Smells Like Revenue Raising

I’m going to preface this story by quoting Yves Saint Laurent and as you read this story I’d like you to remember him – I’ll remind you along the way.

It pains me physically to see a woman victimised, rendered pathetic by fashion.
– Yves Saint Laurent

Here is a promising business idea: we’ll take some pastel blue terrycloth and some pink velour and construct a tracksuit. Then we’ll print ‘JUICY’ across back of the tracksuit in a medieval font so an observer immediately learns the wearer of this particular tracksuit is somewhat succulent. Like all good business plans, this one has a strong sense of the bottom line because anyone who wants to wear such a distinguished outfit can expect to pay $US325 for it. You might dismiss this as a somewhat harebrained idea but in reality, it worked and it made two Californian women very wealthy.

Juicy Couture was born on the USA’s west coast to an audience of irreverent teenagers and cashed-up socialites. The brand biography posted on the official Juicy Couture website is short enough to directly quote in this article.

“Once upon a time in a land far, far away called Pacoima, there were two nice girls who set out to create the perfect girlie collection. Juicy couture swept the land and they lived happily ever after.”

Juicy Couture founders Pamela Skaist-Levy and Gela Nash-Taylor launched the now global brand in 1994, but after more than 10 years in operation any substantial information on the brand’s history is all but non-existent. A brand biography will usually devote a few paragraphs to the early days when the now head designer and CEO would take their products to the local markets and flog them to all their C-grade celebrity friends. Instead we’re simply told Juicy Couture ‘swept the land’ – as if this is some twisted fairytale where achieving perfection necessitates over-priced products, made of inferior materials, being stocked across the world and subsequently adorning the walking billboards that are Juicy Couture customers. Let’s make reference to the YSL quote – physically pained? Affirmative. Juicy Couture was started as a business move and exists as an insult to fashion itself. It laughs in the face of fashion history and literature, while posting $200 million annual profits.

The word couture doesn’t sit easily behind the word juicy. Let’s get some perspective. By definition, couture is clothes and related articles that are designed by fashion designers and are made to order. Something that is, has or suggests the style and quality of a fashion designer. So the mass produced, ill-fitting, fluorescent, terrycloth merchandise that Juicy Couture manufactures in Chinese sweatshops is still couture right? It is an insult to those true trailblazers who have designed couture that has and will continue to stand the test of time. Coco Chanel changed the way women looked and how they looked at themselves. While she may not have defined herself as a feminist, her work was unquestionably part of women’s liberation. That is couture. Fashion so definitive it stereotypes an era. Couture isn’t replicated for the masses; it doesn’t sit on department store shelves waiting to be purchased. Maybe the difference in ideas of couture stems from who is at the helm of the label. Coco Chanel was a visionary, as was Yves Saint Laurent. YSL created a significant moment in fashion history when he launched the women’s tuxedo in 1966. He called it ‘Le Smoking’. The design was considered radical at the time, but the women’s tuxedo is now considered an essential in the corporate woman’s wardrobe. Looking again at his quote, doesn’t paying $250 for a pair of pink velour hotpants, manufactured in China and pitched to the consumer as couture, render the wearer pathetic? Pamela Skaist-Levy and Gela Nash-Taylor would have you think not, but their lives prior to Juicy Couture were not in fashion. Juicy Couture was conceptualised to produce the clothes the women wanted in their wardrobes but couldn’t find in the stores. The clothing is fad-true and immediately popular to the masses, but holds no reverence in fashion history.

The Juicy Couture Boutique, on New York’s Madison Avenue, boasts a ‘New York meets Alice in Wonderland’ theme. The Alice in Wonderland, over-the-top trend had its two and a half minutes of fame in 2004 when Gwen Stefani released What You Waiting For. The film clip had a similar theme and so one could be fooled into thinking Juicy Couture got something right. You would be fooled though because the outfits Gwen grinded to in her 2004 clip were designed by Christian Dior designer, John Galliano. Galliano is a master of haute couture so imitations of his ideas are made all the time, but nothing compares to real Dior. No one can pull off Alice in Wonderland except Alice herself and Mr. Galliano. However, Juicy Couture’s popularity remains.

That popularity is driving sales across world retail markets. In Australia, Juicy Couture is stocked in David Jones and Myers only. The Juicy Couture range in Australia includes handbags, shoes, jewellery, fragrances, and clothing. The clichéd Juicy Couture customer can be seen roller-blading down Surfers Paradise Boulevard. Picture – white stretch-denim hotpants, peroxide-blonde hair, Christain Dior aquamarine top circa 1999 (with ‘DIOR’ printed in gold paint down one sleeve), equally ghastly rimless sunglasses (with ‘DIOR’ printed across the frames) – that’s the Juicy Couture customer. This customer responds (with her credit card) to branding slogans such as ‘Smells like Couture’. This phrase is the homing beacon to Juicy Couture enthusiasts across the world; it is the first in a long line of branding slogans used by the company and features on merchandise, packaging, and product literature. Smells like Couture. Juicy Couture products smell like couture. What does couture even smell like? Apparently it smells like Barbie. Confused? Me too.

Juicy Couture’s first fragrance, aptly titled Juicy Couture, was described by Pamela Skaist-Levy as being the perfume Barbie would wear. So now, couture and Mattel’s Barbie smell the same. The fragrance was reviewed as being ‘bright, perky, sweet, and young … if it was a celebrity fragrance it would be Britney Spears … pre meltdown’. It lasts on your skin for around an hour, 59 minutes longer than it takes the wearer to regret spraying it on themselves. Juicy Couture’s one redeemable quality is its current line of jewellery. Although only gold plated, the pieces are collectively better than any other category of Juicy Couture merchandise purely because it is very difficult to stamp ‘JUICY’ on the arse of a necklace pendant.

YSL has experienced a decline in sales across the last decade. Juicy Couture forecasts sales to reach $3 billion in 2010. When those money facts are as they are, the issue changes focus from a problem with what is being designed to a problem with what is being consumed. Is the traditional fashion follower morphing into a cheap-thrills fashion consumer? If so brands such as Juicy Couture will continue to gain cult-like popularity, simultaneously rendering their wearers pathetic, as YSL would say.