A Cold New York and Its Cool Fashions

The New York Fashion week may have run into snow and more snow, but it did not stop fashions heading down the runway. From turtlenecks to winter tones, WSJ's Elizabeth Holmes gives tips for your cold-weather wardrobe. (Plus, two bonus buys for next year.)
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Meet Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts

Burberry CEO: Fashion in the Age of Social

YouTube, Instagram, Facebook... Burberry, a company that was founded in 1856, is all over social networks. Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts discusses how a heritage brand stays nimble with emerging technology:

The Importance of the Europre's Luxury Industry

The Ft's fashion editor Vanessa Friedman reports from the FT Business of Luxury summit in Vienna on how the luxury industry has emerged as a key player and how it is uniting to influence its own future:

Fashion: the Revolt of the Curvy Customer and the Return of the Circle Skirt

What do calendar makers catering to car mechanics know that fashion designers don't?  The women haters in the fashion world have never seemed to notice what the calendar makers have know for years: attractive women have something to them!

On June 13th, On Style columnist Christina Binkley wrote in the Wall Street Journal about Kate Upton and how the fashion industry is finally starting to understand that the emaciated runway models are not very typical of their customers.   Capitalism is a great thing: money talks where nothing else will!



Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour put Kate Upton on the magazine's June cover.  She writes, "if the high-fashion world seems incapable of figuring out what to do with her … then that's it's its loss:" 


Talk about retro: Binkey also advises Mad Men to move over because Happy Days are back in style. Many designers are fixating on 1950s looks: think high school, circa 1955, updated to look 2013-funky, for early fall:

Baby Boomers, You Too Can Be a '70s Punker!

Designer Hedi Slimane injects a youthful, rock-n-roll spirit into his collection for Saint Laurent during the Fall/Winter 2013 Paris Fashion Week.

Fashion, Conglomerates, & Calvin Klein

French company PPR is a mix of things.  Is there any synergy between its businesses?  PPR's shares rose after it announced strong earnings, driven its luxury division, which includes brands such as Gucci and Bottega Veneta. The group's sport and lifestyle business – dominated by Puma – was less glittering with operating profit down 12 per cent.

In this video (2 minutes and 51 seconds) Lex's Nikki Tait and Oliver Ralph consider whether it's time for PPR to divest Puma:

In this February 15, 2013 video, Vanessa Friedman, the FT's fashion editor, speaks to Paul Thomas Murry, president of Calvin Klein about how couture fits into the business of running a global lifestyle brand. She also talks with Francisco Costa, women's creative director at Calvin Klein, about the new fall collection.

 

 

 

What Has Paris Got to Do with What My Lady Buys at Kohl's or Penny's?

While some of us ask whether the oddly proportioned ladies on the fashion runways were genetically engineered, a reader of the Wall Street Journal asks Teri Agins, the Journal's fashion editor, about "How Fashions Trickle Down From Runways to Stores."

Agins tells us, "Runway creations provide many ideas that trickle down to the masses. Alexander McQueen's low-riding 'bumster' pants [see picture by Rex] seemed downright radical in the mid-1990s. But the revolutionary silhouette inspired many interpretations—and gradually morphed into the low-rise jeans that are so ubiquitous in shops today. Of course, not every design has a runway origin; Capris date back to the 1950s but were revived as recently as a decade ago.


"The mainstream market offers a mix of original designs and runway interpretations."

Penny's, J. Crew, and the rest keenly follow the traveling fashion show as it goes from Milan to Paris to New York. They then design for their own customers. Agins writes that stores "have design teams who possess a keen sense of their consumer fans and give them what they want." Consequently, "what's offered in stores doesn't really change very much. Most customers gravitate to familiar styles that work on many body types, tweaked just enough to look new."

One of the cleverest firms is Zara which has honed the art of imitation and design. Its competitive advantage lies in the speed with which it can put trendy designs on the racks and turn over their fashions. Zara is headquartered in Coruña, Spain. It has ridden its design cycle and supply chain management to spectacular growth and profitability for its parent,Inditex.

Inditex earned €1.3bn on sales of €11.1bn over its fiscal year ending January, 2010, up from the prior year's €1.25bn. Retailers typically have fiscal year ends ending in January. This permits a general inventory after Christmas and January "white sales."  Mark Mulligan explained in the Financial Times that "sales rose 7 per cent," not bad in a global recession which hit particularly hard in Europe. Mulligan attributed it to "expansion in Asia [which] helped offset weakness in the domestic market and other faltering European economies. After stripping out currency factors, global revenues rose 9 per cent, the company said."