RRR, available on Facebook | Source: Rachel Rachel Roy

Pop-up mobile for luxury retail (Mobiluxe)
“One of the inherent values of the mobile medium for marketers is the very personal nature of the smartphone device itself… This creates a plethora of unique engagement opportunities for luxury brands… [to] re-create the feeling of uniqueness historically inherent in shoppers’ experience with the brand.”

Apps Go Upmarket (Ad Week)
“A new report from the Luxury Institute finds significant numbers of upmarket Americans getting into the apps act as they deploy their mobile devices as tools for luxury shopping.”

Italy’s Della Valle boosts Saks stake (Yahoo)
“Italian businessman Diego Della Valle continued to build up his ownership in Saks Inc , raising his stake to 11.12 percent from 9.4 percent in the luxury U.S. department store chain.”

Getting back to basics in a world of luxury (INSEAD Knowledge)
“As China’s middle class expands, does consumption behaviour change? According to Sir David Tang, founder of Shanghai Tang and China Clubs, consumption behaviour doesn’t shift with economic development; it is only perceived to do so.”

The kids are all right: Top ten new faces (Style.com)
“The old guard may have made a strong showing, with the likes of Kristen McMenamy, Kirsten Owen, and even Inès de la Fressange turning up on the Paris runways, but ask any casting director and they’ll tell you, it was a good season for new girls.”

Pink Tartan Autumn/Winter 2010 | Source: The Back Seat Stylers

The Bay finds new fashion focus (Vancouver Sun)
“Two years after Bonnie Brooks took over the helm of the Canadian heritage department store -several months after it was bought by U.S. real estate magnate Richard Baker – Brooks’s fashion focus has finally arrived.”

How mobile has given rise to the omnipresent customer (Luxury Daily)
“These new types of customers are no longer confined to a PC or laptop. They are now on the move and it is up to retailers to not only catch up with them, but meet them at the point of need and anticipate their next move. Mobile provides this capability.”

LVMH Third-Quarter Sales Rise 24 percent (Bloomberg)
“Demand for luxury goods is recovering as wealthy Asian shoppers splurge on timepieces and handbags, and retailers replenish inventories in the U.S. and Europe after the industry’s worst year on record.”

China’s love of luxury goods boosts Burberry (Telegraph)
“Burberry, the luxury goods retailer, said that like-for-like sales in its stores around the world increased by 9pc over the six months to September 30, boosted by shops in emerging markets.”

Fashion retailer Choichiro Motoyama (Japan Times)
“Choichiro Motoyama, 89, is a pioneering Japanese retailer …He relentlessly advocated elegance and is widely known as the man responsible for creating the demand and subsequent boom for foreign luxury goods in Asia.”

Ungaro Spring/Summer 2011 | Source: Style.com

Giles Deacon’s Ungaro debut (Independent)
“Deacon, who became creative director of this grand French fashion house in spring this year, said he wanted to take it back to its distinctly French roots – and he has done just that.”

Is this the future of media? (Independent)
“Many companies have, in recent years, moved into the customer publishing sector, distributing their own glossy magazines to their client database. But the web version has so much more potential, being open to all and offering opportunities for instant purchase.”

Why a mobile strategy for retailers matters more than ever (Luxury Daily)
“By 2013 mobile devices will overtake PCs as the preferred way of accessing the Internet… sooner or later retailers will have to make well-informed technology decisions about how to tackle mobile commerce.”

On Message and on the Screen (IHT)
“This kind of cerebral and visual imagination makes a Hussein Chalayan fashion movie an ideal way of transmitting the designer’s thoughts and feelings in a poetic, but practical, way.”

Jefferson Hack interviews Gareth Pugh (Fashionista)
“In a series presented by Dazed and Confused called ‘Meet the Designer’ the magazine’s co-founder Jefferson Hack talks with [Pugh] about the tentative future of catwalk shows, his sold-out shop in Hong Kong and why Saint Martins does not a star make.”

Mobile Internet Adoption | Source: Morgan Stanley

NEW YORK, United States — Now that most luxury brands have come to accept that the internet is a powerful tool for commerce and that social media provides an opportunity for a new kind of brand engagement, along comes another technological wave that will feed the ongoing digital revolution in fashion — and take it mobile.

Indeed, according to Internet analyst Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley, “more users will likely connect to the Internet via mobile devices than desktop PCs within 5 years.” What does this mean for luxury and fashion brands? And, as consumers continue to migrate to smart mobile devices, how does this change the dynamics for operating fashion commerce and communication in the mobile space, and the wider social web?

To provide the answers, I turned to Dinesh Moorjani, Senior Vice President of Mobile at IAC — the company that owns The Daily Beast, Evite, Urbanspoon and more than 40 other internet properties — and a speaker at the upcoming Luxury Lab Mobile Clinic to be held on 23 June in New York City.

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Mobile Screenshot, RUGBY by Ralph Lauren | Source: RUGBY

With smartphone adoption rates higher than ever, there has recently been a flurry of activity from fashion brands focused on developing and deploying mobile applications. Today, luxury brands like Hermès, Chanel and Gucci have mobile apps for Apple’s popular iPhone. But far less attention has been paid to developing Mobile Web sites. In this guest post, our friends at PercentMobile explain why investing in the Mobile Web can often make more sense than building mobile apps.

NEW YORK, United States — Mobile data traffic is expected to grow 40-fold in the next five years. As the mobile internet rises in significance, the fact that over a hundred thousand mobile applications have been developed for Apple’s iPhone has been hailed as evidence of a rapidly growing mobile ecosystem.

Indeed, there are some amazing applications available. But much less attention has been paid to the Mobile Web. Here, we aim to shed light on the critical differences between mobile apps and Mobile Web and help brands choose wisely as they develop their mobile strategies.

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