LONDON, United Kingdom and STOCKHOLM, Sweden – A couple of years ago, as I was exploring the graduate collections of a stellar Central St Martins MA class, I met Molly Grad, one of the strongest talents to emerge from the legendary fashion school that year.  Apart from the deft tailoring and layering of Molly’s collection itself, I was engrossed in her sketchbook, which was filled with anatomical photos interspersed with her illustrations.

I recently met up with Molly for lunch and she gave me a wonderful book called Fashion Illustration by Fashion Designers, written by Laird Borrelli, who is also a friend. In the book, Laird gives us a sneak peak into the dreams and designs of the world’s leading designers, alive (Boudicca, Giles and Phillip Lim) and dead (Yves St Laurent, Gianfranco Ferre).

I reached Laird via email in Sweden, where she is on holiday but still agreed to answer a few questions, from a Swedish keyboard, so we could benefit from her renowned expertise on the history (and business) of fashion illustration.

BoF: What inspired you to publish this book now?

LB: Well, I have been writing books on fashion illustration for about eight years now and they have been widely copied. Through my work at Style.com, I have the opportunity to go on studio visits and my eyes are always drawn to the inspiration boards and the drawings (when there are any) on them. I thought it would be great to give share these hidden treasures with an interested audience.

BoF: Do you think the art of fashion illustration is dying?

LB: No, but it has gone from being one of the sole means of fashion communication to having a very minor role. The first photographic cover of Vogue was a watershed in the history of fashion illustration and a watershed mark of its decline. Photographs, no matter how altered or retouched, will always have some association with reality and by association truth. I like to think of them as prose poems and illustrations as more fictional narratives. They are more obviously filtered through an individual vision than photos. Illustration lives on, but in the position of a poor relative (think of all of those Jane Austen novels).

BoF: Is there any way in which fashion illustration itself could become a business? Might people want to pay for these beautiful, original works of art?

There are lots of art reps who get and pitch jobs for illustrators. There is also money to be made in print design. As regards to the originals, there is a barely existent market for contemporary illustrators like Antonio Lopez, Mats Gustafson, etc. William Ling in London, with his FIG gallery, is trying to change this and seems to be having some success.

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Fashion illustration is an exercise in individuality: sometimes-fantastical, sometimes bare-bones, sometimes out-of-this-world, fashion illustration captures both the spirit of the garment, but also the mood of the collection and the individual personality and style of the the illustrator themselves.

Molly Grad, MA Collection A/W 2006 (courtesy of Molly Grad and Style.com)

Antonio Lopez (courtesy of Fashion Illustration Gallery)

Mats Gustafson

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We love leaks.

The Business of Fashion has an exclusive first look at the new Jimmy Choo book to be published by Bloomsbury in the UK and the US in March 2009, entitled “The Towering World of Jimmy Choo: A Glamorous Story of Power, Profits and Pursuit of the Perfect Shoe.”

Lauren Goldstein Crowe, a fashion and business journalist, and Sagra Maceira de Rosen, head of the Luxury & Retail division of Reig Capital Group, have teamed up to write the first fashion book to cover both the design side and the business side with equal vigour and rigour.

The book tells the story of how one Tamara Yeardye (now known as Tamara Mellon), an accessories editor at British Vogue meets one Jimmy Choo, and turns him from couture shoe designer into £185m brand. Today, Jimmy Choo (the brand) kicks it heels with Christian Louboutin and Manolo Blahnik in the triumvirate of high-potential luxury shoe businesses, but Jimmy Choo (the man) is no longer involved in the business that bears his own name.

Along with Robert Bensoussan, Jimmy Choo’s former CEO (Gucci Group-trained Josh Schulman has now replaced him), Ms. Mellon created one of the most famous new fashion brands to emerge in the past 10 years. Can you think of another name that has become so recognisable in such a short period of time?

Through some savvy marketing (Sex and the City style), a design partnership with Choo’s niece Sandra Choi (who broke ranks with her uncle to work with Mellon), and apparently a good deal of coy manoeuvring (this book has drama and intrigue too), Mellon and Bensoussan sold 83% of the business to Towerbrook Capital and its affiliates for £185m in 2007 (versus only £20m in 2001), at a rumoured EBITDA multiple of 13x, which is very high by industry standards.

This book is sure to cause a frenzy when it is published, as fervent fashion business executives, private equity gurus, admiring entrepreneurs, brand managers and, of course, the brand’s fans will all have reason to find out just exactly how Mellon and Bensoussan did it.

Stay tuned.

Even for the most culturally-savvy business types, the world of fashion can be daunting. Everyday, fashion people will mention places, names, books, buildings, restaurants and other references that they assume you must know: Truman Capote. Madeleine Vionnet. Diana Vreeland. Zaha Hadid. The Faena Hotel. Leigh Bowery. Patrick Demarchelier. The Misshapes. Jane Birkin. Matthew Barney. Marcel Breuer. Mies van der Rohe. Steven Meisel.

These cultural references form the basis of evaluating and understanding what is going on in fashion today.  So, while  you may not need to have curatorial knowledge of Dior’s New Look or be able to map out the influence of Oscar Neimeyer’s architecture on fashion, it is still important to have some basic understanding of how all of this fits together.

Of course, it’s a body of knowledge that will take years to build up, but to get you started, we have discovered what may be the fashion business professional’s version of a high-school cheat sheet for cultural credibility. 

Nancy MacDonell, the talented editor we work with over at Style.com, has crammed years of her cultural knowledge (and that of other editors and designers we respect like Jason Campbell and Gentry Lane) into a compact book titled In the Know: The Classic Guide to Being Cultured and Cool

This book will not only help you understand the cultural context that influences many of fashion’s most talented creatives, it will hopefully also be the start of a journey to explore the ideas and themes that you find most interesting — which is even more rewarding.

And, next time you’re reading the (sometimes incomprehensible) show notes that are left on the seats to entertain you as you wait (and wait) for a fashion show to begin, you may actually begin to decipher those notes to help you to understand where the designer is coming from…as opposed to trying to make sense of it all in a vacuum.

boo.com was set up in London by 3 Swedes — Ernst Malmsten, Kasja Leander and Patrik Hedelin in 1998. Malmsten and Leander, the real visionaries behind the business, had previous experience and success with Internet businesses in Swedem. This was very impressive for 1998, before many people had even tried the Internet, let alone figure out the commercial potential it could harness.

boo was to be the world’s first online shop for fashion and sportswear. In a world with the hindsight of the successes of Net-a-Porter, eLuxury, ASOS and Yoox, this seems like an obvious idea. But, Leander and Malmsten faced substantial pessimism and doubt about boo’s potential from many of the people they contacted. Through sheer determination, optimism and hard work, they slowly won people over to their idea.

Even if you are not interested in Internet businesses or business planning, this book is chock-full with lessons about setting up new businesses. It would be an insightful read for any entrepreneur. Since I was living in London at the time of boo.com’s meteoric rise (and then dramatic fall) and knowing the ultimate conclusion of the business, I found myself rooting for Malmsten and Leander the whole way through, and wondering what I would have done in their shoes. What decisions would I have made differently? What decisions did they execute brilliantly? A few of the lessons that resonated most with me:

• Focus - be clear about what your company is about and what it is trying to achieve so as to understand what the core competencies of the business need to be. In the case of boo, not focusing meant they spent time an energy launching a new magazine and opening an international network of offices to support a business website that hadn’t yet been launched. This burned cash and detracted from the essential tasks at hand.
• Choose investors and strategic partners who believe in you and your idea – they will end up being the ones to support you when things don’t go as planned, not just because their money is at stake. That said, as an entrepreneur, to use a quip from the book, you might always want to think of your investors as “the enemy.” The worst kind of investors for a start-up are the ones looking for a quick buck, who’ll walk away without warning, when the going gets tough.
• It’s never too early to build a company culture – boo got as far as it did due to the commitment, excitement and buy in from its employees. This is an incredibly valuable resource and your employees can become great sources of guidance, energy and realism.
• Beware the publicity machine - The media is very powerful, and while boo built an amazing profile in such a short period, having extremely high expectations from the marketplace can add additional pressure while the foundation of the business is being set up. And, if you aren’t able to deliver what you promised, when you promised it, the media will be just as happy to tear you down afterwards
• Choose your partners carefully - Partnership is very tough. Having partners who don’t add value or whose objectives are different from yours will eventually lead to breakdown of the partnership. Being completely aligned and having tough conversations early on about roles, vision, strategy and exit strategy are crucial. Even then, it is inevitable that partnership issues will arise — these should be discussed openly and honestly so they can be resolved

I recommend this book highly. It is extremely readable, accessible and interesting, even to those who have no business training. It addresses all the nuts and bolts of building a business and as such, offers lessons to everybody in any business.

By the way, in case you’re wondering what happened to the company’s assets, brand and domain name, I went to the boo.com website and it says “A new boo.com is on the way” and then provides an opportunity to dress a guy in “slick” or “street” clothes. Also, rumour has it that Natalie Massenet of Net-a-Porter scooped up some of the expensive servers and hardware that was purchased to support boo’s complex website and all the traffic it was to receive.