Robert Duffy and Marc Jacobs | Source: Twitpic via @robertcduffy

In our latest CEO Talk, Robert Duffy, longtime business partner of Marc Jacobs, speaks to BoF about the power of Twitter.

NEW YORK, United States — When Robert Duffy posted his first-ever Tweet on 30 January, saying “Welcome Tweeties,” he had no idea what he was getting into. What happened in the weeks that followed is an excellent lesson for fashion executives everywhere: the best way to understand social media is to use social media.

You see, Robert Duffy had never used Twitter before. In fact, he didn’t really even know what Twitter was until a member of his team introduced it to him. Eventually, he warmed to the idea of using Twitter to share the behind-the-scenes action of the Marc Jacobs show, still the highlight of New York Fashion Week even after 26 years in business.

It wasn’t all smooth sailing. On his second day of tweeting, Duffy accidentally deleted all of his tweets. In the days that followed, he learned about direct messaging and retweeting and privacy on Twitter. Still, Duffy stuck with it. He began each day by getting on his stationary bicycle and reading the hundreds of tweets that had come in over night, listening and responding to feedback and questions on stores, customer service, the Marc Jacobs website, and — music to our BoF ears — how to run a fashion business.

Soon, Robert became an expert tweeter, not only on the techniques and norms of using Twitter, but also by speaking authentically in his own voice and even sharing a few private moments with Marc Jacobs himself. This authenticity resonated across the fashion Twittersphere in thousands and thousands of retweets, and spreading to blog posts and articles in the mainstream media.

By February 13, the power of Twitter had really dawned on Duffy: “I have learned much from doing this,” he tweeted. “Am really better for the experiance [sic]. You talk to the whole world in 1 second. Takes no time. Amazing!”

Still, he announced to his almost 7,000 followers that he would be hanging up his Twitter hat. And yesterday, after the Marc by Marc Jacobs show, his @robertcduffy handle was transformed into @MJInternational, leaving room for an as-yet unnamed someone else to fill Duffy’s shoes.

In a very special exclusive CEO Talk for The Business of Fashion, I caught up with Robert Duffy backstage before the Marc by Marc show, armed with questions from our loyal BoF followers, to learn more about his Twitter experience.

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Robert Duffy | Source: Style.com

The Future Of Fashion, Part One: Robert Duffy (Style.com)
“That unflappability has presumably served Duffy well over the last two and a half decades, as he and Jacobs have gone from being the self-described “rebels” of American fashion to becoming the leaders of a global mega-brand. During our conversation… he talked about his experiences with tweeting and live streaming.”

Rewarding Men With a Store of Their Own (WSJ)
“High-end fashion has long catered to women more than men. Hermès and Coach are the latest fashion houses making new efforts to shrink the gender gap.”

New York Fashion Week Gets Techy (WSJ)
“New York fashion week officially kicks off Thursday morning, in what will assuredly be the most open-and-available shows to the public ever. No, that doesn’t mean just anyone can walk into the tents… But if you’ve got an Internet connection, you can do the next best thing: watch a live-stream of the show online. Fashion has finally gotten technology.”

Fashion’s Online Numbers Game: Faking an Audience (Signature 9)
“Despite a straightforward statement to the contrary, wildly inflated numbers about fashion blogs and websites abound. Sometimes the numbers come from the bloggers and websites themselves – with no verification, other times they’re seemingly pulled from thin air.”

Who Sits Where at Fashion Week and Why (Vanity Fair)
“While everyone knows that front-row seats are reserved for celebrities, V.I.P.’s, and important editors, very little is known about the strategic process that goes into filling the chairs where everyone else sits.”

Kate Moss for Longchamps | Source: Longchamps

Kate Moss: Bags of Style (IHT)
“‘I am not doing it for different personalities — it’s what I like,’ says Ms. Moss — or Kate, as she is known. At age 36, she has taken another step in her second life, as a designer rather than as a supermodel using her pretty face and sensual lips to promote other brands.”

Esprit 1st-Half Net Profit Down 5.2 percent; Beats Forecasts (WSJ)
“Fashion retailer Esprit Holdings Ltd. said Wednesday its first-half net profit fell 5.2% percent from a year earlier as a disappointing wholesale business offset the improvement in its core retail operations.”

Abercrombie & Fitch’s Style Sense Wears Thin With Some Shoppers (WSJ)
“Retail analysts said Abercrombie’s troubles go beyond pricing to its once unerring sense of style, a problem that could be trickier to fix. The logo T-shirt and torn jeans ensemble that Abercrombie made the unofficial school uniform a decade ago has played out.”

Marc Jacobs to Stream Show Live While Robert Duffy Hypes It via Twitter (NY Magazine)
“Further democratizing the Fashion Week process, Jacobs’s business partner Robert Duffy just started tweeting to document Marc’s progress on the collection.”

Luxury in 2010 (CNN)
“Is there a luxury hotlist for 2010? CNN’s Ayesha Durgahee reports.”

Who said that big brands can’t retain the DNA of what made them interesting in the first place?

This past week in New York, I visited the Marc by Marc Jacobs store on Bleecker Street, the little brother store to Marc Jacobs mainline collection. Both businesses are owned by LVMH, the world’s largest luxury goods conglomerate. Marc Jacobs is also the Creative Director for Louis Vuitton, the company’s largest fashion brand. So, you might expect that the company feels corporate and over marketed.

Thus, it was a pleasant surprise to walk into the Marc store and see a huge yellow chicken mascot sitting in the store window. A (suitably cool) photographer named Thom was taking photos of customers posing with the chicken and then posting them in the store windows for all to see.  As Thom explained, the tradition of taking these kinds of photos goes back years in Marc Jacobs history to Marc’s infamous Christmas parties, where extravagantly dressed up patrons would pose together as momentos of the party. You can check out some of these photos on Thom’s website.

By translating this fun experience into the store, customers are engaging with the Marc Jacobs brand in such a cool way, that is not staged or fake, but an authentic part of Marc’s lifestyle and appeal. Some more photos of the instore antics are below.

For all of you budding young designers based in America, the CFDA has officially begun its annual search for America’s most promising young designers. Each year, the CFDA awards a $200,000 grant to the winner, along with mentoring from a recognised fashion business guru as part of the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund.  Past winners include the intelligent and talented Doo-Ri Chung (looking super glam in this ad) who is mentored by J.Crew’s legendary Mickey Drexler and the refined-beyond-their-years Proenza Schouler design duo, Jack McCullough and Lazaro Hernandez, who were mentored by Burberry’s impressive former CEO, Rose Marie Bravo.

This is a really great initiative from the CFDA and other venerable fashion names like Barneys New York and Vogue. That said, I have one suggestion to make it even more powerful. I believe the CFDA should supplement the business mentoring and cash with a requirement and access to funding for the winning designers to find a suitable day-to-day business partner/advisor. While mentoring from an experienced fashion business executive is priceless, it does not make up for daily support and partnership.

I have made this point before, but so many young designers try to do everything on their own, and this means they deal with areas where they might not have any formal training or expertise. One look at the long list of established designers who have relied on business parters to act as thought partners on day-to-day decisions and to share the workload, shows that this is a real pattern of success in the industry.  Marc Jacobs (who has Robert Duffy), Miuccia Prada (has always worked with her husband Patrizio Bertelli), Tom Ford (who with Domenico De Sole turned Gucci around from a fuddy duddy backwater brand), Giorgio Armani (Sergio Galeotti worked with Armani for years before he passed away), Valentino (Giancarlo Gianetti is still his business partner, even if he is no longer his life partner), and Derek Lam  (Jan-Hendrik Schlottmann) have all shown that this tandem approach can help to get the business off the ground properly, allowing the designer to focus more on the creative aspects of the business.

This ad above, from today’s WWD, lays out all of the requirements and the application procedure. Good luck!