There are many paths a young fashion designer can take to achieve fame and fortune. But these paths are often meandering and always challenging. It can take many years for a designer to find their way.

Jeffrey Costello and Robert Tagliapietra first made a name for themselves as masters of the jersey dress — perhaps a bit of niche market, but one that they had down cold.  We met the eccentric and charming duo a couple of years ago when they were first embarking on their careers. We watched as Anna Wintour took a front row seat at their show, signaling the strong support they have from the fashion establishment.

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It’s been a long time since the days of disco, Studio54 and the iconic American fashion brand Halston. But, Net-a-Porter and the new team behind Halston are teaming up to use some very 21st century technology to  bring the brand back to life.

Next week, the newly-relaunched Halston will hold its first runway show at the Gagosian Gallery in New York. In a fashion first, two of the featured looks  will be available on Net-a-Porter the very next day for immediate delivery, less than 24 hours after the designs are revealed.

Historically, high-fashion collections are shown months before the clothes actually hit the shopfloor. This was fine in the days before the Internet and fast-fashion retailers, but in recent years, it’s only served to give time for others to knock-off the looks and get them to the market long before the real ones appear.

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Why It bags are out (Wall Street Journal)
Stephanie Solomon of Bloomingdales tells the WSJ that "The ‘it’ bag isn’t important any more. It’s all about looking different from your neighbor."  Consumers are looking for something special, unique and exclusive. And, with a recession in the wind, observers are saying people will consume less conspicuously and may not want an instantly identifiable bag. It bags RIP?

Jane Shepherdson to Buy Whistles (Catwalk Queen)
With a little help from some Icelandic friends, Jane Shepherdson, a former TopShop business dynamo, has become Chief Executive and part-owner of Whistles. Smart move on the part of Baugur who recognised the expertise that Shepherdson could bring to the table and how to keep her there. Fashion Inc tells us about the price-value gap that she is going to have to overcome.

At a time when all fashion advertisements are beginning to look the same, you can always count on Miuccia Prada to keep things interesting. Her new campaign for Spring/Summer 08 reflects the sweet optimism of her collection shown last September in Milan. It could have come right out of A Midsummer Night’s Dream with all its nymphs and fairies.

Remarking on Prada’s dramatic move away from tougher designs in seasons past, Sarah Mower said "when Miuccia is fed up with being perverse in the anarchic-fierce way, she’ll change tack yet again and go against the grain by being so sweetly unchallenging you (almost) can’t recognize her." 

But are things as rosy for Prada on the IPO front?

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Now that we know that the Luxury industry is not as insulated from the economic downturn as much as many luxury and fashion CEOs would like, what’s a brand to do?

Milton Pedraza, CEO of the Luxury Institute, is thinking two steps ahead. Yesterday he shared with The Business of Fashion a 7 point plan for coping with the economic malaise that is quickly sweeping across the world. We thought it was compelling and have excerpted the key points here.

1. Eliminate the Hobbies: Renew your focus on what you do best and innovate within those categories.

Many luxury brands have entered into categories where they have no expertise because they want to be "lifestyle" brands. Some categoriesare logical extensions for a luxury brand but most are not a good fit and will be marginally profitable.

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Cris Barros: Concrete Plans (Style.com)
During our recent trip to South America, we were introduced to designer Cris Barros and her business partner Luiz Felipe. Barros is one of Sao Paulo’s hottest designers. This is a piece we wrote for Style.com on her new flagship which opens in March.

Fashion Change: Hilfiger’s IPO is shelved (Wall Street Journal)
Tommy Hilfiger is the first high-profile fashion IPO scheduled for 2008 that has been called off as global economy continues to deteriorate. Will Prada call off it’s IPO for the fourth time running? Just last week, DowJones contacted The Business of Fashion to ask our opinions on this very topic.

Paris Men’s Fashion Week (Men.style.com)
We caught the tail end of  Men’s fashion week for Autumn 2008 in Paris this past week. Dior Homme was dark and dramatic and London designer Jsen Wintle sent out a palette dominated by grey and black. Earlier in the week, Raf Simons injected some welcome colour with burnt oranges and reds into his collection, which also included the season’s dominant hue: grey.

On the eve of his final couture show held in Paris on Wednesday, Valentino Garavani was telling Italian newspapers that business is ruining the fashion industry and that he wished he had had time to groom a successor before retiring.

Earlier this year, Permira, the private equity company, won a battle with The Carlyle Group for control of the Valentino business, which at the time was split up amongst several shareholders who had aligned themselves with different investors, leading to a down-to-the-wire battle for the venerable Italian fashion house. This may explain why Mr Valentino chose to use particularly strong language to describe the state of the fashion industry, telling Italy’s Messagero newspaper that:

"The world of fashion has now been ruined. I got rather bored of continuing in a world which doesn’t say anything to me. There is little creativity and too much business. The young are all doing the same things."    

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Maybe it is the emerging importance of Russian customers that convinced Frida Giannini she should look to Russian rockers to inspire her latest menswear collection for Gucci. Regardless of the source of her inspiration, it would be fair to say that the collection went down with an audible thud. Suzy Menkes of the IHT, Horacio Silva of The Moment, and Tim Blanks of Style.com seemed to be grasping for positive things to say about it.

Guy Trebay of the New York Times went even further:

There are days in the life of a fashion observer when having a nail driven into one’s skull seems preferable to sitting through another evocation of the so-called rock ’n’ roll style….it seems willfully dated when designers like Frida Giannini at Gucci haul out the paisley scarves, the velvets, the eyeliner, the grommet boots and wraparound Gypsy belts. 

Ahem.

Maybe the real rock star at Gucci Group is not Ms Giannini, the designer, but Mr Robert Polet, the all-star CEO who was recently named European Businessman of the Year by Fortune Magazine.

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Bontoni, the men’s luxury shoe brand featured on the Business of Fashion during September’s New York Fashion Week, is breaking out.

Lewis Cutillo tells us that the brand has been making great strides, albeit quietly, in the past few months. "We continue to take a quiet and discreet approach to marketing our shoes," says Lewis. "Despite that, or maybe because of it, we are finding a growing number of clients among hedge fund managers, top CEOs, and well known professional athletes and entertainers."

The Robb Report recently posted a piece on the budding brand on its New and Noteworthy blog, and several major media outlets have been making inquiries of late, as the word-of-mouth on Bontoni has picked up.

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David Beckham billboard in Milan, courtesy of Emporio Armani

MILAN, Italy - Every once in a while, we notice the media — all kinds of media from blogs to arty fashion mags to the mainstream press — talking about the same topic in a contemporaneous burst of discussion. In the past few days, the talk has been about men’s underwear. Or rather, the advertising campaigns behind this burgeoning business segment. Not since the 1980’s and Bruce Weber’s campaigns for Calvin Klein have we seen so much media interest in men’s underpants. 

Tim Blanks explores the subject at length in VMAN’s Fall/Winter 2007 issue in The History of the Male Supermodel. And, according to an article in today’s International Herald Tribune, men’s underwear is big business.

Two Italian fashion brands are trying to get in on Calvin Klein’s underwear action using sexually-charged photos to heighten awareness of their presence in the market.

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