Iris van Herpen at Berlin Fashion Week S/S 2012 | Source: Newsobserver

The Quiet Rise of Berlin Fashion (WSJ)
“Twice a year, with a series of high-profile fashion shows, the couture quartet of New York, Paris, Milan and London issues style edicts for the next season: hemlines are up, charcoal is the new black. But another capital has long held its own quiet but powerful sway in the fashion world: Berlin… With a few stops and sputters, German fashion has since picked up speed and garnered attention for its practical, minimalist designs propelled by industrious business acumen.”

Vivienne Westwood undervalues itself (Telegraph)
“Fashion designer Dame Vivienne Westwood has agreed to pay almost £350,000 in tax to HM Revenue & Customs for significantly underestimating the value of her own brand.”

Do fashion brands need ugly-queen discount contest? (The Economic Times)
“Fashion brands don’t really need to participate in such ugly-queen contests, year after year, trying to outdo each other by offering more and more discounts. So, what is the way forward? Fast-fashion, which ensures that designs move from catwalk to store in the shortest possible time, has been cited as an effective tool to combat such planned customer behaviour.”

Make That 15 Seconds of Fame (On the Runway)
“Today, with rare exceptions, fashion seems to lack that degree of depth, depth with a calculated eye, and one explanation is that we are simply too absorbed in consuming images. Viddy, a social video app for the iPhone and iPad, may intensify that experience during Fashion Week. Viddy allows you to shoot and instantly share a 15-second video on the Viddy network, or on Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr.”

Rei Kawakubo (WSJ)
“Fascinated by challenging conventional standards of beauty, she’s reconstructed “hybrid” clothes, sewn the left half of a jacket onto the right half of a different jacket and designed asymmetrical dresses made from her own vintage scarves—and that was all just in her last women’s presentation. It’s never just about creating something to wear, but rather expressing an idea.”

Bvlgari Spring/Summer 2010 | Source: Bvlgari

Magic of the Sea (IHT)
“…It is the Parisian jewelers who are having a ball, inspired by a resurgence in global demand and by their new importance on the haute couture fashion calendar… Place Vendôme, home of sparkling brands, have thrown open their doors… To those who want to see the new trends in Haute Joaillerie.”

Debate: Luxury Goods Tax (China Daily)
“The consumption of luxury goods is already high in China. According to the latest report of the World Luxury Association, China’s luxury goods market was worth $10.7 billion in 2010, or one-fourth of the world’s total… China is likely to surpass Japan as the largest luxury goods-consuming country in 2012.”

Fresh Designs From Berlin Fashion Week (WSJ)
“Berlin may not belong to the quartet of trend-setting couture weeks held in New York, Paris, London and Milan, but the city is swiftly making a name for itself as a home for hipsters, prêt-à-porter boutique collections and fresh designers from Germany and Eastern Europe.”

All the young dudes (FT)
“The 1970s are a style decade that many would rather forget yet also one that contemporary fashion designers seem to adore… For men… The period conjures images of flared trousers, platform soles, gold medallions and jackets with outsized lapels… The look is also evident in some of this season’s best men’s wear collections.”

Philip Treacy: ‘I like hats that make the heart beat faster’ (Guardian)
“A person carries off the hat. Hats are about emotion. It is all about how it makes you feel. I like hats that make the heart beat faster.”

Fashion Crowdsourcing Panel at DLD (DLD Conference)
“The Fashion Panel was all about the use of crowdsourcing for fashion brands. Vanessa Friedman moderated the talk with Natalie Massenet from the online luxury fashion retailer Net-A-Porter, who shortly before won the Aenne Burda Award, the Creative Adviser of H&M, Margareta van den Bosch and Scott Galloway, Professor of Marketing at NYU. The main discussion focussed on whether the customers still want strong curators or prefer bringing in their own ideas and designs.”

Mad Men! Romancing the Suit (IHT)
“In tailored suits and noble coats, a whole new generation is finding an antidote to casual sportswear. It is as if the cast of ‘Mad Men,’ the cult television series based on a New York advertising office in the 1960s, had migrated to the men’s shows and been re-branded for the 21st century.”

Couture Isn’t So Dead, After All (Fashionologie)
“How many articles have been written heralding the imminent death of couture? But after Alexander McQueen reported that its custom order business is profitable last week, executives across the board seem optimistic about the state of couture.”

Prada Said to Decide on IPO (Bloomberg)
“Prada, the Italian fashion company that has scrapped initial public offerings four times in 11 years, may decide to proceed with an IPO by the end of the month… An announcement could follow as early as February.”

Berlin’s fashion scene struts into the future (The Local)
“Berlin is seen as the up and coming place for new designers, this is the second Fashion Week that we’ve been to and you can see that it’s progressed even since last year… Things are growing here from season to season.”

La Mode Berlin (WSJ)
“The city’s edgy, sexy vibe was evident on Wednesday as German designers kicked off Mercedes-Benz Berlin Fashion Week, which runs through Saturday. Getting on the world’s fashion map isn’t easy, but Berlin is trying.”

American Eagle Promotes Apparel With Free Phones (WSJ)
“Teen retailers in particular have struggled against gadget makers for control of younger buyers’ wallets. Since the recession, cash-strapped teens have opted to spend what little discretionary income they have on electronics, forcing retailers to compete heavily on price.”

Fashion Industry Waiting For China’s Karl Lagerfeld (Jing Daily)
“We’ve covered the gradual appearance of Chinese design cues in recent collections by top Western fashion and luxury houses, but what’s the status of China’s home-grown designers? When will we see them on the global stage?”

National Treasure (IHT)
“There comes a moment when a great designer moves from being a creative force to a national treasure. With his haute couture show Wednesday, Jean Paul Gaultier took that step.”

Valentino May Be Profitable in 2010; Permira Committed (Bloomberg)
“‘If we are moving ahead at this speed and the economic situation is fine, we can reach good results very soon,’…. Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization ‘could be positive’ this year.”

BERLIN, Germany — A big thank you to PREMIUM and Mary Scherpe of Stil in Berlin for inviting me to join an esteemed panel of German fashion experts — Christoph Amend of Zeit Magazin, Marcus Luft of Gala and  Too Posh to Push, and Sven Schoene of PR Agency K-MB — to discuss the future of fashion media on the first day of Berlin Fashion Week.

The panel began with the esteemed Suzy Menkes, who wasn’t able to participate in person, but declared via video: “The world changed when fashion instead of being a monologue, became a conversation. And that’s never going to stop.”

Suzy, of course, was amongst the first of the mainstream fashion editors to reach out to bloggers and engage them as professionals. “A good blogger,” she says, “can really take all sorts of elements and use them both in words and pictures and make a strong statement.”

She’s “tremendously in favour of anything that is new and fresh in fashion,” but the one thing that concerns her is that “some bloggers believe, in their innocence, that they are completely independent in what they say.” In between the lines, Suzy advises bloggers to be wary of the increasing pressure they receive from brands to evangelise brands and products.

The video also features Julia and Jessie from Les Mads, Jennine from The Coveted and Yvan from The Facehunter, each of whom provide their own perspectives on how quickly the fashion blogosphere is rising in influence and prevalence.

Giambattista Valli A/W 09, courtesy of coutorture

Burani to License Giambattista Valli Fashions (WSJ)
“Italy’s Mariella Burani Fashion Group said it has signed a five-year contract to make and distribute the ready-to-wear collection of Italian fashion designer Giambattista Valli, a deal aimed at growing both companies as the luxury goods industry suffers through the economic crisis.”

Haute Couture Faces Uncertain Times (IHT)
“In the closeted world of satin and sequins that is Parisian haute couture, there is uncertainty about the future.”

Berlin Fashion Week Shows a Raw Energy (New York Times)
“From the discomforting sight of homeless people from public shelters as models at Patrick Mohr’s show, to the gritty glamour of the Boss Orange line strutted through a former electricity plant on the city’s outer fringes, Berlin Fashion Week, which closed last weekend, had a distinctive raw energy.”

Too Precious for a Recession (New York Times)
“In a different economy, Billy Mitchell and Nicole Drucker of San Francisco might have splurged on a $10,000 engagement ring. But Ms. Drucker is out of work and they need to save for a house. So in April, Mr. Mitchell got down on one knee on the Golden Gate Bridge and proposed with a $4,000 diamond ring he had bought on the Internet.”

Christian Lacroix: hanging on by a thread (AFP)
“Designer Christian Lacroix has had his back against the wall since the fashion house which bears his name went into administration early last month. If no saviour turns up, the house will close its doors at the end of July and 112 of its current 124 employees will lose their jobs.”

Scene on Madison Avenue, courtesy of the New York Times

On Madison Avenue, Shops Pack Their Hand-Tooled Bags (New York Times)
“New York’s most elegant shopping corridor, the Gold Coast of Madison Avenue, from 57th Street to 72nd Street, is pockmarked with vacancies as retailers flee sky-high rents.”

Mango’s sales rise 8% (Drapers)
Beating the downward retail trend, Mango’s sales rise 8 percent.

Industry Reacts to Lincoln Center Move (WWD)
Lincoln Center’s Damrosch Park is New York Fashion Week’s new location, and not all industry players are happy. (Subscription required)

Berlin Fashion Week | Very ‘Project Runway’ (The Moment)
“Instead of distilling a powerful German aesthetic and developing the public relations and commercial infrastructure necessary for real success, people are more focused on blowing Champagne kisses and indulging their caviar dreams.”

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