New York Fashion Week

Fashion gets a digital game-changer

January 23, 2012 10:50 am by Vanessa Friedman

In the race to have the most connected catwalk — a race that has seen
Burberry sell direct-from-runway and Tweet each look as it appears, Dolce
and Gabbana live-stream the audience and the backstage preparations, and
every brand with a Facebook page host its show in real time — KCD, the
global publicity powerhouse, may have just trumped everyone. Today they are
announcing the “Digital Fashion Shows”, aka an “innovative information
delivery system”. Say that ten times fast. Read more

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Posted in Fashion, Marketing, Shows |

Fashion still [hearts] Obama

January 13, 2012 1:18 pm by Vanessa Friedman

The electorate in general may be voicing ambivalence about the current administration (though it’s unclear who the alternative will be, or what they will think of him), and Wall Street may be swinging toward Mitt Romney, but one sector, at least, is standing by the current President: Fashion. In this election, as in the last, a number of America’s highest profile designers have stood up to lend their names and creative skills to fund-raising for their candidate. Today Runway to Win, a web site created by the DNC and the Obama re-election committee, is “previewing” products from 23 designers, all working under their own names, not their brand names, whose proceeds will go toward the melee to come.
 Read more

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Posted in Fashion, Marketing, Politics, Shows |

New York’s controversial show

September 16, 2011 6:45 pm by Financial Times

By Isabel Gorst

Our nominee for oddest moment of the just-ended New York Fashion Week came courtesy of an Uzbek.

Although the city has largely embraced foreign designers — Victoria Beckham and Preen, both British labels, show here, as do Brazilians Carlos Miele and Alexandre Herchcovitch and there was a special Korean fashion show this season — it was interesting to see IMG, the organizers of the week, buckle under pressure from human rights groups and cancel a show by the designer daughter of Islam Karimov, the authoritarian president of Uzbekistan. Read more

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French fashion news overshadows New York shows

September 15, 2011 5:24 pm by Vanessa Friedman

What is with these French fashion houses? Do they not get enough attention?

New York fashion? What’s that? Read more

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What Madeleine Albright did next

September 13, 2011 6:34 pm by Vanessa Friedman
Madeleine Albright

Madeleine Albright. Image by Vanessa Friedman.

Maybe, by watching the world’s most fashionable First Ladies, we’ve all been paying attention to the wrong high-profile women, at least as far as clothes go. Madeleine Albright, former secretary of state, put in a surprise appearance at Vera Wang, and as far as I am concerned, she left fellow celeb guests Serena Williams and Beyonce in the shade. Read more

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J. Crew has a moment

September 13, 2011 5:05 pm by Vanessa Friedman

J. Crew show. Image by Vanessa Friedman.

At the J. Crew fashion week presentation, which had bright-messy-luxe, sequins-and-slouchy, pretty-is-cool-ness (all of which, in its hands, manages to somehow not seem an oxymoron), I started chatting to Mickey Drexler, the company’s chief executive. Mr Drexler was standing with three of his board members, and all of them were wearing blazers and button-down shirts, no tie.

Anyway, we were talking about the show and the board, when Ikram Goldman, the owner of Chicago mega-boutique Ikram, and the woman who originally put the Obamas in J. Crew, came up to say hi to me. Then she turned to Mr Drexler. Read more

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Victoria Beckham gets bigger

September 13, 2011 3:47 pm by Vanessa Friedman
Dress from the Victoria line

Dress from the Victoria collection. Image by Vanessa Friedman.

Not her personally — her company. This summer Victoria Beckham expanded both her family and her family business, and in New York she unveiled both results on Monday.

The first, Harper, her new baby, sat happily on her mother’s lap as VB showed the second: not a diffusion, not a licence, but a lower-priced, looser-fitting, all-dress line called Victoria. Maybe the best way to think of it is as an alternative sartorial personality.

“I think it is!” She said of the easy crepe dresses inspired by the cartoon character Emily Le Strange and printed with line drawings of cats, the colour bloc shifts and memory jacquards curved à la sac dress at the back. “It’s the other side of my wardrobe.” In other words, there are no corsets, the basis of her signature collection, here. “Sometimes you don’t want to worry about the tummy area,” she acknowledged. Read more

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New York Fashion Week and the 9/11 anniversary

September 12, 2011 11:59 am by Vanessa Friedman
New York skyline on September 11, 2011.

New York skyline on Sept 11, 2011. Getty Images.

I asked last week whether New York Fashion Week would mark the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

The anniversary was a difficult day and I found the psychological dissonance created by observing fashion shows on the anniversary of 9/11 while my children watched the memorial ceremony at Ground Zero — seeing a product about the future, on a day about the past — jarring.

As that rare thing, a native New Yorker, I had found it odd that, until yesterday, NY fashion had seemingly done so little to deal with, or even acknowledge the events of 9/11. Read more

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No publicity is bad publicity for J Crew

September 2, 2011 1:37 pm by Vanessa Friedman

Today James Scully, J Crew’s CFO, to trumpets the beginning of the brand’s international roll out. It began two weeks ago in Toronto with the opening a stand-alone store in Canada, and the launch of Canadian e-tail. Mr Scully said the company was “really pleased with the results in customer feedback so far.” Interesting, that. As far as I knew – and I was in Canada, outside of Toronto, for the last two weeks — the story all over the Globe & Mail was of how irate J Crew’s loyal Canadian customers were because when the store opened prices were up to 50% higher than they were in NYC. Guess that’s feedback, of a kind.
 Read more

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Posted in Fashion, Marketing |

The truth about what we see on the runway

August 31, 2011 11:55 am by Vanessa Friedman

So, back from my August vacation two days late thanks to Hurricane Irene, to discover, at least as far as NY fashion goes, things seem pretty much business as usual — except for Marc Jacobs, who apparently has decided he has to move his show from its usual slot at 8pm Monday the 12th, to a new closing slot on Thursday the 15th at 8:30 pm, thus extending the show week for a good five hours. Apparently, needed the extra sewing time thanks to the hurricane, which reveals a lot about the last-minute nature of what goes on the runway.  Read more

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Posted in Fashion, Ready-to-wear, Shows, Womenswear |
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