Last week, I went to Tokyo for a Christian Dior show. Yeah, I know, that’s what everyone asks: Dior in ... Tokyo? Not Paris? Huh? And then they shake their heads in a fashion-people-are-crazy kind of a way.
No. There is method in this madness, and shrewdness in this extravagance. Dior’s Tokyo pre-fall event represents an emerging strategy by the great Parisian fashion houses to retain status by detaching themselves from the decline of France, and reposition themselves as global brands. The phenomenon of the catwalk show on tour – just a week earlier, Chanel staged one in Salzburg, Austria, and has previously shown in Dubai – is a ploy by which the aristocracy of the fashion industry, who for generations ruled the seas of style unchallenged, intend to maintain their supremacy in a globalised economy.
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