The Show Man. For the past 25 years, Alexandre de Betak has become fashion’s go-to ringmaster for creating buzz via cutting-edge shows and events. As the industry stands at the crossroads, he and a handful of others have a glimpse of what lies ahead for fashion communication. As part of The Impression/CFDA, Kenneth Richard talked to de Betak about the changing dynamics of fashion shows, how technology will enhance the experience, and how he sees the game being played next. CFDA.com highlights the best moments; go to The Impression for the full interview.

Kenneth Richard: Alex, great to catch you before this crazy show schedule, so much to talk about regarding the changing landscape of shows. But beforehand, how did you start in this business, to begin with?

Alexandre de Betak: “I fell in it by chance, very, very young. I had a passion for photography, I still actually do. I studied photography quite seriously very early. I had my darkroom when I was 12. Then I started working when I was 15 for Berlitz Guides. I shot for them in the States, in Alaska.

That’s over 25 years ago. Then I started taking pictures for various trendy magazines in Paris and then in Madrid. And to make a long story short, I met a fashion designer named Sybilla at the end of the ’80s.”

K.R.: She was exquisite, great romantic.
A.d.B.: “You remember her? That’s great, most people today don’t know her. She was amazing. I met her when I was 16 and still in school. I loved what she did and offered to help, and she called just as I finished my bachelor at 17.

She was 20, I was 17. There were only three people at that time when it started. So we improvised to basically make an against-trend brand because at that time, the late ’80s, was the beginning of Comme des Garcons and Yohji Yamamoto; and the end of the ’80s was Mugler and Montana. And then you had the romantic ones, like Romeo Gigli and Sybilla. Romeo Gigli was bigger. That’s how I started.

We shot pictures with Javier Vallhonrat. I took that story and started working on the image and the communication and then the first shows for a few years. I had already then opened my first company named already Bureau Betak. That’s how it started. From there, we put together the store in Paris – her first store, and it was beautiful. We did an amazing opening party on March 15, 1991; I remember it like it was yesterday. It was the end of the Gulf War, and it was the first post-Gulf War party, during Paris Fashion Week. And then the following day she came to my office and said, ‘Alex, I think I need to stop’ She got everything: the cover of Vogue, the store in Paris, the shows in Milan…”

K.R.: It’s all downhill from there.

A.d.B.: “Exactly, the day we opened the store that she had dreamt of all her life, it was all downhill from there. So she quit the life of flying every week to Milan for interviews, to Florence to work in the factory, to Paris, to New York, to Tokyo for the licensing. That life she was living had to stop. And it did.

And there I was in that post-Gulf War moment, having to figure out what was next. I grew up in Paris, but I was getting bored there. Most Americans and foreigners had left. That’s what happens when there is a recession. Between the recession, the crisis, the war, everybody was gone. Paris became too French, which wasn’t for me. So I came to New York, 25 years ago.

I was really young when I moved here and I was like, ‘I’ll start doing that.’ ‘That’ didn’t even have a name. So when I opened Bureau Betak in NY, it didn’t even have a properly determined function. What I do as a job today didn’t actually really exist. At that time, most fashion shows were conceived by the designers themselves, like Jean-Paul Gaultier, Thierry Mugler and Yohji Yamamoto, and also in Milan. They were usually produced internally by the PR department, or externally by press offices. So that’s how I started. I improvised, for lack of a better word. I was just creating a job for myself that didn’t yet really exist.”

K.R.: You do some big ones in proprietary spaces. Why do you think the game has evolved that way?

A.d.B.:  “The industry is bigger. The big brands need more space, more shows, more people at their shows. Businesses are bigger, richer and more powerful. So that demand needs more space. And then, in more space, the more elaborate the show, the more time it takes to put up and take down, so you can’t share it.

Twenty years ago there were two or three shows a day in the Cour Carrée du Louvre shared spaces. For the past two years, the Louvre has been rented exclusively to Dior for the RTW shows, and we need the Cour Carrée for over one month exclusively each time, for set-up, show and strike. So there is no possibility of sharing. We use the entire place.

The shows became larger for obvious reasons, which leads us to another topic: social media. Originally, fashion shows were strictly for clients, then also for press, then press expanded to TV, then came the internet, which already exposed the shows in real time to wider audiences, and then came social media, which expanded exposure to everyone.

It created the need for the brands to have faster, stronger, wider and more global impact.”

K.R.: Which leads us to the big conversation about the system. How the advent of technology and awareness gets in line with timing and the consumer. What is your take?

A.d.B.: “It’s a complex thing. There is no definite answer. Of course it makes sense today for brands to show to the consumer what the consumer can buy, IF the consumer can really buy it, and if all trades align… because the consumer is looking at it. You have 500 to 1,000 people in a room, that’s trade; and then you have millions who are watching at the same time, the same thing, with the same quality, at the same level of precision, something they can’t buy for another six months. So it’s a very fair point that if one could, one would rather show what one can buy right away. Some brands like Burberry and Moschino have already tried it in certain ways, and it seemed to have proven very successful.

If you were to generalize, New York’s Fashion Week is probably the most commercial and consumer-oriented one of them all. Some brands think that it’s a shame to spend all that money on press instead of on consumers. I never really agree, because I think that whatever money is spent, whatever energy and creative efforts are put into shows, is never wasted. It always goes to the consumer in one way or another.

Today, what has the biggest impact is the world of reality. Reality TV, more than any world, is, in a way, a consumer world. The world of the Kardashians represents the consumer world. And that’s what’s had the most impact on everything, including fashion and fashion shows. Though I don’t personally share a passion for that, I recognize its power and I respect it. That power of what is attracting the general consumer is something we have to deal with, the power of reality.

I still feel that the high fashion world exists because it makes everyone dream. That is what our jobs are. I see the role of a luxury brand to make people dream beyond reality and I think that the long-term sustainability of luxury brands is the dream. The short term is the consumer access. But too much short term is going to kill the long term. Our job is to balance the non-accessibility of that dream and luxury, with accessibility.

In concrete terms, when we create a show we create… well, first of all, I like to think I never create one show. I participate in the making of a brand and I usually intend from the beginning to do it successfully and for a long time. Hopefully! I always enter it thinking, “How we can start a story? How we can design an identity, a visual identity, an emotional identity through shows, and how we can make it evolve with time?” I believe we’re building a dream. There has to be emotion and dream in luxury. That’s what makes the difference between a luxury brand and a more common and affordable brand, though of course major, more affordable brands also communicate like luxury brands.

Now, we are in a time that started many years ago with the help of social media, of what I call ‘reality.’ That in a weird way, and thanks to technology, makes a lot of people dream even more today of luxury. Social media makes everything accessible and interactive. Not only do you know the news, but you can interact with them, you can share them in the way you want. The audience obviously can share what we show them in the way they want and so on.

The good thing for brands is that there will be a mix of it all. It’s about a balance. Because it’s a big expense, we may take these big fashion shows to be more consumer-oriented, which may not make a big difference because they already are.”