Giorgio Armani Fall 2012 | Source: IHT

Military, Front and Center (IHT)
“Is it the bitter, battling winter following the Arab spring that has created a march of the military in men’s fashion? A soldierly influence was an undercurrent in the winter 2012 Milan men’s show, which closed Tuesday. The idea of smartening up and shaping up may be a response to Europe’s gloomy economic situation”

LVMH fund looks to stitch a deal with Fabindia (Business Standard)
“The last word in luxury is wooing the most marquee ethnic wear chain in India. L Capital Asia, the private equity arm of the world’s biggest luxury conglomerate, LVMH Group, is in discussion with Fabindia, to acquire a minority stake in the retailer.”

French luxury firms seeking Italian menswear – Armani (Reuters)
“French luxury groups are on the prowl for promising Italian menswear brands after France’s PPR bought Italian tailor Brioni this month, fashion doyen Giorgio Armani said on Tuesday adding that his business was not for sale.”

Organizers Settle Dispute Over Fashion Week Dates (On the Runway)
“Just as the men’s runway collections came to a close in Milan on Tuesday, organizers of the shows in New York and London announced that they have settled, for now, a dispute over the dates of the women’s runway shows planned this September. The New York and London collections will not overlap with those of Milan, as had been risked by a standoff between the cities over when the season should begin.”

What it takes to be a teenage editor-in-chief on the web (BBC News)
“Tavi Gevinson started her first blog ‘Style Rookie’ when she was 11. She was shopping at thrift stores, taking pictures of her outfits and writing about music, images and movies that inspired her… Now Tavi is 15 and has started her own web magazine for teenage girls, RookieMag.com, that counts 4 editors and 40 writers, illustrators and photographers.”

L-R Altuzarra, Prabul Gurung, Alexander Wang | Source: Style.com

You Can See Spring Coming (NY Times)
“Mr. Wang is a boy disguised as a designer — or maybe it’s the other way around — but whatever the case, he doesn’t want to grow up, and the clothes naturally follow that youthful spirit… Prabal Gurung’s show on Saturday had a pronounced erotic undercurrent that in its blunt use of violet, and the transparent hems of silk print dresses, owed something to the style last season of Riccardo Tisci of Givenchy.”

Fashion week: The ordinary people who stole the show (BBC News)
“Many people might not have heard of Tavi Gevinson, Scott Schuman, Susie Bubble and Bryanboy but they are household names to dedicated followers of fashion. All four are big players in the blogging revolution that has turned the fashion world on its head… But bloggers have been chipping away at the mainstream media as more and more people want to hear about fashion from people who apply it to everyday life.”

Where Fashion Gazes at Itself (NY Times)
“Tumblr, founded four years ago, has reached out to the fashion community in a way no other social networking site has. For the second time, it has brought users to New York Fashion Week as reporters, paying for their trips and giving them access to the shows. Their coverage is being posted on a dedicated channel, tumblr.com/NYFW, made up of posts from 20 bloggers picked by Tumblr’s staff, along with contributions from magazines that have their own Tumblrs.”

Versace sees revenue up in 2012 on H&M and Versus (Forbes)
“Italian top fashion house Versace is expecting higher revenues in 2012 after launching a collection for Swedish retailer Hennes & Mauritz this year and revamping its Versus second line…The company draws most of revenues from its top Versace line, but it launched a “Young Versace” line for kids and bought back its Versus licence this year to boost sales and profitability after starting a deep restructuring in 2009.”

Luxury: the next generation (FT)
“One of the more astonishing success stories of the past century has been the evolution of luxury retailing, from small-scale family firms to an international, multi-billion dollar industry… Yet, as the modern industry struggles to reconcile its artisanal heritage with today’s public offerings and quarterly reports, it is the personal, family connection that bridges the gap.”

Zegna virtual store iPad app | Source: NY Times

Next Step for Labels: Cyber-Boutiques (IHT)
“The ultimate challenge for all luxury brands is to go digital — without losing their key attributes of individuality and identity. Yet click onto almost every big name fashion Web site and while the product offering might be tempting, the experience is often bland and only two-dimensional. The success of Net-a-porter.com and of its witty masculine version, Mrporter.com, is the magazine-style content that makes the sites entertaining as well as efficient.”

Super-luxury brands sail high as slowdown fails to impact Indian consumers (The Economic Times)
“Indian consumers are continuing to show strong appetite for luxury products even as consumption in the rest of the economy slows down due to inflation and sliding growth prospects… Sales of fashion accessory labels Jimmy Choo and Canali are growing 30% year on year.”

Sister act: Rodarte is New York’s hottest label (Independent)
“Buyers either see their work as exquisite sartorial investments, or shock-frocks destined to clutter sales racks. Reviews oscillate from hyperbole to hostility, some press applauding Rodarte as a blast of fresh creative fire, others condemning them as a case of the Emperor’s New Clothes… Both sisters fall into the pale and interesting camp – they look so alike they’re often mistaken for twins. In person, they’re less intense than their clothes initially suggest.”

And the BFA nominees are... (Elle UK)
“The BFAs honour the UK’s most influential designers, business leaders, models and celebrities… Two of the most important awards are the Emerging Talent Award for Ready to Wear and the Best Designer Brand honours… Up for consideration are J.W. Anderson, Mary Katrantzou and Peter Pilotto. In the more established category, the candidates are Burberry, Stella McCartney, Tom Ford and Victoria Beckham.”

Tavi Gevinson Explains Her New Website, Rookie (The Cut)
“15-year-old wunderkind blogger Tavi Gevinson launched her much-anticipated new website, Rookie (rookiemag.com). Originally conceived as a joint venture with Jane Pratt and Say Media, the site is now under Gevinson’s sole ownership (New York Media is helping with ad sales).

Rick Owens | Source: Vice Magazine

Rick Owens: The prince of dark design (Independent)
“In a fashion climate ruled by luxury-goods conglomerates and an excess of merchandise that is both overwhelming and, increasingly, banal, Owens’ less-than-conventional career trajectory – his business turned over more than $50m last year – is an inspiration. ”

The Golden Shears – the Oscars of the tailoring world (FT)
“Sometimes we can be so transfixed by new trends… that the quieter fashion revolutions pass us by. Take last Monday’s Golden Shears competition. It’s the Oscars of the tailoring world… this year not only was the top prize scooped by a woman, there were 18 female trainees among the 24 finalists.”

India’s models accuse fashion industry of racism (Telegraph)
“India’s fashion industry is currently enjoying a boom, with growing numbers of Indian designers such as Manish Arora and Rohit Bal enjoying success…  [but while white] models are cashing in, some of India’s top models have complained they are losing out on the best jobs in their own country.”

Jane Pratt Plots Her Comeback (WWD)
“In the next two months, she will launch JanePratt.com, a Web site aimed at the gulf between the Cosmopolitans and Jezebels of the world. Then, in the summer, she will team up with Gevinson to introduce a magazine and a Web site for teenaged girls.”

How a generation of creatives is changing the face of fashion (Independent)
“‘When I was at art school, anything ‘fashionable’ was frowned upon,’ says Jones, who studied her craft at London’s Central Saint Martins. ‘I jumped straight into this from a BA at Cambridge, so spent a lot of time playing catch-up and making up my own way of doing things. Maybe this is why my style is so slap-dash.’”

The BoF community looks on at Fashion Pioneers with Natalie Massenet | Photo: Lawrence Randall

LONDON, United Kingdom — It’s been quite the year for the BoF team. In January, we will celebrate our 4th birthday, having seen BoF grow from a passion project created from the sofa in my living room to a growing global community of like-minded fashion professionals that is BoF today.

We are grateful for all of the support our community has shown us over the past 12 months, from the success of our sold-out Fashion Pioneers series to the rapidly growing numbers of you who come to us every day for opinionated fashion business analysis and a highly-curated point of view on the day’s news. We now have over 150,000 followers on Twitter, 2,000 fans on Facebook and growing follower base on our new Tumblr page. We are honoured and grateful that so many of you take the time to engage and interact with us on a daily basis, in so many ways.

The international media has also been paying attention to the power and reach of our community, from the International Herald Tribune to Vogue Italia to The Evening Standard. Canada’s Macleans Magazine called BoF “The Economist of Fashion,” the Daily Telegraph included BoF in their round-up of “Britain’s Best Fashion Bloggers” and just this month British GQ gave us a little surprise for 2011 (check out number 92). What an honour and a great way to start the new year!

None of this would be possible without you, the global community of executives, designers, editors, students, academics, investors and supporters who have made BoF their daily must-read on the fashion business. We’re going to take a break over the holidays, but in the meantime here’s a look back to the articles and stories which fired up your interest and passions this past year. Thank you again for your continued support.

Happy holidays, happy new year, and see you in 2011!

1. In Tokyo, Abercrombie Misses Its Mark

Abercrombie & Fitch, Ginza | Source: Fashionsnap.com

When BoF’s W. David Marx filed his report on the new Abercrombie & Fitch store in Tokyo’s Ginza district earlier this year, calling the American fashion brand out for its culturally insensitive approach to international expansion, the fashion blogosphere lit up with conversation about the new store. Commenters on BoF joined in large numbers, describing their own experiences — positive and negative — at the brand’s Tokyo emporium and providing insider scoops on the brand’s bungled retail strategy in Japan.

2. BoF Exclusive | The New Creative Establishment 2010

The New Creative Establishment | Source: INDUSTRIE Magazine

Possibly the most controversial article of 2010 was our exclusive preview of The New Creative Establishment created by our friends at INDUSTRIE magazine. The preview rocketed to the top of our Most Read Articles list right away and has firmly held its position for more than a month. Lists like these always spark some kind of controversy, but the uproar about this one was heard in fashion quarters around the world, and indeed on all of the major fashion websites from Grazia Daily to Style.com. Who deserved to be on the list? Who didn’t? Who was missed? Are these kinds of lists constructive contributions to the fashion dialogue or just a way for a new magazine to get attention and flatter would-be collaborators? You decide.

3. Fashion 2.0 | What The Independent Article Didn’t Tell Us

Tavi Gevinson's Bow at Dior Couture | Source: Twitpic by SteffiSchuetze

Back in February when The Independent newspaper contacted several respected bloggers for comment on an article about the growing influence and questionable ethics of some fashion bloggers, BoF was more than happy to provide some thoughts. However, when the article was published quoting only editors from major magazines, we published our own article, to give the other side of the story.

4. Fashion 2.0 | Top 10 Fashion Films of the Season

Our twice-a-year rundowns of the top fashion films of the season continue to be very popular. Fred Butler’s Sunshowers film topped our ranking of fashion films in the Spring while Gareth Pugh’s tour de force film shown in Paris’ Bercy stadium grabbed the top spot in the Autumn ranking. If you have some time over the holiday break, sit back and enjoy these curated selections of fashion’s finest films.

5. BoF Exclusive | Zaldy Goco talks about designing for Michael Jackson and Lady Gaga

Michael Jackson by Zaldy | Source: Zaldy Goco

Michael Jackson’s untimely death right before he was about to kick off a 50 concert series in London shocked the world.  Not only did BoF get the global exclusive scoop from designer Zaldy Goco on the costumes he had designed for the King of Pop, but we also got his take on working with Lady Gaga, whose impact on fashion in 2010 was absolutely huge.

6. Fashion 2.0 | Suzy Menkes on the Growing Influence of Fashion Blogs

In early in 2010 Suzy Menkes issued a warning to bloggers about the risk of becoming mouthpieces for fashion brands, many of whom seem to be looking to manipulate bloggers into publishing what some consider to be nothing more than brand propaganda. Ever the pragmatist, Ms Menkes also realises that the growing impact and relevance of blogs and other social media is here to stay. She told Mary Scherpe of Stil in Berlin, “the world changed when fashion instead of being a monologue, became a conversation. And that’s never going to stop.”

7. Fashion 2.0 | The Fashionable Rise of Tumblr

Tumblr Screenshots | Source: Google Images

Tumblr is the latest social media platform to take the fashion industry by storm. Vikram Alexei Kansara’s round-up on the rise of fashion tumbling elicited a huge response amongst the Tumblr community and resulted in BoF being invited to become an editor on the official Tumblr fashion channel. BoF has also launched it’s own Tumblr to participate in this passionate community.

8. Fashion Pioneers | Jefferson Hack, Natalie Massenet and Nick Knight

Our series of in-depth, one-on-one interviews with fashion’s most inspiring pioneers have been extremely popular on BoF and have spread around the internet like wildfire. If you missed our interviews during the year, take the chance to listen to these pioneering fashion forces speak about the future of fashion:

Jefferson Hack on Fashion Media in The Era of Digital Beauty

Natalie Massenet Says to Create the Future, Follow the Consumer

Nick Knight Says Heart and Mind are the Key to Fashion Imagemaking

9. How Influential are the New Fashion Youth?

Much has been said about the increasing influence of young fashion bloggers, empowered with digital media and their own creativity. Indeed, today’s internet-empowered youth have the tools, access and information to create and promote their own fashion culture. Our exploration of the ‘new fashion youth’ demonstrated how this kind of online showcase may create opportunities for long-term careers in the fashion industry.

10. It’s Time Fashion Schools Got Down to Business

Thomas Tait’s Sketchbook | Source: Thomas Tait

Rounding out the top ten articles of the year on BoF was an opinion piece highlighting the lack of business training and preparation given to young fashion designers at fashion schools the world over. The article does not advocate upseting “the unique and delicate creative climates that have been carefully constructed at the world’s leading fashion colleges,” but “building some basic business training into the core fashion curriculum would be a very good thing indeed.”

Imran Amed is founder and editor of The Business of Fashion

“When you look at the most popular blogs, each one has a very distinct style and they’re not all the same….even with street style blogs, you know what a Tommy Ton photograph looks like.”

Tavi Gevinson, commenting on the success of her blog Style Rookie at the L2 Innovation Forum, alongside Christene Barberich of Refinery29, Lauren Sherman of Fashionista.com, and BoF’s Imran Amed.

Tumblr Screenshots | Source: Google Images

NEW YORK, United States — According to comScore, microblogging platform Tumblr hit an “inflection point” sometime last June. Page views on Tumblr.com — which lets users create mixed-media blog posts with the kind of extreme simplicity and immediacy not found in traditional blogging platforms — began to surge. By October 2010, page views in the U.S. were up a staggering 1,540 percent from the year before. According to the New York-based company, Tumblr now has 47 million unique visitors per month, 2.7 billion page views per month, and over 9 million users, with approximately 30,000 new users joining the platform every day.

With numbers like these, it’s no wonder that Tumblr — which has been compared to Facebook and previously attracted just over $10 million from Spark Capital and Union Square Ventures (both key investors in Twitter) — was recently able to raise between $25 million and $30 million in additional financing, valuing the business at an estimated $135 million. Famed Silicon Valley VC firm Sequoia Capital was the lead investor. “I will say, it is nice to be well-received on the West Coast,” Tumblr’s president, John Maloney, told Business Insider.

Interestingly, Tumblr has been very well-received in the fashion community, as well, giving rise to a universe of fashion-related microblogs. “Over the past year, fashion has emerged as one of the fastest growing segments of the Tumblr community, with 20% of our top 1000 blogs related to fashion,” said Rich Tong, a co-founder of Weardrobe (sold to Like.com in 2009) and Tumblr’s new fashion director.

It’s not surprising then that Tumblr founder David Karp told TechCrunch last week that Tumblr wants to be “the best place in the world for the best creative communities,” with fashion at the core of this focused strategy.

Tumblr Page Views, 2009-2010 | Source: comScore Inc.

Many of the most popular fashion Tumblrs are personal style blogs like whatiwore and triciawillgoplaces, vintage and craft-focused blogs like psimadethis and hawtvintage, and street style blogs like fuckyeahstreetstyle and lookbookdotnu, launched by the eponymous look-sharing site. But a recent post on Refinery29 entitled “The Best Fashion Tumblrs To Follow Now” reflects the striking diversity of fashion blogs that have sprung up since the platform was launched in 2007. The list includes shoelust, theimpossiblecool, and textbook, a Tumblr dedicated to answering the question “What would Holden Caulfield wear?”

Industry insiders have embraced the platform as well. Purple Fashion editor Olivier Zahm and photographer Terry Richardson, for example, both use Tumblr to publish informal, spontaneous and highly popular personal diaries, Purple Diary and Terry’s Diary.

On one level, Tumblr has struck a chord with the fashion community because, like fashion itself, the platform is both immediate and highly-visual. While Tumblr posts can be text, images, quotes, links, chats, audio clips or videos, 50% of all posts are photos. “As a platform Tumblr is almost purely visual,” said Francine Ballard, founder and editorial director of DesignerSocial, an online showroom that operates a Tumblr. “Most of what gets reblogged is prompted by a sort-of visceral response. So by definition, it has the potential to be a fantastic medium for fashion.”

Indeed, Tumblr has found particular resonance amongst fashion creatives, who use the platform to aggregate and share the inspiration they find online. “I use Tumblr as a way for my creative team to share things that they are inspired by,” said Diana Hong, creative director at digital fashion agency CreateThe Group and an early adoptor of the platform.

Tavi Gevinson, best known for her blog The Style Rookie, also maintains a microblog called Slow Motion Crawl, which she migrated from Blogspot to Tumblr early last year. “It’s much more informal, more for archiving and self-reference than anything else. My favorite thing is how convenient it is for storing inspiration — when I compile images for a post on Style Rookie, I usually find them all in my Tumblr archives.”

But as well as being radically visual, quick and convenient — a Tumblr bookmarklet, as well as Tumblr mobile apps for Blackberry, iPhone and Android, make it incredibly simple to share content — Tumblr is fundamentally different from traditional blogging platforms because it comes with a built-in community. On Tumblr, users can “follow” and “reblog” other bloggers, whose posts appear in realtime streams on a Tumblr “dashboard,” much like on Twitter.

“It’s so addictive because you follow your favourite Tumblrs, which give you the best of the internet, so you just keep clicking through your dashboard and finding more and more that you like,” said Tavi.

“Tumblr seems to now have an audience of regular users and we decided it would be beneficial to drive traffic back to the site, as well as being a source of inspiration,” said Alistair Allan, digital director at Dazed Group, which operates popular fashion, art and music website Dazed Digital and, last month, launched dazeddigital.tumblr.com, a Tumblr that highlights favourite items from Dazed Digital each day.

“Many publications primarily care about Tumblr as a traffic driver, but we’ve noticed that the ones who use Tumblr to express a point of view are the ones who succeed within the community,” said Tumblr’s Mr. Tong, commenting on the Dazed Digital offering. “Once they do that, the traffic takes care of itself.”

Notably, Tumblr has managed to attract a passionate community that’s largely composed of young and influential, design-focused people. For fashion media brands, this is an extremely attractive, high-value demographic who have an almost insatiable appetite for content and share their discoveries with their social graph, both on Tumblr and across the web. “Our community loves original content — and loves reblogging it straight from the source,” said Mr. Tong.

Conveniently, a Facebook app and publish to Twitter feature neatly integrate Tumblr into the two most important social networks on the internet, enabling the platform’s influential userbase to easily distribute content to friends and followers.

It’s no surprise, then, that major fashion publishers like Vogue and Elle have recently launched Tumblrs. “The demographics of the Tumblr audience are very much in line with the demographics of our readers: typically young, fashion-minded people with a strong appreciation for pop culture,” said Keith Pollock, editorial director of Elle.com.

The platform also allows fashion media brands to speak to consumers in a softer, more personal tone. “Tumblr provides a great opportunity for brands and publishers to step out of their strict editorial guidelines and create a down to earth, approachable voice,” said Mr. Tong. What’s more, Tumblr makes it easy to establish the kind of genuine reciprocal relationships that turn fans and followers into brand loyalists. “By following users you think create great content, liking their posts and reblogging their content as well, you establish a very passionate and loyal following,” explained Mr. Tong.

But it’s not just media companies who are getting in on the action. LVMH-backed ethical fashion brand Edun operates a Tumblr called Eye of Edun, where the company shares behind the scenes imagery and visual inspiration. “Tumblr is embraced by artists and creative communities more so than other blogging platforms,” said Edun’s brand director Bianca Barattini. “Edun.com tells our entire story, from backstory to mission and offers a shopping experience, while the Tumblr is purely inspiration.”

But it may not be long before fashion brands start to integrate commerce into their Tumblrs. Last Thursday, a small startup called Of a Kind, which offers limited edition items from emerging designers, became the first store to launch on Tumblr. “Building our site on Tumblr seemed like an obvious move — it has allowed us to put our content in front of early adopters in a place where they were already congregating,” said co-founder and president Erica Cerulo. Tumblr does not technically support e-commerce, but Of a Kind was able to easily connect their Tumblr to Shopify, a simple digital commerce app, to offer a fully shopable experience.

Asked if Tumblr would be adding e-commerce functionality in the future, Mr. Tong responded: “We haven’t yet pursued supporting that feature set, but given the virality of our network, we’re definitely exploring ideas on how best to integrate the e-commerce component into our user experience.”

With the possibility of commerce-enabled Tumblrs on the horizon, the existing opportunities for content distribution and audience engagement, and the minimal time and effort it actually takes to start blogging on Tumblr, we suspect it won’t be too long before smart fashion brands see Tumblr as an indispenable tool in their social media arsenal, alongside Twitter and Facebook.

If fashion and creative communities are at the heart of Tumblr, BoF must be there too. You can now follow us on Tumblr: businessoffashion.tumblr.com

Vikram Alexei Kansara is Managing Editor of The Business of Fashion.

Boutiques.com | Source: Boutiques.com

Google Debuts Fashion Shopping Site (NY Times)
“In a deliberate collision between nerds and fashion mavens, Google has created a new e-commerce site that significantly improves how fashion is presented and sold online. The site, Boutiques.com… may also change how people shop for clothes.”

Where Do China’s Luxury Purchases End Up? (Forbes)
“While most agree that the newly affluent make some such purchases to demonstrate to others around them that they have ‘made it’, others view the same items as safer alternatives to hongbao (red envelopes stuffed with pay-off cash).”

Sustainable Luxury: New Opportunities for Growth (Guardian)
“This new consumer mindset poses an interesting challenge to luxury brands. While on the one hand, global luxury sales have rebounded nicely in 2010… this uptick does not necessarily translate into profitability over the long term.”

Saks expects lift as Wall Street spurs luxe spending (Reuters)
“Saks Inc. reported a higher-than-expected quarterly profit, helped by well-heeled shoppers emboldened by this year’s Wall Street gains to go splurge, and the retailer forecast more sales growth for the upcoming holidays.”

Celebrity fashion blogger to launch a teen magazine (Independent)
“Fashion blogger Tavi Gevinson and former editor in chief of the now-defunct Sassy magazine Jane Pratt are teaming up to create a new teen magazine slated for next year.”

Over the course of the day, three important themes emerged: the power of disruptive thinking, the power of listening and the power of iterative development.

The Power of Disruptive Thinking

“Disruptive Thinking” was the title of a talk by Luke Williams, a fellow at global innovation firm Frog Design, author of Disrupt, and one of the event’s most interesting speakers. Beginning his talk by tracing the origin of the word “competition” to the Latin word competere, meaning to “sit together,” Mr. Williams implied that competitors are a group that’s agreed to appear at the same time and play by the same rules. Competition leads to incremental change, while real innovation is about “disruptive thinking” that breaks previous patterns of thought, he said, identifying Red Bull, Zipcar and Seinfeld as examples of innovative products that challenged fundamental assumptions in their respective markets — soft drinks, rental cars and sitcoms — and earned tremendous success.

The Power of Listening

Tavi Gevinson, Imran Amed and Christene Barberich | Photo: Mike Matas

A panel of fashion bloggers including Tavi Gevinson, Lauren Sherman of Fashionista, Christene Barberich of Refinery 29, and BoF’s own founder and editor-in-chief Imran Amed — a group that instinctively understands the conversational nature of digital media — first raised the importance of having immediate feedback from the consumers of their content. “I know within minutes if a story is successful,” noted Ms. Barberich. “You have to listen.”

For luxury and fashion brands, consumer feedback gathered on the social web is something C-level executives must personally monitor, Mr. Amed advised. “Don’t delegate social media,” he said. “CEOs and CMOs also need to listen and respond.”

The ability to digitally listen, respond and nurture a one-to-one relationship with the consumer is going to transform the way companies do business, ushering in a “thank you economy,” said Greg Vaynerchuk, a self-trained wine expert and social media consultant to companies like Google and Disney, who gave one of the most compelling presentations of the conference. “The next battleground is caring,” said Mr. Vaynerchuk, who has earned over 850,000 followers on Twitter (@garyvee) and attracts over 90,000 viewers per day to his wine-focused webcast, “simply by responding to Twitter queries.”

Indeed, Mr. Vaynerchuk declared search.twitter.com to be “the most important site on the internet today” because it enables anyone to monitor and respond to what millions of real people are saying in realtime about a particular brand, business, category or topic. It’s about the “humanisation of business,” he emphasised. Success will come through “outcaring everyone.”

But listening is not just about gathering tactical feedback and cultivating more caring relationships with consumers. Carefully monitoring and engaging in conversations with and amongst consumers is essential to implementing the kind of iterative innovation strategies that, paired with disruptive thinking, are most likely to succeed in today’s increasingly unpredictable market.

The Power of Iterative Development

“Predictability is at an all time low,” said Frans Johansson, an entrepreneur, author of The Medici Effect and another of the day’s most dynamic speakers. “A predictable path to success does not exist,” he said. Rather, a more reliable way to innovate is to look for new ideas in unpredictable places, then take an iterative approach to developing them, advised Mr. Johansson. That means being flexible enough to take the “smallest executable step” towards a goal, then test, learn and repeat — an approach that’s largely inspired by Agile software development, an adaptive process that emphasises customer collaboration and responsiveness over strict road maps and plans.

Mr. Johansson illustrated the principle with the example of the Ice Hotel in his native Sweden. Interestingly, he explained, the world’s first ice hotel was initially conceived as an “ice exhibit” and later became an event and exhibition hall for artists. It was only when visiting backpackers could not find a room in the local town and asked permission to spend the night in the exhibition hall, placing their sleeping bags on top of reindeer skins, that the idea for the ice hotel was born.

Innovation in Practice

Later in the day, a panel entitled “The Elevator Pitch” highlighted a group of bright young entrepreneurs who were putting the power of disruptive thinking, listening and iterative development into practice.

Jenn Hyman, co-founder and CEO of Rent the Runway, presented her event-focused, “Netflix for fashion” service that’s notable for selling fashion as an experience, not a product. Interestingly, as the startup grew, Ms. Hyman realized that her service was proving to be a great way for consumers to sample brands they might later buy and, consequently, a powerful customer acquisition channel for traditional online retailers like Neiman Marcus, an area of the business she is planning to expand.

Katia Beauchamp and Hayley Barna, co-founders of BirchBox, presented their subscription sampling service for beauty products. The company delivers a box of beauty samples to paying members once a month, a concept based on the insight that, in the beauty business, there is a strong correlation between sampling and sales, especially if the samples are well curated and accompanied by compelling content.

The last “pitch” was from Vivian Weng, co-founder of FashionStake, a company whose startup diaries have appeared on BoF over the last few months. Since launch, the company has embraced change and learnt to iterate, significantly revising their original business model based on consumer feedback. Their new concept flips the traditional flash sale model on its head, allowing consumers to pre-order fashion for a substantial discount, while helping the emerging designers they carry to cut inventory and storage costs, fund production and better optimise supply and demand. But whether they can make this new model work remains to be seen.

The current explosion of digital fashion innovation is driving the continuous creation of exciting new businesses, but according to Mr. Johansson, “the average lifespan of a company is getting shorter and shorter.” No matter how compelling the initial concept may seem, the most successful startups will be the ones that measure everything they do and are agile and lean enough to evolve quickly as fresh evidence emerges.

Thanks to Mike Matas for the insipring images and video of the day. Vikram Alexei Kansara is Managing Editor of The Business of Fashion

Tavi Gevinson at Generation Next | Source: Luxury Lab

NEW YORK, United States — With speakers including teenage blogging sensation, Tavi Gevinson and Teen Vogue publisher Laura McEwen, last Friday’s “Generation Next Forum,” organized by New York-based thinktank LuxuryLab, examined the unique characteristics and growing influence of a young generation of consumers that’s set to impact the luxury goods industry like no other generation since the Baby Boomers: Generation Y.

Wired and Influential

Opening the event, New York University professor and LuxuryLab founder Scott Galloway, underscored the importance of Generation Y with some simple, but astounding numbers. Born between 1977 and 1994, Gen Y currently spends $150 billion a year on consumer goods. That’s five times more than their parents did at their age. They also influence another $50 billion in purchases made by others. Indeed, according to a recent report by Harris Interactive, one in every three consumer dollars spent in the United States today is influenced by someone under the age of 18.

Laura McEwen of Teen Vogue reiterated this point in a presentation entitled “Gen Y and the Dynamics of Influence,” noting that teenage women increasingly influence fashion and beauty trends and drive purchasing decisions amongst older consumers.

Gen Y’s profound influence in the marketplace is directly linked to their familiarity with digital media, said Jane Buckingham, an expert on youth trends and founder of trend marketing and consulting company Trendera. Indeed, 96% percent of Generation Y is active on at least one social networking site.

A New Definition of Luxury

But for this wired and influential generation, luxury means something different than it did to their parents. They are uninterested in conspicuous consumption and showing off status, and more interested in social engagement and experience, said Sterling Lanier, a branding expert and president of research consultancy Chatter.

“Teachers, parents and TV shows are always telling us to be ourselves,” said Tavi Gevinson, the precocious teenager behind the now widely-known fashion blog The Style Rookie. “But what we want more than anything is to belong, to feel like we’re in a clique.” For Tavi, luxury products should be like a secret society that connects you to like-minded individuals and not a mainstream, homogenised stamp of status. Brand markings should be secret emblems that only certain people recognize, she said.

When a company offers them a unique point of view, an authentic experience and meaningful connections to a community, today’s teenagers are happy to evangelise the brand. But if not, this influential, internet-empowered generation will go out and find somebody else who does — and if that doesn’t exist yet, they’ll create it themselves.

Agata Seidel is a writer and consultant based in New York. The Business of Fashion was an official media partner of the Generation Next conference.