Aging Baby Boomers want Practical over Fashionable

Fashion Relearns Its Darwin: Be Adaptable or Be Extinct
By: Constance C. R. White and Jennifer Steinhauer
Fashion Relearns Its Darwin: Be Adaptable or Be Extinct

The fashion business has been slow to recognize the changes in many American women's attitudes toward clothes. Women, particularly aging baby boomers, have recently wanted something less extreme -- clothes that were stylish yet practical enough to wear at the office, a business dinner and a P.T.A. meeting. And if they don't find what they want, they are happy to spend their money on things that now seem far more worthwhile, from vacations to home furnishings to plastic surgery. During the early 90’s many designers that failed to see the changes in women’s fashion simply went out of business from lack of sales. Some caulities were I. Magnin, Petrie Stores and Merry-Go-Round. Perry Ellis and Adrienne Vittadini, two other well-known American sportswear labels, also shut down their designer businesses.
Growth stalled at companies that were leaders in career apparel, like Liz Claiborne and Leslie Fay.
And stores that once seemed invulnerable -- Ann Taylor Stores, Charivari, the Limited and Casual Corner, among them -- are deeply troubled. Women's apparel stores had their worst Christmas in nearly a decade in 1995.

But other retailers, including Searle, the Gap, Target Stores and Sears, Roebuck, have found ways to endear themselves to the female shopper, with an assortment of more practical clothes, reasonable prices and more convenient layouts.
A number of the most promising designers -- all creating expensive fashions, often formal career clothes -- have been forced out of business since 1990. The list includes Charlotte Neuville, Christian Francis Roth, Gordon Henderson, Stephen Sprouse, Mary Ann Restivo, Eleanor Brenner, Gloria Sachs and Carolyne Roehm.

''In the late 80's and early 90's, the industry didn't realize it could all come to an end,'' Mr. Mori said. ''People got wise to the fact that their lives didn't revolve around the way they dressed. Fashion didn't realize what was happening. We found ourselves with overdone fashions.''

But with the change in fashion came came dozens of copycats that imitated hot sellers quickly and sometimes more cheaply.

Winners Letting Shoppers Dictate Style
A new crop of designers like Anna Sui, Tommy Hilfiger, Cynthia Rowley and Max Azria's BCBG are creating fashion houses offering more casual styles that cost from $50 for a knit top to $400 for a jacket, a sharp departure from the current sovereigns of fashion, who built their kingdoms selling $2,000 suits.
A moderate resurgence of luxury goods like handbags, jewelry and perfume has also helped sales at upscale department stores like Neiman Marcus and Saks.
But many retailers are succeeding also by recognizing that the female shopper has changed, and the stores have begun offering a more appealing mix of merchandise, lower prices and an atmosphere friendlier to shop in.
One standout is the Gap. Once a purveyor of very casual fashions that seemed most appropriate for a college class -- striped T-shirts, sweatshirts, loose jeans -- the Gap began offering casual but much more fashionable separates.
Sears, Roebuck is perhaps the best example of a mainstream, moderate-priced retailer that has responded to three of its customers' desires: affordable work-and-weekend dressing, snazzily packaged cosmetics and a better-organized store.
Target Stores, owned by the Dayton Hudson Corporation, is a winner here. Target takes a look from the Milan runway and, rather than trying to cheaply emulate it, translates it into something hip and wearable.