GQ and Park & Bond pop-up shop, NYC | Source: Selectism

When mags merge with bags (FT)
“GQ is not the only media operation to embrace a more overt commercial role. More and more publications have been trying to establish ecommerce operations in an effort to extend their brands beyond the printed page, and find new sources of revenue in a tough advertising market.”

Mulberry enjoys strong festive season, sales up (Reuters)
“Luxury fashion company Mulberry Group Plc expects 2012 financial year results to exceed its earlier forecast, led by strong Christmas and New Year sales, putting it firmly in the festive winners’ camp in the UK.”

Asos Third-Quarter Sales Rise on Retail Growth Outside U.K. (Bloomberg)
“Asos Plc, the U.K.’s second-largest online clothing retailer, reported a 46 percent increase in third-quarter retail sales because of growth abroad, and said it’s confident of meeting analysts’ full-year profit estimates.”

Chinese haute-couture steps up at HK Fashion Week (Reuters)
“China at one time may have been better known for fashion knockoffs than catwalk creations, but Chinese haute-couture is now finding its feet on the international stage — even as it grows ever more popular with customers at home.”

Marc Jacobs: “I don’t know what the key to happiness is” (The Talk)
“I don’t know, I don’t know what the key to happiness is. Happy is just a feeling like every other feeling. I certainly feel happy some days and in general I am pretty happy, but I have all the other feelings as well. So I don’t know if there is a key.”

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.”

A Marriage of Economic Convenience (NY Times)
“More than a decade since Target first popularized collaborations between high-end designers and mass retailers, and seven years since H&M introduced a collection with Karl Lagerfeld, there is still allure in the concept of cheap and chic… Such collaborations are proving to be both a reliable business model for retailers and a business in themselves.”

Marc Jacobs’s Entire Spring / Summer 2012 Collection Stolen (The Daily Beast)
“Call it the case of the missing dresses. Marc Jacobs’ entire Spring/Summer 2012 collection has been stolen from a train en route from Paris to London for the brand’s European press day, the company has announced. According to the e-mail circulated to press on Wednesday morning, the PR team wrote ‘our press day tomorrow in the Marc Jacobs store is cancelled, due to the theft of the spring/ summer 2012 collections during its transfer from Paris.’”

PPR to follow PUMA’s green accounting lead (Business Green)
“The parent company of some of the world’s biggest luxury and sporting brands, including Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, and PUMA, is to embark on one of the world’s most ambitious green accounting programmes, after announcing it will create a group-wide environmental profit and loss statement (EP&L)… By placing an economic value on its environmental impact, the company hopes to improve its reporting of a wide range of green metrics.”

Missed profit forecasts hurt Abercrombie (FT)
“Shares in Abercrombie & Fitch plunged more than 13 per cent as the US teen fashion retailer missed Wall Street profit forecasts and was put on the defensive over its strategy in Europe. Abercrombie executives were grilled by analysts over falling sales at its international flagship stores after it reported a 1.8 per cent rise in net income to $50.9m, or 57 cents per share, which fell short of market expectations of 72 cents a share.”

Benetton Retries Provocation (WSJ)
“Italian clothing chain Benetton is trying to drum up attention for its flagging brand with ads showing global leaders kissing… Now, after having lost ground over the last decade to competitors such as Inditex SA’s Zara and Hennes & Mauritz AB’s H&M, Benetton is trying for publicity.”

Chloe Raises the Roof at the Tuileries Tent in Paris | Photo: BoF

LONDON, United Kingdom — It was a fashion season of extreme weather. After the New York Fashion Week schedule was upended, first by an earthquake and then by the State of Emergency declaration that came courtesy of Hurricane Irene, an unprecedented heat wave in Paris threw buyers, editors and bloggers into a wardrobe tailspin.

The American editors were worst off, having packed for the European shows two weeks before Paris with no prior notice of the heat wave that was to come. After a few days of shows in impossibly hot venues, some of them resorted to ripping the sleeves off their outfits or just wearing their ‘airplane clothes.’

Brands tried to ease the pain. Fans were distributed at shows alongside champagne and much to everyone’s relief, Chloe arranged for the roof of the Tuileries tent to be removed for their show, letting in the sun and much welcome breeze. Meanwhile Net-a-Porter, always on top of a new market opportunity, delivered heat wave friendly clothes to editors caught without weather-appropriate attire.

But of course the real action was on the runway and in conversations between BoF and the good and the great of the global fashion tribe at a season filled with its fair share of events and parties.

Without further ado, it’s time to look back at Spring/Summer 2012, the season that was.

… Continue Reading

Hermès silk printing table by Brigitte Lacomb | Source: WSJ

The Battle for Hermès (WSJ)
“‘My job,’ says the lean, formal 44-year-old and sixth-generation descendant of the company’s founder, ‘is to keep the strong creativity of Hermès alive. To nourish the rigor and the vision . . . to make these values vibrate. ‘This,’ he says, ‘is the force of Hermès.’ Those values—the dedication to rigor, vision and creativity—are what set Hermès apart from its competitors, what company executives mean when they talk about the ‘culture of Hermès.’

Fashion’s Better Halves (WSJ)
“Two days and a handshake later, a fashion empire was born. Today, the duo presides over two of the industry’s biggest luxury labels: Marc Jacobs and Louis Vuitton, where the designer has been artistic director since 1997. Under Jacobs’ often iconoclastic stewardship, Vuitton now does $5 billion in annual sales. At last count, Marc Jacobs has 239 retail stores in 60 countries.”

Hundreds sick in mass fainting at Cambodian factory (Reuters)
“Nearly 300 Cambodian workers fell sick this week at a garment factory producing goods for Swedish fashion brand Hennes & Mauritz (H&M), police said on Thursday. A total 284 workers collapsed on Tuesday and Thursday at M&V International Manufacturing Ltd, a supplier for H&M, in Kompong Chhnang.”

Look Back in Envy: The ’70s Take the Runway (NY Times)
“But the 1970s resonate most insistently on fashion runways, through a proliferation of languid fall looks inspired by the greatest hits of Halston and Saint Laurent, as well as those of style-world luminaries like Sonia Rykiel, Rosita and Ottavio Missoni, Claude Montana and Karl Lagerfeld, whose fluid dresses for the house of Chloé are still being emulated.”

Zac’s back (Vogue UK)
“Zac Posen is taking his show back to New York. He will show his spring/summer 2012 offering on September 11 at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall… The NY-born designer moved to Paris a year agoto show his eponymous collection there, but still presented his Z Spoke by Zac Posen diffusion line in his hometown.”