Gucci Autumn/Winter 2011 details | Source: Style.com

Sleek and Luxe (IHT)
“‘I wanted to play with color, a little of the 1970s and a lot of irony,’ said Ms. Giannini backstage, after the parade of fabulous Ms. Fox furs in turquoise, purple, rust and lilac wrapped around the shoulders above slim leather dresses or those sporty jackets with pleated culotte skirts that looked a lot like Yves Saint Laurent archives updated.”

The Kiddie Couturiers (NY Times)
““Kiddie couturiers” are perhaps the ultimate, inevitable result of a fashion culture that is obsessed with youth… and a youth culture that is obsessed with fashion…But the fact that fashion has become a field that is so easy for a tween to crack says a lot about how much the perception of a designer has changed. The allure of fashion is no longer the craft, but the flash.”

Saks turns a profit, sees higher sales this year (Reuters)
“Saks reported a quarterly profit as it sold more items at full price and forecast continued sales growth at its established luxury department stores, sending its shares up nearly 5 percent… sales at stores open at least a year rose 8.4 percent in the holiday quarter as shoppers resumed spending on expensive dresses, handbags and shoes.”

A Conversation With Tod’s Owner Diego Della Valle (Huffington Post)
“As the fashion flock moves to Milan for the fall/winter 2011 collections, Tod’s chairman Diego Della Valle, fondly called the Italian Ralph Lauren, talks about his life-long pursuit of Italian excellence, the reason why he bought shares at Saks and his part in keeping the Kennedy legacy alive.”

8 Must Know Fashion Show Producers (Luxury Society)
“[As] blogger’s, stylists and PR teams move across to Milan, we bring you a round up of the must-know event producers behind the catwalks… We investigated major fashion show producers and present a selection from around the globe.”

Tom Ford's Spring/Summer 2011 presentation | Source: Nitrolicious

‘Less Is More’ Is Mattering Most (NY Times)
“‘Why would you want to spend hundreds of thousands on a show when everybody’s on their BlackBerry and the clothes seem secondary… Intimacy, exclusivity and a chance to see the clothes: those are our priorities. We like exposure, but we want a more controlled exposure.’”

Mulberry designer Emma Hill has men’s accessories in the bag (The Australian)
“After a decade-long obsession with women’s ‘it’ bags, could men’s bags become the next powerhouse sellers for luxury brands? The likes of Brioni, Tom Ford and Zegna have recognised… an emerging market for men’s accessories.”

Leading China’s voguish revolution (Telegraph)
“China is shaping commerce, but Asia as a whole is inspiring aesthetics. There has been an ongoing East/West dialogue in fashion since Poiret in the Twenties, but it is again taking hold of the imagination in a manner not seen since the late Eighties.”

Supergroup’s rapid expansion boosts sales (FT)
“The ever-growing popularity of Superdry branded T-shirts, hooded sweatshirts and jackets helped Supergroup nearly double its retail sales in the third quarter. Supergroup, which owns the Superdry… said sales at its retail division grew by 92 per cent to £61.4m.”

Anya Hindmarch announces record year (Telegraph)
“Anya Hindmarch, Britain’s ‘handbag queen’ and one of the Prime Minister’s business ambassadors, has announced record 2010 results for her luxury own name brand, and further growth and expansion in 2011.”

TOKYO, Japan – Just before the fashion world turned its laser focus on New York, a lesser known semi-annual week of fashion shows in Tokyo failed to garner much attention.

Not surprisingly then, a key activity during Japan Fashion Week is listening to other people grumble about Japan Fashion Week. Although Tokyo is one of the world’s most important fashion cities, overflowing with amazing daily dressers, avant-garde masters, and street fashion innovation, the organized collection week has yet to muster up a global impact on par with Paris, Milan, or New York.

And the problem is not just international reception: most of the cooler domestic Japanese brands aren’t even on board.

Long ago, there was a very loose event called Tokyo Collection, which stretched seasonal shows over three months. In 2005, the Japanese government stepped in and concentrated most shows into a single week, enabling foreign buyers and media to stop in briefly and spread the gospel back home. The bureaucrats understandably saw Japan Fashion Week as an important step towards promoting exports for Japan’s domestic designers and apparel producers. They are also generously helping out young designers pay for the costs of a collection show.

That being said, this is fashion, and front-and-centre government sponsorship creates some dissidence in the super chic brand image the event needs to succeed. Fashion weeks elsewhere are about glamour, celebrities, parties and exclusivity. Not Tokyo. The crowd is a strange mix. Front row: trade journalists, foreign invitees, greying bureaucrats and corporate VIPs in boxy suits and company pins. Back row: fashion school students.

Without the mass popular brands (seen at Tokyo Girls Collection) or the internationally-feted Japanese brands like Comme des Garçons, Junya Watanabe, Undercover, and Number Nine or the coolest men’s brands (who intentionally show after JFW), the line-up does attract the Japanese style establishment. Only rarely do editors from the top fashion magazines come by. Since the brands are new (and too artsy for 95% of Japanese women), the week only gets serious coverage from trade publications.

But in light of these issues, the week is actually quite rewarding, and the brands, while not super influential, are on-the-whole interesting.

First and foremost, the total lack of glamour returns attention to the clothing. No one is celebrity-spotting. When the show starts, the crowd gets serious and dedicates themselves to the collection. With no hype to
distract, the week’s gossip and chatter is about cuts, patterns, colours, and materials (and the aforementioned problems with JFW.)

Second, the participating brands are generally artistic and diverse, reflecting many facets of the Japanese fashion experience.

The most dominant aesthetic this season combined Japanese traditional inspiration, organic materials, and soft layered styling. For example, Matohu reinvented the Asian robe as a sexy feminine item, while fur fur looks like finding a treasure chest of earth-toned beauty in your grandmother’s attic. Tiny Dinosaur made men’s suits out of Japanese fusuma door material. Young Aguri Sagimori went achromatic, but still found inspiration in Japan’s literary history by printing tiny Japanese texts as a grey jacquard.

In the opposite corner, there is another set of brands that takes the pop obsession of Tokyo’s streets into a deeper fashion context. mercibeaucoup, imagined a subcontinental ethnic costume made from earth tones over pop comic prints over big pastel solids over classic gingham over trad red-white-and-blue over madras madness over stripes. Zechia did freak-folk pop: psych’ed out planet pattern dresses and multiple-sizes of black-and-white stripes. mint designs, on the other hand, printed newspaper texts in primary blue and red over nylon raincoat material. Mikio Sakabe continued his retro-future Stepford Wife take on 1950s sunny elegance, while G.V.G.V. mixed Helmut Newton superwomen and Futurist geometry.

Overall, Japan Fashion Week does bring out one strength of the Japanese market: the infinite number of small indie brands with unique vision and a low production run. This kind of market fits perfect with a new era of consumers mixing and matching in a search for the most perfect fashion individuality.

JFW may not be the voice of Japanese fashion nor a spawning point for world-conquering designers, but still works quite well as a showcase for some very distinct viewpoints on clothing.

By W. David Marx, Contributing Editor of The Business of Fashion and Chief Editor of Mekas. Photos by Sean Wood, courtesy of Mekas

NEW YORK, United States – While the rest of New York Fashion Week was caught up in its regular Bryant Park frenzy today, designer Marc Bouwer was busy blazing his own fashion trail, exclusively showing his S/S 2009 collection on his website, thereby giving everyone a front row view.

Of course, we have seen other designers, notably Stefano Pilati for YSL (first with menswear, and most recently women’s resort) and Husein Chalayan, create videos to showcase their collections. And, Giorgio Armani made history when he streamed his Armani Prive couture collection for Spring 2007 online, gaining kudos for democratising the storied world of haute couture. Net-a-Porter also innovated by putting up Roland Mouret’s RM19 collection in an online video and commerce site mere hours after showing during Paris Couture.

But Bouwer’s approach is a first for an independent designer without the clout of a YSL or Armani, nor the support of a major online retailer. So, how well did his experiment work?

In short, I was underwhelmed.

I tuned into the Bouwer website today after a long day of shows and, leaving the aesthetic of his collection aside, I found myself wanting something more. Neither did his online presentation have the artfulness of Chalayan’s videos nor did it have the commercial savvy of the RM/Net-a-Porter collaboration, which allowed viewers to order directly from the runway. Rather, it was just a video of women walking down a runway to a soundtrack.

And here’s the kicker. This unimaginative effort still cost up to $100,000, according to an Eyewitness News segment on Bouwer that has shown on repeat in the back seat of New York City taxis this week (though a WSJ article reported that the show cost up to $75,000.)

Either way, while Bouwer’s effort to be innovative is admirable, what’s the point of doing an online show if it doesn’t make a lasting impression?

At the end of the day, a fashion show, online or not, should create a mood that viewers will remember. If designers are going to show their work online, they must not constrain themselves to the format of a traditional fashion show. Rather, they should think out of the box, using all the potential of new media to do something that wasn’t possible before.

Marc Bouwer S/S 2009 courtesy of Marc Bouwer.

Last night I witnessed the intricate ballet of savvy PR and event-planning that has helped build Marc Jacobs into one of the only truly successful, global luxury brands that has been launched in the past 20 years.

It was evidence of the basic human psychological desire to be part of the cool crowd. You know those nightclubs that intentionally keep people waiting outside to give off the impression of being the hot spot of the moment? This was not all that different, except Marc Jacobs has been doing this for almost 20 years, and he has it down to a fine art. Plus, this is not just hype. He has a reputation for delivering collections that will inspire designers and consumers the world over as they adopt his take on of-the-moment coolness. Nobody wants to miss it. It is the hottest ticket in town

Here’s how the night unfolded.

9:00pm – Crowds of guests and press have formed outside the Armory, but nobody is getting in. People are pretty calm, given the show was supposed to  start at this time, except for a French woman who insists she must urgently get in now. She is promptly rebuffed.

9:10pm – The rapidly growing crowd is told by burly security guards to come back at 10:00 when the doors would open. The show would not start before 11:00, they said. KCD publicists assure important buyers and press that they will not lose their seats and that they should go grab a drink. Almost nobody leaves. An old school ice-cream stand outside (with a Kate Spade logo?) serves up helpings to keep the crowd cool. Dodgy freelance papparazi types scour the crowd and big black SUVs like ambulance chasers, desperately looking for recognisable faces. The anticipation builds.

9:19- The doors open 41 minutes earlier than expected. Miraculously. All those people who didn’t leave were right to have stayed. A flood of people pushes inside. A wall of paparazzi await the entrance of major celebrities. Nearby, journalists from fashion channels from around the world are held back by steel barriers, sticking their microphones out to stop the bold and the beautiful to ask them what they think of Marc. I stop to answer questions from Fashion Television. Obviously, everyone thinks Marc is just fabulous. Especially since they are now officially part of the cool crowd. I race to find my colleagues somewhere in the melee.

10:00 – The first of the major celebrities begin to arrive, in what appears to be a carefully choreographed pecking-order. One by one they come, welcomed by an explosion of flash bulbs and then escorted into the Armory by their bodyguards and PRs. Carmen Electra. Courtney Love. Sheryl Crowe. Mischa Barton. Victoria Beckham. Too many to list. They are followed closely by hangers-on and a stream of cameras and young women trying to sell charity t-shirts.

10:05 Everyone else is waiting, watching and gawking at the spectacle unfolding in front of them.  Nobody seems bored or the slightest bit bothered by the wait. Part of the entertainment is what happens beforehand.

10:25 – I am perched (precariously) near a friend in the front row, who explains that since Robert Duffy has started making the rounds to say hello to the high profile guests, the show will begin shortly. I look a couple of people down the row and see Heath Ledger sitting next to Michael Stipe from REM.

10:35 Stipe and Ledger are repeatedly requested to do interviews. Stipe puts on dark glasses when he does the TV spots. I spot Tyson Beckford in the third row.

11:00 . The lights dim and to everyone’s surprise, Marc Jacobs runs out and gives his end of show bow at the beginning of the show. Backwards. Upside down. Inside out. I have seen this concept somewhere else, but can’t quite remember where. Was it India Fashion Week, of all places?

11:01 Even Anna Wintour and the Vogue crowd look amused.

11:02 The models begin to come out, with the most intricate couture-like looks first. Again, this is against the norm. The clothes look interesting. Lots of colour. I am trying to decipher the message. There is always a message with Marc. There are a lot of layers of different clothes being shown in various states of dress and undress. Video screens display the models coming out in their underwear.

11:07 I begin to note that the strength of the show is in accessories, which are on-trend and will be instantly recognisable to Marc Jacobs fans. This is consistent with seasons past. Even if not everyone will "get" the clothes, they will still understand the accessories.

11:19 Look 2 comes out. Only 1 look to go. I see Anna Wintour put her jacket on.

11:20. Show’s over. People race out to beat the crowds while a long queue of journalists wait for an interview with the designer. Once again, it is all choreographed perfectly and Marc only comes out once the journalists have been lined up according to priority. Everyone else races off to the afterparty

12:30 Marc finally shows up to his own party, after having done 1 hour of interviews, only to be greeted by more flashbulbs and more press. Everyone wants a piece of him.

12:40 Marc tries to watch his show video, but people keep interrupting him. I watch as his bodyguard and his PR politely (but firmly) tell people who come up to Marc for too long to move along.

12:45 He is unfailingly polite to people, even to the ones he doesn’t seem to know. He looks tired. This is not an easy life.

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You never know what to expect with Giles. Unlike many other designers, he isn’t overly focused on his "signature", the technique/look that a designer develops over his or her career to the point of near perfection, for which he or she becomes famous. Sometimes, a signature can lead to being pigeon-holed, but for a man with the creative depth and flexibilty as Giles, this is out of the question. Maybe its because Giles seems to be able to execute so well on so many different styles. One season it will be Elsworth Kelly’s geometric colours and the next it will be tight, sexy leopard prints. Why be known for one thing when he is so good at so many things? Giles’ way of getting around this, I think, is that he knows exactly who is designing for, where she will wear his clothes, and why.

With hype like this, and with Christopher Kane nipping at his heels for the title of the reigning King of LFW, there was much pressure on Giles to come up with the goods yet again. All the signs of the dizzying heights of expectation were there:

1. The sometimes pushy, sometimes friendly, eager jostling outside his show. Sharp elbows indeed.
2. The PRs outside were (politely) telling more than one person,  "I am really sorry, but you’re not on the list." People responded with everything in the book: "But I have been working on this show for months", "But I am with Teen Vogue", "But Giles told me to come".
3. Celebrities, fashion icons, buyers and editors packed the front row: Anna Piaggi, Thandie Newton, Jefferson Hack with Anouck Lepere, Lisa Armstrong, Suzy Menkes, Cathy Horyn, Hamish Bowles, Julie Gilhart, Ken Downing, Michael Fink, and more.

The sense of expectation was palpable, and people were literally sitting on the floor and security just gave up on trying to have people clear the aisles. So with all this pressure, the show finally began at 9:00pm.

Would Giles deliver?

It was all about birds of a feather. Giles worked with famous milliner Stephen Jones to create some of the most arresting (and yes, not commercial, but who cares?) headpieces to hit the catwalk, and given the number of hats we have been seeing this season, he had some serious competition. The collection started with leather and shearling pieces and slowly morphed into thick, heavy knits styled over top of more wearable dresses and skirts, followed by vivid short green and orange dresses that will definitely do the rounds of the celebrity party circuit, and finally into the feathery flights of fancy with some  eye-catching couture-style pieces, which seemed to float down the runway. In short, he did it again and the ovation at the end of the show (captured on the video below) underlined yet another creative coup for Giles.

Here are some shots from before, during and after the show.

BEFORE: The crowd waits. Patiently.

Mesh Chhibber of MO Communications slots in the guests in a way that only the smoothest and experienced fashion PR can. / Margot Stilley in her develish shades.

DURING: Let the festivities begin.


Jefferson Hack and Anouck Lepere look on.

Vivid colours.

Hard ruffles.

Evening delight.

AFTER: Backstage perspectives.

Giles Deacon is a fashionista magnet: Anna Piaggi. Dude in Beret. Thandie Newton. Jefferson Hack.

Postscript: So what of the business?

What remains to be seen is how Giles takes all of this talent and potential and commercialises it. Yes, there is the creative directorship of Daks and the new capsule Gold collection for New Look.  But, methinks there is more up Giles’ sleeve, feathered as it is with peacock plumes. Some designers seem to really want to build businesses and spend years building the necessary foundations for long-term commercial success. Others, focus on showcasing the lengths of their creative talents, hoping to be picked up as a creative director of an esteemed Parisian fashion house. Some, of the rarest breed, even manage to do both.

Somehow, the edgy venue and refined collection came together very well in a sort of  modern elegance, best exemplified by a hooded-dress that looked stunning from behind. There were also Lily Cole’s legs in a short sea grey skirt with ruffly pleats. A stream a immacuately cut dresses and trousers followed, each with hints of embellishment (okay, sometimes they were more than hints) and draping. While still a commercial collection you could imagine in the boutiques , it was a stronger statement of Osman’s signature than the last collection, which lacked the maturity that the new collection demonstrated. Some of the skin-tight mini dresses didnt work as well, though they were well-executed.

Selfridge’s are actively supporting Osman, having provided him with a coveted Oxford street window during Fashion Week, provided the venue for his show, and securing exclusivityfor Osman’s collection in London. It is great to see the industry get behind a designer and support him. It benefits both parties – so everybody wins.

Christopher Kane, who only hit the London Fashion Week radar one year ago after winning the best collection award from Harrod’s during the St Martins MA graduate show in February, that is. His collection was a true tour de force, hitting all the right notes, and that included the music from his show going from soft Sunday afternoon in the park to a sexy club on a cheeky Thursday night. How could anyone make golf ball size swarvoski crystals work? Christopher Kane did.

I watched the video here: Christopher Kane, Autumn/Winter 2007.

Here are some photos I took at his graduate collection show last year.

You can read the article here:  http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/12/news/rlon13.php

http://www.swarovskisparkles.tv

Season after season, Swarovski sponsors some of the hottest young talent by giving them free product to use in their creations and sponsorship money to fund catwalk shows. This year, as per usual, London is disproporationately represented in the list of designers. Now you can watch their shows, courtesy of Swarovski, in their full glory – not edited down to digestible bites (or bytes, if you prefer) like on Style.com.

So why dole out all the cash and free product to young designers? For the same reasons the MAC and Saab and many other large companies do the same. Apart from the satisfaction of supporting creative talent, Swarovski also gets its brand associated with hip young designers and the halo effect gives the brand the fashion edge it is aspiring towards.

I wonder if Swarovski will take the site any further after fashion week is over to make further links to the fashion space.