STARK, LATE 1970S
Bowler bag, MCM, Fall 2009.
Anthony Cotsifas/Art Partner
Founded by Michael Cromer in 1976, the German brand MCM Worldwide hit its stride in the freewheeling heyday of the 1980s. Its omnipresent fabric, the all-logo pattern Cognac Visetos, became a signifier for a lifestyle of flash and flamboyance. Diana Ross took their suitcases on tour. The moneyed denizens of the television show Dynasty traveled with trunks dotted with the MCM logo. Even the acronym, which stood for Michael Cromer München and for the Roman numerals for 1900—the year of the birth of the modern age—was jokingly termed “more cash money.”
Cromer was an equally oversized figure. He played with a German youth rugby team, opened a discotheque in 1962, and made a guest appearance as an actor in the 1972 Italian miniseries The Adventures of Pinocchio starring Gina Lollobrigida. He came up with the idea for MCM when he saw a fellow actor with matching suitcases arriving at their hotel: “The other man was apparently accorded such fawning respect by the bell-hops that Cromer underwent an instant conversion from possessor of scruffy holdalls to manufacturer of luxury luggage,” reported the Sunday Times in 1996.
The MCM collection expanded beyond trunks, carry-ons, and suitcases. There were MCM-logo alarm clocks, coffee cups, tennis rackets, and even dog leashes and backgammon sets. The cult item, however, was the Stark backpack, which every cool kid seemed to have. It was a simple schoolyard style covered in that iconic Cognac Visetos monogram.
But, like the market, the MCM moment ended, and 1990s minimalism came into vogue. The brand and its type of heady ostentation were over, save for a pocket in South Korea where it continued to resonate. Cromer was out of the picture.
Then, in 2005, South Korea’s Sungjoo Group, led by retail magnate Sung-Joo Kim, acquired the worldwide rights and set about relaunching the brand. Kim definitely had the know-how and muscle for the job: named one of Wall Street Journal’s “Top 50 Women to Watch” in 2004 and Asiaweek’s “Seven Most Powerful Women in Asia,” she had previously launched Gucci, Marks & Spencer, Sonia Rykiel, and Yves Saint Laurent in the Korean market.
Kim set about hiring a new director, Michael Michalsky; opening new stores; and putting the bags in the hands of Justin Bieber, Lydia Hearst, Heidi Klum, Rihanna, and the street-style set—not to mention the influential K-pop stars of Korea. MCM bags got screen time on Gossip Girl. Kim and Michalsky tweaked the original formula, doing away with the signature cognac, punching up the palette with bright colors, and reframing the MCM to mean “Mode Creation Munich.” But the allover logos remained. “I’m a kid of the 1980s,” explained Michalsky to Women’s Wear Daily in 2006. “I’ve always loved monograms and in accessories especially, people are interested in logos, which have been there a long time. They want something with history, whether it’s good or bad.”
“If the 1980s had a sound, it was a vertiginous swoon—as one person after another toppled over with envy at the sight of someone’s killer handbag.”
—CATHY HORYN, Vogue, October 1995
Stark backpack, MCM, London, February 2014.
Adam Katz Sinding/Trunk Archive