Stefano Pilati | Source: Fashion Squad

Balanced on Fashion’s Wobbly Pedestal (NY Times)
“In total, Mr. Pilati has been a designer for nearly 30 years, during which time he has had highs and lows, wrestled with drug abuse, and constantly questioned his place in fashion and whether the pressures are worth it.’I have worked and worked and worked hard again… I have been a monk here.’”

It’s Hard to Be Sexy (NY Times)
“Of course, all this is a big fat cliché; women, including Ms. McCartney, are much more complex than that. But it was interesting for Ms. McCartney, who isn’t known for straying far from her brand comfort zone, to take these sexual identities to such extremes. As a trying three-week run of shows winds down, you realize how difficult it is for designers to make new statements with sexy clothes.”

Cut from a different cloth (FT)
“There are, at most, just 300 Intha people who know how to harvest the wild lotus flower stems… About 200 others know how to extract the filaments and process these to skeins, which must be done within 24 hours of picking to prevent deterioration. When Loro Piana first came to Burma… he guaranteed to purchase all the fabric.”

Prada Shuns Milan for Hong Kong Signals Economic Shift (Bloomberg)
“Losing Prada highlights the struggles facing Borsa Italiana to gain new listings, said investor… The Italian exchange lost half its value in the past three years amid a dearth of IPOs and the drop in stock prices since 2007… ‘The Borsa’s troubles mirror sluggish economic growth and an exchange that isn’t as visible as others on a global scale… Companies that have a global market are looking elsewhere for success.’”

Nuturing by a Style ‘Angel’ (IHT)
“One woman in particular was overwhelmed with emotion at the Ackermann show: Anne Chapelle, the Belgian investor who believed in the designer and supported him, just as she has Ann Demeulemeester and has brought the Josephus Thimister brand back to life. Ms. Chapelle’s approach to designers is different from the big-bucks, big-brand style…. ‘My designers have to have their feet on the ground.’”

LONDON, United Kingdom — The fashion film movement has hit the mainstream, with well-known brands like Prada and Y-3 running integrated, cross-channel campaigns around high-impact digital videos and a dedicated Digital Schedule for fashion films and catwalk streams now in place at London Fashion Week.

But there were no signs that the medium was condensing around fixed codes. Quite the opposite. What we saw was the kind of restless innovation and constant evolution that characterises the fluid nature of digital media itself, with an explosion of new films that energised, but also transcended, the seasonal presentation schedule, speaking directly to consumers across the internet as part of in-season digital campaigns.

During the Paris menswear collections, Stefano Pilati opened the Yves Saint Laurent show with “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing,” a 7-minute film by legendary photographer Bruce Weber, while on the first night of New York Fashion week, a mesmerising film by Nick Knight, featuring Ranya Mordanova in a fractured, postmodern ritual, beautifully complemented Korean designer Jung Kuho’s deconstructed Hexa collection. A week later in London, the British Fashion Council inaugurated a special screening zone at Somerset House for a series of film presentations by young designers like Craig Lawrence, Louise Gray and Katie Eary.

But much of the action took place outside the official fashion week schedule. We saw fashion films inhabiting online advertising units on sites like The New York Times, as well as the emergence of new editorial channels like TEST and NOWNESS, which joined SHOWstudio, Dazed Digital, brand websites, video sharing sites, and Diane Pernet’s international festival, A Shaded View on Fashion Film, as platforms for striking films by avant garde designers and established brands alike.

Last October, we brought you our first seasonal ranking of the Top 10 Fashion Films. This season, the competition was stronger than ever. So sit back, turn up the volume, and enjoy the Top 10 Fashion Films of the Season — and since most of the films are in HD, we recommend you expand the videos to fill your screens with the latest in digital fashion creativity.

(RSS and Email subscribers, click here to view the films).

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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.

… Continue Reading

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.