Screenshot of the new Dior.com website | Source: Dior.com

The moral of Dior’s numbers (FT)
“The Christian Dior results are in and, contrary to what some people had predicted in March when John Galliano, Dior designer, was fired for saying bad stuff, they are good. In fact, they are very good.  Revenue for the first nine months is up 21 per cent (at constant exchange rates) to €705m against the same period in 2010 and retail revenue rose by 27 percent.”

Weak economy reins in Russia’s young fashionistas (Reuters)
“Headbands emblazoned with Russian symbols, cheap accessories and military-style clothes sashayed through the Russian Silhouette fashion designer contest in Moscow this week… Some judges said that a slower economy this year had prevented students from displaying the kind of experimentation and whimsical flair seen in past shows.”

Haute Pants: Making A Market In Custom Denim (Forbes)
“Walk into 3×1, a new boutique in Manhattan’s Soho launched in August, and you may discover a team of pattern-makers, sewers and designers, all wearing pristine white lab coats, putting together a pair of jeans right in the middle of the store. Part atelier, part retailer, 3×1 offers limited-edition jeans sewn on site.”

ASVOFF Winner: Elisha Smithe-Leverock (Dazed Digital)
“Recently awarded the fourth A Shaded View on Fashion Film Grand Prize, judged by fashion legend and the awards organizer Diane Pernet alongside Manish Arora, Daphne Guinness and Rossy de Palma. Elisha Leverock-Smith’s witty, telling and hyper-glam film I Want Muscle, takes the fashion film genre and adds a level of social narrative to sharp effect.”

A Profile of Simon Spurr: Tough Swagger Confident (Esquire)
The journey — from boy to man to designer to brand — begins in a tiny village in Kent, in southeast England, a town, Simon says, “with one grocery store and five pubs.” His parents were both bankers, his dad commuting forty minutes each way to London. “I still look up to him,” Spurr says. “As a person, as a man. But he’s also very influential in my aesthetics. My dad had a lot of suits working in a bank, late ’60s, early ’70s. They still had the slim lapel, the narrow shoulder. And I guess it was subconsciously ingrained in me. That’s the decade I always go back to.”

LONDON, United Kingdom — According to network technology and services company Cisco, the number of people who watch web videos will surpass 1 billion by the end of 2010. By 2014, web video alone will account for 57 percent of all consumer internet traffic. Already, more than 2 billion videos are played each day on YouTube alone. With staggering statistics like these, it’s no surprise that fashion brands, both large and small, are investing in online video content, while agencies that represent commercial artists are urging their fashion photographers to reposition themselves as image-makers who can direct short films.

But what makes a good fashion film? And are these the same primary concerns that go into a good fashion photograph? While these questions have been circulating since SHOWstudio’s early experiments in moving image, this season, as the medium of fashion film matures, we saw the debate condense around two distinct points of view.

Some industry figures say that creating a successful fashion film is very different to creating a fashion photograph and underscore the primary importance of elements like narrative and acting. “What makes a good fashion film is exactly what makes any good film: direction, lighting, acting, script, sound,” said Diane Pernet, influential fashion blogger and founder of A Shaded View on Fashion Film. “These are elements that go beyond a static photo shoot,” she continued.

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J.Crew Takes a Leading Role in Men’s Fashion (Bloomberg)
“The men’s fashion landscape has long been dominated on one side by luxury brands… [or alternatives] that no longer seem au courant.  J.Crew has emerged in this void as the merchant of a new style that bridges work and leisure, youth and age, vintage and contemporary, gay and straight.”

Will Chinese Shoppers Embrace Luxury Goods–Sans Logo? (Forbes)
“Although luxury shoppers in established, recession-stung markets may gradually be lured back into stores by understated items…will this trend appeal to potential buyers in emerging — and lucrative — markets like China, where garish still equals good?”

Hermès launches street style website (MyFashionLife)
“Dedicated solely to its signature square scarves, the new website, called J’aime Mon Carre (I Love My Scarf), takes a street style turn as it shows hip young things working the scarves in ways Hermès would never have dreamed of.”

Nordstrom profit matches view, outlook unchanged (Reuters)
“Nordstrom Inc reported a higher quarterly net profit that met Wall Street expectations, but the company did not raise its previously announced 2010 profit outlook and its shares fell 2.5 percent.”

Diane Pernet on Tavi, Fashion Film, and the Future of Catwalks (Fashionista)
“Diane Pernet’s enlightened view on fashion, combined with her support of budding talents, has made her one of today’s great ladies of La Mode… Fashionista had coffee and grapes with the lady… we talked Tavi, tomorrow’s talents, and her trendy tribes and tribulations.”

VICENZA, Italy — Whereas Italy may have initially been slow on its uptake of Fashion 2.0, momentum appears to be building there to embrace digital media in all its forms, but especially fashion film. Indeed, two high profile events focused on moving image in fashion will take place in the month of May alone, bringing a much needed digital awareness to the country’s conservative fashion mainstream.

Tomorrow, in Vicenza, is the launch of OPPURE II, La moda in movimento verso i nuovi media, an exhibition curated by Federico Sarica, director of the Italian edition of VICE magazine and professor of fashion and new media at the European Institute of Design ModaLab in Milan. OPPURE II will showcase moving image in fashion and discuss its impact on the future of the industry. And, later this month, Diane Pernet will bring ASVOFF, her pioneering peripatetic fashion film festival, to Milan in collaboration with Vogue Italia.

Earlier this year, we featured the stunning short film for Fred Butler by Elisha Smith-Leverock which debuts at Pernet’s event in Milan, and today we bring you one of the featured films for OPPURE by Luca Merli. More OPPURE films can be viewed on the BoF YouTube page.

The Business of Fashion is an official media partner for OPPURE II which runs from 14 May 2010 – 27 June 2010 at Spazio Monotono run by Cristiano Seganfreddo in Vicenza, Italy

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