Narciso Rogriguez, designer of Caroline Bessette Kennedy’s wedding dress, and Liz Claiborne, the purveyor of everything from Juicy Couture tracksuits to Lucky jeans, announced today that Liz Claiborne Inc has taken a 50% stake in Mr Rodriguez’s namesake label.

Of late, we haven’t seen that many large fashion conglomerates take an interest in growing small high-end businesses. This particular partnership is also of interest because on the surface, there does not seem to be a natural match between Narcisco’s target market of luxury customers (who buy his collection at Neiman Marcus, Saks, Bergdorf Goodman and Barney’s) and Liz’s connections and expertise with lower priced Contemporary and Bridge labels (which are distributed much more broadly in stores like Bloomingdales, Macy’s and JC Penney). However, with the funding power and clout of a large strategic partner behind him, Narcisco may finally realise his aims to build a global brand. According to an article in today’s WWD, Liz’s strategy for the brand does not  include repositioning Narciso’s label to a lower price point, but rather to stick to the current high-end positioning of his designer collection while leveraging the Narcisco Rodriguez brand in licensing and non-apparel categories, where Liz has a great deal of expertise.

© 2007 Copyright Imran Amed – The Business of Fashion.

In Canada, many young aspiring fashionistas cut their teeth on Fashion Television (or FT), hosted by Jeanne Beker. I accidentally happened upon the site recently and came across a veritable treasure trove of video content that is relevant to some of the topics recently debated and discussed on The Business of Fashion:

Fashion blogging
Any regular readers of this blog know that I have been a big fan of the Sartorialist, aka Scott Schuman, since I first came across his site almost two years ago. His was the first blog of any sort to really catch my attention because there was something really powerful about seeing clothes that are styled by real people on the street. It brings the clothes to life in a way that high-fashion editorial sometimes cannot.  FT does a great video profile of Scott that allows you to see how The Sartorialist came to be, explains how Scott thinks about his work and reveals that The Sartorialist is now receiving over 1.3 million page views per month. [You can see my own Sartorialist moment here]

The Sartorialist blog also opened my eyes to the potential of what the democracy of blogging could do for a fashion business, particularly emerging businesses with limited profiles and advertising budgets.  What if, for example, you could mouse over a sweater you like in one of Scott’s photos and could discover who designed the sweater and where you could buy it online through phototagging (just like you can tag people in your photos on Facebook.com)? Its Fashion 2.0 folks and its only going to get more interesting.

There is a lot more discussion of the fashion blogosphere is in this video overview narrated by Jeanne Beker, highlighting the pros and cons of the fashion blogging phenomenon, which some say has resulted in a reported 2 million fashion blogs. Jeanne speaks to some of the world’s leading fashion critics  (Cathy Horyn of the New York Times, Kate Betts from Time magazine, and Colin McDowell from the Sunday Times) to get their views on what blogging has done for them. She also speakss to the (love-him-or-hate-him) blogstar Perez Hilton.

Tom Ford’s new store on Madison Avenue
FT also gives us a peek into the much-discussed Madison Avenue flagship recently opened by Tom Ford, and heavily criticised by some observers for being too exclusive and too expensive. Tom Ford gives Jeanne a personal tour of the store which provides some of Tom’s own thinking on what he was trying to accomplish with the store. Jeanne does go through the price points in the store, which are truly astronomical,  including personalised underwear for $75.

Mentoring emerging designers
When emerging designers talk to me about setting up their own businesses, I often encourage them to try to get some time working in the studio of an established design house first.  This video outlines the mentorship of young proteges including Yves Saint Laurent (mentored by Christian Dior) to Francisco Costa (mentored by Calvin Klein) to Narcisco Rodriguez (mentored by Donna Karan). You can see how some of the industry’s biggest names of today started their careers as apprentices to some of the biggest names from yesteryear.

© 2007 Copyright Imran Amed – The Business of Fashion. 
Scott Shuman photo courtesy of FT.

Top fashion business links for the week of 30 April, 2007:

New York Times – No Store is a Hero to its Valet
Either the New York Times really has it in for Tom Ford (perhaps he spurned and interview request or declined an editors request for a discount?) or there is a real issue with Tom Ford’s new eponymous business. First, Cathy Horyn criticized Ford’s new business for being too niche and too grand (after Ford had provided her with a private tour – you can’t buy this woman’s vote) and today, in its Critical Shopper feature, Horacio Silva pans the store for confusing "exclusionary for exclusive."

Modabot.de – Brave New Internet World – How the Internet is changing the Fashion Universe
Fashion 2.0 is a hot topic. The Business of Fashion recently advocated that big fashion brands should consider the Internet an avenue that they should be cruising down, albeit with necessary caution. Over at Modabot.de, the Berlin-based fashion blog for avantgarde fashionistas, they delve into the topic with vigour, providing a 360 degree view of the fashion blogosphere and some of the new social shopping sites that are bound to change the way consumers shop forever, if not now, then certainly in the years to come.

Style.com – Gathering Moss
Sarah Mower at Style.com provides a witty and always insightful peek into the Kate Moss for Top Shop event this week. This is no small business. Philip Green has managed to make this line a pilot project for expanding Top Shop to other markets, particularly the US. Not only will the line bow at Top Shops around the world, it will also be sold at Colette in Paris, Barney’s in America and 10 Corso Como in Milan. Mr. Green was even on hand to provide some sales assistance himself. Clearly, this is a business he is counting on.

The Daily Telegraph – Farewell to Floaty and Flirty
Is this a harbinger of Chloe’s fast fall, after its fast rise on the fashion scene? At the Daily Telegraph, they have joined the chorus of people questioning the design direction taken by new Chloe’s new Creative Director, Paulo Melim Andersson. One can definitely appreciate a bit of Marni heritage in the collection he showed for A/W 2007, but the question is whether Chloe loyalists are brand faithful or design faithful. As the Telegraph points out, if it is the latter, then there are plenty of other places for girly girls to look for the look that Chloe has become known for over the past 10 years. Clearly, for a large fashion house like Chloe, a change in creative direction like this should be considered carefully as part of a broader strategic exercise. This is no less important to a fashion business than an airline choosing to fly to a new market (did you know Virgin flies to Nairobi?), a cola company changing their age old formulation (New Coke, anyone?), or Colonel Sanders tweaking the KFC recipe (do you like your chicken more crispy?).

Last week, Tom Ford launched his much-awaited menswear collection at a brand new New York flagship, where he provided personal tours to the fashion elite, including Bernard Arnault of LVMH and Cathy Horyn of the New York Times.

It seems that while Cathy was impressed, she didn’t necessarily understand the business rationale for Tom’s decision to focus solely on the most elite niche of the menswear market, i.e. men who are willing to spend upwards of $3000 on a suit. Tot top it all off, Ford has supplemented the purchase of the suit with a truly luxurious environment (read expensive capital expenditure and rent) to provide a truly unique tailoring experience.

Will Mr Ford be able to work his Gucci magic again? There is an interesting discussion speculating on this topic in the comments section of Cathy Horyn’s post.

Although I don’t always agree with her critical opinions, I have really been enjoying reading Cathy Horyn’s new blog for the New York Times: On the Runway. Not only does Cathy use a more casual (sometimes downright catty) voice than in her NYT reviews, she has also started to attract a real community of fashion lovers who are engaging with each other (and with Cathy) actively through blog comments. Several characters have started to develop in the "On the Runway" community, including Autre, who has clear and well-stated views on many of the collections that Cathy has reviewed and on her reviews themselves. A veritable online frenzy often ensues, debating everything from Miucca’s fabrics and Dries’ prints to Stefano’s cuts and Christopher’s crystals.

It was very smart of the NYT to supplement its traditional fashion coverage with this community concept through Horyn’s blog. It is the first successful execution I have seen on the NYT site to build a targeted community (read: loyal audience for advertisers) to take it beyond the transactional way most of us use to interact with news media. Instead of quickly digesting articles and then clicking somewhere else, readers are compelled to stay and engage each other in further discussion. This inevitably does lead to more clicks and return visits to the site, and much of it is driven through that oft-spoken-of concept of user-generated content.

I have been seeing this more and more on many news sites, including The Globe and Mail which enables comments for even its regular articles, through which sometimes hundreds of comments are posted. Style.com has also been working with the Sartorialist, who has a dedicated section on the site — though for some reason, people here don’t seem to be engaging as much — especially when compared to the passionate conversations on the Sartorialist’s own blog.

In a previous blog on the business of blogging, I spoke of how many fashion editors are being asked to write blogs in addition to their regular responsibilities. Not everyone is happy about it. But, having seen Horyn’s blog and the proliferation of new fashion content on the Internet, this seems to be the only way the traditional players are going to be able to keep up with the upstarts. However, it’s the old adage of "Content is King" that still prevails. Only so long as the content remains good will this strategy prevail. I look forward to seeing where Cathy takes the blog in the future.