Monthly Archives: June 2012

What you don’t know can help you

June 21, 2012 3:48 pm by Vanessa Friedman

There’s a piece in the paper today I did about Joseph and Karen Altuzarra, his mother and CEO, and their impressive working relationship and in the course of our conversation, something came up that didn’t make it into the story, but I thought was worth passing on: Mrs Altuzarra is convinced, as is her son, that the fact she didn’t know much about the fashion system when they launched really worked to their benefit, financially. Read more

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Posted in Finance, Ready-to-wear, Womenswear |

Rulers of their own domains

June 20, 2012 2:35 pm by Vanessa Friedman

Here’s a tip: go poke through the applications for ICANN’s new top-level domain name program – you know, the one that will allow companies to have their own .whatever denomination, instead of just .com or .org or .fr. It makes for fascinating reading. You’d think this would get luxury and fashion all a-lather, given their obsession with brand control and intellectual property protection and all that, but it seems not.
 Read more

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Posted in Fashion, Internet, Luxury goods |

Occupy the runway

June 19, 2012 1:50 pm by Vanessa Friedman

As far as strange, opaque industries go, modelling is up there with espionage and rocket science: it’s a world built on image, and invested in preserving its mystery. Recently, however, two inmates (intimates?) have started to speak out about the reality, and what’s interesting is they’re not talking about the sex/drugs/eating disorders issues we are used to, but rather employment-law-type infractions: pay inequality, ridiculously long working hours, bad working conditions, and child labour. Read more

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Posted in Fashion, Menswear, Politics, Womenswear |

Schiaparelli’s new CEO, and clues to strategy

June 18, 2012 1:07 pm by Vanessa Friedman

I woke up this morning to what is, I believe, the shortest ever CEO announcement I have seen, courtesy of Schiaparelli. It’s like a luxury HR haiku! Or a clue to how they mean to go on. Read more

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Posted in Fashion, Luxury goods, Womenswear |
From FT.com June 15, 2012

There were many things I found odd at first and then grew to love during the 12 years I spent in Britain: Pimm’s, summer pudding, wellies. However, the one thing I could never quite get my head round – or under, to be exact – was the fascinator: those inexplicable quasi-hats that are more like the idea of a hat than any meaningful headgear. Perhaps, I thought, they are a cultural step too far; a social signifier that a Yankee can never penetrate; the final proof I am from a different gene pool of dresser. Read more

Posted in Fashion |

It’s the outlets, stupid

June 15, 2012 1:21 pm by Vanessa Friedman

Buried amid all the Mulberry hoo-ha over the last day since shares tumbled one comment stood out to me. It was from Godfrey Davis, Mulberry’s chairman, who blamed the fall in profits, which led to the fall in shares, on a bad performance in his outlets. Outlets? In luxury goods-land? Well, yes – of course. We all know about them. But who knew they could have that much of an effect on a brand’s bottom line?
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Posted in Fashion, Financial results, Luxury goods |

Cinema’s obsessives celebrated

June 14, 2012 5:53 pm by Financial Times

Just days after returning from styling Madonna on her MDNA tour – a certain wardrobe slip-up in Istanbul notwithstanding – Arianne Phillips visited the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, New York, to see her work celebrated in a new exhibition. ‘Magnificent Obsessions: 30 stories of craftsmanship in film’, sponsored by Italian sunglasses brand Persol, brings together actors, directors and designers deemed by curator Michael Connor to demonstrate “the fierce passion behind cinema”.

Many of the items on display might never have been discovered if Connor hadn’t tracked down the artists and gained their trust. Pages ripped from the diary of actor Ed Harris explain the emotional cost of his transformation into Jackson Pollock for the 2000 movie ‘Pollock’, and complex sketches by Alfred Hitchcock map the camera angles in the desert scene in ‘North By Northwest’. A series of colour charts created by director Todd Haynes to guide the actors in ‘Far From Heaven’ had to be rescued from a box in his basement. Read more

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Posted in Fashion, Hollywood, Jewellery |

LVMH buys into menswear wars

June 14, 2012 3:01 pm by Vanessa Friedman

LVMH just announced the acquisition of Arnys, a family-owned French made-to-measure tailor established in 1933. It seems the plan is to combine it with Berluti, to give that brand, run by Antoine Arnault (aka Bernard Arnault’s eldest son) a super-high end suiting service. The former luxury shoe brand also launched men’s ready-to-wear last season. Take that, Savile Row! And take that, PPR! Read more

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Posted in China, Menswear |

La Dolce Vinci at Ferragamo

June 13, 2012 5:03 pm by Carola Long

Salvatore Resort 2013

As fashion statements go, it doesn’t get much grander than Salvatore Ferragamo’s 2013 resort show at The Louvre in Paris. It wasn’t  just the setting or the clothes themselves, but the reason behind the location. Ferragamo is sponsoring the exhibition ‘The Saint Anne, Leonardo Da Vinci’s Ultimate Masterpiece’ at the museum, and combined showing its collection with private tours of the da Vinci show for guests from all over the world. In return for its sponsorship, Ferragamo gets to be the first label to show a collection in the archways of the Denon peristyle, which frame the Louvre (previous shows have been in the courtyard) and to host  drinks and dinner (serving wine from the Ferragamo family’s Il Borro estate in Tuscany) and most importantly it gets an implied link with one of the greatest artists in history. There was nothing exactly humble, or indeed subtle about the message that was being telegraphed here, namely da Vinci and Ferragamo: Italian genius. Read more

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Posted in Fashion |

The special sartorial relationship and the Olympics

June 13, 2012 1:15 pm by Vanessa Friedman

Yesterday at L’Wren’s Scott’s resort collection (her first), I saw what is possibly the best ever sartorial uniform for any female politician wanting to re-instate ye olde UK-US special relationship, or up it as it currently stands. It would also be a great look if Michelle Obama was planning to come to the London Olympics. And speaking of Olympians, guess who is the latest famous person to declare their desire to be a fashion designer? Read more

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Posted in Fashion, Politics, Womenswear |
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