kind of special privileges, they’ve worked really, really hard. They’re both from the retail and designer industry and for them to get the Balenciaga gig, it was just so punk, it was brilliant, I loved it. I think the success of them just shows you that you can be a great designer. We work really closely with them. I get lots of special things – not for me but for our business! They’ll give me a lot runway exclusives.
Assia: So stock specifically for you?
Natalie: Yeah.
Aisha: That’s the holy grail, you want people to come to you first.
Natalie: They do work with me on runway exclusives, but they do that with other retailers that they’re working with as well. It’s just more intimate and I think we’ve lost some intimacy. Things need to feel really personal and creative and passionate and no one wants to be churned out unsustainable fast fashion. Even though fashion in the way that we’re shopping is going fast, we hold a lot of integrity with the designers that we work with.
Catherine: We have been going through a period where a lot of casualties in fashion have come to pass. It started not that long ago and there is that whirlwind of musical chairs which again is still quite constant. When Hedi Slimane became the creative director at Yves Saint Laurent, he did turn the visage around which was very, very intelligent. Of course, there was so much backlash and revolt against what he was pushing because what he was really creating in a way were staple pieces. Hence Vetements, which means clothing and clothes. I’m not saying that Vetements wouldn’t have been born without Hedi Slimane, but I think it was just a natural passage to where we are now.
Natalie: They once laid out a dress for me on the table and showed me that there was one hole being cut there for the head for the dress and everything else was just one piece of fabric. When you put it on it looks very complicated. That is one person that knows how to cut and design. I think that’s what made me believe in the collection, because there’s a lot more to it than meets the eye.
Assia: Aisha, have you had any of those a-ha moments with a brand?
Aisha: I think we have quite a few successes at Bergdorf Goodman as a whole. I think what is most exciting about being at Bergdorf Goodman is that people often look to us for what is the next greatest thing. This can be good and bad because there’s a lot of pressure in that. The Fifth Floor has been turned so quickly, it’s contemporary. Self-Portrait went gangbusters immediately when it came out. We haven’t been able to keep that stock. I think that we have a customer that is very sophisticated and it’s got this lady but edgy feel. I think she was looking for what the next thing was and we inundated her with that. We gave her a new resource to look to and it has been very successful.
Assia: How do you manage your business with the change in traditional buying cycles?
Natalie: When we started collaborating with designers, it was quite strategic to deliver at certain times of the year where deliveries were low. Because I’ve worked in many different areas of the industry, I know how that production cycle works. So there’s certain times the factories get quiet. This way, the designers get a bit more money and they get to produce more things. For us, we get a delivery outside the normal windows when the customer is getting a bit fed up because there’s nothing new coming in.
Assia: It was the start of that change.
Natalie: It was born out of that ‘buy now wear now’ concept but we didn’t call it that. I think we have consciously, for a few years, bought quite transseasonally. We think about the global weather. It’s going to be hot somewhere and it’s also going to be cold somewhere. I’m constantly working with knitwear, coats. I can have shearlings delivered in January, which might seem a little bit odd because that is when all the summer collections coming in. It will be cold somewhere. So it is about getting out of that mind-set of ‘Well, it’s winter and I need to buy coats’. It took longer for the designers to respond. Finally, you would go into a showroom and there would be a rack of clothing you’d want to wear when it gets delivered. The consumer has responded to that.
Aisha: I think being in New York, we’ve had that specifically with as it speaks to the resort collections in November and December. Having dealt with coats and swim, I have watched this juxtaposition for years and waited for the designers to get on board. Someone’s always travelling, so my biggest coat business is in November and December. But then, so is the swim department. We always make the joke: "Is she wearing a bikini under her Monclear coat?." Essentially she’s going away, she’s going somewhere else. Ultimately, I think it just becomes a customer service issue. How are we going to be a resource for her to come and get whatever she needs whenever she needs it?
Assia: Have you ever had to fight for a label?
Aisha: All the time. I think it’s an interesting dynamic. We as a buying team and then our planning team, who financially plans the business. What I try to do as a buyer is include them in the market appointment or share with them the runway show. This is so that when I’m having that conversation of “I need more money, I have to overspend”, they feel as emotional to the product as I do. I think that’s where we find the synergy and we work together, we find a way to make it work. It is a bit of a balance.
Natalie: And you’ve got to do it in about an hour.
Assia: How often do you meet with the planners?
Aisha: They’re like two doors down, we’re together all the time! We talk to each other quite frequently and I think that is the success of that. I know that other retailers have very siloed structures and so it’s like you set a budget and you just have to work within in it. I think that’s what makes us successful is that we have the ability to work together.
Assia: Do you think there’s an opportunity to capture that resort boom with Australian Fashion Week realigning to the season?
Natalie: Yes. It’s perfect they’ve done that with scheduling and it’s perfect for delivery. It’s the strongest delivery out of the whole year. For the whole year, it’s our biggest spend and it’s the biggest sale so it’s really important that they’ve got onto the schedule.
Assia: In terms of saleability, what imperatives are you driven by as buyers?
Natalie: Commerical and creative – you need both, absolutely. There’s no point having one without the other. If a brand has both, then it’s great, but it’s a balancing act. That’s our job as a buying team: to make sure the edit has a lot of commerciality but also supporting a lot of creativity. We have been known to work with designers for quite a few seasons and with very late deliveries, but we will continue to support them. Not all companies work like that. I’m very lucky that I do work for a company like that and I couldn’t do it otherwise. Creativity to me is extremely important. It’s the only way we’re going to get new designers in and newness on the market and sometimes those designers need some support.
Aisha: It’s not always about the bottom line.
Natalie: Sometimes I have to sit in those meetings and be like, “I don’t care about the bottom line, this person is going to be successful." Sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t, but it’s about people having that trust and faith in you. It is about having a different point of view as a retailer. Otherwise we’re all just the same retailer.