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  The Pearl in Doha, Qatar is a massive luxury real estate development | Source: The Pearl

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  The Toujouri Flagship Store, designed by Peter Marino Architects | Source: Toujouri

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  Caroline Issa models Toujouri in Atelier-Mayer Magazine Volume 2 | Source: Atelier-Mayer

DOHA, Qatar — Just before the madness of fashion week season began, I couldn’t resist accepting an invitation from Lama El Moatessem to visit Doha, the capital city of the tiny nation of Qatar, to attend the opening of the Peter Marino-designed flagship for Toujouri, Ms El Moatessem’s three year old fashion brand. How did a little-known Middle Eastern brand get Mr Marino, the go-to architect for powerhouse brands like Louis Vuitton, Chanel and Céline to design its first store? I was intrigued.

At first, driving through Doha doesn’t feel so different from driving through Dubai, the Gulf region’s major international hub. Both are cities with gleaming skyscrapers rising from the desert, in areas which were virtually empty less than a decade earlier, and both have drawn foreigners from all over the world to execute on ambitious economic development plans.

Indeed, in the last six years, Qatar’s population has almost doubled, growing from around 900,000 people in 2006 to almost 1.7 million today. During my 36 hour visit to Qatar, I met people from Spain, the Philippines, Malaysia, India, China, Nepal, the United States, and Egypt, all of whom had chosen to settle in Qatar to work in jobs ranging from manual labour to executive positions in major Qatari companies.

The 300,000 Qatari nationals have a high propensity for acquiring luxury goods, but until recently the vast majority of these products were bought abroad. In 2010, the investment arm of Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund even bought Harrods — yes, I mean the entire landmark luxury department store — from Mohamed Al-Fayed for an estimated £1.5 billion.

The engine for Qatar’s fast-growing economy is energy. According to Wikipedia, “Qatar has the world’s largest per capita production and proven reserves of both oil and natural gas. In 2010, Qatar had the world’s highest GDP per capita, while the economy grew by 19.4 percent, the fastest in the world.” This has brought in more than $100 billion in investment from international oil companies like ExxonMobil and Shell.

But the ruling monarchy recognises that the energy sector will not sustain the country forever and that when oil reserves eventually run out — something which is not expected for at least another 40 years — Qatar will need additional pillars to build its “knowledge economy,” hence the presence of satellite campuses of international universities including Cornell, UCL, and Georgetown, and efforts to build out other economic vectors including finance and international transportation, with the country’s ultra-luxe airline, Qatar Airways.

But Qatar is more conservative than Dubai and doesn’t seem to be seeking out the tourist trade. There were many more women wearing the Hijab in Doha, and alcohol was banned in large swathes of the city, which is not necessarily a magnet for international visitors. In this way, Qatar is closer to its only bordering neighbour, Saudi Arabia, one of the most conservative countries in the region.

Doha has also learned from Dubai’s mistakes, especially with regards to urban planning and development. The city seems more human-friendly. For example, residents can go for a run along The Corniche, which curves around the water like Ipanema in Rio or Marine Drive in Bombay. This is in stark contrast to Dubai’s concrete highways and gridlock traffic.

In Qatar, there has also been heavy investment in culture, both local and global. Just off of The Corniche, we visited the striking I.M. Pei-designed Museum of Islamic Art (MIA). Our guide was a trilingual Chinese woman who learned Arabic at Peking University in Beijing. Earlier this year, the Qatari Museums Authority unveiled a 24 metre soaring sculpture by Richard Serra nearby in the MIA Park. It is the American artist’s first public commission in the Middle East and said to be a beacon for the arts in Qatar.

The MIA museum was impeccably presented, with perfect lighting and the enough space to explore the ancient Islamic artworks. It made me wonder why that same attention to detail hadn’t been translated to many of the luxury and premium fashion brand stores at the shopping mall we visited at The Pearl, an unabashedly luxurious lifestyle residential development on 985 acres of reclaimed land just off the Arabian Peninsula, where Toujouri’s new store was opening. The Pearl is Qatar’s answer to The Palm in Dubai, boasting three marinas with capacity for 700 boats, three 5-star hotels and 2 million square feet of retail, restaurant and entertainment space, which is slowly filling up.

Designed specifically for consumers in the Gulf Region (but also targeted at the international jet set who touch down in resorts like St Barts, Saint-Tropez and Sardinia), Toujouri’s evening dresses boast modest silhouettes with jewel tones and embellishment, produced in India using age-old handwork techniques.

“I don’t think [people here] have yet been given something that is of high-quality, that is also proud to be associated with the Middle-East,” said Ms El Moatassem. “Toujouri has a real Middle-Eastern essence, but in a modern way.”

Ms El Moatassem said she was lucky to have secured the support of Peter Marino given the small scale of her business, but that it did not come without some hustle. She pursued Mr Marino for over a year, finally winning him over in person by showing him one entire collection, piece by piece.

The benefits of Mr Marino’s participation, apart from the star power of his endorsement, which drew a pack of international journalists from Dubai and London, were clear. Toujouri’s studded facade and bright lighting stood out in a sea of drab, poorly displayed, poorly lit stores nearby. A few of them had clumsy-looking “Sale” signs hanging in the window, something I haven’t seen since a visit to Bermuda a few years ago. No wonder Ms El Moatessem was a beaming all evening.

The store-opening coincided with the launch of Toujouri’s collaboration with Atelier Mayer’s magazine, part of the content strategy for the growing vintage e-commerce start-up founded by Carmen Haid, a former communications executive at Céline, Yves Saint Laurent and Tommy Hilfiger.

“I like to go into these countries myself to better understand their culture and their societies, and also the taste of the customers,” said Ms. Haid when asked why she would choose to launch her magazine in the Qatari capital.

So what has she learned about the market for luxury goods in the Gulf countries? Mainstream bling is not enough. “Everybody is trying to be luxury today. It’s kind of boring so you have to really go to the core,” she said, “especially for people who are wealthy, in these regions. They can buy anything they want.”

Taste levels, in the region are rapidly evolving. Ms. Haid recounted a story of carting all of her prized vintage Hermès pieces to nearby Bahrain, only to find that all of the women had “super-bespoke” Birkin bags and were more interested in items from lesser-known brands, and even garments without labels.

“If you go four years back, everyone just cared about Chanel, Dior, Versace, and that’s it,” said Noor Al Thani, co-founder of Haute Muse, a Doha-based lifestyle and fashion blog that morphed into a fully-fledged magazine one year ago. “Now people are open to Topshop and H&M. You can mix and match really high-end brands with [low-end brands],” she said, speaking in a perfect American accent and idiom and demonstrating that the younger generation here are as switched on and logged in as their peers in other parts of the world.

Looking back at the skyscrapers in Doha’s central business zone as we zipped back to the airport, there was also a whiff of the Pudong district in Shanghai, with its futuristic skyscrapers twisting in post-modern statements of steel and glass. But while Qatar may not have the scale of the Chinese market, nor the tourist Mecca status of Dubai, for the luxury sector, this is still a country to watch.

Imran Amed is founder and editor-in-chief of The Business of Fashion

Calvin Klein Mens by Italo Zucchelli | Photo: Karim Sadli for 032c

In Part I, we examined Italo Zucchelli’s philosophy of menswear. Today, we explore the designer’s creative process and approach to innovation.

NEW YORK, United States — A honeyed accent doesn’t give away Italo Zucchelli’s heritage as much as his ability to cut a jacket. A Wagnerian sense of color and experimental materials reveal professional stints with both Romeo Gigli and Jil Sander respectively. He may seem of a piece with European contemporaries like Prada or Raf Simons, but critic and friend Tim Blanks argues that Zucchelli is refining an entirely personal viewpoint, what he calls “subtle futurism,” an evolution sewn discreetly into every collection. Stitch by stitch it could add up to an altogether altered reality.

Everyone agrees Zucchelli has stepped into a big pair of shoes – a pair of Calvin’s as it were. He’s won respect for not kicking them off, but Zucchelli notes the paradox faced by a generation of talented designers who, like him, are breathing new life into old brands: “If all of us were strictly referential we would be criticized. It’s very important to respect the language and understand the staples, but also evolve because time moves on.”

With nearly two decades of witnessing audience reactions to every twist, fold and turn on the runway, Nian Fish warns that the pressure to innovate is ruthless: “If you are safe, they will kill you.” In her opinion, Zucchelli is moving not only the clothes, but also the whole brand forward. Forward? Fashion may innovate, but certainly not in the same way as technology, or does it?

It’s a common perception that men’s fashion is slow to change, and Zucchelli acknowledges that: “Few men will respond to a fantasy as freely as a woman.” However, he observes that many more men are interested in fashion today than a decade ago. In numbers alone, international consumption of men’s apparel and accessories had nearly caught up to women’s by 2000, and with increased freedom of choice.

In the years that preceded Zucchelli’s arrival at Calvin Klein, innovative menswear seems to have been largely defined by flashy changes in shape. New York Times reporter Eric Wilson recalls: “Thom Browne created the shrunken suit, Hedi Slimane the extremely fitted suit and Tom Ford the louche, high-waisted big lapel suit. They were contrasting looks but they worked all at the same time, making menswear feel very exciting all of a sudden.” Currently, Wilson believes, a band of niche designers has splintered menswear center stage leaving no clear headliner. Things are set for a major voice to rise. So the question facing Zucchelli, as Nian Fish puts it, “is how far to push without the shock of pushing too far.”

Are you ready? Cotton and metal weaves (2006); nylon moirés and PVC packaged wool (2007); silver PVCand mesh covered neoprene (2008); reflective wool and liquid twill; stretch, heat-bonded, debossed and molded foam wrapped in wool and nylon; punched and bonded paper-based fabric (2009); bark-texture coated cotton and heat-bonded Mylar; transparent nylon (2010); laminated nylon pile (2011); laser cut mesh cotton, resin suede bonded jersey (2012). Perhaps more than anyone in the field of luxury menswear, Zucchelli manipulates the genetic code of clothes, merging natural with synthetic materials as if engineering a sneaker, a car or the wardrobe of a Hollywood cyborg.

Zucchelli’s laboratory, a modest fluorescent-lit space with a discolored concrete floor, emerges from down a blaring all-white corridor in Calvin Klein’s 7th Avenue headquarters. The other surfaces are plastic laminate, the most ubiquitous and virtual of today’s architectural finishes, and they are pitch black. The contrast ignites my eyes. Everything looks sharp, most notably a few well-chosen crystals Zucchelli keeps by his desk. “The next time you are on the beach, pick up a grain of sand: that is a quartz crystal,” he says, explaining his fascination. “They are beautiful to look at and they have been used since the dawn of civilization. Our telecommunications system, like computers and telephones, is silicon-quartz based. Crystals have a ‘connecting’ power with other worlds or dimensions.”

Similarly, Zucchelli strives for higher-order connections in his working process. He almost never sits in his corner office, but prefers to share the open studio space with his five-person team listening to atmospheric and “mental” music. He favors small, well-appointed groups of “very good people that are happy and engaged.” Together they initiate every collection, which can include upwards of 40 pieces, by travelling, either to Los Angeles, London, Tokyo or Berlin on a scavenger hunt for books, magazines, vintage clothing and, most of all, ideas. At the moment I find myself looking at meticulous, hand-drawn sketches and material swatches the team is preparing for the Fall 2012 debut show in Milan.

Italo Zucchelli: I start every collection early. Nobody starts as early as I do. This is a system I inherited from Calvin. I never abandoned it because there is an ocean between us and where the clothes are produced. During the six-month process I get three fittings, which is a lot. It’s good. I can perfect things. The core concept I come up with now is what you are going to see in January. I say it because it has always been like that – that’s what I do.

Pierre Alexandre de Looz: What did you learn from working with Calvin Klein in the beginning?

I worked with him for three years and it was an amazing relationship. He always knew if he liked something or not. He solved things without compromise. I am similar in that sense. He was very quick. He made decisions almost immediately, which is very American. Europeans can be philosophical about things, but these are clothes! His response was very good, it was the main thing that allowed me to go in one direction or the other and then apply my European sense to make it the best possible. I learned the immediacy from him. I never heard him say, “I don’t know” … ever.

You never doubt yourself?

No I don’t. I question myself but not in that way. Last January the concept for the show was “protection” and I came up with it in August. Then we perfected the concept until the end.

Didn’t you tell me you have a German bent?

I joke about it.

You are being conceptually rigorous because you identify an idea and you stick with it. In other words, if I look at any collection, everything I see refers back to the exact concept you came up with in the beginning?

On the runway it is definitely the case. When you do a show the message should be self-explanatory. It’s important to express the vibe of it very clearly. Often it is verbalized at the beginning, but it can also happen towards the end. It helps the team to communicate and work together, and convey the construction of a mood.

To give it a name is to make it recognisable to everybody else, like the public and the press. Do you ever let yourself use more than a single word?

Yes, but I prefer one. I think it’s more powerful. I also like journalists who do their job when they see a show. I give them a word and they elaborate on it.

Is the person who wears your clothes American?

The world we live in now is global. People take planes the way we took buses 20 years ago. Of course different markets have different requirements. What I design is produced the same for every country, but retailers in each area purchase different elements, based on what they think they can sell. What you see in a runway show is only a third of what compromises a complete collection and the rest appears in the showroom for the buyers. The show gives a message to the journalists. The buyers however see the depth of collection in the showroom. The presentation is an edit and we aim for consistency. I could do a show where every outfit is different but it would be completely wrong and the press would get confused. You have to meet commercial needs.

So how do you keep your audience interested?

Instead of giving you a flannel blazer, which will always be in the collection, I might use a fabric that looks like flannel from afar but in reality it’s a techno-fabric mixing black and white; it’s a texture and it’s nylon; it doesn’t crease and it makes you look very sharp and modern. For Fall 2008 I used a thermo-fabric that loses color based on body heat. On the runway, the material gave off an impression of the model’s chest. These special effects are made to look effortless and it’s a way of updating familiar clothes.

As a matter of fact, some of your designs would not look out of place on a CG character like the T1000 Terminator. What kind of special effects, to use the term loosely, do you think men are prepared to wear today that they would not have accepted so easily in the past?

Men want more color. They do plastic surgery, use facial products, exfoliate and hydrate. I don’t think men will be wearing lipstick, but men’s make-up will become mainstream.

What are the most technologically challenging pieces you’ve ever created?

We created a Mylar suit, although it’s not really a fabric, for Fall 2010. The concept of that collection was protection and Mylar, which is used for marathon blankets, is very thin, light and insulating. It also has great texture and nothing else quite gives you that effect. Mylar is only produced in silver, so we found an American manufacturer who could print color on the material. When we started making the pieces, which were heat-bonded, we found that the color would melt and fade in the heat, so we had to start over. We learned we had to face it with a protective layer. It was a whole process that took three or four months to develop and the manufacturer doesn’t speed up just because you have a fashion show! We managed to include the pieces in the show and they looked great on the runway, but it was very challenging. These types of pieces are very specific and are not necessarily bestsellers, but the Mylar suits actually went into production and were well photographed.

What’s your advice for my fashion well-being?

Be yourself is the golden rule. It is very important to choose clothes that represent your personality. Choosing clothes is one of the most powerful ways to express who you are. You should wear the clothes and not the other way around. You also can’t look in the mirror for hours or be too analytical and obsessive about being perfect, because it will feel and look contrived, especially in a man. That’s what’s strong about the American fashion spirit and why sportswear was invented here. It is casual, less studied and spontaneous. That language really speaks to me because that’s how I choose and wear clothes myself. I almost never look at myself in the mirror.

This article was written by architect and writer Pierre Alexandre de Looz and was first published by 032c. Click here for a preview of the current issue 0f 032c.

Calvin Klein Menswear by Italo Zucchelli | Photo: Karim Sadli for 032c

In an exclusive two part interview, courtesy of our friends at 032c, Pierre Alexandre de Looz explores the work of Italo Zucchelli, Calvin Klein men’s collection creative director, known for grafting the infallible promise of technology — the 21st century’s cultural hope — to the fibre of masculine elegance. Today, in Part I, we examine Zucchelli’s menswear philosophy.

NEW YORK, United States — Snug. Well cut. Brilliant. A smack-your-lips example of product design, it defines a point of no return in menswear that equates less with the demise of the top hat than the birth of the iPod. In the story you are about to read, nearly everyone had something to say about Calvin Klein underwear, even the bootlegged kind: MoMA PS1 Curator Klaus Biesenbach, for instance, purchased emergency briefs after losing his luggage on a trip to China and “they are still going strong,” he said, 10 years later. Minimal, clear and universally known, they are like the dark slab of Kubrick’s Space Odyssey, a portal to somewhere beyond our tatty reality. Welcome to the tailored universe of Calvin Klein Men.

Beyond the spread of new men’s fashion rags, growing menswear revenues, and greater assimilation of male customers into the larger fashion system, the Calvin Klein identity sets an ideal stage for modern menswear. If fashion historian Anne Hollander is correct, that “Male dress was always essentially more advanced than female dress throughout fashion history, and tended to lead the way, to set the standard, to make aesthetic propositions to which female fashion responded,” then menswear is the future and the Calvin Klein man is like modernity to the second degree, our escort on the red carpet to a distant horizon.

Italo Zucchelli, an Italian-born designer picked by Mr. Klein, has directed the brand’s Men’s Collection since 2004. I dress as a man, and from this perspective, fashion seems more of a problem than a pastime, a frankly stiffer medium of self-expression than it has been for women. Zucchelli on the other hand doesn’t seem to shoulder any grudges. He wears New Balance sneakers as pleasantly as his Buddha-like face. Nian Fish, 18-year veteran of the KCD production agency and now an independent creative director, tells me, “People don’t get stressed around Italo because you ride his wave of being present and in the moment. He is very light.” Biesenbach, a friend, adds, “He is so modest and at the same time very precise – a rare quality.”

True enough, meeting Zucchelli was light, clear and precise like the tubular steel armchair that graces his living room, a signature Starck design of 1983. A large-scale print of model David Agbodji’s naked back, a molten monolith from Calvin Klein’s Spring and Fall 2010 campaigns sits close. More effusive than his portrait let on, Agbodji later confided: “Italo is probably the nicest, down to earth person I know in this business. Working with him greatly changed my own style. I had no clue how much I love modern minimalism until him.”

Zucchelli invited me to sit at a comfortable distance from the overpowering photo. I hoped to learn a lesson similar to Agbodji’s, to understand Zucchelli’s world and philosophy of menswear. We sank into a soft gray couch that frames the view of midtown from his penthouse apartment. Reflecting on a skyline built of testosterone, I asked, “Should a man dress to show his power?”

“A man should dress to show who he is,” Zucchelli replied. His tautology dispelled any hopes I had of borrowing an identity from anyone or anything outside myself.

Editors and retailers alike appreciate Zucchelli’s no-nonsense focus. Reporter Eric Wilson from The New York Times explains: “He tends to start with a clean line that’s very accessible and adds elements that are more challenging and unusual, but always in a way that a customer can relate to. Italo keeps in mind that he is designing for men and not women, that there is a real world outside the bubble of fashion insiders. It’s a big mistake that a lot of designers make, especially the Europeans.”

Zucchelli keeps a constant reminder of American “realness” in his corner office, a portrait of bulging bare-chested Marlon Brando posing as Stanley Kowalski from the 1951 movie A Street Car Named Desire. Zucchelli has never removed his vintage paperback copy of Tennessee William’s play from its cellophane slip, as if to contain the power of its iconic cover model. Idols like Brando or James Dean served as widely accepted prototypes of masculine style, especially in the way they galvanized a generation of casual dressers (T-shirts and jeans), but was it them or the characters they played? Is Zucchelli thinking of Brando or Kowalski, or both?

David Agbodji, for example, defined the Calvin Klein man like this: “extremely confident and fearless, strong, in great shape and super duper confident. Classic American superheroes like Bruce Wayne or Superman come to mind.” But, how real is Superman? He may be more real than you think. The image of “real men,” particularly in American culture, combines fiction and fact to a degree where the two are inseparable, indistinguishable even.

Italo Zucchelli: When I do a collection I think about the things men would want to wear. On the other hand, when I do a fashion show I have to create a fantasy. My ideal is to reach a perfect balance. It’s like a perfect pop song. It is the most difficult thing to achieve for an artist: to create something that may not seem commercial, expressing his or her creativity to the fullest, and then to see it become a commercial success. Kate Bush’s first single “Wuthering Heights” comes to mind. She was 19 and she sang a song that in 1978 was not what the radio would play – just a girl with a piano and a voice. She fought to release it as her first single (her record company favored another song). It made her a star immediately, number one all over Europe. It was the perfect combination of creativity and commercial success and it’s very inspiring.

Pierre Alexendre de Looz : Perhaps the consumer we think exists is just a fantasy?

I recently read that Steve Jobs avoided focus groups. He believed you have to show people what they want and he proved it. The iPod is a great example. I obsess over music and to me it was revolutionary; a minimal and perfectly designed object that everybody uses, and the most commercially successful product of the last decade. Jobs was incredibly clever and intuitive. I’m fascinated by the fact he applied Zen principles in his “creative strategy” and the result was pure innovation.

How do you use intuition?

Without comparing myself to Jobs, I’ll give you an example. I wanted to use neon color for a while. I debated whether it was chic enough and the many ways to use it. Suddenly, in a vintage store in LA, I saw a wet suit with perfect neon colors. I thought it was a message and decided it was the right time. I assumed the fluorescent suits would simply be an editorial piece, but they did not even arrive in stores – people bought them over the phone! There was clapping in the middle of the show – it was a real moment.

How do you keep your intuitions fresh?

Transcendental meditation. Intuition is something everybody has and meditation is a great way to develop it. I was given a mantra 20 years ago. I sit down and close my eyes, repeating the mantra for 20 minutes. It’s a tool. I would do it even if I cultivated tomatoes because I love it!

What defines the style of American men?

On an elemental level there is a casual, less conceptual or philosophical way of living in America. American men have been trained to take good care of their bodies, practicing a sport or working out at the gym. It’s very different from Europe.

It’s an obvious exception to the distinction you just made, but what do you think of Versace’s menswear from the 90s, since his men were on an American scale?

I thought it was fantastic. It was the opposite of what was going on and it marked the moment of Versace’s career when he enjoyed his greatest success. Sadly, he died shortly after. I see the 90s as a reaction to the 80s, which were about flamboyance and excess. You could design anything, even skirts for men. It would sell and people would wear it. Then came the Gulf War and we entered a major recession. Fashion in the 90s turned to purity. It was almost “non-design” – the opposite of 80s maximalism. But then, Versace became even more baroque. He was making people dream in sad times, you might say. Did I wear it? No, it wasn’t for me. But, it was fun. He invented the super models. He worked with Bruce Weber and Avedon. He created the kind of excitement that fashion always needs.

If the Calvin Klein identity were ever to part ways with minimalism, it will have taken a radical turn; yet, you seem to flirt with the possibility. Do you ever let yourself be kitschy?

In a sort of minimal way, I actually did for one of my earliest runway shows (Spring 2007). The aesthetic was clean, of course, but I sent some models down the runway with leggings (I don’t think anybody got it, but I pretended they were the kind of swimsuit worn by Australian surfers.) When the first of the legging models came off the runway he said, “I think I caused a stir!” That was the show where everything changed: people gasped. It was borderline underwear, borderline kitsch without having to do skirts or brocade. I had taken a staple of American sportswear and combined it with the sex value of the Calvin Klein brand. One reviewer said that you could see whether the models were circumcised or not! A lot of people laughed and some didn’t like it at all, but you need these moments! The midriff T-shirt (Spring 2011) was also very risqué. In eight years it was the most photographed item I’ve designed!

You sexualized the man but did you also feminize him?

Androgyny as a concept was one of the things that drew me the most to the brand because I was always fascinated by it, but especially androgynous women. That’s why I love Tilda Swinton, Annie Lennox, and Grace Jones. David Bowie is on the other side. In fact, I hope Tilda Swinton will play David Bowie in a movie someday. She would be perfection in the role, not least because she is playing a man. There is something extremely modern about the genders coming together, or men and women who dress alike. Calvin always played with that. Even Kate Moss was a creature in the beginning. She was a girl but also otherworldly. That’s the power of unisex. I grew up with this fascination. Even if I am unaware of it, this attitude will come out of what I do from deep inside my imagination.

But you grew up in a country where the gender roles are so clear?

That’s probably why I was fascinated with the middle, as a rebellion.

Are you familiar with Fellini’s sketches where he imagines a muscle woman whose clitoris stands erect like a penis? Modern androgyny was probably invented in Italy.

The Park Hyatt in Tokyo has those drawings on display! It’s an ancient tradition, but that’s where we are headed. The future will be less worried about gender and it will be reflected in clothes.

You are nudging us there! Your collections could be described as a battle between the T-shirt, which is increasingly genderless, and the man’s collar shirt. Lately, the traditional men’s shirt seems to be losing.

Lately, it’s true. T-shirts are very American; just think of James Dean! I was not born here, so I fantasize about the American look – again, we go back to the fashion fantasy. How do I make menswear look relevant and iconic but at the same time highly designed? The T-shirt is the number one staple of American sportswear and the American identity.

Nevertheless you’ve manipulated the traditional shirt. Would you call that fashion in its truest sense – because you are making small changes to a prototype, and these changes can cycle from season to season – or is this what we call progress?

To achieve any results in fashion, it takes time; that’s why I have three fittings in my process. Every collection starts from what you achieved in the last one. Menswear elements like the suit are subtle, whereas sportswear can be extreme and bolder and it’s easier to update. In menswear you have more rules and fewer elements than in women’s fashion, which I like. I find it more challenging to achieve something new while staying within the rules, or, you might say, breaking but not destroying the rules.

Hindsight shows us moments when contemporary fashion reached decisive points, like the little black dress or pantyhose. Do you have any inkling what the next major step for menswear will be?

When Chanel did the little black dress, fashion as we know it was at its beginning. She was a genius, but she arrived at a point when women were still wearing frocks. She simplified the woman. When Giorgio Armani put women in suits, that was genius and both times fashion was still young. These kinds of avenues have been well explored. I am not sure a statement as vast could be made now. My biggest fantasy for the future is that we’ll be able to disappear and not even need clothes. When we live on spaceships, maybe then someone will come up with something as groundbreaking as Chanel.

So, the revolution will come from life and fashion will respond. Thinking back over the last 60 years, who together with Armani has shaped menswear to modern life?

Armani created the power suit for both men and women and empowered women to be as powerful as men. He also created a whole new language, still very relevant today, for men in business and for celebrities – think of Richard Gere in American Gigolo. He created an effortless, everyday man that lives in a modern world, unfussy and real. He always speaks about sobriety. That is his mantra. His company is 30 years old this year, but something so good doesn’t have an expiration date. Helmut Lang created something very sleek, street cool and desirable, especially for men. He defined an era and it was a big loss when he retired. I wore a lot of his clothes because they fit me so well – like a reflective pair of pants!

What other American designers besides Calvin Klein attracted your attention?

Stephen Sprouse was the only alternative designer in America that I was interested in as a student. I never wore anything by him, but I know his vintage is hard to find, and expensive. The fluorescent colors, graphics, graffiti and punkiness; everything about it was underground.

In a similar way, Hedi Slimane has been recognized as having applied countercultural references to men’s tailoring. How do you describe his contribution?

He brought back youth culture. He influenced fashion through the shape he created – a skinny idealistic guy – which was androgynous in a way. All his muses are very young. I relate to his music interests and his interest in the underground, which is where everything comes from.

In the Wim Wenders movie A Notebook on Cities and Clothes from 1989, you see Yohji Yamamoto explaining his love of August Sander’s photographs. They are predominantly images of early 20th century working class men whose clothes are loosely fitted. It reveals a secret code of fashion: if something fits perfectly, it looks tailored and non-proletarian. You are clearly obsessed with precision, so what does looseness mean to you, and how do you use it?

I recently started doing over-sized shapes – let’s use that word – in sportswear. For Fall 2011 I did a bomber and I wanted to make the classic bomber even rounder, to emphasize the iconic. Yamamoto is a master and Japanese fashion has been over-sized since the beginning. But, I would never do this with a suit.

Tomorrow, in Part II, we explore the designer’s creative process and approach to innovation.

This article was written by architect and writer Pierre Alexandre de Looz and was first published by 032c. Click here for a preview of the current issue 0f 032c.

Savigny Luxury Index January 2012 | Source: Savigny Partners

LONDON, United Kingdom — It’s been a strong start to 2012 for the luxury good sector, as equity markets made significant gains in January.

Big news

• The Savigny Luxury Index (‘SLI’) outperformed the benchmark MSCI World Index (‘MSCI’) by 6 percentage points, gaining 11 percent over the month of January, relative to an increase of close to 5 percent for the MSCI.

• Investors have been exposed to continued good news.  Indeed almost all luxury groups have announced outstanding Christmas trading and 2011 year-end results driven mainly by growth in Asia excluding Japan.

• However, uncertainties have not dissipated.  Although the US market seems much better, Europe remains a concern, with sector sales highly dependent on tourist spending.

Going up

Louis Vuitton Maison in Sydney | Source: moluxury.com.au

SYDNEY, Australia — 2011 was an extremely busy year for luxury retail expansion in Australia. In April, Burberry opened a new flagship on Sydney’s George Street. In July, Prada and Miu Miu opened flagships in Sydney’s Westfield  shopping mall, where Gucci also opened its own two-level emporium in November. Then, in a dramatic end-of-year crescendo, Louis Vuitton opened a grand Maison on George Street and Bottega Veneta and Gucci opened stores in Sydney hotel and casino The Star.

This year, store openings in Australia are set to continue at a similar pace. Chanel is planning to expand its flagship on Castlereagh Street and relocate its Melbourne store to a stand-alone building, while Christian Dior will open its first Australian boutique on the site of the old Louis Vuitton store on Castlereagh Street.

So what’s behind the flurry of store openings in Australia?

A Relatively Rosy Macroeconomic Picture

On a macro-economic level, Australia is the only advanced economy that did not enter a deep recession during the global financial crisis. The country’s economy did slow in 2008 and 2009, but recovered quickly thanks to government action in the form of a stimulus package and trade agreements with Asia. “Seventy-five percent of Australia’s exports go to Asia and commodity prices have been very high in recent years,” said Peter Jolly, head of research at National Australia Bank, referring to the spectacular rise in prices, over the last decade, of the country’s major commodity exports to Asia, including iron ore, thermal coal and gold. “The Australian economy is leveraged to China and more generally, Asia, and these economies have continued to grow well in recent years,” he continued.

Indeed, today, the country boasts above-average growth, very little foreign debt and a stable banking system, which, along with a strong Australian dollar, have made the market highly attractive to international brands.

“I think this new move is quite symbolic of how ourselves [sic] and, I believe, the rest of the industry is considering Australia today,” said Yves Carcelle, chairman and CEO of Louis Vuitton, at the press conference for the opening of the brand’s new Sydney store.

“We see great potential in thriving flagship markets globally, and Sydney and Melbourne, with their cosmopolitan local populations and strong tourist flow, are no exception,” commented Burberry CEOAngela Ahrendts.

The Importance of Asian Tourist Flows

Indeed, Australia is not only a comparatively vibrant, ‘Western’ economy. It’s also part of the rapidly-growing Asia-Pacific region, making it doubly attractive to international brands who stand to benefit from the country’s healthy flow of Asian tourists, especially from China. In fact, Philip Morrice, director of The Friday Group, a Sydney-based consulting company, estimates that up to 35 percent of Australian retail traffic can be attributed to tourists.

“[Luxury brands] are boosting their presence and catering to the travelers coming to Sydney from Asia,” said Peter Esho, chief market analyst at City Index, a factor Carcelle acknowledged: “[Australia is] one of the big centres of interest for Asia-Pacific. You are quite a centre of attraction for high-end tourists from this part of the world.”

In 2010, the number of tourists from China grew by 24 percent (figures for 2011 have yet to be released) contributing $3.26 billion to the Australian economy. And in July of 2011, Tourism Australia unveiled its China 2020 Strategic Plan, which aims to further increase the number of Chinese tourists over the next eight years. Part of their sales pitch: Australia as a luxury shopping destination.

“While we know Australia’s incredible nature experiences are the main reason why Chinese travelers choose to visit, other aspects such as our food and shopping experiences are also part of the mix,” said managing director of Tourism Australia Andrew McEvoy. “Certainly the increasing presence of luxury brands in Australia will help to enhance the shopping options for Chinese visitors when they are here.”

Importantly, the price of international luxury goods is substantially less in Australia than in China, meaning that shopping in Australia can mean significant savings for Chinese tourists. “[They avoid] China’s mainland sales tax of up to 17 percent, consumption tax as much as 56 per cent and hefty import duties,” said Melinda O’Rourke, director of Sydney-based consultancy MO Luxury.

Targeting Asian tourists is such an important part of a successful Australia retail strategy that some luxury brands have even launched special Australia-inspired products which, experts say, are much more likely to resonate with visitors than locals. For example, to celebrate the opening of the brand’s 7,500 square foot flagship at Westfield Sydney, Gucci launched a limited-edition ‘Sydney’ collection, which included monogrammed koala, crocodile and kangaroo key chains and bags emblazoned with the Australian flag and the stars of the Southern Cross.

Store openings in hotel and casino complexes — Gucci, Bottega Veneta have opened in Sydney’s The Star, while Louis Vuitton, Prada and Burberry have stores in Melbourne’s Crown Casino and Entertainment Complex — are also designed to help brands tap the tourist market, said O’Rourke.

What’s more, brands are placing significant importance on recruiting multilingual retail staff to cater to tourists. “Right now, as the Chinese tourist market is strong, it is part of the strategic plan of brands to ensure they have Chinese-speaking staff on the floor,” said O’Rourke.

But as China’s economic growth rate declines — year-on-year growth in China has slowed for four straight quarters — can luxury brands depend on tourist spending to boost their Australia sales?

An Uncertain Future in Australia

“The vast majority of our business is done with the Australian consumer. The tourist business is a welcome addition, but in this world it is very unpredictable,” said Philip Corne, CEO of Louis Vuitton Oceania.

“If luxury brands are forecasting and managing their businesses correctly the tourist dollars should be the cream on the top,” said O’Rourke. “Budget and profit targets should be achieved with local consumer spending.”

But local spending in Australia may not be as dependable as once thought, either. Indeed, much of the country’s economy — not just tourism — is dependent on China’s growth, which has driven astounding demand for Australian commodity exports over the last decade.

However, as Philip Bowring reports in a recent Wall Street Journal article entitled “Australia’s Economic Luck May Not Last,” with China’s engine of growth slowing, Australia’s economic outlook is looking less rosy. “One of the challenges will be how China and Asian economies perform,” said Jolly. “Although on this front we have some comfort, as we expect soft-landings for presently slowing Asian economies.”

But according to Bowring, commodity prices can move much more violently than changes in demand, painting a worrying picture for the commodity-dependent Australian economy. “The bottom line is that Australia is more vulnerable than is usually assumed.”

Alice Cavanagh is editor of Oyster magazine.

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  New Order accessories Winter 2012 | Source: BoF

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  Boys playing in Santa Teresa | Photo: BoF

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  Sandy sidewalk on the edge of Ipanema Beach | Photo: BoF

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  Fabrica in Lapa district | Photo: BoF

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil – Arriving in Rio de Janeiro in the middle of the Brazilian summer, in a country experiencing an ongoing economic boom, certainly puts the bleak, uncertain economic outlook of wintry Europe and North America into sharp relief.

I was invited to Brazil on the generous invitation of ABIT, the Brazilian Textile and Apparel Industry Association, to attend Fashion Rio, the smaller of two semi-annual fashion events just concluded in Rio and São Paulo this week. And as ever on my trips to international markets, it was the perfect opportunity to explore firsthand one of the fastest growing luxury markets in the world, to see some local designers, and to get to know the local BoF community as well. Brazil ranked 13 on our list of countries with the most BoF readers, based on website traffic in 2011.

I came to Brazil with three questions on my mind: what are the prospects for the Brazilian luxury industry, what’s it like to do business here, and who is the Brazilian consumer?

HOMEGROWN LUXURY

With a population of 190 million people – the fifth most populous country on the planet – for years, Brazil received little attention from the international luxury goods industry, which was content to serve the market through other channels, primarily via licensing and franchises.

For years, Brazilians also simply bought luxury goods from their friends, who imported luxury products in their suitcases from their trips abroad. This is how the São Paulo-based luxury emporium Daslu is said to have been founded, before growing into the beacon (and then target) for a superrich elite in one of the world’s most unequal countries.

On my last visit here in December 2007, Brazil had yet to welcome stores from major international luxury brands like Prada, Hermès and Bottega Veneta. But all of this has changed. The aforementioned brands have recently opened new stores in Brazil and more than 30 other new retail openings are expected to follow in 2012, Carlos Ferreirinha, president of MCF Consultoria & Conhecimento, a São Paulo-based retail and luxury consulting company, told WWD. In short, the luxury retail landscape is being completely redefined.

This seems well-timed. The number of millionaires in Brazil is on the rise, spurred by a commodities boom and new oil discoveries, and is predicted to surpass 1 million by 2020. Property prices in Rio De Janiero are sky-rocketing. Meanwhile, this year, the Brazilian luxury goods industry is expected to grow to more than $12 billion. In comparison, there is also a thriving homegrown apparel and textiles industry, valued at more than $60 billion, with only $1.5 billion going to exports.

Brazil’s answer to LVMH and PPR is In Brands, a multi-platform “consolidation of lifestyle and premium fashion brands – the iconic brands – in Brazil,” but relatively unknown outside the country. These include high fashion line Alexander Herchcovich, menswear lifestyle brand Richards, swimwear label Salinas, online website FFW.com.br, and the branded fashion weeks organised by Luminosidade in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, whose fashion week is touted as the fifth largest fashion event in the world.

But the Brazilian fashion brand with greatest international visibility (if not sales) is Osklen, built around the relaxed lifestyle of Rio, founded in 1989 by orthopaedic physician Oskar Metsavaht. With 63 stores in Brazil and 10 stores and growing abroad, Metsavaht’s business is estimated to turn over between $170 to $230 million each year. Reports in Brazilian and international business media say that a majority stake in the Osklen business is currently for sale, with LVMH and PPR as two of the potential suitors.

BYZANTINE BUSINESS ECOSYSTEM

But beneath this glossy surface is a complex market with a complicated future. Despite the sense of optimism, the Brazilian economy has actually been slowing down. After rapid GDP growth of 7.5 percent in 2010, growth fell by more than half in 2011, to about 3 percent. Consensus forecasts peg 2012 growth to be slightly more than this. The spectre of a Brazilian bubble is debated in the financial newspapers.

Many local business people also complain that the Brazilian market is impossible to navigate. The country was ranked 126 in the latest “Ease of Doing Business,” report published by the World Bank in June 2011. As one expat described it to me, Brazil will welcome you with open arms, but when you actually try and do business here, you will eventually find yourself stuck in a morass of government bureaucracy, corruption and an incomprehensible system of taxation.

Indeed, nobody could definitively explain to me the country’s byzantine tax system. According to Rafael Cervone Netto, chief executive of Texbrasil, a textile and apparel industry export program, tax rates differ depending on the product category, the state into which the product is imported, and where the product is purchased, resulting in more than 300 different tax positions within the textile and apparel sector alone. What’s more, these tax policies are constantly changing, at multiple levels of government. A staggering 38 percent of Brazil’s GDP is comprised of taxes, versus 8 to 20 percent for other countries, Mr. Netto said.

Not only does this make Brazil extremely difficult for global luxury brands to manage, it also makes imported products as much as two or three times more expensive than in their home markets. According to Jenny Barchfield, fashion writer for the Associated Press, “at the Burberry store in Sao Paulo, a trench coat that retails on for $915 on its UK website was selling for 3695 reais, or $2075,” or more than twice as much as it costs in the UK.

WHO IS THE BRAZILIAN LUXURY CONSUMER?

All of this begs the question: who exactly are these Brazilian luxury consumers and why are they willing to pay such outrageous prices? Why don’t they simply shop abroad like their counterparts in China and India?

Brazilians do shop abroad, particularly in Miami or New York, but contrary to popular opinion as gregarious people, they “tend to be shy and prefer to buy at home because they are more comfortable here, where they can speak in Portuguese” said Graça Cabral, a director of Luminosidade. Customer service is also a magnet for shopping. In Brazil, clients have close relationships with their favourite sales people, who constantly feed them information.

On the recommendation of a Brazilian friend, I flicked on the television in my hotel room one night to watch Mulheres Ricas, or ‘Rich Women,’ a new reality TV show based around the lives of extremely wealthy women in Rio who apparently have nothing to do all day but flaunt their designer dogs and Birkin bags. One character named Brunete Fraccaroli, with her blown out hair and extreme plastic surgery, spent much of the episode clutching a Barbie-style doll, of herself. As it turns out, the doll was a gift from Mattel, who bestowed her with this honour.

Are these the kinds of consumers snapping up luxury goods at inflated prices in Brazil? Not entirely, said Monica Mendes, founder of the country’s leading lifestyle public relations firm that has worked with Daslu, and global luxury brands like Hermès, Chanel and Prada. “Of course we have these kinds of clients, but these are the very new rich, who want to show everything,” she said.

And then it came out. “The woman in Brazil is completely crazy,” said Mendes enthusiastically. “She is completely fashion-oriented. She knows everything about fashion.”

These women, said Ms. Mendes, follow American Vogue as much as they follow Brazilian Vogue. They see all the same editorial and advertisements at the same time as the women in America. “They tear out the pages, mark them with post-its and send them to sales girls who bring it all to their homes.”

“We like fashion,” agreed Ms. Cabral. “It’s a media phenomenon in Brazil. It’s not like [this] anywhere in the world. You see fashion on television, in every kind of slot and programme. You see fashion in all the newspapers. You see fashion in magazines — even magazines that are not fashion magazines.”

But still, how can they afford it? Luxury prices in Europe and America are already stratospheric, but in Brazil they are in another galaxy. “We’ve had a lot of economic crises. We’ve changed our [currency] I don’t know how many times,” recalled Ms. Mendes, and with no irony added: “The Brazilian people are very creative with money.”

You see, in Brazil you can buy everything by payment plan, even luxury goods from Chanel and Hermès. You can pay for your tweed suit in four payments or pay for your luxury handbag in seven installments, and so on. Depending on the kinds of stores you’re visiting, and how much you’re spending, you can split your payments into smaller and smaller chunks.

More than one expert suggested that these payment plans are also a convenient way for women to disguise their luxury purchases from their husbands, splitting up payments across credit cards, cheques and cash.

“We like to dress up. It’s different from other cultures. Maybe more similar to the Arabian culture,” said Ms. Cabral. “Don’t forget, we come from Indians and Africans, and all of them like to wear things and decorate themselves. It’s part of our DNA. It’s there.”

“We want to be cool and have everything that everybody has. We want to wear the Brazilians, but also the international designers,” she added. “We have more and more consumers that want [to buy] quality as well, who are more demanding. And even if you can buy a bag from a Brazilian designer that is 2,000 reais, or a bag from Balenciaga that is 2,000 euros, they prefer [the latter],” she said.

“It brings status as well, because they need that too.”

Imran Amed is founder and editor-in-chief of The Business of Fashion

Bandana Tewari | Photo: Johan Sandberg for Industrie Magazine

PARIS, France — Bandana Tewari has made a name for herself as one of the fashion industry’s smartest commentators. As fashion features director of Vogue India, she has quickly become the go-to source for anyone who wants to learn about the country’s rapidly evolving luxury market. Recently, she was named to Industrie magazine’s Fashion Media A-list, alongside other leading fashion commentators including Cathy Horyn, Tim Blanks and Suzy Menkes.

So, I am delighted to reveal that Bandana Tewari will pen a regular column for The Business of Fashion, offering her unique perspective on the Indian luxury market, starting with this interview originally conducted for Industrie.

I sat down with Bandana in between shows during Paris Fashion Week in September to talk about India’s fast growing fashion market, tailoring luxury products to Indian sensibilities, the power of Bollywood and wearing Tarun Tahiliani saris with Manolo Blahniks.

BoF: How would you describe your point of view on fashion, your angle?

BT: Every time someone asks, ‘How do I become a fashion journalist?’ I say, ‘Forget fashion.’ You’ve got to be a social anthropologist first. That for me is the hook. I don’t think I could think of fashion in a uni-linear way. Fashion is like a fantastic hydra-headed monster that is influenced by everything around us – pop culture, state of the economy, global warming, you name it. I can only understand fashion in this holistic way.

BoF: You’ve been working in fashion for eight years now, and India has gone through a massive change in that time. Can you tell us what you’ve observed as India has become part of global fashion culture?

BT: In India everything happened so quickly. In the first phase, when fashion became corporatised and institutionalised into Fashion Weeks, it started off being very Indian. Then the media cried foul: ‘No one’s wearing just these traditional clothes – what are these Indian designers doing?!’ And then suddenly everyone was into – what I think is a reductionist Indian fashion term – ‘fusion-fashion’, as in Indo-Western fusion, which was basically Western silhouettes with dollops of very ethnic nuances and motifs. We were following all the clichés that we punish the rest of the world for using on us. A nice little jacket but paisleyed to death, you know? Or skirts that were too embellished.

BoF: But today, Indian fashion has morphed into something more defined.

BT: The third stage of fashion in India was the period when we reconciled ourselves to the fact that there is a certain DNA that cannot be taken out of the country. We do have a forte that lies in handicraft, in decorative arts, in embellishments, in technique. But what designers started doing was to not use them literally: they took little bits of it and used it in fluid silhouettes. And then we had beautiful collections from designers like Sabyasachi Mukherjee, Anamika Khanna, Varun Bahl, Savio, James Ferreira. They brought this very coherent vision of India, which unfortunately I feel the Western world still hasn’t seen or utilised.

BoF: What do you mean?

BT: Well, here we are at Paris Fashion Week for spring/summer 2012. I look around me there are events promoting all young emerging designers from London. I’ve just come back from a CFDA presentation of American designers. Then, you have the Koreans in ‘Seoul to Soul’ in the Museum of Decorative Arts. It’s phenomenal how much support different countries are offering to these designers. When I went to ‘Seoul to Soul’ I thought, ‘We now need to’ – and I’m definitely going to spearhead this –‘get five, six Indian designers to have a platform like this, where we, as Vogue India perhaps, can support it.’ I saw the emerging talent, and we are no less accomplished.

BoF: But we’ve been through this phase where Sabyasachi and Ashish N Soni were showing in New York and Manish Arora was showing in London. And it seems to me that, except for Manish Arora, most Indian designers have gone back to refocus on the Indian market.

BT: Well we’re at the stage where a top Indian designer like Sabyasachi Mukherjee can sell a garment for the same price as a couture dress by Dior and conclude, ‘I know my forte lies in doing Indian clothes for Indian people and catering to a market that is worth close to 11, 12 billion US dollars per annum’ – which is the Indian wedding industry. Some designers are like Manish, who [has shown] his first collection for Paco Rabanne: he’s very clear he wants to make it in the international arena. But other designers have decided their marketing focus is in India, and they are doing phenomenally well in their own country.

BoF: And maybe that makes sense. Because some global brands have failed to understand that the Indian market requires a really tailored offering.

BT: Absolutely. Not just tailored, but you have to understand India in terms of its spending power and when that money is spent. In a certain month you’re not supposed to be ostentatious, so forget about any grand opening in that month. You have to do full research of the rituals of India. Come August, September and right up to February, it’s the wedding season. It’s also the season with all the top festivals, Diwali, the festival of lights, where money is spent, buying for others and for yourself.

BoF: Do you think global brands are starting to understand this?

BT: Absolutely, and to respond to it too. Gucci did a limited-edition ‘Made for India’ series, which you can only buy in India. And it catered the Indian sensibility, which is a little bit bling. The India Knot clutch, which is by Bottega Veneta, was a sell-out, inspired by the architecture of India. Then Hermès recently launched six or seven beautiful saris – an extension of the scarves they’re doing, and I can tell you now, it is going to fly. There are so many customisations happening, on a small level: Jimmy Choo does bridal shoes for the Indian wedding industry. All these brands realise that just a bit of tailoring for the Indian aesthetic goes a long way for them to establish themselves in the hearts of the Indian consumer.

BoF: You have this interesting dichotomy between these big local Indian designers and the international superbrands. How does this divide represent itself in Vogue India, in terms of editorial and advertisers?

BT: When you flick through Vogue India, everything is customised for the Indian reader. So we put Indian designers alongside all the international designers irrespective of who’s advertising and who’s not. Because if you walk down the streets in Bombay, go to cocktail parties, go to dinner parties, we’re still wearing Tarun Tahiliani saris but with Manolo Blahniks. We are taking international fashion the way we want to. Not necessarily getting into gowns yet, because that’s something to be talked about and discussed further. The way we are indulging in [Western] fashion is really through accessories.

BoF: And so the consumer has created their own fashion fusion in the way they dress.

BT: Absolutely. So there is no way Vogue India would not put designers together. You know, we don’t care that Tarun Tahiliani doesn’t show at New York Fashion Week. He shows in India Fashion Week and that’s good enough for us. And he sells and he’s loved by his consumers and our readers. So if he’s doing a black sari that becomes the It-sari of the season and we do a ‘Midnight Black is Back’ page in the front of book, you’ll see a Jil Sander black shirt with that Tarun Tahiliani black sari, with a Dior black clutch and a black dress by Gaurav Gupta, who’s a young Indian designer.

BoF: Do you also Vogue India as playing a role in educating consumers about international fashion? Because before Vogue fashion magazines in India were not nearly at the international level.

BT: When we launched we said ‘education first’. Every brand story we did was almost like a profile: the legacy of Louis Vuitton, of Bottega Veneta. We’d customise it for our Indian readers. So if it was Gucci, it was about what Frida Giannini thinks about women all over the world and what she thinks about Indian women. And we’d weave the brand story with it so they get to know about the brand. A few seasons later, the next stage was to engage international designers properly with the Indian consumer. So it was about going back to the designers and saying, ‘How are you engaging out customers? What is it about India?’ So all our stories would revolve around that.

BoF: Condé Nast set up Vogue India as a fully owned subsidiary, so Condé Nast India operates as part of Condé Nast International. How does that relationship work?

BT: We were the first international magazine in India to be 100 per cent owned by the parent company, Condé Nast, and it makes a huge difference when you don’t have another partner. Your marketing strategy, your sales strategy, your editorial strategy is in tandem with the rest of fully-owned Vogues all over the world. In terms of the quality and content we want to bring to the consumer, I’d say it’s as good as even American Vogue, British Vogue. And that happens because we have full control of our magazine’s destiny.

BoF: Do you have interaction with the other Vogue Editions? Do you take content from time to time from British Vogue or American Vogue?

BT: We do that all the time. Because someone picking up Vogue in India wants to know what’s happening in the rest of the world too. So we take syndications, not just the English-language magazines but from Vogue Japan Vogue, Portugal, Brazil. We are global citizens. But globalisation is a dirty word today: I think the international community is getting so tired of everything that’s globalised. So we’re not homogenised – we have such an intrinsic indigenous quality to our lifestyle and we celebrate that. Because that indigenous quality is absolutely imperative.

BoF: You mentioned cultural clichés earlier. I wanted to talk about the power of Bollywood. There’s a lot of Bollywood in your covers. Is it is still very powerful force?

BT: Bollywood is by far the biggest marketing tool for anything that you do in India. I’d prefer to call it Indian cinema, but Bollywood is what it is right now. And we took a conscious decision to Voguify the Bollywood styles.

BoF: How do you mean?

I mean all these young actors and actresses are gorgeous. Whether you like the kind of movies they choose to act in… that’s a subjective choice. But we took these amazing women who are successful and extremely powerful. And there were a lot of designer gowns and designer saris, and they’re on the cover with the top make-up artists and photographers: Patrick Demarchelier shot our first cover. We’ve had Gisele on the cover wearing an Indian-style bikini done by Tarun Tahiliani and a Balmain jacket, and we’ve had Bollywood stars in Gucci dresses. So we’ve brought that Vogue element to Bollywood. And it has changed the way people now want to present themselves in public. Because the whole red carpet thing didn’t exist in India then, but it does now.

A version of this interview first appeared in Industrie magazine.

Antique Elevator | Source: elevatorpreservation.com

In our final post in a week of articles on e-commerce innovation, we are pleased to launch Elevator Pitch, a recurring feature on BoF that will showcase one exceptional fashion-technology start-up per month and provide valuable feedback from a panel of fashion, technology and investment experts, as well as the BoF community.

LONDON, United Kingdom – Ever since the early days of BoF, we have taken a keen interest in the exciting emerging activity at the intersection of fashion, technology and entrepreneurship. From the first article we published about Gilt Groupe back in November 2007, when the company had only 5 employees, to our four-part series on FashionStake, which last week announced its acquisition by Fab.com, to our early features on platforms like Pinterest and Tumblr, which have gone on to attract tremendous attention from the fashion community, BoF has a track record for being the first to spot and support the most innovative start-ups making a mark in the fashion space.

As we have examined over the last few days here on BoF, we are currently witnessing a veritable surge of innovation and venture capital interest in the fashion-technology space. Amongst e-commerce start-ups alone, we have seen the emergence of new business models like curation, subscription retail, social merchandising, mass customisation, retail gaming and collaborative consumption.

What business models will be next to emerge? Who will be the next Net-a-Porter, Gilt Groupe or Pinterest? If you have a promising business idea in the fashion-technology space or are already working on a start-up and looking to raise your profile or attract funding, we are putting out a call for your Elevator Pitch: concise pitches that you might give to a potential investor, partner or key hire if you bumped into them in an elevator.

For entrepreneurs wishing to participate, please respond to the questions below for the opportunity to have your pitch featured here on BoF and receive valuable feedback from a panel of fashion, technology and investment experts.

THE QUESTIONS (maximum 500 words):

1. What is your business idea and what problem is it solving?
2. What market does it address and how big is this market?
3. Who is your competition and how are you different/better?
4. What is the revenue model?
5. Who are the team that will make your idea a reality?
6. How much funding are you seeking and why?

HOW IT WORKS:

1. We are accepting Elevator Pitches by email only and review the first 500 words you submit. Please send your submissions to elevatorpitch@businessoffashion.com. We cannot respond to every email and will only contact those pitches selected to be published.

2. Each month, the selected Elevator Pitch will be presented to members of our Expert Panel, who will provide their feedback on the business idea and its potential.

3. We will publish one Elevator Pitch per month, along with feedback from our Expert Panel, and invite the BoF community to join the discussion.

THE EXPERT PANEL:

Sonali De Rycker, Partner, Accel Partners, London
Sonali has been active in the European venture business for 12 years focusing on investments in the consumer internet and digital media sectors. Sonali is responsible for investments in KupiVIP, Lyst, StylistPick, Spotify, and Top10.

Kirsten Green, Founder, Forerunner Ventures, New York
Kirsten has been in the investment business since 1996, investing in both public and private companies and building a focus on the consumer sector. Representative investments include: Birchbox, Bonobos, Chloe & Isabel, Cleanwell, Serena & Lily, Skullcandy, StyleOwner, Warby Parker.

Ben Lerer, Founder, Thrillist, New York
Ben Lerer is a Manager of Lerer Ventures and the Co-Founder and CEO of Thrillist.com, a leading men’s multi-platform lifestyle publication with over 3 million daily subscriptions in 19 localized markets in the U.S. and the U.K.

Rachel Shechtman, Founder, Cube Ventures, New York
Rachel has been a marketing and merchandising consultant since 2003 working with clients including Gilt Groupe, TOMS, and the CFDA; and advising others such as Birchbox and Quirky. Recently she launched a new retail venture in Manhattan called STORY.

Imran Amed, Founder and Editor, The Business of Fashion, London
Imran is a fashion business advisor, writer, and digital entrepreneur, and is Founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Business of Fashion.

Elevator Pitch is a recurring feature on BoF, co-curated and developed with Rachel Shechtman of Cube Ventures, that will showcase one exceptional fashion-technology start-up per month and provide valuable feedback from a panel of fashion, technology and investment experts, as well as the BoF community.

Modcloth screenshot | Source: Modcloth

In Part I, we examined the innovations and infrastructural advances that have improved the historically poor economics of e-commerce and set the stage for a renaissance in online retail. Today, we explore some of new and exciting business models taking shape, the companies exploiting them and the challenges they face.

SAN FRANCISCO, United States — For years, e-commerce suffered from capital inefficiencies and complexities that pushed investors away. But in recent years, major infrastructural advances and the success of innovative start-ups like Gilt Groupe have rekindled investor interest and set the stage for an explosion of promising new business models including personal subscription, social merchandising, mass customisation and collaborative consumption.

PERSONAL SUBSCRIPTION

Opportunity: The model is relatively simple: consumers join a monthly club, complete a personal style survey, and are then shown a selection of products each month that they can choose to buy for a flat rate. While traditional online retailers struggle to gain and retain customer mindshare, and must constantly re-engage and convert customers to stay profitable, subscription style services generate far more predictable revenue streams. Subscription retailers also capture data on the tastes and size measurements of individual customers in order to deliver personalised product selections. This not only drives greater customer loyalty, but also enables retailers to better manage inventory risk.

Key Players:

• Shoedazzle offers personalised, stylist-selected shoes and accessories at affordable prices, delivered straight to doorsteps, and has attracted over 3 million members and over $60 million in venture capital from top tier firms.
• Beachmint has raised a total of $38.5 million and launched several subscription services across a number of verticals, working with celebrity designers, including jewelry site Jewelmint, launched with actress Kate Bosworth and her stylist Cher Coulter; Stylemint, launched with Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen; skin care site Beautymint, launched with pop culture phenomenon Jessica Simpson; and shoe site Shoemint, launched with actress Rachel Bilson.
• Birchbox, an early subscription retail innovator, is a beauty subscription service that addresses product discovery and sampling and has raised a total of $11.9 million
• Manpacks is a convenience-focused men’s subscription service for staple male essentials like razors, underwear, socks and shirts.

Challenges: Competition in the subscription retail space is heating up, so we might start to see increasing churn rates. While subscription services have stickier revenues, they are vulnerable to cancellations. In order to succeed over the long term, they must continue to offer products that are constantly exciting and relevant to their customers. Multiple months of disappointment will most likely result in lost customers.

SOCIAL MERCHANDISING

Opportunity: Social merchandising enables retailers to collect consumer feedback on goods prior to buying them. Typically, consumers are asked to vote, comment or curate products (sometimes through contests), indicating their preferences in a way that generates hugely useful data that retailers can leverage to more accurately predict what will sell, better aligning supply and demand. Social merchandising also engages customers and drives greater loyalty.

Key Players:

• Threadless was one of the first online fashion retailers to let the crowd vote on their favourite t-shirt designs and determine which designs would be put into production and sold on the site.
• Modcloth, which raised $19.8 million in a Series B round led by Accel Partners in 2010, has experimented with a successful “Be the Buyer” program, which lets consumers vote on their favourite items, generating data that informs Modcloth’s merchandising strategies.
• ASOS now encourages consumers to vote on, curate and share the designers and products they fancy most, a sign that larger e-commerce sites are experimenting with social merchandising as well.

Challenges: With social merchandising, timing is a challenge. What consumers want today may not be the same as what they want in a few months time. So, for these feedback loops to be most effective, short cycle production and fulfilment are essential.

MASS CUSTOMISATION

Opportunity: Mass customisation lets businesses deliver individualised products to every single customer, based on the buyer’s choice of aesthetic, functional, or contextual components such as styles, colours, materials and measurements. The individualised tailoring of products has, traditionally, been too costly to scale. But mass customisation allows customers to participate meaningfully in the design of their goods, restoring individuality to the process, while leveraging the cost-efficiencies of mass production to make the model feasible. Customers get the exact products they want. And by offering goods that, by definition, cannot be found elsewhere, the model enables companies to differentiate themselves vis-à-vis competitors and build stronger, more engaged and loyal relationships with consumers. Plus, by getting commitment (and payment) at the top of the purchase funnel, mass customisers avoid the perennial issue of excess, end of season inventory that didn’t sell. Indeed, customers pulling — rather than companies pushing — product designs offers practical, emotional and economic advantages.

Key Players:

• Nike first launched its highly successful mass customisation platform NikeiD back in 1999, allowing consumers to add a personalised look and feel to select shoe models. Ten years later, following a 2008 redesign of the application, the company reported that the platform had “surpassed $100 million for the first time.”
• Zazzle and Cafépress, which earns over $100 million in revenue per year, are white label companies also active in the space.
• Burberry Bespoke allows customers to create trench coats to their personal specifications, choosing from a wide range of style, fabric, colour, embellishment and detail options.

Challenges: The downside of mass customisation is the increased cost and complexity of production, which is ultimately reflected in higher prices. Prices for Burberry’s custom trenches start at about $1,800, while special materials can bring the price up as high as $8,800. Customers derive greater value from personalised products and are willing to pay a premium for these goods, but it’s simply not feasible that every part of a product design will be customisable. The trick is identifying which key elements of a product to make customisable and offering the right degree of variability in order to provide a made-to-order feeling, while ensuring manageable and scalable production.

COLLABORATIVE CONSUMPTION

Opportunity: Collaborative consumption is the next generation of swapping, sharing, bartering, trading and renting, behaviours which are being re-energised through the growth of peer-to-peer marketplaces and other technology-enabled platforms. Sellers can get rid of used or depreciating assets, while buyers can consume the items’ residual value at a price point that is substantially cheaper than retail. Collaborative consumption also includes rental models. For high cost items, especially those that are fashionable or ephemeral, renting items often makes more sense and gives a new customer base access to products that would normally be outside of their reach. As a result of the troubled economy and the rise of flash sale and daily deal sites, consumers expect discounts as a matter of course and routinely seek out high quality or high design items at cheaper price points, creating an environment ripe for the growth of businesses built on collaborative consumption.

Key Players:

• Rent the Runway, a mail-order service which lets women rent designer fashion and is sometimes described as “the Netflix for fashion,” has attracted over 1 million members and secured over $30 million in funding from top tier firms Highland Capital, Bain Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
• Bag Borrow or Steal lets consumers rent designer bags by the week, month or season.
• TheRealReal, backed by start-up accelerator 500 Startups and other noteworthy angel investors, recently launched an online consignment store selling previously owned luxury fashion at prices as low as 90 percent below retail.
• I-Ella enables consumers to easily swap and exchange fashion.

Challenges: Peer-to-peer models faces obvious challenges around trust and quality control. And, as with any marketplace business, getting liquidity through a critical mass of products and users is essential, but challenging. The rental model is initially capital intensive, because a company has to purchase inventory upfront and absorb the depreciation and maintenance costs associated with each item, which creates barriers to entry for copycats aiming to get off the ground and achieve profitability. Overtime, the model can be lucrative, especially for companies that are able to make accurate assumptions around depreciation from wear and tear and the costs of upkeep.

Although winners are already emerging from the current explosion of e-commerce start-ups, we will continue to witness constant e-commerce innovation for the foreseeable future. Indeed, with only 9 percent of commerce currently being conducted online, there is still tremendous room for growth. Beyond the aforementioned approaches, a number of promising young companies are building businesses around innovative models like shoppable media (Joyus), multi-level marketing (Stella & Dot), curation (AHAlife), local shopping (Aisle50) and retail gaming (Lockerz and Sneakpeeq). And while venture capital investment is a symptom of a good market, not a cause, investment in e-commerce more than doubled from $1.06 billion in 2010 to $2.39 billion in 2011. This kind of interest from VCs will surely accelerate the explosion of new start-ups set to disrupt the retail industry in the months and years to come.

Elizabeth Knopf is a former investment associate and the co-founder of Sorced, an online showroom.

Fab.com Screenshot | Source: Fab.com

Yesterday, BoF was first to bring you the news of the recent $18 million investment in Farfetch.com. Today, we continue a week focused on e-commerce by examining the historical challenges faced by online retailers and how recent innovations and infrastructural advances have fundamentally improved the economics of e-commerce, setting the stage for a renaissance in online retail.

SAN FRANCISCO, United States — Following the burst of the dot-com bubble in early 1999, e-commerce suffered from a lack of venture capital investment. The unrealised, over-hyped expectations for e-commerce — at a time when the market, consumer technology and infrastructure were less evolved — and the subsequent burns left venture firms with a nasty aftertaste. Perhaps the most spectacular fashion e-commerce failure was that of Boo.com, which launched in the Autumn of 1999, burned through $135 million in venture capital in just 18 months and was liquidated in 2000.

But on closer inspection, e-commerce has also faced additional complexities and capital inefficiencies that, for years, continued to push investors away.

HISTORICAL CHALLENGES AND FIRST MOVER ADVANTAGE

First, e-commerce lacked defensibility. With software or other internet services, intellectual property or the complexities of build create barriers to market entry for would-be competitors. But e-commerce businesses are essentially selling products. The most important elements of these businesses are the assortment, breadth and variability of the merchandise they offer, along with overall access to this merchandise. Access to inventory is not a sufficient barrier, however, as other stores can carry the same products unless a business has exclusive agreements with vendors, which happens rarely and usually only for a limited time.

In the absence of defensibility, companies needed to demonstrate solid metrics around scale of revenues, registered users and overall profitability in order to secure investment. But for e-commerce companies, this requirement created something of a catch-22. When compared to software or other internet services, start-up costs for e-commerce companies were higher, due to the expense associated with buying physical inventory, setting up a logistics platform for warehousing and fulfilment, and acquiring and retaining customers. Furthermore, since they operated at the wholesale level, their margins were relatively smaller.

In order to work and attract investment, these businesses required scale. But in order to achieve scale, they needed significant investment.

There were a few big success stories, such as e-Bay and Amazon, which gained significant first mover advantages. As Josh Kopelman of First Round Capital has pointed out, from 1999 to the beginning of 2010, the list of top general e-commerce sites in the United States remained almost unchanged. In fashion, online juggernauts like Net-a-Porter, Yoox, Neiman Marcus, and Shopbop maintained their incumbent positions.

IMPROVED ECONOMICS AND REDUCED ENTRY COSTS

In recent years, however, the tides have turned in e-commerce. For one, consumers are now acclimated to the concept of online retail. According to Forrester, the online retail market in the US alone is expected to grow to $279 billion by 2015. But critically, major innovations and infrastructural advances have also fundamentally improved the economics of e-commerce, attracting significant venture capital interest in the sector.

Starting in 2007, US private sales pioneers like Gilt Groupe, Rue La La, Hautelook and Ideeli were able to drive massive consumer adoption in a very short amount of time when compared to traditional e-commerce sites. They offered designer fashion at significant discounts, distributed directly to email inboxes.

With timing and supply constraints to compel immediate action, these members-only sites successfully identified and leveraged key behavioural insights to drive engagement, collect customer data and generate rapid sales. But perhaps most importantly, their ability to move product much more quickly than traditional sites reduced cash flow requirements. Indeed, many flash sales sites buy on consignment, while others do not touch or pay for inventory at all until it is purchased by the end consumer.

In recent cycles, the rise of social media channels like Facebook and Twitter have also enabled e-commerce businesses to acquire customers and accelerate growth far more efficiently. Fab.com, which sells discounted furniture, jewelry and art in 72-hour flash sales, has leveraged social media to great success, attracting a total of 1.65 million registered users in just six months. According to The Wall Street Journal, in November of last year the start-up processed approximately 100,000 orders, double the previous month, and is now averaging $1.4 million in sales per week. The company recently raised a Series B round of $40 million, led by Andreessen Horowitz, valuing Fab.com at more than $200 million. “They’ve leveraged social extremely effectively,” said general partner Jeff Jordan in a blog post on the transaction.

The evolution of e-commerce solutions like Shopify, Magento and BigCommerce, along with the growth of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) tools like Mailchimp, RJ Metrics and Shipwire and the rise of Amazon Web Services, a cloud computing platform, have also made it significantly easier and cheaper for retailers to build and manage beautifully designed e-commerce storefronts. Additionally, leveraging APIs (application programming interfaces that make it easy for software programs to talk to each other) has made integration much more time- and cost-efficient, not only for the consumer-facing storefront, but also in terms of the back-end workflow.

Innovation across the supply chain is also making development easier, improving scalability and easing integration, while also decreasing capital requirements for e-commerce businesses. Web-based point of sale systems, wholesale marketplaces, ordering and invoicing software, enterprise resource planning systems, and shipping and fulfilment systems are becoming simpler, cheaper and more flexible. In fact, companies can now use highly efficient software-as-a-service (SaaS) tools across the entire supply chain, paying periodically to access hosted software, without having to incur the costs and complexities of hosting and managing back-end infrastructure.

NEW OPPORTUNITIES AND ECOSYSTEMS

In the context of these improved economics, there are a number of problems to be solved that provide interesting opportunities in e-commerce. Traditionally, retailers have faced difficulties in turning customer data into actionable insight. This is beginning to change. SaaS tools let retailers more easily access and make sense of data, opening up opportunities for businesses to leverage the inadvertent “buyer profiles” that consumers are now creating as they express themselves on social media. Particularly interesting are the taste and behavioural data that consumers share on social curation sites like Svpply, Pinterest, Lyst and The Fancy.

While brands and retailers are scratching their heads solving their data issues, consumers are frustrated with the process of discovering products. It’s easy browse through a physical store, but searching millions of items online is overwhelming. Even if you know you want to buy a black pair of shoes, you still end up with thousands of options. Discovering products that are right for you remains challenging.

The growth of new technology channels and ecosystems created and supported by large players is also providing fertile ground for e-commerce innovation. Alongside the growth of social channels like Facebook, which offers retailers new ways to achieve viral distribution and offer social discovery, the mobile commerce market is expected to reach $31 billion in the US alone by 2016, up from $3 billion in 2010. But while these new channels create new opportunities for e-commerce companies, they also present a major challenge: multi-channel integration. Historically, merchants have been forced to cobble tools together to create a seamless, multi-channel workflow.

EBay’s new X.commerce initiative aims to address this problem, offering retailers a single platform that lets them easily add, customise and integrate tools from the X.commerce marketplace, making it easier for young companies to capitalise on the multi-channel opportunity. The stated vision of the X.Commerce initiative is to “help merchants and businesses of all sizes to compete and thrive in the fast-changing world of social, mobile, local and digital driven e-commerce.”

Indeed, with improved economics, new opportunities and goliaths like eBay supporting the ecosystem, the stage is set for a renaissance in online retail and the growth of disruptive business models built around new ways of buying, selling and engaging with goods.

Tomorrow, we explore the recent explosion of new business models in online retail, including personal subscription, social merchandising, mass customisation and collaborative consumption.

Elizabeth Knopf is a former investment associate and the co-founder of Sorced, an online showroom.