Giles Deacon At Pitti | Source: The Business of Fashion

FLORENCE, Italy — In the world of menswear, January is a full-on month of trade fairs and fashion shows. The super-charged schedule of activities begins with Pitti Uomo, continues on to Milan where mega Italian brands like Gucci, Prada and Armani unveil their collections, and concludes with a bang in Paris, where established Parisian fashion houses like Lanvin and Dior Homme show alongside a cornucopia of international designers from Korea, Belgium, Britain and the United States.

This season, the kind folks at Pitti Immagine invited me to Florence for my first-ever look at what Mesh Chhibber, Managing Partner of Relative|MO, refers to as “the chicest tradeshow on earth.” Indeed, rather than a series of boring stalls, filled with ‘me-too’ product, Pitti Uomo offers an impressive menswear mix of urban and classic, formal and casual, and high-fashion and high-street. There is literally something for everyone in the maze of pavillions on the site of the Fortezza da Basso.

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Federico Marchetti Founder and CEO of YOOX Group, Photo:Luca Cottinelli

MILAN, Italy — Federico Marchetti is one of fashion’s online pioneers. In 2000, when Marchetti established Yoox.com, online fashion retail was still in its infancy. in 2008, the Yoox Group, which includes the original YOOX site, as well as white-label sites for 18 fashion brands, including Emporio Armani, Marni and Pucci, and thecorner.com, shipped more than 1.7 million products to over 53 countries around the world, with €101 million in revenues, a 48 percent increase over the previous year.

Always looking to stay on the online fashion frontier, Marchetti’s latest move is to partner with another online visionary, Nick Knight, and Ruth Hogben (recently featured on BoF), to launch an online film, marking the launch of womenswear on thecorner.com. The film, which debuts today, features brands including Maison Martin Margiela, Haider Ackermann, Ann Demeulemeester, Viktor & Rolf, Proenza Schouler, Rick Owens, Hussein Chalayan, Raf Simons, Kris Van Assche and Sophia Kokosalaki.

2009 is also shaping up to be a big year for the YOOX Group in financing terms. Up until now, YOOX has been funded by a series of venture capital firms, including Benchmark Capital, and private investors. But later this year, YOOX is expected to conduct an initial public offering of its shares on the Milan Bourse.

Federico recently spoke to me about his new creative and business initiatives, which continue to set the pace for online fashion retail.

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MILAN, Italy – Take a walk into a Gucci store these days and one cannot help but notice the preponderance of logos and icons on almost every Gucci product in sight, especially the brand’s leather goods, shoes and accessories. Horsebits, double G’s, and Gucci crests abound. But, it seems the conspicuous logos are failing to resonate with consumers in these recessionary times.

Rumours are circulating in Italy that Gucci has dramatically cut production orders to make up for waning demand for the Italian luxury brand’s core leather goods offering. If the reports are accurate, it speaks volumes about the worsening climate for luxury goods players in general, but particularly for brands like Gucci which have chosen to follow an explicit “accessible luxury” strategy.

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

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

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

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MILAN, Italy – A few months back, I published an article about the Made in Italy label, following damaging findings aired in a provocative Italian documentary on the state of luxury manufacturing in Italy.

In the meantime, there has been growing interest in the concept of ethical luxury, but some of the biggest manufacturers continue to flout the rules and standards.

Just yesterday, a new reader of the BoF named Lauren, provided detailed commentary on our previous article Made in Italy | Time for accountablity regarding the egregious behaviour of major Luxury brands which she has observed first hand. Her observations merit further discussion and debate, and so I have included them here.

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

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

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

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While London is often the spark of new ideas and New York is confidently commercial, the Milan shows usually sit somewhere in between. They may not be the pushing the limits of fashion in terms of new ideas, but they specialise in striking the right balance between commerce and creativity.

Many buyers and editors complained of an uncharacteristically inconsistent offering from Milan’s usually focused designers last week. But we think there was a lot to be impressed by in Milan, especially from the some of the heavyweight brands who show there.

Take Burberry, for example. Christopher Bailey is on a clear winning streak, softening his approach this season with the perfect autumnal mood for the urban birds who walked down his catwalk of  "optimistic melancholy." (Theurban birds term was cleverly coined by Tim Blanks; Bailey loved it. We think its perfect).

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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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The Made in Italy label is a source of pride for every Italian. You see, Italians have fashion in their blood and style in their DNA. It’s not surprising that more than 4 million of them tuned in to watch the RAI3 documentary Schiavi del Lusso, or Slaves of Luxury, on Sunday evening which revealed a slimy world of underpaid immigrant labour, huge price mark-ups, and what was portrayed to be undue influence from American heavyweights like Anna Wintour.

This is not the first time that the industry has come under attack in recent months. The Dana Thomas book De-Luxe and the WWF Deeper Luxury  report have called into question the ethical and environmental practices of major luxury companies. While the first two have only seemed to generate a discussion within the luxury industry itself, RAI 3’s televised approach seems to have struck a real chord with end consumers. Since the television show was aired on Sunday, many Italians have been up in arms and have stormed the RAI 3 website with comments of indignation and Italian bloggers have been propagating the dicussion.

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Ever since Roberto Rimondi and Tommaso Aquilano of 6267 sent their S/S 2008 collection down the runway in Milan last week, everyone has been talking about that dress.

In her glowing review, Suzy Menkes said the big surprise of the show came "when the models turned to show a wide dress morph into a sinuous shape at the back. It sounds tricky, but the idea worked, offering one of the most intriguing contrasts of the season." Of the show’s standout piece, Nicole Phelps of Style.com said that "Rimondi and Aquilano have an untapped avant-garde streak: Coming, the dress looked like a sculptural, full-blown trapeze; going, it revealed itself to be a body-skimming, provocative sheath." (Note: Unfortunately, no photo of that dress, but another one with similarly constrasting construction is pictured to the left)

Lucky for me, though I missed the show in Milan, I was invited to tea at Place du Marché St Honoré in Paris yesterday evening to take a closer look at the collection. I dragged Jason Campbell of the JC Report along with me — and we were not disappointed and not alone.

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