FOCUS ON KNOOP
Christian Knoop designers The secret of a successful makeover is to have the right idea at the right time. “The Richemont brands offer an unbelievable treasure trove of cultural and artistic heritage that sets a leading example and provides an endless source of inspiration for today’s designers. Creativity remains a key asset of each Maison and one of the most precious values held by the Richemont Group.
Mechanical watches have a rich and fascinating history and many of them become iconic products within the world of luxury accessories. In our Maisons, designers team up with craftsmen, artists and experts combining traditional artisanal techniques with cutting-edge technology and manufacturing benchmarks. Continue reading
THE LORD OF THE CHIC
Luxury Tycoon Bernard Arnault has overtaken Bill Gates as the world’s second richest person.
The chairman and chief executive officer of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton has to third position on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index with a net worth of $107.6 billion on Tuesday. Arnault’s fortune has grown by $39 billion this year, meaning he likely added another $197 million to his coffers overnight. Continue reading
CAVALLI SOLD TO DAMAC OF DUBAI
After weeks of speculation, the name of the new owner of Roberto Cavalli S.p.A. has been revealed: It is Vision Investment Co. LLC, controlled by Hussain Sajwani, the founder and chairman of the Damac Properties Group.
Vision Investment has signed a binding contract with the Florence-based fashion company and its shareholder Varenne 3 to acquire 100% of the firm. Financial details and the amount of the debt were not disclosed, although sources peg the transaction at around 160 million euros.
Damac Properties was ranked number one on the Forbes 2017 Global 2000 list of the fastest growing global companies based on the compound annual growth rate of revenues from 2013 to 2016, according to Wikipedia. In the Forbes 2018 rankings, Sajwani was the world’s fourth richest Arab with a net worth of $4.1 billion.
EYMERIC FRANCOIS BARBE A PAPA
ELVIS IS ALIVE
Elvis is alive Authentic Brands Group, the owner of the rights to the late singer’s name, and Bellevue Brands have partnered to launch the Elvis Presley fragrance collection this fall, a line of scents for men and women.
The initial collection is comprised of four fragrances under the names Legend and Forever. The men’s Legend scent has musky and spicy ingredients such as pink pepper, amber and cedarwood, while Forever features black pepper, incense and fir balsam. For women, Legend has floral notes of hibiscus water, lavender buds, orange flower and rose, while Forever for Her has mandarin, apple blossom, pink pepper and ebony woods.
The bottles containing the fragrances nod to Elvis’ music history. Legend features a gold-plated mold of the entertainer on stage and Forever is a record-shaped bottle with a gold or silver vintage microphone top. Continue reading
SAMANTA LEATHER GROUP
Chanel has acquired a stake in Italian tannery Samanta, a specialist in printed leather, as it continues to secure its supply chain in the face of a growing shortage of high-quality leather.
In a rapidly changing luxury market and leather industry, the two companies have decided to join forces to help Samanta further develop its unique offering, recognized by the biggest names in luxury. For Chanel, Samanta’s expertise and technical know-how represents a real added value for the leather industry as a whole.
Samanta’s expertise in printed leather will be especially useful for Chanel, which announced last year that it would no longer use exotic skins including crocodile, lizard, snake and stingray, and would instead rely on the know-how of its in-house ateliers to create high-end products. Continue reading
ATELIER BY FANG COUTURE
The technique of origami featured heavily in Yang Fang’s fall 2019 collection for Atelier By Fang, the couture line of the fashion label she established in 2013 upon returning to her hometown of Shanghai after studying fashion at Esmod in Paris. Continue reading
L’ORÉAL TALKS WITH CLARINS
L’Oréal is diving deeper into the designer perfume business, disclosing Tuesday that it’s in exclusive talks to acquire the Mugler fragrance and fashion businesses, and the Azzaro fragrance brand and accessories. It sets the stage for the world’s biggest beauty company to dabble in fashion once more, while Groupe Clarins will exit the perfume and ready-to-wear markets altogether to focus on skin care.
“The perfume category is at the heart of our global strategy for growth at L’Oréal Luxe,” said Cyril Chapuy, president of that division. “In this context, we would be thrilled to welcome Mugler and Azzaro: These signatures, with a long history in fashion and olfaction, would perfectly complete our portfolio of brands.”
“This is a strategic move, whose goal is to refocus and reinvest to unleash the full potential of Clarins. Mugler’s portfolio of perfumes includes the blockbuster Angel women’s scent, which pioneered the gourmand olfactive family when it launched in 1992, and Alien, that’s now an even a bigger bestseller. Continue reading
FASHION WEEK PARIS 2020
SORBIER KNIGHT OF THE ARTS
Friends of the walks in poetry, here is the secret garden of Franck Sorbier … It is the first magic note played on the silver rope of a heart in summer, the caress of the eyes of the whole Fashion Week, a message which delivers the ineffable and exhilarating secrets of the week. Continue reading
BELLETINI PRESIDENT
Francesca Bellettini succeeds Chanel’s Bruno Pavlovsky as president of the governing body of women’s fashion in France. Saint Laurent chief executive officer Francesca Bellettini has been elected president of the Chambre Syndicale de la Mode Féminine, the governing body of women’s fashion in France.
Bellettini succeeds Bruno Pavlovsky, president of fashion at Chanel and president of Chanel SAS. Pavlovsky and Chloé ceo Geoffroy de la Bourdonnaye were voted in as vice presidents at a meeting of the Chambre Syndicale’s general assembly on June 20. Continue reading
THE BIRD BY CLARE WAIGHT KELLER
With the Givenchy collection she showed on Tuesday night, Clare Waight Keller indicated a shift from the more clearly clinical perspective from which she created her first three couture collections for Givenchy, creating some quite beautiful clothes along the way, to that of a storyteller who now also buys into the wonderment of couture. Backstage post-show, she didn’t lead with the importance of precision cuts or modernist restraint. Rather, she dubbed the collection Noblesse Radicale.
“I wanted to kind of step it up a notch for myself,” she said. “I wanted to push it into something that has a little more theater.”
Waight Keller went back and forth between the smart elegant tailoring that she’s made a priority at Givenchy to beautifully crafted gowns, some constructed to nth degree, some more deliberately haphazard, their voluminous sleeves or skirts festoons of fabric taken from those imaginary curtains and secured by drawstrings. Continue reading
JULIEN FOURNIÉ WINTER 2019 PARIS
DIOR LAST DAY AV MONTAIGNE
A giant Jack and the Beanstalk faux redwood in charcoal creeping up four floors up through the stairway, fabulous black and white paintings and a string quartet in white Grecian robes playing Vivaldi. Ironically, the show was staged just days before the house begins a massive reconstruction of its historic headquarters on Avenue Montaigne. Continue reading