What 'it' is these days

By Sharon Fink
NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE, NEW YORK
Thursday, Feb 08, 2007, Page 13

Models wear creations by Hermes during one of the shows staged on the 7th day of the Ready to Wear Spring-Summer 2007 fashion week in Paris, France, Saturday 07 October 2006. PHOTOS: AGENCIES

You may have been too immersed in trying to score a Marc Jacobs Stam handbag or researching Lindsay Lohan's favorite sunglasses to notice, but "it" items have been declared "out."

The concept of "it," the ultimate "in" things that every fashion fiend burns to own, is rapidly fading, Women's Wear Daily stated in a story a few months ago. The fashion industry newspaper cited retail executives who said women were taking "a more personal approach" to dressing and relying less on one key look.

That's hard to believe. One of fashion's cornerstones is the "want-need-must-have at all costs" pack mentality.

Women still put their names on waiting lists for Hermes Birkin bags, one of the be-all and end-all of "it" items. Oprah Winfrey can spend five seconds saying she loves a certain kind of jeans and the brand immediately becomes the most coveted in the country. And anyone who wants to bid on a Balenciaga jacket on eBay should be prepared to let the money flow until the final second ticks off the auction clock.

Models present ensembles by Marc Jacobs for Louis Vuitton.

"I think it's too early to tell if 'it' pieces are really over," eBay style director Constance White said by phone. "We still see, for instance, women clamoring for handbags (they) see on celebrities."

Melody Acree, a Tampa Bay area stylist and handbag designer, agrees. (Her bag line, Acree-Hartzog, launches in the fall.)

"Certainly the 'it' bag phenomenon is still happening," said Acree, who also is internship coordinator at Tampa's International Academy of Design and Technology. "Though it may be toward the end of the trend," she added, because women are getting tired of how fast a certain bag goes from "it" to "ick."

In the bag

Handbags have long been the ground zero of "it."

The book 101 Things to Buy Before You Die (Red Rock Press, 2006) traces the start of the phenomenon to a bag produced in 1932, Louis Vuitton's Noe. Acree pegs the beginning to HBO's Sex and the City showcasing expensive designer bags in the late 1990s.

White said that though fashion has always had cult "it" items — "the bag for the fashion editors to have that season, or the hoodie for the rapper cognoscenti to have" the concept exploded into mass consciousness in 2002 with another Vuitton bag, the Murakami.

American Marc Jacobs, then Vuitton's design director, teamed up with Japanese artist Takashi Murakami to create something completely different from the traditional brown Vuitton palette. They did traditional bags decorated with red cherries, pink flowers and anime characters, and white bags littered with the LV logo in bright multicolored letters.

“The confluence of fashion, high style, art and the mix of different cultures all joined together to make this thing explode,” White said.

The “it” bag fervor has become so intense that popular designer Kate Spade collaborated with hip New York artist Hugo Guinness to spoof it, producing last year a canvas tote with “it” printed on it.

Get to know ‘it’

But “it” isn't just a handbag thing. Anything can be “it.” And how something becomes “it” is almost impossible to predict. “This is going to be something for anthropologists and sociologists to study and report on years from now,” White said, laughing.

Some basic “it” ingredients can be identified. Celebrity usage and involvement of a prestigious designer are two. “We really haven't seen any ‘it’ come from downmarket and push upward,” White said.

Mass-media promotion is another.

“You can't have things become across-the-board explosions if you don't know about it and have access to it,” White said. “Media like eBay, celebrity magazines, like Sex and the City ... all the really modern-day entities contribute to the making of ‘it.’ I don't think ‘it’ could exist without that pop culture continuum in which we live.”

Ugg boots are a good current example of “it,” White said. Celebrities seen wearing the Australian-made sheepskin and suede boots incited Ugg passion a few years ago. Now the boots, and their ripoffs, can been seen everywhere, in all weather.

“Could they look any stranger. Could they be any more specific to a particular function,” White said. “That's the power of the ‘it’: It's, like, 21˚C, girls are wearing them, and it does not matter.”

Categorical quality

Though the end of “it” is not near, its meaning is shifting further from specific items to “it” brands and categories.

The brands of the moment include Chanel anything, Christian Louboutin shoes and Coach bags. “While the stars may not be carrying Coach, it's a brand really coveted by young women in particular,” White said. “It’s high-priced ... and prestigious enough that they want it, yet the price is affordable (the top price is around US$800; Birkin bags start at around US$6,000) … And Coach does tend to stay right on top of trends and really make its handbags, in design, in interesting ways.”

Popular “it” categories are vintage, Acree said, and pieces that carry on the Murakami bag tradition of mixing cultures, periods and influences.

One more basic “it” ingredient runs through them, she said:

“The common denominator is quality.”