Inditex Headquarters in La Coruna, Spain | Source: Inditex

How Zara clothes turned Galicia into retail hotspot (Reuters)
“The green, rainy region of Galicia in northwest Spain is best-known as the destination for pilgrims hiking the Camino de Santiago to pay tribute at the remains of apostle Saint James… But a different kind of pilgrim also makes the journey here — retail sector analysts visiting the headquarters of Spain’s most successful modern export, Zara clothes, which has made the founder of Inditex one of the richest men in the world.”

The Future Of Fashion, Part Nine: Azzedine Alaïa (Style.com)
“Fashion will last forever. It will exist always. It will exist in its own way in each era. I live in the moment. It’s interesting to know the old methods. But you have to live in the present moment. The evolution today is in the machinery. There are machines that did not exist before. It allows you to be a lot more of a perfectionist.”

Luxury Daily Deals Site Gilt City Picks Up BuyWithMe at a Discount (All Things Digital)
“Gilt City, the daily deals site operated by fashion and luxury online retailer Gilt Groupe, has acquired BuyWithMe… Gilt will be purchasing BuyWithMe’s assets, including its member and vendor lists, as well as some of its technology. Other companies also exploring offers included San Francisco-based Bloomspot and the No. 2 player, LivingSocial.”

UnitedStyles Lets You Play Fashion Designer (TechCrunch)
“Based in Shanghai, UnitedStyles is a Facebook Connect-enabled service that lets any user create customized women’s apparel, allowing them sketch out, adjust and share a design via an online interface and customized 3D preview… Co-founder Marc van der Chijs tells me that his objective is to recreate the entire fashion design experience for Internet users, ‘It’s very strange that you cannot [already] design your own clothes online.’”

Rise: Anna-Sophie Berger (Dazed Digital)
“Graduating next year, 22-year-old Anna-Sophie Berger has a mad obsession with humanness and geometry. The Austrian student also likes to work around the concept of limitation and simplifying clothes to a very basic shape. For her mainly black and white collection ‘m/m2′, Berger chose the square that was transformed and disrupted, before shown as an installation pinned to a wall to visualize the two dimensional aspects of the flat squares and contrasting that in the look book, when the model’s body wearing the clothes creates a three dimensional volume.”

Zombie Boy | Source: NY Times

Designers Start to See in Triplicate (NY Times)
“With something like 250 runway shows and parties crammed into the New York Fashion Week that begins Sept. 8, a lot of designers are saying that there must be a better way to show clothes, or at least some way to grab people’s attention for more than a second or two. The latest thing, if a handful of them are correct, would be fashion shows in 3-D.”

Guess joins the queue as labels spread their wares through China (Independent)
“Guess has become the latest international brand to announce massive plans for expansion into mainland China… Guess is targeting its “lifestyle collection” of denim garments, handbags, watches and footwear at China’s ever-growing luxury goods market, one which industry insiders expect to be worth more than 84 billion yuan (13 billion dollars) this year – making it the second largest in the world after the United States.”

Burberry in step with digital age (FT)
“The luxury fashion brand Burberry has spurned glossy magazine adverts in favour of a Facebook campaign to promote the global launch of its latest fragrance, Burberry Body… On average, digital makes up 15 to 20 per cent of media spending globally. Burberry’s strategy shows how quickly the fashion industry is moving away from magazines as it seeks to interact with consumers worldwide.”

H&M and Zara Duke It Out for U.S. Online Sales (Forbes)
“Move over brick and mortar expansion tactics, retailers are finally realizing that bottom line growth isn’t always going to come by swelling square footage. Zara and H&M are taking their fast fashion competition online, while Urban Outfitters is jumping into F-commerce (making their Facebook fan page shoppable).”

First look at Carine Roitfeld: Irreverent (Telegraph)
“Ever since Carine Roitfeld stepped down from the role of editor at Vogue Paris, there have been whisperings about what is next in store for her. But now images of one of her first projects have been released and somewhat surprisingly they involve looking to the past, rather than the future.”

Gap cautious on full-year sales outlook (Reuters)
“Gap Inc Chief Executive Glenn Murphy said on Thursday that consumer sentiment may deteriorate in the second half of 2011 and was cautious about future sales growth at the apparel retailer… Gap has lost about a quarter of its market value this year as investors questioned the company’s ability to grow sales after several quarters of losing market share.”

Zara accused in Brazil sweatshop inquiry (Guardian)
“Retail fashion chain Zara is under investigation by Brazil’s ministry of labour after a contractor in São Paulo was found to be using employees in sweatshop conditions to make garments for the Spanish company… Zara is a family business founded in 1975 in La Coruña, north-west Spain by Amancio Ortega… According to Forbes magazine, half of production remains in Spain, with 26% per cent in Europe and the remainder spread around the world.”

Caution on Main Street: retailers fret ahead of key sales season (Reuters)
“Caution is the watchword for apparel executives heading into the all-important holiday season and their lack of confidence is scaring investors. Wary of talk of a double-dip recession, consumers are waiting on bargains, leaving retailers in the dark over how sales trends will turn out in the key year-end shopping season.”

Louis Vuitton’s “Big Store Strategy” Spreads (Jing Daily)
“Luxury giant Louis Vuitton has spent the last several years in China ramping up its inland expansion and rethinking its strategy in top-tier cities… A new LV store might not seem like big news, considering the brand is expanding perhaps more quickly than any other luxury brand in China, but in second- and third-tier markets, the arrival of Louis Vuitton means they’ve reached a certain level.”

Fashion; red in tooth and claw? (FT)
“The story so far: in 2008 Louboutin trademarked a lacquered red sole on footwear ( Pantone No. 18-1663 TP, or “Chinese Red,” FYI). In April this year Louboutin filed a trademark infringement lawsuit in New York saying that YSL had breached its copyright by using the red sole… Potentially worse for Christian Louboutin, who has another hearing in the case scheduled this Friday, the judge also implied that his 2008 trademark could be cancelled.”

Dion Lee S/S 2012 at Sydney Opera House | Photo: BoF

SYDNEY, Australia — Australian fashion has an image problem. When I mentioned to friends that I was thinking of attending Rosemount Australian Fashion Week in Sydney, the reaction ranged from raised eyebrows to incredulous laughter. Others quipped that the sum total of Australia’s contribution to global fashion could be distilled down to Ugg boots and swimwear.

“Surely you’d only be going to take some time in the Australian sun?” they asked. But as my schedule only allowed for three days in the Australian fashion capital, there would be little time to sit on the beach and anyway, the summer sun in Sydney had already given way to crisp Autumn evenings and intermittent rain showers.

It was an email exchange with Tommy Ton and Susie Bubble that finally convinced me to get on the 24 hour flight from London to spend a few days immersed in Sydney’s fashion scene. Both Tommy and Susie were planning to go back for their second season, and highly recommended that I come along too.

In Susie’s words, there is “plenty to see that’s interesting…it’s good to see a developed fashion week outside of the big four and definitely worth going to just to see how Southern hemisphere fashion works!”

Indeed, that turned out to be the most interesting question of all, and it was well worth the time to get there.

In multiple ways, it seems the cards are stacked against the Australian fashion industry. Apart from the fact that Sydney is more than 20 hours away by plane from all of the major fashion capitals, the value of the Australian dollar has increased by over 100 percent in the last ten years, from 53 to 106 Australian cents to the US dollar. This has made products exported from Australia very expensive, though raw materials and services from abroad have also therefore become much cheaper, an important consideration in a country where local apparel manufacturing is scarce.

But, the complexities continue. Unlike other secondary fashion markets like Brazil, India and China which have huge local populations, Australia has only 23 million people. To build a sizeable fashion business therefore, international growth is imperative. However, the fact that Australia is seasonally opposite means that in order for designers to build global businesses, they have to find some way of catering to both their local market at home, as well as the large Northern hemisphere markets in Europe, North America, China and Japan.

THE POWER OF TRANSEASONAL PRODUCTS

With all of these challenges, I began to wonder if it was possible for any Australian fashion designer to build a global business. All it took was one conversation with Nicky Zimmermann to prove me wrong.

More than twenty years ago, Zimmermann and her sister began designing swimwear, and shortly thereafter began showing at fashion week in Australia. Unlike the straightforward swimsuits which are ubiquitous in a country where the lifestyle is built around beach culture, Ms. Zimmermann has specifically sought to associate her product with fashion, and has built a global following for a core product that is “transeasonal.”

“We sell swimwear pretty much the whole year round,” she said to me as we sat down for lunch in the chi chi food court of the brand new Westfield shopping mall, where the brand has opened its latest Australian store. “We knew from the very first season that we would have a seasonal issue, but we always linked it to fashion which has now enabled us to add our own ready-to-wear line,” she explained. Zimmermann and other Australian brands like LOVER also split their collections, targeting part to the local market and part to the markets in the Northern hemisphere.

The strategy has worked wonders. Zimermann now has more than A$25 million in annual sales, 14 stores across Australia, and plans to open its first international outpost on Los Angeles’ Robertson Boulevard later this year.

YOUNG CREATIVE GENIUSES

But lest you think that fashion down under is restricted to swimwear, make sure you have a look at the collections by Dion Lee.

Aged only 24, Lee is Sydney’s design wunderkind. Unlike many of his peers who seemed content to draw liberally and unashamedly from the collections shown in London, Paris and Milan only a couple of months ago, Lee showcased an aesthetic and approach all his own. Layers of tailored pleats and folds, with soft abstract prints and deconstructed, asymmetrical silhouettes made for inspired viewing, even in the landmark setting of the Sydney Opera House, which could have distracted from a collection by a lesser talent. The expectations placed on this young man were formidable, and by all accounts he more than lived up to them.

At the end of that sunny Sydney day, Mr. Lee breathed a sigh of relief as he collapsed in a heap at the Blue Bar and told me about the challenges faced by fashion designers in Australia — a virtually non-existent local manufacturing base, a small local fashion market, the soaring Australian dollar — in addition to those other difficulties that young designers face the world over. Operating an emerging fashion business in Australia is not for the faint of heart.

But this is one determined young man with eyes on taking his business global. Already, Net-a-Porter has snapped up his collection. And, with help from his mentor Nicky Zimmermann, he is plotting his next moves. Watch this space.

I was also struck by the aesthetic sensibilities of another young Australian, 28 year old Chris Kyvetos, creative director of the venerable Australian menswear store Harrolds, which opened a huge 1000 square metre emporium in Westfield Sydney in December 2010 to great fanfare and early commercial success.

Kyvetos has curated an enviable selection of globally recognised men’s fashion brands — Thom Browne, Comme des Garcons, and Kiton, and soon, Tom Ford and Rick Owens — in a setting that is truly world-class. But what was even more special was discovering niche brands from all over the world, including Naked & Famous denim from Montreal, Gold Bunny leather jackets from Milan, t-shirts by Deerdana from New York, and Song for the Mute, a local Australian label.

THE ARRIVAL OF INTERNATIONAL FAST FASHION

But many other local retailers are having a tough time of it. Earlier this year, the denim brand Sass & Bide, (another globally successful Australian business with a core transeasonal product) received a cash injection of A$42.25 million from Myer, one of country’s leading department stores.

Like many of its peers, Myer has been struggling to compete with the arrival of international chains, and its net profit is expected to decline by 5 percent this year compared to 2010. According to Myer chief executive Bernie Brookes, the department store took a 65 percent stake in Sass & Bide as part of its efforts to introduce “new product categories, brands, concepts and concessions.”

To put the retail challenge in perspective, consider the hullabaloo in April when the country’s first Zara store opened in the new Westfield shopping centre, upending the stodgy local retail scene, previously sheltered from international chains that move at the pace of global fast fashion.

Australian editors spoke breathlessly about Zara’s grand opening event that had queues of VIPs forming around the block. Within three minutes of opening, more than 80 percent of the stock was snapped up leaving local Zara executives to proclaim that it was the one of the most successful Zara openings ever and underlining the insatiable appetite Australians seem to have for international fashion.

Unlike some luxury fashion brands which insist on selling the same product in the Australian winter that is being sold during the Northern hemisphere summer, Zara is tailoring its product offering to fit with local tastes and seasons. Zara spokesman Jesús Echevarría told Jess Blanch, editor in chief of Australia’s Russh Magazine, that “eighty-five per cent of Zara’s Australian merchandise has been either adapted for or tailored specifically to the Australian market.”

It’s an approach that more international labels may want to consider as the buying power of other Southern hemisphere markets in South America, the Middle East and South East Asia continues to grow.

AN ONLINE DISCONNECT

Balenciaga Gladiator Sandals at RAFW | Source: Jak and Jil

But perhaps the biggest threat to Australia’s domestic fashion industry is a virtual one. As Mary Henderson of Australia’s Marketing magazine wrote last year, “the choice for purchasing is now both international and virtual and no longer physical and domestic.”

Outside the shows, it was hard to distinguish the Australian editors’ streetstyle from that of their international counterparts at the shows in Paris and New York. Tommy Ton and Phil Oh were having a field day. It was obvious that consumers in Australia are very aware of international fashion trends, and want access to the same products and collections as their peers in other parts of the world. But consumers repeatedly complained that they weren’t able to find what they were looking for at home, online or off.

In the pre-internet era, Australian retailers were artificially protected from international competition due to the sheer distance from the rest of the world, but the internet has blown this wide open. Armed with a strong Australian dollar that makes shopping abroad a relative bargain, they are flocking online to buy the latest trends from American and European etailers like Shopbop, Net-a-Porter and Topshop, who can deliver orders to their doors in a matter of days. Australia is now the third or fourth most important market for many international fashion e-tailers, a ranking that is disproportionate to the country’s relatively small population.

For the most part, Australian retailers have been very slow to move online, citing complications with logistics and complaining about the unfair tax advantages given to international retailers, who are exempt from collecting sales tax on purchases less than 1000 Australian dollars. If Shopbop can get the goods to all the way from America to Australia without issue, it’s surprising that local retailers cannot even organise themselves to deliver domestically.

Thanks again to IMG for continuing to invite me to their international fashion events. It’s a great experience to meet so many new people and understand the ever-changing dynamics of our global industry.

Imran Amed is Founder and Editor of The Business of Fashion

Burberry Mens A/W Show 2011 in Milan | Source: Oki-ni CultureShoq

Today, BoF exclusively brings you Savigny Partners’ blow-by-blow analysis of the rapidly shifting luxury fashion business model which is undergoing transformation due to underlying shifts in consumer values, technology and globalisation

LONDON, United Kingdom — Luxury fashion is a very exciting business which can generate substantial returns if you get the formula right. Not only is there the ability to charge up to ten times the cost of manufacturing a garment and the potential to build a global business; apparel can be the beginning of a page-turning blockbuster, accessories and leather goods are the next chapter, fragrances and eyewear licenses the well-oiled plot. The story can have a happy ending with the promise of many sequels to come.

Success stories in this field are mouth-watering: Burberry’s share price climbed from 175p in November 2008 to 1,116p at the beginning of this year as the brand went from strength to strength and reportedly attracted the attention of a number of acquirers. Lanvin has embarked on a stellar growth trajectory with plenty of potential yet to come. However, not all blockbusters have a happy ending. The latest crisis has claimed a number of victims: Christian Lacroix, Gianfranco Ferré, Yohji Yamamoto, Luella Bartley to name a few.

In this article we will examine how the traditional designer business model has come under threat and what key factors we believe are necessary to ensure the success of a luxury fashion label today. Finally we will take a look at what lies ahead for the luxury fashion sector.

Is the designer brand becoming redundant?

The traditional designer brand business model is not for the faint-hearted. Typically, a design-rich but loss-making main line is invested in with the aim of capitalising on its cachet through a cash-generative diffusion line and, eventually through lucrative licensing deals. This model not only takes years to generate returns, but the ride is also a bumpy one with no guarantee of success. Christian Lacroix is a prime example of a label which, despite heavy investment in its main line/couture business, never saw the more commercial side of its activities take off sufficiently.

Life has also been made more difficult for designer brands, initially by the proliferation of fast fashion brands with a credible fashion offering. Zara, Mango and H&M have been extremely successful at attracting the fashion conscious consumer by interpreting catwalk trends with a time to market that would make Philip Green’s head spin. H&M took this one step further by pioneering designer collaborations, which created veritable stampedes in its stores and brought new customers to the brand. Top Shop has also been a trailblazer in this category: the brand showcases its Unique collection at London Fashion Week, its collaboration with Kate Moss has given it an edge and its recent opening of a flagship opposite Harrods demonstrates that it is looking beyond its traditional high street pasture.

And finally, traditional designer labels have been challenged by — and sometimes losing ground to, contemporary brands which offer a more accessibly-priced, less fussy fashion product. In this category both a Phillip Lim, who designs his eponymous line to a price point whilst still being able to fully express himself, and a Tory Burch, with a very-well merchandised line sourced mainly out of China, have found their audience in a relatively short time and have created thriving, financially successful businesses.

It is telling that Narciso Rodriguez and Hussein Chalayan both saw their brand being returned to them by their investors, and that such a star designer as Hedi Slimane is still without a major job in the industry. What lies ahead for top designers?

Managing seasonality

Designer labels have taken major steps to reduce seasonality risk by complementing their Spring/Summer and Autumn/Winter collections with pre-collections, cruise and pre-Fall collections, thus increasing the number of collections from two to up to six per year. These inter-seasonal collections tend to contain more commercial pieces than the main collections, often have more accessible price points and now account for the bulk of sales of a fashion brand. This is also music to retailers’ ears whose aim it is to get fresh stock into stores, so as to give customers a reason to come back, and shift the stock as quickly as possible. Some luxury brands have taken a leaf out of the book of leading fast fashion players such as Inditex, introducing flash collections in their stores.

Harnessing creative talent – the increasing importance of the merchandiser

The well-publicised demise of the Gianfranco Ferré fashion house exemplifies the need for a strong merchandising function: during the early noughties development costs for its main line collection escalated to 5m euros per season, and the number of pieces produced for market stretched as far as the eye could see. The first actions of the newly-appointed CEO upon taking over the troubled company was to control collection development costs by significantly reducing the number of SKUs, the number of styles produced and of prints ordered, and to make sure that each style was able to generate profits on relatively small sales volumes.

There the model was clearly in need of an urgent fix, but on an ongoing basis the role of the merchandising team, working with the design and product teams on one hand and the marketing and sales teams on the other, harnessing the creative talent and editing down the creative output to what will work or generally help the band, is absolutely critical. This helps to ensure that the market reception of the collection will be as good as possible, but is also true — and increasingly importantly so — in a world where the number of deliveries has increased and where efficient re-ordering and replenishment is where the real money is made.

Create a bestseller but know when to let go

Whilst every management team in the industry dreams about creating that iconic product or series of products which will become a cash cow, over-dependency can prove a curse if you push this too far and the market turns on you. This famously happened to French Connection, which rode the FCUK bike from 2001 until the wheels came off, resulting in the company dipping into loss for the first time in fourteen years in the first half of 2007 (the group is now rapidly recovering under the watchful eye of its Chairman & CEO, Stephen Marks).

One interesting path is that of Burberry, which initially had to rely too much on the dual deities of trench and check but made a considerable effort to diversify its product portfolio so as to avoid being branded as a one-horse pony, and on top of that successfully fended off the chav issue (to be reviewed in detail in a forthcoming issue of our newsletter).

Invest in retail but focus on the detail!

The last crisis claimed a lot of casualties as a result of over-dependence on the wholesale channel. Pain was felt in two areas: small boutiques not paying up on their orders, or proving to be too much of a credit risk going forward, and department stores panicking and batting down the hatches. Many fashion wholesale businesses were thus caught with their pants down and had nowhere to shift their rapidly devaluing stock. At the other end, whilst the experience for retail-led fashion brands was not by any means pleasant, the effects of the crisis were less hard felt. In this respect wholesale activities played for the fashion industry the same role as leverage did relative to the financial world: it can significantly enhance returns and offers easy growth, but when the market turns, the ground is taken away from under your feet.

Beyond this point, retail presence offers a number of advantages. First and foremost the ability to capture the retail margin – a fully-integrated fashion retail business can generate gross margins up to 80 percent (and sometimes more!), as compared with a wholesale business margin of 40 to 50 percent. Retail presence also allows for more control of the brand image and presentation. This is particularly important as a brand evolves as it can often get stuck in a time warp, with retail buyers ordering variations on what sold well in the last season instead of following with new products/designs, often seen as more risky.

Whilst location is key, store size is also vital to driving store economics. The late 1990’s saw the proliferation of mega-stores as shrines to brands. Many of these were loss-making: those of you who spend time in London will remember the monolithic Jil Sander store on Burlington Gardens, intimidating by its emptiness. When Change Capital Partners took over the company, its losses were well into double-digit millions. One of the first steps the new owners took was to close a few of its most unprofitable stores – the infamous London flagship for instance was relocated to a smaller premise on Bond Street. Losses were drastically reduced, and within a year the company was profitable.

White elephants such as this previous Jil Sander store never made good retail propositions, but you could understand why some management teams were keen on them: retail really helps drive wholesale. Department store managers will never own up to it, and we are sure Barneys and Bergdorf top brass were horrified when Lanvin announced the opening of its Madison Avenue store in the summer last year, but over time (and more quickly than people think), whatever turnover is temporarily lost for the neighbouring department stores will be made up and more, as the brand benefits from increased awareness, more prestige and a stronger, more complete image as a result of its own retail presentation.

So, own retail is most definitely good — as long as you can properly evaluate its cost/reward assumptions and avoid the white elephant trap.

A dynamic supply chain can drive profitable growth

Fashion is a uniquely complex business. The supplier base is increasingly global and increasingly specialised: there is therefore no guarantee a brand will be sourcing its product from the same country, let alone the same supplier, season after season. Distribution can be equally complex, the challenge of a global distribution network being compounded by an often fragmented customer base. The fashion business model is also very sensitive to production volumes; thus the supply chain has to be continually revisited during the growth phase of a brand.

One of the cornerstones of Burberry’s success has been the investment in its supply chain. Project Atlas, an overhaul of the company’s supply chain and IT systems, was launched in 2006, culminating in the roll-out of global SAP systems in 2010. This has given it a much improved granular understanding of every phase from design to the consumer, allowing the company to react rapidly to sales trends and capitalise on bestsellers. Burberry completely re-engineered its supply chain, cutting the number of distribution centres, freight carriers and suppliers and, through improved production planning, significantly reduced the use of air freight in favour of cheaper sea freight. These measures were estimated to deliver approximately £25m in annual savings, or 14 percent of operating profit. As a result of these measures the company can now also give fast fashion a run for its money through dramatically shortened times to market.

A future dominated by men and computers?

Besides the well-documented potential in China and other emerging markets, two areas of growth merit our attention: menswear and the internet.

Despite continuing success stories such as Lanvin’s, womenswear is pretty much a saturated segment in developed markets and therefore very competitive. On the other hand the men’s market accounts for a relatively much bigger slice of the luxury pie in emerging markets. Men are notoriously difficult to attract to a brand, but as a result also tend to be very brand loyal. There are also less cultural/sartorial differences across borders in menswear than there are in womenswear. All of these characteristics make this segment worth the chase, even if traditional menswear players have to alter their offering to give more room to sportswear and casual styles, away from suiting (suits are simply worn less in emerging markets). The potential of the internet has yet to be fully harnessed by luxury fashion players.

Richemont’s recent investment in Net-a-Porter (and the valuation the investment commanded) confirms the perceived potential of this medium. Burberry is ahead of the curve in this category — its Facebook page has the largest following of any luxury brand, its social media website www.artofthetrench.com is streets ahead of competition and it was the first brand to sell runway items from its Autumn/Winter 2010 show direct from the webcast to consumers. The potential for volume and margin in this area is huge — the only cloud on the horizon being the high level of returns (around 40 percent) creating a working capital headache.

Let fashion do what fashion does best….re-invent itself

The designer brand model in its purest sense has probably had its heyday. However, just as we thought we’d never see shoulder pads again when Joan Collins’ flamboyant character Alexis Colby left our screens, with a few alterations here and there they are back with vengeance. We should expect no less from the designer fashion business.

Pierre Mallevays is Founder and Managing Partner and William Plane is Director of Savigny Partners, a boutique advisory firm focusing on specialty retail and aspirational brands

Zara Catalogue A/W 2010 | Source: Zara

Cost, demand pressures face fashion retailers (Reuters)
“The rising cost of cotton and labour and sluggish European demand are set to squeeze fashion retailers, results from world number one Inditex and others in the industry showed on Wednesday.”

London’s NewGen 2011 Winners Announced (Style.com)
“London is famously supportive of its young designers, and today, the British Fashion Council announced the 18 who will be the beneficiaries of the NewGen sponsorship at London fashion week in February.”

H&M sales soar after Lanvin success (Retail Week)
“H&M, the Swedish fast fashion chain, said worldwide like-for-like sales jumped 8% in November, the month in which it launched its sell-out Lanvin collection.”

Robin Givhan Leaving The Washington Post (Media Decoder)
“Robin Givhan, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer who became one of The Washington Post’s biggest stars of the last generation, is leaving the paper to join Tina Brown’s reconstituted Newsweek.”

Critical Shopper | Pierre Hardy: The Fun House Awaits (NY Times)
“Like any Frenchman worth his fleur de sel, the new Pierre Hardy boutique immediately poses challenging questions. Like, where is it?”

Joyce 40th anniversary multi-sensory exhibition | Source: Dazed Digital

The Joys of Joyce (Dazed Digital)
“Joyce was a pioneer which was the first to bring international designers such as Givenchy, Lanvin, Margiela, and Fendi, amongst other luxury names, to Asia. To celebrate their 40th anniversary, Joyce has specially commissioned works of over 50 designers.”

5000th Zara store: Inditex embraces eco-fashion (Fashion United)
“Showing off its real aim to embrace the latest eco-trends from top to bottom… Inditex has just opened its 5000th Zara store as the flagship of its 2011-2015 Sustainable Inditex Plan.”

Giovanni Bedin Revitalizes a Heritage Brand (WSJ)
“Charged with meeting the lofty standard set by the brand’s legendary founder, Charles Frederick Worth, Mr. Bedin is simultaneously determined to pursue the modern.”

Finding Inspiration with The Sartorialist (NY Times)
“Regularly visiting The Sartorialist, a picture blog created by Scott Schuman, is akin to a serendipiter’s journey with a guide whose eye for detail, gift for framing and hopeful outlook help you see how many beautiful people there are.”

Sci-fashion (FT)
“The fusion of fashion and science as [serves] to expose science to more worldly thinking outside the lab, while at the same time allowing fashion to stop relying on ‘periods of history’ and look forward instead.”

Balanciaga Spring 2011 Runway | Source: Style.com

In Paris, Designers Hit the Redial Button (NY Times)
“Nicolas Ghesquiere was showing Balenciaga at the Crillon, Balmain was at the Grand, and an American, Zac Posen, was making his debut here, in the very place where Yves Saint Laurent used to show. So why did the day feel like a broken record?”

Forever 21 to launch in the UK (Telegraph)
“Forever 21, America’s answer to Primark and New Look, will be opening two stores in the UK this Autumn. The brand makes inexpensive clothing and accessories that ape up-to-the-minute trends, with new styles arriving daily in their shops.”

H&M, Zara Fast Fashion Pressures Luxury Labels to Speed Up (Bloomberg)
“Luxury companies need to improve their logistics to react more quickly to changes in consumption patterns… Burberry Group is now able to replenish stock monthly and in April introduced a limited-edition… which went from design to store in three months.”

Giving Affluents the Luxury Treatment Online (e-Marketer)
“Affluent consumers expect luxury retailers’ websites to replicate the same shopping experience they offer in their stores… Luxury retailers are challenged to mimic that experience online.”

Hermès to the rescue of Indian crafts? (Live Mint)
“If a hundred Shang Xia’s bloom, Asia’s fast-evaporating artisanal heritage will not only get a second lease of life, it will be raised to a whole new level. At their core, luxury brands are cultural products, their heritage coded and reinterpreted for contemporary times.”

Industrial sewing machine, detail | Source: Act Now

Britain’s appetite for fast fashion is pushing workers into starvation (Guardian)
“Ethical trade has to be to ensure that workers are being paid a living wage… [including] food for her family and cover housing, education and health needs – Asian garment workers are currently being paid about half of what they need to do this.”

Fashion chains H&M and Zara launch online operations (Guardian)
“Several retailers have warned that consumer confidence is waning as people worry about their jobs… Online fashion sales, however, are proving remarkably resilient. Zara and H&M are two more in a long line of fashion stores that have moved into the online retail market.”

Fashion provides opportunities everywhere (Times of India)
“Designers from small towns as well as big cities have bright prospects… The future of the Indian fashion industry is very bright. Our designers have to stick to their basics and class and style in their work.”

A Garment District Perennial (WSJ)
“Although M&S flowers have graced J.Crew shoes, Teen Vogue photo shoots and Marchesa gowns (including the crimson dress actress Anne Hathaway wore to the 2008 Academy Awards), the company has struggled to stay in business amid competition from overseas.”

A Return to Basics, One Stitch at a Time (IHT)
“When Sara Checcucci opened her atelier in Galluzzo… she was astonished by the number of young people who would stop to gaze at her through the window as she worked. Later some of them came in and asked her to teach them her skills.”

Sir Stuart Rose | Source: Guardian

Rose: no growth for retail in 2010 (Independent)
“Sir Stuart Rose has said that the UK retail market will not grow this year, as uncertainty over how the next government will tackle the public deficit hangs over consumer spending.”

Burani Seeks New Adviser to Help Rescue Fashion Group (Bloomberg)
“Burani, which makes clothes under license for Vivienne Westwood, on Jan. 3 said Mediobanca withdrew as an adviser, citing Burani’s failure to set up a 50 million-euro ($72 million) escrow account. It said the same day that Burani is seeking to guarantee ‘ongoing operations.’”

The Influence Of Fashion Bloggers On Retail (PSFK)
“It’s part of this reason that fashion bloggers have begun to take the reigns from traditional media in the fashion industry. While to those inside the new media zeitgeist view this is old news, many inside both the retail and advertising world have been scrabbling to capitalize on Internet fame.”

Zara releases a pointless iPhone app (Econsultancy)
“Fashion retailer Zara released an iPhone app recently, which falls well short of what a retailer could achieve with an iPhone app, in terms of promoting products and providing useful information for users.”

Spain’s Breakout Talent (IHT)
“On first meeting, Josep Font does not seem the sort of designer who would be especially fond of lace-trimmed collars and velvet bows. But Mr. Font’s spirit — nourished by Spanish folk verse and nostalgic Charles Trenet songs — is clearly romantic.”