Benetton Unhate campaign | Source: Foto Telegraf

Benetton to make decision on delisting (FT)
“The Benetton family will decide at a board meeting on Wednesday whether to delist the Italian knitwear group known for its brightly coloured jumpers after the company posted another plunge in profits as it struggles to compete with Inditex and H&M.”

Luxury Companies That Can Bring You Closer to the Good Life (Money Morning)
“A lot of consumers are hurting right now, but you wouldn’t know that looking at the earnings of major luxury companies. Many luxury companies like LVMH Moet Hennessey Louis Vuitton, Burberry, Hermès, and Coach Inc had a stronger-than-expected 2011 campaign.”

Bright Young Things (Vogue)
“The British Fashion Council has announced the launch of International Fashion Showcase – a platform for international emerging designers – which will take place during London Fashion Week. Nineteen embassies and cultural institutes across London will display work from over 80 rising designers, spanning the world from Belgium to Botswana.”

The Finnish Fashion Blogger Who Landed A Deal With Diesel (Business Insider)
“Sandra Hagelstam, 24, is the founder of the hot fashion blog 5inchdesandup.com. She started blogging to create a daily log of what she wears… ‘(The blog) has opened up doors for me I never would have imagined in terms of being able to design my own collection and collaborate with others.’”

Divided they stand: the new extremists (Telegraph)
“This may look like a classic case of Roundhead versus Cavalier. Or Minimalist meets Maximalist. But that’s too simplistic.Neither Mary Katrantzou or Osman Yousefzada can be that easily pigeonholed.”

JUMA Inspiration | Source: JUMA

TORONTO, Canada — Following our piece on Vancouver’s Digital Olympics earlier this week, it only makes sense that the BoF Spotlight should focus on the Great White North for our monthly inspiration from emerging designers. This month I turned to long-time friends of BoF, Alia and Jamil Juma.

The designer brother-and-sister duo are based in Toronto, not Vancouver, though they have called both cities home. They are of South Asian ancestry via Africa, having grown up tied-at-the-hip all over the world, from Los Angeles to Kinshasa, and even Almaty, Kazakhstan. Indeed, the only time they have lived apart was in university, but still only 5 hours away from each other in Toronto and Montreal. That’s a mouthful of cities to have lived in for a couple of thirtysomethings.

Jamil and Alia are symbiotic sponges of the cities they live in, soaking in inspiration from their surroundings and feeding off of each other, and reflecting the cultural diversity of Toronto. In the suburban neighbourhood of North York, for example, Jamil and Alia found inspiration from the local Hasidim and their characteristic black attire, with a slim and relaxed silhouette that is their signature.

Having spent so much time together building their fledgling business, it’s not inconsequential that Alia has recently moved to New York to give their brand a presence in North America’s only global fashion capital, leaving Jamil in Toronto. Following a characteristically deep research immersion trip that took them to China and Bali at the end of last year, for the first time they are living and designing apart. But with two cities to draw inspiration from, and modern technology to keep the communication lines open, we’re hoping for big things from JUMA.

JUMA for BoF

And so without further ado, sitting in the nexus of business and fashion in our logo this month are JUMA’s dreamy printed scarves. “The scarves are designed in the same spirit of our collections,” Jamil told me via email.  “We took images from various inspirations combined with images from our blog to create scarves that reflect our brand personality.  The scarves come in either silk twill or silk jersey, and are unisex.”

Many thanks to outgoing Spotlightee, Fanny Boucher, whose Honorine jewels have been colourfully gracing our masthead for just over a month now, and will debut on Net-a-Porter exclusively in the coming months.

The Spotlight is BoF’s showcase for emerging talent employing creativity and business acumen to make their mark in the fashion business.

To many die-hard fashionistas, Los Angeles has always been considered the less sophisticated, dressed-down, in your face, suburban, over-celebrity conscious little sister to New York, which has consistently retained its place amongst the world’s fashion capitals.  However, our visit to L.A. has revealed an interesting mix of local designers and boutiques combined with the glossy global brands along Rodeo Drive. Driven by its native contemporary brands, L.A. is experiencing a fashion renaissance.

Yesterday, I cruised around some upcoming fashion districts here with Jamil Juma, of Juma, which he designs with his sister Alia. Juma’s collections (one fashion forward RTW, one activewear) are carried at more than 30 boutiques around North America, including Fred Segal  in L.A. and Caravan in NY. Both Jamil and I were keen to get a feel for what is going on here, especially in the hot contemporary segment where his brand is positioned.

In the past few years, contemporary brands based out of L.A. (which themselves grew out of the designer denim explosion that also started here) have taken America by storm. While Juicy Couture is the best known of these brands outside the USA, others including Vince, Joie, Corpus and James Perse have built sizeable businesses using an operationally efficient model that combines fast fashion (multiple deliveries, great ease of reordering) with with celebrity-based promotion.

Not surprisingly, all of the major high-end department stores have turned to these contemporary businesses to drive sales growth, particularly with the surge of Zara and H&M in the mass segment. Barney’s Co-op, Bergdorf Goodman’s 5F and Neiman Marcus Cusp are all sub-brands and businesses built for the contemporary market and Bloomingdales revamped its second floor in New York to get in on the action. And, there are entire shopping districts, like Abbot Kinney in Venice Beach and West 3rd in L.A., which seem to be dedicated to these fashionable yet affordable brands, priced in-between designer and mass.

The Abbot Kinney district boasts more than a dozen boutiques, tightly clustered along the edgy boulevard, mixed in with cafes teeming with laptop-toting students and hipsters. There is a strong movement to keep the independent vibe of the street, and a petition to keep chain stores out of the area was highly visible in many of the stores we walked into. The shopping experience therefore feels a lot more authentic than your friendly neighbourhood H&M.

The standout boutique in Abbot Kinney is Heist, an elegant store with an emphasis on French contemporary labels like Vanessa Bruno and Isabelle Marrant. Like most of the best boutiques, the owner is passionate about fashion and does all of the buying herself.

Jamil and I also spent some time scoping out the cluster of stores around the intersection of 3rd and Fairfax in West L.A. and spoke at length with Eveline Morel, the fashion aficionado behind EM & Co, a women’s boutique on the West 3rd strip. The store had an interesting mix of local labels, international names and Contemporary brands from Vivienne Westwood to Brian Reyes. Seeing Jamil in action reminded me how powerful it can be for young designer to go out and meet with boutique owners and buyers directly, as it is the best way to build confidence in their creative vision, product sense and reliability. It also puts a face to the name on the label.

Eveline told us she works with local emerging designers on product development and collection planning to help grow their businesses. And while she hasn’t bought into the whole celebrity angle for her own store, she said the power of name recognition associated with a Hollywood starlet is undeniable.  She cited the example of Mblem, a business built around the celebrity of Mandy Moore, who while not involved in design, provides input and takes 30% of sales revenue in return.

The Business of Fashion is here in L.A for the next few days and will continue to explore the nooks and crannies and highs and lows of the city of angels. Stay tuned.