Kim Jones will be in good company in his new role as artistic director of Dior Homme, which has appointed Yoon Ahn, a member of the designer’s inner circle, as the brand’s jewelry designer.

Known as Yoon, Yoon Ahn has carved a rare niche for herself as an entirely self-taught designer. On the day we met, she had just learned that she’d been named an LVMH Prize finalist. “It’s crazy—we just made pants for the first time!” she says, laughing. “For us to be even be nominated is like, what?”

Tokyo-based Ahn and her partner Verbal, a celebrated rapper in Japan and former member of M-flo, the Nineties hip-hop group, are super-connected in the fashion industry. The power couple, which has its own streetwear brand Ambush that figured among the finalists of the 2017 LVMH Prize, has appeared in campaigns for Louis Vuitton and Dr. Martens. They’ve also collaborated with brands including Colette, Sacai and A Bathing Ape. Continue reading →

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Tapping into the expertise of smaller independent stores, Galeries Lafayette has named Clara Cornet creative and merchandising director of its future flagship on Avenue des Champs-Elysées, effective since Feb. 1.

Cornet, who has been working in the United States for five years with edgy retailers Opening Ceremony and The Webster, reports to Nadia Dhouib, who will manage the new Paris department store.

“As part of her missions, Clara Cornet will be responsible for the unique and exclusive selection of brands and products, as well as the visual identity and content for this flagship store  which will open in 2019  to establish it as the international benchmark for a ‘new generation’ commerce, by reinventing the physical store’s codes to surprise and inspire its clients at every visit,”. Continue reading →

McCartney said her option to buy back Kering’s 50 percent stake in the brand had been in her contract from Day One. She said she couldn’t turn it down.

“It is an incredible blessing and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that’s not awarded to many fashion designers with their name on the door. I have four children, I have the opportunity to take control of the business that bears my name and that is extraordinarily exciting. To be afforded that chance as a designer, as a woman, as a mother of four, it’s something I had to take on; McCartney said.

In a statement released on Wednesday evening after the Paris and London stock markets closed, François-Henri Pinault, chairman and chief executive officer of Kering, said it was the right time for McCartney to move on.

“Kering is a luxury group that empowers creative minds and helps disruptive ideas become reality. I am extremely proud of what Kering and Stella McCartney have accomplished together since 2001,” he said, adding that McCartney and her team had brought far more than business to Kering. Continue reading →

Louis Vuitton, the premium brand of LVMH Moët Hennessy, whose super-agile vertical supply chain for luxury leather goods rivals that of fast-fashion.

Today one of the house’s bags can be produced and delivered to stores in as little as two weeks but the aim is to shorten it to a week, Valérie Dubois, Vuitton’s director of workshops, France, said during a visit of one of the house’s ateliers in Sainte-Florence in the Maine-et-Loire region on Tuesday.

A handful of journalists were also taken to see an empty field in nearby Beaulieu-sur-Layon on which a state-of-the-art workshop geared to facilitating agility and speed is set to open in early 2019. The structure will serve as a template for future sites, with a new workshop located nearer to Paris also in the works for next year. Continue reading →

After having been taught how to do business, they now are learning how to create a brand museum business like LVMH.

In the vein of fashion as museum art, Hermès has conceived a series of touring “Hermès Heritage” exhibitions, the first of which is titled “Harnessing the Roots” and will touch down at the house’s Beverly Hills boutique on March 31. A specially built structure behind the Rodeo Drive flagship will house the multiroom show until April 7.

The exhibitions explore the history and heritage of the house, which was founded in 1837 by Thierry Hermès, through a series of objects that highlight iconic themes, colors and motifs from the brand’s origins as a harness-maker and saddler up to the present day. Continue reading →

Count Hubert James Marcel Taffin de Givenchy was a French fashion designer who founded The House of Givenchy in 1952. He was famous for having designed much of the personal and professional wardrobe of Audrey Hepburn and clothing for Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy.

With his perfect manners and old-school discipline, Givenchy had a distinguished presence that colored the fashion industry for over fifty years. A consummate collector with an perfect eye for objects as well as for interior decoration of houses, he leaves behind a fashion house that defined the very notions of refinement and elegance.

Under the ownership of luxury conglomerate LVMH since 1988, the house of Givenchy issued a statement paying homage to its founder, “a major personality of the world of French haute couture and a gentleman who symbolised Parisian chic and elegance for more than half a century.” Continue reading →