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.

While other brands may get more kudos for their digital tactics, Dolce & Gabbana are careful to point out that they were the first luxury fashion brand to have a mobile website (2004), the first to livestream a fashion show (2005), and the first to live stream a fashion show on an iPhone (2009). In a savvy PR move, D&G put bloggers in their front row in September 2009, mixing in Bryanboy and Tommy Ton with Anna Wintour and Suzy Menkes, creating an image that will no doubt stand as visual marker of a watershed season in fashion history.

At the core of this digital innovation is a culture that fosters risk-taking, something that has always been a part of D&G, right back to the time when the business was set up as an entrepreneurial venture in Milan just over 25 years ago. “We are never satisfied,” explained Stefano Gabbana, “maybe this is the trick of always moving forward.”

For his part, Domenico Dolce said that risk-taking is also enabled by the fact that D&G is a private company, which can make decisions as it pleases. “If we have an idea, we use it…we decide what [we] want, when [we] want, in which way we want” to do things, he said.

“It’s a new language,” continued Mr. Dolce, likening it to a time in the late 1970′s when the first generation of Italian mega fashion brands of today, such as Armani and Versace, were just emerging.  “I think today is a very special moment in the fashion business.”

RSS and email subscribers, please click here to watch the exclusive interview with Dolce & Gabbana

Hussein Chalayan S/S 2011 featured in Glamcult | Source: Hussein Chalayan

Hussein Chalayan: The surreal thing (Independent)
“When a designer such as Hussein Chalayan bases his collection on Japan it’s safe to presume that his interpretation will be far from literal: no opulent silk obi sashes tying flat-cut voluminous garments here.”

Marks and Spencer to return to France (Telegraph)
“The British high street stalwart has today announced that it will be returning to the French capital in style, opening a giant, three-storey floor on the fashionable Champs Elysées in the centre of the French capital towards the end of the year.”

Hermès in talks to sell 45 percent Gaultier stake (Reuters)
“Hermès is looking to sever longstanding ties with star designer Jean-Paul Gaultier as the French luxury group has begun talks to sell its 45 percent stake in the Gaultier fashion brand. Hermès… said on Friday it had been approached by potential buyers and was studying all options.”

Dolce & Gabbana acquitted of tax evasion (Telegraph)
“The news follows a preliminary court hearing held in Milan last week concerning accusations that design duo Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana had avoided paying taxes totalling $569 million each.”

Designers Face Uphill Battle When It Comes to Knock-offs (Thread NY)
“Knock offs are nothing new, but the Proenza Schouler bag situation hit a nerve — after all, the design duo has a history of partnering with Target. If they aren’t off limits, who is?”

L-R Alexander McQueen, Chanel Autumn/Winter 2011 | Source: Style.com

Chanel provides the fire, McQueen the ice (Independent)
“The mood in fashion is changing. The sight of a waif-like female stepping out in a heavily embellished, barely-there cocktail dress now seems dated. Lagerfeld’s status as the last of the great, traditionally trained couturiers is undisputed. He is also enough of a modernist, however, to respond to the zeitgeist and his reaction made for impressive viewing.”

Leather Costs Hit by Supply Squeeze (WSJ)
“European luxury-goods companies are bracing for higher hide prices as a rebound in high-end consumption and a swelling middle class in China drive up demand for leather as well as more-exotic skins. U.S. federal data show cattle-hide prices are at their highest level in nearly a decade.”

Bulgari CEO Trapani Says Independent Jewelers Will Struggle (Bloomberg)
“LVMH and large luxury competitors will increasingly dominate the industry as scale and global reach becomes more important, said Bulgari Chief Executive Officer Francesco Trapani. ‘More and more, I think the big groups will be the protagonists of the luxury business,’ said Trapani, who this week announced plans to sell Bulgari to LVMH.D&”

Dolce to Fold D&G Brand Into Main Label (WSJ)
“Italian fashion brand Dolce & Gabbana is planning to fold its secondary D&G brand into the main label… in an effort to limit cannibalization between the two lines. The D&G label will disappear, but the Dolce & Gabbana line will extend its price range to carry lower-priced clothing in addition to its more expensive, tailored collection.”

After the Pressure, the Smoke (NY Times)
“Each day in the Tuileries hundreds of people wait along a carpeted path to see the fashion people arrive for a show… The carpet begins at the Place de la Concorde, so it’s an extremely long walk of shame. There are more people waiting than ever, about 500 or 600, with cameras and microphones, and you can’t believe what they ask.”

Hogan A/W 2011 Presentation | Source: The Business of Fashion

MILAN, Italy — In the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, luxury fashion brands found themselves scrambling to develop strategies for the so-called “new normal.” Logos and conspicuous consumption were out, it was said. Customers were now looking for understated luxury, value and discretion.

And so, in uncanny lock-step syncopation, brands from Louis Vuitton to Gucci to Dolce & Gabbana began a strategic march to the same heritage tune, showcasing their age-old manufacturing techniques in carefully constructed advertising campaigns designed to appeal to notions of timelessness and quality and designing entire collections dedicated to their “iconic heritage.”

But, if the menswear collections just concluded in Milan are any indication, for many fashion brands, the focus on heritage was just another passing trend, in one season and gone the next. The industry has now embraced digital, “the next big thing,” in the same superficial and fleeting way. But generally speaking, if you scratch the surface, their real understanding of digital opportunities and risks is only screen deep.

Yes, Italian fashion has caught the digital bug that has swept across much of the fashion industry over the past 24 months. There are digital screens everywhere you look — alongside the runways at fashions shows, inside the store windows, and even within glass boxes with artfully projected holographic images, as at the A/W 2011 Hogan presentation.

Several brands successfully incorporated digital media into the fabric of their fashion shows. At the beginning of the Ermenegildo Zegna presentation for A/W 2011, we were welcomed to the brand’s “digital world,” which included the use of green screen technology to project the models’ images onto iconic Chinese backdrops like the Great Wall of China, just before the real models came out onto the runway. (In case we didn’t grasp that the images were just projections, the show concluded with a real green screen to hammer home the point that this was all brought to us by the magic of technology.)

Other brands began their fashion shows with film presentations, sometimes with no apparent link to the collections that followed. When quizzed on the puzzling fit between the fun, light-hearted film by Walter Pfeiffer — which drew both catcalls and groans from the gathered fashion masses — and the serious, rugged collection of delectable knitwear conceived by creative director Claire Waight-Keller that followed, Pringle could only cryptically say that it wanted to give artists the freedom to “express their views on Pringle collections and the brand…clarifying our positioning through a multitude of individual viewpoints.”

Fine, but why try to show the two things together if the mood and creative direction of the film and the show were so different? Both the film and the collection were enjoyable enough, but there was no need to force them together just to be on digital trend if they had so little in common. Rather than clarify the brand’s positioning, it created a dissonant experience and left more than a few editors scratching their heads as they walked out of the venue into the crisp Milan evening.

The most successful digital presentations during the Italian menswear season took place at Pitti Uomo, where Gareth Pugh’s tour de force film, projected like a digital fashion fresco on the ceiling of the 800 year old Orsanmichele church, was a powerful combination of Italian cultural history and fashion’s digital future. Who’s On Next winner Andrea Incontri, also showing at Pitti, began his fashion show with a compelling narrative film which artfully showcased his sumptuous accessories, while not coming off as crassly commercial, integrating thematically and logically with the fashion show that followed. The filmmaker and designer had clearly worked together to create one seamless creative presentation, with a consistent message.

While at Pitti, I also had the pleasure of meeting several local Italian bloggers, who reported that many Italian brands — including those that are supposedly amongst the most digitally sophisticated — don’t know how to manage relationships with bloggers. “They’re only interested in inviting the famous foreign bloggers to their shows because it gets them publicity,” I was told by one local blogger. “But still, they send us their press releases and images afterwards, and then wonder why we don’t post them on our blogs,” he continued.

Notably, it was often the brands who weren’t caught up in the digital hysteria, who made the most impact. Even though I spent a scant 10 minutes scanning the goods on offer at Marni’s small but immaculately conceived A/W 2011 presentation, the excellent product has stuck in my head, because I got to touch it and feel it. Umit Benan’s presentation was another breath of fresh air in an otherwise stale Milan Fashion Week. Though the clothes themselves may not have been exceptionally different from what was on offer elsewhere, fused together with the unique narrative challenging the homogeneity of the investment banker set, the collection spoke to me in ways that many others simply did not.

Lest I be too negative, Italian executives I spoke to insisted that they understood that digital was an important consideration for their businesses going forward. Many of them are genuinely curious about how to approach digital and some brands like Dolce & Gabbana — boasting a team of 23 people working on digital projects alone — have invested heavily in digital talent.

But all of this is of little use if brands are simply embracing digital communication as a superficial trend and a way of obscuring a lack of focus on the product and their seemingly limited understanding of how to strategically integrate digital initiatives into a fashion business.

Imran Amed is Founder and Editor of The Business of Fashion

Prabal Gurung Spring/Summer 2011 Runway | Source: Style.com

Stores Cheer Versatile Designs (WSJ)
“Nearly two years after the bottom fell out of the luxury business, retailers are selectively increasing their spending budgets, targeting fashions their core customers will splurge on and key pieces that the still-wary aspirational consumers will find compelling to buy.”

Louis Vuitton tops fashion brand rankings (Just Style)
“The LVMH-owned label maintained its 16th place in the 11th annual rankings of the Best Global Brands, increasing its value by 4% to US$21.9bn.”

Dolce Mentoring (Vogue UK)
“Dolce & Gabbana is launching a new platform highlighting the collections of emerging designers. Opening in Milan this weekend is Spiga2 – a new retail outlet that will house the work of the [designers'] favourite up-and-coming talents.”

A New Location That’s All in How You Use It (NY Times)
“The tents are larger and certainly cleaner than those in Bryant Park, but they don’t necessarily improve the presentations. If [the]smallest, most intimate space at Lincoln Center can’t help the audience engage in the clothes, what hope is there… for American fashion?”

Emma Hill, the Mulberry designer (Guardian)
“Mulberry is a high end but also a quintessentially British brand. Hill herself, though, has spent most of her working in life in New York, designing bags for the likes of Marc Jacobs and Calvin Klein.”

H&M Autumn/Winter 2010 Looks | Source: Style Pantry

Profiling the Value Retailers (WWD)
“Stores, like people, have personalities. Whether that personality determines the customer, or the customer the personality, is one of those chicken versus egg questions that’s a matter of perennial debate (well, at least among retail nerds).”

Selfridges and Dolce & Gabbana in ‘giant falling out’ (Telegraph)
“From next spring, the chain’s department stores will not offer the premium label or its D&G line. There were claims the retailer and the designer parted on bad terms after Selfridges proposed a change to the lines’ in-store positions.”

Men’s Suits Under $500: The New Magic Price Point (WWD)
“There’s a new sweet spot in the men’s suit market. With their popularity bolstered by the lingering recession, branded and private label offerings hovering in the $500 retail range are continuing to gain traction.”

Gap profit beats as sales edge up (Reuters)
“Yet, despite improvements in many lines of business, same-store sales at Gap’s namesake stores in North America, which account for about a quarter of overall sales, continued to slip, falling 4 percent.”

A Paris House and a Playful Street Link (NY Times)
“We’ll see more sites that essentially serve as a bridge between street style and e-commerce… customers want styling tips — and buyers are picking up ideas from visual blogs and user-generated sites that help them present trends.”