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In designing house brands, originality is a luxury, not a necessity. Some of Macy's Charter Club has been cut from virtually the same cloth as Ralph Lauren's signature lines. Among Charter Club's recent best sellers: handmade sweaters emblazoned with horses and wine-colored skirts printed with flying birds. While Lauren's hand-knit sweaters can cost $345, a Charter Club counterpart sells for $124. Designers shrug off such imitation as a cost of doing business. Says Louis Dell'Olio, designer for the Anne Klein label: "There isn't a designer on Seventh Avenue whose clothes haven't been knocked off by every store."
As they learn how to mass-produce clothes, retailers assemble teams of designers and product-development experts who travel from Milan to Tokyo looking for ideas and materials. Most retailers opt for manufacturing in Asia ! to take advantage of low wages. The Limited can probably claim the industry's most streamlined distribution network. Within ten weeks, 700,000 garments for a new line can be woven, cut, sewn, flown from Hong Kong and placed on racks in the chain's 751 stores across the U.S.
As house brands take up more space on store shelves, some traditional name brands have been pushed aside. Some companies, like Spitalnick, a longtime manufacturer of expensive women's apparel, have responded by giving up manufacturing their own line of clothes to make private labels instead.
Many designers are competing by opening their own chains of stores. Ralph Lauren opened a Manhattan Polo emporium in 1986; he now operates 68 stores across the country. Liz Claiborne this year launched a new store chain known as First Issue. The designer plans to have 13 outlets in business by January.
For department stores, developing private-label garments has its risks. If poorly executed, they can fail just as severely as the most misguided high- fashion trend. But by gaining control over design and manufacturing, department-store merchants think they can stay in closer touch with the tastes of their customers. Case in point: when working women turned up their noses last year at the miniskirts offered by designers, many retailers rushed to offer house brands with hemlines more suited to the office environment. As such thread-to-thread competition intensifies, consumers are likely to be the real winners -- even if their favorite designer turns out to be an imaginary character.