LAFAYETTE CONQUER CHINA

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Galeries Lafayette believes its China operations can become a one billion euro business and the French retailer aims to have ten stores across the nation by 2025, including a new store here that soft opened Saturday and a Beijing unit.

By 2025, the retailer plans to open in some of the fastest-growing cities in China, with the brand currently looking at opportunities in Guangzhou, Xiamen, Suzhou, and Chongqing, although plans have yet to be finalized. Galeries Lafayette is still a hot brand and all the developers want to work with Galeries Lafayette.

The company’s Haussmann location in Paris has been especially successful in attracting and brand building amongst Chinese shoppers. Continue reading →

PAUL SURRIDGE HAS RESIGNED

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According to a well-informed source in London, Paul Surridge would have resigned, or is closed to taking that step, leaving his role as creative director of the Roberto Cavalli brand. An announcement is expected to come as early as this weekend.

Sources said the designer over the past few months has grown increasingly frustrated because of the lack of investment in the development and refurbishment of the store network as well as in marketing and communications. He is also said to feel the design team has not been supported, as resources have been scarce.

“The decision last summer to look for an external investor and, more recently, to not provide any more funding have made the original project impossible, and therefore triggered Paul’s decision to look elsewhere,” said one source.

Committed to chief executive officer Gian Giacomo Ferraris and his team, Surridge agreed to stay on to design and present the Spring 2019 and Fall 2019 collections. However, sources now say that Surridge has been approached for another project and wants to distance himself from the company in order to be in the position to evaluate freely the next step in his career. The Roberto Cavalli company made no comment.

SALMA AWWAD NEW EDITOR

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Harper’s Bazaar Arabia is bringing in a new lead editor with a design-laden background.

Salma Awwad will next week take up the role of editor in chief of the fashion magazine, one of the only U.S. fashion titles in the region. She succeeds U.K.-born Louise Nichol, who spent about four years at the title and ended her tenure with the March issue. Before that, the title was led by founding editor Rachel Sharp, who is Australian.

So it appears that Awwad is the first native of the region to lead the magazine in its nearly 12 years of existence, having been born in Kuwait to Egyptian parents who raised her in several places across the Middle East. She received her education in North America, and eventually went to The New School’s Parsons School of Design. Continue reading →

NEW GILET JAUNES ROUND

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The gilets jaunes movement shows no sign of dying down. Protests took a particularly violent turn on the Avenue des Champs-Elysées, echoing the first acts of vandalism witnessed on Nov. 24.  Parts of Fouquet’s, a high-end restaurant known for having hosted former French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s election party, were set on fire.
Champs-Elysées stores including Longchamp, Zara, Swarovski and Hugo Boss were pillaged and damaged. Nearby cars and magazine kiosks were also set on fire.

"Like a huge majority of French people, today I feel a great anger wrote French prime minister Edouard Philippe on Twitter.The acts committed today weren’t done by protesters, but by looters, incendiaries and criminals. No cause justifies this violence. Continue reading →

LVMH BUYS RODEO DRIVE

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Louis Vuitton, is ramping up activity in the hospitality sector, eyeing three recently purchased properties on and around Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills for the opening of a Cheval Blanc hotel.

In March 2018, LVMH bought a 6,200-square-foot empty retail space at 456 North Rodeo Drive for $110 million. Then, in September, the luxury powerhouse headed by billionaire Bernard Arnault purchased 468 North Rodeo Drive, the massive 22,250-square-foot, multistory building at the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard that was previously occupied by Brooks Brothers, for $245 million from the trust of the family of Margaret J. Anderson, who built the pink stucco Beverly Hills Hotel. In November, LVMH scooped up the 26,523-square-foot Paley Center for Media museum behind the store, at 465 North Beverly Drive, from New York private real estate investment firm Jenel Management for $80 million. Continue reading →

NOT JUST A PRETTY FACEBOOK

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Wednesday afternoon, a number of Facebook and Instagram users were having trouble accessing their accounts. According to DownDetector.com, tens of thousands of users haven’t been able to access their social media accounts since roughly noon Eastern Standard Time.

For Facebook, DownDetector.com states that out of reported problems, 34 percent can’t log in to their accounts, 33 percent can’t access their newsfeed and 32 percent are experiencing a total blackout. In its live outage map, it shows that the Facebook outage is being primarily experienced in the U.S. and Western Europe. Continue reading →

JIANG LIU DIED AT 62

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Jiang Liu, chairman, president and co-founder of Trends Media China and a pioneer in the Chinese fashion media scene has died at 62 in Beijing, according to multiple sources. Liu died from acute leukemia at Peking Union Medical College Hospital, one source said.

The company confirmed his death with an obituary via Wechat on Saturday evening. His successor hasn’t been announced, but the local industry speculates Feng Wang, who assumed the position of chief content officer of the group from May 2018 and later editorial director of Esquire China, would an ideal contender. Continue reading →

FASHION MUST NEVER FORGET

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Creation is the backbone of fashion houses, and although the artistic director is there to provide creative impetus, the brand image cannot be embodied by one person alone.

The passing of Karl Lagerfeld, Chanel’s genius artistic director, gives us pause to think about the dependence of luxury fashion houses on their star designers. In particular, how do we avoid sudden gaps in succession? How do we prevent turbulence from disrupting the brand and profits in an industry where creation is the heart and soul of the business? What characterizes the haute couture fashion houses that most effectively manage the risks linked to designer dependence? Continue reading →

VUITTON CONTROVERSED BY NICOLA

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On Tuesday evening, guests arrived at the venue to discover a reproduction of another Paris art institution, the Centre Pompidou, built by architects Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, in a groundbreaking style that caused an uproar when it opened in 1977.

Since Nicolas Ghesquière presented his first collection for Louis Vuitton inside the Louvre’s Cour Carrée in 2014, he has often used the historic museum as a backdrop for spectacular sets with a futuristic bent.

Why the world’s largest luxury brand would build a faithful copy of a structure that is only a mile away in real life was something of a mystery one that Ghesquière cleared after the show: The collection was inspired by his people-watching at Café Beaubourg, which overlooks the vast square in front of the Pompidou.

Indeed, the variety in the collection felt overwhelming at times, as the eye jumped from Ghesquière’s familiar jutting shoulders and ballooning sleeves, to Eighties-style power suits, to a Cyndi Lauper-esque bustier dress dotted with silver stars and polka dots. Continue reading →

CHANEL SNOWBALL IN HELL

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Karl Lagerfeld’s last show for Chanel opened with a moment of silence, and the vast Grand Palais was as hushed as the mountain village depicted in the set, rows of wooden chalets, their chimneys smoking, set among pine trees and mounds of fake snow.

Lagerfeld loved snow  he would rush out to take photos whenever it dusted Paris and his finale looks were white “snowball” sweater dresses with fluffy skirts, the first modeled by Penélope Cruz, who strolled out smiling and twirling a flower.

Chanel tucked a sketch into the press kits on each seat in Lagerfeld’s inimitable hand. It shows him standing with Gabrielle Chanel, and his handwritten caption read “The beat goes on…”

Claudia Schiffer, Janelle Monáe, Kristen Stewart, Stella Tennant, Ellie Bamber, Brandi Quinones and Naomi Campbell were among the bold-faced names to attend the show, along with international press and VIP clients

GIVENCHY ARSENIC AND OLD BIRD

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A clear tent under moonlit trees in the Jardin de Plantes undoubtedly held appeal for Givenchy’s “Winter of Eden”-themed fashion show. But maybe think twice before cramming 1,000 people in a space the length of a city block with only one way out through a dark tunnel of dizzying lights and pounding club beats?

Pick up old British grandma styles, early 90s aristocracy, punkish girls, urban functionality, jewel gowns and shake them all together to see what should come out. Clare Waight Keller at Givenchy did it and the result was not great.

The coats and jackets were powerful with spiky or rounded big shoulders, plissé printed tight poly silk dress, long and cozy knitwear, urban functional puffy down bombers, Japanese herringbone wools, and precious evening garments and tuxedos were balanced and aesthetically catchy.

The smart idea of Waight Keller wasn’t just an over mixed crazy style, but a culture clash between young and old with a lot of differences in term of aesthetics.

CÉLINE PARIS FASHION WEEK

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On Saturday night, Slimane introduced Celine’s new woman, and she is a woman chic, knowing and a direct descendant of a particular stylish archetype of years past. In a little fashion irony, Slimane always installs a modernist set. This time, his first model descended from on high in a big light box, emerging onto the runway in all her retro glory. Her look: the sort of confident, sporty élan that ruled bourgeois Parisian style, and emanated well beyond that sphere, in that well-dressed period from the mid-Seventies into the Eighties, before the latter decade turned hideous. The aura travels well, across time and through modern life.

As usual, Slimane employed a laser-sharp focus. His primary message: a great, often mannish jacket atop an easy skirt or some variation of culottes, some full enough to be called, in the language of old, a split skirt, others streamlined into walking shorts. Continue reading →

CHLOÉ AFTER KARL

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“Through Karl [Lagerfeld] is how I’ve known Chloé since I was a child,” said Natacha Ramsay-Levi, who selected six archival photographs and quotes representing the dearly departed designer’s 25 years at the brand and had them printed on postcards as mementos for every guest at Thursday morning’s show. “The clothes joined the personality of the woman rather than taking all the personality of a woman,” she said in praising Lagerfeld’s work, which was unstructured, weightless and totally feminine albeit of a different time. Her fall 2019 collection was less romantic romp than full gallop through the everyday wardrobe needs of today’s active women, featuring equestrian tailoring bent to a woman’s will. Chic without screaming so, it was all about wearability with considered details. Continue reading →

ROCHAS COUTURE IN PARIS

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Alessandro Dell’Acqua has been delving into the couture heritage of Rochas for a couple of seasons, as a form of antidote to the streetwear flooding luxury fashion. Or perhaps he was inspired by the launch of the house’s latest fragrance, Mademoiselle Rochas Couture, a bottle of which was placed on each seat.

For fall, he took the exploration in two directions. The first was fabric, with materials including a heavy speckled tweed, cloqué textures, and a jacquard covered in wool tufts that looked like tiny feathers. The second was cut, via trapeze and cocoon constructions that harked back to the heyday of post-war haute couture.

A roomy black collarless tweed coat was trimmed with a thick band of jet beads at the hem, while a pleated black cloqué skirt was worn with an oversize short-sleeved shirt in ultrafine glossy black leather. Elbow-length black gloves and skintight black leather over-the-knee boots gave the look dramatic bite.That edge was missing from some of the other outfits, like a duo of tent dresses in frothy tiered organza. Indeed, some teetered dangerously close to period costume, such as a hump-backed black skirt suit, topped with a saucer-like crinkled plastic hat by Stephen Jones. A striking silhouette, for sure. Wearable? Not so much. Continue reading →

PATRICK McCARTHY DIES AT 67

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Patrick McCarthy — who brought intelligence and wit to his former role as chairman and editorial director of Fairchild Fashion Group, overseeing WWD and W magazine — died Sunday after a short illness at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York. He was 67 years old.

McCarthy was well-respected in the fashion industry and the newsroom for his brilliance, wicked sense of humor and gregarious personality. An intensely private person with dashing good looks, McCarthy kept a calm exterior and was adamant about getting the scoop and getting it right. He not only instilled in his journalists a sense of aggressiveness and purpose, but created a lively presence in the newsroom.

BOTTEGA VENETA

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Daniel Lee’s debut at Bottega Veneta was one of the most awaited events of this season. The need to regain another authoritative voice in the Milanese fashion week is stronger than ever, and this show reassured the Italian institutions.

The creative director of the house from Vicenza perfectly did his job for two reasons. On one hand, he didn’t replicate word-for-word Phoebe Philo’s beloved Céline style, the house which was the last stage of the designer’s notorious background.

On the other hand, a buzzed-about show like Bottega Veneta added an important player that amped up the international interest in Milano Moda Donna. The result was good: a boost of modernity in the traditional techniques of leather manufacturing, a simplicity, both feminine and tough, made with biker jackets, pants and boots together with catchy glittered outfits or light layered tulle dresses. Continue reading →