Colette in Paris has just installed a live webcam, so we can all spy on the fashion folk who are shopping when they are supposed to be watching the runways shows at Paris Fashion Week … Complete with suitable soundtrack…
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Monthly Archives: February 2008
Friday, 29 February
Colette goes live with streaming webcam
Friday, 29 February
Old money, new fashion and luxury in the DNA
An emerging group of luxury fashion designers - led by Daphne Guinness - are finding that they are their own best muse - and creating luxury products based on their rarefied lifestyles.
It’s not clear to say what role generous financial backing and well-connected social circles have in the success of the brands, but many of these famous names are reversing the typical route to market which depends on seeking out celebrity, and operating under brand names that mask their origins…
Their advantage, knowing their audience, and a claim that generations of luxury living has instilled a sense of luxury in their DNA…
Any mention of her family annoys Eugenie Niarchos. After much coaxing, the 21-year-old jewelry designer made a fleeting reference to Gloria Guinness, her maternal great-grandmother, but that is all.
“I want to be known for my work and nothing else,” said the Greek heiress, who is based in London. Going under the professional name Eugenie N, she is making considerable headway, having co-designed Czarina, Repossi’s youthful line of fine jewelry, and doing a capsule collection of costume jewelry for Vanessa Seward at Azzaro. — (Via IHT)
Thursday, 28 February
Luxury pronunciation for (electroclash) dummies
This is fantastic, and horribly addictive. We have discovered a wonderfully random luxury brand pronunciation channel on YouTube.
Ranging in difficulty from the elementary PRADA to the rather more advanced JAEGER-LECOULTRE it has a collection of 61 brands to listen to.
Along the way, you’ll find that most luxury brands take 3 seconds to say (sort of), apart from the more langurous CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN, and THIERRY MUGLER at 4 seconds. CARTIER is rather disappointingly brisk (and muffled) 2 seconds, while DOLCE & GABBANA weighs in at a majestic 6 seconds.
The man who does the Italian brands has a voice which seems custom-made for electroclash remixes. His spectacular version of GUCCI must constitute the definitive reading of the word, and his dramatic pause is unparalleled. You will never say Gucci the same way again.
Marvellous.
Thursday, 28 February
Hussein Chalayan becomes Puma creative director
PPR-owned sporting-goods maker Puma announced this morning that it had hired Hussein Chalayan to be the company’s creative director and acquired a majority stake in the British designer’s fashion brand.
This is a significant evolution for the brand to an increasingly prestige positioning.
Chalayan, who has twice been named the British Fashion Council’s “Designer of the Year,” will be responsible for all creative work for Puma’s collection, including footwear, apparel and accessories, the company said today at a Paris press briefing. — (Via Bloomberg)
Thursday, 28 February
7-star hotel madness; chatelaines are the new butlers
The star-creep that has been taking place in hotels over the last few years shows no sign of slowing down…
The original star system was based on a features-based award system; from one to five. While five stars are awarded, six stars are self-awarded - by the hotel’s marketing department.
The Palazzo Versace in Australia recently staked its claim to being the only six-star hotel in the the world. And this despite the Setai in Miami already having done the same thing. Meanwhile, the most famous self-professed six star hotel is the Burj Al Arab in Dubai (which employs the rather unluxurious policy of insisting that visitors spend at least $100 while there.) Most recently, a former chairman of the Ritz Carlton has just announced plans to open a six-star hotel chain - the contradictory semantics of which seem to defy logic.
And it struck us as rather unimaginative that nobody had claimed to be a seven star hotel. So it’s nice to see one launch in Milan.
The press release goes entirely overboard with its starry-eyed hyperbole. The best feature is that it offers not just butlers (how six star!) but chatelaines who will cherish your dog (as long as it’s small)…
These butlers or chatelaines can become prestigious event planners… Your butler can get you tickets so that you can avoid tedious queues. The butler will tenderly cherish the guest‘s small dogs and assist in every possible detail of their care. It is the butler who will track down that elusive helicopter for the all important flight to most fashionable ports for a sailing trip or book the Bentley for a magical jaunt to some heavenly spot. — (Via TownhouseGalleria)
Something is beginning to get disconnected here. Hotels invented the idea of luxurious service, but some of the best hotels in the world are increasingly lost in a kind of panicky oneupmanship that only leave consumers feeling confused.
We can guarantee that there will be an eight star hotel by the end of this year.
Thursday, 28 February
Gucci parent bullish on future sales
2008 is turning into a strong year for PPR, the owner of the Gucci Group, based on strong performance in its luxury division.
Yesterday, the CFO sounded an upbeat note for the coming year.
“We have set our budgets in the expectation of a more complicated economic environment than in 2007, but without any real rupture. We are still heading for a rise in our results and profitability.” (Via IHT)
One of the strong performers in the PPR stable is Bottega Veneta, giving more evidence to the growing success of whisper-quiet luxury brands. (Via Bloomberg) Yesterday we wrote about Bottega Veneta’s equally discrete competitor, Hermes
And more good news as Gucci is voted the most the most coveted designer brand in the world by Nielsen.
“In the past two years, Gucci has managed to maintain and even increase its brand equity in a very competitive and fickle industry,” said Patrick Dodd, Nielsen’s president of Europe in a statement. “They have achieved this by consistently embedding their core brand values in all their branded products, which range from perfume and sunglasses to accessories, jewelry, handbags and ready-to-wear.” — (Via Bloomberg)
Interestingly, PPR has just relaunched a more dynamic new website, which includes a quote that appears to underpin the new energy at the luxury group, “PPR, c’est la puissance d’un groupe mondial alliée à l’agilité d’une start-up”…
Wednesday, 27 February
LVMH to buy Tiffany & Co.?
Tiffany stock surged 8.4% yesterday - the highest rise in two years in New York - on loud rumors that LVMH was planning a takeover bid… Today shares are holding at yesterday’s high…
Wednesday, 27 February
Hermès turns up the volume
Things are afoot at Hermès.
Until recently, the brand has been standing rather majestically apart from the rest of the aspiration-oriented luxury pack. But recently, the brand has gathered increased amounts of visibility.
Towards the end of last year, they unveiled a collaboration with Eurocopter (Via Eurocopter)
A month ago, a new print campaign introduced a distinct new attitude. (Via Dark Planneur)
Now they have unveiled their first ever collabaration with a designer, Yohji Yamamoto.
This is a Hermès moment. When Yohji Yamamoto sent out a sleek new bag as the first collaboration that Hermès has ever done with a designer, it crowned the moment for the Paris fashion house famed for its whisper-quiet luxury. — (Via IHT)
Wednesday, 27 February
The Dom Perignon socialist manifesto
On a day when President Sarkozy visits a Louis Vuitton factory, buys a bag for Carla Bruni, and creates more accusations of pre-revolutionary behavior (Via The Times, London), Counter Punch publishes a lengthy piece about the relationship between the politics of luxury and Sarkozy’s new French republic…
Last September Bernard Arnault, chairman and CEO of the luxury conglomerate company LVMH, held a little “do” to mark the 60th birthday of the couture house of Dior. He spared no expense, with Dom Perignon champagne, caviar, 75 waiters for 25 tables, 14 cooks, 4,000 roses and 8,000 sprigs of lily of the valley (the late Christian Dior’s signature flower). But then the 270 guests were rather special too… Also present was the prime minister, Francois Fillon, who only four days later said: “I am in charge of a bankrupt state. This has got to stop.”
There is nothing new about billionaires indulging in conspicuous consumption. But the social portent of such festivities now reaches beyond the pages of glossy magazines. — (Via CounterPunch)
Tuesday, 26 February
The birth of the freeconomy
Chris Anderson, the editor-in-chief of Wired, and author of The Long Tail is pre-releasing large sections of his new book Free online this week. The book examines the rise of pricing models which give products and services to customers for free.
But until recently, practically everything “free” was really just the result of what economists would call a cross-subsidy: You’d get one thing free if you bought another, or you’d get a product free only if you paid for a service.
Over the past decade, however, a different sort of free has emerged. The new model is based not on cross-subsidies — the shifting of costs from one product to another — but on the fact that the cost of products themselves is falling fast. — (Via Wired)
Increasing categories of business are examining the idea of giving away the products that used to constitute their core profit centers. In many ways, the luxury industry has a model in the entertainment industry, which, nervous about future profits and beseiged by counterfeiting, has already undergone a process of restructuring for the future.
It may seem counterintuitive, but the luxury industry has more incentive than most to look at the opportunities afforded by the emerging freeconomy.
