Change Of Pace.(on fashion design)

Byline: Photographed by Norman Jean Roy By Mark Holgate.

What's the best way to take up residence at fashion's most fabled houses? According to these incumbents, by checking their egos at the door--and letting the clothes take the spotlight.

Like latter-day Olympian gods, they walked among us, existing in realms that could only be dreamed about by mere mortals. And lo it was that these fashion deities--Bill Blass, Gianfranco Ferre, Roy Halston Frowick, Valentino Garavani--were idolized not only for creating magical, mythical vestments but because they excelled at living at the zenith of unbridled, and sometimes unhinged, fabulousness. Blass, the patrician-seeming Park Avenue boulevardier whose gloriously gadabout life surpassed that of any of his sassy aristocratic American dames. Ferre, the opera buff, who ferried himself around on a private jet as if it were a car service. Halston, whose enduring experimentation in sartorial athleticism was equaled by a whole other feat of stamina when he discovered the drug-fueled club scene of late-seventies Manhattan; he partied on its dance floors and didn't bother getting off them for years. And Valentino, the Roman designer whose taste for boldfaced jet-set excess was more than a match for his city's ancient origins. No, that wasn't some scent that came floating out of the ether whenever he appeared--just the waft of perfume that a minion had sprayed minutes before he entered the room.

Now they've gone, and their positions at the summit of the fashion world have been taken by Peter Som at Bill Blass, Lars Nilsson at Gianfranco Ferre, Marco Zanini at Halston, and Alessandra Facchinetti at Valentino. Don't expect the same feats of grandeur from this quartet. It's not so much twilight-of-the-gods time, just the dawning of a new era when these neophytes would rather not be treated with adulation, thanks all the same. It's one thing to exist in a world of another designer's making but quite another to keep it turning in the same way. After all, it's not their names above the doors of their new homes. Yet it can't be denied that the founders' departures leave a void; when you bought Valentino, say, you felt you'd been granted an all-access pass to his glamorous world. So what will, what has to, replace the cult of personality at these houses is the cult of desirability. These recently installed creative directors have been entrusted with creating a longing for clothes that will simultaneously honor heritage and legacy, yet will also afford a tantalizing glimpse of a previously unseen--and utterly brilliant--future. (Or not, as the case may be.)

No one seems to want a wild card, no matter how genius they are. "With the economy being so skittish," says Som, "the risks are higher. It's not like the mid-nineties, when there was so much money around and designers were indulged." Yet they still need the full support and commitment of those who hired them. The pace of the fashion industry now means that designers don't always get the time to establish themselves. Take Anne Klein's decision to shutter its runway collection, designed by the prodigiously talented Isabel Toledo, late last November. Despite being barely two seasons old and critically lauded, it was closed on the grounds of economic expediency.

The idea that designers need to be mercurial, tempestuous individuals is looking kind of tired, especially when so many mercurial, tempestuous individuals are crashing and burning elsewhere in our fame-fixated culture. Think about those in the employ of some of the most currently covetable fashion labels, the very ones, chances are, that you're stocking your closet with: Nicolas Ghesquiere at Balenciaga, Olivier Theyskens at Nina Ricci, or Alber Elbaz at Lanvin. They might stick their head above the parapet every now and again, squiring some movie star or appearing at an artist friend's opening. Despite our knowing less about them, they feel more real and tangible and human than any of the superstars whose lives were endlessly chronicled. And as they've backed off from an eternal place in the spotlight, their clothes have only stepped into it all the more.

Yet the new figureheads of Halston, Blass, Ferre, and Valentino can't be invisible. We still want to feel there is some creative individual at the heart of a house, someone who is present in the world, shaping what it stands for. As Zanini, the Milanese designer who worked for Donatella Versace for nearly a decade, puts it, "I played a supporting role in the Versace movie, and now I know I need to take the lead." From this gang of four, it is likely to be Facchinetti who will be under the most scrutiny by virtue of the fact that her predecessor, it's fair to say, happily lived in the full glare of celebrity. When Valentino bade arrivederci in September 2007 to the business he had spent 45 years creating, he'd just thrown a 36-hour anniversary party that included everything from a private tour of the Vatican to a black-tie gala held in a re-creation of the Temple of Venus. By contrast, Facchinetti celebrated signing her contract with her boyfriend and two of their friends over a risotto-and-polpette dinner at a low-key restaurant, Trattoria del Norte.