To Frill or Not to Frill? Designs for a Downturn

Nanette Lepore Balances Femininity and Practicality In A Season of Romantic Looks

The first look that designer Nanette Lepore sent down her runway during the New York fashion shows last week was a floral-print coat made of a very soft burlap. The coat's oversized, notched collar and bold print signaled power, but the elbow-length sleeves and flowers flashed pure femininity.

Ms. Lepore has built her 12-year-old fashion label on a signature look that manages to combine girlish charm with tailored power. Her designs seemed particularly relevant last week, as dozens of designers offered romantic, feminine looks (with varying degrees of success).

The talent of fashion designers lies in gauging the mood of our culture to create a clothing line that people want. As WSJ's Christina Binkley reports, politics and the somber mood of the economy has influenced Nanette Lepore's designs.

Fashion designers must walk a fine line this year as the economy continues its downward spiral. At a time when women are cutting spending on clothing, designers feel they must entice women with something new and special -- without coming across as frivolous and impractical.

Over the summer, Ms. Lepore decided -- as did a lot of designers showing at fashion week -- that the solution was not conservative designs. On the contrary, difficult economic times seemed to call for escape. In the fashion world, that translated to feminine '70s looks and floaty, frilly counterculture clothes.

Ms. Lepore was among the designers taking chances with ruffles and mixing materials and patterns such as plaid and stripes. "I'm not a huge rule breaker," Ms. Lepore said, but "we're breaking more rules."

Indeed, wearing Lepore requires a taste for well-managed risk. For spring, for instance, she will offer tailored jackets -- without sleeves. A simple sheath dress has a single ruffle running across the skirt. She calls her look "enlightened boho."

Yet Ms. Lepore knows how to balance the tension between function and fashion. More-conservative women might have overlooked the floral-print coat as it was shown on the runway. It was paired with green knickers -- decidedly not an office look. But worn over a more conservative pair of slacks or pencil skirts, the same coat would add verve to a professional wardrobe.

"I feel like I understand that working women need functioning clothes and dresses," said Ms. Lepore in her studio, wearing a transparent leopard-print blouse over a short black skirt. She is a native of Ohio and a working mother herself -- her daughter is 10 years old. She attributes her understanding of appropriate dress in part to her sister Michele, who is married to Ohio state Rep. Bob Hagan and has to find pitch-perfect outfits for a variety of public and political events.

Whether or not Ms. Lepore gets her designs right, the shifting economy is buffeting her business. Earlier this year, she was on the brink of selling a controlling stake in her company in order to expand. Bill Smith, the former president of investment bank Financo Inc. and founder of Global Reach Capital, a private-equity investment group, had been scouring fashion for labels that could be leveraged into juggernaut brands with the launch of accessories, perfumes and other spin-off products. Mr. Smith approached Ms. Lepore about a stake in her brand, which has seven retail stores, in addition to being sold in department and independent stores, producing about $140 million in annual sales.

Figuring Out What to Wear

How do you see the line between feminine and professional? Is there more room for feminine looks at the office these days, or less? Discuss on Front Lines.

Though intrigued, Ms. Lepore dragged the negotiations out for two years while her husband, who is the company's president, urged her to get to the finish line. "I didn't want to lose control of my company," she says. "And then the economy crashed." The deal fell through. "I come home to 'I told you so' every night," she says, as her husband, Robert Savage, nods with a rueful grin.

These days, with financial havoc on Wall Street, all kinds of stores are feeling pressure to reduce the prices of the clothes -- even low-priced Target stores, a Target spokesman told me last week. High-priced designers like Ms. Lepore have found retailers cutting back sharply.

"We're not getting what we're used to in reorders -- it's been hard for me to adjust," she said recently. "In a normal environment, we'd be having tons and tons of reorders, but now, stores are not wanting to get loaded with inventory."

Instead, Ms. Lepore is pressing to grow independently. Plans are in the works to open stores in Bal Harbour, Fla., and on Madison Avenue in New York City -- and she is looking to raise her profile overseas. She said about 15% of her sales currently are overseas, but she hopes to double that percentage within five years. In the U.S., she will launch her first advertising campaign this fall in magazines and on billboards.

Mr. Smith might manage to help out after all. At her show last week, he made it clear he hasn't given up. He said airily, "We'll do something at some point."

By: Christina Binkley
Wall Street Journal; September 18, 2008

Bare-Legged Ladies: Hosiery Reveals Office Divide

Hose or no hose? That's the working woman's dilemma around this time of year. The weather grows warmer, and the debate heats up: Are bare legs proper?

In today's casual workplaces, many women have peeled off the panty hose, and it is now common to see bare legs even on conservative Wall Street and at business events. Yet the transition has highlighted a generational divide. For women who entered the work force before the 1990s, hose were considered as necessary as underwear. But many twentysomethings have never worn panty hose at all.

The fashion shift has left some baby boomer managers feeling that their hosiery make them look frumpy. Kathy Garland, the 54-year-old chairwoman of the Northern Dallas area for the National Association of Women Business Owners, says she finally threw out a bag full of hose last week. An executive coach herself, she noticed a few years ago that she was the only woman wearing hose at a formal business fund-raiser. "Younger women don't even think about panty hose," she says.

There are certainly weightier issues to ponder these days, what with a presidential election and a war going on. But to managers in offices encompassing several generations, panty-hose policies are an opportunity to set fair rules.

This is the issue that lately has occupied the mind of Jim Holt, president of Mid American Credit Union, a small financial institution in Wichita, Kan. Mr. Holt is 58 and a three-decade member of the U.S. Army Reserves. He joined Mid American, which has 50 employees, four years ago, inheriting a dress code that prohibited, for women, such things as boots and mules, or backless shoes. The company required "hose" at all times -- even under pants.

When Mr. Holt attended a dress-for-success seminar that year, he got advice that caused him to loosen the reins on women's boots and mules. But not bare legs. The rule, "nylons and dress shoes are to be worn at all times," applied even to business-casual contexts. "We're not New York or San Francisco," Mr. Holt says, wearing ironed khaki slacks, an ironed golf shirt, and crisply creased socks. "We're the Midwest."

If there is a male equivalent of panty hose -- forcing wearers to balance comfort and formality -- it is probably the tie. Ties aren't required at Mid American. "The revolution has already taken place in the tie area," says Mr. Holt. He wears ties only on Mondays for his weekly Rotary Club luncheons.

As for fairness, it's hard to say whether ties or panty hose are more uncomfortable. One male reader of this newspaper, after making a bet with a female co-worker, attempted to discover the answer by secretly wearing panty hose under his business suit for several weeks. He claims ties are worse.

About a year and a half ago, Mr. Holt hired Kristen Spear as executive director of administration and human resources. Ms. Spear is 28. Like Ms. Garland in Texas, Ms. Spear found that wearing hose to professional events sometimes made her stand out awkwardly. Yet it was her job to counsel wayward employees on Mid American's dress code, which she did dutifully if not enthusiastically.

One bare-legged 23-year-old clerk in indirect loans -- where she dealt with customers by phone -- confessed she had never owned a pair of hose. Hose are "so foreign right now to Gen Y or Gen X," Ms. Spear says.

Ms. Spear encouraged Mr. Holt to reconsider his stand on hose. "According to her local research, hose are optional," Mr. Holt said in a recent email to me.

He relented just last week. "I didn't want to be so old-fashioned that people would be like, 'Do you require corsets, too?'" he said.

Mid American's newly loosened dress code, allowing bare legs, will be announced to employees in coming weeks in a series of meetings. Women at the credit union would be well-advised to listen closely. Mr. Holt says that when evaluating employees' performance in dress, as well as workmanship, he'll make a distinction between "who is meeting the minimum standards and who is exceeding them." In other words, hose will be optional but advised.

I suspect it is only a matter of time until Ms. Spear's point of view wins out entirely.

For the time being, Ms. Spear says she'll wear hose to board meetings "or if there is reason to exude the highest professional appearance. I will not wear them if I will be in the office all day, because I believe one can be professional-looking without wearing hose."

By: Christina Binkley
Wall Street Journal; June 5, 2008