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FRESH APPROACH Lindsay Lohan is now an artistic adviser for Ungaro's fall-winter 2009 collection.
On Wednesday, Ungaro announced that Ms. Lohan has indeed become its artistic adviser, working with a new chief designer, Estrella Archs. The move immediately raised eyebrows in the fashion world, because Ms. Lohan would become part of the artistic legacy of a 43-year-old label whose namesake, Emanuel Ungaro, was once a protégé of Cristobal Balenciaga, described in the Who’s Who of Fashion as “possibly the greatest couturier of all time.”
Sales of the high-end Ungaro collection have dropped substantially since Mr. Ungaro sold his business in 1996, and none of the designers hired to replace him since his retirement five years ago have managed to draw much attention to the label. Mr. Moufarrige, who joined the label in 2006 and has previously turned around the fortunes of French luxury labels like Goyard and Chloé (with the controversial appointment of Stella McCartney as its designer in 1997), said it was unlikely that a single fashion designer who fits the traditional mold could rebuild Ungaro during the recession. The label, which has global sales of about $200 million, mostly from cheaper products sold in Japan and scarcely from the high-end runway collection, has been losing money for several years. Mr. Moufarrige would not say how much, only that, as a minority shareholder, he was not in the habit of throwing it away.
Mr. Cortazar, who started his own label in Miami as a teenager, was also a controversial choice to design the collection, which is largely seen as a vehicle for marketing more than a profit maker for the company. Despite encouraging reviews, his work was not garnering sales or international press as the company was expanding in China and Japan. He was not available to comment on his replacements. Typically, it takes a designer, even a hot one, years to build a strong reputation, and Ungaro has been faulted for changing its creative head every couple of seasons, damaging its reputation among editors and retailers. Mr. Moufarrige said he was not afraid of shaking things up once again.
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