Escada Spring/Summer 2011 | Source: Fanpop

How Escada Clawed Its Way Back From Bankruptcy (Die Welt)
“With Berlin Fashion Week — the first big fashion event of 2012 — just a week away, excitement is mounting in the world of clothing design. The energy is particularly high at Escada, as the Munich-based brand’s new sports line will open the catwalk show in the German capital… But after being written off as dead, the global brand is decidedly back in business. According to Sälzer, turnover for the 2011 business year was some 300 million euros — up 7% over 2010.”

Liz Claiborne cuts outlook, shares drop 12 percent (Reuters)
“Liz Claiborne Inc, which recently announced a name change, cut its outlook for the year as the company expects to push more of its cost cuts to 2013, sending its shares down 12 percent after the bell.”

Parallel lines (FT)
“When Dolce & Gabbana announced in September that its spring/summer 2012 collection for D&G would be its last, it seemed like the death knell for diffusion lines… Yet this season also sees a new generation of what might be called ‘alternative’ lines, created to stand alongside high-end catwalk collections, not exactly as peers but not as second-rate cousins either.”

A Joyous Image Maker Way Before His Time (IHT)
“Mr. Goude, an artistic multitasker as designer, illustrator, photographer and ad man, baptized each transformed graphic as a ‘French Correction’ (a play on the movie title “The French Connection”). But that witty tag only just begins to describe the genius of a man who envisaged the effects of the wired world 25 years before video cameras and computer games became part of everyday life.”

Posh punk: fashion turns the clock back to 1977 (Guardian)
“Designer Karl Lagerfeld picked up the theme by announcing last month he had a crush on so-called ‘posh punk princess’ Alice Dellal, the well-connected daughter of a British millionaire. He chose her to be the face of a spring campaign to sell his latest Chanel handbag.”

Louis Vuitton Singapore | Source: Luxuo

Singapore to the fore (FT)
“‘Until two to three years ago, not much had happened in Singapore’s [fashion and retail] scene,’ says Jean-Baptiste Debains, Asia-Pacific president of Louis Vuitton… But now Singapore, once regarded as Asian fashion’s frumpy step-sister, a place where steamy weather and limited retail options bred a populace most comfortable in beachwear, has seen an unprecedented flurry of developments in the fashion industry.”

Twitter turns up heat on ambitions (FT)
“After overhauling the design and features of its homepage and mobile apps, Twitter is now gently turning up the heat on its ambitions as an advertising business. ‘Twitter is more of a journalistic than a marketing phenomenon,’ says Mark Read, chief executive of WPP Digital, the advertising group. ‘If you talk to newspaper editors and people in the media, they are obsessed.’ By contrast, Twitter is ‘still trying to figure out’ its advertising products, Mr Read says.”

Fashion disaster of its own making (The Standard)
“Italian fashion brand Dolce & Gabbana is notorious. It’s making news headlines here and overseas for the wrong reasons this time – after its flagship shop in Tsim Sha Tsui found itself embroiled in a controversy over photo-taking. The ban reportedly applied to Hongkongers only, while mainland customers were welcome to click away.”

Women cut their way into the manly world of London tailoring (The National)
“If London’s historic bespoke tailoring has traditionally been an almost excessively male environment – all calculated deference, pinstripes and chesterfield sofas, with the puff of cigar smoke lingering in the air and a special, often intimate relationship between a gent and his cutter, much as between a man and his barber – then the pioneering Hall, if only for her sex, might seem out of place.”

A Children’s Story (On the Runway)
“Last year Ms. Parker-Barker and her husband decided to create a children’s line, with Cameron building the site. ‘I just had a hard time finding non-graphic T-shirts for our son and things that didn’t have trucks on them,’ she said. She also felt that boys’ clothes looked too boxy. ‘It’s that age-old feeling of ‘there’s nothing out there, let’s make something,’ she said.”

Alexander McQueen Spring/Summer 2004 | Source: Fashionist

They Shoot Fashion, Don’t They? (Huffington Post)
“The fascination with the spectacle of fashion that McQueen (amongst other designers) brought to the catwalk arena lies at the purposeful core and messages of the exhibition. If one may doubt the intentions behind exhibiting clothes and photos related to the current phenomenon that is the catwalk fashion show, the clever irony of such a display is certainly not lost on those that see the mirroring value and critique of celebrity and glamour in the same way that Pollack or McQueen did.”

Sowind Reaps Fruit of Merger With PPR (NY Times)
“François-Henri Pinault’s PPR, the owner of a number of high-fashion brands including Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent and Alexander McQueen, increased its stake in the Sowind Group to 50.1 percent from 23 percent over the summer, gaining a controlling stake in the Swiss family-owned watchmaker group. For Sowind, which owns the high-end watch brands Girard-Perregaux and JeanRichard, the benefits of coming into the PPR fold were “huge” in terms of growth capacity and marketing.”

On the front row at the inaugural Tel Aviv Fashion Week (Telegraph)
“It was a scrum just when it seemed that the British journalists’ reflexive line-forming would be trounced by the natives’ more rambunctious approach, Dorit Bar Or, the designer of Pas Pour Toi, appeared… And ushered us past the bouncers…. You won’t find Miuccia Prada or even Christopher Kane pushing their own rails or haranguing journalists, however good-naturedly. Eventually, Israeli designers may learn to play the international game, but meantime, their way is far more entertaining.”

Dolce & Gabbana head back to court in tax evasion case (Telegraph)
“Italy’s equivalent of the Supreme Court in Milan has overturned a judge’s decision from April this year not to proceed with a trial, and to dismiss accusations against Domenico Dolce, Stefano Gabbana and five other defendants over alleged tax evasion offences totaling €416 million.”

Big Small Business: Maria Cornejo Talks Staying Small (Style.com)
“American Express’ Small Business Saturday (11/26), which returns for its second iteration this year to bring awareness (and hopefully, customers) to local businesses, may be the weekend’s best shopping bet… It’s important for me, for my own creativity, to have our own point of view in the whole market. Being a small business, you’re offering a different a point of view that hasn’t been offered everywhere else.”

Prada Spring/Summer 2012 | Source: Style.com

The Roman Spring of Ms. Prada (On the Runway)
“Miuccia Prada spent her summer vacation in northern Argentina. Karl Lagerfeld was at home in St.-Tropez, ducking camera-snapping tourists. Somehow, though, their spring collections brought us all to Italy, or at least our idea of an Italian holiday. Neither show was a movie-still occasion, but the cottony, upswept hair and glitter-coated eyelids at Fendi might make you think of a 1960s film star. The collarless, knee-length satin coats and pleated chiffon dresses at Prada did the same.”

Nike sees strong worldwide demand (Reuters)
“Nike Inc staved off margin pressure in the first quarter with strong revenue and price increases, and said it was confident about its position among peers as it heads toward the winter holidays… The world’s biggest athletic shoe and clothing maker topped Wall Street’s profit and sales estimates, and its shares rose more than 5 percent in after-hours trading.”

Milan floats a big idea (FT)
“Recently a new fashion store opened in Milan. This would not in itself be a notable occurrence, especially during fashion week, but this is a vast, 43,000 sq ft ‘directional emporium’… This is Excelsior, Italy’s first upscale concept department store in the Selfridge’s/ Barney’s mode.”

Milan fashion week: Dolce and Gabbana call an end to D&G (Guardian)
“Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, Milan fashion week’s kings of bling, can make anything look glamorous – even the usually rather downbeat business of closing a 26-year-old fashion label. Thursday’s D&G catwalk show, right, was as ever a carnival parade of bouncy, youthful glamour. D&G is the younger sister label to Dolce & Gabbana, and the D&G aesthetic has always appeared to be aimed at a woman with the taste of a cheerleader and the bank balance of a CEO.”

Kanye West recruits London students for debut fashion collection (Guardian)
“Somewhere in London, a nightclub full of fashion graduates are working for Kanye West. The rapper has reportedly recruited Central Saint Martins students to work on his Paris fashion week collection. Next week West is expected to make his prêt-à-porter debut, unveiling, er, something at the fashion world’s most important autumn/winter event.”

MILAN, Italy — The Business of Fashion is pleased to share the first ever in-depth video interview with Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, discussing the digital strategies that in 5 short years have transformed D&G from a “closed” brand to an “open” brand, where digital is now intertwined into the DNA, providing realtime, behind-the-scenes access via three separate Twitter accounts, a Facebook fan page with more than 3 million fans, a slew of digital content initiatives including Swide.com, and a new online store for the Dolce & Gabbana mainline that launches today.

Speaking exclusively to BoF founder Imran Amed at an interview recorded in June at London’s Mandarin Oriental Hotel, monsieurs Dolce and Gabbana speak candidly, not only about the way they use digital technology in their business, but also how it has impacted their own lives, and how this has changed the way they work with each other, and with their teams.

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