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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MILAN, Italy – It is sad when fashion lives up to its cliched stereotype as a world without loyalty and common sense. News is breaking that Tomasso Aquilano and Roberto Rimondi, the celebrated duo behind the upstart Italian label 6267, have ditched their manufacturing partner, Castor srl, to start up a new label, rumoured to be backed by ITC, a division of IT Holdings.

Earlier this year, the pair reached new heights in their fashion ascendancy when they were named Creative Directors of Gianfranco Ferre, which is also owned by IT Holdings. Shortly before the announcement, Castor and 6267 were featured in a highly complimentary article by Cathy Horyn of the New York Times, which touted the value and closeness of the unique designer-manufacturer collaboration as a key factor for thier success.

Given the closeness of the partnership, and its early success, the designers’ decision is puzzling and could prove to be one that they regret in the long run.

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NEW YORK, United States – New York already has the reputation of being the most commercial of the fashion capitals, but this New York Fashion Week has taken that stereotype to new levels. With economic uncertainty swirling through the city (Lehman Brothers is the latest Wall Street Bank whose future is in question) and footfall at department stores dropping precipitously, the mantra of the week seems to have been ‘Play it Safe!”

Over and over again this week, young designers have told me that the big buyers are sticking to proven silhouettes in basic colours, veering away from the fashion items. While the basics and staples of designer collections will always be important part of the product assortment, it seems to me that precisely because times are so tough, buyers should be making an effort to give consumers a reason to buy. And, that is not accomplished with a series of little black dresses.

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PARIS, France - Just a few weeks ago I met Qiu Hao in Shanghai I am thrilled to announce that tonight in Paris he has been awarded the Woolmark Prize, worth €100,000.

The award is is famous for anointing both Karl Lagerfeld and Yves Saint Laurent in 1954 and this year it has been resurrected by Australian Wool Innovation, which recently acquired the Woolmark brand. Said Mr Craig Welsh, CEO of AWI, “We see the Woolmark Prize as an opportunity to support the future of design and at the same time, showcase to the world Australian Merino wool at its best and most innovative.”

For those of you who missed it, please check out our feature on Qiu Hao and his fellow Shanghainese designer Helen Lee, and congratulations to Qiu. Well done.

TOKYO, Japan - “I wanted to start a movement of new generation, young fashion designers in Japan,” Arashi Yanagawa tells me over coffee in Tokyo’s hip Nakameguro neighbourhood. He is speaking of the genesis of John Lawrence Sullivan, the menswear brand he started almost five years ago.

But Arashi hasn’t always been a fashion designer. At first, he followed in his father’s footsteps and spent 13 years in professional boxing. Then, with no fashion training whatsoever, he used his fight money and worked with local pattern cutters to perfect his first collection of two blazers, using vintage garments as a starting point. As a nod to his former life, he named his brand after the 1880’s American bare-knuckle boxer and today, JLS is Japan’s hottest menswear label, known for its slick tailoring and modern accessories.

Despite his non-fashion background, or perhaps because of it, Arashi is at the vanguard of a group of promising, young menswear brands that are taking Tokyo by storm. They offer high quality clothing at prices lower than Lanvin and Thom Browne, but still packing a design punch.

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