Paying celebrities to design collections for high street store chains is an empty marketing ploy that is stifling innovation, warns one of the country's leading fashion retailers.
George Davies, the inspiration behind Next, George at Asda and Marks and Spencer's Per Una range, says that the high street's obsession with launches by the likes of Kate Moss and Madonna is short-changing customers.
Moss's range of clothes had fashion-conscious shoppers queuing for hours outside Topshop last week. On Wednesday, it will be the turn of Lily Allen, who has designed a line of clothes from ballgowns to trainers for New Look.
Despite the initial hype these celebrity launches create, however, the tide appears to be turning. Indications that the public is underwhelmed by Moss's collection were to be found yesterday on eBay, where items were being sold on for little more than they cost in Topshop.
In the United States, where the range will be launched in the Barneys chain this week, the New York Post declared that the collection 'looks like Kate copying a lot of other people's stuff Kate's worn before'. Other critics have called the range 'Duplikate' and 'bland'.
Moss's line would not be the first to fail to live up to its publicity. Both Roland Mouret's Gap range and Madonna's H&M collections were fast-tracked to 'clearance' within weeks of their launches. This, said Davies, is why he would never invite a celebrity to produce a 'capsule label' within his own range at Marks & Spencer.
'I haven't got time for this new fashion for celebrity culture in the design world,' he said. 'These celebrity clothing lines are being done for publicity. It's all about how much hype can be got from the launch.
'Celebrities should keep to what they are good at, which is walking down catwalks. It makes no difference that they love clothes. I love driving Ferraris, but that doesn't mean I could design one, and I wouldn't even try.'
Davies criticises shops that link themselves to celebrities on a long-term basis, like Moss and Topshop, as well as those who get fashion designers to create ranges for the high street, such as H&M's involvement with Stella McCartney, Karl Lagerfeld and Viktor & Rolf, or Sainsbury's link with Anya Hindmarch and the This Is Not a Plastic Bag shopping bag.
'This is a tough job,' Davies said. 'Designers have to have vision, which is a rare commodity. They also absolutely have to stay hands-on, which is very difficult. I put 500 new designs in my Per Una line every month and I still have the designs and printing blocks for every one of them.
'If you look at the past instances of celebrity designs, they don't create anything that survives the test of time,' said Davies, who is giving a speech on fashion at De Montfort University, Leicester, this week.
'That's because they're not there, talking to the customers and asking what they want. I spent a lot of time on Per Una shop floors with the women who are buying the range. I care what they say and listen to what they want. That's how you design clothes that mean something and that last.'
Davies, now one of the best-known businessmen in the UK, first came to public prominence as the founder of Next in 1985 when he was named Businessman of the Year. His innovation was to group clothes together by colour to allow customers to put outfits together more easily and design shops that customers liked to use. 'My next invention was to launch George at Asda,' he said. 'It was the first really successful supermarket clothing range.'
After leaving Asda, he was credited with helping revitalise Marks and Spencer's fortunes by creating the Per Una range. But he now believes that the focus on getting celebrities involved in the mass market has distracted attention from the reality of the high street experience.
'We've replaced the innovation and inventiveness of retail and fashion with the marketing ploy of celebrity culture,' he said. 'Personality has gone out of the shopping and retail experience for the customer.
'What's even worse is that customers are being treated like cattle. Just because they're putting up with it at the moment, it doesn't mean they will continue to take it if an alternative to the high street comes along.'
Celebrity collections
Stella's denim jacket
Stella McCartney's November 2005 collection for H&M sold out within an hour. Ranges by Karl Lagerfeld and later Viktor & Rolf sparked similar frenzies.
Roland Mouret's Galaxy dress
After 500 or so of Mouret's designs were snapped up at Gap's Oxford Street store, demand plummeted.
Madonna's dress
H&M and Madonna's beaded evening dress sold at a New York store for $198 (£99) but the line was quietly moved to the 'clearance' areas within weeks.
Anya's bag
Sainsbury's sold 20,000 of designer Anya Hindmarch's £5 cotton bag imprinted with 'I'm not a plastic bag'.
Lily Allen's ballgowns
The idiosyncratic dress sense of the 21-year-old singer will be available to the masses on Wednesday when clothing retailer New Look releases her range of signature dresses and accessories.
