Yes, it’s more Marc Jacobs news! The Jacobs show, aka the most-anticipated show of NY Fashion week due to the designer’s ability to turn on a dime season after season, has just emailed all of us fashion types to announce they are moving the show from Monday, the usual slot, to Thursday at 8pm due to “weather and production problems”.
Here are some excerpts: Read more
Marc Jacobs. Getty images
The post I wrote about the fashionisation of life? Well, today comes the news that stubbly zeitgeist-channeller/designer Marc Jacobs is the 2013 creative director of Diet Coke. See what I mean?
Diet Coke’s gig is a year-long stint involving the redesign of some bottles and cans, and a commercial that seems to feature Jacobs mostly shirtless. Previously they worked with Karl Lagerfeld, who, post-2001-diet became famous for his love of Diet Coke (he drinks 10 cans a day), and Jean-Paul Gaultier. Marc says he drinks two to three cans a day, so the choice makes sense – though the Coke folks have missed the boat with buzzy new Dior designer Raf Simons, who told me he used to drink two big litre bottles of Coke Zero daily, but quit this January in fear of aspartame.
Anyway, the point is less that fashion has a thing for Diet Coke – what else would anyone expect, given the industry’s body image issues? – but rather that Coca Cola, the behemoth that is #3 on Forbes’ most powerful brands list, has sussed that having a fashion name design their bottles gives them a new reason to get consumers to buy. Read more
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The news today that Blackberry was teaming up with Mercedes for some F1 branding because, RIM’s chief marketing officer told the FT, both are “at the beginning of a journey to reclaim the top position”, is interesting. But it seems to me, if this brand really wants to catch up with its competitors, especially Apple, what it needs is a creative director: a design mind, and, potentially, a famous one at that. Marc Newson, anyone? That would be a game-changer.
Jony Ive is not exactly a secret weapon: we all know how important his aesthetic skills were to Steve Jobs’ crafting of Apple’s identity and success in convincing consumers that electronics are actually fashion/luxury items. I never fail to understand how another company has not seen this and one-upped them by officially appointing a designer of their own. Read more
One of the more intriguing collaborations that has come my way has to be the Hermès/Comme des Garcons team-up. What, one thinks, do France’s most classic luxury brand and Japan’s most conceptual designer have in common? More than you might expect — and not just a thing for scarves, though that is what nominally brought them together.
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Diego Della Valle, the chairman of Tod’s, has been making a big ruckus lately about the need for Italian brands to protect Italian heritage – their own (ie their artisans and their skills) and their countries. First, he put his money where his mouth is, funding the restoration of the La Scala opera house to the tune of €2m and pledging to restore the Colosseum for €25m, and then he statred castigating his peers for not following his lead.
Well, now someone has. Yesterday Fendi announced it was going to single-handedly provide the funds to restore Rome’s famous fountains, starting with the Trevi fountain for €2m, and following with unspecified contributions for the nearby Le Quattro Fontane (the four fountains). Designers Karl Lagerfeld and Silvia Fendi made the announcement in front of a sketch of the fountain (above). It’s even got a catchy logo: Fendi for Fountains, or FFF, a play on Fendi’s own double F. Chic, no? Fashion to the rescue – what governments cannot do, luxury can. Branded philanthropy. Read more
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The continued preponderance of celebs at the couture show in Paris this week – Sigourney Weaver, Chloë Moretz, Jessica Alba, Rosamund Pike and Noomi Rapace, among others (left) at Dior; Hilary Swank and Uma Turman at Armani; Charlene, Princess of Monaco and Olivia Munn at Versace; Rita Ora at Chanel – has got me thinking about the expectation this has raised, and how that can backfire for a brand. And no, I’m not talking about the usual problem of celebs behaving badly.
I’m talking about the fact that these relationships have become so common and so public, that now when we see a star in pretty much anything branded, there is an assumption there’s a contractual relationship there. And a contractual relationship implies approbation and shared values. At our recent Business of Luxury conference in New York, Lisa Jacobson, head of branding for United Talent Agency, said there were “maybe” five celebs in Hollywood that didn’t want a relationship with a brand, and the endorsement contract had become a significant part of most stars’ income. Read more
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It’s couture week in Paris; but we’re a show down on the schedule: Givenchy, which under Riccardo Tisci has held an up-close-and-personal presentation of a handful of elaborate pieces, is taking time out to, well, ease up on the pressure. Meanwhile, it has emerged that Alexander McQueen will also not be holding a show in March during the autumn/winter shows, as its creative director, Sarah Burton, pictured left, will be on maternity leave.
Instead they will have a small presentation; a variation on the tactic Celine’s Phoebe Philo used when she was last pregnant. Her show fell in her third trimester and decided to eschew the stress of a full show for small talk-throughs with tiny groups.
Could it be that both the corporate and creative sides of the business are beginning to think shows may not be the crucial component of a business they have been previously considered? Holy hemlines, Batman! Read more
IBM monitors electronic conversations to pick up on and predict trends. Getty Images
IBM has gotten into the trend-spotting business. You know that thing designers refer to as “zeitgeist”. Well, it can identify it, track it, determine when it turns from vague mumblings into larger movements, and then sell the information to clients. It’s not an art anymore; it’s a science.
Actually, it’s the Social Sentiment Index, a tool for monitoring the global electronic conversations on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, as well as blogs. When people start talking a lot about a certain topic: bingo. Read more
Shoes by Nina Ricci. Image by Vanessa Friedman
It seems the YSL/Christian Louboutin red sole suit has had some unexpected consequences. Yesterday, during the Nina Ricci pre-fall mini-show, what I was most struck by among the neat little tweed day suits and very pretty cocktail frocks was an aside from designer Peter Copping that the brand had decided to start using a signature shell pink on the soles of all its shoes, as a sort of shorthand fashion semiology.
Could this be the start of a new trend: fashion houses known by the soles of their shoes? Read more
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Vanessa has been the FT’s fashion editor since 2003, and is based in New York, though she lived in London for 12 years.
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