Olivier Rousteing | Source: Balmain

Olivier Rousteing Named New Designer at Balmain (T Magazine)
“The new era at Paris’s sex-charged fashion house Balmain is beginning to take shape, with Olivier Rousteing being tapped as the label’s new designer. Rousteing, who joined Balmain in 2009 and is currently in charge of women’s wear.”

Savile Row tailors on dressing the royal groom (Telegraph)
“Last week, David Cameron briefly stole the limelight from Kate with his fashion indecision… At least it got everyone talking about men’s fashion, for once. Retail analysts estimated that the wedding will generate £620 million for the British economy: surely Savile Row should be getting a slice of that (wedding) cake?”

Fashion Companies Go Green, Cut Costs (Thread NY)
“It may be socially responsible for fashion companies to be eco-conscious, but many are finding that thinking in terms of sustainability also produces major cost savings.  Finding ways to cut costs internally has also become increasingly important for fashion companies as the cost of commodities like cotton rises and labor costs increase.”

Coach profit rises 18 percent, boosted by U.S., China (Market Watch)
“To spur growth for the company, Frankfort… also is expanding in stand-alone men’s shops and in the U.K. and other European markets. The company also plans to introduce mobile commerce in North America next week and continues its roll out in China, its fastest growing market.”

Q&A: Franca Sozzani (WWD)
“Vogue Italia editor in chief Franca Sozzani doesn’t shy away from controversy. Some might argue she courts it. She isn’t afraid to speak her mind, and her blog on vogue.it has helped the site jump to more than one million unique users a month.”

Christophe Decarnin | Source: Homme a la Mode

Balmain Exit (Vogue UK)
“Christophe Decarnin is leaving Balmain after spending five years as creative director. A successor has not yet been appointed…. Decarnin joined the French fashion house in 2005 as a designer before being made the creative director in November 2007. He is largely credited for introducing the rock and military-inspired look… that the label is currently known for.”

Reviving the Russian luxury market (Reuters)
“Russia’s luxury market may be worth only half of what it was pre-financial crisis, but its thirst for excess is making somewhat of a comeback, though uncertainty over its ability to grow lingers. ‘Slowly, slowly, people are starting to live again,’ said Alla Verber, Russian clothing mogul and head of fashion at plush designer store TSUM, Moscow’s answer to Saks Fifth Avenue.”

Boom time for boutiques in Australia (The Australian)
“Burberry’s flagship store in Sydney’s CBD has marked a trend…for bigger, more lavish and, of course, more expensive boutiques in the booming top end of the retail market. … ‘Our new Sydney store is the most ambitious and expensive boutique we have ever opened,’ TAG Heuer chief executive Jean-Christophe Babin said. ‘After just two months of operation, it was already our No 1 store in the world.’”

Twitter to offer brands Facebook-style pages (Marketing Magazine)
“Branded pages, through which advertisers could deliver tailored messages, are under consideration, along with other plans to increase the long-term revenue potential of the social network… The pages would work in a similar way to Facebook Pages, providing brands with their own space to deliver content and encourage Twitter users to follow them.”

Dazed Live: Ruth Hogben (Dazed Digital)
“The pioneering London filmmaker Ruth Hogben is Director of Fashion Film at SHOWstudio and will be speaking at Dazed Live about her collaborations with Gareth Pugh and the resulting, inimitable visual style of her unique films. She has created iconic fashion films with Matthew Stone and Dazed’s own Katie Shillingford, not to mention her work with Nick Knight and Alexander McQueen.”

WHY Wally Hermès Yacht | Source: Twistedsifter.com

What’s Next: Luxury Products (WSJ)
“Pierre-Alexis Dumas embraces innovation. But as the sixth-generation member of his family to lead, in his case, the creative end of the French luxury house Hermès, he must uphold tradition, as well.”

John Lewis Adds to Evidence Of February Sales Bounce (NY Times)
“Bellwether retailer John Lewis posted another double-digit percentage rise in weekly sales as wet weather drove customers to its stores, adding to evidence consumer spending bounced back in February.”

Balmain produces this year’s template for the high street (Independent)
“High-street bosses will be on the look out for inspiration for their autumn/winter 2010 designs, and the Balmain show will have been the focus for much of their attention. The French label… has been heavily copied by mass-market brands over the last year.”

Creating the World of Tomorrow? (IHT)
“A definitive exhibition of the work of Yves Saint Laurent, whose masculine/feminine vision dominated the wardrobe of the 20th-century woman, and a book celebrating 60 years of Pierre Cardin, fashion’s eternal futurist, gives pause for thought.”

Gianni Versace, a life lived as a 90s fashion icon (Reuters)
“‘House of Versace: The Untold Story of Genius, Murder, and Survival,’ by Deborah Ball tells the story of how Gianni, with his flamboyant sister Donatella as muse, not only became the cutting edge of 90s fashion but symbolized the era.”

Dunhill Shoes

LONDON, United Kingdom — There’s been quite a lot of talk about value lately. But what does value really mean, and how are different consumers evaluating their purchases?

Dunhill recently held a private sale in a discrete space in a Mayfair alley with some deeply discounted prices. It’s something many luxury companies have been doing to help shift stockpiles of their products in a way that doesn’t damage the brand. It’s easy to tell why most of the products are on sale at such low prices. There are flaws of some sort in the knitwear or the trousers are poorly cut or the print is ghastly. You tend to find these kinds of overstock products in available many replicates, in all sizes, proving they were of no interest to anyone at full price.

But sometimes, you come across something that seems one of a kind, special, and only available in one size: yours.

At the Dunhill sale, my eyes were immediately drawn to a beautiful pair of brown shoes. On a shelf filled with many other more mundane styles, these ones stood out because of the yellow coloured laces and a perfect shape. On the bottom, they said ‘Hand-Made in Italy’ and had a pricetag of £75. I could scarcely believe my eyes and figured they must have been used on a mannequin or for visual merchandising, because although they were a tiny little bit worn, they had no apparent flaws and there no others like them. I slipped them on and they fit. Even at their normal retail price of over £300, they would have been well worth it.

Since then, my Dunhill shoes have become something of an obsession, a rare purchases in these lean times. For me, they represent the best kind of value—a combination of great design, excellent quality and especially now, a price that didn’t stretch the bounds of belief, even with the Great Recession spending brakes on.

Louboutin corsage shoes

Contrast this with a savvy Italian friend of mine who also had a very emotional encounter with a pair of shoes. Admittedly her taste and style have sometimes outstripped the budget her fashion salary allows, but this is a sharp fashion consumer and one who knows value when she sees it.

When she first saw Christian Louboutin’s peach peep-toe heels with a flower corsage on the shelf at Harvey Nichols, she went into the kind of frenzy that all great designers ultimately yearn for: to create an emotional response within real customers. But when she turned the shoes over and she saw the £847 pricetag, or almost 1000 euros, those Great Recession spending brakes kicked in and the purchase was stopped cold in its tracks. She loved the corsage shoes so much that she took a photo of them on her feet, but she couldn’t bring herself to buy them because they didn’t promise to deliver any lasting value.

“In Mantova,” her hometown, she said, “people make 1200 euros on average per month. I can’t justify spending that much money on shoes, especially with this crisis.” What’s more, a previous pair of Louboutins she had bought during sunnier economic times have not stood the test of time. She complained that the quality was no good and that the inner sole had been glued and had fallen out. In other words, they did not pass her value test and this is one shopper whose memory is long.

Balmain crystal-studded sandals

Then again, at the newly revamped Joseph store in Notting Hill, some customers are still spending huge amounts of money on women’s shoes. Balmain’s crystal-studded sandals by Giuseppe Zanotti are retailing at an astounding £1300, or about $2000, and barely stay on the shelves before they are snapped up by fans of the uber-hot brand led by Christophe Decarnin and Emmanuelle Alt.

There was only one pair of those Balmain sandals left at Joseph on the Friday of Easter weekend. Two of the three pairs were bought almost immediately as the shoes hit the shelves, both by foreign customers, and one of these by telephone from Beirut. They are already sold out on Net-a-Porter.

Apart from their fashion currency, another reason why the Balmain shoes are so hot is because they are already collectors’ items. If you hop on a plane back home to the USA from London, you can sell them on eBay for $2800, allowing for a neat $800 profit.

Now that’s value of a completely different kind altogether, but it still shows that some customers are still willing to spend some serious cash on fashion shoes. Value, it seems, is in the eye of the beholder.

Imran Amed is Editor of The Business of Fashion

Sara Ferrero, CEO of Joseph Group

LONDON, United Kingdom — Sara Ferrero is one of those once rare but increasingly common fashion executives who spent the early part of their careers outside the fashion industry. After six years at McKinsey & Company, the management consultancy, she entered the fashion business at Furla, the Italian accessories brand. Under her leadership, Furla’s retail sales tripled to over 360 million euros in less than five years.

Last year, Joseph, the London-based fashion retailer, tapped Ferrero as its new CEO, and since then she has been executing on a plan to revive the once-hip chain to its former glory. With more than 120 stores scattered across several countries, and a turnover of over £85 million, the Joseph Group is an important player on the global fashion scene. But in recent years, Joseph had somewhat lost the original excitement that drew the fashion hordes under the brand’s charismatic founder and namesake, Joseph Ettedgui back in the 1970s.

I spoke to Sara at the Joseph showroom to get the inside scoop on her strategy to take Joseph back its roots, starting with its store in London’s Westbourne Grove, which celebrated its official launch during London Fashion Week.

BoF: Why did you decide to take on this challenge now?

There is so much in the essence of this brand. I was actually living here in London in the early 1990′s and at the time, Joseph at Fulham 77 was the place to go if you wanted to be cool. It was known for this kind-of chic take on fashion, with a sophisticated sexual undertone.

When the opportunity arose to join Joseph, I couldn’t resist because, as a former customer, I knew exactly where this business came from and where it needed to return. Even today, amongst most international fashion-savvy customers, there is a brand memory for Joseph as a fashion leader and trend-setter.

Joseph himself was a fashion curator known for bringing the best brands of the time — Alaia, Prada, Marni, Kenzo — together in one-place, carefully selecting the styles from each collection to create an offering that reflected his own distinctive fashion point-of-view . He combined this with the development of great separate pieces under his own name. Eventually Joseph also became known for these basics with a twist, like a great pair of pants. Finally, all of this was delivered all of this within truly impressive retail spaces.

In essence, Joseph invented the idea of the concept store as we know it today — before Colette; before 10 Corso Como.

BoF: So, what happened at Joseph in the intervening years prior to your arrival?

After operating independently for almost 20 years, in the late 1990s Joseph and his brothers (who owned the business together) decided to take on some prominent private investors from France, who bought 50 percent of the equity. In the years after that, the business was diffused a bit and the stores started to lose their special feel.

Then in 2005, Onward Kashiyama, the Japanese company that also owns Jil Sander and GIBO, bought both parties’ stake and Joseph left the business. By now, the stores had become too safe and began to lose the directional point-of-view altogether.

BoF: Now you are trying to re-capture that cool factor.  What are your plans to get it back?

There are three elements to my strategy.

First, we needed to find a fashion curator of Joseph’s calibre. For this, I turned to Alain Snege, who previously was a buyer for Colette in Paris. Just like Joseph, Alain has a strong point-of-view, and his direction is now reflected in our stores merchandising and look-and-feel.

Second, we needed to re-energise our retail spaces. We have some amazing locations, on Fulham, Sloane Street, Westbourne Grove, Old Bond Street in London and avenue Montaigne, rue St Honore and boulevard St Germain in Paris, but our stores started to feel boring. We have identified 8 stores which will be completely re-furbished and stocked with products specially selected for their clientele and environment. Each store will look and feel different, but they will all have a strong Joseph point-of-view.

Finally, we will also return to our focus on the Joseph own-label as a place for customers to find great fashion pieces styled together with basics to ensure relevant looks for today but also items that they can turn to time and time again, at prices which are competitive and deliver good value. I expect that our own brand component will compete with new, upcoming Contemporary brands from around the world, like 3.1 Phillip Lim, Alexander Wang and Isabel Marant.

BoF: But admittedly, it’s an odd-time to be relaunching a high-end fashion chain that stocks Balmain and Givenchy, some of the priciest brands on the planet, isn’t it?

To the contrary. Our sales numbers for designer brands are up 67% for Spring/Summer 2009, which reflects our new buying strategy. We sell 2-3 pieces of Balmain, Alaia and Givenchy every day and we have bought more than anyone else in London. Our customers are still spending, although they are certainly being more careful.

What’s more, we are doing special collaborations with many of our brands, including Alexander Wang, David Szeto and Comme des Garcons. We will have product that nobody else will have. On the retail side, we are collaborating with Tom Dixon for the refurbishment of our Bond Street Store opening next Friday.  This is not only a commercial effort, we also believe in supporting the creative talents that we believe in, something that Joseph was also known for.

BoF: What about online retail?

Just like our flagship retail stores, the new online presence for Joseph will reflect the fashion point-of-view that we will become known for, and it will be going live soon, so stay tuned!

CEO Talk is an ongoing series of discussions with fashion entrepreneurs and business leaders as they combat the economic downturn. Previous interviews are listed below:

• Natalie Massenet, Chairman and Founder, Net-a-Porter
• Camilla Skovgaard, Shoe designer and Entrepreneur
• Susan Lyne, Chief Executive Officer, Gilt Groupe
• Priya Kishore, Founder and Creative Director, Bombay Electric
• Alex Bolen, Chief Executive Officer, Oscar de la Renta
• Jeffrey Kapelman, Chief Executive Officer, Hilldun Corporation
• Bonnie Takhar, Chief Executive Officer and President, Halston

Balmain A/W 2009, courtesy of Style.com

PARIS, France — I’m in Paris for the collections, after sitting last season out. It’s funny the way everything looks different when you’re actually here.

Take Balmain, for instance. I assumed, from what I read in the press after last season’s showing by designer Christophe Decarnin, that it was the collection du jour; the one that everyone adored, adored, adored. It turns out that well, this is not really the case.

The talk amongst the fashion intelligentsia before and after the show centered around one key point – and that point was not: “Isn’t Decarnin a genius?”, but rather “Who can actually buy this stuff?”

What I knew of Balmain was summed up in the Michael Jackson Thriller jacket (short, sparkly, superlative shoulders) and ripped jeans look that I assumed everyone in Paris would be wearing. The house is credited with kicking off the most recent 1980s revival trend.

The Balmain collection shown yesterday was nothing if not 1980s. The dresses were short, sparkly and strapless. The trousers were billowing and, left open down the front, bizarre. The only look of note — and probably the one you’ll see in most wrap-ups — was the last. The white sparkly jacket with strong shoulders and distressed jeans was a subtle evolution of last season’s one hit wonder.

Except that, in the real world, the collection isn’t a one hit wonder at all. One buyer told me that it sells out before it hits the selling floor. Customers are emailing photos from the internet and requesting pieces. Another said they’re getting 95 percent sell-throughs. No one cares one bit that the current collection has very little to do with the brand’s history. (A note to other designers attempting a revival.)

So who is buying this stuff then? All I could think was that the hedge fund fathers haven’t had the gumption to their daughters that the free-spending days are over. Certainly not many born before 1985 would, or could, wear this stuff.

Marco Zanini, the former designer from Halston, showed his first collection for Rochas this week. The house had been on a three season hiatus after dismissing Olivier Theyskens. The lovely collection, produced by Gibo and owned by Procter and Gamble, provided a redemption of sorts for Zanini. It was pretty, and perfectly formed.

The PR took pains to say Zanini did not revisit the archives – he simply thought about what the house meant to him. It made me wonder what was going on behind the scenes at Halston for his only collection there to have been so bland.

As for Theyskens, he is, for now at least, designing Nina Ricci. Many editors I spoke to thought the collection was a poke in the eye of the brand’s owners, the Spanish cosmetics company, Puig. It was meticulous in its construction, but absolutely unwearable – a point he underlined by putting the girls on the most absurd platform, heel-less shoes we’ve seen thus far.

Some loved it, some hated it. Most seemed to think it was his swan song. Rumours abound that Theyskens has already been fired.

Lauren Goldstein Crowe is our Friday columnist and co-author of a book on Jimmy Choo to be published by Bloomsbury later this year.

Balmain S/S 09 ad campaign, courtesy of Balmain

LONDON, United Kingdom — If one wanted an indication that nothing is ever going to be the way it was in luxury, this was the week to watch.

Forget about Karl Lagerfeld’s paper accessories at the Chanel haute couture show (a gimmick if there ever were one.) Consider instead the dichotomy of two of the most interesting items in this week’s fashion news.

First, that Tom Ford is bringing out jeans with a $990 price tag in the midst of the credit crunch. Why so expensive? Well, they’re made from Japanese selvage denim, which means they won’t fade or shrink. And they have an 18-carat gold button. (Note to anyone tempted: Dior Homme has Japanese selvage jeans for $777, if you can live without the gold button).

Tom is not alone. The uber-hot French house Balmain is selling jeans for $2685. How do they justify that price? “There are so many processes, the dyeing, the washing, the fraying,” the house’s muse Emmanuelle Alt explained to The Telegraph’s Sarah Mower. “You know, it is all made in France.” (Another reason may be that the Tom Ford jeans are for men, while the Balmain ones are for women and women are more used to this kind of sticker shock.)

There is apparently a waiting list for the Balmain jeans, but insiders know that retailers can easily create a “waiting list” buy simply buying just one pair at wholesale.

There was also some very disturbing news for Luxury retailers looking to Russia for growth. Women’s Wear Daily reported yesterday that the Manolo Blahnik shop in Moscow has closed. Note the deliberate use of past tense. It’s finished, over, shuttered, gone. Next to go are Stella McCartney and Alexander McQueen, both only 18 months old.

When a friend of mine in international sales for a US designer told her boss that the Russians were canceling orders, the CEO asked what all the fuss was about, not realizing the credit crunch crosses its national boundaries.

Which does beg the question: Who is going to buy those jeans?

Some Russians may still be shopping, but they are the ones who spend lots of time abroad. Maybe that’s the reason for the “waiting list” for the Balmain jeans at Browns? One thing is for sure, I’m betting that you won’t find them on the sale racks. I doubt there was a big enough production run of the pricey jeans to warrant drastic mark-downs.

In the end, the executives running Balmain and Tom Ford probably don’t care much if the jeans sell or not. They’ll end up in the archives and on the balance sheet the jeans will prove to be worth their weight in free PR.

Lauren Goldstein Crowe is co-author of a book on Jimmy Choo to be published by Bloomsbury later this year