CHLOE MAGAZINE
“GOOD MORNING
MR. RIBKOFF”
And so began my conversation with one of Canada’s
most prestigious designers. From his home in Montreal,
Joseph Ribkoff discussed his company, which has been
designing clothes for 57 years, and the many facets involved
in putting together a commercial design line.
words by Emily Fox
After humble beginnings, Mr. Ribkoff began to design
on a commercial scale, creating staple pieces that cater to
a varied market of women aged 40-70. The cost of the
pieces is indicative of the quality of the clothes, which
are manufactured in Canada. Where perhaps 90%
retailers manufacture or buy their goods abroad, mostly
in China, Joseph Ribkoff (the company) takes pride in
having its base in Canada.
As a commercial designer, the fashion industry as most
people know it (think Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs) is inconsequential. “Fashion week is not important
to commercial fashion,” says Mr. Ribkoff, with smaller,
intimate fashion shows the way of commercial designers,
who often have no government grants existing to assist
their companies in getting off the ground. According
to Mr. Ribkoff, the commercial fashion industry is the
way of the future, “but still, certain markets have gone
the way of everything else in the fashion industry; New
York is a shadow of what it was, and London used to be
big, but many of the old commercial names do not exist
anymore.”
It is, essentially, a tough market, where big stores have
destroyed boutiques, and it is also a market that is continuously in flux, with more countries vying for the same
consumer. “It is very competitive,” Mr. Ribkoff says,
“In order to grow, you have to expand.” In other words,
fashion as a whole is very hard work, and designers must
be ambitious in order to survive. Joseph Ribkoff the
company has managed well over 57 years because it has
been able to adapt, and adapt to big business.
Commercial fashion is a business, and where companies
such as Reitmans and Le Chateau have begun to struggle, other companies such as Walmart have succeeded.
“They did their homework,” says Mr. Ribkoff. Target recently attempted to move into the Canadian market, but
did little work in researching the fundamental market
differences between US and Canadian fashion markets,
and subsequently lost around $1 billion dollars in their
first year (and are closing many, if not all, stores as a
result). Commercial fashion is not based on the artistic
impulses of a designer; even fashion designers who show
their artistic ideas on runways around the world succeed
because they fight to stay current and have a certain level
of business sense when it comes to marketing.
“New York is a shadow
of what it was, and
London used to be big...”
A bad season of distasteful clothes can cause a big
fashion designer to fail, due to the amount of consistent
spotlight they are under, but if a commercial design
company is to take large markets for granted, and assume they will succeed due to superficial similarities,
they will fail just as easily.
As Mr. Ribkoff mentions in our interview, “I have
never felt that I’ve got it made.” And if Mr. Ribkoff has
learned anything, it is to never take success for granted,
especially in such a fickle and ever-changing market as
the fashion industry.