L-R Mugler, Issey Miyake, 3.1 Phillip Lim Fall 2012 | Source: Style.com

Asian Designers Make an Impact in Paris (IHT)
“Asian designers, whether home based or in the fashion diaspora, are making an impact in the opening days of the Paris men’s 2012 season. Phillip Lim, the Cambodian-American designer based in New York, was smart to come to Paris to show a 3.1 Phillip Lim collection that was simple but laced with the conceptual.”

European Luxury-Goods Stocks May Benefit From Weaker Currencies (Bloomberg)
“Investors forecasting the euro and Swiss franc will weaken against the dollar may find comfort in shares of European luxury-goods companies. Financiere Richemont and LVMH are among stocks that would benefit disproportionately if the currencies fall further from year-ago levels.”

Crisis on the catwalk over Britain’s fashion brain drain (Independent)
“The British Fashion Council (BFC) yesterday announced the formation of a Fashion 2012 Menswear committee, designed to raise the profile of UK designers and increase sales.”

More Heads Roll at Ungaro (The Cut)
“After losing Giles Deacon in December and new CEO Jeffry Aronsson just last month, Emanuel Ungaro appears to be on one shaky last leg. WWD reports that the ailing French fashion house told retailers that they’re unable to deliver their spring-summer collection because of ‘internal reorganization.’”

Louis Vuitton’s Kim Jones: exclusive Q&A (Guardian)
“British menswear designer of the year Kim Jones presented his second collection for Louis Vuitton. He talks exclusively to the Guardian about his inspirations and moodboard.”

Liz Claiborne Autumn/Winter 09/10 | Source: NY Mag

For Liz Claiborne, will new name bring better luck? (MSN Money)
“When Liz Claiborne sold its namesake brand to J.C. Penney late last year for $288 million, it became obvious that a name change was in order. The company indeed announced Wednesday that starting in May it would become Fifth and Pacific. The name reflects New York (Fifth Avenue) and Pacific (The Pacific Ocean). It is not a bad corporate name, but it doesn’t obscure the challenges that lie ahead for the fashion.”

Spotlight on specialty online retailers (The Times of India)
“The red hot e-commerce story will go niche with the speciality e-tailing set to dominate the consumer internet business in 2012. Venture capitalists who pumped big bucks in group buying and mass merchandising portals like Snapdeal, Flipkart and Yebhi are now chasing the single category e-tailing start-ups.”

Inside Marc’s World (Vogue)
“Louis Vuitton’s new Marc Jacobs exhibition will open at Les Arts Décoratifs in Paris on March 9 until September 16. A celebration of the designer’s 15-year-long reign at the luxury label, the exhibition will be curated by leading fashion author and lecturer Pamela Golbin.”

In With the New: A Look at 2012 (WWD)
“The publishing world is all about what’s new and what’s next, so 2012 should be right up its alley. There are lots of changes ahead in Media Land.”

Insiders | Sarah Mower (AnOther)
“Her recent citation with an MBE for ‘services to the Fashion Industry’ only confirmed to the wider public what the British fashion industry has known for years: few have done as much to ensure the rude health of London’s fashion designers than Sarah Mower.”

Frida Giannini | Source: Vogue Taiwan

How Gucci Got Its Groove Back (Departures)
“Today she’s happy being the woman behind the brand, unlike Ford, who was ultimately bigger than Gucci, which is why, in part, he’s no longer there. (Ford declined to comment for this article.) ‘After almost ten years, it’s difficult to divide myself from Gucci,’ she says. ‘I love this company, and I have such respect for its history.’”

Azzedine Alaïa, a furious fashion talent (Independent)
“Basking in the knowledge that, more than any other designer, he occupies neutral territory – it is not uncommon for M Alaïa to be seen front row at many of his competitors’ shows, or indeed for other designers to wear his clothes – this is not a man who has been overly worried about what others might think of him and that, too, in fashion circles, is most unusual.”

The Rise of Consumption Equality (WSJ)
“It used to be so cool to be wealthy—an elite education, exclusive mobile communications, a private screening room, a table at Annabel’s on London’s Berkeley Square. Now it’s hard to swing a cat without hitting yet another diatribe against income inequality. People sleep in tents to protest that others are too damn wealthy.”

Fashion Hangover (Vogue)
“Louis Vuitton is going to war with Warner Bros: suing the entertainment giant for profits from it recent blockbuster sequel The Hangover Part II, for using fake copies of its bags in the film. Despite requests by the luxury label to not feature counterfeit bags – created by Diophy which is also being sued – the fake Louis Vuitton luggage appeared in a scene filmed at the airport.”

Cathy Horyn Recounts the Year in Fashion (NY Times)
“‘Give me time, and I’ll give you a revolution,’ Alexander McQueen once said. Like anyone born to achieve, he resented the small distractions — and the fashion business provides plenty of them.”

Louis Vuitton Maison Sydney | Source: AFR

Anatomy of a maison (AFR)
“In the Medieval age, the sight of a towering spire signalled a city of splendour. Today, it is cathedrals of retailing that indicate metropolitan status in the global pecking order. The December 3 opening, not of another Louis Vuitton store – there are already 460 of those worldwide – but of a much grander Louis Vuitton ‘Maison’ (of which there are just 13) proves Sydney must be a very smart town indeed.”

Arcadia Closures (Vogue)
“Sir Philip Green has confirmed that he expects to close more than 250 Arcadia stores in the next three years as the company reports a profits drop of almost 40 per cent against last year. ‘We have got – from my memory – 450 or 460 stores where leases expire in the next three years,’ Green said. ‘And I think on our latest summary we will close more than half of those on lease expiry.’”

Heel Height Times Tweets? (NY Times)
“The 1920s notion of a “hemline index,” in which the economist George Taylor posited that skirt lengths rise and fall in relation to the economy, suggests that fashion is socially determined. In a modern twist, a report about the direction of high heels, issued by I.B.M., proposes that fashion can now be determined through social media.”

Ogilvy’s and Holt Renfrew: Buzz is, big changes are coming (Montreal Gazette)
“It’s the talk of downtown: big changes are said to be coming to Ogilvy’s and Holt Renfrew. The buzz is that Holt’s will close in its current location, move into Ogilvy’s, and the Art Deco Holt building will become condos… The rumours come after Selfridges Group Ltd., owners of Holt Renfrew, acquired Ogilvy’s this summer.”

Hailee Steinfeld Miu Miu ad deemed ‘irresponsible’ (Telegraph)
“The Advertising Standards Authority ruled that the image… Showing the 14-year-old actress sat on a train track and wiping away what could be tears from her eyes, was irresponsible because it depicted a child in an unsafe location. Prada Retail UK, who own the Miu Miu brand, said the image, captured by renowned fashion photographer and film-maker Bruce Weber, was ‘part of a serious, high-fashion campaign’ and ‘based on the set of an imaginary film’.”

LVMH Lecture Theatre at Central Saint Martins, Kings Cross | Source: LVMH

LVMH and Central St Martins Partnership (Vogue UK)
“Central St Martins new Kings Cross building will feature a state-of-the-art lecture theatre sponsored by LVMH. The luxury conglomerate has also announced plans for a scholarship programme to recruit promising designers from the university for its stable of brands.”

Tamara Mellon leaves Jimmy Choo (FT)
“Tamara Mellon has stepped down from Jimmy Choo, the footwear and accessories brand she founded 15 years ago, following its takeover and integration with Labelux, the private Italian luxury goods group… In 1996 Ms Mellon transformed a small business set up by Jimmy Choo, a cobbler from east London. The business has also branched out into accessories such as handbags and scarves, as well as fragrances.”

A new frontier for big brands (FT)
“In Paris, at 23 Place Vendôme next year, Louis Vuitton will open the first boutique dedicated to its fine jewellery. It is a significant move for the industry… As is usual with Louis Vuitton, a decision by the world’s most successful luxury brand to make a decisive step into a new market is a signal of shifts in the industry… But expectations are that jewellery’s switch from a predominantly craft market to a new frontier for big brands is under way.”

Big in Japan: Paul Smith’s focus shifts to the East (Telegraph)
“The designer has, however, recently fixed his gaze eastwards, staging a fashion show in Japan for the first time in his career. Entitled I Love Japan, the show marked the launch of Japan’s first major fashion event since the March 11 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis… In the case of Paul Smith, the designer’s affection for Japan has clearly returned – reflected in both the number of boutiques and department stores across the country and sales figures.”

Fashion retailing catalogs turn a page (LA Times)
“Alluring as print catalogs may be, an increasing number of retailers — Bloomingdales, Nordstrom and J. Crew among them — aren’t just mailing them to their customers. They’re going digital, showing off this season’s lace-trimmed dresses and faux-fur vests in free downloadable apps that mimic the traditional catalog experience, minus the print.”

Vogue: The Covers | Source: mostmagnific.com

LONDON, United Kingdom — There are two ways in which a fashion magazine can be successful: either by featuring clothes with which the reader can identify or by stimulating the reader’s imagination. It is the old tussle between commerciality and creativity. Except, of course, it isn’t a tussle that existed before fashion magazines became mass market and needed to chase and keep readers who, for most of the twentieth century, never even opened a ‘glossy’ magazine, which until the fifties was still a very exclusive and small circulation type of publication.

The effects of commercialisation can be seen very clearly in Vogue: The Covers (Abrams), which is a visual threnody for subtleties lost. The change happened comparatively quickly in the sixties when the clothes and the elegance they epitomised gently morphed into the woman — and normally the famous and easily recognised woman — as the face became the selling point: a clear indication of the power of the cosmetics industry over magazine publishers. The battle between clothes and make-up was largely over by the end of the decade as flawless faces and worryingly perfect teeth, seen through slightly parted lips in order to emphasise the lipstick shade, routed the clothes which had dominated the previous three decades.

Memorable images of high fashion were no longer required. The fact that none of the subsequent faces remains in the memory for even the month of the magazine’s life is symptomatic of the change. Readers were not expected to recall the face. It was the shout-lines that gave the message, then as now. This book is a classic primer of the effects of chasing a mass market. I don’t think I am alone in finding the seventies and eighties the rock bottom and subsequent decades, dominated by Hollywood stars, only marginally better. This book is a cautionary cavalcade of the rise, fall and slight recovery of Vogue covers and, as such, is an elegant record of our changing tastes and needs.

But, of course, creativity still exists in magazines and it is at its best with maverick editors who keep their artistic integrity by making their publication a personal diary of their obsessions, dreams and intellectual beliefs. Carine Roitfeld’s Irreverent (Rizzoli) is the perfect example of the genre, almost perversely personal and even private, giving the reader the sensation of looking in her knicker drawer. In her years as editor of French Vogue, Roitfeld’s very Gallic aesthetic — with a little Russian from her ancestors — created an instantly recognisable style that has been dubbed ‘porno-chic’ and has influenced not only every young stylist under the sun but also how even designers actually think. Roitfeld’s youthful iconoclasm is about cultural freedom to delight through shocking. I am sure that if Cocteau, Berard and even Beaton were alive today it would be Roitfeld’s Vogue that they would devour each month and fight to work for. This amazing woman is the only modern editor who would excite the doyenne who single-handedly pushed back the barriers to enable the sort of shocking, thrilling and entertaining pages that make this book so exhilarating.

I’m talking, of course, about Diana Vreeland, whom I knew and used to visit in the late seventies, in her tiny scarlet apartment on Park Avenue. The most original thinker and memorable verbaliser I have ever met, Vreeland was illuminated — as is Roitfeld — by the sheer power of her imagination and enthusiasm. She is a legend. Everyone who knew her has Vreeland stories because everything she said was arresting, even at its most extreme, shot through with the ability to get to the essence of everything, but above all, dress. So, it is good to have a reissue of Eleanor Dwight’s convincing biography, Diana Vreeland (Harper Design) joining a new anecdotal volume Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel (Abrams) which is high on pictures but low on analysis. For the growing army of Vreeland fans who are under 30 and realise she was even younger and bolder than they are, both books are essential, not only because they are ‘gala’, to use one of her highest terms of praise, but for the pure panache of her personality that comes shimmering off every page. She is in a class of her own.

But one who comes close is Glenda Bailey, who has lead Harper’s Bazaar for ten years with much of the bold aplomb that Vreeland brought to editing. She has given us amazing stories — witty, bold and often slyly debunking of the more extreme reaches of fashion’s unrealities. But, make no mistake, Bailey is besotted by the magic and mystery of the fashion world and the enthusiasm I knew and loved years ago when she first hit London are as fresh and undimmed today, as Harper’s Bazaar Greatest Hits (Abrams) admirably demonstrates. Here are The Simpsons doing the Paris shows; Marc Jacobs playing many parts — mainly naked; Jean Paul Gaultier as a nun and many other visual extravagances dreamt up by Bailey and her inspired artistic director, Stephen Gan, whose boldness matches her own. Their covers are exceptional for their elegant understatement but they certainly give full, rip-roaring scope to their imaginations on the editorial pages.

From Fifth to Seventh Avenue every American in the clothes business has reason to bless Eleanor Lambert, the woman who made American fashion a major player in the world, helped to launch such giants as Lauren, Klein and Halston and even managed to make the French designers sit up and take notice with her famous joint fashion show featuring American designers on the same runway as the French in Versailles in 1973. Eleanor, whom I knew when she was very old (she lived to be a hundred), was full of energy and determination, possibly inherited from her family who were circus folk, plus the imagination to know what was needed next long before anybody else did. In Eleanor Lambert: Still Here (Pointed Leaf Press), she emerges as the Calamity Jane of New York fashion, lassoing and branding all the talents that her shrewd eye was attracted to and promoting them with her incredible vigour. But she did more. Without her there would be no CFDA. It was she who came up with ‘The Best Dressed List’ to stimulate interest in clothes and keep sales figures climbing. And, above all, she was the earth mother of fashion PR. A copy of this revealing book should be in every fashion office, from the editor’s to the CEO’s, and on the shelves of every fashion college library.

Fashion has become the lingua franca of the world. It now affects virtually every aspect of creative life, certainly in the West, and is increasingly the thing that binds disparate disciplines together to give them a ‘cool’ credibility. Nowhere is this more apparent than in architecture, a discipline that influences fashion and is, in turn, influenced by it. So it is good to see this ever-closer link captured in a book that looks at how one of the major fashion brands, Louis Vuitton, uses many of the world’s most prominent architects and designers to create its flagship stores across the globe. Louis Vuitton Architecture and Interiors (Rizzoli) provides a stunning record of high imagination, apparently cavalier disregard for cost and, as the end product, some of the most exciting retail spaces in existence today. As most fashionistas know, the presiding genius is the architect Peter Marino, a man who, along with the Louis Vuitton project designers, has been responsible for incredible shops from Tokyo to Macao, Paris to New York. The photographs in this book are stunning but, unlike most fashion-related books, this is a text to read. Illuminating and inspiring.

Equally illuminating is Gucci: The Making Of (Rizzoli). Not another Gucci book, you may say. But this one is different. Without sacrificing in any way the glamour of this most frequently re-invented label, it gives us the low-down on the business and even the internecine struggles of the original Gucci family: betrayals and violent quarrels, including fraternal murder. It is all here, elegantly packaged in the way we expect of one of Italy’s great labels but by no means relying solely on the quality of the pictures. This is another book where the writing is as important as the images. The contents are split into 48 sections — this is a lofty tome by any standards —

that cover every aspect of the company’s history, developments and products, from CEOs, customers and social networks to perfumes, lifestyle and, of course, the loafers and bags. It is sufficiently comprehensive that a new Gucci book will not be needed for many years to come. Publishers, please take note!

And so, finally, to an amuse bouche for Christmas morning. The Elves and the Shoe-Maker (It Books – HarperCollins) is the story — or ‘fashion fairy tale memoir’ — of Manolo Blahnik, told by Camilla Morton and illustrated by the subject himself. Light as air, winningly expressed, this book is fun, not only for Manolo’s many drawings but also for the way it captures the sophisticated whimsy of this most elegant of all the world’s shoemakers. It is so good-humoured that it is the one to bury your head in whilst waiting for Christmas dinner. It will make aunt Edna’s moans about feeling hungry and uncle Joe’s spectacular downing of glass after glass of your best claret hardly seem irritating at all. Happy Christmas!

Colin McDowell is a contributing editor at The Business of Fashion

Peter Marino | Source: Peter Marino Architect

The fashion industry depends heavily on a wide variety of creatives apart from just fashion designers. In our new series, The Creative Class, BoF highlights success stories, insights and advice from the most talented creatives working in fashion today.

NEW YORK, United States — “Dude, it’s ninety-five percent hard work!” the black leather-clad Peter Marino told BoF on his rise to the position of luxury fashion’s most influential architect. And work hard he has. Since founding his own architecture firm in New York in 1978, Mr. Marino has designed many of the world’s most forward-thinking retail temples, redefined the luxury flagship experience and established a decades-long tenure as the “go-to guy” for powerhouse firms like Chanel and LVMH.

“My first commissions were from Andy Warhol, Yves Saint Laurent and the Agnelli family,” said Mr. Marino. “Then the fashion world took notice. I started doing retail in the 80’s when Fred Pressman hired me to revitalise Barneys, which was then a sleepy men’s store. We introduced a really novel concept — no one had ever seen anything like it before.”

It was while working for Barneys that Mr. Marino met many of the world’s leading fashion designers: Calvin Klein, Donna Karan, Giorgio Armani, Azzedine Alaïa, Miuccia Prada. “I worked with every single one of those designers to bring their boutiques into Barneys, which was tough, because we wanted a very cool and hip look for Barneys, yet I had to keep the designers happy,” he said. “Somehow, I was able to do that, so I got into it as a career.”

But developing retail concepts that translate the codes of the world’s leading fashion brands into three-dimensional space, while creating novel and engaging consumer experiences, is no easy feat. “My real charge from all of the brands and why they keep coming back, is that each time we do a new store, everybody feels like ’that’s the way the brand should look and it hasn’t always looked that way,’” explained Mr. Marino.

Sometimes this means working closely with the brand’s creative director, which is especially important when a fashion house is undergoing a major revamp, as with Céline, for which Mr. Marino is designing new Paris and New York boutiques. “Phoebe Philo really wants to be involved in the stores, reflecting her direction and interpretation of the brand,” said Mr. Marino.

But unlike many architects, Marino doesn’t start with pen and paper. “I’m a colours and materials kind of guy,” he said, describing his creative process. “I start with colours, paint, fabrics, wools, metal, steel and put them on a table and feel if it’s the brand,” he continued. “This is very different from going ‘Oh, I think I’ll make a two-storey space. Hey dude, you’re given the store! One out of ten, I get to do the whole building, but nine times out of ten you’re given an existing building, so you have a lot of internal architecture and certainly a lot of façade architecture [to contend with].”

Marino must also take into account some fundamental economic realities. “[Unlike a fashion collection] architecture is there for six to seven years,” he explained. “For all of the boutiques that I do, it’s the single largest cash investment these corporations make in anything — it’s hundreds of millions of dollars. They absolutely don’t want something that is going to be out of date three, four, even five years down the line.”

In the face of this challenge, Marino has a rather scientific approach. “We push the branding, let’s say, as a factor between ten and thirty percent, so I’m actually trying new things in every store and keeping the rest [constant] so you feel at home and so there is a continuum,” he said. “This is crucial for these corporations financially, which is why I say a continuum: change the new stores, but by the time you get to the end of the seven year period, which is how most of these stores are financed, then you’re ready to begin again, but none of them ever look out of date,” he explained. “That’s my formula.”

But perhaps what makes Marino most valuable to the fashion industry is the way he is so sharply attuned to the practical needs of retail. “Some companies might over intellectualise the process,” he said. “Shopping is shopping. I try to make goods very, very, very accessible. I’m not John Pawson who puts two bags on a wall sixty feet long because I think that’s just torture,” he continued. “If you’re there in the store, the idea is to see the merchandise, touch the merchandise and hopefully get some kind of emotional response out of it.”

Indeed, uniting emotion and shopping is something Mr. Marino does uniquely well. The London ‘Maison’ he designed for Louis Vuitton, which opened last year on Bond Street, is an ambitious examples of experiential retail, integrating work by artists like Takashi Murakami, Gilbert & George and Andrei Molodkin into the shopping environment, something Mr. Marino is famous for doing. “It’s really good bringing artists in early, because you create the space around their art and you work together with them,” said Mr. Marino. “The reason they’re artists is because they don’t see things they way you and I do. They have unique visions and it’s just fantastic. Some of the commissions that I’ve been allowed to do have really synced with my architecture.”

And while Marino has so far eschewed digital interfaces inside his stores, he has embraced new technologies to turn the façades of his flagships into cutting-edge works of art. “I think computers remove emotion,” he said. “But modern technology on façades is totally legitimate and we always push it.” Indeed, as part of his commision for Chanel’s Tokyo Ginza tower, Marino spent eighteen months developing a new kind of “triple polarised” glass which allowed him to turn the building’s exterior into a TV screen, while allowing those on the inside to see out. “We are [using new technologies] with Vuitton and we are doing a new Dior store in Seoul, which will have a beautiful lighting affect on the exterior,” he said. “And for Chanel we are doing a store in China which has a new computerised way of doing neon. It literally feels like a work of art.”

Unsurprisingly, Marino is responsible for many of the most impressive luxury flagships popping up across Asia. Last Week, Louis Vuitton chief executive Yves Carcelle hosted an opening party for the ‘Island Maison’ Marino designed for the brand at the Marina Bay Sands Hotel and Casino in Singapore. “It’s a vacation spot for millions of Chinese. It’s an occasion spot [sic] where you go for a week, you go to the casino, the amusement park, hopefully you go to the shopping center,” said Marino. “But [Vuitton] didn’t want to just be in the shopping centre like every other brand,” he explained. “The LV island is a real experiment in retail. It’s an object sitting in the water. You take a little wooden path 100 feet to the store, or there is a tunnel with a moving walkway; a little history of the company flashes by you, which is great fun, and then you come up,” said Marino, explaining the choreography of the consumer experience. “Because Vuitton, with their luxury luggage collection, owns the world of travel, it’s very much reminiscent of a luxury liner.”

With Chinese luxury consumption projected to account for 20 percent of global luxury sales by 2015, it’s no surprise that Marino is increasingly active in the country. “The stores there are anywhere form twenty to eighty percent larger than they are in the West, either due to optimism or the Chinese growth rate,” he said. “But I worry a little bit, because really big is hard to keep [it] luxurious,” he added. “I keep fighting against a lack of intimacy and a lack of surprise.”

Indeed, the demand for fashion is so high in today’s China that not all brands see the need to innovate architecturally. “They just make a box and stick it up and they are successful,” said Marino. “Here in the West, there is so much competition you have to raise the bar.” But in rapidly growing markets like China, flagships also serve to educate consumers. “They convey the brand’s origins, heritage and story,” he continued. “In every market survey that I’ve read or witnessed, [Chinese consumers] are very interested in this.”

For Marino, communicating authenticity is key. “One of the things that I do in China, specifically, is try to accentuate the origins of the company,” he said. “So with Loewe, the oldest Spanish luxury brand, we give it a bit more Spanishness,” he continued. “In this case, we would use an artist like Cristina Iglesias — we want Spanish artists there, because we want to get the message across that this is a Spanish luxury goods company.”

“For Chanel and Dior, I’m also very much promoting that they are French luxury brands,” he underscored. “This means a lot to the Chinese. When they go shopping, they want the legitimate experience of the brand.” Which is precisely what Mr. Marino is so very good at conjuring.

This piece was written by managing editor Vikram Alexei Kansara, with research from contributing editor Timothy Coghlan

Brioni Autumn/Winter 2011 | Source: Fashion Windows

Brioni Shock (Vogue UK)
“Brioni is ending its womenswear line, and its contract with the label’s creative director Alessandro Dell’Acqua. Brioni’s manufacturing plant in Italy, which was dedicated to the production of the brand’s womenswear collections, will be shut down in September.”

Why luxury goes hand in hand with sustainability (Guardian)
“As social and environmental stresses increase and global resources come under greater pressure, the concept of luxury, always fluid, will keep changing. There have also been positive efforts within the sustainability movement to redefine luxury as something that embodies the social and environmental credentials of a product or service… If we read ‘luxury’ as placing an importance on durability, pride in buying less and better, the link to sustainability becomes less jarring.”

Billionaire Slim Spends $8.8 Million to Boost Saks, Times Stakes (Bloomberg)
Billionaire Carlos Slim spent $8.8 million to boost his stakes in Saks Inc and New York Times Co, adding to his biggest U.S. holdings as the stock market slumped last week… Slim, who had been Saks’s largest shareholder before the purchases and last acquired the New York-based retailer’s shares in April 2009, raised his stake to 16 percent from 15.7 percent.”

What China Should Learn From Hong Kong’s Luxury Malls (Mao Suit)
“There are currently upwards of 50 new luxury malls currently being built across China to tap into rapidly growing luxury goods market, yet very few of them will come anything close to the standard of the luxury malls developed in HK over the last few years… What the HK developers do so well is that they create mixed-use shopping malls that… Create an ecosystem of real estate that brings masses of people to the mall everyday and easily translating into sales.”

Deutsche brands (FT)
“German fashion has been a bit off the international radar since Jil Sander sold her namesake label and Wolfgang Joop left Joop! to start up a new label, Wunderkind… Recently, however, that has begun to change. Thanks to the combination of a buzzy Berlin fashion week and a new generation of fashion-forward consumers, a growing number of local heroes is emerging in the country.”

Gap cautious on full-year sales outlook (Reuters)
“Gap Inc Chief Executive Glenn Murphy said on Thursday that consumer sentiment may deteriorate in the second half of 2011 and was cautious about future sales growth at the apparel retailer… Gap has lost about a quarter of its market value this year as investors questioned the company’s ability to grow sales after several quarters of losing market share.”

Zara accused in Brazil sweatshop inquiry (Guardian)
“Retail fashion chain Zara is under investigation by Brazil’s ministry of labour after a contractor in São Paulo was found to be using employees in sweatshop conditions to make garments for the Spanish company… Zara is a family business founded in 1975 in La Coruña, north-west Spain by Amancio Ortega… According to Forbes magazine, half of production remains in Spain, with 26% per cent in Europe and the remainder spread around the world.”

Caution on Main Street: retailers fret ahead of key sales season (Reuters)
“Caution is the watchword for apparel executives heading into the all-important holiday season and their lack of confidence is scaring investors. Wary of talk of a double-dip recession, consumers are waiting on bargains, leaving retailers in the dark over how sales trends will turn out in the key year-end shopping season.”

Louis Vuitton’s “Big Store Strategy” Spreads (Jing Daily)
“Luxury giant Louis Vuitton has spent the last several years in China ramping up its inland expansion and rethinking its strategy in top-tier cities… A new LV store might not seem like big news, considering the brand is expanding perhaps more quickly than any other luxury brand in China, but in second- and third-tier markets, the arrival of Louis Vuitton means they’ve reached a certain level.”

Fashion; red in tooth and claw? (FT)
“The story so far: in 2008 Louboutin trademarked a lacquered red sole on footwear ( Pantone No. 18-1663 TP, or “Chinese Red,” FYI). In April this year Louboutin filed a trademark infringement lawsuit in New York saying that YSL had breached its copyright by using the red sole… Potentially worse for Christian Louboutin, who has another hearing in the case scheduled this Friday, the judge also implied that his 2008 trademark could be cancelled.”

Acne Paper Spring/Summer 2010 Photographed by Daniel Jackson | Source: Acne

Northern Discretion: Thomas Persson of Acne Paper (Interview)
“When Acne Paper was founded in 2004 as a literary prong of the multi-faceted Swedish denim empire, it faced a challenge: having to prove its creative independence, and its worthiness beyond being a fancy bit of advertising.”

Louis Vuitton, Burberry Win Millions in Landmark Canadian Counterfeit Suit (Forbes)
“Louis Vuitton and Burberry have won significant damages in Canada’s single largest trademark counterfeit and copyright case…  The fashion houses had filed suit last year… claimed that Singga, Carnation and Altec had been selling fake handbags, along with other “fashion accessories.”

Business is brisk for fashion brand Valentino: CEO (Reuters)
“Italian fashion brand Valentino is enjoying solid demand for haute couture pieces, thanks to Middle Eastern, Russian and U.S. buyers and trading overall continues to improve.”

A Vision in Melancholy (NY Times)
“For Chanel’s haute couture show here Tuesday night, he recreated the Place Vendôme inside the Grand Palais… Dresses… Added to the fin-de-siècle melancholia… it’s a legitimate mood in an overbright, bored world. It was just unclear how to read it against kitsch scenery.”

Bip Ling unveiled as new face for Forever 21 (Fashion Monitor)
“Model and DJ Bip Ling has been announced as the latest face of the US fashion store, Forever 21… Spanning three floors, the new Forever 21 London store is unveiled to the public on July 27.”