Kellogg, the prestigious school of management at Northwestern University in suburban Chicago, has announced plans for a business course on fashion — or at least, how fashion can play a role in industries as varied as fast-moving consumer goods to consumer electronics and home computers. ESSEC, the French business school, has an entire MBA program dedicated to a Luxury.  And, fashion and luxury clubs are popping up at business schools around the world, from Harvard to Columbia to London Business School.

These are the latest signs that professional general managers are playing a more prominent role in the fashion and luxury industry. Before the emergence of major luxury groups, first LVMH, and then Gucci Group and Richemont, many fashion and luxury businesses were a family affair — and this is still the case for many brands, most notably in Italy. But, with more and more luxury IPOs and the shift towards managing luxury brands within a portfolio, has also come the need for CEOs who are well versed in brand management, investor relations and supply chain optimisation.

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In our ongoing collaboration with JC Report, we recently contributed two articles about some promising emerging brands, and we wanted to make sure BoF readers could learn about these talented young designers too.

The first designer came to our attention when we spotted a friend sporting the coolest cardigan. When we asked who designed it we  expected to hear the names Ann Demeulemeester or Rick Owens — but  instead came a name we had never hear before: Rivy Ng.   

Our article for JC Report discusses Rivy’s international background and step-by-step approach to building his fashion label. This is definitely a label to watch for its discreet understated style and emphasis on quality. (Speaking of which, the New York Time has an interesting take on Bottega Veneta and discreet luxury, one of our favourite topics here on the Business of Fashion).

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Bolstered by a string of well-received collections in recent seasons, positive feedback from the sales floor, and her newly profitable status, Stella McCartney is setting her sights on Asia. 

In 2007, the brand signed an exclusive distribution deal with the Lane Crawford Joyce Group to open 10 freestanding stores in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia by 2012. And yesterday, McCartney announced a partnership with TSG International Marketing Pvt to open 6 stores across India, including two stores by the end of this year.

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The one word that would describe the state of the global economy today is uncertainty. With the financial markets in free fall one day and then bouncing back the next day, it’s not surprising that people are confused. The same can be said for the fashion industry where record profit announcements one day are followed by reports of same-store sales declines the next day.

Back in January, we argued that the luxury industry was not immune to a slowdown, as some observers might have hoped. This weekend, we decided to go straight to the front lines of the business to assess the mood on the street and in the boardrooms of fashion and retail companies in the UK. While this is an admittedly unscientific approach, it is still useful to hear things from the proverbial horse’s mouth.

As it turns out, the horse did not provide much encouragement or optimism for the year ahead.  Our anecdotal research suggests that retailers from the high-end to the high-street are bracing themselves for a serious slowdown as evidence of the 2008 recession in the UK has started to show up in lower footfall and declining sales figures.

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In the run-up to the Easter long weekend, which has already begun here in London, we thought we’d share some our new favourites for lazy Sunday reading from the ever expanding fashion  and business blogosphere.

JC Report
Not technically a blog, but now presented in a blog format, JC Report is one of the leading online authorities for thoughtful fashion content on the cutting edge. We’ve been working with Jason Campbell, JC Report’s charismatic founder, on restructuring the JCR value proposition, launching a newly designed site, and engaging JCR’s truly global fashion community. We’re delighted with the results: daily news, editorial and intelligence that you can’t find anywhere else.  The latest issue, released yesterday, features a denim hunter from London, shopping in Kuala Lumpur, and the masculine tailoring trend sweeping through the A/W women’s collections. For the next month, the JC Report site is being curated by photographer Miguel Villalobos. Congratulations to Jason and his team.

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This month’s Monocle magazine plays "Spot the Shopper" at one of China’s cavernous new luxury malls. Have a look — there’s barely a shopper in sight. We’ve been hearing similar reports about luxury malls and stores in Russia, and the (admittedly anecdotal) fashion grapevine says that luxury stores in India are struggling as well. Add this to the economic uncertainty sweeping through the global economy and it’s enough to step back  and wonder: is this whole Asian luxury explosion overstated?

Not according to Radha Chadha, a leading expert on Asia’s luxury boom and co-author of the book The Cult of the Luxury Brand: Inside Asia’s Love Affair With Luxury. Turns out that some companies and luxury projects are just not well conceived to begin with, and these ones are likely to fail. However, other players are scoring major successes in Asia, especially those that have been present in the region for some time.

We reached Radha Chadha in her Hong Kong offices to better understand the impact of the global economic downturn on the luxury boom in China and India and to get Radha’s views on which brands are best positioned to dominate the market there.

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We have recently become addicted to a series of videos from TED — or, Technology, Entertainment and Design — an annual conference where passionate people descend on Monterrey, California to listen to other passionate people, each of whom are given 18 minutes to give the talk of their lives. The idea is that the best ideas will spread, by sheer virtue of the combined influence of all of the mavens and connectors in the room.

The notion of the idea virus also happens to be at the core of Seth Godin’s expertise. Godin gave this prescient talk at TED in February 2003 and declared to the world’s leading thinkers: "No matter what we do for a living, we’re in the fashion business!" 

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Just digest these figures for a moment:

• Coach’s online business now has revenues of over $100m per year — the same as what Gucci’s new flagship on 5th Avenue is expected to sell.  Neiman Marcus has broken the $500m in sales barrier online.
• In the last year alone, wealthy consumers’ use of social networks such as Facebook and MySpace has rocketed from 27% to 60%, a growth rate of more than 120%.
• And, people are snapping up uber-luxe products online — DeBeers regularly sells single diamonds worth more than $25,000 on its ecommerce site and 20ltd.com has sold items worth twice this much.

These were amongst the most interesting tidbits revealed at this week’s Luxury Interactive conference held in London. The eCommerce opportunity has now become abundantly clear. Some quick math would suggest eCommerce is a very profitable channel indeed, especially when compared to a flagship store. The rent alone on the Gucci flagship in New York is estimated to be $23m, when an Internet retail site can still charge a full retail price, but with much lower fixed costs to cover. (However, returns and discounts are higher in the Internet channel.)

As for Web 2.0, finally, we’re beginning to see a shift from a discussion of "if" luxury brands can seize real opportunities for relationship building with their best customers on the Internet, to an exchange on "how" this can be done. Arguably, a brand’s Internet site is now the most important contact point for customers — especially for the customers of the future. One step brands may now take is to set up their own online communities, as we wrote about in a Financial Times article in February.

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In fashion’s latest revolving designer door saga (we’ve already seen this play out at Vionnet, Ungaro, Nina Ricci, etc.), Chloé has removed Paulo Melim Andersson as Creative Director. Andersson stepped into the role after Phoebe Philo left the Parisian fashion house two years ago. He has been replaced by Hannah MacGibbon who previously worked under Philo.

Melim Andersson’s ouster should come as no surprise to fashion industry insiders, many of whom have been whispering about significant drops in retail sales and wholesale orders ever since Andersson unveiled his first Chloé collection, which was  a dramatic departure from the floaty feminine styles that propelled the brand back onto the fashion radar.

Are we going back to the girly Chloé girl then? Maybe, but then again, the girly thing is quickly becoming passé as designers move towards a more long, silhouette, often influenced by masculine tailoring.  Now where will the brand go?

In what may be one of the most innovative manifestations of Fashion 2.0 we’ve seen, Ford Models has brought fashion modeling to the YouTube generation — quite literally.  Under the careful watch of Katie Ford, daughter of founder Eileen Ford, and new CEO John Caplan, the once-embattled American modeling agency has creatively melded the rarefied world of Fashion with the openness of Web 2.0. And, in doing so, they have successfully reinvigorated the Ford brand and created brand new revenue streams that will see the company into fashion’s future.

Web 2.0, of course, has already turned the music industry upside down and created a platform for influential web voices including everyone from political commentators like Arianna Huffington, to entrepreneurial gurus like Guy Kawasaki and Seth Godin, and even the celebrity-obsessed Perez Hilton. But these online influencers have all been built by being open and open to criticism — something the fashion industry isn’t known for. And, they are individuals, not a monolithic company.

So, how does a modeling agency, built on the secretive glamour and exclusive allure of fashion, operate within the openness of Web 2.0 culture? By taking down the fashion barriers and letting everyone inside to get to know its people.

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