October 7th 2010
What is the Level
Reading WWD the other day at a show, the word ‘masstige’ was impressed upon me over and over again making me think of the repugnant way it sounds (I say skin disease, Meenal Mistry says it also sounds like a physiotherapy massage treatment…) but also the oxymoronic qualities of such a word that makes it problematic to apply it in a lot of instances of what it’s normally used for – i.e. designer collaborations with high street/lower-end brands. In this supposedy accurate definition though, masstige is supposed to be ‘premium but attainable’ which puts a far more sensible spin on the hybrid word. Which brings me to Carven, a recently revived French house label that everyone has been going ker-razy for, both buyer and press-wise, because of its moderate pricing – NAP gives some handy indicators – and therefore ticks that ‘premium but attainable’ box that I think more and more people are yearning for. A current-working example would of course be someone like Acne, whilst not being cheap as chips, knocks out sales left and right and is seen as being something that is a bit of a ‘splurge’ (well, at least in my financial world…) but isn’t completely unreachable.
These levels are of course all relative depending on your financial level but I guess in the general average-income-in-a-cosmopolitan-city scheme of things, £300 for a dress does sit in that bracket. Carven is perhaps a step up from Acne in terms of pricing but in range, aesthetic and dare I say, quality in materials and with the history of a Parisian house behind it (though it’s not necessarily something that figures into the design), most people in the know have looked upon the pricing of Carven and have been scratching their heads thinking “How did they get it down so low?”
Sadly, I’m not one of those clever clogs in the know and I don’t have the answer to the question. What I do know is that Carven has got me pumping for things that I feel like I could feasibly save up for and buy come S/S 11 drops in January/February. The aesthetic that designer Guillaume Henry has carved out for Carven (yes, I dropped that one AGAIN…) has been taken up a notch, honing in further on that elusive Carven customer – somewhere between girlhood and womandom, a mixer and matcher, someone who doesn’t really do head-to-toe. Once again, their lookbooks are simple-to-break-down and in the showroom, even more so when separates hang on the rail making it far too easy and dangerous to want it all. In the case of S/S 11, it’s the way cut-outs are worked in, the Minnie Mouse ears on the sides of dresses and shoes, the play on volume seen in the bloomer skirt/shirts, the little ‘C’ bolo ties on a shirt, the Ancient Greece lithograph print, the texturised rucksacks (or just the fact that a rucksack is paired with a cocktail dress…), the rose-gold zips, the cropped flared shape of a trouser, the polo that is cut at the hem to look like an unbuttoned body and a hole host of other endearing tidbits that I’m sure will see Carven flooding into stores next season. If the first two seasons were tentative but succesful, then this one is definitely bankable. It’s NOT, however masstige. Because that’s a skin disease… or a massage treatment… or just plain horrid to say…
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