The Costume Institute's Savage Beauty | Source: Courtesy

Alexander McQueen in All His Dark Glory (IHT)
“The exhibition, which celebrates Mr. McQueen’s wild, unfettered and dark imagination: gothic Victoriana, dresses tufted with blood-red feathers, decorated with dying flowers or rattling with clamshells. The weird, wonderful accessories alone send a tingle down the spine.”

PPR to buy Volcom for $607.5 million (Los Angeles Times)
“Richard Woolcott, Volcom’s chief executive, called PPR the ‘perfect partner’ to take the brand to the next level. Volcom designs and distributes surf, skate and snowboard clothing and related products for young men and women under the motto ‘youth against establishment.’”

Sites That Send Shoppers What They Might Like (NY Times)
“The sites are the latest example of retailers inventing new ways to shop online… these shopping clubs aim to filter the seemingly infinite options online and show a small selection, catered to an individual’s taste.”

Pierre Cardin Ready to Sell His Overstretched Label (WSJ)
“At 88 years old, Mr. Cardin says he wants to sell his business to ensure it outlives him. ‘I want to sell it now,’ Mr. Cardin said in an interview in his corner office overlooking the French presidential palace. ‘I know I won’t be here in a few years and the business needs to continue.’”

Trend-spotting is the new £36bn growth business (Telegraph)
“In an era of social media and hyper-connectivity, trend forecasting is becoming more and more important for business. And it is therefore also becoming a big and highly competitive business.”

Brooks Brothers Spring/Summer 2011 | Source: Brooks Brothers

A Hard-Working Suit (WSJ)
“There are more suits priced between $500 and $700 that include features once found typically on more expensive suits: fine Italian fabrics, modern cuts and narrow lapels. The goal is to attract younger men who increasingly want the current fitted, formal styles as opposed to the boxy suits and more casual officewear of their dads.”

Online clothing sales double (Telegraph)
“Over a third of consumers have brought some of their clothes over the internet in the last year, proving that internet fashion shopping – once dismissed as something that would never take off – has come of age. Last year £4.3 billion worth of clothes were bought over the internet, a growth of 152 per cent in the last five years.”

Eye On Shanghai, The Fakes (Jing Daily)
“China is the world production center for counterfeit goods (it is estimated that 85 percent of the world’s imitations are made here). Foreign businesses are lobbying with the government to halt this black beast of a market, to deter significant dents in figures related to employment and gross national product. These are just some of the complex concerns at hand, alongside child labor and copyright infringement.”

Fit for a (future) king (FT)
“Oh, the missed opportunity! Does the royal family not care enough for the British tailoring industry to want to take this singular moment to promote it? After all, retail analysts Verdict are predicting the royal wedding could boost the UK economy by around £620m – and shouldn’t men’s wear get a piece of that?”

Prada Fondazione: Rotor’s ex limbo (Dazed Digital)
“Amidst the clothes, models, celebrities, and theatrical staging, the literal nuts and bolts holding up a fashion show, the sets are often one of the least notable elements of the spectacle. Art collective Rotor specialise in bringing forth the remnants of a world that, after a moment of meaningful splendour, is discarded.”

E. Tautz Spring/Summer 2011 | Source: E. Tautz

Menswear’s Formal Acceptance (WSJ)
“Jeremy Langmead, editor in chief of the recently unveiled men’s retailing website Mr Porter, thinks the tailoring turnaround heralds a return to the desire for rules. ‘If you have parents who grew up in the ’60s and ’70s, they already rejected all the rules where dressing was concerned. This is a new generation who is interested in learning how to tie a Windsor knot. You can’t rebel by wearing the clothes your dad wore.’”

Gap Seeks to Freshen Itself as a ‘People’s Brand’ (WSJ)
“Remember when Gap advertising was entertaining and effective… Yes, and remember the Clinton presidency? It may be an exaggeration that the Gap division of Gap Inc. has had no outstanding marketing since the 1990s. But Gap has been struggling for years to figure out how to attract younger consumers as well as win back those who have stopped shopping there.”

Burberry To Join China’s Digital Revolution (Jing Daily)
“Burberry has intensified its digital push into China to match its brick-and-mortar offensive, launching official accounts on four Chinese social media platforms (Kaixin001, Douban, Youku, Sina Weibo)… their April 13 fashion bash in Beijing set to include virtual image technology that combines live models, animated footage and holograms, music performances, and live-streaming via Burberry.com.”

Ecommerce up 16 percent year-over-year (Luxury Daily)
“‘As fuel prices rise beyond the $3.50 per gallon mark, miles driven begin to drop off substantially, giving shoppers more incentive to stay home… More generally, consumers are becoming more comfortable with the online shopping experience… We see this not just with luxury, but also with clothing and footwear, where generous return policies have made it easy to exchange items.’”

Fashion 101: Rent The Runway Targets Students (WSJ)
“Now that Facebook and cellphone photos record every outing, no woman wants to wear the same outfit… This is fertile ground for Rent The Runway, a year-and-a-half-old company that rents designer dresses and jewelry to women—and increasingly, to girls. College campuses—and even a few elite prep schools—make up roughly 25% of the company’s business and are a big source of its growth.”

Bryanboy | Illustration: Moises Quesada

Blogging from Manila to Milan (WSJ)
“Bryan Grey-Yambao, a 24-year-old Filipino based in Manila, began blogging from his parents’ home in Manila in 2004. He is one of the biggest names among a new, increasingly influential crop of fashion bloggers — with their own commercial contracts, front-row seats at fashion shows and multipage spreads in magazines.”

In Eco-Jeans, the Green Becomes Harder to Spot (New York Times)
“Two years ago, when going green was red-hot in the fashion industry, there were plenty of organic jeans to choose from. Today, none of the brands do. Which raises the question: Where has all the organic denim gone?”

Jiang Qiong Er, Shang Xia’s CEO & artistic director (Luxury Society)
“Beyond the industry’s collective marvel at the foresight of the firm to bolster its export of Hermès goods into China by inventing a domestic Chinese luxury brand to boot, there is much more that the Shang Xia brand is destined to achieve besides just filling the Hermès coffers. Shang Xia’s visionary co-founder, Jiang Qiong Er, explains why.”

Forecast 2011: Menswear’s e-commerce success story (Monocle)
“With sales having increased by 11.4 per cent over the first two weeks of November 2010 alone, e-commerce is one of the fastest growing sectors in retail. And, this year it’s the men’s market that will see the greatest change.”

eBay Takes a Page From the Glossies (New York Times)
“[Andrea] Linett began a new job this week as the creative director of eBay Fashion. One of her responsibilities is to enliven the experience of online shopping at a site that often feels more like a digital flea market.”

LONDON, United Kingdom — London, of course, is widely known in the fashion world for its unbridled creativity and superb emerging fashion talent. But, increasingly, it could also be described as fashion’s Silicon Valley, with a growing number of innovative fashion ecommerce startups sprouting in the city, following in the footsteps of the ultimate luxury e-tailing pioneer, Net-a-Porter.com.

During my visit to Vienna for the 9 Festival for Fashion & Photography, I had the privilege of hosting a discussion amongst some of the newest fashion e-tailers on the London scene, bringing together Sarah Curran, CEO of my-wardrobe.com, José Neves, CEO of farfetch.com and Stephanie Phair, Director of theoutnet.com.

Thanks to our easy-to-use Flip Video Mino, we managed to capture some of the most poignant responses from our illustrious panel and are pleased to share them with you in the coming weeks. First up: How are your clients changing their shopping habits in the downturn?

RSS and email subscribers, click here to watch the video.