Jeanne Yang

The Fashion Statement: Are Celebrity Labels Compromising the Craft of Fashion Design?

A celebrity launching a fashion line? It seems this is one trend that will never end.

There it was earlier this week, the big bulletin that Katie Holmes is hooking up with her stylist Jeanne Yang to produce Holmes & Yang, a women's line slated to debut at the Maxfield boutique in Los Angeles this fall.

The list of celebs-cum-designers must be a mile long now: Jessica Simpson, Gwen Stefani, Sarah Jessica Parker, Justin Timberlake, Milla Jovovich, Sienna Miller, Mary Kate and Ashley Oslen, Chloë Sevigny, Pamela Anderson, Victoria Beckham, Gwen Stefani, Beyoncé, Fergie and, of course, Paris Hilton just to rattle off a few.

Celebrities with fashion labels is so commonplace (even Ryan Seacrest went there), Perez Hilton recently started www.cocoperez.com to document all the goings-on of the modern day deities turned taste makers.

The whole celebrity/fashion setup can't help but reek of making-a-buck. Very few of the glitterati, if even one, will ever pick up a needle and thread. We all know how challenging it is to make a garment (thank you, Project Runway). And then there's that unexplainable sixth sense fashion designers seem to have. Stylists exist because celebrities are more often than not a fashion hazard waiting to happen. Demi Moore's biker shorts at the Oscars, anyone? A good stylist will steer a celeb away from a career-debilitating swan dress. So why should anyone trust good taste to the latter?

"I can honestly say I'm not a big fan of celebrities as clothing designers," says celebrity stylist Monica Schweiger. "I mean in most cases, the celebrity designer more than likely has no actual design training and may not even have a unique style opinion-other than their stylist. It's kind of like taking the celebrity poster girl ad concept one step further-instead of putting the face on the ads lets just put their name on the brand."

Gallery: The Fashion Statement, 08/20/09