What is it with fashion and film this week? Two fashion TV premieres, a move behind the camera for a designer and now this: Kering, a.k.a. the parent company of Gucci, Saint Laurent, Balenciaga, Bottega Veneta, McQueen and McCartney, among others, has announced a five-year stint as an “official partner” of the Cannes Film Festival. Read more…
Renaissance men or control freaks?
This is what I kept wondering when I got the news that Christopher Bailey had stepped behind the camera to direct Burberry’s holiday mini movie. Because, you know, he does not have enough to do already what with being both the chief executive and chief creative officer of Burberry, a FTSE 500 fashion company. Read more…
“It was the toughest decision we’ve had to make,” Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue, said at the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund award dinner on Monday night.
She was speaking of choosing a winner among the 10 finalists — a milliner, a jeweler, a shoemaker, and the designers of a men’s wear line, a knit line, two women’s wear lines, a handbag line, a sunglasses line and a denim line. And while the implication was clear that the difficulty was due to the level of talent, it was hard not to wonder how you even begin to compare such disparate businesses. Read more…
There’s something a little surprising on Tom Ford’s website, and it reads kind of like… honesty.
Unlike most designers colonizing the web, who focus on e-commerce adventures and aggregated marketing moments, with some tips and feel-good truisms thrown in, perhaps with photos of the designer demonstrating his “lifestyle” approach, Mr. Ford has a blog post that explains the genesis of his spring collection — otherwise known as the “pastie collection” — along with a gallery of mood board images. Read more…
Valentino has some big plans for its couture shows, and the changes don’t have that much to do with the traditional fashion schedule.
In December, the fashion house is heading to New York City with an entirely new couture collection — its third this year, after the usual shows in January and July — to celebrate the opening of its Fifth Avenue store. Read more…
On Wednesday, almost exactly a year after she retired from the label that bears her name and the entire fashion scene, Ann Demeulemeester, the 54-year-old Belgian designer much beloved of black-trouser-suit-collecting cerebral romantics everywhere, made a reappearance of sorts to sign copies of her new 1,010-page book at Barneys New York.
She seemed quite chipper about it.
She was wearing a black jacket, black sweater, black trousers, a black hat and red lipstick, and was accompanied by her longtime collaborator Patti Smith, who wrote the introduction to the book and was also wearing black (jacket, sweater), over a big white shirt. Both women sat behind a big table autographing their tome for a long line of equally black-clad acolytes who were hopping from foot to foot and whispering in glee at the sight of the designer. Read more…
It’s a big day for Green Fashion on both sides of the Atlantic!
In London, Kering is unveiling a five-year partnership with the Center for Sustainable Fashion at the London College of Fashion, which will involve a series of talks — starting Wednesday with François-Henri Pinault, Kering’s chief executive — about the importance of building a sustainable fashion business, a sustainable fashion award (money and an internship) for two students every year, and the development of academic courses on the subject. In New York, the Council of Fashion Designers of America and Lexus are also unveiling the winners of its $75,000 first prize and two $5,000 second prizes for the C.F.D.A./Lexus Eco-Fashion challenge, now in its fifth year.
Drum roll, please. Read more…
There’s another fashion heritage name on the auction block.
Luvanis, an investment company based in Luxembourg that specializes in identifying and buying the trademarks of major fashion names gone dormant, announced on Tuesday that it would sell the Paul Poiret brand. Read more…
Activewear? Athleticwear? Sportswear? Does anyone else think we need a better word for the gym-to-street sector that has suddenly become the hottest thing to cover two legs — at least if the latest entrant to the field is any indication?
I am speaking of Beyoncé, of course, who is entering a joint venture with Philip Green of Topshop, according to British Vogue. Read more…
Ooh, we love a list! Especially a “best of” list. So happily, just in time for the weekend, comes Harvard Business Review’s 100 “Best-Performing CEOs in the World.” Fashion executives account for just more than 10 percent of the names — take a bow, Main Street — which is pretty good, but what’s really worth looking at is exactly which fashion executives made the cut. Bet you wouldn’t guess most of them. Read more…
Bonnie Cashin is still in fashion — not that she ever really went away.
Ms. Cashin, the germinal sportswear designer who died in 2000, might be best remembered for her long association with the accessories company Coach, which still stocks some items from a Legacy line it produced that splashed her sketches on silk scarves and reproduced some of her signature handbags.
But there was far more to her long career, which is being spotlighted at the Manhattan Vintage Clothing Show that runs Friday and Saturday at the Metropolitan Pavilion on West 18th Street, prowled by not just dedicated secondhand Roses but stylists seeking possibilities for awards season and fashion designers looking for inspiration. (Jean Paul Gaultier has been known to amble through.) Many of the 90 vendors will be stocking her wares, which reached the height of their popularity in the 1960s and ’70s, and will display then-innovations like metal turn-lock closures, piping and skirt fastenings resembling dog leashes. Read more…
So every fashion brand from Tory Burch to Alexander Wang wants to get into the hot new sector known as activewear? Well, then, the king of activewear, a.k.a. Nike, is going to borrow a page from fashion. Read more…
While everyone in fashion was busy looking one way and mourning Oscar de la Renta’s death, over in another direction, Marco Bizzarri, chief executive of Kering’s luxury couture and leather goods division, was busy remaking his brands. Read more…
The following is the personal statement released Tuesday by Alex Bolen, the chief executive of Oscar de la Renta and Mr. de la Renta’s son-in-law, and his wife, Eliza Bolen, who is Mr. de la Renta’s stepdaughter and the company’s executive at large.
Related: Oscar de la Renta, Who Clothed Stars and Became One, Dies at 82
This morning dawns under the long shadow of the death of the designer Oscar de la Renta, whose absence will be felt deeply in American fashion. In his memory, I thought it worth mentioning two events from Monday that Mr. de la Renta, of all people, would probably have appreciated. Read more…