Stefano Pilati of YSL, courtesy of Wallpaper

Black is back at Yves Saint Laurent (Financial Times)
After ten years of losses, Yves Saint Laurent breaks even amid the current recession.

Net-a-Porter profits rocket (Drapers)
Due to improved margins, Net-a-Porter’s pre tax profits are up 300 percent to £9 million.

Wal-Mart’s Profits Attributable to Sad State of Economy (Seeking Alpha)
“Wal-Mart is one of the few stalwarts to actually expand business amidst today’s financial carnage and the glowing statistics are not to be mistaken for a grandiose harbinger of U.S. economic vitality.”

Christian Lacroix Heads Back to the Basics (WSJ)
As a response to the economic tumult, Lacroix pulled back on his signature exuberance.

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.

PARIS, France – There was wall-to-wall coverage of Yves Saint Laurent’s funeral in Paris on Thursday, but as usual, it was Suzy Menkes, in her own erudite and quirky way, who best managed to capture the mood of the moment in her article and video about Saint Laurent’s final farewell.

That John Galliano, Christian Lacroix, Ricardo Tisci, Valentino Garavani, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Sonia Rykiel, Stefano Pilati, Mark Jacobs, Alber Elbaz, Hubert de Givenchy and Vivienne Westwood were all there to pay homage speaks to Saint Laurent’s towering status amongst his peers and YSL successors. The one notable absentee was Karl Lagerfeld.

Marc Jacobs, speaking of Saint Laurent’s influence on his own designs, said simply “He’s the person who taught me everything I know.” In creative fields like fashion, it is this kind of recognition, respect and influence that stands the test of time. Not dollars and cents.

PARIS, France – The inventor of modern-day ready-to-wear, the first designer to use black models on his runway, the first to bring androgyny to high fashion, the successor to Christian Dior, the first to license his name to other businesses, and one of the youngest designers ever to be at the helm of a major Parisian Haute Couture house, Yves Saint Laurent, died at his home on Sunday evening, June 1, 2008. 

Fans of YSL, or simply those who want to learn more, may want to check out the newly-opened (and, I guess, impeccably-timed) YSL retrospective at the Musée des Beaux Arts de Montréal which runs until September 28, 2008 and which is being planned in conjunction with La Fondation Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent.  Pierre Bergé himself was on-hand for the opening of the highly-acclaimed exhibit last week, and according to a friend on the organising team, he recounted some incredible stories about his life and times with Monsieur Saint Laurent.

Of course, tributes to YSL are pouring in  from up on high, from every corner of the fashion world. But, if you would like to pay your own personal tribute, please feel free to do so here and I will ensure that any tributes and comments are sent over to Montréal to be shared somehow as part of the retrospective.  It would be a fitting way to honour this legendary designer who was, above all, a man of the people, known for empowering women.

Pimp your Google homepage (CNet)
iGoogle, the popular service from the Internet behomoth, has partnered with Oscar de la Renta, Tory Burch and Dolce & Gabbana to provide designer skins for users to personalise their iGoogle pages.

Adidas wins $305m in copyright case (WWD)
Following our revelations about Steve Madden’s blatant copying, Adidas is awarded $305m in the largest award ever in a trademark case against Payless.

Valerie talks to Vanessa (Financial Times)
Vanessa Friedman interviews Valerie Hermann, chief executive of Yves Saint Laurent, to learn how she is digging the historic French house out of the red.

The Fashion Billionaires (Forbes)
Forbes has released a list of the world’s fashion billionaires, with Amancia Ortega, Stefan Persson and Bernard Arnault heading up the list.

For years now, the Yves Saint-Laurent brand has been a drag on the otherwise strong results posted by many other fashion brands in the Gucci Group, owned by parent-company PPR. Most recently, Bottega Veneta has been on a tear with strong financial results (eclipsing YSL’s top line revenue in 2006) and a leading position in the luxury consumer league tables, making it the number two luxury brand in PPR’s stable.

The story for YSL is a lot less fairytale, and a lot more Nightmare on Elm Street. The brand has not been profitable since Gucci Group purchased it in 1999 and is still reportedly losing around €50m a year. The brand turned over €194m in sales in 2006. PPR doesn’t break out operating loss of YSL its website and has not provided a timeframe to investors for expected profitability.

It’s not surprising then that Stefano Pilati, YSL’s Creative Director, has been trying to inject new energy into this legendary brand. The latest initiative is an innovative project with Nick Knight’s Showstudio. According to WWD, Showstudio has received over 200 submissions of script ideas for a photoshoot to be held this Sunday, featuring the new "seasonless" Edition 24 collection of YSL basics. The creative output of the photoshoot will appear on a newly-revamped YSL website this fall, promoting the new collection in an interactive way, with some user-generated content to boot.

It’s good to see more luxury houses experimenting to see how the web can work for them. While a project like this won’t solve YSL’s systemic profitability problems (Valerie Hermann, YSL’s CEO, clearly still has her work cut out for her), it does bring some freshness to the way the brand is perceived and promotes the new capsule collection in a way that is bound to draw attention (and eyeballs). With a certain "Creative Technologist" on staff, we are looking forward to seeing more interactive experimentation from Gucci Group brands.