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By Garland Pollard
Rochas Fashion Brand returns
PARIS - Proctor & Gamble shut down the Rochas fashion house two years ago after over 80 years in existence. Bad move.
However, The Wall Street Journal reports that the company has signed the Italian company Gibo Co. SpA to make a line of clothes under the brand. The brand Rochas was founded in Paris in 1925 by Marcel Rochas, and is one of the best known classic fashion names.
Over the years, the Rochas brand was on all sorts of classic perfumes including Moustache, Femme and Lumiere. The clothes were worn by icons like Carole Lombard, but the fashion part of the business closed in 1955 on Rochas’ death. The perfume brand was continued by his wife until 1989. Recently, it was revived by Oliver Theyskens, who brought the line acclaim and tons of star power. But it was then shut down.
P&G owns a number of high fashion, beauty and perfume brands including Hugo Boss, Max Factor, Noxzema and Olay.This is a good policy for brandholders. Own the brand, but if your core competence isn’t fashion, license it out. We see all sorts of possibilities for the relaunch. For instance, soap operas can’t show which perfume a star is wearing. But there is no reason why Rochas, or other fashion brands, can’t be used carefully to dress the stars on shows like As the World Turns and Guiding Light.
Interested in more historic perfume and fashion brands? Read our story on historic perfume brands called:
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1 P&G | BrandlandUSA // Aug 30, 2009 at 10:04 pm
[…] has had a strange foray into luxury brands with the purchase of the fashion house Rochas. While there are certainly high margins in luxury brands, the genius of P&G is that it makes […]
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