Two articles this week gave an inside look into two of the women who are changing the face of fashion. And unlike the mysterious, impenetrable images that helped to create previous fashion icons, these women seem to be comfortable just being themselves, even if it is politically incorrect. Is authenticity the new must-have?

The Anti-Anna (New York Magazine)
In an unabashedly honest look into one one most important women in fashion, the editor of Paris Vogue, Carine Roitfeld makes no apologies for who she is. Comparison to Anna Wintour aside, we were most intrigued by Ms. Roitfeld’s comments on the fashion business, saying

“Right now, I think that fashion in the world becomes a bit boring. There is so much money, and I feel a bit when you go to shows they want to sell so many handbags, and for me, well, I do not like handbags. I do not wear handbags. It is not a nice look, to carry a handbag…I’m not a business girl. I will never be a business girl.”

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Two Italian fashion moguls known for their fiery personalities have been making news this week.

Patrizio Bertelli, CEO of Prada announced his company’s intention to go public in 2008. The industry has heard a similar announcement from Prada at least three times in the last decade, only to see the IPOs get called off due to unfavourable market conditions.

Mr. Bertelli has become known for his astute product eye and his challenging personal style.  He is thought to have control over the leather goods businesses while Mrs. Prada focuses on the creative ready-to-wear businesses. Each has their own domain, as it were, and Bertelli’s success with leather goods speaks for itself. However, some have questioned how he will cope with answering to the public markets, when he has been answerable to noone up until now — not even his wife Miuccia, in some cases.

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Three different men, three different strategies for conquering the fashion business. They couldn’t be more different from each other (French "cult" fashion designer, legendary American couturier, and rapper entrepreneur), but they are each at the top of their game.

Oscar: Why Is This Man Still Fashionable? (Wall Street Journal)
75 year old Oscar de la Renta gives a candid interview on his longevity in the "family" business. CEO Alex Bolen, whom we met at the last Oscar show, chimes in towards the end with some business commentary.

JayZ: JayZ Expands Fashion Portfolio (BlackEnterprise)
JayZ continues to prove himself as a savvy businessman. The latest news is his acquisition of the Artful Dodger brand.

Roland: Moon Over Manhattan (New York Post)
Roland Mouret’s moon dress is out today at Bergdorf Goodman in NY and apparently half of the inventory was pre-sold before it hit the floor. A pop-up shopt at Selfridges was also stormed by Mouret-lovers.

P.S. We finally got around to securing a URL in sync with the Business of Fashion – welcome to www.businessoffashion.net. To all our friends, linkers and supporters, it would be great if you could update your links and bookmarks.

What drives me crazy about most fashion industry coverage is that it is often limited to soundbites, tainted with marketing spin, and driven by editorial objectives. This perpetuates the notion of the superficial designer and undervalues the contributions made by truly innovative creative geniuses like Karl Lagerfeld.

It is rare to have an unedited, in-depth conversation with anyone influential in this business– let alone Karl Lagerfeld. But, not only did PBS interviewer Charlie Rose have this rare opportunity, he seized it with gusto in this clip I recently found on YouTube.

Together with Harriet-Mays-Powell, Fashion Editor of New York Magazine, he deftly takes Mr. Lagerfeld through a wide ranging one hour conversation (no easy task!) which goes from his design process to the role of celebrity in fashion to the relevance of haute couture to how fashion reflects the modern zeitgeist. Lagerfeld also declares that second lines are “condescending,” “bridge lines are for the dentists,” and that fashion today is about mixing.

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It’s been 10 months since The Business of Fashion was launched, and now it’s time to take stock. In sum, we would like to understand what and how we can improve so as to make the BoF more useful to you.

We have put together a 10 question survey that should take you less than 3 minutes to complete. We thought long and hard about how to motivate readers to complete the survey. Some people offer prizes for this kind of thing, but after much thought we decided that the most honest incentive would be to promise to deliver a better Business of Fashion in the future. Plus, we don’t have any clobber and swag to give away just yet!

We encourage feedback which is constructive, courteous and honest and in return commit to read everything and consider it as we take things forward.

Complete The Business of Fashion Reader Survey here. Or, if you find it easier, please feel free to leave comments below or email us using the "Email Me" link in the top right column under "About".

Thank you very much for taking the time — we hope you will see the impact of your collective feedback soon.

JC Report is one of the finest sources of global fashion content on the Internet, and thus the BoF was more than delighted to provide some of our thoughts on the fashion blogosphere and on the business of fashion to Jason Campbell for the most recent issue of JC Report. This topic seems to be quite hot at the moment, what with all the Web 2.0/Luxury conferences in London this Autumn and an interview we did for the South China Morning Post earlier this year, also on the fashion blogosphere.

But, the traditional fashion industry media are taking awhile to get on board. Women’s Wear Daily conducts "Yea or Nay" surveys, but doesn’t allow comments on its main stories. Style.com has a new roster of sharp bloggers over at StyleFile and the UK’s Drapers Record has a blog too — but this is only the first step.

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JC Report has dedicated its most recent bi-weekly issue to men’s fashion where Angelo Flaccavento makes a compelling argument from the start.

Let’s be honest: over the last couple of years, most of the really interesting developments in fashion have happened in menswear. Maybe it’s because for women, everything (or almost everything) has been done and redone to death, while masculinity remains a vast, unexplored territory open to new sartorial definitions and formal experimentation. Maybe it’s because the apparent limitations of the genre are a stimulus rather than an obstacle for truly creative minds.

This was not something that had occurred to me before — but as I reflected upon it, it does seem one of the reasons behind men’s fashion new burst of energy is simply because so much has yet to be explored.

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Today, we are flattered to be Typepad’s featured blog of the day.

Thanks very much to Robin at Typepad for selecting us and welcome to new readers who are reading the blog for the first time. To regular readers who are visiting us from over 120 countries, thanks for coming back.

As the BoF continues to push forward, introduce new features and cover the intersection of business and fashion, we’d also like to encourage readers to join in the discussion. The best blogs aren’t a one way discussion — so pipe up and tell us what you think.

Do you have something to add to the discussion? Is there a topic you’d like to hear more about? Do you disagree with an assertion that has been made? Constructive comments and debate will make the BoF an even better place for exploring these issues.

It seems like forever since those heady, spirited days of the dot.com boom. There was no 9/11, no War in Iraq, no “Axis of Evil”. Instead there was champagne was flowing freely, the NASDAQ, FTSE and DOW soaring to new heights, and millionaires (at least on paper) were being created overnight. Wanting to relive that spirited time and on recommendation of my friends Matthias and Abi, I recently finished reading “boo hoo”, the story of boo.com, one of Europe’s most high profile Internet stories of spectacular boom and heartwrenching bust.

boo.com was set up in London by 3 Swedes — Ernst Malmsten, Kasja Leander and Patrik Hedelin in 1998. Malmsten and Leander, the real visionaries behind the business, had previous experience and success with Internet businesses in Swedem. This was very impressive for 1998, before many people had even tried the Internet, let alone figure out the commercial potential it could harness.

boo was to be the world’s first online shop for fashion and sportswear. In a world with the hindsight of the successes of Net-a-Porter, eLuxury, ASOS and Yoox, this seems like an obvious idea. But, Leander and Malmsten faced substantial pessimism and doubt about boo’s potential from many of the people they contacted. Through sheer determination, optimism and hard work, they slowly won people over to their idea.

Even if you are not interested in Internet businesses or business planning, this book is chock-full with lessons about setting up new businesses. It would be an insightful read for any entrepreneur. Since I was living in London at the time of boo.com’s meteoric rise (and then dramatic fall) and knowing the ultimate conclusion of the business, I found myself rooting for Malmsten and Leander the whole way through, and wondering what I would have done in their shoes. What decisions would I have made differently? What decisions did they execute brilliantly? A few of the lessons that resonated most with me:

• Focus - be clear about what your company is about and what it is trying to achieve so as to understand what the core competencies of the business need to be. In the case of boo, not focusing meant they spent time an energy launching a new magazine and opening an international network of offices to support a business website that hadn’t yet been launched. This burned cash and detracted from the essential tasks at hand.
• Choose investors and strategic partners who believe in you and your idea – they will end up being the ones to support you when things don’t go as planned, not just because their money is at stake. That said, as an entrepreneur, to use a quip from the book, you might always want to think of your investors as “the enemy.” The worst kind of investors for a start-up are the ones looking for a quick buck, who’ll walk away without warning, when the going gets tough.
• It’s never too early to build a company culture – boo got as far as it did due to the commitment, excitement and buy in from its employees. This is an incredibly valuable resource and your employees can become great sources of guidance, energy and realism.
• Beware the publicity machine - The media is very powerful, and while boo built an amazing profile in such a short period, having extremely high expectations from the marketplace can add additional pressure while the foundation of the business is being set up. And, if you aren’t able to deliver what you promised, when you promised it, the media will be just as happy to tear you down afterwards
• Choose your partners carefully - Partnership is very tough. Having partners who don’t add value or whose objectives are different from yours will eventually lead to breakdown of the partnership. Being completely aligned and having tough conversations early on about roles, vision, strategy and exit strategy are crucial. Even then, it is inevitable that partnership issues will arise — these should be discussed openly and honestly so they can be resolved

I recommend this book highly. It is extremely readable, accessible and interesting, even to those who have no business training. It addresses all the nuts and bolts of building a business and as such, offers lessons to everybody in any business.

By the way, in case you’re wondering what happened to the company’s assets, brand and domain name, I went to the boo.com website and it says “A new boo.com is on the way” and then provides an opportunity to dress a guy in “slick” or “street” clothes. Also, rumour has it that Natalie Massenet of Net-a-Porter scooped up some of the expensive servers and hardware that was purchased to support boo’s complex website and all the traffic it was to receive.

Fashion Week season will soon be upon us with the Men’s shows in Milan and Paris, followed by the Couture shows in Paris and then the Ready-to-Wear collections soon after that. I am excited to see how designers take two of the new themes from last season — technology and the future, as explored by Husein Chalayan and by Nicolas Ghesquiere for Balenciaga, and an eighties revival a la Herve Leger as pioneered by Proenza Schouler in New York and Christopher Kane in London — and push them even further. That whole pretty girl in a pretty dress thing was getting a bit old, so it was good to have some new ideas injected into the mix.

Beyond the parties, glamour, paparazzi and celebrities, Fashion Week actually plays a critical role in the Fashion industry. Once upon a time, it was the time for buyers to choose and pick what styles they wanted to feature in their stores. But today, with the advent of the "pre-collection" which account for 60%+ of the season’s sales, Fashion Week now is mostly about brand and profile building. What better way for a young designer to get their name and signature known than in front of the photographers, press and buyers of the world who assemble twice each year in the world’s fashion capitals? These photos are beamed around the world — and the more creative, provocative and different your show is, the more likely Suzy Menkes will talk about in her highly respected reviews in the Herald-Tribune. The more you have tapped into the zeitgeist of what the consumer wants, the more likely it is that Julie Gilhart will snap up your collection for Barneys New York, one of America’s premier luxury department stores.

Just for the sake of some good old fashion reminiscing, here’s a look back at the Paris shows for S/S 2007 from Style.com, including my highlight of last season, the Alexander McQueen show that took place at a Circus in the round.