THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE HERALDS THE MARRIAGE OF FASHION AND CELEBRITY….so what else is new?

The article, “STARSTRUCK! How the cult of celebrity sells fashion designers to the public,” talks about how a celebrity endorsement can catapult a designer from obscurity to center stage. According to sources, dressing celebrities "is absolutely imperative. It parallels the $20,000 per page you'd spend on advertising in a magazine to have someone like Nicole Richie wearing something of yours and having her photographed in it…

“The more visible the celebrities, the more likely key sales accounts will take notice. "Retailers like Saks, Barney's and Bergdorf see that you have gowns being worn by celebrities…and are more inclined to carry you in their stores."

The perpetually hip media savvy hat designer Christian Audigier, owner of Ed Hardy, is quoted as saying that he gives away over 300 hats a month to A-list celebs. Four years ago as head designer and vice president of Von Dutch, he took the company from nothing to $160 million by placing trucker hats and T-shirts on Madonna and Britney Spears.

"I am the world master of this kind of marketing because I create a worldwide brand just based on celebrities… I believe I can promote any product in the world." And we believe him, in the first year his company sold $15 million worth of T-shirts and caps.

Audigier, who is supposed to be on the cover of Forbes, says he has a simple formula for building a brand. “A sales showroom is not enough: There must be a retail store with a hip vibe for celebs to come and chill. Then let them have whatever they want for free. After that, The paparazzi will do the work for you."

The celebrities get photographed on the style pages in exchange for wearing a hot designer’s wares, so everyone seems happy with arrangement. "I'm not dependent on anybody," he says, "because there's always a new one." (We think he means celebrity).

If you want to read the actual article, go ahead, it’s interesting. Last week was LA Fashion week so we assume this article was born out of the celeb studded runway shows.

Christian Audigier with celeb	ED HARDY HATS
Ed Hardy hat with rhinestone trimming

STARSTRUCK!
How the cult of celebrity sells fashion designers to the public

Christian M. Chensvold
Sunday, April 2, 2006
San Francisco Chronicle

Los Angeles -- Call her Rachel. The young ingénue with third billing on a new WB drama stops in front of the white backdrop where Fashion Week's celebrity guests smile for the cameras. The paparazzi swarm like basketball players fighting for a rebound, and a lightning storm of camera flashes scintillate against Rachel's lacquered teeth.

As the ingénue disappears into the lobby, one photographer mutters, "Who was that?" The others shrug.

In an age when anybody can be a somebody, the answer is moot. The designers showing at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week (the aptly named corporate moniker for the event better known as Los Angeles Fashion Week) may never have heard of Rachel either, but they know she is potentially their most powerful spokesperson. And there are hordes of Rachels slinking around Fashion Week, these professionally styled denizens of the celebrity substratosphere, one of whom just might be the next "It" girl.

Held March 19-23 in Culver City, a few miles west of Hollywood, Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week at Smashbox Studios shines a revealing spotlight on the cross-pollinating industries of fashion and entertainment. In an age of celebrity worship, making a name for oneself as a fashion designer requires dressing someone famous.

Los Angeles may not be home to a Calvin Klein or Giorgio Armani, like other global fashion capitals. But it is in the unique position of sharing its geography with the entertainment industry. Combine this with an insatiable cultural thirst for celebrity lifestyles -- catered to by magazines such as Us Weekly and InTouch -- and fashion designer and entertainment star find themselves in an increasingly symbiotic relationship in which goods and services are exchanged for mutual publicity.

These are the new rules of the game: For the media and the consumer, who's wearing a designer's clothes is just as important as the clothes themselves.

Lights
Now in its third year as a partnership among show promoters IMG Fashion, Mercedes-Benz and Smashbox Cosmetics, Fashion Week's roster included 35 designers, from high-end lingerie line Agent Provocateur, established dressmakers such as Sue Wong, streetwear lines like Morphine Generation and a host of lesser-known couturiers.

And while the event struggles to draw marquee design names, it has increasingly succeeded in luring celebrities such as Carmen Electra, Mischa Barton and Christina Aguilera to the front row. With them has come a host of tabloid media, there to cover the stars, not the designers. "I'm here for the celebrities," says Meaghan Murphy, a writer on assignment for Star magazine. "That's the only reason."

Celebrity attendance is meticulously recorded and broadcast in e-mail alerts from Fashion Week's head office as well as the designers themselves. And the importance of a designer's runway show is judged by the number and prominence of celebrity guests, as much or more so than buzz about the designer's artistic talent.

Many celebrities are enticed to the front row with promises of free clothes and a host of other perks.

Alan Del Rosario has spent eight years making red-carpet gowns for the likes of Michelle Pfeiffer and Jenna Elfman, but showed his first runway collection March 21. His PR firm, Dennery Marks Public Relations, offered celebrity guests a fitting for a free gown and limousine service to the show. That's for top names because celebrities are ranked by their visibility and influence; lesser ones were given a discount coupon.

It's all standard protocol, says Del Rosario's director of sales and marketing, Brian Sullivan, who has spent 15 years in fashion marketing and public relations. "Media come to designers' events based on what celebrities are confirmed to attend," says Sullivan. When he pitched a segment on Del Rosario to Access Hollywood host Nancy O'Dell, "her first question was, 'Which celebrities have confirmed?' "

Del Rosario's show was modestly attended but well received and succeeded in drawing actresses Marilu Henner and Bai Ling. Henner says Del Rosario has never dressed her, adding "but he's going to."

Dressing celebrities, continues Sullivan, "is absolutely imperative. It parallels the $20,000 per page you'd spend on advertising in a magazine to have someone like Nicole Richie wearing something of yours and having her photographed in it."

The more visible the celebrities, the more likely key sales accounts will take notice. "Retailers like Saks, Barney's and Bergdorf see that you have gowns being worn by celebrities," says Sullivan, "and are more inclined to carry you in their stores."

Especially for designers starting with little capital, "to dress celebrities is the fastest way to get your name out there."

Louis Verdad has always been one of Fashion Week's top draws. This time, his audience included paparazzi-magnet Paris Hilton. The fashionista entered the main tent wearing a Verdad dress and chatting on her cell phone, setting off a piranha-like swarm of photographers as she took her front-row seat.

"There's a lot of jealousy of what I've achieved," says Verdad, who did 25 media interviews after his runway show. "I hear from a lot of people that it's because I have the biggest amount of celebrities at my show. I say, 'Do you think that's what it is, or is it because of my collection?' And they say it's a mix of the two."

When Verdad first showed at L.A. Fashion Week several years ago, there was less buzz but more focus on his designs. Now, coverage of his red-carpet gowns vies with his high-profile guests. Verdad says reporters "dwell on the fact that people are forgetting truly about my craftsmanship and (are) concentrating on who is at the show."

But stars don't overshadow his work, Verdad says: "Celebrities come to the show because they understand your work. They don't come because they want to be seen."

He points out that using celebrities in ad campaigns has become a marketing strategy for fashion brands worldwide, from Halle Berry in Versace's latest campaign to Sarah Jessica Parker for Gap. "Celebrities are the maximum advertising of any product," says Verdad.

Cameras
Inside the Ed Hardy Melrose Avenue office is a sacred tome, a leatherbound breviary of celebrity photos, each printed on identical glossy paper and set inside a decorative border. Flipping through it is like watching a carousel of Hollywood's elite. And they're all doing one thing: wearing Ed Hardy, a hip new streetwear brand licensed from the renowned San Francisco tattoo artist.

Ed Hardy owner Christian Audigier doesn't need L.A. Fashion Week -- nor any other conventional form of marketing. Four years ago, as head designer and vice president of Von Dutch, Audigier took the brand from zero to $160 million in two years by skillfully placing trucker hats and T-shirts on celebrities like Madonna and Britney Spears.

He calls this wild marketing: "I am the world master of this kind of marketing because I create a worldwide brand just based on celebrities," Audigier says in a French accent that is alternately charming and incomprehensible. "I believe I can promote any product in the world."

Audigier eventually left Von Dutch and, in November 2004, started Ed Hardy after acquiring the rights from tattoo artist Don Ed Hardy. Consisting primarily of T-shirts and caps that can fetch $120, the line's first-year sales were $15 million -- double what Audigier expected.

Now Audigier has started an eponymous collection and plans to do with red-carpet gowns what he's already done with hats and Ts: quickly build a fashion brand by dressing celebrities.

The difference between him and Calvin Klein or Donna Karan? Simple: "They pay millions of dollars (to advertise) and I don't spend one cent. Madonna is the new model of Versace. How much do you think she's paid by Donatella Versace, a million, 2 million dollars? I have her for free."

It's a quid pro quo relationship in which Audigier fares well. Madonna recently asked for 52 different Ed Hardy trucker hats. One of them was a style that had been languishing in the warehouse. Madonna was photographed at Heathrow Airport wearing it, and the image ran in InTouch Weekly. The next week Audigier sold 2,000 of them. "I upgraded the price," he says, "because the Japanese were going on the Web site like crazy."

The brand's Web site, donedhardy.com, is plastered with shots of celebrities wearing Hardy apparel. The company routinely sends out press clippings to its wholesale accounts and sees an immediate sales boost for a product that's been pictured on a celebrity.

But logo-driven gear isn't doled out fecklessly. To ensure that everyone's happy, Ed Hardy's staff verify that the celebrity in question is on the promo circuit with a new album or movie, so that the item he or she is given and is supposed to wear will be photographed. Audigier estimates that his company each month gives away about 300 pieces, which are carefully logged so they can be written off as marketing expenses. "But we're getting more selective," he adds. "In the beginning, you have Z celebrities, then you have a W, and when the A comes, that's it for the rest of the year."

Audigier, who believes he will soon be recognized on the cover of Forbes -- not for being the smartest businessman in America, but the "fastest" -- has a simple formula for building a brand in Los Angeles. A sales showroom is not enough: There must be a retail store with a hip vibe for celebs to come and chill. Then let them have whatever they want for free. After that, "The paparazzi will do the work for you."

What celebrities get in exchange for being an informal company spokesperson is publicity, but the kind that gets them on the style pages, where they want to be, not on the gossip pages. And with an inexhaustible supply of celebrities, Audigier's marketing team is easily replaced. "I'm not dependent on anybody," he says, "because there's always a new one."

Trading places
If the media delivers the message of the designers' and celebrities' mutually beneficial menage, it is one that is received with open arms by the consumer. As co-president of fashion PR firm Couch Nobelius, Shelli-Anne Couch's job is to place her clients' clothes on celebrities because "it immediately translates to the bottom line."

And while celebrities have always boosted a fashion designer's cachet, "it wasn't exploited to the full tilt that we've seen in the past couple of years," Couch says.

All this has trendsetting retailer Lisa Kline wondering, "Where are today's fashion iconoclasts?"

One of L.A.'s most influential retailers, with a reputation for discovering fresh design talent, Kline is finding that her taste is being overlooked by customers content to merely copy celebrity outfits.

When Kline was credited in a magazine for providing clothing, she would always put the clipping up on her Web site, lisakline.com. But now that the consumer sees celebrity endorsement as the ultimate validation, Kline posts clippings even when her store didn't provide the clothes, "and across the country, everyone buys the stupid item just because a celebrity's wearing it."

Recently, Jessica Simpson was photographed wearing pants by Saint Grace that Kline happened to carry. Kline ran the photo with her Web site's listing for the item, "and we can't stop selling the pant.

"Whether they like it or not," she concludes, "everybody's reading the celebrity style magazines. That's the buzz in the fashion industry right now, and you have to be a smart retailer."

As the lights went down on L.A. Fashion Week, Couch tried to stifle a sense of nostalgia. Couch Nobelius has produced many of the event's runway shows over the past few years but this season declined to participate, saying the event "doesn't have the zing and sparkle and compelling draw that it used to."

While media coverage of Fashion Week has grown steadily, with more A-list celebrity attendees and seemingly as many D-listers as fashion reporters, the event still struggles to draw marquee design names. Richard Tyler, arguably L.A.'s most noted designer, hung out in the lounge but didn't show. And St. John, which was to close the event, pulled out at the last minute, reportedly for internal reasons.

So the celebrity names are getting bigger, while the design names are getting smaller.

And then there's the media, which goes to Fashion Week, says Couch, "because Bijou Phillips is in the front row. They're not covering the designs anymore."

It's a familiar story. "The whole world," says Sullivan, "has never been more obsessed with celebrity lifestyles than it is right now."

Christian M. Chensvold, a Santa Rosa native, is a writer in Los Angeles. He blogs about style and the arts at Dandyism.net.