Geek Goddess

For one,Ahrendts bio reads Burberry,an elite fashion label,and also Donna Karan and Liz Claiborne. These are hardly what you would call mass retailers,where a corporate leader’s job is to do little else but rustle up big numbers.

In a world where fashion is largely considered the playground of the daft and the frivolous,Ahrendts is a glad myth-buster. She was hired by Burberry in 2006 when the British label,famous for its trench coats,was on a huge downward spiral. It suffered what the luxury business calls ‘brand overexposure’,and its cheap copycats had diluted its appeal even further. Ahrendts’s job was to bring back Burberry’s snob value.

She struck a perfect legerdemain. From being a fading 150-year-old company,Burberry has become the most tech-savvy fashion label. It’s on its way to become the first luxury label to be what Ahrendts calls “fully digital end to end”. Not only are Burberry goodies easily available online,its sales staff uses iPads too. Who can forget the spectacular sci-fi fashion show Burberry put up in Tokyo last year (with even a sprinkle of good-old English rain for special effects)? Burberry is in the black again.

Ahrendts’s role in Apple is to achieve a similar end. Apple’s ‘cool quotient’ has seen a dip ever since its founder Steve Jobs passed away. With Samsung,and other cheaper smart phones abounding,Apple seems to be losing its edge. Jobs built his company’s computers marrying technology with chic minimalist design,and in that Apple is rudely called a ‘fashion brand’ by its competitors. Ahrendts can especially aid in making the iWatch,out next year,a bigger hit than other tech-fashion utilitarian products like Google Glass.

Ahrendts builds a perfect bridge between fashion and business. It’s only an aside that she’s gorgeous to look at: supermodel-tall at six feet three inches,with long blond hair that swivels like Jennifer Aniston’s. She’s married and a mum of three,lives in an eight-acre home and reads the Bible everyday.

She is a female trailblazer,who also runs a happy home alright. But Angela Ahrendts is a woman who is a super success at being chic and a geek at once. And for that alone,her place in the sun is the haute-st one.

namratanow@gmail.com