The Business of Fashion

Links | NRDC spree, Giles style and Levi's liftoff

The man who wants to fix retail (Fortune)
Fortune magazine profiles NRDC's Richard Baker who is on a retail and fashion acquisition spree having bought Lord & Taylor, Fortunoff, and Peter Som and is said to have his eyes on Saks.

Giles Style (Scottish Daily Record)
Giles Deacon talks to a Scottish paper about the fashion designer of the 21st century -- one who has his feet on the ground and is passionate about gardening and reading.

Levi's turns a corner (International Herald Tribune)
Armin Broger , President of Levi Straus Europe, is successfully turning around the Levi's business by refocusing its collections and using cities like Antwerp as fashion business laboratories.

Peter Som A/W 2008 photo courtesy of Coutorture.

Louis Vuitton and Keith Richards: Viral marketing magic

By now, everyone has seen the striking Annie Leibovitz portrait of Keith Richards, his electric guitar, and his monogrammed Louis Vuitton guitar case. It is the fourth in a series of ads that have featured Mikhail Gorbachev, Catherine Deneuve, and tennis powercouple, Steffi Graf and Andre Agassi.

The ads have been in almost every respected magazine and newspaper imaginable, the Richards image is the current homepage image for the Louis Vuitton website, and the former Rolling Stone is blown up to two story proportions as the hoarding in front of the soon-to-be-expanded Louis Vuitton store on London's Bond Street.

But somehow, I did miss this YouTube video which goes behind-the-scenes to show how Leibovitz worked her photographic magic with a rock star legend.

Luxury in India | Not just a cut-and-paste

While China may have the unyielding focus of many Western luxury brands today, many players are already beginning to set their sights on India for the next wave of expansion. But, as global luxury players begin to tentatively test these Indian waters, they are finding that India, which has its own vibrant indigenous cultural scene, may require a different expansion strategy altogether.

With Bollywood stars and local Cricket legends that get more attention in India than their Western cultural equivalents, there is no blank canvas in India upon which to paint Western tastes. Locals on the streets of Shanghai and Beijing have, by and large, adopted Western dress, but those in Delhi and Mumbai  are more likely to fuse East and West; a Tarun Tahiliani kameez paired with Seven for all Mankind jeans, Jimmy Choos and a Gucci bag or a Sabyasachi sari paired with Harry Winston jewels and Bottega Veneta minaudiere.

For international luxury brands, therefore, conquering the Indian market will require a lot more than a cut and paste -- and, there is some formidable local talent to contend with.

Breaking News | Is Barneys about to become a basket case?

News has been trickling in all week about confusion around the strategic direction being taken by Barneys and today, the New York Times is reporting that its highly respected CEO Howard Socol will resign next week. This is an abrupt change of tone in the buzz around Barneys, which is arguably the most influential and forward thinking luxury and fashion department store chain in America today.

Bergdorf Goodman, of course is a venerable store in its own right, but it only has one location in New York and  its sister company, Neiman Marcus, based in Dallas, is far removed from the New York fashion hub. Yes, Neimans serves an unequaled luxury customer, but it just does not have the fashion cred that Barneys has managed to build in recent years.  Barneys' affable Fashion Director, Julie Gilhart, has been a champion of emerging talent and amongst others, is credited with recognising the talent of the Proenza Schouler boys, buying their graduate collection from Parsons.

But, is Barneys about to become a basket case?

Fashion 2.0 | Fashion156 speaks out

Guy Hipwell, the stylist-cum-entrepreneur behind Fashion156, is carving out a space as one of the UK's pioneers of fashion on the Internet. Yesterday, Guy teamed up with two of his contributors, Susie Bubble (interviewed on the BoF back in November) and Elliot James Sainsbury, to share their fashion Internet experiences at the Apple Store in London. The event coincided with the launch of Fashion156's latest issue, appropriately titled, "The Fashion on the Internet Issue."

My biggest takeaway was that the future for fashion editorial -- both online and offline -- is healthy and promising.  Integral to the fashion industry is the telling of stories, communicating about brands and inspiring debate and discussion. While the Internet has broken down traditional fashion industry walls, there is still a clear demand for traditional fashion content as well.

Links | Designer skins, Copyright cash, YSL and Fashion billionaires

Pimp your Google homepage (CNet)
iGoogle, the popular service from the Internet behomoth, has partnered with Oscar de la Renta, Tory Burch and Dolce & Gabbana to provide designer skins for users to personalise their iGoogle pages.

Adidas wins $305m in copyright case (WWD)
Following our revelations about Steve Madden's blatant copying, Adidas is awarded $305m in the largest award ever in a trademark case against Payless.

Valerie talks to Vanessa (Financial Times)
Vanessa Friedman interviews Valerie Hermann, chief executive of Yves Saint Laurent, to learn how she is digging the historic French house out of the red.

The Fashion Billionaires (Forbes)
Forbes has released a list of the world's fashion billionaires, with Amancia Ortega, Stefan Persson and Bernard Arnault heading up the list.

Brussels | The next fashion hotspot?

When a designer with an international, cult following of fashion insiders shifts his headquarters to Brussels, could it mean that the Belgian city better known for its frites, waffles and EU bureaucracy will be the next fashion hotspot? I sat down with Brussels' new transplant, David Szeto, in his huge 2 story space (see above) to learn the reasons behind his move from Paris, Szeto's long-standing home base.

Antwerp, of course, is the reigning champion of Belgian fashion, having produced the avant-garde group of designers known as the Antwerp Six, all of whom graduated from Antwerp's famous Royal Academy of Fine Arts. More recently, the school has gained recognition for nurturing designers like Bruno Pieters, Kris van Assche and Haider Ackerman. But, if David's recent move is anything to go by, then maybe we'll be talking about the Brussels Six as well someday.

Cartier and Sergio Rossi | The power of Internet video

Yesterday I met with James Killough, an innovative London-based film maker, who happens to have a film in pre-production that may end up being one of the first real films about the fashion industry -- or so everybody tells me.

More to the point, James also talked to me about the potentially powerful combination of the Internet, video and the luxury industry and cited an innovative video project directed by Olivier Dahan, the renowned French film-maker, who collaborated with Cartier on a series of 12 videos for its Love collection.

I took a gander at the videos today, and was impressed -- not only with Cartier's forward-thinking use of video to create a narrative behind one of its most important iconic lines, but also with the stories themselves, which were engaging and, sometimes even moving.

Everybody's talking about | Fashion copycats

At what point does referencing and inspiration turn into blatant copying? It's a question that is increasingly on the minds of designers -- particularly young designers and small brands -- who don't have the legal muscle (read: cold hard cash) and time to defend the integrity of their designs.

In other creative disciplines like music, writing and visual art, it is much easier to defend copying. In fashion, referencing, inspiration, and trends form the backbone of our industry (just check out this long list of adventures in fashion copyright). So, where do we draw the line?

Case 1:  Steve Madden
Sometimes it's quite straightforward to see what is going on.  A post on Manolo's shoe blog alerted us to this blatant copy of the Balenciaga sportiletto shoe. Some may find it amazing that anyone would even wear these shoes, but I find it amazing that any company would be so brazen as to rip designs off in this way. 

Fashion 2.0 | Top 10 Online Fashion Magazines

While taking a whirl around the Internet these days you're bound to bump into an online fashion magazine - or ten. Everyone from Richard Mortimer of Boombox fame to Net-a-Porter’s Natalie Massenet is getting in on the action – and looking for ways to monetise it.

For a long time, content developers had a hard time creating a distinction between simple websites and bonafide online magazines. But, in the past year, a plethora of online magazines have emerged with three common threads:

Multimedia:  The new magazines are a veritable multi-media festival. For some content consumers, particularly younger tech-savvy types, a multi-media experience is the only way to capture (and keep) their attention: lots of videos, blogs, and communities.

Integration: The trick here has been to create a truly integrated experience across different channels -- for example,  how do you make an offline page really come alive on the Internet? Creating complementary content that can be consumed separately, and together, satisfies even the most demanding multi-tasker.

Convergence:  Style.com meets Neiman Marcus.com. Content companies are integrating commerce models into their sites while commerce companies are creating their own content, and thereby, becoming content destinations in and of themselves. 

To mark the surge of online magazines, we've compiled a list of ten of the most interesting concepts to watch:

Breaking News | Gucci sales growth disappoints

News flashes have been coming in today from investment analysts covering PPR, which reported its 1Q08 results earlier today. The news is not good for the Gucci brand, but Bottega Veneta has managed to beat market expectations, even in this downbeat economic environment.

Gucci sales only increased by 2.4% to €513m, versus market expectations in the neighbourhood of 7% growth. As a result, some analysts are considering posting downgrades to their ratings on the PPR stock. Given it's self-stated positioning as an 'Aspirational luxury' brand, it may not seem surprising that Gucci would be one of the first brands to show signs of the economic slowdown.

But that's not the whole story.

The Business of Fashion | Talks to Vogue Korea

It's turning out to be fashion magazine week on the Business of Fashion.

A couple of months ago, Dominic Sohn, a newly appointed Fashion Editor at Vogue Korea, contacted me to get some thoughts on the revolving doors for designers at major fashion houses. This was before Lars Nilsson was turfed from Gianfranco Ferre (just days before his first runway show) only to be replaced by Tomasso Aquilano and Roberto Rimondi of 6267 and before Paulo Melim Andersson was sent packing after three seasons at Chloe, making way for Hannah MacGibbon. Dominic's questions were timely indeed.

Excerpts from the interview have just been published in an article in the May 2008 edition of Vogue Korea, along with the reflections of Sally Singer of American Vogue. It was such an interesting exchange that it's posted here for BoF readers.

Fashion Magazines | Balancing advertising and editorial

The other day I nipped out to grab a coffee in London's Hanover Square. As I was waiting, who should walk in but Alexandra Shulman, the Editor-in-Chief of British Vogue. There was no entourage or chauffeur or huge sunglasses. Rather, she very normally ordered her skinny cappuccino (without assistance and without attitude) and waited like the rest of us to be served.

It got me to thinking that (thankfully) some people in the fashion industry are completely normal (despite the caricatures that may be painted of them in the Press), and it also got me thinking about the business of magazines -- fashion magazines in particular. It turns out Ms. Shulman has been quite the business woman during her respected editorship of the magazine.

Angel Chang | High-tech meets high-fashion

I'm sure you've all had one of those moments when a friend or colleague picked up your phone by accident, because it looked the exactly the same as theirs. I know it's happened to me on more than one occasion. Today, Paul Taylor of the FT cleverly compared the uniform style and design of most mobile phones to the Ford Model T, when Henry Ford declared that “the customer can have any colour he wants, so long as it’s black”.

Just the other day, we dove into the marriage of fashion and technology for the first time, looking at the emergence of the fashion phone. But, the ideas, questions and suggestions have kept coming since then, begging the question: is now the right time not only for bringing a little fashion to technology, but also for bringing a little technology to fashion?

New York-based Angel Chang thinks so. She is one designer who is integrating new technologies into her designs.

Fashion 2.0 | Still waiting for the future

About a year ago,  I posted an article entitled, Fashion 2.0: What the Future Holds, laying out some thoughts (and questions) on the future of luxury and fashion online.  Since then, Fashion 2.0 has been one of  the most discussed topics on The Business of Fashion, and the ensuing debate has been thought-provoking, largely due to the high level of engagement from the BoF community. The latest example of this is from Annie Chang, who posted this delightful YouTube video response to our first Fashion 2.0 post, demonstrating the convenience of shopping from the comfort of one's living room. Thanks Annie.

Over the past year, I've continued to argue for the potential to sell luxury online, and more controversially, to use the Internet as a tool for communicating and engaging customers. I spoke to JC Report and the South China Morning Post about the growing influence of fashion blogs and wrote an article in the Financial Times on Fashion 2.0, using the example of the wildly successful Mini Cooper online community as a compelling case study for where things may go.

But, has anything really changed in the meantime?