Dior Couture by Patrick Demarchelier | Source: Fashion Diary

How long can Dior thrive without a couturier? (France 24)
“Ten months after John Galliano was sacked over a racist outburst, Dior has yet to name a new chief designer — but sales are booming. Which begs the question: how long can the French fashion house thrive without a couturier at the helm?”

Rio 2012: what can the fashion industry do to become more sustainable? (Guardian)
“This new ‘fast fashion’ model has considerably changed the role of fashion retailers in their supply-chains, specifically how and where they buy… Cheap fashion uses cheap fibres, such as polyester and cotton. While polyester is an oil-based commodity, cotton on the other hand is not exactly the ‘good’ crop it is usually perceived as.”

Asian shoppers and tourists boost Burberry (Reuters)
“British luxury brand Burberry posted a 22 percent rise in third-quarter revenue as wealthy shoppers and tourists, particularly in Asia, showed their resilience to shaky economies in Europe and the United States.”

In the ‘Twilight’ Zone (IHT)
“Alexander McQueen is introducing a made-to-order line with Huntsman of London’s Savile Row. And that news, along with the upscale clothes displayed in the brand’s Milan showroom, confirm that the tilt in men’s wear is toward the formal and the evening.”

Milan’s Rising Star: A Conversation With Umit Benan (On the Runway)
“His clothing collections, under the label Umit Benan, have made Umit Benan Sahin a rising star in Milan, where he moved after working briefly in New York. In 2009, he won a prize for new talent sponsored by a trade show in Florence that raised his profile, and last June, he was hired by Trussardi to design its men’s and women’s collections.”

“You have to bring it back to the house where you are working. We never look at fashion references. It’s always very much creating a world through a story. It’s always very much: ‘What would McQueen do?”

Sarah Burton, Creative Director of Alexander McQueen, explains the craftsmanship, mathematics and underwater inspiration for the McQueen woman in Spring/Summer 2012 to New York Times fashion critic Cathy Horyn for NOWNESS.

Gilt Groupe Screen Shot | Source: Gilt Groupe

Gilt Groupe consider going public in 2012 (FT)
“Gilt Groupe, a ‘flash’ sales site for designer clothes, plans to join its peers Groupon and Amazon as a public company, perhaps by the end of next year, when the company will be close to generating $1bn in annual sales… Gilt and rival sites… Are among the fastest-growing segments of online retail, which is itself expanding faster than traditional retail amid economic malaise in the US and Europe.”

Jack Wills debuts in Hong Kong (Red Luxury)
“The ‘fabulously British’ clothing company, Jack Wills, will make its Asia debut with the opening of two stores in Hong Kong. Mark Parker, the company’s president of Asia and the Middle East, said: ‘Harbour City has a high percentage of mainland customers. It’s a very, very large window into China, and greater China is a very important market long-term. In Causeway Bay…there’s a large number of [mainland Chinese] customers, local consumers and international travelers.’”

Why Deco Now? (On the Runway)
“Every fashion designer, they say, is an architect manque, intent on imposing a structure on the wayward human form. That observation seemed especially apt in a season of spring runway shows filled with dresses constructed to glide over the body and embellished to echo the linear symmetry of Art Deco design.”

Alexander McQueen’s McQ label (Telegraph)
“The founder of the Alexander McQueen label, Lee McQueen, may have tragically passed away last year, but his legacy lives on through his brand’s expansion. The luxury label’s younger, more renegade outpost, McQ, has announced the opening of its first stand-alone store and its debut on the catwalk at London Fashion Week.”

Elle Macpherson: the brains behind The Body (Telegraph)
“Macpherson insists that the financial revelation that struck in her early-to-mid twenties was her own, unprompted by some agent… . It came, she says, after ‘working for Sports Illustrated for so many years, and recognising that working for a business in which I did not have a profit share was not attractive’.”

Steve Jobs | Source: Wired.com

Steve Jobs, 1955 – 2011 (Wired.co.uk)
“The full legacy of Steve Jobs will not be sorted out for a very long time. When employees first talked about Jobs’ “reality distortion field,” it was a pejorative — they were referring to the way that he got you to sign on to a false truth by the force of his conviction and charisma. But at a certain point the view of the world from Steve Jobs’ brain ceased to become distorted. It became an instrument of self-fulfilling prophecy. As product after product emerged from Apple, each one breaking ground and changing our behavior, Steve Job’s reality field actually came into being. And we all live in it.”

A Sea Change in Style (IHT)
“The carousel of horses — and maybe the merry-go-round of the fashion world — twirled through the Louis Vuitton show on Wednesday, as the models stepped off the white horse roundabout, and the audience debated whether this would be the last LV show headed by Marc Jacobs.”

No sombre mood allowed on Paris catwalks (Reuters)
“Ending a month-long marathon of fashion shows which started in New York, fashion critics said the mood on the catwalk was upbeat and relaxed – in contrast with the gloomy media headlines they read in the papers while waiting for the show to begin. ‘I find this spring/summer season to be much lighter and uplifting than the others,’ said Linda Fargo, senior vice-president in charge of fashion at Bergdorf Goodman.”

SuperGroup fires off shock profit warning (Guardian)
“SuperGroup, the company behind the fast-growing Superdry brand, has fired off a shock profit warning after a computer glitch at its warehouse… The shares dropped 25% in morning trading on Wednesday after a misfiring IT system resulted in products being dispatched in small and extra large but not the sizes in between, leading to depleted sales. The company said the upset would wipe up to £9m off this year’s profits.”

Kanye West, Designer (Yawn) (NY Times)
“‘I gave you everything that I had,’ he said, one of his few printable remarks. If that is true, Mr. West faces bigger obstacles in life than credit-card debt. His show was described by those who attended as, at best, a disappointment, and yet the rapper could be found almost everywhere during Paris Fashion Week defending himself.”

L-R Rick Owens, Balmain, Balenciaga S/S 2012 | Source: Style.com

Raid the Archives With Caution (NY Times)
“Mr. Ghesquiere can come away refreshed from the Balenciaga archive, but for most designers the postwar couture is an element in the cut-and-paste process that largely defines current fashion. Designers saw the Madame Grès exhibition here this summer; they know Balenciaga’s volumes and bullring pomp by heart. But they always have to do something extreme to make you think it’s new.”

Don’t Forget the Clothes! (IHT)
“They are the champions of the Internet age — designers who can tap into the ultra-modernity of image and sound as part of a multimedia experience. But as the catwalk moves into cyber space, there should be one dictum: Don’t forget the clothes! Two fashion labels — the revived Mugler brand and the British-born Gareth Pugh — were in the same territory as the Paris season clicked onto spring/summer 2012. Or make that the year 2099 as these shows streaked into the future.”

H&M cost control cushions fall in profits (Reuters)
“Hennes & Mauritz accelerated its expansion plan and said it was gaining market share as it delivered a fall in third-quarter profits that was smaller than feared. The world’s no.2 fashion retailer suffered a 15 percent drop in third-quarter profit, hit by costs such as higher cotton prices. It said sales so far in the fourth quarter were below its expectations and markets remained challenging.”

From shopping sprees to marketing technique (FT)
“So-called ‘haulers’ are tween-to-twentysomething, largely female shoppers who haul their purchases back home and post video reviews on YouTube for their followers to watch…Chris Sanderson, co-founder of The Future Laboratory, a trends and innovation consultancy, says: ‘If that’s your world, to go to the shops and show off your stuff, then it’s incredible. This becomes a whole new mechanism for [retailers to] understand and target a demographic’.”

Official: Alexander McQueen is cooler than Chanel (Telegraph)
“Alexander McQueen, the British fashion label that scored the commission of the century – designing Kate Middleton’s wedding dress – has topped a list of cool designer fashion brands… The label, headed up by creative director Sarah Burton since Lee McQueen’s death in 2010, came eleventh overall in the 2011 list of cool global brands – four places ahead of iconic Parisian fashion brand, Chanel, at number 15.”