The Real McCoy's Tokyo | Source: One and Beyond

Made Better in Japan (WSJ)
“Louis Vuitton sales are plummeting, and magnums of Dom Pérignon are no longer being uncorked at a furious pace. That doesn’t mean the Japanese have turned away from the world. They’ve just started approaching it on their own terms, venturing abroad and returning home with increasingly more international tastes and much higher standards, realizing that the apex of bread making may not be Wonder Bread–style loaves, but pain à l’ancienne.”

Luxury brands long to bond with China’s elite (FT)
“Chinese shoppers have become a fixture of the luxury retail scene in the US and Europe, drawn by prices that can be up to 50 per cent lower than tax-elevated levels at home. But many upscale brands have yet to bond with the truly wealthy – China’s million millionaires.”

A fashion revolution? (FT)
“By far the most exciting thing I saw last week during the couture in Paris wasn’t couture at all, but a website that launches today: www.honestby.com. The brainchild of Belgian designer Bruno Pieters, late of Hugo Boss, it is the most subversive etail initiative I have seen.”

CFDA Controversy (Vogue)
“The CFDA has caused controversy after deciding to relocate its offices from New York’s beloved Garment District to Bleecker Street – a move designers have described as a snub to the area – a location that the organisation has always tried to protect and promote through initiatives such as Fashion Incubator and the Made In Midtown study.”

Custom shirts, cut from a different cloth (LA Times)
“Custom-made men’s dress shirts were once considered the privileged peacockery of the moneyed set… Thanks to advances in technology, a competitive market and consumer demand, custom clothing has moved within the barrel-cuffed arm’s reach of the common man.”

Hermès Canton Road | Source: B on brand

Behind the brands (China Daily)
“A survey confirms China’s luxury goods buyers are young and keen on pampering themselves.Gan Tian reports… The focus of this year’s survey is in line with China’s luxury industry profile, where the majorityof buyers are aged between 20 and 30 – significantly younger than their counterparts inWestern countries or nearby Japan.”

Mulberry profits boosted by overseas growth (Reuters)
“British luxury fashion brand Mulberry said its first-half profit more than trebled, boosted by global expansion, and said it was cautiously optimistic about the future while acknowledging the challenging macroeconomic climate. The company, which designs, manufactures and sells leather goods and accessories, posted pretax profit of 15.6 million pounds in the six months to Sept 30, up 231 percent.”

The CFDA Refuses to Shorten New York Fashion Week (The Cut)
“The CFDA has agreed to move New York Fashion Week back a week for September 2012 (to run from September 6 to September 13), and also start on the second Thursday in September in 2013 and 2014, as Milan requested. However, it rejected Milan’s demand to shorten New York Fashion Week.”

Facebook Fashion Index Ranks Brands by ‘Likes’ (WWD)
“When it comes to getting ‘likes’ on Facebook, Converse is a pro. In November, Converse continued to hold the number-one spot among fashion brands in Facebook “likes,” at 20,985,796, up 0.38 percent from October. Coming in at number two was Adidas, which had 11,397,425 “likes,” up 0.86 percent from October, according to a survey on Stylophane.com.”

Ohne Titel Stands Alone (Interview)
“Flora Gill and Alexa Adams of Ecco Domani Award-winning womenswear line Ohne Titel have always wanted to showcase their structured high-impact garments in an environment that echoes their strong look. Hence their excitement when New York-based arts and culture nonprofit BOFFO selected them to participate in its second annual Building Fashion Project. “

Steven Kolb | Photo: Carly Otness/BFAnyc.com

PARIS, France — The fashion world is in a tizzy. Ever since the Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana (CNMI) laid down the gauntlet, scheduling next autumn’s Milan Fashion Week from September 19th to 24th, a massive rift has emerged amongst the fashion fraternity.

New York Fashion Week, organised by the Council for Fashion Designers of America (CFDA), is scheduled to start on the 13th of September and conclude on the 20th. London Fashion Week, organised by the British Fashion Council (BFC), is supposed to run from the 21st to the 24th. But based on the dates currently being proposed for Milan Fashion Week, which the CNMI insist were communicated back in 2010, Milan would not only conflict with the end of New York Fashion Week, but completely overlap with London. Paris Fashion Week, organised by the Fédération française de la Couture, du Prêt à Porter des Couturiers et des Créateurs de Mode (known informally as the Chambre Syndicale), would follow Milan, and begin on the 25th. In short, it’s a jumble of acronyms and national organisations trying to oversee what is effectively a fashion month for a global industry.

In response to this serious scheduling problem, Jonathan Newhouse, Chairman of Condé Nast International issued a statement: “We at Condé Nast do not want the schedule to be changed. We very much oppose moving the Milan shows earlier so that they overlap or conflict with the London fashion shows — or with the New York fashion shows or those of any market,” he said, adding that various international editors of Vogue would not attend a Milan Fashion Week that conflicted with its counterparts. Milan has not budged on the 2012 dates, but they have proposed to discuss the 2013 dates.

Contrast this dispute with my surroundings as I sat down for tea with Steven Kolb, chief executive of the CFDA, on a park bench in Paris’ Palais-Royal, surrounded by stores from fashion brands from all over the world. It was clear proof of the global nature of our industry, as CFDA President Diane von Furstenberg articulated a few days ago in an open letter to the fashion community. “We share the same goals as Milan, Paris, and London,” she wrote. In other words, pitting fashion weeks against each other is like the fashion industry feeding upon itself.

Mr. Kolb was in town for “Americans in Paris,” inspired by the British Fashion Council’s “London Showrooms” concept, a perfect example of how fashion weeks can learn from each other. It’s the latest in a slew of CFDA initiatives designed to support America’s burgeoning young fashion talents, including Prabal Gurung (Nepali), Sophie Theallet (French) and Simon Spurr (British), all of whom came to America from other countries. It’s an international fashion world after all.

I met with Mr. Kolb while all this fashion week in-fighting was only just simmering, and had yet to reach boiling point. But nonetheless, it became an important part of our conversation, along with the future of fashion week more generally and the prospects for young fashion designers in America.

… Continue Reading

Is Digital Killing the Luxury Brand? (Adweek)
“Just a few years back, most high-end fashion brands distrusted all things digital. Their fear was understandable. Digital is democratizing; it’s about accessibility. The brand image for high-end fashion is all about inaccessibility: Keep the masses out so that the people who can afford to buy their way in feel they’re exceptional.”

Don’t Look Back or Ahead (NY Times)
“‘There is so much pressure in the business to be something or not to be something, people dictating what I should be or do next, that you can get drunk on all the voices,’ said Mr. Panichgul, 36. ‘I don’t want to be just a product of the hype, being categorized as ‘Michelle Obama’s designer.’ So what I’ve learned to do is to focus on what’s in front of me right now, on what I’m doing today and not tomorrow, where I am now.”

Eyes on the prizes (FT)
“‘The market was severely affected by the September 11 attacks: designers had lost their show venues and everything was at a standstill,’ says Steven Kolb, the chief executive of the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA)… As a result, Kolb, along with the editor-in-chief of American Vogue, Anna Wintour, decided something needed to be done, and in 2003 the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund, an award for globally expanding designers with at least two years’ domestic business experience, was born.”

S Korea luxury: beyond the obvious (FT)
“Korea is still a good place for fashion houses – luxury sales have been up about 12 per cent each year since 2006 – but they must adapt to changing trends. Intriguingly, several luxury goods makers note Korean culture is becoming so hip around Asia and beyond thanks to TV dramas and music, that they need a strong foothold in Seoul to identify trends that could spread from there.”

Bright future: Louise Gray (Independent)
“In London, there is currently a vogue for the work of young Scottish fashion designers – with Christopher Kane, Jonathan Saunders and Louise Gray leading the charge… After graduating in April 2007, Gray almost immediately became involved with Fashion East – Lulu Kennedy’s 10-year-old initiative, which provides financial and business support for emerging designers.”

The gospel according to Forever 21 (Guardian)
“This is the American fashion chain run as a family business, the chain that, thanks to its “pile very high, sell very cheap” operation, has been a phenomenal success, with profits (in 2008) of $135m despite the fact that nothing it sells costs more than $65.”

Mulberry Tops Fashion Retailers on Sales Boom (Bloomberg)
“The 40-year-old British luxury-handbag maker, is the world’s best-performing fashion retail stock over the past year… Investors are betting Mulberry…will join the likes of Burberry Group Plc as an iconic luxury brand.”

Designs on Doha (FT)
“Muslimah dress restrictions have paved the way for an accessories boom in the Middle East. For affluent young women here, however, designer accessories are not symbolic of money or aspiration but are simply the norm. So they increasingly seek out unfamiliar territory in the form of emerging designers.”

Sitting in the lap of luxury (China Daily)
“While consumers in Japan, the United States and Europe are scrimping on luxury goods, the swelling ranks of big spenders in China are taking in whatever the “haute” houses in Paris or Milan can serve up… Luxury brands feel no constraint in boosting their prices to cover rising costs and foreign exchange losses.”

Designers Revisit Copyright Protection (On the Runway)
“…Five years into a campaign by the Council of Fashion Designers of America to enact some sort of protection for original designs…One of the biggest differences in the new bill is that designers would have to prove that a copy is “substantially identical” to their originals, rather than “substantially similar.”