Revived Carven open in mainland
Print Edition
A sense of lightness and refreshing Parisian attitude was most definitely in the air at Carven, where the creative director, Guillaume Henry, showed his spring/summer 2014 ready-to-wear collections for men and women at The Waterhouse on Wednesday.
French fashion house Carven hosted its first fashion show in China with joint venture partner the Bluebell Group to celebrate the opening of the brand’s first three stores in China.
“I’m really happy to see the great response the brand gets in China. People really understand and support fashion, for both men and women’s wear. And, I do believe that Chinese women and men do understand what we call the ‘French touch,’” Henry said.
The brand was once well known for a blockbuster scent called Ma Griffe that it launched in the 1940s. Not only is the perfume being relaunched, but the brand is now being rebuilt as one of the hottest brands in the skilled hands of rising fashion star Henry.
Carven’s spring/summer 2014 collection for women borrows from the nonchalant elegance of the 1990s. Henry creates tension between couture volumes and sportswear-inspired fabrics and signs his silhouettes with elastic choker necklaces, metallic flowers and platform shoes in patent leather.
For men, the collection possesses the disheveled allure of an artist from Vallauris: relaxed collars, A-line jackets and Bermuda shorts with ample folds take shape in new volumes.
Henry would love to see people of different character, backgrounds and age groups showing off Carven clothing with their very own spirit and attitudes.
Founded in 1945, Carven was once a fashion house dedicated to making garments for petite women. The Carven house has had a very Parisian view of fashion design. Spontaneous, light, simple and enthusiastic, Madame Carven always accomplished things on the basis of her love, her convictions and desire to play. She was the first to make clothes for petite women like herself; she removed bra straps thus designing half-cups and her dresses were made from ethnic fabrics brought back from her worldwide journeys.
For the couture years, Carven kept its heritage but it has been reawakened since Henry was appointed artistic director for the house. He has been mastering Carven’s history and its DNA, opening a new chapter of Carven — reborn as a ready-to-wear line based on chic, femininity and simplicity.
“When I arrived in Carven, the brand was a sleeping beauty. I didn’t consider myself as a charming prince but my mission was to bring the brand back to life,” Henry said. “Couture design only reaches a few people but we believed at the time that we needed to talk to many people by launching ready-to-wear collections with a couture spirit.”
Henry visited the museums that have kept Carven archives and discovered the brand had designed beautiful dresses for the time that are not practical for the modern world. “So we kept the key words of Carven: fresh, elegant, spontaneous, and kept the DNA by working with atelier and keeping three-dimensional cutting,” he said.
Since Henry launched Carven’s first women’s ready-to-wear collection in 2010 and first men’s ready-to-wear collection in 2012, he has transformed the brand into a profitable, accessible label beloved by women across the style spectrum, from Beyonce to Alexa Chung.
Henry is obsessed with shirts. “It is something you can wear in so many different ways. You can be sexy, completely strict or shy, and you can wear huge mens shirt or really fitted one.
“And dresses. There is nothing like that for men. I like the idea that you can be cool and chic in two minutes,” he said.
Henry, who started in the house of Givenchy and also worked at the French sportswear label Paule Ka, said Carven is considered a French brand with a Parisian soul yet the brand style is truly international.
“The Carven woman is from everywhere and can be any body type, young or old. It’s just a question of spirit. Alexa Chung has nothing to do with Beyonce, yet our piece is ... simple enough to let you do what you want with it,” he said.
“The Carven man exactly shares the same value: I like the idea that a man doesn’t have to force himself to show he is a man. I like a man to be more playful, more sensitive and more emotional. I like to play with colors and proportions in a charming way.”
The strategy of Carven for China’s mainland is to deliver the brand into the first-tier locations and place the brand with the same positioning of all the contemporary designer lines. “We penetrate the market. We position ourselves as a designer’s line. After the success in Japan and Hong Kong, it’s natural for us to come to China’s mainland and we already have opened three points of sale at IAPM, Grand Gateway in Shanghai and Galeries Lafayette in Beijing,” said Doreen Cheng, CEO of Bluebell China.
“Carven’s brand DNA matches with what the customers are looking for these days, statement designs infused with refreshing Parisian attitude and chic silhouette,” she continued.
“In a five-year plan, we should be able to open 20 points of sale in China’s mainland. We are also developing our wholesale business and selling at Lane Crawford and 10 Corso Como.”
Cheng emphasized that the brand is about young sophistication with injected creativity.
They are positioning the brand as affordable, fresh, elegant, spontaneous and contemporary with jacket prices ranging from 5,000 (US$806) to 20,000 yuan and dresses from 5,000 to 15,000 yuan. There are a lot of designer hand-touched elements injected into their pieces, brand officials said.
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