Fashion production show

Fashion videos: retailing meets show business

The scene is Dakar, capital of Senegal. The tall natives are decked out in jungle prints. The music is local. And the clothes are WilliWear.

That's right--if all goes as planned, movie theaters will have a 30-minute short to show this winter that features Willi Smith's newest sportswear. Smith's $100,000 adventure is just one demonstration of the hottest news in fall fashions--a profusion of videos to sell clothes.

The craze is blanketing the garment industry like a London fog. Norma Kamali, Daniel Hechter, Henry Grethel--these and other manufacturers are making minimovies to project an attitude and image they hope will dazzle customers not just in clothing stores, but in theaters and on TV, too.

"Fashion videos are going to become a major part of selling," maintains Kal Ruttenstein of Bloomingdale's. Says Terry Melville, a fashion director for Macy's: "More and more designers will be making conceptual videos to build their image. It's no flash in the pan."

Videotapes of models sashaying down runways to flaunt the latest fashions are old hat. They have been the mainstays of selling in designer showrooms for some time. More recently, these runway repeats have been aired on monitors near designer areas in stores to attract passerby.

Now, entertainment is the word. The emphasis is on image and excitement, not particular outfits. Designers give as much thought to finding the right music to go with story lines that involve fast-paced escapades and exotic locations as they do to creating collections. Remarks designer Norma Kamali: "I can say to anyone looking at my video: 'This is my intention--fashion is fun and it makes you feel good.'"

Actually, Daniel Hechter discovered Africa well before Willi Smith. His spring 1984 menswear collection was shown in Kenya safari video. Hechter associate Rhonda Gainer remembers that filming the scenes was a production nightmare. "The government wanted us to pay 80 percent duty on everything we brought into the country. We sat for five days while the company wired me money. They confiscated everything. The bottom line is that it was no easy trick to film."

Viewers of Hechter's fall video will see two men in business suits motorcycling and later one of them schussing downhill on skis. The Hechter crew actually produced the video in a New Mexico desert in April. They worked 20-hour days to shoot around the noontime glare and 110-degree heat. Though the video appears to be a winter scene, it actually was shot on sand.

Makers of tailored menswear see slick videos as another life raft in the sea of sinking retail revenues. Hartmarx is employing one to indtroduce a line of tailored suits for younger men designed by Henry Grethel. The $75,000 flick was made in London with an English band supplying music. First, disembodied suits gyrate on a screen. Then, the video cuts to the real band whose members rock in sartorial splendor in a crowded disco. "We felt it was time to catch up with the women's industry in videos," explains Frank Brenner, A Hartmarx vice president.

Designers say the action videos really do lead to increased sales. "There has been a tremendous rise in business where videos play continuously," says Patricia Papock, national sales director for Anne Klein II. One reason videos seem to work is that they appeal to customers and salesclerks directly. Says designer Kamali, whose seventh video features six tunes by Carly Simon, a customer: "When people see things, it's easier for them to decide if the clothes are for them."

"Customers seem mesmerized by Kamali's videos," reports Melville at Macy's. In a sense, she says, "they are moving mannequins--almost an alternative to the salespeople."

Dayton-Hudson, a Minneapolis-based chain, has used a videos in its juniors' and young men's departments for 12 months. It now has a contract with a music-video distributor to send a monthly master reel of tapes to all 37 stores. "Whether it's a fad or a marketting tool remains to be seen," adds Karla Alexander, Dayton-Hudson manager of in-store electronic media.

For designers, these tapes mean free advertising that many of them could not otherwise afford. Television news and cable programs have given designers thousands of dollars' worth of free air time. Cable News Network used Hechter's 6-minute Kenya video in connection with its coverage of the Pope's visit to that country.

In Fashion, a division of Ohlmeyer Advertising, is designing four 30-minute TV shows that will air eight videos per program. "The time is right for fashion programing on television," says Sandy Pittman, president of the Ohlmeyer unit. "We make it worth the designer's while to produce videos because we've got the air time." Pittman also is developing several shows with fashion videos at their core for cable-TV or syndication that can be inserted into news programs.

All this makes video something of a dream come true for designers. Intended as promotional material, the tapes seem to accomplish that purpose. But they are more--movie and TV entertainment, news and advertising all in one. Little wonder, then, that models and production crews are heading for exotic corners of the earth to churn them out.