What is with these French fashion houses? Do they not get enough attention?
New York fashion? What’s that? Read more
Recently I was at the unveiling of the new line of UGG Australia boots – you know, those squishy sheepskin booties that looks like slippers and became hugely trendy after movie stars like Kate Hudson started wearing them with shorts to get their Starbucks. Anyway, these UGGs were not those UGGs. These UGGs were all Made in Italy, mostly sporting very high heels or wedges, and priced not an average of $150, but an average of $1095. Yes, UGG, one of the defining styles of modern mass market cool, wants in on luxury. But does luxury want in on UGG?
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Well, this is a shocker: today a digital think tank called L2 is publishing a study, “L2 Prestige 100®: Facebook IQ,” which ranks the high-end brands as “Genius, gifted, average, challenged, and feeble” according to who uses Facebook best, and out of brands that span the auto, watch & jewellery, fashion, beauty, and spirits & champagne sectors, Burberry, normally held up as THE most web-savvy, digi-forward company in the luxury industry, ranks…average. Actually, it’s number 49.
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A fitting end to a strange, dark season.
Yet another one of Bernard Arnault’s designers is leaving his empire, although at least this time it’s not under a cloud. Read more
Today the AMF, the French securities regulator, approved the defensive plan of a group of Hermes family shareholders to pool their stock to create a holding company for over 50% of the company equity without having to make a public tendor offer for other minority shareholdings. Given that the holding company has been engineered solely to make it impossible for LVMH, which before Christmas announced they owned over 20% of Hermes shares, to acquire a majority of the heritage brand, this seems to me to imply the belief that 1) the AMF accepts Hermes’ position that LVMH does not have the best interests of the brand at heart, but just Wants To Make Money (horrors!); and 2) Hermes has somehow transcended product status to become synonymous with France, or a certain French heritage/craftsmanship, and the regulators think this deserves protection like any monument.
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For anyone interested in the progress of American IP law, I highly recommend the fashionapparellawblog, run by US law firm Sheppard Mullin, who specialise in IP rights and have become one of the luxury industry’s go-to groups of attorneys in this highly fuzzy area. Read more
The New York Times magazine had a bumper package yesterday entitled “Shop China Shop!” Actually, the shopping story turned out to be subordinant to a bigger, Chinese economy story, but I guess it made a better cover. I hoped what was inside could answer a pressing question I’ve had about the lifespan of blingy luxury in emerging markets.
Antoine Arnault, Bernard Arnault’s 33-year-old son from his first marriage, is stepping into the management hot seat. Though it has not been officially announced, insiders have confirmed he is leaving his current job as Communications Director of Louis Vuitton to become managing director of Berluti, the luxury shoe brand that LVMH bought in 1993, in the new year. Read more
It never rains but it pours (and in Brooklyn, where I live, it just hailed). After the Gap on-line logo hoo-ha at the end of last week comes a report from the Stern business school at New York University and the think tank L2 entitled “Digital IQ Index: Luxury,” looking at how 72 luxury brands are handling themselves on-line, on their websites, social media, digital marketing and mobile apps. Guess what? They’re stuck in the mud!
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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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