Celebrities on the front row at LFW...

“I’m not into the celebrity thing . . . like we used to. That’s boring.”

So said Marc Jacobs who famously banned celebrities from his New York show in February last year. One celebrity who did slip through the net though, was Material Girl, Madonna. “She came backstage, and I was like, ‘What do you do with her now?’ Because it’s not like she was invited,’ said Jacobs. ‘She just called and said she was coming, and we weren’t holding the show for her. She just came, and that was it. There are certain things I can’t control.” Jacob’s stance caused headlines around the world. Why? Because over the last decade, inviting, and even paying, celebrities, to attend shows has become the norm in the fashion industry.

Celebrities and fashion are nothing new. Coco Chanel created a brand out of her celebrity status while decades of style icons, from Wallis Simpson to Grace Kelly and latterly, Alexa Chung, have been scrutinised as much for their clothes as anything else they might do. But until the 1980s, catwalk shows were largely for the fashion industry; buyers, photographers and press. So what changed? The first celebrity-fashion crossover came with the rise of the supermodel. Christy, Naomi, Eva and Kate were beautiful, aspirational, and crucially, as likely to garner column inches as any A-lister. From phone throwing to super-sized salaries, the supermodels of the 1980s and early ‘90s were as likely to make the front pages as the clothes they were supposed to be displaying. But with the advent of grunge and ‘heroin’ chic, everything changed.

Fashion and Shock Tactics…

With younger, thinner, paler and less memorable girls colonising the catwalks, publicity dwindled with designers resorting to increasingly outrageous looks. From Alexander McQueen’s ‘bumsters’ to Vivienne Westwood’s frighteningly high platforms, the clothes were getting all the attention. But in an increasingly celebrity obsessed society, clothes alone weren’t enough. People had stopped looking to the catwalk for their fashion cues and had started looking to the red carpet and the pap shot for their fashion fix instead. The impact these shots made was huge, telling and is still being felt today. After all, who doesn’t remember Liz Hurley in that Versace dress or J-Lo , also in Versace, showing off her navel at the Grammy’s in 2000? “My inspiration is still rock and roll, but now its lady rock and roll,” said Versace at the time. “The look is more refined, and more glamorous.” Glamorous it certainly was, and the dress went on to become one of the most talked about that year. Crucially, it wasn’t just talked about. It sold. By the shed load.

So does the symbiosis between fashion and celebrity just amount to a glorified form of advertising? Certainly, the last five years have seen celebrities dominate ad campaigns and magazine covers, the most famous recent example being Louis Vuitton’s campaigns featuring Madonna and Scarlett Johansson among others. For magazines, celebrity covers have helped to drive sales with American Vogue’s Anna Wintour among the first to spot the trend. ’Anna saw the celebrity thing coming before everyone else did,’ said Creative Director, Grace Coddington. From red carpets to magazine covers and campaigns, by the mid noughties, celebrity endorsements had become the Holy Grail for designers, thanks to their ability to put labels on the mass-market map. And celebrity endorsements went further than just wearing clothes; the four big fashion weeks, once the domain of the fashion industry’s style-setters, were now playing host to a celebrity studded cast as well.

A PR coup for red-top favourite Katona

The End of an Era?

But could that all be about to change? With 2009’s recession came boredom and distain for ostentatious celebs flaunting it at shows. At the 2006 World Cup, the doings, sayings and dress sense of the England WAGs were splashed across the front of every paper, tabloid or not. By contrast, at the 2010 event, WAGs were banned. Similarly, fashion’s front row line up of rent-a-stars started to look tired and even, a little old fashioned. Street style bloggers everywhere started to focus on what the industry’s fashionistas were wearing with names like Anna Della Russo and Garance Doré, once known only to hardcore fashion followers, making it into the mainstream. Jacob’s anti-celebrity stance, which just a few years ago would have looked self-defeating and naive, felt refreshing and symptomatic of a sea change.

Things never stay the same for long, however, and the likes of Alexa Chung, Clemence Poésy and Sienna Miller won’t be going anywhere soon. Just last season, Giles’ front row included quite possibly the naffest celeb on the planet – one time singer and reality show, Kerry Katona. This, from the man who counts super-stylist and LOVE magazine editor Katie Grand as his best friend. And with collections designed by celebrities such as Victoria Beckham, Gwen Stefani and Nicole Ritchie proving a critical success, perhaps celebrity and fashion isn’t over yet. Perhaps it’s just been deconstructed and reworked into something entirely new. Now that’s fashion.