The Awakening of Sleeping Beauties

We are all familiar with the charming fairy tale of Princess Aurora who woke up from her deep sleep of a hundred years after Prince Philip broke the curse with a true love’s kiss. Vintage luxury brands, affluent and prosperous in a bygone era much like Princess Aurora, are being revived and reinstituted to their past glory with a new radiant and contemporary appeal. Their Prince Philip comes in the form of wealthy entrepreneurs that save the brands from bankruptcy and oblivion. Such labels are known as “sleeping beauty” brands.

Over the years, the luxury brands groups have acquired trademarks and rights to many splendid and quaint labels. They have breathed life into these exquisite emblems which would have otherwise turned to dust and blown away with the sands of time.

This business model works brilliantly too. Luxury is borne from noble heritage and fine legacy. Relevance is maintained via transitions and transformations; the forging of an identity echoing the call of the times. Acquiring labels rich with tradition but which offer full freedom to carve a singular personality into existence is a compelling opportunity. Taking advantage of the longevity of the brand and its particular virtues and attributes, these revived brands can be resold, leading to “rather interesting multiples” of profit.

The journey through the times from understanding the ancestry and culture of these luxury labels to the au courant revived and rejuvenated brands of today is quite an exciting one. In this article, we will visit Maison Macquet’s luxury stationery, adventure with the Hummer’s rugged luxury and then try on elegant Haute Couture with the House of Schiaparelli.

1. Maquet - Luxury Stationery

When you re-launch a brand, it’s like telling a story.

Maison Maquet was established by the Maquet Brothers, Hector and Charles, in 1841 specialising in finest personal luxury stationery, leather goods and art prints. It was one of the most illustrious Parisian luxury houses, enjoying the status of “Official Purveyor” to Empress Eugénie. The House catered to several other foreign royal courts and was favoured by the Grand Duchess and the Grand Duke Constantine of Russia and the Prince Axel of Denmark. With the advent of Republicans, the Maquet label switched their focus and started supplying republican and financial institutions as well as French embassies.

Its most illustrious designs include the pearly grey "empress paper” which strikes an elegant balance between white and azure paper and the notebook of the French writer Prosper Mérimée, bound in Maquet dark green morocco, distinguished by fine gold threads on both sides. With many patents to its name, including the invention patent for “a machine suitable for making letter envelopes,” the House crafted stationery in an innovative fashion, sometimes completely reinventing the norms of confidentiality of correspondence.

Over the years, Maison Maquet inhabited numerous address numbers but persisted on Rue de la Paix in Paris. In 1908, Maquet was passed on to businessman and architect Léon Tissier, who widened the brand’s craft through many artistic collaborations. He extended Macquet’s range of leather products and invested in advanced printing machinery and buildings. Cassegrain, stationery manufacturer and engraver, acquired Maison Macquet in 1990. In 1994, the operations of the House ceased. It was acquired by Luvanis in 2014.

Luvanis, is a private investment company specialising in the incubation and revival of dormant heritage luxury brands and then its sales. It was founded in 2009 with the resuscitation of the luxury label Vionnet by Guy de Lummen and his son Arnaud de Lummen, a graduate from Harvard Law and a mergers and acquisitions associate at an international firm before.

2. Hummer – Automobile

We’re here to win, not only compete.

Known for its fierce, tough personality, Hummer is a luxury brand of trucks and SUVs. Derived from the original military versions of Humvees, the Hummer exudes the same level of ruggedness and power. Built upon the insistence of Arnold Schwarzenegger, AM General produced and marketed the first civilian Hummer, H1, in 1992. In December of 1999, AM General sold the rights of the brand to General Motors who were responsible for the marketing and distribution of all civilian Hummers which were still being produced by AM General. Soon, GM introduced two of its own designs for the brawny brand - the Hummer H2 and the Hummer H3. However, Hummers featured very poor fuel economy along with other civilian concerns of lacking child safety locks, air bags and the existence of large, blind spots.

After the economic meltdown of 2008-2009, Hummer’s viability came under scrutiny. It was already suffering because of high fuel prices and weak consumer demand. Several interested parties approached GM for Hummer, including the Indian brand Mahindra & Mahindra. After GM declared bankruptcy in 2009, the rugged luxury brand was put under review for its sales potency rather than being liquidated. Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Ltd., a Chinese private company known for making a wide range of road equipment, closed the deal with GM pending approval from the Chinese government. However, the sale fell apart by February 2010 and the attempt at sale with any other company also failed. By April 2010, GM decided to close down the production of the Hummer.

With murmurs and rumours strife about the return of Hummer in 2019, the GM team kicked off the new year 2020 with the announcement of the revival of the Hummer on national television with an ad aired during the Super Bowl. The 30-second ad featured the NBA celebrity, LeBron James known widely for driving around the hefty vehicle while still in high school. The ad highlighted the features of the GMC HUMMER EV - 1,000 horse power, 11,500 pound feet of torque and the ability to go 0-60 in 3 seconds, all while maintaining utmost silence. The Hummer Electric is a quiet revolution.

The new Hummer would not be a stand-alone brand but would be a model under GM's profitable GMC brand. The pickup truck “Hummer EV SUT” was all set to make its debut in May 2020 followed by the electric SUV “Hummer EV SUV" in 2022. However, because of the complications caused by the novel Covid-19, the launch has been pushed to late 2021. The 2020 Hummer ’s base price is around $70,000.

4. Schiaparelli - Haute Couture Fashion

The idea with Schiaparelli is to propose the brand with all its modernity, and represent dreams, art and all the most sophisticated things we can do.

Elsa Schiaparelli was an Italian-French designer who gained fame for her hand-knit pullover innovations in 1927. Notorious for her trompe-l’œil design and surrealist vision, her quirky eccentricity presented itself in her works. Her patrons included the heiress Daisy Fellowes and actress Mae West. Schiaparelli was ingenious and unconventional - she was the first designer to make use of visible zips in Haute Couture, which were there for practical as well as ornamental purposes.

Elsa Schiaparelli is known most prominently for the creation and the launch of the colour “Shocking Pink” - an addition of crazy to her mad-genius that appeared in a riot of colours and dreamlike pieces. Some of her other striking designs include the scandalised divider skirts, the wrap dress, the Forbidden Fruit dress, experimentations with diagonal buttoning and tuxedo dresses and the "2-en-1" dress. Schiaparelli couture is also acclaimed for the collaborations with artists involved in the Dada/Surrealist movement - Jean Cocteau, Leonor Fini, Méret Oppenheim, and Alberto Giacomett. The brilliant combination of Schiaparelli and Salvador Dali led to the formulation of many extraordinary and exceptional designs - a powder compact in shape of a phone dial, the lobster dress, the Le Roy Soleil fragrance and many others. By 1939, Schiaparelli was well known as the epitome of modernity.

She left Paris during the second World War and went to the United States where she stayed until 1945. After coming back, Schiaparelli introduced some novel, profound approaches to Haute Couture. The House of Schiarapelli launched its own designer sunglasses collection and enlivened revolutionary modernity by playing with sizable accessories such as giant bee brooches and oversized earrings. The House also designed the wardrobes for Zsa Zsa Gabor's outfits for the 1952 biopic of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Moulin Rouge. In 1952, Elsa Schiaparelli closed her Couture House and wrote her autobiography “Shocking Life”. In 2006, Diego Della Valle, chairman of the Italian leather goods company Tod’s, acquired the Schiaparelli archives and rights.

The Couture House was reopened at Hôtel de Fontpertuis, 21 place Vendôme in 2012. In 2013, Monsieur Christian Lacroix designed a collection of Haute Couture embodying the originative, shocking spirit of the House as a tribute to Elsa. The first Schiaparelli Haute Couture runway show was held after 60 years in the January of 2014 during Paris Haute Couture week. Schiaparelli was awarded with the official Haute Couture label by the French Ministry of Industry and the French Couture Federation in 2017. Today, Daniel Roseberry handles the direction for all creations for the Maison Schiaparelli. Vogue Runway released a promotional clip of “collection imaginaire” of Fall 2020 Couture Schiaparelli Collection on July 6th. The exception a result of the Corona virus.

Conclusion

With a dormant fashion house, you have an inexhaustible reserve of storytelling to match, yet it comes with no liability, negative connotation or skeletons in the cupboard. There is no restructuring to be done and you can position the brand however you wish in terms of creativity, price points and distribution channels. It is basically ‘carte blanche’ to devise a modern business model that comes with the benefits of aura and heritage.

Although this sounds smooth-sailing and indeed constructive, reviving a dormant brand is a task that requires acute expertise, quiet patience and supreme skill. Resuscitation of an emblem built on decades of regalia requires intuitive artistry to do justice to the insignia, to deliver expectancy.

“We’re selling you a dream in a way,” Mallevays says about packaging old labels for sale. “Sleeping Beauties can be hugely attractive for the right group—the right brand can get up to scale very quickly and successfully.”