Fashion Movements Who is really "Global"

The Girbaud label, named Marithe + Francois Girbaud after the designer and his long-time creative partner and companion, has always had a receptive audience in the US.
"There was never any problem getting recognition in the States. Somehow our young American customers got us right away, and stayed loyal," insists Girbaud. The designer helped finance a College Rock Tour last year featuring fashion and rock music to pay back American fans for their constancy.
The US remains a key market for Girbaud, representing 40 percent of his global wholesale turnover of close to $200 million. Europe makes up a further 40 percent, and the rest of the world the remaining 20 percent.
The designer will open his new New York concept store in January on 47 Wooster Street, but because the site is in a landmark building the project has taken longer than expected. "It's not just in old Europe that these things take so long," he smiles.
Two decades ago, Girbaud was widely regarded as the fashion designer who pushed the boundaries of fabric innovation, developing new technical fabrics, using materials from active sports in casual wear, and developing distressed leather.
"A lot of people took advantage, including Prada, though not just them. I basically provided the whole industry with the fabrics, as I was a half-decade in advance," he argues, twisting his graying, stringy beard.
The Girbauds' fashion has always been a mélange of technical innovation, fabric development, street style and novel cutting -- from the top line, its edgier SPQRCITY collection, to the skiwear Actlife collection, sold mainly in mountain resorts. And don't expect the roving couple to change soon.
"There was a time when people followed the movements of herds of camels or sheep. I follow the movements of my industry. I get fabrics in Italy, do marketing in America and sourcing in Asia," smiles Girbaud, who flits between homes in Italy, the UK and US.
"But like all my French friends I'm a resident in London for tax purposes," he winks.
Few things sum up Girbaud's peripatetic existence like his catwalk shows, whose locale changes almost according to the collections' mood. From 1995 he mainly showed in New York, then recently took to the runways in Milan, but earlier this year the collection was staged in Paris in the basement of the Petit Palais.
"You know, everyone in fashion is always saying how global they are. But they really aren't. They go on about being international, but the French nearly all show in Paris, the Italians in Milan and Americans in New York. They are more scared about their calendar dates and being on the official list of the Chambre or the Camera. Matter of fact, the whole system makes me sick," he snorts.
A workaholic, Girbaud eschews the party circuit. Even though he once paid for the Paris Premiere TV fashion host Marie Christiane Marek to fly roundtrip from Paris to cover his New York show, he recently politely refused to attend her 10th anniversary party on Mouna Ayoub's yacht on the Med.
"Last I heard, you couldn't make fashion on a yacht, can you?" he says. "Give me an apparel plant any day!"