Luxury goods

Learning from Thierry Mugler, Nicola Formichetti and Lady Gaga

April 3, 2013 1:22 pm by Vanessa Friedman

So stylist/creative director/friend of Gaga Nicola Formichetti is leaving Thierry Mugler after two years. This is one of those insider fashion stories that will barely register outside the glossy environs of the industry. So why do we care? Well, because his fame was partly the point: his famous friendships and access to celebrity; his hundreds of thousands of twitter followers; his ability to reach out via Facebook and livestream and so on and exploit new media to an old brand’s advantage. He is not a designer, after all, so putting him in charge of a design house was an experiment, much ballyhooed, in whether all that other stuff was actually more important in brand revival that ye traditional stuff.

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Posted in Fashion, Internet, Luxury goods, Marketing |

Private Equity strikes again in Italy: Neo Capital buys Valextra

March 22, 2013 4:01 am by Vanessa Friedman

Yet another small Italian family-run fashion firm has been snapped up by an outsider: Today NEO Capital, the London-based private equity firm, announced it had acquired a majority stake in Italian luxury accessories brand Valextra.

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Posted in Accessories, Fashion, Luxury goods |

PPR is dead; long live the company-that-tomorrow-will-be-formerly-known-as-PPR

March 21, 2013 4:01 am by Vanessa Friedman

Tomorrow French luxury and sports lifestyle Group PPR will announce it has a new name. Earlier this week, journalists received a mysterious evite to a meeting in Paris Friday to unveil the “new” PPR, one which has finally shed its old retail/catalogue arms, FNAC, Conforma and Redcats, to become a pure two-sector player. According to an insider, this unveiling is, in fact, the unveiling of the fact it is no longer called PPR. So far the Group has refused to divulge its new title, though it has registered at least two alternatives. Let’s see if they are any good.

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Posted in Fashion, Luxury goods, Marketing, Ready-to-wear |

Anna Wintour promoted to Great and Powerful Wizard of Condé Nast

March 13, 2013 1:33 pm by Vanessa Friedman

Actually, that’s not true: Anna Wintour, aka editor of US Vogue, is, in fact, being promoted to “artistic director” of Condé Nast . It’s not Oz, and it’s not ambassador to the UK, but it’s definitely a step up.

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Leaving aside the weirdness of that title, which makes it sound like she is running a ballet company (and exists because CN already has an “editorial director” – Tom Wallace – though that role has become more operational than content-focused, apparently; fun for Mr W), this means, along with her current job at Vogue, she will essentially weigh in on the creative side of the stable of magazines, as well as their personnel.

Here’s how CN explained it in the announcement: “The establishment of an artistic director is a reflection of our commitment to preserve and champion all that exists ‘Only at Condé Nast’. In today’s business environment, it is critical to promote and foster our established creative authority. This is the ideal time to leverage Anna’s extraordinary vision and leadership to amplify and elevate the profile of Condé Nast US both domestically and abroad. Anna is an icon in the worlds of fashion, business and the arts, she has the foresight and wisdom to influence the major trends of our society and is respected globally as an accomplished businesswoman.”

However, in a New York Times report on Ms Wintour’s promotion, what interested me most was her statement that the job “isn’t about a machine or an iPhone or an iPad. It’s about people.” This is telling. After all, for the last few years Ms Wintour has been most famous, intra-fashion world, not for her reportedly chilly personality or even her anti-animal-rights-activists body guards that like to push everyone out of the way when she exits a fashion show, but for the games of chess she plays with brands and designers. She has probably done as much, if not more, to shape the fashion world as to shape her magazine, and as much as any of the big groups. We hear she is a wiz of a wiz, if ever a wiz there was. Because because because because, because of the wonderful things she does. Read more

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Posted in Fashion, Luxury goods |

Paris, NY and Berlin fashion councils play follow the London leader

March 1, 2013 10:46 am by Vanessa Friedman

Three years ago in the midst of the financial crash, Sarah Mower, the British Fashion Council’s ambassador for emerging talent and a writer (she was awarded an MBE for it), in conjunction with the British Fashion Council, set up what she called “the London Showrooms”. A temporary salon during Paris Fashion Week for young UK designers not yet ready to pay for their own showrooms around the world, or organise them, but eager to reach those among the international fashion body who might not have made it to the London shows because of budget or time.

It was a big success, and since then she has introduced such showrooms in Los Angeles, New York and Hong Kong, as well as another in Paris for menswear, and potentially one in Tokyo this year. Read more

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Posted in Fashion, Luxury goods, Womenswear |

Alexander Wang’s Balenciaga: first thoughts

February 28, 2013 10:41 am by Vanessa Friedman

It was clean, it was exact, it didn’t rock the boat (or the brand). It was, as the French say, pas mal.

Almost entirely in black and white, Alexander Wang’s first Balenciaga show nodded to the house’s architectural past. Building from a base of a flat suede boot/legging, he layered on skinny black trousers, high-waisted skirts cut in a curve on the hem and waist to dip in back and rise in front. There were white shirts that mixed cotton piqué with a nubbly cloqué added under or over in origami-folds; neat dresses in a marbelised print realised in appliqués on organza; intarsia furs; a cracked painted leather polo neck and matching skirt; and suede trousers flashing bits of flesh between the cracks.

As an interpretation of the now-abstract idea of Balenciaga, it looked exactly like what to expect if one imagined the archives and what a young designer would make of them, which will probably be gratifying from a consumer perspective: not too challenging, but elegant enough, the clothes suggested the past without confronting it. It’s nice to be proved correct when you enter a store (or pick a designer). And they will probably attract Mr Wang’s band of cool, growing-up, society girls – even, possibly, their mothers. Read more

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Posted in Couture, Fashion, Luxury goods, Womenswear |

Tiffany, Neil Lane and Van Cleef milk Oscars red carpet

February 25, 2013 11:26 am by Vanessa Friedman

Forget clothes; the red carpet is all about the jewellery now. Would be that of an after-awards morning my in-box would be full of who-wore-what emails. Not any more! Now it’s jewels, all the way down (or pretty much). Yet I can’t help feeling that there’s a difference between fine jewellery and clothes, even really expensive clothes, and the “if-it-worked-for-fashion-it-will-work-for-gems” theory is wrong.  Read more

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Posted in Fashion, Hollywood, Jewellery, Luxury goods |

Burberry personalises the runway: good or bad?

February 18, 2013 2:00 pm by Vanessa Friedman

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In a few hours (4pm UK time) Burberry will take to the runway at London Fashion Week (that’s chief creative officer Christopher Bailey with Samantha Cameron at the opening reception for LFW, left), and viewers will take to their smart phones not just to watch the show, which is being streamed on pretty much every part of social media you can imagine, but to order coats and bags… with their names on them! They will arrive on their doorstep in nine weeks, which is much earlier than in stores. Not only that: they will also be able to access video of their product being made, just for them. The knees go weak.

Ok, so that sarcasm was maybe a bit uncalled for. On one level I think offering videos of the customised product is a very smart thing. It pulls customers into the process, which provides an increased sense of ownership and also underscores the hand-made side of things, partly justifying the price and categorisation of Burberry as a luxury brand. But on another, this feels a little smoke and mirrors to me. Read more

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Posted in Fashion, Internet, Luxury goods, Marketing, Shows, Womenswear |

Of scandals and fashion: horsemeat, John Galliano and CNN

February 14, 2013 2:10 pm by Vanessa Friedman

British designer John Galliano

It’s been a big week for scandals; Europe’s horsemeat-in-the-beef-lasagna crisis, John Galliano’s appearance in New York in what some construed as faux-Hasidic garb, and CNN’s decision to run a piece comparing war photography and fashion photography. It’s hard to know where to start. Here are some thoughts – in no particular order.

1. Horsemeat: reading my colleague John Gapper’s column today about the supply chain issue being at the heart of the matter, it occurred to me that this bears a notable resemblance to the blood diamond scandals, which resulted in the Kimberley Process. Like the supermarkets that sold the adulterated meat, the jewellers that sold the sparkly end product had never really pushed themselves to know where it came from. When the truth was revealed, they were horrified and embarrassed. It had never occurred to them they needed to take ownership of the supply chain if they were responsible for the end product, and the experience changed luxury’s strategy completely. Read more

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Posted in Couture, Fashion, Jewellery, Luxury goods |

LVMH plays exec musical chairs, while Hermès plays happy sales tune

February 12, 2013 5:18 pm by Vanessa Friedman

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Two interesting developments today: Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy has announced that Bulgari, less a chief executive since Michael Burke was moved to Louis Vuitton last December, finally has a new leader: Jean-Christophe Babin, who for the past 13 years has been CEO of LVMH’s watch brand Tag Heuer.

And Hermès, which has publicly battled LVMH over the latter’s purchase of Hermès shares, has released news that 2012 sales (annual results are officially due out next month) were so good – up 22.6 per cent – that they predict “for the full year, given the excellent performance in the fourth quarter, the operating margin is expected to be slightly above the all-time high achieved in 2011″. Read more

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Posted in Fashion, Luxury goods |
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