Bleached Denim is Back
Angel Haze ‘A Tribe Called Red’ from Rollo Jackson on Vimeo.
W Creative
The 2015 Met Gala
This year’s theme of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute Gala: China: Through the Looking Glass. The best display of Chinese inspired designs I have seen on one spot. Very inspiring and educating.
Read moreTrends Emerge as Innovators Address People’s Basic Human Needs and Wants in Novel Ways.
Model T
Who is Tom Ford? I think of him as a very smart guy who brilliantly markets his good looks. But is he a good designer?
My friend Gaby, who is a Designer in Paris, once told me this anecdote. He came to Saint Laurent, stood up in front of his team and said, “browse the archive, make the collars wider and the skirts shorter. Let’s meet in a few weeks before the show”. It doesn’t really matter, he is super human.
I just saw this documentary and think did he really say that? He did a great movie, showing off his more intellectual capabilities. The clip shows his deeper side:
We live in a material world, velvet feels good, cashmere feels good. Colors excite us. there is a certain enjoyment be gained by materialism. We live in a material world. But we have to keep it in perspective. It is nothing. We own anything in our life. I ususally think of it as a bunch of stuff I am kind of swimming through, I must say I sometimes struggle, I am attracted to beautiful things.yet the same time I am very aware of their lack of value and the most important thing in life is the connection to other people. So it is a little struggle.
I am very familiar with this struggle. I don’t need all this wonderful crap. But I love beauty. Quality. Art. Ideas. Creativity. Craft. And some very prominent designers are referring to it as well. Buy less. Buy quality. Be with it. – I think I have my solution and will share my thoughts soon.
Fashion is not just clothes it is a mirror where we are culturelly at a moment in time or it can be or it can be an indicator where we are going.
We convince people they are not perfect enough, you need this and that. We promote materialism, which ultimately is not the thing which brings you happiness.
Fashion is a business. Fashion is something deemed by popular culture at a moment in time, to be the thing, that you should be wearing. You should have, but every one lives in their own world. Fashion is really in the eye of the beholder. Style for me is something completely different. You can be, what we consider in our culture unattractive and have great style. You can have no money and have great style. You can have a lot of money and have great style. More often, you have plenty of money and have terrible style. You plaster yourself with what you think you should be wearing and you lost yourself.
Style for me is somebody how figures out who they are, what works on them, what they feel good in and develops that. Develops their character. The outer expression of their character is style.
New Kid’s in Town
DKNY has named Maxwell Osborne and Dao-Yi Chow as creative directors of DKNY. Mr. Osborne and Mr. Chow are the founders of the haute New York street wear brand Public School.
Public School have a rough, gender-neutral appeal that is very of the moment, though not necessarily very DKNY, which has tended to the more neon-tinted, young-girl-in-the-big-city side of things.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/30/fashion/dkny-maxwell-osborne-dao-yi-chow-public-school.html?ref=fashion: In a statement, Caroline Brown, the Donna Karan chief executive, said the team would “re-energize and redefine what authentic New York means for DKNY right now given today’s world of fast living, extreme innovation and global competition at the highest level.”
Father Karl
Make Love
Chloë Sevigny Book
The New Yorker famously called her ‘the coolest girl in the world”. Looking through Chloë Sevigny’s books of photographs, tear sheets, scrapbook pages, and other highly personal snaps is re-experiencing an era of ‘alternative’ and ‘independent’ New York, that Sevigny inspired with her mischievous, do-it-yourself aesthetic. The book highlights contemporary fashion’s extraordinary spirit of levity and inventiveness, qualities for which she has been largely responsible.
Amazing
The name Iris van Herpen popped up for me on a Hong Kong billboard the first time. So many “Iris” and “van” in the fashion world, I was thinking this is just another freeloader. But Iris van Herpen became the Dutch North Star of innovative, experimental and intelligent fashion. Just amazing.
Foot soldiers
A series of images of Shoe Shiners in the NYTimes, showing on their hands their most valuable tool, the rag:
But all shoe shiners have one thing in common: the rag, the most disposable and yet the most indispensable tool of their trade. A long strip of fabric that gets twisted around fingers and then back over the flat of the hand, the rag works the polish into the deepest cracks, then buffs it till it gleams.
Go Nude
Christian Louboutin says he doesn’t like clothes. So he had to come up with the tight but effective concept of The Nude, now estended.
FABI – Italy
Photo- Production in Guangzhou x Cris Weer with Kalina GFL Models.
Read moreShoes like buildings have a mysterious chemistry of proportion.
Embracing Digital
I told you so, for a very, very long time. Call this depressing. The businessoffashion.com on going digital or die:
Fashion and luxury brands have the power of their brand to leverage, plus style and design skills, which technology players are often missing. New technologies like smart fabrics, 3D Printing and Internet of Things, should be integrated to create new products, aligned with a brand’s lifestyle proposition.
1. Focus marketing on digital and data.
2. Transform the physical retail experience.
3. Less wholesale, more direct.
4. Change design and production.
5. Product innovation.
6. Create new digital brands.
7. Change the funding model.
Most Influential
Vanessa Friedman bemoans the choices for The Time most influential people in fashion. Among Diane Fürstenberg, Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, she thinks, Alexander Wang is the least deserving. Really?
I think these lists are only editorial hyberbole without any meaning then to entertain. But I think she gets her so wrong.
At least she gives him that much:
What Mr. Wang represents, however, which these names do not, is a certain kind of cheerfulness and lack of neuroses: He bounds down the runway! He is having fun! He makes fashion look like a neat job.
And maybe this is where his influence really lies, in that he may persuade kids to go into the sector. Maybe he’s an accessible role model, changing the image of what a fashion designer is. Maybe that qualifies.
What do you think?
I think this is it! It is so important to approach any industry with joy and create a fun environment. So we have no two fashion people leading the field. Alexander Wang and David Hsieh.
Color Theory
Thank you Garance, I never understood the yellow thing either. I even saw people put it against green.
Dior by Philip-Lorca Dicorcia
In “Terminal 3” a short fashion film by the best Non Fashion Fashion Photographer Lorca Dicorcia. I wanna get out his work for W Magazine, the best work he ever published.
Read more45% of Chinese Luxury Consumers Shop Online.
The Truth About Handbags
According to the businessoffashion.com: What this tells us is that consumers want novelty and get tired faster than in the past. Louis Vuitton has recently got back to growth, achieved largely through new canvas and logo products, including those created in collaboration with third-party designers, riffing on the LV monogram, of all things. The fact that Prada became a casualty highlights the possibility of fatigue risk from over-reliance on a few coveted shapes.
This may sound blasphemous, but even Chanel and Hermès may not be safe in the brave new world of handbags if they fail to replicate their past landmark successes with new blockbuster products.
I have a story to add to the “truth”. I visited a handbag factory in Guangzhou/ China to move my production and saw “PRADA” handbags everywhere on the plant’s floor. My first thought was, of course, this factory produces fake Pradas. But then a friend and the factory boss assured mw, these are no fakes. Under close inspection the leather, hardware and overall quality was really good so I didn’t add second thoughts.
Then, weeks later I ran into some problems with this company and I put them under more scrutiny. I noticed that the sample makers where making patterns from Prada bags, and I asked myself, this is a strange practice, I do not expect from a mega brand. Even if they diversifiy production, then they should use some kind of master samples and not let a factory quintessentially copy the bag. I also was questioning the fact they would only produce several hundred of satchels and men’s bags. Prada would not produce in a factory with less then a hundred employees, wouldn’t they? I asked, where do the bags go? The boss answered:” Shenzhen”. I expected he would say Shanghai, the fashion mega hub in China. Then I just said: ” I think these are just good fakes”. He denied and said he has a license from “PRADA”.
I put this all together. The bags were most likely very well made “Prada” fakes. I don’t assume “PRADA” hands out licenses to small Chinese factories, so maybe the “PRADA” store gave them a license and sells fake “PRADA” handbags to add to their bottom line and bypassing original inventory. A theory, I won’t be able to find out but it would cut into “PRADA’s” overall profit if the practice is more common.
High Fashion Knock Off
Isn’t it going both ways? High fashion produces athletic inspired footwear and Nike collaborates with Dover Street Market. Nike is looking for some luxury credibility while luxury assimilates the sneaker aesthetic.
Summer Moon Over It
Alexa Chung “IT” girl in a commercial for AG Jeans over a song of “The Strokes” off shoot “Summer Moon”.
Chick-Heel-A
Bai Ling Dragon Lady
Dream Girls
I love Garance Doré but this time I could’t follow: her Dream Girl goes Upstate New York, eats hot dogs at a camp fire, watches the Blair Witch Project, goes tree hugging and then listens Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young with the boys. Her T-Shirt says: “We are the flowers in your head”. “So cool, right”? Garance is asking, like she is not too sure.
But I like this process and it should be followed much more often:
“I love when designers start talking about an imaginary girl. She’s usually the mix of a movie character, a real woman they have in their life, and a bit of just imagination. In order to design a whole collection, they like to imagine who she is, who are her friends, what movies she goes to and what she eats. They put together a mood board and let their imagination flow. Of course not all designers are like that. But if I was a designer, that’s definitely how I would proceed. It’s literally like creating a character.
The steps are:
She reads? + She eats? + He favorite exercise? + She is listening to? + Her favorite movie? + Her outfit is? + She is carrying? + Her only problem? + Her favorite joke? + Her T-Shirt says?
Maybe we should create an app!
Power Dresses
Miu Miu’s goes weird and I love it. Dresses coming to life and having super powers.
APRIL
x Garance Doré
Dressed in Black Again
Whenever you thought studs are out somebody comes along and gives them a new take.
Le Must des Shoes
TFOF
The future of fashion according to the mean queen of the NYTIMES. I actually enjoy her writing now. She claims in the NYMAG: “I wonder if Ghesquière isn’t confounding our notion of comfort by turning it into a fetish. If that’s true, then much of the fashion world is now at his mercy. We cannot look away, because he is too inventive.” “His Vuitton clothes are luxury sportswear at its liveliest — at once cool and wearable.”
Nice N’ Easy
Rebecca Knock Off!
Copies hurt the bottom Line! Just not obvious which side is loosing. This review in the New York Times of Rebecca Minkoff’s new store in New York’s Soho screams “ouch”.
You don’t see it coming: “Shoppers visiting the new Rebecca Minkoff store in SoHo are greeted by a touch-screen wall that displays products, makes suggestions and — please join me in a Homeric squeal — takes orders for a free beverage, your choice of sparkling water, green tea, coffee, espresso or Champagne. I pressed the Coffee button and felt my pocket buzz. It was a text message alerting me that my order had been placed.” I might add, and their database extended.”
Jab, jab, jab: “A wall devoted to the much-loved Minkoff handbags highlighted a problem with other items I tried on, which is that many things looked much cheaper than they were. Not only in cost, but in quality: a fringed tote appeared ersatz but was made of real leather; a polyester-seeming blouse was actually pure silk.”
Right hook: “Shoes were on display in the back, including a coven of studded jellies that precisely replicated a Valentino sandal from seasons past. Same studs, same shape, same ankle strap, same PVC material. I admired the PVC but not the choice of origin material, which by now has been copied by everyone from Steve Madden to Forever 21. It’s a dark day when Steve Madden beats you to the punch. And copycatting is an offense with a high rate of recidivism. The peril of a flashy knockoff is how quickly it pollutes the rest of a brand’s inventory. A visitor’s eyes narrow as they sweep the room. What else has been cribbed?”
I borrowed a bit copy from Gary Vaynerchuk, the online marketing guru.
Your Business Evaluation
Fashion or anything else this list is the best rundown of your idea evaluation:
Urgency How badly do people need this?
Size How many people would purchase this?
Pricing Potential What is the highest price people would be willing to pay.
Acquisition How easy is it to acquire new customers?
Cost Costs of product and service.
Delivery Cost How much does it cost to deliver the offer.
Uniqueness How unique is your offer versus the competition.
Speed How quickly does it take you to get this running.
Investment How much do you have to invest before you have an offer.
Up Sell What related offers could you present?
Evergreen Potential The more evergreen the more attractive the market.
But the best is this: Apply a value to each point from 1-10. Keep it conservative! Keep these rosy glasses of your face. The add it all up. Below 50, don’t do it. 75-80 excellent. Start action tomorrow!
Thanks to Josh Kaufman, “The Personal MBA.”
Take me to Church
Garance Doré is talking about Church’s but referring to the song “Take me to Church”. This makes me look into the lyrics. I was thinking, sounds like the Evangelical Right. But I was so wrong:
I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies
I’ll tell you my sins so you can sharpen your knife
Offer me my deathless death
Good God, let me give you my lifeNo masters or kings
When the ritual begins
There is no sweeter innocence than our gentle sinIn the madness and soil of that sad earthly scene
Only then I am human
Only then I am clean
Ooh oh. Amen. Amen. Amen.
The central message of the song is rather: “Growing up, I always say the hypocrisy of the Catholic church,” Hozier says. “The history speaks for itself and I grew incredibly frustrated and angry. I essentially just put that into my words.”
Great song writing, I can not see how somebody can match this depth a second time.