Benetton Unhate campaign | Source: Foto Telegraf

Benetton to make decision on delisting (FT)
“The Benetton family will decide at a board meeting on Wednesday whether to delist the Italian knitwear group known for its brightly coloured jumpers after the company posted another plunge in profits as it struggles to compete with Inditex and H&M.”

Luxury Companies That Can Bring You Closer to the Good Life (Money Morning)
“A lot of consumers are hurting right now, but you wouldn’t know that looking at the earnings of major luxury companies. Many luxury companies like LVMH Moet Hennessey Louis Vuitton, Burberry, Hermès, and Coach Inc had a stronger-than-expected 2011 campaign.”

Bright Young Things (Vogue)
“The British Fashion Council has announced the launch of International Fashion Showcase – a platform for international emerging designers – which will take place during London Fashion Week. Nineteen embassies and cultural institutes across London will display work from over 80 rising designers, spanning the world from Belgium to Botswana.”

The Finnish Fashion Blogger Who Landed A Deal With Diesel (Business Insider)
“Sandra Hagelstam, 24, is the founder of the hot fashion blog 5inchdesandup.com. She started blogging to create a daily log of what she wears… ‘(The blog) has opened up doors for me I never would have imagined in terms of being able to design my own collection and collaborate with others.’”

Divided they stand: the new extremists (Telegraph)
“This may look like a classic case of Roundhead versus Cavalier. Or Minimalist meets Maximalist. But that’s too simplistic.Neither Mary Katrantzou or Osman Yousefzada can be that easily pigeonholed.”

Modcloth screenshot | Source: Modcloth

In Part I, we examined the innovations and infrastructural advances that have improved the historically poor economics of e-commerce and set the stage for a renaissance in online retail. Today, we explore some of new and exciting business models taking shape, the companies exploiting them and the challenges they face.

SAN FRANCISCO, United States — For years, e-commerce suffered from capital inefficiencies and complexities that pushed investors away. But in recent years, major infrastructural advances and the success of innovative start-ups like Gilt Groupe have rekindled investor interest and set the stage for an explosion of promising new business models including personal subscription, social merchandising, mass customisation and collaborative consumption.

PERSONAL SUBSCRIPTION

Opportunity: The model is relatively simple: consumers join a monthly club, complete a personal style survey, and are then shown a selection of products each month that they can choose to buy for a flat rate. While traditional online retailers struggle to gain and retain customer mindshare, and must constantly re-engage and convert customers to stay profitable, subscription style services generate far more predictable revenue streams. Subscription retailers also capture data on the tastes and size measurements of individual customers in order to deliver personalised product selections. This not only drives greater customer loyalty, but also enables retailers to better manage inventory risk.

Key Players:

• Shoedazzle offers personalised, stylist-selected shoes and accessories at affordable prices, delivered straight to doorsteps, and has attracted over 3 million members and over $60 million in venture capital from top tier firms.
• Beachmint has raised a total of $38.5 million and launched several subscription services across a number of verticals, working with celebrity designers, including jewelry site Jewelmint, launched with actress Kate Bosworth and her stylist Cher Coulter; Stylemint, launched with Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen; skin care site Beautymint, launched with pop culture phenomenon Jessica Simpson; and shoe site Shoemint, launched with actress Rachel Bilson.
• Birchbox, an early subscription retail innovator, is a beauty subscription service that addresses product discovery and sampling and has raised a total of $11.9 million
• Manpacks is a convenience-focused men’s subscription service for staple male essentials like razors, underwear, socks and shirts.

Challenges: Competition in the subscription retail space is heating up, so we might start to see increasing churn rates. While subscription services have stickier revenues, they are vulnerable to cancellations. In order to succeed over the long term, they must continue to offer products that are constantly exciting and relevant to their customers. Multiple months of disappointment will most likely result in lost customers.

SOCIAL MERCHANDISING

Opportunity: Social merchandising enables retailers to collect consumer feedback on goods prior to buying them. Typically, consumers are asked to vote, comment or curate products (sometimes through contests), indicating their preferences in a way that generates hugely useful data that retailers can leverage to more accurately predict what will sell, better aligning supply and demand. Social merchandising also engages customers and drives greater loyalty.

Key Players:

• Threadless was one of the first online fashion retailers to let the crowd vote on their favourite t-shirt designs and determine which designs would be put into production and sold on the site.
• Modcloth, which raised $19.8 million in a Series B round led by Accel Partners in 2010, has experimented with a successful “Be the Buyer” program, which lets consumers vote on their favourite items, generating data that informs Modcloth’s merchandising strategies.
• ASOS now encourages consumers to vote on, curate and share the designers and products they fancy most, a sign that larger e-commerce sites are experimenting with social merchandising as well.

Challenges: With social merchandising, timing is a challenge. What consumers want today may not be the same as what they want in a few months time. So, for these feedback loops to be most effective, short cycle production and fulfilment are essential.

MASS CUSTOMISATION

Opportunity: Mass customisation lets businesses deliver individualised products to every single customer, based on the buyer’s choice of aesthetic, functional, or contextual components such as styles, colours, materials and measurements. The individualised tailoring of products has, traditionally, been too costly to scale. But mass customisation allows customers to participate meaningfully in the design of their goods, restoring individuality to the process, while leveraging the cost-efficiencies of mass production to make the model feasible. Customers get the exact products they want. And by offering goods that, by definition, cannot be found elsewhere, the model enables companies to differentiate themselves vis-à-vis competitors and build stronger, more engaged and loyal relationships with consumers. Plus, by getting commitment (and payment) at the top of the purchase funnel, mass customisers avoid the perennial issue of excess, end of season inventory that didn’t sell. Indeed, customers pulling — rather than companies pushing — product designs offers practical, emotional and economic advantages.

Key Players:

• Nike first launched its highly successful mass customisation platform NikeiD back in 1999, allowing consumers to add a personalised look and feel to select shoe models. Ten years later, following a 2008 redesign of the application, the company reported that the platform had “surpassed $100 million for the first time.”
• Zazzle and Cafépress, which earns over $100 million in revenue per year, are white label companies also active in the space.
• Burberry Bespoke allows customers to create trench coats to their personal specifications, choosing from a wide range of style, fabric, colour, embellishment and detail options.

Challenges: The downside of mass customisation is the increased cost and complexity of production, which is ultimately reflected in higher prices. Prices for Burberry’s custom trenches start at about $1,800, while special materials can bring the price up as high as $8,800. Customers derive greater value from personalised products and are willing to pay a premium for these goods, but it’s simply not feasible that every part of a product design will be customisable. The trick is identifying which key elements of a product to make customisable and offering the right degree of variability in order to provide a made-to-order feeling, while ensuring manageable and scalable production.

COLLABORATIVE CONSUMPTION

Opportunity: Collaborative consumption is the next generation of swapping, sharing, bartering, trading and renting, behaviours which are being re-energised through the growth of peer-to-peer marketplaces and other technology-enabled platforms. Sellers can get rid of used or depreciating assets, while buyers can consume the items’ residual value at a price point that is substantially cheaper than retail. Collaborative consumption also includes rental models. For high cost items, especially those that are fashionable or ephemeral, renting items often makes more sense and gives a new customer base access to products that would normally be outside of their reach. As a result of the troubled economy and the rise of flash sale and daily deal sites, consumers expect discounts as a matter of course and routinely seek out high quality or high design items at cheaper price points, creating an environment ripe for the growth of businesses built on collaborative consumption.

Key Players:

• Rent the Runway, a mail-order service which lets women rent designer fashion and is sometimes described as “the Netflix for fashion,” has attracted over 1 million members and secured over $30 million in funding from top tier firms Highland Capital, Bain Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
• Bag Borrow or Steal lets consumers rent designer bags by the week, month or season.
• TheRealReal, backed by start-up accelerator 500 Startups and other noteworthy angel investors, recently launched an online consignment store selling previously owned luxury fashion at prices as low as 90 percent below retail.
• I-Ella enables consumers to easily swap and exchange fashion.

Challenges: Peer-to-peer models faces obvious challenges around trust and quality control. And, as with any marketplace business, getting liquidity through a critical mass of products and users is essential, but challenging. The rental model is initially capital intensive, because a company has to purchase inventory upfront and absorb the depreciation and maintenance costs associated with each item, which creates barriers to entry for copycats aiming to get off the ground and achieve profitability. Overtime, the model can be lucrative, especially for companies that are able to make accurate assumptions around depreciation from wear and tear and the costs of upkeep.

Although winners are already emerging from the current explosion of e-commerce start-ups, we will continue to witness constant e-commerce innovation for the foreseeable future. Indeed, with only 9 percent of commerce currently being conducted online, there is still tremendous room for growth. Beyond the aforementioned approaches, a number of promising young companies are building businesses around innovative models like shoppable media (Joyus), multi-level marketing (Stella & Dot), curation (AHAlife), local shopping (Aisle50) and retail gaming (Lockerz and Sneakpeeq). And while venture capital investment is a symptom of a good market, not a cause, investment in e-commerce more than doubled from $1.06 billion in 2010 to $2.39 billion in 2011. This kind of interest from VCs will surely accelerate the explosion of new start-ups set to disrupt the retail industry in the months and years to come.

Elizabeth Knopf is a former investment associate and the co-founder of Sorced, an online showroom.

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.”

Savigny Luxury Index November 2011 | Source: Savigny Partners

LONDON, United Kingdom — As the luxury and fashion sector enters the critical holiday shopping period on the back of strong results for the first half of the year, there are growing signs that executives are worried about what the future holds for the luxury market in 2012.

Big news

• This has been another month of record results for the luxury sector, with Hermès, Richemont, Ferragamo, Burberry, Tiffany, Prada and Ports all posting outstanding numbers for their first half or third quarter period.  Buoyant growth in Asia continued to lift sales; Richemont in particular shone with revenues in the region soaring by 60 percent in its first half report.  Growth was also present in mature markets, notably in the USA where Burberry’s first half sales and Tiffany’s third quarter revenues rose by 25 percent and 17 percent respectively.  This was confirmed by recent news of a very strong Thanksgiving weekend, with US retail sales estimated at a record $52.4 billion.

• Yet worries are growing over 2012.  The global markets rebound which took place towards the end of November following news of concerted action to solve the eurozone debt crisis did not happen for the luxury sector, with our Savigny Luxury Index resuming its downward slide.  Some market participants have issued thinly veiled warnings over next year, notably Richemont and Tiffany (see below).  Retailers are keeping inventories low into the end-of-year season; we have heard reports of some of them asking leading fashion brands not to deliver too early, a shocking role-reversal mode.  Industry CEOs are hoping for the best but quietly making contingency plans.  Overall, the SLI has lost 4.9 percent over the month of November, compared to an increase of 1.8 percent in the MSCI general index.

• The long-rumoured acquisition of Italian tailor Brioni by PPR finally crystallised, evidencing the importance of the menswear segment for the sector’s growth expectations, especially in China.

Going up

• Luxottica’s share price is the only one to have risen during November, attributable to recent M&A activity.  The world’s leading eyewear group continues to expand geographically its successful vertical integration model to emerging markets, namely Latin America.

Going down

• Tiffany’s candid statement that trading was starting to be difficult in Europe and on the East Coast in the US caused its share price to tumble, taking US luxury peer Ralph Lauren down with it.

• At nearly 12 percent down, Ferragamo’s share price performance for the month ranks near the bottom of the sector, despite strong third quarter results and sales momentum.  Investors’ concerns seem to centre around the Italian’s group relative lack of scale compared to most of its peers and on Ferragamo’s already large Chinese presence, potentially signalling a lesser upside.

What to watch

• Investors are hanging on to every piece of news in anticipation of the Christmas results. Sector outlook has rarely been so uncertain.

Sector Valuation

Pierre Mallevays is a contributing editor at The Business of Fashion and founder and managing partner of Savigny Partners, a corporate advisory firm focusing on the retail and luxury goods industry

Savigny Luxury Index October 2011 | Source: Savigny Partners

LONDON, United Kingdom — The market roller coaster continues, but the luxury sector has once again outperformed the general market. While questions remain about the ability for China to sustain the growth of luxury brands, investors seem to be on side again, at least for now. Analysts remain divided about the future of the luxury sector in 2012, amid much macroeconomic uncertainty.

Big news

• Renewed confidence in the sector prompted the SLI to recover the ground it lost from the mass sell-off in September.  The SLI posted an impressive increase of 21.9 percent over the month of October, versus an increase of 7 percent in the MSCI.

• Positive newsflow has boosted the sector, with LVMH, Burberry, PPR and Coach’s quarterly results beating market expectations.  Swatch announced that September was a record month for the group and that 2011 promised to be its best year ever.

• Investor concerns over a slowdown in China were addressed as all major sector players confirmed the Chinese market’s resilience.

Going up

• Up more than 35 percent, Tiffany’s share price rise over the last month is the strongest in the field.  Surely some savvy investors took notice of the termination of the Swatch partnership, which now makes Tiffany a more palatable target for the big luxury conglomerates?

• Prada posted the second strongest gain for the month underpinned by an 18 percent increase in the Hang Seng Index.  Its China-led growth strategy also appears to have regained favour with investors.

Going down

• With the whole sector bouncing back up, Hermès, Safilo and Luxottica look like they have been left behind.  Hermès’ newly implemented defensive structure has taken the bid-spec wind out of its sails, whilst the two eyewear companies’ share price performances were marred by lacklustre growth expectations.

What to watch

• The all-important holiday season is just around the corner.  Early signs will come from the USA as trading over the Thanksgiving weekend beginning 24 November is usually a bell-weather for Christmas sales.

Sector Valuation

Pierre Mallevays is a contributing editor at The Business of Fashion and founder and managing partner of Savigny Partners, a corporate advisory firm focusing on the retail and luxury goods industry

iPad2 | Source: The Reader's Eye

iPads Now Driving More Web Traffic Than iPhones (Mashable)
“Smartphones and tablets — particularly the iPad — are becoming an increasingly significant source of web traffic in the U.S. According to web analytics firm comScore, smartphones and tablets accounted for 6.8% of all web traffic in the U.S. in August… Shopping is also a popular pastime. In August, 56% of tablet owners looked up product or price information from a specific store, and 54% read customer ratings and reviews. Nearly half of tablet owners actually completed a purchase on the device.”

India Vows to Open Up Luxury Market (WSJ)
“Global luxury brands have been testing the Indian market for years – but with very limited success… Indian Minister of Commerce Anand Sharma, speaking at a luxury conference in New Delhi on Tuesday, hinted that this may soon change… Big global brands would like India to lower import taxes on luxury goods, which at the federal level are between 30%-40%, and to remove the 51% cap on the foreign ownership of their Indian units.”

Burberry sees no sign of slowdown for luxury spending (Reuters)
“British luxury goods group Burberry is not seeing a slowdown in demand for its trademark raincoats and leather goods despite an uncertain economic outlook, it said on Wednesday as it beat quarterly sales forecasts. ‘No evidence of any slowdown … What we have seen is consistent strong brand momentum and business growth,’ Finance Director Stacey Cartwright told reporters after the 155-year-old group posted a 29 percent rise in second-quarter revenue.”

Levi profit rises as demand in India, China grows (Reuters)
“Levi Strauss & Co posted a bigger quarterly profit as demand in growing markets like India and China grew, offsetting the effects of rising costs of cotton and discounts on its flagship brands. For the third quarter, the company earned $32 million, compared with $28 million last year. Revenue grew 9 percent to $1.20 billion, led by a 20 percent rise in the Asia-Pacific region.”

U.S. Fashion’s First Voice (WSJ)
“New York has its own forgotten, or almost, stars and tastemakers, though their legacies live on. Eleanor Lambert was one such person… She was the greatest fashion publicist of her time, and one of the greatest publicists, period. Among her accomplishments was helping to create the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute and, starting in 1948, its glittering annual gala… And she championed the careers of Calvin Klein, Donna Karan, Anne Klein and Perry Ellis when they were still fresh-faced kids.”

London Fashion Week, Somerset House | Source: Zimbio

Battle of the catwalks as Milan clashes fashion week with London (Telegraph)
“Milan has announced that its fashion week next September will overlap those of New York and London, meaning that if no solution can be found, department store buyers and fashion magazine editors would be forced to choose one city over another.”

Burberry slumps on fears of end to Asian boom (Guardian)
“Shares in the British superbrand Burberry took a fresh pummelling as investors worried that the sun was setting on the luxury goods sales boom in Asia. Nearly £2bn has been wiped off Burberry’s market value in the past three months on fears that the Chinese economy has started to splutter.”

Stella McCartney Keeps It in Perspective (NY Times)
“Ms. McCartney also does not have that designer problem of reducing a woman’s life to one or two moments: work, a fancy party. She also makes outfits that strongly hint of home, like a piped pajama shirt worn with a matching foulard-dot pantsuit, or a loose sweater or easy all-in-one to wear to a casual dinner. And they are done with a slightly wacky sense of humor that one assumes reflects her own life and those of the people on her staff.”

H&M Targets Expansion in Asia (Bloomberg)
“Hennes & Mauritz, Europe’s second- largest clothing retailer, plans to step up the expansion of its new brands in Asia, anticipating that Chinese consumers will favor more-expensive labels such as Monki and COS… H&M is adding stores in China more rapidly than anywhere else, turning to the world’s fastest-growing major economy to help reverse falling profit.”

Christian Louboutin retrospective to open in London (Telegraph)
“Launching at the end of March 2012, London’s Design Museum will host an exhibition detailing the story of the shoe designer’s rise to the top of the glamorous footwear game, from his launch in 1991 to the present day, when he dresses the feet of everyone from Victoria Beckham to Lady Gaga.”

Burberry S/S 2012 Details Screenshot | Source: American Vogue.com

Legendary fashion writer and BoF contributing editor Colin McDowell has been attending and reviewing fashion shows for more than 30 years. Who better to give us the lowdown on one of the best London Fashion Weeks in recent memory?

LONDON, United Kingdom — Each season, despite challenges, London continues to raise the stakes, in terms of both creativity and, dare I say it, commercial potential. Here, I’ve assembled my top choices of London Fashion Week.

BURBERRY
We were all rather shocked at the colours that first came down the runway. “Is it Spring-Summer or Fall-Winter?” my neighbour on the sardine-packed benches asked. But within seconds winter green and maroon seemed not only the most natural colours in the world for Spring, but the only colours. The conviction and strength of what was Burberry creative director Christopher Bailey’s most powerful collection for a few seasons suddenly had the same sort of rightness that Christian Dior’s New Look collection did. Women were so convinced that they came out of the show desperately trying to lower their hemlines. At Burberry there was a version of that overwhelming sense of something not just totally right for now, but also presaging the future. I loved the shapes, textures and scale of just about everything — and people who know me are well aware of how rarely I say that about a collection. No wonder this chap is where he is — he is truly exceptional.

MARIOS SCHWAB

Marios Schwab S/S 2012 Details Screenshot | Source: American Vogue.com

There is talent and there is sophistication. Of the first, there is a good pool in London. Of the second, there is less than would fill an egg cup, let alone a pool. Schwab has both, of course, and like Christopher Bailey, he brought them both together in a collection which again set a new bar for this label. Like quite a few of the London shows this season there were echoes of the great Hitchcock blondes such as Grace Kelly, Tippi Hedren and Kim Novak — all sexy elegance and lady-like. From the very first moment this show had total confidence, reminiscent of the uptown girls I used to see in New York when I was very young — the ones who gave me, and Frank Sinatra, a fetish about clean bouncy hair and legs like a gazelle’s. If there was any lingering doubts about the stature of this designer, this delicate and very focused collection blew them away — and me!

ANTONIO BERARDI

Antonio Berardi S/S 2012 Details Screenshot | Source: American Vogue.com

There was a time when Berardi was working in Italy when I used to groan and say, “Oh, no, Antonio, no.” But that was before his friend and colleague Sophia Neophitou began to work with him as his stylist. The change has been dramatic and now we have a soignée approach to dress that most English designers find hard to carry off. So perhaps all those dreadful days in Italy were necessary to clear the decks for Berardi’s talent. Ice white and glamorous, this was a confident collection that was almost pitch-perfect. Although I do wonder how the pants with heavy three inch ribbon running down the seams sneaked past the taste police. What was all that about, my boy? And I must add, I do think we can do without quotes from Milton to help us understand the clothes, Antonio, thank you very much — pretentious, moi?

ERDEM

Erdem S/S 2012 Details Screenshot | Source: American Vogue.com

After an opulently rich plum pudding of a show last season, Erdem was all lightness and air this time around. I was so impressed by what he showed and what it said of his approach to dress that I went home and wrote to Sidney Toledano, chief executive of Dior, suggesting that he look at this young talent that dresses the wives of presidents and prime ministers — not for that, but because this show was about all the things concerning femininity and allure that Christian Dior believed in and taught to Yves Saint Laurent. I even thought that when he came out for a bow, Erdem looked rather like Yves as I remember him when young, with a slightly bemused, “where did all these people come from?” look, doing a quick smile and scurrying backstage as soon as possible. Does fashion history repeat itself? Who knows. But with thirties colours and fifties cuts, this was simply brilliant. I frankly never thought I would see such purity on a London runway, but I was wrong.

ACNE

Acne S/S 2012 Details Screenshot | Source: American Vogue.com

For my generation (Neolithic, since you ask), nothing raises the spirits at the end of a long day quicker than a sharp blast of Shirley Bassey and a bit of mirror shine. We had both at Acne and felt all the better for it. Shirley’s top hits, a mirrored runway and a posse of hand-picked guys proferring drinks all put me in a good mood. And the show augmented it as marvellous shapes — wide pants and great parkas — came confidently swinging (the only word) down the catwalk in clever combinations of blue, white, tan and some great shiny surfaces a bit like a yacht. There was something so clean, wholesome and rain-washed fresh about this show that it sent me out into the raucous London night dreaming that I was on a heathery Scandinavian hilltop surrounded by apple-cheeked healthiness. A great experience.

TEMPERLEY

Temperley S/S 2012 Screenshot | Source: British Vogue.co.uk

I have had my problems with the Temperley aesthetic in the past and have been struck off her guest list a few times for saying so. Hey ho, that’s the fashion life. But her show at the British Museum this season made it all clear. Alice Temperley has her market down to a fine art. She knows the rich. She is rich — at least by London designer standards. And she has had ten years to refine her look which is, well, rich, I guess. The whole collection consisted of evening wear, all long and minimal, in delicate colours and with enough glitter to keep the customers happy. They are, I would imagine, the West Coast Americans and the Middle Eastern princesses whose natural setting is a shiny yacht or a cunningly lit poolside at night. Nothing original, no great fashion breakthrough, that’s for sure, but I loved these clothes because they know where they are going. And so do we. Straight onto the backs of the wealthy ones, who will love them very much.

ANTONI AND ALISON

Antoni and Alison by Muir Vidler | Source: Time Out

Fashion does not go in for national treasures very much, unfortunately. Often overlooked by the fashpack, Antoni and Alison are jewels in the crown of London Fashion. The trouble is, they are modest, thinking people with a totally unique aesthetic which modern fashion doesn’t quite know what to do with. They are not chasing the front cover of Vogue and have no need for the approval of the Americans. They are as English and as natural as a russet apple. And, above all, they have a wit that puts them up there with Peter Blake, The Beatles, Larry Grayson and all the Blackpool pier comedians who were our natural treasures before ‘stand-up’ comedians changed everything. But Antoni Burakowski (how English is that?) and Alison Roberts are so much a part of the English dress continuum that goes back to Hogarth that they could almost be the parents of Christopher Bailey, who is also in that special historic line.

MEADHAM KIRCHHOFF

Meadham Kirchhoff S/S 2012 Details Screenshot | Source: American Vogue.com

Originality is the soul of wit, in my book, and these two designers are both original and witty. This was a great show of the sort that only London-based designers are capable. And I mean SHOW. Extraordinary clothes can come from the likes of Jean Paul Gaultier — intended to make us laugh and totally succeeding — but these guys are different. They give us not only a complete look but a world. This season it was all about ballet, but not quite as Covent Garden knows it. And like Antoni and Alison, the mood and fun were a Merrie England mix of traditional music hall, fairground and carefully orchestrated chaos that made even the most frigid fashionista smile. I loved the sugared almond colours and the sharply strident primaries, but most of all, I loved the character of this show. You don’t find that anywhere but London.

Colin McDowell is a contributing editor at The Business of Fashion

Burberry Spring/Summer 2012 | Source: Design Scene

Burberry launches 2012 collection on Twitter (Guardian)
For the first time, the label “live tweeted” the show on Monday from backstage, posting photographs of each look on Twitter moments before the model stepped on to the catwalk… When you consider that it was not long ago that high street stores smuggled spies into catwalk shows in order to glean clues as to what might be in stores in six months’ time, this is quite a turnaround.”

Tom ‘God’ Ford has off day. Fashion world in denial (Guardian)
“This man redefined the parameters of what a fashion brand could be during his time at Gucci. He made the world rethink what it means to be sexy, replacing heroin chic with a slick, glossy aesthetic…His comeback show in New York was one of the highlights of my decade as a fashion editor: a gorgeous, glorious, life-affirming celebration… But even godlike geniuses have off days.”

eBay says Boo to the runway (FT)
“Some of the world may be obsessed with fashion that hasn’t yet happened – or the stuff now appearing on runways from London to Paris, which won’t be in-store until late February of 2012 – but the folks at eBay are much more interested in the profit potential of immediate gratification.”

London Fashion Week crisis after Gucci summon models to Milan (Telegraph)
“London Fashion Week has been thrown into crisis after heavyweight Italian fashion brand Gucci, who will show their spring/summer 2012 collection in Milan on Wednesday, ordered countless models to fly to Milan early to begin fittings for their show.”

Miuccia Prada Sitting Pretty (Because London)
“Miuccia earned her stripes slowly and after years of being regarded with skepticism from critics and fashion insiders. Untrained in design and lacking an apprenticeship in the conventional sense, she earned a Ph.D. in politics, then became a mime artist before eventually taking over the family business. 
At that point in the late ’70s, Prada was a small Milanese leather goods manufacturer.”

Zombie Boy | Source: NY Times

Designers Start to See in Triplicate (NY Times)
“With something like 250 runway shows and parties crammed into the New York Fashion Week that begins Sept. 8, a lot of designers are saying that there must be a better way to show clothes, or at least some way to grab people’s attention for more than a second or two. The latest thing, if a handful of them are correct, would be fashion shows in 3-D.”

Guess joins the queue as labels spread their wares through China (Independent)
“Guess has become the latest international brand to announce massive plans for expansion into mainland China… Guess is targeting its “lifestyle collection” of denim garments, handbags, watches and footwear at China’s ever-growing luxury goods market, one which industry insiders expect to be worth more than 84 billion yuan (13 billion dollars) this year – making it the second largest in the world after the United States.”

Burberry in step with digital age (FT)
“The luxury fashion brand Burberry has spurned glossy magazine adverts in favour of a Facebook campaign to promote the global launch of its latest fragrance, Burberry Body… On average, digital makes up 15 to 20 per cent of media spending globally. Burberry’s strategy shows how quickly the fashion industry is moving away from magazines as it seeks to interact with consumers worldwide.”

H&M and Zara Duke It Out for U.S. Online Sales (Forbes)
“Move over brick and mortar expansion tactics, retailers are finally realizing that bottom line growth isn’t always going to come by swelling square footage. Zara and H&M are taking their fast fashion competition online, while Urban Outfitters is jumping into F-commerce (making their Facebook fan page shoppable).”

First look at Carine Roitfeld: Irreverent (Telegraph)
“Ever since Carine Roitfeld stepped down from the role of editor at Vogue Paris, there have been whisperings about what is next in store for her. But now images of one of her first projects have been released and somewhat surprisingly they involve looking to the past, rather than the future.”