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LONDON, United Kingdom — Digital fashion film has gained real momentum over the last couple of seasons. Using sound and movement to communicate fashion in a way that’s emotionally charged, cost-effective and easily distributed, the format has been adopted for online editorial and fashion week presentations alike. But it’s important to remember that new formats are only as successful as the image-makers and stylists who embrace and sustain them with their creativity.

Over the last year, on the strength of two breakthrough films for Gareth Pugh, London-based Ruth Hogben has emerged as one of the most influential and passionate young filmmakers working in fashion film today. It’s a genre she helped to pioneer while assisting Nick Knight between 2005 and February 2009, both as his first photographic assistant and editor of his fashion film projects for SHOWstudio.

With her third major film — a short for Christopher Kane’s highly anticipated new Topshop collection — due to launch during London Fashion Week, BoF recently caught up with Ruth to talk about her first experiments in film, the power of sound and movement, balancing concept with clothes, the importance of the internet, and her hopes for the future of fashion film.

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Sophie Theallet

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

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

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By now, everyone has seen the striking Annie Leibovitz portrait of Keith Richards, his electric guitar, and his monogrammed Louis Vuitton guitar case. It is the fourth in a series of ads that have featured Mikhail Gorbachev, Catherine Deneuve, and tennis powercouple, Steffi Graf and Andre Agassi.

The ads have been in almost every respected magazine and newspaper imaginable, the Richards image is the current homepage image for the Louis Vuitton website, and the former Rolling Stone is blown up to two story proportions as the hoarding in front of the soon-to-be-expanded Louis Vuitton store on London’s Bond Street.

But somehow, I did miss this YouTube video which goes behind-the-scenes to show how Leibovitz worked her photographic magic with a rock star legend.

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Nokia 7900 Crystal Prism Phone

LONDON, United Kingdom – Something is in the air. Earlier this week, we received a mysterious package in the post from Nokia. Inside, we found a 7900 Crystal Prism phone, complete with a Sapphire crystal and engraved design by French graphic designer Frederique Daubal, who has previously collaborated with Paul Smith and Colette, the iconic Paris fashion concept boutique.

Not only this, the fashion and technology blogosphere has been abuzz about Tag Heuer’s branded mobile phone, priced to compete with the Vertu phones, at 3900 euros (or about $6000). Previously, other fashion brands including Prada, Armani, and Levis have launched mobile phones with much hype and fanfare.

To top it all off, I was recently invited to give a Keynote Speech at the ArcChart Handset Fashion and Style Congress in London later this month on, what else, The Business of Fashion.

So, is all this fashion phone buzz just PR hype, or is it something that fashion brands and mobile phone players should be seriously thinking about?

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David Beckham billboard in Milan, courtesy of Emporio Armani

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

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

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

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Last night I witnessed the intricate ballet of savvy PR and event-planning that has helped build Marc Jacobs into one of the only truly successful, global luxury brands that has been launched in the past 20 years.

It was evidence of the basic human psychological desire to be part of the cool crowd. You know those nightclubs that intentionally keep people waiting outside to give off the impression of being the hot spot of the moment? This was not all that different, except Marc Jacobs has been doing this for almost 20 years, and he has it down to a fine art. Plus, this is not just hype. He has a reputation for delivering collections that will inspire designers and consumers the world over as they adopt his take on of-the-moment coolness. Nobody wants to miss it. It is the hottest ticket in town

Here’s how the night unfolded.

9:00pm – Crowds of guests and press have formed outside the Armory, but nobody is getting in. People are pretty calm, given the show was supposed to  start at this time, except for a French woman who insists she must urgently get in now. She is promptly rebuffed.

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The Business of Fashion is on the road. Our first stop is in Nassau, the capital city of The Bahamas, an archipelago of islands which has long been a stopping off point for people cruising around the Caribbean. San Salvador Island is where Christopher Columbus first set foot in the New World in 1492 to trade with the Lucayan people. When British loyalists came over in 1717, the islands fell under British control and did not gain full independence until more than 250 years later.

Today, the Bahamas is a rich country, with the 3rd highest GDP per capita in the Western Hemisphere and an economy driven primarily by tourism and offshore banking. A recent mega real-estate development called The Atlantis, financed by Sol Kerzner, the titan known for his over-the-top casinos and hotels in South Africa’s Sun City, has further boosted the Bahamas as a tourist destination, primarily for sun-seeking Americans with money to spend and gamble away in the cavernous casinos.

With more than 5 million tourists visiting the islands every year, it’s not surprising that many of the luxury brands have set up shop to entice these visitors to do a little shopping. What is surprising is that some of them have allowed their brands to be diluted by haphazard merchandising, market-style bargaining, and poorly-outfitted stores under the control of local franchisees. That said, there are still signs that the luxury industry in Nassau is alive and well.

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For years now, the Yves Saint-Laurent brand has been a drag on the otherwise strong results posted by many other fashion brands in the Gucci Group, owned by parent-company PPR. Most recently, Bottega Veneta has been on a tear with strong financial results (eclipsing YSL’s top line revenue in 2006) and a leading position in the luxury consumer league tables, making it the number two luxury brand in PPR’s stable.

The story for YSL is a lot less fairytale, and a lot more Nightmare on Elm Street. The brand has not been profitable since Gucci Group purchased it in 1999 and is still reportedly losing around €50m a year. The brand turned over €194m in sales in 2006. PPR doesn’t break out operating loss of YSL its website and has not provided a timeframe to investors for expected profitability.

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This week’s Economist ominously warns of “The Trouble with Private Equity” at a time when many in the fashion world are wondering how the infusion of private capital will impact their industry. In the last month alone, La Perla, Samsonite and Valentino have all been snapped up by private equity funds. Just today, The Sunday Times broke the news that Prada has also been in talks with private investors. (Not surprisingly, Prada has denied these reports, but it is not hard to see why this would be a natural option for Patrizio Bertelli, especially given several failed attempts at taking Prada public.)

The recent investment exuberance around fashion brands is a dramatic departure from the stance that many professional investors took even just a few years ago. Back then, they said there was too much “fashion” risk and that without predictable and stable revenue streams, their highly-leveraged (heavy on debt, light on equity) investment strategies were untenable. Now, with more and more money fighting for fewer investment opportunities, it seems much of this wisdom has been thrown out the window. 

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On my last trip to New York, I finally managed to see the new Tom Ford flagship store in person. After all of the hubbub about its "Hermes and Oprah" similarities, I wanted to judge for myself. Was Cathy Horyn right in criticising the high price-points as being out of reach even for the most discerning male customers? Was Horacio Silva on the mark for panning the store for its overly-exclusive environment?

I’m afraid the answer is yes. In spades.

For all of the talk about the luxurious feel of the store, I have to say it all felt quite ordinary to me. That is to say, it didn’t feel different from most of the other masses of luxury stores that are out there. The grey colour palette and silver store fittings reminded me a bit of the old Gucci store formats (that are now being phased out). Sure, the furniture and materials, based on Ford’s London home, were sumptuous and very tasteful. However, the store lacked that special something that makes truly unique retail formats stand out. When you walk into a Chanel store – any Chanel store -  you feel like you have truly entered the world of Chanel and all that it stands for. When you walk into Abercrombie & Fitch, there is a certain electricity in how the product and store environment go hand-in-hand to speak about the brand. 

This, the Tom Ford store did not have. Not yet, at least. For now, customers need to get through glass cabinets that hold many of the clothes more like museum pieces, than sumptuous articles of clothing. How is a customer going to feel the need to buy a beautiful cashmere sweater if he can’t even touch it before asking someone’s permission? This is akin to taking a child to a petting zoo and saying, "no petting allowed, unless you ask me first. "

The most disappointing thing for me is that Mr. Ford has completely misjudged the consumer he is going after. After having nailed it at Gucci, he has completely missed the mark here. Ford has insulted the intelligence of the customer by assuming he will pay the steep prices just because of all the frills. Frills or no frills, most luxury customers are very discerning about the product, and by making it so hard to form a judgment, the customer is forced to judge based on the store itself, not the product. The Gucci formula of glamour and sex won’t work when you are asking a man to spend $5000+ on a suit. It’s no wonder the store was completely empty.

My expections for this store were very high, even with the unfavourable media coverage that I had seen in advance. Mostly, this is because Tom Ford has been selling the idea of his eponymous brand to us for the past year and half.  It is also because I respect the man a great deal for his creativity, business acumen and personal style. So, you can say I felt rather disappointed than critical.

Many industry observers have been waiting with baited breath to see what he would come up with. Maybe this is another lesson learned for Mr. Ford, the erstwhile master of PR and spin. Be careful what you say (and how long you say it for, and how often you say it) about a big project in advance of its launch. You might just be setting yourself up for a different kind of high-profile PR than you had expected: the negative kind. Perhaps it would have been better for Mr. Ford to take a listen from the Internet world and go beta first, testing out the concept and honing it carefully before making the big splash.

© 2007 Copyright Imran Amed – The Business of Fashion.