Tilda Swinton in Zero Maria Cornejo | Source: Style Frizz

Styles and Strategy That Defy Convention (WSJ)
“Investors have their own expectations, and their cash often puts them in the driver’s seat. It’s a common theme in fashion—designers [who part] with the investment partners whose visions didn’t end up coinciding with the designers.”

Macy’s Gets Fast Fashion (NY Times)
“Any retailer on earth would just about die to create the kind of consumer craze that takes place when H & M introduces a discount designer collaboration… the latest store to delve into fast fashion is a bit unexpected in that it is the classically mainstream Macy’s.”

Limited Brands: Overseas can rival U.S. market (Market Watch)
“A 1,000-square-foot Victoria’s Secret travel store in a Brazilian airport, which just sells accessories and beauty products, opened a little more than a year ago. Since then, it’s done about $10 million in sales, or $10,000 per square foot.”

Luxury brands not using online video effectively (Luxury Daily)
“Luxury marketers are missing valuable opportunities by failing to promote their brands vigorously through the rich-media canvas of online video, according to Forrester Research.”

The Fashion Conservatives (NY Times)
“‘The notion that a contemporary woman must look mannish in order to be taken seriously is frankly dismaying,’ Ms. Wintour chided. ‘I do think Americans have moved on from the power suit mentality. Political campaigns that do not recognize this are making a serious misjudgment.’”

PARIS, France — Yesterday, Chanel launched its long awaited Chanel No.5 short film Train de Nuit, featuring Audrey Tautou, who is no stranger to the storied French couture brand. Often compared to Mademoiselle Chanel herself, Tautou has now twice taken on the role of the famous coutourière, most recently in Coco Avant Chanel, a film exploring her early life and times.

Within seconds of seeing the opening shot of the 2 minute short film, directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who previously worked with Tautou on the award-winning film Amélie, the viewer is struck by Tautou’s alluring presence, as she rushes to catch the Orient Express which takes her from 1955 Paris to modern-day Istanbul in mere seconds. This is the Internet after all, so things have to happen quickly before patience wears thin and viewers click away.

On board this luxurious mahogany express train, Tautou’s fragrance catches the attention of a fellow passenger, played by American actor Travis Davenport, who becomes hopelessly addicted to our heroine, laying the foundation for a tale of intertwining destinies, woven by the threads of chance and fate.

There is no dialogue at all throughout the film and the story is conveyed entirely through the actors’ powerful body language and the soulful voice of Billie Holiday. In doing so, the film successfully captures the beauty and sophistication of Coco Chanel’s essence while delicately conveying the power of scent in seduction, almost as if it were wafting straight off the screen. This film is the strongest proof yet that luxury brands can achieve a whole new level of storytelling on the Internet, leaving two-dimensional magazine advertisements in the dust.

The production quality is remarkably good and perhaps more importantly, the film is watchable, over and over again, because new details can be picked up with each viewing. There is also a 60 second version of the film available and a full behind-the-scenes look at the making of the film and the story of the legendary perfume itself.

But this is where things start to go awry. It pains us to say that this beautiful film, and all the supplementary materials, are available only on the Chanel site and any initiative to virally propagate the film is thwarted by the lack of an embed function. Indeed, a legal disclaimer warns that

“No part of this website may be copied, reproduced, republished, uploaded, posted, transmitted or distributed in any way for commercial purposes. This prohibition also includes framing any content from this site on another site, as well as unauthorized linking…use of material from this site without CHANEL’s prior written consent is strictly prohibited.”

Unauthorized linking? You’ve got to be kidding. In the digital age, such restrictions not only seem antiquated and old-school, but they also reflect a lack of understanding of the open world of the Facebook-addicted, always-Twittering, YouTube-loving internet faithful who want to share and discuss and celebrate things they love.

While the quality of such sites would not replicate what is available on the Chanel homepage, when weighed against the potential loss of millions of views (see Susan Boyle), this seems like the wrong trade-off to make. Chanel will only reach a fraction of its potential audience with this film due to the restrictions. Why bother creating such a great brand development tool if you aren’t willing to share it?

Viewers clearly want to share the film, and thanks to the advances in video-ripping technology, certain seeders have already started propagating bootlegged versions of the film drastically varying in quality, which is even worse for the brand and completely ruins the experience of watching the film, which could have been released in HD on YouTube by Chanel itself. We managed to find an excellent version of the film anyway. It seems that some luxury brands think they can control content on the Internet.

Not only this, Chanel still refuses to sell Chanel No.5 (or any other Chanel product) on its website, meaning that millions of dollars of potential sales are being sent elsewhere—and this, at a time when the internet is the only channel for sales growth in the luxury sector.

We give full marks to Chanel on the concept and creation of this stunning film, but can’t help but feel frustrated with the fact that this is an unsharable masterpiece. In the end, fashion film is not just about the story, it’s also about an execution strategy that enables the story to be told far and wide.

Title: Train de Nuit by Chanel, 2009
Directed by: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Starring: Audrey Tautou and Travis Davenport
J&A Rating: 3.5 Stars out of 5

LONDON, United Kingdom — Blanket media coverage over the weekend reported that a British woman named Susan Doyle has become one of the biggest Youtube sensations ever, registering more than 47 million views across the world, in less than one week. That’s more than the George Bush shoe-throwing incident, more than Tina Fey’s satire of Sarah Palin, and even surpasses views of Barack Obama’s victory speech. More than 150,000 comments have been registered on the YouTube page where the video appears. The numbers place the Susan Boyle video amongst the fastest spreading internet memes ever.

Boyle’s overnight international stardom holds a few interesting lessons for the fashion industry.

First, it demonstrates the potential impact and cost effectiveness of viral marketing strategies. Create content that evokes an emotional response, and it can travel like wildfire, turbo-boosted by social media like Facebook and Twitter. The cost implications of this are minimal as distribution is virtually free once the technology has been employed to seed the content in the internet’s fertile conversation garden. (Well, at least free to use if not free to deliver. A report from Credit Suisse last week said that Youtube was losing $470 million a year for Google, which owns the video sharing site.)

Kudos to brands like Halston and Diesel and designers including Viktor & Rolf and Gareth Pugh who have experimented with viral videos and achieved thousands of video views. But the viewership of Boyle’s video demonstrates just how much more potential there is to use these tools to connect consumers with a brand’s message. Imagine. Over the last year, we have watched as the Internet played a pivotal role in electing an American President. What could it do for a brand with a powerful story to tell?

Second, it highlights a return to realness. One of the reasons for the success of the video is the power of Boyle’s voice when compared to her grandmotherly appearance. Nobody expects her to belt out a performance of I Dreamed a Dream from Les Miserables, worthy of West End legends like Sarah Brightman and her idol, Elaine Page. But belt it out she does, catching everyone off guard. Even if you know something remarkable is coming, she still manages to impress.

I suspect that a large reason for this is not only the immensity of her talent, but also the celebration of something real. She uses her talent to tell her own story, making the performance all the more authentic. Boyle is an unemployed church volunteer who cared for her aging mother until she passed away in 2007. “I had a dream my life would be, so different from the one I’m living,” she sang, fulfilling a promise to her mother to enter the competition.

Fashion companies, which have relied heavily on image-driven marketing in recent years may want to think about this: Boyle was not styled for the performance, nor was she coached to be anything but herself. Image will always be a part of fashion communication, but more and more, unless it is accompanied by authenticity and honesty, it rings hollow. Consumers no longer want to aspire to something fake.

Finally, creating something authentic doesn’t mean it can’t have commercial intent. Cowell says that Boyle will soon appear on Oprah and that her eventual album could hit number one in America. While some have criticised the way the Boyle’s awkward mannerisms were exploited to score the international PR coup, I believe it shows cleverness on the part of Simon Cowell and his producers for the show on how to communicate with consumers, using social media and the Internet, to heighten the overall television experience. Sharing the video with my friends was just as good as seeing the video for the first time myself.

There is a brave new world of communication going on. The many-to-many conversation maybe a bit noisy and distracting at times, but that in itself speaks volumes for those who manage to rise above the noise.

Imran Amed is Editor of The Business of Fashion

In another segment, Marc Jacobs explains the thinking behind the low key approach to showing his signature collection this year, when he went without the elaborate sets and 2000 person mega event of New York Fashion Week. He says that it just didn’t feel right this time and so they put the money (and focus) into the clothes.

As for Roitfeld, CNN’s documentary reveals her to be an authentic character, true to herself, and, a somewhat softer one at that. This, especially when contrasted with the strong fashion looks she wears from designers like of Ricardo Tisci and most recently, Joseph Altuzarra.

The CNN Revealed episode is the first of two new TV features on top fashion editors. A 60 Minutes profile of Anna Wintour by Morley Safer, now 77 years old and still getting scoops that other media outlets would kill to have, is said to air in May.

Apparently, Safer’s been taking this scoop very seriously. Fashion blogs have been aflutter ever since Cathy Horyn revealed that Safer (or someone working on the documentary with him) shushed Catherine Deneuve and Salma Hayek while they waited for him to complete an interview with Wintour.

But, you’ll have to wait until later this year for that. For now, you can watch Carine.

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Part Two

Part Three

NEW YORK, United States – Quoting Steven Kolb, executive director of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, saying the format of showing the Fall 2009 collections this February is the “number one item on everyone’s agenda right now,” The Wall Street Journal‘s Heard on the Runway blog recently asked the question: “Will fashion shows survive the economy?”

To answer this question, it’s important to consider how fashion shows function in today’s media landscape. Increasingly, images and video from runway shows, captured by the established media, as well as a new generation of fashion bloggers wielding video-enabled camera phones, reach a global audience of fashion consumers, in close to realtime, on Style.com, YouTube and fashion blogs around the world.

As a result, today’s shows are not simply aimed at editors, buyers and other industry insiders. They have become remarkable vehicles for conjuring and transmitting the energy of a brand to end consumers.

Recessionary times require a rethink of the cost versus benefit calculation. Certainly this applies to fashion shows also. But tough economies also prompt new ideas. So far, the most popular answer has been to stage simpler “presentations” instead of elaborate runway shows. But the timing has never been better for designers to think outside the box and leverage the power of the internet to communicate their vision in a dynamic and cost-effective manner.

For Spring/Summer 2009, Victor & Rolf became the first major fashion brand to stage a web-only show, while online fashion retailer Net-a-Porter recently staged a mini-runway show featuring eight outfits from Alexander McQueen’s 2009 Pre-Spring collection. While they get top marks for innovation, simply taking the format of the runway show and recreating it online isn’t the only (or necessarily the most effective) way to harness the potential of the new medium.

Indeed, recent seasons have seen the rise of a groundbreaking new format: the online fashion film. Complementing less elaborate presentations, online fashion films have the potential to deliver the poetry and energy of a full-blown runway show, with motion and music, in a way that’s cost-effective and easily distributed.

For Autumn/Winter 2008, creative director Stefano Pilati, struggling to achieve profitability at Yves Saint Laurent, decided to skip the traditional runway show and present his menswear collection for Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche through a film broadcast on YSL’s website, YouTube and Nick Knight’s SHOWstudio.

A pioneer of the new format, SHOWstudio themselves recently released “Insensate,” an online short that brings to life the bewitching aesthetic magic of Gareth Pugh’s Autumn/Winter 2008 collection. But Prada was perhaps the first big brand to experiment with the new medium of online fashion film as a marketing tool that played an integral role in their seasonal advertising campaign. Their animated short “Trembled Blossoms,” based on the James Jean wallpaper that appeared in the campaign, depicts a cyber-woman’s journey through a CGI forest as she acquires looks from the Spring/Summer 2008 collection, as if by magic. Premiered at New York Fashion Week, the film created quite a buzz with both fashion insiders and a global audience on YouTube.

Even Chanel, arguably France’s premier fashion house, has been experimenting with online fashion film, launching a beautiful online short that highlights Coco Chanel’s fascination with Russia and the splendour of the tsars to accompany the recent launch of Chanel’s Paris-Moscou collection. And while brands like Chanel are unlikely to stop staging the kind of elaborate presentations that sometimes feel more like operas than mere runway shows, one thing’s for sure.

The ascendance of the online fashion film is a significant and growing trend that stands to get a boost from the current economic climate. Stay tuned.

Vikram Alexei Kansara is a digital strategist and writer based in New York.

LONDON, United Kingdom – Yesterday evening’s British Fashion Awards ceremony was a wonderful occasion to celebrate the best in British Fashion Talent. There was a very impressive list of awards categories and an even more impressive list of winners, but I couldn’t fight this nagging feeling that something was missing.

Then, I realised that there was not even one award to acknowledge the various talented business people who also make their own kind of fashion magic, and are an essential part of the British fashion eco-system.

Over the course of the evening, awards were given out for everything from Designer Brand (Jimmy Choo) and Fashion Creator (Tim Walker) to Red Carpet Designer (Matthew Williamson) and Designer of the Year (Luella Bartley) to Model of the Year (Jourdan Dunn). Two new awards were also given out for top Emerging Talent, and I was lucky be seated at a table between the two winners, for Ready-to-Wear (Louise Goldin) and Accessories (Nicholas Kirkwood), both extremely deserving of their honours.

The highlight was seeing (and hearing) the affable Stephen Jones accept an award for Outstanding Achievement for over two decades of work in cutting-edge millinery for the likes of Comme des Garcons, Marc Jacobs, John Galliano for Dior, Giles Deacon and L’Wren Scott. Of his chosen metier, Jones quipped “it is the Esperanto of fashion; nobody does it.”

But, the lack of a business award was especially surprising coming from the British Fashion Council, an organisation which has been desperately trying to shore up its own business credentials and the marketability of British fashion in general. To acknowledge photographers, models, designers and not recognise even one business type was a glaring omission.

It’s not like there was a shortage of business talent around. I spotted Joseph Velosa (the business partner of Matthew Williamson), James MacArthur (the new CEO of Harrods), and Natalie Massenet (Founder and Chairman of Net-a-Porter, recently interviewed on BoF), amongst others.

Maybe one of these three will be honoured next year? Stay tuned.

Mickey Drexler is probably the most famous merchandiser in the fashion world. Merchandisers are known for their magical ability to combine art and science, analytics and gut feel, experience and predictive skills.

Over twenty years, Drexler built the Gap into a bonafide worldwide business from a struggling 400-store regional chain, using his product and merchandising skills and a 20-piece wardrobe that he kept on a list in his drawer while middling it out in other roles that didn’t inspire him.

I came across this conversation from earlier this year between Mr. Drexler and Charlie Rose, one of America’s most respected and talented interviewers. Charlie Rose says he “wants to go to school” on Drexler’s experience — which exactly what he does, getting underneath the mystery of merchandising through a series of stories and examples from Drexler’s career.