Could They Be Next Donna, Calvin and Ralph?

By Kristina Zimbalist

Several minutes into the opening number of the Ruff Ryders--Cash Money concert in Albany, N.Y., in March 2000, rapper Eve--the only female member of the tour--glanced into the audience and noticed that a few thousand girls were dressed just like her. Dubbed the first lady of hip-hop, Eve had already released one megahit solo album, appeared in a Sprite spot and modeled for Tommy Hilfiger. Still, the concert was a key moment for her. She thought, What am I doing modeling other people's clothes?

So the former dancer from Philadelphia sketched some ideas for a clothing line based on the way she liked to dress. Three years later, Fetish--Eve's broad-ranging line of denim jumpsuits, corduroy skirts and slinky slip dresses that look like basketball jerseys--has been snapped up by stores like Bloomingdale's, Macy's and Rich's and is scheduled to hit shelves in time for fall. Sales for the first year are projected at $50 million.

Of course, Eve isn't the first pop-culture sensation to try on fashion. In the past two years, Jennifer Lopez has watched her line, JLO, take off, earning $130 million at retail in 2002, with $175 million projected for this year. And over the past few months, it seems every celebrity with a face and a following has announced a new fashion line. Eminem, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, Nelly, Jay-Z and Mexican pop idol Thalia Sodi all have theirs. Beyonce Knowles, Gwen Stefani and 50 Cent are each coming out with a label. Lenny Kravitz reportedly really wants one. And this winter Pamela Anderson broke the news that she would launch a label, capitalizing on the riot of publicity surrounding her animated series, Stripperella.

If designers were the celebrities of the '90s, then celebrities are the designers of the new millennium. They make or break looks on the red carpet. They set trends in concerts and in their videos. And though they may not yet be crowned the next Calvin, Donna and Ralph, in a tough economy, with fashion Balkanizing and luxury companies like the Gucci Group showing profits down 97% in the first quarter, celebrities are poised to give the design industry's leaders a run for their money.

"This is a huge untapped market just starting to take off. It's just on fire," says Jennifer Black, a retail and apparel analyst at Wells Fargo Securities, of the urban category most celebrity lines fall into.

"The only thing I can liken it to is when companies like Nike injected technology into footwear and revolutionized the market, creating a billion-dollar industry. It's as revolutionary as that," says Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst of the NPD Group. "In the climate that's being established, celebrities could certainly build an empire that would put them on the financial charts. Would they be similar to Calvin? No. But could they be as important? Yes."

If commercial multitasking is a business proposition too lucrative for celebrities to pass up, it may also be one their images can't survive without. As making millions on a movie becomes ho-hum by Hollywood standards and the public is continually bombarded with the couple, comeback, blockbuster or breakup of the moment, it seems almost a prerequisite for a celebrity to engage in fashion expansion just to get an audition for a spot on the pop-culture radar.

"That's what power is today: it's exposure," Cohen says. "Celebrities are about being branded. If you want to compete in the new world of entertainment for publicity, you need to market yourself. By using multimedia--music and entertainment as well as fashion--today's celebrities have three powerhouses to get them to the height of popularity. The more you put yourself out there and the more cultures you can cross over, the bigger the payout potential. And for those celebrities who have yet to figure it out, believe me, their agents are working on it."

The entertainment industry has discovered a new medium for generating a blockbuster: the wearable kind. "It's a whole new future of fashion that's driven by a lot of change and spirit and attitude and pop-culture currency, and those things are usually driven by entertainment artists," says ad executive Peter Arnell, who devised the marketing strategy for Sodi's line.

Like other vertically integrated personalities with carefully crafted images--Oprah, Martha Stewart, Madonna, Sean (P. Diddy) Combs and Russell Simmons, plus product-endorsing athletes such as Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan--celebrity designers capitalize on the fact that popular approval equals influence, whether it's a book-club recommendation, a pistachio-colored pillowcase or a velour tracksuit.

"Imagine you're a person walking through an enormous store and you see something that has a celebrity association you admire, and there's something there that might make you feel a little bit like her [J. Lo]," says Joe Denofrio, senior vice president and fashion director of Macy's East. "That's a major selling feature. If then, when you get to the dressing room, it actually fits you and looks sexy, you've got something winning on your hands."

And while celebrity labels often begin as niche markets, their growing profits owe much to their skyrocketing popularity in suburban as well as urban markets. "There's a new young generation optimistic about diversity. They want to buy new America as well as old America," says Simmons, who recently teamed up with Kellwood to launch the sportswear line Def Jam University. "People look around and say, 'Where's the next Polo?' There isn't a new Polo. It's Phat Farm and JLO and Sean John. These companies are all new America."

So winning are celebrity associations that fashion companies are using them to craft their brand images and their products. Reebok has teamed up with 50 Cent, Shakira and Diane von Furstenberg; Birkenstock with Heidi Klum; and LeSportsac with Gwen Stefani. And designers like Marc Jacobs, in the absence of seismic shifts in fashion, are siphoning some adrenaline from Hollywood by putting celebrities in their ads: Cate Blanchett for Donna Karan, Adrien Brody for Ermenegildo Zegna, Christina Aguilera for Versace.

"The information at our fingertips has made us extremely aware, and now everyone sees through the branding and gimmicks," says Janine Lopiano, a co-founder of the Manhattan cultural-intelligence and market-research firm Sputnik. "Believe it or not, to see a celebrity [attached to a product] makes it real. In the '90s it was celebrity as hero--the million-dollar salaries. Now they're a dose of reality at a time when everything is over the top, animated and not real."

Whether it's with Lopez or Stefani, a celebrity association seems to provide a sense of familiarity in a cyberspeed, anonymous world where family is often far flung and community absent. Companies that capitalize on this through co-branding get instant emotional attachment and hipness by association. Companies that don't take that step run the risk of being perceived as pop-cultural outcasts.

"It was like there was a cool party going on and Reebok wasn't invited," says Jan Sharkansky, vice president of classic lifestyle marketing at Reebok, describing the company before it entered into high-profile partnerships. "Then they got some cool friends." The company's biggest co-branding coup was in teaming with Von Furstenberg, who designed a collection of dresses for Venus Williams (she has a $40 million contract with the athletic-wear brand). It was the first designer tennis line to appear on the women's professional circuit.

Designers are using celebrities to invoke a new message: authenticity, even antiglamour. This spring, Jacobs used Winona Ryder in ads for his secondary line, Marc by Marc Jacobs, after she wore his designs at her shoplifting trial. Director Sofia Coppola designed a line of fall bags for the same label. And this season a severe-looking J. Lo stars in Jacobs' Louis Vuitton ads. Then there's the famous Madonna Gap commercial and Coke's recent "Real" campaign starring real couple Courteney Cox and David Arquette.

Anna Zegna chose Brody to star in the fall campaign for Zegna after seasons of using "the model of the moment," she says. "Teenagers, anorexic men, very fragile human beings, all aesthetics that were more fashion victim than the reality of the brand, which is about authenticity." Brody, she says, brought "not only flash and muscles but a more intimate and strong personality."

Donatella Versace hired Aguilera to give the fall campaign a realistic edge. "She's not a perfect beauty. She's not perfectly made up," Versace says. "The pictures don't say, 'I'm feeling gorgeous,' but instead they say, 'I can't give any more,' which all women know--changing moods, what women go through in life to accomplish what we need to accomplish."

It's the latest development in the millennium's all-out obsession with reality. Celebrities, once airbrushed beyond recognition, have been brought down to earth and suddenly look ... normal. They're just like us.

"That she's a real woman, she just had a baby and she's out there every day doing what she's passionate about are all things I can relate to so closely," says Karan of her stark, sci-fi-inspired fall campaign starring Blanchett.

"How many totally perfect, gorgeous hair-body-skin-face-teeth can you see and still have it spark your interest?" asks Trey Laird, president and executive creative director of Laird + Partners, the ad agency that handles Donna Karan. "There's something about a real person--and you can say celebrities aren't real people, but they are. They just happen to have a very visible job. They're not perfect, they have a life, and they make it a little more emotional, give it more of an interest, more of an intrigue. It makes it real."