Gilt Groupe Screen Shot | Source: Gilt Groupe

Gilt Groupe consider going public in 2012 (FT)
“Gilt Groupe, a ‘flash’ sales site for designer clothes, plans to join its peers Groupon and Amazon as a public company, perhaps by the end of next year, when the company will be close to generating $1bn in annual sales… Gilt and rival sites… Are among the fastest-growing segments of online retail, which is itself expanding faster than traditional retail amid economic malaise in the US and Europe.”

Jack Wills debuts in Hong Kong (Red Luxury)
“The ‘fabulously British’ clothing company, Jack Wills, will make its Asia debut with the opening of two stores in Hong Kong. Mark Parker, the company’s president of Asia and the Middle East, said: ‘Harbour City has a high percentage of mainland customers. It’s a very, very large window into China, and greater China is a very important market long-term. In Causeway Bay…there’s a large number of [mainland Chinese] customers, local consumers and international travelers.’”

Why Deco Now? (On the Runway)
“Every fashion designer, they say, is an architect manque, intent on imposing a structure on the wayward human form. That observation seemed especially apt in a season of spring runway shows filled with dresses constructed to glide over the body and embellished to echo the linear symmetry of Art Deco design.”

Alexander McQueen’s McQ label (Telegraph)
“The founder of the Alexander McQueen label, Lee McQueen, may have tragically passed away last year, but his legacy lives on through his brand’s expansion. The luxury label’s younger, more renegade outpost, McQ, has announced the opening of its first stand-alone store and its debut on the catwalk at London Fashion Week.”

Elle Macpherson: the brains behind The Body (Telegraph)
“Macpherson insists that the financial revelation that struck in her early-to-mid twenties was her own, unprompted by some agent… . It came, she says, after ‘working for Sports Illustrated for so many years, and recognising that working for a business in which I did not have a profit share was not attractive’.”

Shanghai Tang iPhone App | Source: Shanghai Tang

Connecting Digitally With Chinese Consumers (Jing Daily)
“In recent years, as Chinese luxury consumers have gotten younger and more sophisticated, and the marketplace has become more crowded, digital outreach in China has become critical for major global luxury brands.”

Italian menswear gets young, bold and beautiful (Reuters)
“Designers shrugged off the global economic slump at Milan’s menswear fashion week, opting for bold, impeccable suits to woo demanding buyers keen on wearing something more than once.”

Shape Shifters That Mutate With You (NY Times)
“‘Modern’ is a term so routinely invoked in fashion-speak that it lost its meaning long ago. But without quite intending it, JNBY, a new loftlike boutique in SoHo, has revitalized that concept, lending ‘modern’ a near-prophetic ring.”

Ferlisi For McQ (Vogue.com)
“Pina Ferlisi has been named creative director of Alexander McQueen’s diffusion line McQ. Ferlisi will reportedly work under the newly appointed Sarah Burton.”

Scottish Fashion Awards (Telegraph)
“Jonathan Saunders was named the Scottish Designer of the Year… while Holly Fulton, the young Royal College of Art graduate, whose jewellery-and-architecture inspired designs have won praise from Alber Elbaz of Lanvin, was named the Young Designer of the Year.”