Follow the FT’s reports from the final day of Milan Fashion Week. Read more
Interestingly, given all that has been written about the hoo-ha of brands placing bloggers in their front row and the supposedly retrograde reaction of the established glossy press (yikes! Barbarians at the gate! and all that) this week American Glamour has invited – and imported, on their own budget – five of the “guest bloggers” on their new “Young & Posh Blogger network,” part of their website, to Milan, to see some shows, meet some designers, and otherwise become part of the family. If you can’t beat ‘em, employee them. Read more
Follow the FT’s latest reports from Milan Fashion Week. Read more
To all those fashion pundits who keep prophesying the rise of local Chinese brands, and then crying – if not “doom!” then at least “watch out” – when discussing what that might possibly mean for the rest of the fashion world (the ones who currently act like they have a lock on the lucrative Asian market), here is a message: last night their visions (dreams? nightmares?) came true. Read more
Follow the FT’s latest reports from Milan Fashion Week. Read more
Fashion designers get inspiration from all sorts of places: leaves (Valentino Garavani once told me the green in a dress he made came from some leaf he had picked up in Hyde Park and carried back to his atelier), true life stories (this season John Galliano made an entire collection about a 1920s con artist), and, occasionally, other designers.
Consider these two pictures: Read more
Skirts are not the only thing getting longer this season; so, apparently, are job titles. Tom Florio, the ex-VP of the Vogue Group (which once consisted of four magazines but shrank during the recession to two magazines and some web sites) has just landed at IMG, the sports/fashion management monolith, as “Senior Advisor for Fashion to the Office of the Chairman.” It’s a mouthful.
It also sounds awfully like those Minister Without Portfolio titles beloved by so many heads of state, and almost always disliked by everyone else (like cabinet ministers), who feel said minister is spending too much time interfering in other people’s official and titular business.
Certainly the fact that Mr Florio’s job “will be…identifying new, high margin product offerings across all of IMG’s Fashion related businesses” (this from the press release) cannot be encouraging for the folks currently at IMG’s fashion-related business, who apparently were not so good at identifying those opportunities themselves. To allay such fears Florio told the New York Post that when you work with an entrepreneur like IMG chief Ted Forstmann, titles were “irrelevant.”
How reassuring. If you believe that, you might be interested to know Hermes is for sale. Read more
So Milan fashion week is over, which means I can finally report back on a little theory vs. reality experiment I’ve been conducting. As part of its new, improved fashion week, the Camera Nazionale (the organising body for Italian fashion) was offering attending editors the change to “Go Green!” via bike sharing. The Camera was very pleased with itself about this. Check out their announcement:
“Since 2008, the Milanese people can use Bike-MI, a fast, ecological, and easy way of moving in the city and Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana wants to promote the bike-sharing service in the all Fashion World. CNMI always aware of the environmental issue, wish to those who has chosen to be environmental friendly a nice ride!” Read more
One of the more surprising collaborations of the season was unveiled last night in the gardens of the Bulgari Hotel in Milan, amid tinkling champagne glasses and tiny lacquered pots of mozzarella and steamed Branzino. Read more
This sculpture was just installed in the piazza in front of the former Milanese stock exchange. It’s by the Paduan artist Maurizio Cattelan, who’s having a big exhibit in the Palazzo Reale. 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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