when kell freezes over

Kelly Cutrone: ‘Fashion Luxury, Forget It. It’s Over.’

Style.com has this long series on the “future of fashion,” in which they call up important fashion people like Marc Jacobs’s business partner, Robert Duffy, or Barneys’ Julie Gilhart, and talk to them at length about the Internet. Understanding the future of things for the fashion business — notorious for its technology-fearing nature — has become an exercise in accepting that people in the world enjoy the Internet and these things called blogs and social networks. Plenty of fashion magazines whose websites you probably don’t read regularly are still coming around. (And how many computers did you see in use at Vogue in The September Issue?) Style.com should really ring up Kelly Cutrone, who, speaking at the Bryant Park Reading Room Series yesterday, gave this answer to a girl asking about where to look for a job in fashion:

Here is what I think is the future: Street life and life style. Style is in; fashion luxury, forget it. It’s over. Gucci, Vuitton, Hermes … all those places are really great, go for it. That business exists in a city called Paris, France. That’s where that is. Those businesses will continue. Retail business, pretty much over. I think people who sell to retail companies are people who can’t afford their own stores. The poor boys — Old Navy, J.Crew, Gap … they already knew that and aren’t wholesaling. Editorial, magazine, we are going to say buh-bye to them as we know them. They will still exist but everything is on the internet.


She’s probably right, but this might be where bloggers who thought they wouldn’t be blogging for the rest of their lives seek professional counseling. Or maybe print employment, where rolling into work at ten is, like, fine.

Power Hour With People’s Revolution Head Honcho Kelly Cutrone [Racked NY]

Kelly Cutrone: ‘Fashion Luxury, Forget It. It’s Over.’