For 2008, more fashion anniversaries, but looking to the future

If 2007 bulged with fashion anniversaries - well, 2008 is much the same. But there is a different forward-looking attitude to the new events, after those big birthday bashes last year: gala dinner, patterned balloons and Kylie Minogue for Pucci at 60; or aerial ballet, sumptuous Roman fest and the private jet set for Valentino at 45.

Instead of looking back to a glorious past, this New Year is about celebrating the future.

The Sonia Rykiel house is turning 40, but it will be with a new designer and energetic expansion projects, according to Nathalie Rykiel, now president and creative director of the company her mother founded in 1967, at the beginning of the youthquake that shook Paris and ushered in a new fashion era.

It was in 1968 that the young Emanuel Ungaro founded his ready-to-wear line. Forty years on, the house is marking the moment with the arrival of a new, young designer: Esteban Cortazar, a native of Colombia who grew up in Miami and showed his first fashion collection there at age 15.

Halston, the iconic American designer of streamlined, minimalist clothes, opened his New York salon in 1968. With the house long since shuttered, it will be relaunched this year with backing from the movie mogul Harvey Weinstein.

For Ossie Clark, the British designer who dressed "swinging London" in sinuous, romantic clothes, 2008 is also a year of renaissance. Forty years after he signed his first ready-to-wear contract, his bankrupt house is being revived with the Israeli-born Avshalom Gur as designer.

In the big league, this is an anniversary moment for Karl Lagerfeld, 25 years after he breathed new life into Chanel. But there will be no retrospective and "non, non, non" to any landmark celebrations, according to the House of Chanel. And why would anyone expect a backward glance from a designer who is always looking at the next project? Lagerfeld's own extraordinary œuvre speaks for itself, with its dance between rapprochement to Coco and distancing himself from the founder.

The haute jeweler Boucheron, having made it to a century and a half, is permitting itself a few festivities during this month's haute couture shows. Part of Gucci group and a jewelry house renowned for its bold creativity, Boucheron is marking its 150th anniversary with a gala and private exhibition in a Paris townhouse.

Ferragamo, a pioneer ever since Salvatore Ferragamo sailed from Italy to America in the 1920s and garnered a Hollywood clientele, is being equally adventurous for its 80th birthday. Instead of a cake-and-candles affair in its Florentine home, where a museum emphasizes the skills of Salvatore as creator and initiator, the Ferragamo family is heading en masse for the anniversary to Shanghai this spring.

Some celebratory dates are a trifle obscure. Did the Cuban fashion star Narciso Rodriguez's brand turn 10 last year, when Liz Claibourne invested in his company? Or do we count the decade as the moment when the new spring 2008 deliveries hit the stores at the end of the month?

Was the Lacoste 75-year moment in 2007 - when a lively show took place in New York last September - or now? A book celebrating the "crocodile" and the sportswear empire created by René Lacoste is due out in the fall.

As Nathalie Rykiel says, what matters is not when a brand started - but where it stands now and how it is projected into the future. Sonia Rykiel remains the only French company in high fashion that is still in family ownership, with the founder herself still designing, in her 78th year.

Her daughter has not only taken control, but has also appointed a new CEO from outside the family. François Steiner, a former LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton executive, most recently at Kenzo, will take on the management functions. He will also work to expand the brand, especially in America.

For the first time too, Gabrielle Greiss, a designer trained at London's famous Central Saint Martin's school, will be publicly recognized for the role she has played in her collaboration with Sonia Rykiel since 1992.

There will be a Paris retrospective in the fall at the Musée des Arts Decoratifs. The earlier festivities will include a block party around the refurbished Rykiel store on Boulevard Saint Germain - the heartland of the Left Bank culture of which Sonia Rykiel herself was a founding member.

There is also what Nathalie calls "Pure Rykiel": special pieces, re-edited from the past, that will project the image forward.

The haute monde may be preparing for the final Gloria Swanson glamorama of Valentino's retirement with his absolutely last and final couture show on Jan. 23.

But as this first decade of a new millennium flashes past, fashion is trying to focus not on the past - but on events yet to come.