Rachel King Art Lecture: Captains of the Fashion Industry--Gurus of Denim

On April 27th, Adriano Goldschmied of Gap, Diesel, and more and Jerome Dahan of Citizens of Humanity and Seven for All Mankind spoke for the Captains of the Fashion Industry Lecture Series: Gurus of Denim. The program is a joint effort between the Roski School of Fine Arts and the Marshall School of Business. I found this to be a very smart collaboration as business and art/design often go hand in hand, not just with fashion but with advertising design, product packaging, and countless other jobs where the two industries overlap.

Adriano, an artist of denim, understood this necessary collaboration between business and art. He quickly learned to think of the attitude of the buyer when they are looking to buy. Fashion is the way people can present themselves. Therefore, through marketing, you need to present your product so that the buyers can see themselves wanting to present themselves in that same way. Giving the right image to the product is just as important as the product itself.

Adriano was also the one mainly responsible for bringing denim from a workman’s product to a luxury market. He was able to reinvent this material and completely change its market. I think that is a sign of a true visionary and artist, taking something everyone looks at one way and be able to see it in another light. Being able to then market it and make people see it in that new light is the sign of a true businessman. He is definitely both.

The two men also discussed where the industry was going especially with all this global consciousness and responsibility. The whole mentality is changing. There is the pressure to create a product with more responsibility due to environmental pressures. This is also an important factor to consider. Though many people see artists as being completely free-range and with no boundaries, when it comes to a sellable “art” there are going to be constraints and it is important to be creative enough to work around the constraints and make it seem like there were none.