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.”

NEW YORK, United States — From Jean-Paul Gaultier at Montreal’s Musée des Beaux Arts to Hussein Chalayan at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, this has been a year of high-profile fashion exhibitions. The grand daddy of all these shows is the Alexander McQueen Savage Beauty exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Last week, I finally managed to catch the exhibit in its final days.

In total, 661,509 people passed through the exhibition, making Savage Beauty the most visited fashion exhibition in the museum’s history, putting it in the same league as the Treasures of Tutankhamun (1978) and Mona Lisa (1963). So high was the demand that the Met extended the exhibition’s run by week and stayed open until midnight on the final two days, releasing a statement explaining that this was the first time that the museum had ever kept its galleries open so late to accomodate the “extraordinary response”

But despite this “unprecedented interest” in Mr. McQueen’s body of work, museum officials said that Savage Beauty will not travel to any other museums because it is composed almost entirely of loan. What a shame.

By all accounts, the Met and its curator, Andrew Bolton, did a formidable job of bringing Mr. McQueen’s body of work into a tightly and expertly curated fashion experience, immersing visitors deep into McQueen’s world. Those of us lucky enough to have attended any of his fashion shows could see the same kind of high-quality production value, creative integrity and aesthetic sophistication in this wonderful, inspiring exhibition.

As I walked into the room entitled “The Cabinet of Curiosities,” packed shoulder-to-shoulder with hundreds of other people, I overheard a little girl asking her mother, “Mommy, why do the hats have animal horns?” Her mother answered softly and authoritatively, “Because he was a very special, talented man who made fashion into theatre. He was no ordinary fashion designer.”

Listening to this exchange brought home the real impact of this exhibition. Unlike so many of the television shows and media that claim to show the ‘reality’ of fashion, Savage Beauty managed to get underneath the glossy surface and make fashion understandable, interesting and inspiring to a mass audience.

For this reason, I hope the Met will reconsider its position on taking Savage Beauty on the road. Surely those who loaned their McQueen items to the exhibition — most notably Daphne Guinness and Alexander McQueen, the company — have seen the powerful impact of the exhibition. Surely there can be no better tribute to this great designer than having hundreds of thousands of ordinary people enjoy Mr. McQueen’s work and see it up close.

But emotional reasons aside, there is a clear business rationale for touring the show as well. It turns out that the exhibit has been a great marketing machine for McQueen. According to a release sent out by the Met yesterday, “popular McQueen merchandise in the Met Shops, including armadillo shoe ornaments, crystal skull paperweights, and tartan purses, sold out several times and were repeatedly reordered.”

Imran Amed is founder and editor of The Business of Fashion

Correction – 9 August 2011: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the Hussein Chalayan exhibit took place at The Design Museum in London.

Ogilvy, Montreal | Source: Wikipedia

Selfridges Group buys Ogilvy (The Province)
“Toronto’s billionaire Weston family has bought Montreal’s prestigious Ogilvy department store, adding to its stable of high-end retail offerings after the purchase of Dutch luxury institution de Bijenkorf eight months ago… The back-room deal comes as a bit of a surprise because the previous ownership group had held Ogilvy for barely a year.”

Aquascutum secures financial lifeline (Guardian)
“The new owners of Aquascutum, whose trenchcoats were once the uniform of Hollywood stars and British politicians, have secured a financial lifeline for the heavily loss-making fashion label. The brand, which was acquired by Jaeger owner Harold Tillman nearly two years ago, is in the final negotiations for a new £8m bank loan.”

L Capital to pick up 15% more stake in Genesis Luxury Fashion (The Economic Times)
“L Capital Asia, the private equity arm of the world’s largest luxury conglomerateLVMH Group and Groupe Arnault, is betting big on India. A little less than a week after it announced its acquisition of a 25.5% stake in Genesis Luxury Fashion, it is in talks to pick up an additional 14.5% stake in the company.”

Burberry joins rush to enter Hong Kong retail scene (Independent)
“The shopping landscape in Hong Kong is about to be expanded once again with news that the British luxury brand Burberry plans to open its Asian flagship store in the city… It will be the British retail giant’s largest store in the region and the second largest in the world, behind its 57th Street, New York outlet.”

At the Met, McQueen’s Final Showstopper (IHT)
“… While he was revered in fashion, and his runway shows were among the most closely watched, almost no one could have imagined that, as the subject of a museum exhibition, Mr. McQueen would prove to be almost as popular as Pablo Picasso and Vincent van Gogh.”

Carine Roitfeld | Source: Purple Diary

Carine Roitfeld’s stylish tribute to Elizabeth Taylor (Telegraph)
“Fans of Carine Roitfeld who have been suffering from withdrawal symptoms since the ultra-chic former Vogue Paris editor vacated her post… Won’t have to wait much longer to get their latest fix… Roitfeld has reunited with her old partner… Mario Testino to style the entire September issue of V Magazine.”

Keeping Cool, Fashionably (IHT)
“Trends come and go, but the dress persists, secure in its status as a metaphor… To get to the heart of dresses’ appeal, talk to the women who wear them: those scores of fans, young or not so young, who have made them the backbone of their summer wardrobes.”

Online retail sales top industry forecast (Reuters)
“Spending by British shoppers over the internet grew a better-than-expected 19 percent during the first six months of 2011, boosted by helpful weather patterns and the Royal Wedding.”

More Reports Seem to Confirm Kanye West’s Spring 2012 Fashion Line (Thread NY)
“… An increasing number of reports would seem to indicate that rapper Kanye West — who has been known to frolic in the fashion world’s playpen — is planning to launch a fashion collection… Harper’s Bazaar editor Christine Centenera has apparently been consulting with West on the collection.”

McQueen Met Milestone (Vogue UK)
“More than 500,000 people have now seen Alexander McQueen’s Savage Beauty exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the British brand has revealed.”

Chanel Couture A/W 2011 | Source: Ecouterre

LONDON, United Kingdom — Death and disgrace do not often darken the world of fashion. In the case of the first, a designer normally dies long after retirement and his demise is of only local interest. In the case of the second, it rarely happens and can usually be covered up by one means or another. But in the last eighteen months there have been two tragedies that can neither be covered up, nor ignored. They are, of course, the death by suicide of Alexander McQueen and the disgrace of John Galliano at Christian Dior.

Their effect, traumatic enough when the events occurred, have ramifications not merely for London and Paris, but for the whole structure of the international fashion world. And the questions they raise must be answered.

As even the most doltish are aware, fashion is a tough business where impossible timeframes and endless demands affect everyone. As companies grow bigger, they become greedier. Even the best beloved designer retains that status only as long as the sales figures stand up. The bottom line (that infamous bottom line!) is not ‘how good was it?’ but always ‘how good are the figures?’ And the first matters less and less.

Businessmen in the rag trade have rarely been known for their sensitivity to artistic attitudes. Even more rarely are they actually engaged with the beauty and originality of the product their firms sell. Normally this would hardly matter at all. You don’t have to love (or even understand) the goods you are pushing — ask any furniture salesman. Your job is to sell them and then balance the books at the end of the season. We all know that selling is a business. But it does matter very much if you are the man who is pressurising the other guy, for whom the product matters passionately. Mainly, of course, because the money man always makes the final decision and aesthetics or creative integrity are rarely considered. The men in charge of these things are rarely attuned to the world of high glamour sophistication. So, why does it matter?

Well it matters at this moment because it is apposite to the case of John Galliano, who was brought into Dior as a golden boy and created a standard of luxury and extravagance in both garments and presentation never seen before. He set the media of the world alight and was adored by all at Dior for the tact with which he re-invented the aesthetic of the man who’s work he revered.

‘Great!’ said the financial gurus. ’Let’s have more of this.’
‘Sure!’ says John, as any designer would.
After all, he had pulled the trump card and arrived in fairyland. Smiles all round.

But the years roll on. The designer’s workload increases substantially during this time — as do the profits. Everyone envies John and his ability to do virtually anything he wants to as long as the bottom line doesn’t waver. But other things are wavering. Things the money men do not understand. The creativity is beginning to sag. Some seasons are not as good as others — creatively or in sales. Senior press become increasingly lukewarm. John feels pressurised and leans more and more heavily on prescription drugs and booze to help him through the days. His loyal and loving staff see it and feel powerless. But instead of help from management, John gets criticism. Life becomes very much harder. Rumours that there are storms a-brewing in fairyland increase. The loyal team continue to see loyalty as keeping their heads down and their mouths shut when the bosses are around. It can’t go on.

Finally, Armageddon.

Very few of us will ever know why Alexander McQueen decided to end his life. And that is how it should be. It is only for those closest to him to be privy to such truths. But we do know the pressures he was under because they are the pressures most young designers are under even if, on paper, they own their names and sometimes their actual companies. Of course, they are given financial rewards and help and, if they are lucky, are able to keep the company small and more or less under their charge. But, almost always, it is the smaller companies that feel any economic pinch first and I could roll off a lot of names of young designers who, at this difficult moment, are protesting how viable their companies are whilst actually clinging on by their fingertips.

So, what price freedom? Rather high. What price long term success? Rather low. Especially so if you are a young designer wishing to show in London Fashion Week where the fee for a place on the tent schedule with back-up security, lighting etc is a cool £12,000. But, in a ‘damned if you do; damned if you don’t’ scenario it is hard for a young designer to know which will be the most damaging for his young company — to spend a lot of money in order to show in the official venue and hope to get all the right people there or to show elsewhere and probably not get them. In the fight to keep solvent, neither seems terribly promising. Rock and hard place isn’t it?

Of course, London is a special case in that the BFC has dedicated itself to having more shows than anywhere else in order, somewhat naively perhaps, to demonstrate, to what I fear is a rather indifferent world, how buoyant their fashion scene is. And they could be right, if you believe that the old costermonger’s policy of piling them high and selling them cheap is a valid way to run a fashion week, make money and support young talent. And, of course, unless they are very naive, they know that the wastage will be high and appear to accept the fact. Sad for the young designers who drop off along the way, however.

This brings us to the related question of how Fashion Weeks themselves are going to remain in business. They are, as many would agree, a clumsy, inconvenient and costly way to show clothes each season. In the case of couture week (which, like London, takes rather less time than that) there are only one or two shows a day that it is necessary for the international elite to attend. But with typical French pragmatism, the Chambre Syndicale has quietly allowed the parameters of the week to stretch in order to include fine jewellery and probably, in the future, perfume launches as well. This not only works as far as everybody’s time is concerned, it reinforces the city’s traditional role as the world centre of luxury, exclusivity and glamour.

A shrewd move. But what about the other cities? And what about the burgeoning number of fashion weeks around the world? Can they, in any meaningful sense, now or in the future, have any value or viability in terms of international fashion, faced, as they currently are, by the highly organised competition of the huge conglomerates of the west? And will their designers be doomed to be small and always cash-strapped before quietly fading back into the woodwork or be taken up by one of those big conglomerates and possibly suffer the different fates personified by John Galliano and Alexander McQueen? Neither is a happy prospect, but I don’t see any solution until international fashion embarks on a co-ordinated root-and-branch investigation of its world and starts planning for a future that will be much more rosy for young designers than it is now, at this difficult time.

During the Couture week in Paris, there was a feeling of ostriches with their heads in the sand as luxury and excess swamped any new fashion ideas that might be there. For Chanel, Lagerfeld even replicated Place Vendôme in the Grand Palais, complete with column, but with Coco at the top instead of Napoleon. Megalomaniac? Moi?

There is a fear that, after the hype has been stripped away, international fashion will be left, not as a high-mettled glossy race horse bred for perfection over the generations, but merely the whitened bones of its skeleton.

Colin McDowell is a contributing editor at The Business of Fashion

Hussein Chalayan photographed by Chris Moore | Source: Vogue Paris

Chalayan and McQueen exhibitions: cultural landmarks of the year (Telegraph)
“It is the intellectual and imaginative stature of these two former peers – the fact that they drove fashion to reflect difficult realities and push the boundaries of technology – which make their shows a different kettle of fish from the usual lifeless way clothes appear in museums.”

LVMH Pledges Gender Balance In Europe (Forbes)
“LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton voluntarily committed to increase women’s representation at the highest corporate level by signing the Women on the Board Pledge for Europe, which aims to increase women’s board membership to 30% by 2015 and 40% by 2020.”

Global Demand Buoys Burberry (WSJ)
“Luxury retailer Burberry PLC reported a 34% rise in first-quarter sales, boosted by new store openings and continued global demand for its iconic trenchcoats and designer handbags… Luxury groups enjoy renewed demand and the company’s growth strategy continues to deliver strong profits.”

U.S. Retailers Shop for Space in Europe (WSJ)
“The weak U.S. economy and worries about jobs have consumers spending less and are causing some of the biggest U.S. retailers to look abroad for growth… American retailers are finding it easier to experiment and try new strategies in new markets than to revamp worn models at home.”

eBay liable for counterfeits sold on its site (Telegraph)
“eBay has tried to claim exemption from liability for counterfeit goods sold on its site, but the European Court of Justice… Ruled that brand owners will be able to initiate legal proceedings if the likes of eBay and other online marketplaces allow counterfeit goods to be sold.”