Burberry store Chennai India | Source: Luxury Facts

Worst of times prove best for luxury brands (CNN)
“Luxury brands, including fashion label Burberry and vehicle manufacturer Rolls-Royce, have all enjoyed bumper years, recording slump-busting profits that may raise eyebrows among consumers forced to tighten their non-snakeskin belts. Such income surges will dispel doubts raised when markets first began to falter over the resilience of the high-end market.”

Chanel’s Blue-Sky Thinking (IHT)
“Chanel took flight on Tuesday — both in its air travel stage set, inside the Grand Palais, and in the soaring imagination of its summer 2012 haute couture collection, all in blue, like an open sky. Trim and elegant as fantasy air hostesses, the first models were sent out by Karl Lagerfeld, who appeared in front of a mock pilot’s cabin at the end to take his bow.”

Jean-Jacques Picart Shares Four Decades of Fashion Wisdom (WWD)
“In a dense new book comprising 30 interviews with famous names and hidden talents, Paris-based fashion consultant Jean-Jacques Picart gleans life and career lessons — and unearths some candid snapshots of yore that alone are worth the price of admission.”

Osklen, Brazil’s First Global Luxury Brand (Forbes)
“Brazilians are snapping up luxury goods at a staggering rate. Industry sales were up 33% last year to $12 billion. So one would assume that the big, domestic brands would treat Brazil’s own consumers as a priority. Not Osklen, the sought-after maker of sportswear founded in 1989 by the orthopaedic physician Oskar Metsavaht.”

LVMH: daring to ditch the runway circus (FT)
“The Céline  move marks a conscious decision to choose the designer over possible marketing returns from the runway pictures (front row, celebs, backstage) that benefit brands every season, and is the first time I can remember that an LVMH house has done anything like this. Even after John Galliano’s fall, they continued to have major shows for Dior, refusing to miss a season.”

Mickey Drexler | Source: Bu

Lunch with the FT: Mickey Drexler (FT)
“My lunch with Millard S. Drexler, the 67-year-old chief executive of J. Crew, the American clothing brand made world famous by its First Client Michelle Obama, turns out not to be a lunch. Or to be more specific: not just a lunch. It’s lunch, followed by a short walk, a couple of emails and two phone conversations… Typically I find that chief executives of $1.7bn companies such as J. Crew… Are happy to give you the allotted hour and a half or so, then cross you off their to-do list. But Drexler, it turns out, is very consciously not that sort of chief executive.”

Readjusting Our Eye, Again (On the Runway)
“We have at the moment a strong crowd of designers not merely believing in clothes with a modern attitude but also showing us what they mean — and without turning craft into some fetishistic pile of stuff that no intelligent person would consider wanting for a second.”

Online shoe store Spartoo.com projects €100 million turnover this year (TechCrunch)
“This ‘Zappos of Europe’ was founded in France by three young entrepreneurs in 2006, and is now active in 20 countries, including United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands. Today, the company revealed that its internationalization efforts have led to significant growth. In fact, Spartoo.com says it sold more than one million pairs of shoes in Europe in the first months of 2011 (the company offers about 15,000 models and 400 brands).”

Why are we so cuckoo about Coco? (FT)
“There is, it appears, an endless appetite for Chanel (and I am not talking about the quilted bags or the tweed jackets, though those are very covetable) – one that is exponentially greater than for any other fashion designer… What Chanel has that other fashion designers don’t is as basic as the little black dress: a really fantastic narrative. And if history teaches us anything, it’s that narratives – stories that can be passed on through generations – are what lasts.”

A Golden Touch Without the Glitter (NY Times)
“Rather, the shy woman with enviable rocker-messy hair who was sitting, largely unnoticed, in the NoHo restaurant the Smile on a recent sunny Friday morning is Charlotte Ronson, the clothing designer, who in the last few years has quietly and somewhat surprisingly evolved into one of the most successful retail entrepreneurs of her generation.”

Chanel Spring/Summer 2012 | Source: Style.com

Chanel Never Breaks Stride (NY Times)
Suffice to say, the Chanel show had everything, from novel materials to feathered chiffon prints to jackets with ties formed by the linings. (“It’s a stupid idea,” Mr. Lagerfeld said, with a shrug, “but stupid ideas can be good ideas.”) Above all, the Chanel show had no feeling of being stuck. The shapes were agile and youthful, for going places, and that’s really all that matters.

Aging European Brands find second life in China (Red Luxury)
“The rising Chinese middle-class, driven by its strong conscious for status, is gobbling up exhausted European brands re-imagined for their rich histories and royal connections. ‘Chinese are a lot more brand driven than other countries, and also they have rapidly increasing income but their brand product knowledge is sort of behind their spending power. That creates an interesting opportunity,’ said Vincent Lui, a Hong Kong-based partner at Boston Consulting Group.”

Milano Unica, Italy’s Largest Textile Fair, Woos Emerging Designers (Forbes)
“Milano Unica, a biannual textile fair featuring 480 European manufacturers, eager to sell their fabrics and services to a bevy of designers, labels and retailers. For its 13th edition this season, Miano Unica welcomed 21,400 visitors from all over the world… ‘So many young designers are focused on styling rather than materials now,’ says Loro Piana. ‘We have to change that.’”

Elie Tahari Reportedly Near Deal to Buy Catherine Malandrino (Thread NY)
“Many folks outside of the fashion industry mostly know Tahari to be designer with a successful brand that has a broad appeal to customers at department stores. In fact, Tahari actually co-founded Theory in 1997, and then later sold his stake. His business has been reportly been valued at about $500 million.”

‘Think big but start small’ (FT)
“Ms Busquets’ investing style stands apart from more famous venture capital firms, which shower start-ups with tens of millions of dollars, bestowing young companies with colossal valuations. Instead, she doles out small investments as a company needs capital.”

Peter Marino | Source: Peter Marino Architect

The fashion industry depends heavily on a wide variety of creatives apart from just fashion designers. In our new series, The Creative Class, BoF highlights success stories, insights and advice from the most talented creatives working in fashion today.

NEW YORK, United States — “Dude, it’s ninety-five percent hard work!” the black leather-clad Peter Marino told BoF on his rise to the position of luxury fashion’s most influential architect. And work hard he has. Since founding his own architecture firm in New York in 1978, Mr. Marino has designed many of the world’s most forward-thinking retail temples, redefined the luxury flagship experience and established a decades-long tenure as the “go-to guy” for powerhouse firms like Chanel and LVMH.

“My first commissions were from Andy Warhol, Yves Saint Laurent and the Agnelli family,” said Mr. Marino. “Then the fashion world took notice. I started doing retail in the 80’s when Fred Pressman hired me to revitalise Barneys, which was then a sleepy men’s store. We introduced a really novel concept — no one had ever seen anything like it before.”

It was while working for Barneys that Mr. Marino met many of the world’s leading fashion designers: Calvin Klein, Donna Karan, Giorgio Armani, Azzedine Alaïa, Miuccia Prada. “I worked with every single one of those designers to bring their boutiques into Barneys, which was tough, because we wanted a very cool and hip look for Barneys, yet I had to keep the designers happy,” he said. “Somehow, I was able to do that, so I got into it as a career.”

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Chanel Couture A/W 2011 | Source: Ecouterre

LONDON, United Kingdom — Death and disgrace do not often darken the world of fashion. In the case of the first, a designer normally dies long after retirement and his demise is of only local interest. In the case of the second, it rarely happens and can usually be covered up by one means or another. But in the last eighteen months there have been two tragedies that can neither be covered up, nor ignored. They are, of course, the death by suicide of Alexander McQueen and the disgrace of John Galliano at Christian Dior.

Their effect, traumatic enough when the events occurred, have ramifications not merely for London and Paris, but for the whole structure of the international fashion world. And the questions they raise must be answered.

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