While he comes from a political family — his uncle was Pierre Mendès France, prime minister of France from 1954 to 1955 — Didier Grumbach grew up in the fashion business.
His grandfather owned a coat manufacturer in Paris, C. Mendès, and in lieu of summer jobs, Grumbach earned “pocket money” by functioning as the company’s first export agent, selling coats in Benelux countries at a time when “coats and dresses were not the same trade,” he pointed out. “Not the same savoir faire,” the grandfather would explain to his 18-year-old grandson.
Grumbach’s early successes in a nascent industry foreshadowed a fruitful career at the forefront of the ready-to-wear explosion in France and a storied 16-year tenure as president of French fashion’s top organizing body, a tenure he wound up this fall, having passed the reins to Ralph Toledano, president of Puig’s fashion division.
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A walking encyclopedia of the French industry, the 77-year-old Grumbach has poured his knowledge into “History of International Fashion,” an updated, English-language version of his original 1993 tome that is being launched this fall in the U.S. and India.
In an interview, Grumbach reflected on a career that saw Paris, long a cradle of fashion creation, become a vital and vibrant fashion capital with an international complexion. Along the way, he opened a concept store that was an early precursor to Colette, backed incendiary fashion designer Thierry Mugler and forged ties with trade bodies around the world, visiting BRIC countries long before the acronym existed.
Grumbach originally intended to go into law but never completed his studies, deciding to join the family business in 1954, after finishing his compulsory military service in France.
Founded in 1902, the Mendès factory was owned jointly by his uncle and his mother, and Grumbach felt he should develop it.
He couldn’t have chosen a better time.
Couture houses such as Dior, Schiaparelli and Carven were branching out into rtw, and they needed manufacturers to supply their boutiques. That’s where French fashion’s governing body — the Fédération Française de la Couture, du Prêt-à-Porter des Couturiers et des Créateurs de Mode — earned the middle part of its name: ready-to-wear from couturiers.
Grumbach recalled this “extraordinary period” between 1961 and 1975 with great affection, describing how apparel made for the boutiques of couturiers gradually evolved into a promising export business.
And so the budding fashion executive boarded a plane for New York, purchasing a felt fedora so he would fit in with American dress codes at the time (although he confessed it didn’t fit him well, so he carried it more than wore it).
Revealing a stunning memory for details and names, Grumbach recalls renting suite 921 of The Plaza hotel to receive buyers from Lord & Taylor, I. Magnin, Neiman Marcus, Berdorf Goodman, Sakowitz, Bloomingdale’s and others. He remembers each of their names and the staggering quantities they bought in comparison to French boutiques, setting his family enterprise on an expansion path.
“That changed totally our concept of the business,” said Grumbach, who quickly realized he had to grow beyond his artisanal production of less than 30 employees.
“And so I opened my first factory in the west of France, near Angers in Chalonnes-sur-Loire, and it was 100 people, and we taught them everything from scratch, including how to make a buttonhole,” he said. “It was the beginning of decentralization.”
Having been able to achieve good quality standards with his first factory, Grumbach decided to buy a bigger facility, La Cotonnière de Saint Quentin, which employed 450 people in Angers. That was in 1966, and his bet was that he would be able to produce high-quality dresses in large quantities.
“My uncle didn’t expect this company to become what it did,” he said, recalling a board meeting at which he told Mendès France that he was planning growth for the year ahead in excess of 50 percent, prompting the politician to remark to the bookkeeper in attendance: “Don’t you think this boy is totally uncontrollable?”
Puzzled and stressed by the apparent volatility of the fashion business — and deeming his factory ties a liability for his political career — Mendès France told his nephew: “I want you to buy this factory, but if you do, you have three months to buy my share and not one day more!”
Grumbach chuckled at his uncle’s remark, as it echoed the tight deadlines Mendès France imposed when his government negotiated the armistice to end the First Indochina War.
Grumbach ultimately prevailed, partnering with a consulting firm, CEGOS, which his uncle had hired to evaluate the soundness of the exploding family fashion business.
The company continued on a roll when Yves Saint Laurent couture boss Pierre Bergé approached Grumbach about producing YSL Rive Gauche rtw, further cementing the prestige of Mendès as the go-to factory for couture houses. At its peak, it employed about 1,200 staff. Grumbach recalled that his first order for YSL was 500 pieces and the last was 150,000 pieces, reflecting the “astronomical” growth of that fashion house and rtw in general.
Another plum assignment came when Cristobal Balenciaga was tapped to design uniforms for Air France stewardesses. Mendès produced all 19,000 pieces, including suits, coats, rainwear and shirts.
Sensing a need to develop new brands alongside storied couture names, Grumbach established Createurs et Industriels, a prescient, if short-lived, venture that was part fashion incubator, part concept store.
“The idea was to create and promote new brands and to link factory owners with creative designers,” he explained, Emmanuelle Khanh and Ossie Clark were the first to join, and he tapped interiors maven Andrée Putman as artistic director. Group members would ultimately include Jean Muir, Fernando Sanchez, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, Issey Miyake and Claude Montana.
Grumbach describes the venture’s retail shop, which opened in 1973 on the Rue de Rennes, as “a little like Colette 20 years earlier, because we were selling clothes, objects, furniture, jewelry, bicycles, green plants. You could frame your photographs; you could have a drink.”
While the store and the collective were ultimately folded — ventures that were perhaps ahead of their time — they underscored Grumbach’s close affinity with fashion designers, especially daring and visionary ones.
Enter Mugler, whose talent stupefied Grumbach. By ceding his shares in Mendès and Saint Laurent Rive Gauche, he was able to finance a budding French designer with a penchant for theatricality.
“I think he was a genius. In fact, I had no doubt. And he still is,” enthused Grumbach, invariably dressed in a Mugler shirt with its metal snap buttons. “When you look at the archives and you look at the videos of his shows — well, he was a director more than a couture designer. Directing fashion shows, he’s absolutely amazing. The influence he had is fabulous.”
Grumbach ultimately struck a deal with Groupe Clarins to help finance Mugler’s expansion into fragrance, selling the beauty company 30 percent of the couture house at a time when it was very profitable.
“There was a pact between all of us saying that if the perfume was a success, they should buy the control, because they wanted to have control of the brand, and if it was the contrary, we should get our shares back,” he recalled.
Given the blockbuster success of Angel, launched in 1992, Clarins acquired all of Mugler in 1998, freeing Grumbach to take on a bigger role at the federation.
In fact, he had been closely involved with the fashion body for many years.
In 1991, he headed a commission under then-industry minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn (who is also a former managing director of the International Monetary Fund) to liberalize the couture appellation, opening up the rare and exacting pursuit to guest members. The first was Mugler in 1992, who paraded rtw alongside high fashions.
Grumbach allows that, when he assumed the helm of the federation, Paris was not the dynamic fashion capital it is today. In the mid-Nineties, Milan was arguably fashion’s most happening city, with Tom Ford revving up Gucci and Versace roaring ahead. What’s more, the licensing model upon which many French houses were built had run out of steam.
Inviting guest members to participate in couture, including Mugler and Jean Paul Gaultier in 1997, set high fashion on a new course, and the rejuvenation of Paris began to gather steam with new couturiers at Dior and Givenchy: John Galliano and Alexander McQueen, respectively. Ford’s arrival at the creative helm of YSL in 2000 further tilted the excitement needle in Paris’ favor.
Grumbach insists couture will continue to be a strong attraction for brands that want to burnish their image, predicting Givenchy and Saint Laurent could one day rejoin the high-fashion crowd.
He noted, for example, that returning to couture has been a plus for Versace and the couture week. Ditto for Giorgio Armani, who attracted a new and different clientele when he joined the calendar in 2005.
“Couture is a plus. It’s service. It’s not an industry. It cannot live without ready-to-wear,” he said. “Some brands will always be in couture, and some will be in ready-to-wear.”
One of Grumbach’s key accomplishments at the federation was to further internationalize Paris, positioning it as fashion’s preeminent stage. Foreigners began moving onto the calendar in his Createurs et Industriels days; he noted that, “up until then, only the French had some internationally famous brands.”
Createurs et Industriels was the precursor to rtw designers that were not born out of the couture.
“That’s how we arrived at having Jean Muir, Issey Miyake and Fernando Sanchez on the calendar. That was the beginning of internationalization,” Grumbach said.
While there were a handful of non-French participants in Paris Fashion Week when Grumbach took the federation helm, with Dries Van Noten arriving from Antwerp in 1997, there were 25 nationalities by the time he bowed out.
Grumbach is insistent that “nationalism in fashion is totally irrelevant,” noting that the first grand couturier, Charles Frederick Worth, was English. And, today, Paris remains a magnet for forward-thinking design from any corner of the globe.
“When the talent is obvious, we are happy to nurture it,” he said, musing what might have happened if Hamburg-born designer Jil Sander had chosen to parade her collections in Paris, rather than Milan.
“To fight to bring English designers back to London is childish. It’s just badly placed nationalism,” he continued, alluding to the British Fashion Council’s efforts to woo Burberry, Alexander McQueen and others back to its capital. “London will always be essential, like Milan, but we don’t have the same mission.”
Detractors argue that, perhaps, Grumbach opened the door to Paris too wide.
According to Karl Lagerfeld, “He let in too many second-rate people — and then, always, the changes of the dates of the collection. That makes the work more and more difficult.”
Grumbach is convinced Paris is the platform for advanced, visionary fashions, ones that can change the history of costume.
“Rick Owens would not design the same collection if he was still in California,” he said. “When designers are creative and want to express themselves, more than just feeding some clientele, they will need Paris.”
“When Yohji Yamamoto came to Paris, it was to show a collection that didn’t exist in Japan. He had Y’s for that,” he said, referring to the Japanese designer’s second line. “Paris is really the research center of fashion. When you see Haider Ackermann, you understand what it means. Paris has high standards that don’t exist in New York or in Tokyo.”
In his estimation, the need for creative, demonstrative fashion is growing: “All over the world, consumers will want to differentiate themselves,” he said.
An unabashed fan of fashion shows and known to well up during a particularly good one, Grumbach raced around Paris to attend as many as he could in anticipation of what all fashion professionals recognize as a fashion moment.
“If we’re lucky enough, we have four or five surprises every season,” he said, stressing that such surprises “are worth the trouble.
“You come to Paris for the emotions you have in certain shows,” he said. “There was a recent Issey Miyake show — I forget who the designer was at the time — but the music, the casting, the lighting, the collection, et cetera — everything was perfection. So, it’s not always something you expect.”
Asked what he likes most about fashion shows, he said the atmosphere and “theatrical ambiance.”
In fact, he predicted that fashion shows will become “more and more spectacular” in the future.
During Grumbach’s tenure, he saw designers vacate the Carrousel du Louvre, a centralized fashion-show venue introduced by his predecessor, Jacques Mouclier, with then-culture minister Jack Lang’s backing.
“It was the only space where you could have an audience of 2,200,” Grumbach said of the Carrousel.
Van Noten was among the first to turn his back on the underground network of catwalks, and when Chanel and Dior followed suit, it was a stampede. The federation ended its contract with the venue in 2010, arranging, instead, a series of venues concentrated along the Seine River, which snakes through central Paris.
Big fashion houses such as Chanel, Dior and YSL decamped to the Grand Palais, with its soaring 11-story glass cupola, or opted for bespoke tented venues.
Like his successor Toledano, Grumbach is of the discreet ilk, preferring to work quietly behind the scenes rather than trumpeting projects that might never achieve the desired effect.
Yet he is proud of his work to burnish Paris and aid promising fashion talents.
During his tenure, he started a fund called Mode et Finance, which takes minority stakes in promising young designers; created an initiative called Designers Apartment, which encourages young designers to take orders before putting their collections on the runway; and established the Cercle Saint-Roch to strengthen ties between member companies and students at the École de la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne and the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs.
He also mentions the Cité de la Mode, a sprawling riverside complex that includes eateries and nightclubs as well as the Institut Française de la Mode, which offers post-graduate students a variety of programs in management and design.
Grumbach is an associate lecturer there, giving insights into the history and strategy of creative brands.
He said his experience at the IFM “changed my thinking and my person,” confessing that, before embarking on his teaching adventure, “I didn’t even know what marketing was.”
Grumbach remains dean of the IFM, which includes a school of management dedicated to fashion that he asserted “has no equivalent.”
Grumbach said the industry must perpetuate and nurture itself with new brands, mentioning that, when Christian Dior and Pierre Balmain launched their fashion houses, some of the existing federation members were 100 years old.
“It’s essential to have new brands to nurture this industry,” he said. “In the long run, we know that even two new brands can change the ecology-economy.”
Mode et Finance recently made investments in designers Yiqing Yin, Bouchra Jarrar, Nicolas Andreas Taralis and collaborative label Each X Other.
Grumbach noted that designers require financing because they can no longer resort to such easy-money options as licensing, and they must immediately pursue an export business to succeed or take on additional design roles.
Grumbach laments that many fashion designers do double duty, arguing that only the rare talent can juggle a signature brand and a role at a heritage firm.
“Nobody can do what Karl does. It’s a miracle,” he said, referring to Lagerfeld.
Grumbach is not one for staying idle, either. He said his departure from the federation does not mean he is retiring, hinting that he’s interested in areas such as training “based on creation and tied with contemporary art. But it’s too soon to speak of it.
“Everything important takes a few years,” he said with a knowing smile.
So, have all these decades in fashion turned him into a clotheshorse?
Grumbach smiled again, opening his jacket to show a Yohji Yamamoto label and admitting a penchant for Japanese designers — and for rarely updating his wardrobe.
“Buying clothes at my age,” he chuckled, “is extremely optimistic.”