It seems rumors of Christian Dior’s fall from grace have been greatly exaggerated. Despite the less-than-kind words many a fashion critic has directed at Dior’s post-Galliano runway shows, now under the control of Galliano’s former collaborator Bill Gaytten, the old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words still rings true and picture painted by Dior’s third quarter earnings report which was released earlier this week is a pretty one indeed. Despite the sudden loss of their creative director and the wave of bad press that followed Christian Dior has posted a 21 percent increase in revenue over the past nine months.
The fashion world’s reaction to Dior’s rosy sales report has been muted thus far, with most bloggers and critics pointing to the old adage of “no publicity is bad publicity” as an explanation for climbing revenues amid sinking reviews. However a brave few, such as Vanessa Friedman of Financial Times Material Culture blog have dared to address the writing that is clearly on the wall. Just because the designers, editors, owners and models that populate the fashion world act like its the case, doesn’t mean that the eyes of the world are always on them. Perhaps it could be that most consumers didn’t follow the Galliano story with much interest, if they followed it at all. Or perhaps the real truth is that the average shopper, whether buying Dior, DKNY or anything in between, is so far removed from the politics and posturing that has come to define the fashion world that maybe the opinions of critics (gasp!) don’t really matter to them.
Now we’re not suggesting that everyone throw caution to this wind and begin ignoring critics and editors alike, if the critique of your work is uniformly bad, or good, there is usually a reason. But let’s just say that when you are a label as big as Christian Dior, its going to take more then a few off runway showings and some bad reviews to change the minds of a world wide army of consumers who have come to love your product.
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