Lanvin by But Sou Lai | Source: NY Times

The Inside Story of a Couture Dream in the Making (IHT)
“Few dare to focus on a blank page, even if it has a gilded trim, or to imagine that a cover could be made from gros grain, with the texture of a couture dress and no sign of a title — until you find the names embossed on the gilding: ‘Lanvin’ and ‘Alber Elbaz.’… ‘I didn’t want to make it a retrospective, the beginning of the end,’ says Mr. Elbaz, who is celebrating covertly his first decade at Lanvin.”

Lion Capital’s Lyndon Lea defends his performance (Telegraph)
“In recent months, however, Lion, a private equity firm famous for turning Jimmy Choo into an international luxury brand, has lost some of its glamour… Lea models Lion’s culture on the creative businesses it invests in, a different approach from most numbers-obsessed private equity firms, even if he does get some stick for the wild parties.”

Supergroup sales jump over Christmas (Reuters)
“SuperGroup, the company behind the Superdry fashion brand, posted a 22 percent rise in group sales over the key Christmas period as it overcame distribution issues which had dogged the firm in 2011.”

Valentino’s Creative Directors Prepare For Their Men’s Runway Debut (Style.com)
“Tomorrow in Florence, Valentino’s Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pier Paolo Piccioli debut their Fall ‘12 menswear collection as the invited guests of Pitti Uomo. The occasion marks the first runway show for the men’s collections, which the designers took over several season ago and have been quietly showing by appointment in their Place Vendome showroom—where it has been a quiet highlight of the Paris collections—ever since.”

Sole Man Blake Mycoskie (WSJ)
“Although he’s the founder of TOMS Shoes, the company that donates a pair of shoes to a child in need for every pair sold, his name isn’t Tom. Social entrepreneur Blake Mycoskie named his for-profit company after his original charitable inspiration, ‘Shoes for a Better Tomorrow,’ which eventually became ‘Tomorrow’s Shoes,’ and then ‘TOMS.’

NEW YORK, United States — At a news conference Monday morning, livestreamed on YouTube and emceed by the actress Anne Hathaway, Valentino Garavani and long-time business partner Giancarlo Giammetti unveiled the Valentino Garavani Virtual Museum, a downloadable desktop application that showcases almost five decades of the designer’s work, drawing on a database of over 180 videos and 5000 images, including Valentino’s original sketches. A fashion first, the digital museum invites users to navigate a series of immersive galleries, organised by theme and rendered in 3-D, that in the physical world would stretch over 10,000 square meters.

Funded entirely by Mr. Giammetti and Mr. Garavani at a reported cost of several million dollars, the virtual museum, which is free to access, serves no direct commercial purpose — the duo no longer have a financial stake in the Valentino business, which is owned by private equity firm Permira — and exists for the sole aim of securing the designer’s legacy.

But the Valentino museum launch comes at a significant moment for the industry. Public interest in fashion exhibitions is surging. This summer’s record-breaking Alexander McQueen exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art attracted over 650,000 visitors. Meanwhile, big luxury brands like Louis Vuitton, Chanel and others are moving to control and communicate their heritage by staging large-scale exhibitions at major museums in emerging markets. Gucci has even opened a private museum of its own in the heart of Florence.

While lacking some of the inherent experiential value that comes with exploring a physical space, the Valentino virtual museum offers obvious advantages in terms of cost and reach — no small points in the context of today’s globalised and uncertain economy — and the initiative’s strengths and weaknesses are sure to be examined closely by other fashion brands in the weeks and months to come.

Having previewed the Valentino Garavani Virtual Museum in the days prior to launch, BoF sat down with Mr. Giammetti just before the press conference to discuss the vision behind the world’s first digital fashion museum.

BoF: Why did you decide to make this museum a digital experience instead of a physical one?

Giancarlo Giammetti: I’m passionate about virtual tours. I remember years ago going online to the website of the Barnes Foundation. I was fascinated by this virtual tour, which was a camera going around the rooms of the gallery. You could move and focus on paintings. This was always in my mind. And when we started to think about what to do with this huge archive of forty-seven years, which was quite well organised, I wondered how to make it available and how to keep it together and also how to keep it as a memory for ourselves. So the idea of a virtual museum was born.

We have a small museum in France, but it’s very small. There are not hundreds of dresses there. Also, it’s not in Paris, but about one hour from Paris, so it’s much more difficult to bring people there. I respect real museums very much. I think, especially in this country, fashion museums are doing an amazing job. But for one designer to have his own museum and be sure that it will live forever and not one day look dusty and instead keep fresh — how will this happen? Digital is also the language of today, so whomever will come after us can still see it, because it’s something modern, not something related to a model of the past.

BoF: We understand you worked with the digital agency Novacom Associés-Paris, as well as the architects Patrick Kinmonth and Antonio Monfreda, to bring the museum to life. What was the brief you gave them?

GG: The brief was, first, to create the architecture. I wanted something very modern, very simple. But I wanted to keep the idea of a room and have a blue sky with clouds moving to simulate the breeze of Rome, so we have skylights. As it’s an archive, of course you want to see the dresses, you want to see the photography, you want to see the people. There is a master class [where Valentino explains his creative process]. There is an interview in which I describe our adventure together. I wanted to keep it something classic, but bring it to a different reality. In the end, we wanted a real museum, but in a virtual way.

BoF: The museum features an impressive array of content. What is your favourite part?

GG: My favourite part is “Very Valentino” where you see five decades of clothes. There is one dress, for example, and behind that you see Monica Vitti wearing the dress in L’Avventura, the movie by [Michelangelo] Antonioni. And then you see a picture by Helmut Newton of Valentino and Monica and Antonioni in the Caffé Greco in Rome, along with the original Valentino drawing of the dress. All this together — this is the world of Valentino, this is the world of that dress. For every garment, you can see a video — if there is a video, because don’t forget video began in the 1980s — and the original drawing, press clippings, advertising, all linked together.

BoF: Alongside the museum itself, you have launched a presence on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. How will these channels complement the experience?

GG: On Facebook, there were so many Valentino Garavani fakes, like for every celebrity I would imagine. I wanted to create [an authentic Facebook presence] myself, so I started with The Real Valentino Garavani. It was more for our friends; it was not huge, just four thousand people. But I started to put a lot of material there; of girls, models, press. And then it was normal to move to Facebook for the museum and then to Twitter.

BoF: In terms of the museum, one thing we haven’t talked about as yet is the audience. Who are you trying to reach? Are there people you hope to reach with a digital museum who may not have visited a physical archive?

GG: Yes. That’s why you get the application for free. We didn’t want people to have to pay to get into the museum. We didn’t want any sponsors. All the investment is [from] Valentino and myself. In 2008 or 2009, we did a show at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. It was beautiful to see all these young people sitting on the floor and drawing. That’s who we want to reach here. But Les Arts Décoratifs is small. This can be huge.

BoF: You mentioned as we were sitting down that this was your first experience working in digital. Can you describe what that experience has been like and one lesson that you have learned?

GG: It never stops! When I started working on this, I thought when you have finished you take a break. You have done it and it’s there. But no! We want to evolve it. I’m already thinking that the master class of tomorrow will be done by an important journalist, or I will have somebody witty — I already have somebody in mind — who writes a blog, so I’ve learned that it seems easy, but it’s not.

OUR THOUGHTS:

Expectations? When we first heard that the legendary Mr. Valentino and Mr. Giammetti were launching a virtual fashion museum, we were excited. In the context of the physical exhibitions currently being staged by a number of luxury brands, here was a new digital format that offered both practical advantages and new creative possibilities. Expectations were high.

First impressions? As soon as you enter the museum, the ambitious nature of the undertaking becomes clear. The digital architecture is stately and there is a vast amount of rich content to explore. But the videogame-like experience is a far cry from the standards of popular gaming titles and the 3-D graphics feel dated. One of the major advantages of a virtual museum is greater accessibility and one of the key audiences the experience aims to reach are young people, who are highly mobile and constantly bombarded with a vast array of media experiences competing for their attention. Therefore the decision to create a downloadable desktop application rather than a web app that can be easily enjoyed across devices and during quick bursts of media-snacking is unfortunate. Of course, this choice stems from the choice to apply the metaphors of a physical museum to a digital experience. It’s one thing to make physical museums digitally accessible à la Google Art Project. But when creating a digital museum completely from scratch, why follow the conventions of a physical gallery?

Most potential? Conceptually, the core idea of a digital fashion archive is strong. Not only does a digital experience have the potential to be far more accessible and cost-effective than a bricks-and-mortar museum, but the flexibility of digital media enables users to more easily explore the web of interesting relationships and interconnections between pieces of archival content. For each garment there is a rich back-story of videos, editorial images and sketches.

What’s more, unlike a physical museum that has certain fixed properties, a virtual museum can be updated at the pace of a blog, an opportunity Mr. Giammetti appears eager to seize. Indeed, if Mr Giammetti and Mr Garavani commit themselves to the kind of constant experimentation and rapid innovation that digital allows, they have the opportunity to create something that no fashion house has yet achieved: a living and breathing archive that’s globally accessible and ever-evolving. This is a powerful way to secure the legacy of one of the world’s greatest fashion designers.

What’s missing? The virtual Valentino museum is a closed system, isolated from the social web. None of the archive’s rich content is sharable and there is no integration with leading social platforms like Facebook and Twitter. This is a missed opportunity to spark conversation amongst fans, and indeed to drive more people to explore the museum, especially after the initial media buzz has faded.

Furthermore, a visit to the virtual Valentino museum is a solitary experience, where it’s impossible to see, be influenced by or interact with fellow visitors. One of the most powerful ways to create the kind of digital archive that Mr Giammetti envisions — never dusty, always fresh — is to harness the energies of visitors. For example, why not let users curate a selection of their favourite dresses, remix them with other archival content and share this record of their experience, both within the museum and beyond? The possibilities are endless.

But perhaps the single most powerful and forward-looking thing that Mr. Giammetti and Mr. Garavani could do to unlock the creative potential of their substantial archive is to develop an Application Programming Interface or API. Technology companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter often publish APIs — interfaces that enable software to interact with other software — making their platforms available to external developers who can leverage them to build new experiences and applications. For example, in August, luxury retailer Bergdorf Goodman used the Google Maps and Instagram APIs to create Shoes About Town, an interactive map featuring geo-tagged images of covetable footwear. In a similar way, a Valentino museum API could give select developers access to the vast amounts of content currently housed in the digital archive — dresses, images, videos, text — with which they could build new experiences and applications to add to the virtual museum project and bring the designer’s legacy to life in previously unimaginable ways.

In Digital Scorecard, BoF’s editors review the most innovative digital initiatives from across the world of fashion.

Michael Kors by Mikael Jansson | Source: Interview

Michael Kors By Lauren Hutton (Interview)
“It’s hard to pinpoint when Michael Kors first became a fashion designer. It might have been the moment when Dawn Mello, then-fashion director at Bergdorf Goodman, stopped by Lothar’s, the boutique on 57th Street where Kors was working as salesman/window dresser/in-house designer after dropping out of the FIT, and told him that if he ever went out on his own, she’d love to take a look at his collection.”

Valentino Boost (Vogue UK)
“Valentino has reported a revenue boost of 24 per cent in the past six months, helping it to return to the black. The Italian label posted first half net profits of €2.6 million euros (£2.28 million), compared with a loss of €7.4 million (£6.50 million) during the same period the year before.”

J.Crew settles investor lawsuits for $16 million (Reuters)
“Investors agreed to a $16 million settlement of lawsuits stemming from the buyout of clothing retailer J.Crew Group Inc by two private equity groups, according to an investor attorney. The settlement is based on an earlier $10 million agreement that collapsed in January, according to Stuart Grant of Grant & Eisenhofer PA, which represents shareholders.

Fashion’s Great Confusion (WSJ)
“If looking fashionable is your goal, you can’t go far wrong this season, even if you don’t give a fig for sartorialism. Why? Well, fashion—the designers, manufacturers, marketers and retailers of clothes, and the stylists, editors, commentators and photographers who bring it all to you—don’t seem to have a clue as to what’s going on. There’s a schizophrenic element to this season’s looks and collections.”

Helmut Lang to Put on Its First Fashion Show Since 2005 (The Cut)
“Nicole and Michael Colovos started as creative directors of Helmut Lang in 2006 after Theory bought the label from Prada, but they never put on a fashion show. This spring they’ll do their first one for the label at New York Fashion Week.”

Acne Paper Spring/Summer 2010 Photographed by Daniel Jackson | Source: Acne

Northern Discretion: Thomas Persson of Acne Paper (Interview)
“When Acne Paper was founded in 2004 as a literary prong of the multi-faceted Swedish denim empire, it faced a challenge: having to prove its creative independence, and its worthiness beyond being a fancy bit of advertising.”

Louis Vuitton, Burberry Win Millions in Landmark Canadian Counterfeit Suit (Forbes)
“Louis Vuitton and Burberry have won significant damages in Canada’s single largest trademark counterfeit and copyright case…  The fashion houses had filed suit last year… claimed that Singga, Carnation and Altec had been selling fake handbags, along with other “fashion accessories.”

Business is brisk for fashion brand Valentino: CEO (Reuters)
“Italian fashion brand Valentino is enjoying solid demand for haute couture pieces, thanks to Middle Eastern, Russian and U.S. buyers and trading overall continues to improve.”

A Vision in Melancholy (NY Times)
“For Chanel’s haute couture show here Tuesday night, he recreated the Place Vendôme inside the Grand Palais… Dresses… Added to the fin-de-siècle melancholia… it’s a legitimate mood in an overbright, bored world. It was just unclear how to read it against kitsch scenery.”

Bip Ling unveiled as new face for Forever 21 (Fashion Monitor)
“Model and DJ Bip Ling has been announced as the latest face of the US fashion store, Forever 21… Spanning three floors, the new Forever 21 London store is unveiled to the public on July 27.”

Valentino Spring Summer 2011 | Source: Valentino

Valentino: State of Grace (Interview)
“If there is something most significant about Valentino, it’s that women feel beautiful when they’re wearing Valentino. Beauty is at the core of his work—it’s not just an element.”

Nepal seeks legal cover for shawl that conquered the world (Independent)
“Coveted for its lightness and warmth, the [pashmina] wool… has brought much-needed income to the mountain kingdom of Nepal. But recently exports have slumped, thanks to competition from cheap imitations mass-produced mainly in China and India.”

Bulgari Swings To Net Profit As China Sales Surge (WSJ)
“The jewelry maker revised previously reported sales figures up slightly and said first-quarter sales rose 28% to EUR254.7 million. By category, all divisions posted double-digit growth, as jewelry sales rose 29%, perfume and cosmetics sales rose 33% and watch sales rose 22%.”

Hermès First-Quarter Sales Rise 26% (Bloomberg)
“Revenue increased 26 percent to 637.1 million euros from 507.7 million euros a year earlier, the Paris- based company said… The average estimate of three analysts compiled by Bloomberg was 590.3 million euros. Excluding currency swings, sales climbed 21 percent.”

Rise: Yusuke Maegawa (Dazed Digital)
“His dark and voluminous aesthetic led to a place at last season’s Vauxhall Fashion Scout exhibition, and that’s only the beginning for this Japanese Saint Martins graduate.”

Bulgari Store, Rome | Source: Daylife

Bulgari under fire for global ambition (FT)
In a globalised world, the relatively small scale of many Italian companies… is proving a problem that is shared by Italian industry at large… ‘The risk to independent brands is that if they do not have revenues of around €3bn [$4bn], they will probably lose market share.’ This is because it is too difficult to compete with companies such as LVMH.

A new day for Valentino couture (Telegraph)
“The task before Chiuri and Piccioli – to take couture and ready-to-wear to the next generation – was seen by many as a poisoned chalice… Alessandra Facchinetti’s designs were judged too directional for established customers and yet not appealing enough for a new audience… Now young Hollywood in particular is embracing Valentino.”

Luxury brands need more of a woman’s touch (Independent)
“Even Arnault wants more women at the very top: a third non-executive female director will be joining in May and more will follow. He’s given Chantal Gaemperle, the head of human resources and synergies for the group, the task of helping push the proportion of female executive committee members to 35 per cent by 2012.”

China Split Between Conspicuous And Sophisticated Shoppers (Jing Daily)
“Currently, China’s luxury consumption remains in the ‘conspicuous consumption’ or ‘competition in consumption’ stage. Of course, there are some consumers who are highly educated and erudite, some rich second- and third-generation individuals, and those who have had experience living abroad — all of whom have learned how to enjoy luxury goods.”

Fashion designer crackups: Is industry’s pace too relentless? (Washington Post)
“You are on a very, very tight schedule. It’s like a factory putting out an aesthetic. There is no space for imperfection.’ The shift occurred during the past two decades, when business tycoons took over established family-run houses and — with the help of bright, young talents — transformed them into publicly traded billion-dollar global luxury brands.”

Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pier Paolo Piccioli | Source: Wasafix

Saving Valentino (WSJ)
“When Valentino Garavani left the building, he took with him much of what made the label legendary. Can the new designers bring the brand into the future without destroying the past?”

A Look That’s Worth a Million Hits (NY Times)
“[Explaining] the challenge of modeling clothes online… The process involves ‘selling clothes to people who can’t touch anything… so even if only for one second, you want to have some connection with her.’”

New world challenges luxury brands (Warc)
“Luxury consumers … are moving to a more introverted kind of consumption that involves family, friends and living well. In the new world of luxury, consumers are looking more to ‘be’ than to ‘have,’ BCG said.” (Full BCG Report available here)

The Crush Builds as SoHo Revives (NY Times)
“‘There’s a new energy in the neighborhood,’… What a difference a year makes. In 2009, commercial real estate in SoHo was reeling, with one out of 10 shops in the retail-heavy stretch between West Broadway and Broadway vacant.”

Alexander McQueen to receive posthumous fashion award (Telegraph)
“Lee Alexander McQueen, one of the finest young British designers of his generation, will receive a posthumous award for Outstanding Achievement in Fashion Design at the British Fashion Awards 2010, in London.”

Z Spoke by Zac Posen, Autumn/Winter 2010 | Source: Nitrolicious

Designers Show Off Less-Expensive Clothing (WSJ)
“Almost every high-end fashion designer has been forced to cut prices or launch lower-priced collections since the economy tanked… [secondary collections] are creeping out of the showrooms and onto the runways this week.”

Burberry’s conquest of cyber space (Telegraph)
“We are now as much a media-content company as we are a design company, because it’s all part of the overall experience. So it’s a big deal. It’s changing the whole system of buying, and the whole cycle of production.”

The Runways Lighten Up (WSJ)
“Stores may now be stocked with this fall’s cautious camel and gray classics, but there are signs that bright colors and whimsy are about to return to fashion.”

Valentino launches capsule collection with Gap (Catwalk Queen)
“In terms of unlikely collaborations, this one has to be up there. In celebration of their arrival in Italy, Gap have announced they have teamed up with the House of Valentino for a capsule collection.”

London’s Fashion’s Night Out (Vogue UK)
“There were Bugsy Malone-themed dance lessons in Rupert Sanderson, cookery lessons in Browns, fashion design lessons in Harvey Nicks… and live music in the windows of Matthew Williamson and Burberry.”

Tilda Swinton for Pringle | Source: Pringle

Pringle boss reveals blueprint (Daily Record)
“Pringle boss Mary-Adair Macaire has revealed her plans to turn the knitwear brand into Scotland’s answer to Chanel… she’s confident that Pringle… will soon win a place among luxury brands from around the world.”

Beleaguered fashion chain returns to profit (Guardian)
“The fashion chains Oasis, Karen Millen, Coast and Warehouse, which became entangled in the failure of Icelandic group Baugur, have reported improving sales under their new owner.”

Does Digital Mean the End of Control? (Fashion’s Collective)
“With now 500 million people on Facebook, and the number of internet users growing exponentially across the world, brands need to figure out how to participate in online communication, but does this mean losing control?”

Valentino Wins 16-Year Trademark Case (Fashionista)
“For the past sixteen years, Valentino has been engaged in litigation with a company called Florence Fashions over the use of the Valentino trademark.”

A Hat Fit for a Queen (WSJ)
“In Via Dei Piatti, a narrow one-way street in the rabbit’s warren of roads around the Duomo in downtown Milan… master hat maker Lorenzo Borghi has labored for almost 60 years.”

Acne Autumn/Winter 2010 | Source: Acne

The hot spot for cool customers: Swedish label Acne (Independent)
“Swedish denim label Acne – it stands for Ambition to Create Novel Expressions – is the latest coup de foudre of the fashion world… And it’s opening its largest store in London this week.”

New Beirut Mall Aims to Be Luxury Oasis (WWD)
“Beirut is embarking on a new era in retailing with the renovation and debut of the Souks shopping mall, a revitalization project by Solidere, The Lebanese Co. for the Development and Reconstruction of Beirut’s Central District.”

High Fashion Relents to Web’s Pull (NY Times)
“Luxury brands were a little hesitant or reticent, because they were struggling with how to convey and create an experience that was rich… But by the time the luxury market slid last year, attitudes were changing.”

Burberry Q1 revenues seen up 15 percent (Reuters)
“British luxury goods group Burberry is set to report a 15 percent rise in first-quarter revenue on Tuesday, boosted by strong growth in accessories, in Asia and through its own retail outlets.”

Valentino’s Techno Legacy (IHT)
“There will be cross reference to people, because you can’t separate the clothes from the life — it has to be biographical… interweaving categories of craft, art and the world of Valentino.”