Behnaz Kanani

LONDON, United Kingdom — Behnaz Kanani is the name to know for buyers in search of a shoe designer with an age-old emphasis on craftsmanship paired with a modern eye. This month, our BoF logo showcases her aesthetic which mixes contrasting colours, exotic skins, and luxe leathers in immaculately-constructed shoes that are designed to catch a bit of attention.

After graduating from Cordwainers College in London in 1997, Kanani set her sights on Italy’s traditional shoe industry at Bruno Magli in Bologna to get the kind of old-world training that money can’t buy. With that technical foundation in place, she flexed her design muscle working with Sandra Choi, Creative Director at Jimmy Choo, just as the brand was starting to take off and reach uber-hot status. Then, in 2006, with brother and business partner Reza by her side, she launched her own label and has experienced promising success in the first few years of her business.

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Sophie Theallet

NEW YORK, United States — New York fashion is said to strike a balance between commerce and creativity. With few exceptions, New York designers tend to prioritise practical concerns like wearability over more frivolous concerns like the so-called wow factor. On the surface, this seems like a sound business strategy. But when designers focus too much on the practical and are obsessed with being on-trend or with what their peers are doing, everything ends up looking, well, kind of the same.

Sophie Theallet, the French-born American designer based in New York, does not have this problem. Theallet creates clothes with a distinctive mix of sophisticated wearability and refreshingly untrendy luxury. Unlike other designers who look for aesthetic inspiration from visual archetypes or vintage clothes, Theallet, who claims to not have a specific muse, designs with a more soulful, introspective process.

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Justin Giunta

NEW YORK, United States — For the month of June 2009, The Spotlight is on Justin Giunta, of Subversive Jewelry.

I first met Justin in the throes of a chaotic New York Fashion Week in February, after he was introduced to me by Mary Gehlhar, author of one of the must-read fashion books for any emerging designer, The Fashion Designer’s Survival Guide. Mary raved about Justin’s creativity and drive, and my late afternoon tea at the Mercer Hotel with Justin only confirmed this.

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The ever-morphing Barcelona dress, courtesy of Karolina Zmarlak

NEW YORK, United States — As global economic woes continue to wear on consumer spending, some fashion and luxury companies are teetering on the brink. Blue chip brands are halting expansion plans in order to focus on survival tactics, while smaller labels with limited resources are faced with the reality of sudden annihilation. It may not seem to be the ideal time to start a new label, but New York-based womenswear designer Karolina Zmarlak remains unfazed.

“All ventures in the business of fashion are daunting because it is an industry that is constantly moving, contradictory, and revenue-challenged,” she argues. “But it would be tragic to not face the demons and complexities by attempting to ‘wait it out.’” Rather than sitting on the sidelines, Zmarlak has jumped into the fashion game with an eponymous Autumn/Winter 2009 collection of directional and versatile clothes that bravely tackles womens’ shifting perception of real fashion value.

Faced with tight personal credit, consumers want more bang for their hard-to-part-with bucks. “We have taken this deeply to heart by enabling each piece to be worn in various, truly distinct ways,” notes Zmarlak’s business partner, Jesse Keyes, adding: “Just as the Parisian woman is famously able to style the same garment in a myriad of ways with accessories, our pieces can be accessorized within their own structure.”

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HONG KONG, China — This month’s spotlight is on Aganovich, the designer duo made up of Nana Aganovich and Brooke Taylor, who split their time between their studio in London’s Whitechapel and an atelier at their factory just outside Hong Kong.

Like many emerging fashion brands, Aganovich has had its ups and downs and a couple of false starts. But over the past year or so, I have watched as Brooke and Nana have carefully put all of the pieces in place to re-launch with a sustainable platform in place, including angel funding, high-quality Chinese factories, solid sales support and endorsement from all the right people, including Amanda Harlech and Diane Pernet.

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A piece from the Battle Royal collection by littleshilpa

We’re wrapping up BoF India Fashion Week with the wonderful story of Shilpa Chavan, a Bombay milliner whose sophisticated urban headdresses have caught the attention of Style.com and ended up at the AlSabah Art & Design Gallery in Kuwait.

MUMBAI, India — There’s no doubt that India is a treasure chest of craft and creativity. Indeed, these were the two words most heard at the recently concluded IHT conference in New Delhi, after the two words in the program title: “Sustainable Luxury”.

While the images conjured up by the word craft are often of weavers in villages or hand embroiderers in factories, to prove that contemporary craft is alive and kicking in urban India, meet Shilpa Chavan—the maverick milliner of Mumbai and proprietor of littleshilpa, her nickname and brand.

Littleshilpa is a case in point of incredible Indian creativity in need of a bit of strategic guidance and fashion business savvy. But in the subcontinent’s burgeoning fashion industry, executives with grounded commercial experience are few and far between. And so the question becomes, how does India commercialise its craft and creativity?

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Image courtesy of Rad Hourani

MONTRÉAL, Canada - It’s been a year since BoF last spoke with stylist-turned-designer Rad Hourani. Since then, his collection has been taken on by fashion-forward boutiques Joyce and IT in China, Cache in Bulgaria, Seven Boutique in New York, and Canada’s Holt Renfrew and Reborn.

All the while Hourani has continued to use photography and film to express his razor-focused personal aesthetic, built around the colour black. This captured the attention of Hywel Davies, a contributor to London-based SHOWStudio, a collaborative online fashion community that fuses fashion with interactive online projects, film and live performance — a perfect fit for Rad’s craft.

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HONG KONG, China - Camilla Skovgaard is one of those rare aberrations of the current economic malaise.

While almost all other designers I have spoken to are nervously reporting order cancellations and declining or flat sales, Skovgaard’s shoes have chalked up triple-digit increases for Spring/Summer 2009.

Of course, part of this growth can be explained by the rapid growth of the luxury shoe category — it’s a case of  ‘the rising tide raises all boats. ‘ And, according to a recent report by Bain & Company, shoes will continue to be the fastest growing luxury segment of all; more than handbags, apparel, watches, jewelry and fragrances.

However, Camilla’s enviable success can mostly be attributed to perseverance, an incredible work-ethic, great design and pragmatism about merchandising and pricing her collection for the downturn. In our second CEO Talk, we caught up with Camilla to learn the secrets of her success.

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ZURICH, Switzerland - The Swiss Textiles Award is not the richest fashion design prize available — the 300,000 euro prize from Mango takes that category. But, over the past 5 years it has emerged as perhaps the most influential award of its kind, and the only one to operate with a global remit.

In 2003, a little-known Belgian designer named Raf Simons won the prize and went on to wow fashion critics, who were now playing close attention to his work. Cathy Horyn had this to say of his Simons’ men’s 2005 Spring/Summer collection, shown in Paris in July 2004:

What Mr. Simons did in an instant was to render the day, and most of the previous one of the spring men’s collections, obsolete. In 18 years of reporting on fashion, the last 5 at this post, I have stood up from only a handful of shows with a conviction that everything had been transformed.

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Andre Benjamin, Creative Director of Benjamin Bixby

LONDON, United Kingdom - Young designers, you are not alone. Even pop superstars find the fashion business tough.

Last night, at the UK launch of Benjamin Bixby, the charming and down-to-earth Andre Benjamin (aka Andre 3000 of OutKast) told me that starting his new menswear label was the craziest and hardest thing he has ever done. That says a lot for someone who has been heralded not only as one of the coolest musicians around, but is also a style icon, known for a dandy-ish look that turns heads.

Andre says that he has learned that merchandising is, by far, the most important aspect to get right in a new fashion business. “It’s like medicine,” he quipped. “You need to wrap it up in peanut butter to make it appealing.”

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