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”.
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New York Fashion Week begins today, bringing with it the news that Occupy Wall Street is back and planning a protest. The instigator: Intern Labor Rights, an OWS spin off. The subject: unpaid interns. Seems magazines and fashion houses are exploiting them and not adhering to labour law. Seems the desire among youngsters to 1) raise their employment chances by getting useful experience in their chosen field; and 2) enter the seemingly glamorous world of fashion means there are more than enough kids willing to work for free.
Numerous tweeters have weighed in on the matter, most negatively, as has The Fashion Law Institute , which pointed out that OWS tried this before – a few lonely souls held a widely derided protest outside the Calvin Klein show last February – without much effect. Will this time around be any different?
Professor Susan Scafidi of Fashion Law said: “hard to tell,” but my guess is: “not much.”
Why? Primarily because I’m not sure Fashion Week is the most effective time for OWS to target the fashion industry. It might appear so at first – it’s when the world’s eyes are on the industry – but let’s think about it some more. 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
John Galliano. Getty Images
So Oscar de la Renta has invited John Galliano, the ex-Dior designer whose fall from grace in 2011 for anti-Semitic remarks rocked the fashion world, back into the atelier. His atelier, to be precise. According to WWD, Mr Galliano is going to do a three week “designer in residence” stint in Mr de la Renta’s studio, beginning – well, soon. What do we think of this idea?
On the face of it, it is a surprise. But really, it’s very smart.
The surprise comes not from the fact Mr Galliano is beginning to stage a comeback (that’s been mooted for a while, and every friend of John I’ve talked to over the past year has mentioned it), but the fact he’s doing it under the auspices of Mr de la Renta. The two have never really been public collaborators before. Indeed, the classic New York society designer, favourite of first ladies, always perfectly dressed in suit and tie, and the British rebel who demolished and rebuilt an old couture house and costumed himself every season, are pretty different types. I mean, check out their portraits. Read more
One of the many purposes of the terribly confusing fashion season known as pre-fall, which began presentations last week and extends until mid-January and which hits stores around June, is — even more confusingly — to feed the voracious maw that is the Hollywood red carpet during awards season. Yesterday the Golden Globe nominations come out, in front of the actual awards in January, and earlier this week the SAG short list was announced. Stylists everywhere are gearing up. Here are my bets on some of their picks.
And then there were six — annual collections, that is. Last season Nina Ricci introduced a capsule collection called “Les Envies” as a sort of lead-in to its pre-spring, and this season they’ve made it official: they now offer spring/summer and autumn/winter (what we see on the runway); pre-spring and pre-fall (mini shows); and pre-pre-spring and pre-pre-fall(aka Les Envies). Monty Python couldn’t have one-upped this if they’d tried. Not that this is a joke: it’s a brave new reality!
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So it’s official: Alexander Wang, the 28-year-old wunderkind who launched his eponymous brand in New York only five years ago has just been handed the creative director reins at Balenciaga. He will continue to run his own brand (which is owned independently by Wang and his family), and split his time between New York and Paris. His first collection will be autumn/winter 2013 womenswear, next March. I’m wondering, does this indicate a new theory about/stage in luxury brands?
What’s up with YSL these days? Post-designer Hedi Slimane’s weird tweet rant at NYT critic Cathy Horyn, which came after her review of the on-line pictures of the show she wasn’t invited to (if you can follow the absurdity of that chain) the brand’s CEO has gotten in on the action. Yesterday YSL chief exec Paul Deneve wrote an “Open Letter” to WWD complaining about a story they wrote recently comparing Raf Simons’ Dior debut to Hedi Slimane’s at YSL. Mr Deneve didn’t think the WWD folks had been fair, he said, and they should stop trying to invent a rivalry that isn’t. At first glance, this seems like an executive kicking sand. But Machiavelli might have a different point of view. 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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