Thus begins the rehabilitation of Marchesa, the fairly or unfairly damned-by-association red carpet brand that was a casualty of the Harvey Weinstein horror story: with the Met Gala, a Vogue story and the support of the American fashion establishment.
Marchesa, as you might remember, was the latterly tarred and always feathered line codesigned and co-founded by Georgina Chapman, the now-estranged wife of Mr. Weinstein, which at one point was a red carpet staple. Seemingly beloved of women from Renée Zellweger to Anne Hathaway, it became another symbol of Mr. Weinstein’s abuse of power when stars suggested they were strong-armed into it: an example of how the producer manipulated the women in his orbit to do what he wanted, whether come to his hotel rooms or wear his wife’s dresses.
Ms. Chapman announced she was leaving Mr. Weinstein, and went to ground, but it didn’t seem to matter; celebrities appeared to abandon the brand, which disappeared from premieres everywhere as if it had never existed. A collaboration with the Helzberg Diamonds was put on hold. It was reported that employees were fleeing. Faster than you could say “bugle bead,” stories appeared last October asking, as the Daily Beast put it, “Did Harvey Weinstein Kill his Wife’s Fashion Label?” A February New York Fashion Week show never materialized.
And then this week happened.
On Monday Scarlett Johansson wore an off-the-shoulder blood-red dégradé Marchesa gown strewn with flowers on the Met Gala red carpet, becoming the first star to appear in the brand since the allegations against Mr. Weinstein broke. “I wore Marchesa because their clothes make women feel confident and beautiful, and it is my pleasure to support a brand created by two incredibly talented and important female designers,” the actress said in a statement to Entertainment Tonight.
Then, on Wednesday evening, Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue and artistic director of Condé Nast, told Stephen Colbert on his TV show: “I think it was a great gesture of support on Scarlett’s part to wear a dress like that — a beautiful dress like that — on such a public occasion.”
The next morning Vogue posted the editor’s letter from its June issue. The letter was entirely devoted to a feature on Ms. Chapman that ran inside the magazine.
Under a photo by Annie Leibovitz of Ms. Chapman standing on a pebble-strewn shore as her two children with Mr. Weinstein played, and with the title “Starting Over,” Ms. Wintour wrote: “I am firmly convinced that Georgina had no idea about her husband’s behavior; blaming her for any of it, as too many have in our gladiatorial digital age, is wrong. I believe that one should not hold a person responsible for the actions of his or her partner.”
Both Ms. Wintour’s and Ms. Johansson’s highly visible statements followed Ms. Chapman’s appearance on March 18 at a board meeting…
