The IPO: 2011′s biggest fashion trend
Looking back over 2011, which I am currently doing for a Christmas Eve column, I've been struck by the fact that one trend dominates all others by a significant margin, having held true from last March...
View ArticleThe Duchess of Cambridge: surprise fashion subversive
Anyone else notice anything surprising about the Duchess of Cambridge's appearance yesterday at a homeless shelter in a 350 GBP Ralph Lauren polo-neck dress? Let me repeat that: a GBP350 RALPH LAUREN...
View ArticleChanel scents a change in strategic direction
After Nicole Kidman, after Audrey Tatou, after Carol Bouquet, comes...Brad Pitt? Chanel has just announced the latter will be the new, and first male, face of their cash cow product, aka the perfume...
View ArticleWhat is a “luxury lifestyle” brand?
Does anyone else feel like suddenly everywhere they turn, another erstwhile satisfied luxury brand is re-christening themselves a “luxury lifestyle” brand, talking about their “global universe” and...
View ArticleVersace ups its stake in the branded jewellery game
The branded jewellery game, long viewed as an area with the least players and the biggest potential pay-off, has a new entrant: Versace, which just announced it will introduce its first high jewellery...
View ArticleVersace still thinking about going public
Last night at a very glamourous Versace dinner (where I nevertheless managed to cover myself in shame by chatting briefly to – and not recognising – Lady Gaga, then asking the man next to me who the...
View ArticleOttavio Missoni dies: The end of the (family) era?
The news today that Ottavio Missoni, known as Tai and co-founder of the fashion/knitwear brand that bears his surname, has died aged 92 has sent the fashion world into mourning, for a number of reasons...
View ArticleThe really interesting implications of Versace’s suitors, from Permira to...
Stay out of the office (more or less) for a month to attend to personal matters, and what happens? Strange things! I mean, first Burberry makes its designer CEO; then Jil Sander departs her eponymous...
View ArticleGoogle’s most-searched terms in 2013: fashion shocker in the US and France!
Google has published its annual list of most-searched names in multiple categories in countries all over the world, and, as we know, there’s one category in particular that sets this blog’s heart to...
View ArticleBlackstone and Versace: a marriage made in hospitality heaven?
Today the FT is reporting that Blackstone is the clear leader in the race for the Versace minority stake – which is surprising on the surface, given that the private equity firm has never made any...
View ArticleWhat’s wrong with British fashion?
The answer to the above question -- what's wrong with British fashion -- is summed up for me in today's announcement that Christopher Kane has won the 2011 BFC/Vogue Designer Fashion Fund award. Read more
View ArticleLauder leaves Lauder for lifestyle
According to the NY Post, Aerin Lauder, the current family standard bearer of the Lauder cosmetic empire (so much so that she actually was the face of the relaunch of her grandmother Estee’s favourite...
View ArticleVersace will never do what it never did
One of the more controversial, if obscure, practices in the fashion world is “sand-blasting”, the process by which sand is fired at denim at high speeds: pow, pow! While this can make the fabric look...
View ArticleItalian brand extension bonanza
Designers – especially, it seems, Italian designers – are busily embracing all sorts of aesthetic product opportunities beyond the runway. Both Missoni and Versace have teamed up with Century...
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Hermès and Donald Trump set up house
Though in many ways the brands mentioned in the headline – Hermès and Donald Trump – are what one would think of (OK, I would think of) as polar opposites, the former being famous for its discrete...
View ArticlePPR and Brioni: After the deal, the implications
So it all came true, and PPR did, indeed, buy Italian men’s wear luxury brand Brioni. So far, so rumoured. But what does it mean? Seems to me there are two main implications to the deal. Read more
View ArticleVersace, couture and a radical re-think
The Chambre Syndicale, French fashion's governing body, has just announced Versace is returning to the couture schedule eight years after leaving it due to cutbacks. Is this good news? Or rather, is it...
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