Pop stars – the new fashion designers

Amber
Hello, I’m Amber and you’re listening to bbclearningenglish.com. In Entertainment today, we find out why pop stars are the new fashion designers – in other words, why there’s a trend for pop stars to start their own clothing labels or brands. For example, the drummer with the chart-topping band The Arctic Monkeys has just launched a line of leisure wear, and this follows designs launched by Madonna a short while ago.

Here’s the first part of an interview with Lisa Armstrong, the fashion editor of the Times newspaper. She says this trend is an obvious, ‘a blatant’, move by pop stars to make money! But it’s also an attempt, ‘a stab’, at staying famous for longer! ‘To get a bit of longevity’ – ‘longevity’ here means the length ofsomeone’s career. And for the model Kate Moss, launching her own clothing label is a sensible next move, it’s ‘a logical step’.

As you listen, try to catch the expression Lisa uses to describe how the stars of today are smarter than pop musicians in the 90s – when it comes to making money from fashion – because they are marketing their own designs, not those of big, established designers.

Lisa Armstrong
‘Yeah, I mean, it’s clearly a blatant attempt to make money – why not?! But I think also, for some of them, it’s a stab to get a bit of longevity, you know, careers are very short, and for someone like Kate Moss, in particular, it’s a logical step. I think also in the ‘90s, musicians traditionally got friendly with Versace or Armani – got free clothes, sat in the front row – now they’re just cutting out the middle-man!’

Amber
Did you catch it? Lisa says that pop stars today are ‘cutting out the middleman’ – they are marketing their clothes directly to their audiences. To cut out the middle-man. Listen again.

Lisa Armstrong
‘Yeah, I mean, it’s clearly a blatant attempt to make money – why not?! But I think also, for some of them, it’s a stab to get a bit of longevity, you know, careers are very short, and for someone like Kate Moss, in particular, it’s a logical step. I think also in the ‘90s, musicians traditionally got friendly with Versace or Armani – got free clothes, sat in the front row – now they’re just cutting out the middle-man!’

Amber
Next, Lisa talks about Madonna’s range of clothes for the high-street store H & M. She isn’t impressed – she says the range was ‘a bit of a flop’, a bit of a failure. She says what fans wanted was the outrageous, the ‘camp’, kind of clothes that Madonna wore on stage – ‘conical bras’, for example, bras shaped like ice-cream cones! But according to Lisa, the clothes were ‘period’, a polite way of saying old-fashioned! They were ‘mum-sy’, they were like the kind of safe, frumpy clothes a mother, who was not fashion-conscious, would wear.
Listen.

Lisa Armstrong
‘I think when it doesn’t work … I mean, Madonna’s line for H & M was a bit of a flop because we wanted conical bras, we wanted all that camp, fabulous Madonna, and what we actually got was late, period, mum-sy Madonna, and that doesn’t tie in with the H & M customer.’

Amber
Did you catch the expression ‘to tie in with’ – meaning to match? According to Lisa, Madonna’s ‘line’ of clothes was not the kind of clothes the young women who shop at H & M wanted to buy.

Lisa Armstrong
‘I think when it doesn’t work … I mean, Madonna’s line for H & M was a bit of a flop because we wanted conical bras, we wanted all that camp, fabulous Madonna, and what we actually got was late, period, mum-sy Madonna, and that doesn’t tie in with the H & M customer.’

Amber
Now here’s a list of the language we focussed on in the programme today.

a blatant attempt to make money – an obvious attempt to make money
a stab to get a bit of longevity – an attempt to make your career last longer
to cut out the middle-man – to sell directly to your customers
a bit of a flop – a bit of a failure
camp – outrageous
mum-sy – old-fashioned, safe, frumpy
to tie in with – to match