Back in 2003, Pier 1 decided to put tremendous effort into producing a rap video to train its employees.
At the time, the retailer dominated the home decor market. Since then, the retailer's faced poor sales and near-bankruptcy.
Now the video's on YouTube, with lines like "All the merchandise really makes me smile/there's perfect stuff in every aisle."
Check it out:
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Ann Romney made her grand entrance to the Republican National Convention in a bright red Oscar de la Renta gown.
Fashion buffs see her choice of designer as a jab at Michelle Obama.
That's because Oscar de la Renta has a longstanding beef with the First Lady for not wearing more American designers.
According to Charlotte Cowles at New York Magazine:
He was incensed when she wore Alexander McQueen to a state dinner for Chinese president Hu Jintao in January 2011, telling WWD at the time:
"My understanding is that the visit was to promote American-Chinese trade — American products in China and Chinese products in America. Why do you wear European clothes?"
De la Renta was popular with many other first ladies including Laura Bush, Nancy Reagan and Hillary Clinton. But Michelle Obama has never worn his designs.
Beef aside, Cowles approves of Romney's outfit.
"The cut itself is conservative and flattering, with elbow-length sleeves, a fold-over collar, and a trim belted waist," Cowles wrote.
The estimated cost of the dress is around $2,000.
The fashionable women and men of New York will hit the streets Sept. 6 for Fashion's Night Out.
The event is the brainchild of Vogue's Anna Wintour, and is in its fourth year. FNO kicks off Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week.
Stores throughout the city will host parties with DJs, celebrity guests, gift giveaways, and lots of champagne.
But with so many stores and only a few hours, it's important to map out your plan for the night. We think these 15 events will be worth your time.
See the complete list of events here.
Where: 754 Fifth Avenue
When: 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.
The details: The famed department store is hosting a book signing and party for author Sara James Mnookin for the release of her new book Scatter My Ashes At Bergdorf Goodman.
The guest list includes Edward Bess, Halston Heritage, Rachel Zoe, Lela Rose, and more.
Where: 654 Madison Avenue
When: 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
The details: NBA All-Star Dwyane Wade will be signing his book A Father First: How My Life Became Bigger Than Basketball while customers browse the racks at Calvin Klein.
Where: 252 Elizabeth Street
When: 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.
The details: "Project Runway" alum Christian Siriano will make an appearance at his namesake store while shoppers enjoy cocktails and enter to win two tickets to Siriano's show at Fashion Week and a $250 gift certificate to the store. Siriano will also pose for photos and sign handbags.
These days, traveling in style means booking a room at a hotel designed by your favorite fashion icon.
Missoni. Bulgari. Armani. DVF. LVMH. Oscar de la Renta. Ralph Lauren. Versace—it seems like every major fashion house has expanded into the hospitality business.
Some brands actually own hotel properties, while others have collaborated with existing hotels to design special rooms or suites.
LVMH, for example, opened Cheval Blanc in a former ski house in Courchevel "in response to considerable demand from LVMH’s clients who wish to discover unforgettable destinations while enjoying exceptional experiences," a representative for the brand told us.
We've selected 10 of our favorite fashion-branded hotels around the world.
Rooms: 85
How much: Rooms start at $810 a night.
Perks: The hotel boasts a library, spa, nail salon, private screening salon, and conference space.
Source: Bulgari Hotels
Rooms: 200 suites and 72 condominiums
How much: Rooms start at $370 a night.
Perks: The hotel has four restaurants, spa, lagoon pool, a Versace boutique, and an in-house salon run by Oscar Cullinan, who was named Australian hairdresser of the year.
Source: Palazzo Versace
Rooms: There are only 34 rooms.
How much: Rooms start around $880 a night.
Perks: There are two restaurants, great access to the French alps, and a pool with a waterfall in it. There is also a Guerlain spa in Cheval Blanc, and Guerlain is an LVMH brand.
Source: Cheval Blanc
It’s true: New York Fashion Week is approaching rapidly. If you’re as celebrity obsessed as some of us here, you probably can’t wait to see who turns up in the front row, who gets too drunk at an after party, and most importantly, who’s trying their hand at fashion design this season.
It’s pretty easy to slap your name on just about anything and have it considered a clothing line when you’re a celebrity, but to actually get the chance to showcase your items at New York Fashion Week is another story. Here, we’ve rounded up a slew of stars, ranging from reality stars to full-on fashion royalty, who will be hosting a presentation or a show for their collections this season.
The Real Housewives of Orange County star Gretchen Rossi has a new venture on her hands -- fashion design. She's previously designed handbags and shoes, but this is her first foray into a "ready-to-wear" collection. Naturally, her line will be shown at Kiss & Fly in the Meatpacking District at 8:00 PM on Monday, September 10.
Avril Lavigne has had a big year. Not only did she get engaged to Nickelback lead singer Chad Kroeger and make Canada weep in bliss, her second collection at New York Fashion Week is fast approaching. The Abbey Dawn Spring 2013 collection will show on September 10 at Metropolitan Pavilion at 6:00 PM. And although she's no longer dating Brody Jenner, his half-sister Kylie Jenner will be walking in the show as she did last season. Expect slightly more upscale Hot Topic duds. Haute Topic! Am I brilliant or what?
While she did originally come to prominence for being the skinny stylist friend of Nicole Richie, many fell in love with Rachel Zoe on her Bravo reality show The Rachel Zoe Project. She's finally an established designer, with her show taking place at 1:00 PM on September 12 in the Studio at Lincoln Center. Expect 1970s inspired duds, as Rachel seems to be perpetually dressing Bianca Jagger in her mind.
Brigitte, a German fashion and lifestyle magazine, is looking at abandoning the "no models" policy it adopted nearly three years ago. The magazine had announced in 2009 that editors were tired of "fattening up" skinny models on Photoshop and would subsequently photograph only "real women" for their pages. This week's about-turn is said to have come after magazine staff struggled to find normal women who could do the job well, on the days it needed to be done (most readers had to book time off their real jobs to attend the Brigitte shoots), and because circulation hasn't increased at all since the initiative began.
This back-pedal is in no way surprising to me. And while I can identify the magazine's ostensibly admirable intention (in addition to creating some excellent PR), it was a wholly misguided one – not to mention rather patronising towards those who model professionally. As someone who has worked with these women for 15 years, I know models bring to the table a great deal more than a pretty face and rake-thin body.
The average jobbing model is self-employed and earns something in the region of £40k – a good salary but hardly the Gisele numbers most people seem to imagine (Brigitte magazine claim they were paying their "real models", mainly readers, the same going rate). And for this a professional model spends 3-4 days a week meeting up to 30 photographers, editors and casting agents, showing her portfolio and being criticised and picked apart. "Too old", "skin's bad", "hair's all wrong": just some of the feedback a model might hear in an average day. If one client actually likes what she or he sees, then the model might get booked for a photoshoot. While she is hardly being sent down a mine to dig with her bare hands, she will spend around eight hours on her feet being largely ignored by the assembled crew, except when being ordered to pull poses (fashion is always a season ahead so this could easily be while wearing nothing but a bikini in a December blizzard) or undressing in front of assembled strangers.
During this time, she will be expected to know what makes a great picture, where her best angles are, how lighting works on the face and understand completely the mood the photos aim to create – any delay can cost thousands in studio and equipment hire and crew overtime and can often result in inferior photos. The job, while not without its great perks, involves a talent for acting, extreme patience and the hide of a rhino when it comes to criticism. Consequently, it is entirely possible to be a breathtakingly beautiful-looking woman and a very bad model.
It's unclear why the editors of Brigitte chose to use amateur models rather than "plus-sized" professional models (still a relatively slim size 14, but more representative of the average woman's size than a size six, and presumably in no need of the pumped-up decolletage Brigitte adopted as standard). Because surely the real point here is whether professional models should be more diverse, so magazines don't have to resort to those without experience in order to better reflect their readership. This seems to be a straightforward question with a rather obvious answer that few consumers would disagree with.
Except that the publishing industry consistently sees reader focus groups choose thin models over larger women in both editorial and advertising. Attempts at using larger women have been as unsuccessful here as in Germany. And yet criticising thin women has become an easy, crowd-pleasing option in recent years (politicians cynically wheel out the anti-model stance on quiet days, often using the term "real women", an expression so offensive it undermines its intended meaning).
Clearly, if magazines don't show any women over size eight it's very wrong and needs to be addressed. But we as consumers need to decide where we really stand and vote with our wallets — not continue to say we want one thing while consistently preferring another.
This article originally appeared on guardian.co.uk
The fashion industry, which already accounts for 4.4 million U.S. jobs, is pushing to bring more manufacturing jobs back from overseas.
Apparel manufacturing jobs are half of what they were a generation ago, Kristi Ellis at Women's Wear Daily reported. It used to make sense to outsource jobs to China, because it was cheaper to make goods there.
Now, we might be better off manufacturing in the U.S., Edwin Keh, a lecturer at the Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania, told WWD:
"In the last couple of years, chiefly in the relationship of the U.S. dollar to the Chinese renminbi, it became less. Coupled with stubbornly high oil prices, suddenly the question became why take on so much risk to offshore when you are not getting the value you wanted to create in the first place?
“The challenge now is we don’t have a supply chain that can respond to the turbulent times we live in. But I think it is a lot more feasible to think about high-quality products that can be made onshore and that can respond to much faster marketplace turbulence. How fast onshoring happens will depend on the momentum. If one or two big brands decide to make a commitment and bring the whole supply chain ecosystem with them, from zippers, button and thread suppliers, then all of a sudden this becomes much faster in terms of velocity.”
President Obama's policies focus on bringing more fashion jobs to the U.S. through his Made In America campaign. Romney's plan would repeal regulations imposed by the Obama administration and would crack down on undervalued Chinese currency.
Regardless of the outcome of the election, it looks as though more clothing will be sourced in the U.S.
If certain high-profile celebrities don't have a front-row seat at a Fashion Week show, don't expect them to show up.
While the hundred or so different designers who present their collections at Mercedes Benz Fashion Week all have different strategies for creating their seating charts, they all do some things in common.
We spoke to an insider at Nicole Miller (who asked not to be named) to find out how the fashion house decides who sits where.
Designers work with Fashion Week producer IMG to decide which venue they will be showing in, but generally get to request their space, the insider said. Nicole Miller traditionally shows at the Studio at Lincoln Center, which seats around 400 (not including standing room).
It's smaller than the massive theater, which seats around 1,000, but is far more intimate.
Once the space is booked, it's time to work on the seating chart.
"The best seat is always in the front row," the insider told us. "Celebrities are always front row, center."
The faces you don't recognize in the front row belong to journalists with clout. Nicole Miller will give publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Women's Wear Daily, and The New York Times front row seats.
The rest of the seats are divided into sections by sales, retail, Nicole's personal friends, licensee partners, and online bloggers.
Every seat is determined by seniority, and one's relationship with the brand. If you hope to go from standing room to sitting front-row and center, it's going to take a lot of work, a lot of coverage of the brand, and maybe even befriending Nicole herself.
Nicole Miller has last-say on every decision.
The PR team is in charge of the seating chart and invitations. They send out about 900 invitations to fill 400 seats.
"There's a lot of work that goes into it," the insider said. "Most of the people outside the industry don't understand it, but making the seating chart consists of a week of all-nighters before the show."
Old glamour: that was the theme Joseph Abboud Creative Director Bernardo Rojo used to kick off Fashion Week in New York this evening.
"It's about looking back to the old glamour of American style and modernizing it," Rojo said in his notes before the show.
If he didn't hit that note completely, he did something equally impressive by showing sleek, easy clothes. As Rojo works to reinvent Abboud, he's done a good job giving men strong, sharply constructed suiting that's easy to wear.
Sport coats came in ivory linen, a grey and off-white gingham, and navies and reds. Unlike his fall effort hitting shelves now, suits were mostly deconstructed and wrinkled.
They made sense for the man heading to Southampton over Memorial Day weekend, if not on a summer Friday in the office.
The two real standouts in the collection came in Abboud's outerwear and lightweight sweaters. A canary yellow fine gauge wool v-neck paired with cotton shorts and two neoprene motorcycle jackets were cool.
It all fit well, which worked with the two films Rojo checked before the show: "Rebel Without a Cause" and "Drive."
"Taking inspiration from yesterday's icons but bringing something completely new," he said. "I believe that design is a mode of expressing one's individuality, not suppressing it ... and this collection leaves room for tomorrow's icons to be made."
To be truthful, I was distracted by GQ Fashion Director Madeline Weeks, who sat with fellow GQ editor Ted Stafford, front row.
They contrasted the men lined up across from them, who included Ryan Lochte and Kellen Lutz. There was something to the ease of Ms. Weeks in aviators and a khaki trench and Mr. Stafford in slim jeans and a blazer that the blinding celebrity lacked.
The two looked fresh, something Mr. Rojo no doubt wants to replicate on his runway.
My only hope is that he's able to keep this new Abboud going — after all, it was only his second season leading the brand. It's refined and easy, something he's established he doesn't need that front row for.
Front Row: Ryan Lochte, Kellan Lutz, Hunter Parrish, Daniel Gillies, Alexander Ludwig, Frank Grillo, Brad Richards
In order to keep pace with their clientele, hotels are constantly evolving to stay on the cutting edge of luxury. Five-star restaurants, top notch spas, and designer decor are just some of the ways they lure in guests.
And now, hotels are making over their gift shops. Designer brands are the new norm for luxe hotel boutiques, and the stores themselves have become sought-out retail destinations.
We've selected the 10 best luxury hotel shops in America that will make you want to leave your suitcase at home and buy a whole new wardrobe while you're on vacation.
What you can buy: Designed and managed by Seaside Luxe, this boutique features high-end women's brands like Oscar de la Renta, Pucci, Tory Burch, Jimmy Choo, and more.
Who should shop here: Women with a taste for big prints and island style.
What you can buy: A hallway of underground shops below The Drake Hotel, The Drake Arcade features Chanel, Hildt Galleries, Van Cleef & Arpels, and Georg Jensen Jewelry.
Who should shop here: Any Jetsetter looking to purchase fine jewelry or art.
What you can buy: Some of their top brands are swimsuits by Pucci, Milly, and Haute Hippie, as well as sunglasses by Ray Ban, Dior, and Versace.
Who should shop here: Women new to the South Beach scene.
Max Azria, the designer behind BCBGMAXAZRIA, has dressed celebrities including Alicia Keys, Sharon Stone and Halle Berry.
We caught up with the designer before his runway show today at New York Fashion Week.
He told us how the bad economy has affected the mentality of fashion designers at every level.
"Today we have to be totally crazy and make stuff that stands out," he said. "It takes so much more to get a consumer's attention because they're more careful about how they spend their money. We also try and make things very precise, bold and basic so that a woman can wear one item for a lot of different occasions. The color black rules everything."
Azria has been designing for 40 years, and also told us how women have evolved since the beginning of his career.
"Women today are much more confident and sure of themselves," Azria said. "They're more willing to show off and be bold. I find that I can design more unique clothing and women are actually confident enough to wear them."
This season's runway collection included calf-length dresses, black-and-white jumpers, and leather.
Sanya Richards-Ross won a gold medal for the U.S. track team in London.
Now that the Olympics are over, the 27-year-old Jamaican-born beauty is focusing on her other passion: fashion.
We ran into Richards-Ross backstage at New York Fashion Week, where she told us what she's been up to.
"It's been great, I've just been preparing to go to Fashion Week," Richards-Ross said. "Fashion is the thing I am absolutely the most passionate about besides running."
It's not surprising that Richards-Ross made an appearance on the Fashion Week carpet. She's known for fighting Rule 40, a regulation that restricts how athletes can promote their sponsors. She also recently appeared on BET.
She is scheduled to attend a variety of shows throughout the week, including that of one of her favorite designers Rachel Roy. She's also doing a special fitting with Elie Saab, who is best-known for designing Halle Berry's Oscar dress.
Eventually, Richards-Ross brought out her gold medals and posed with BCBG designer Max Azria.
Richards-Ross wore a black and cream-colored silk jumper backstage. On several occasions, she was mistaken for a model.
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Men are disproving the stereotype that they hate shopping, and the retail world is taking note.
Retailers from Ugg to J. Crew are scrambling to provide men with better selections and customer service, Eric Wilson at the New York Times reports.
Many are even opening men's stores.
Here are some of the changes the industry has made recently:
In 2011, men's spending on apparel increased by 4 percent. The increase was fueled by a broader interest in fashion according to research by NPD Group, Wilson reported.
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Katie Holmes recently weathered a very public divorce with Tom Cruise, with media experts declaring her the victor in the court of public opinion.
While Holmes is perfectly comfortable navigating through swarms of paparazzi, she said she still feels insecure in the fashion industry.
The actress has a fashion line, Holmes & Yang, that will present its first runway show at New York Fashion Week.
She told Women's Wear Daily how the fashion industry still makes her feel insecure:
“When you go in and you show your clothing, you think that they’re going to buy the whole collection,” she said with a hearty laugh during an exclusive interview with WWD on Tuesday, minutes after inking a deal with Bobbi Brown Cosmetics. “And when they don’t, you’re like, ‘What do you mean? It all goes together. So what do we do with this?’ So that was new, but I think that’s kind of a life thing — ‘What, you don’t want all of me?’”
Holmes spoke to the publication about her new deal as spokeswoman of Bobbi Brown cosmetics. She dodged questions about her recent divorce settlement.
You can see a look book for Holmes' collection here. It features a variety of basic, elegant pieces, much like Holmes' own personal style.
"Heroin chic" is a fashion movement from the 1990s led by waif-like model Kate Moss. Judging from the looks at New York Fashion Week, it's back.
The look generally involves pale skin, dark circles under the eyes, and extreme thinness, much like a heroin addict. Several books have explored the negative impact its popularity has on young people because it glamorizes drug use. Back in 1997, then-president Bill Clinton condemned it.
We saw models outside the BCBGMAXAZRIA show displaying the look:
And Style.com interviewed the make-up artist who said he was looking to create "Kate Moss-inspired eyeliner that looks like "it's been on for a while."'
Earlier this year, Cara Dorris at Brown University observed "heroin chic" on her school's campus and described it in the following way:
The original models were often strung out in crumbling poses, wearing the blank stares of glamorized drug addicts. The fashion industry was forced to give them up after the ’90s and the arrival of healthier-looking models like Gisele — when abs became cooler than atrophy.
As I look around College Hill, it disturbs me to think some of us are trying to emulate these models. We forget that heroin chic owns its name for a reason — the models are beautiful but fleeting. They die at the end.
Meanwhile, the industry has shunned curvy fashionistas like Kim Kardashian. Even popular model Kate Upton is rarely seen on the runway wearing anything but a bikini or lingerie.
A fashion German magazine that swore off skinny models three years ago is now reconsidering.
While designers around the world have insisted they are committed to having healthier models, it appears that curves won't be the standard for a long time.
Even though New York City is considered a fashion mecca, its residents are not among the best-dressed in the country.
The website DressCodeFinder.com created this infographic of the best and worst dressed cities in the U.S. Their results are based on restaurant dress codes in the area.
By this metric, Beverly Hills is the best-dressed.
Check it out:
Women haven't abandoned Lululemon for cheaper copycats just yet.
Lululemon just posted second-quarter results that beat Wall Street estimates and sales are up 15 percent from this time last year.
The good news comes at a tough time for Lululemon. Shares are down and the retailer is facing more competition than ever before.
Gap's Athleta is seen as Lululemon's biggest threat. The activewear retailer is even going as far as to open stores in close proximity to Lululemon. Because Athleta's stuff is cheaper, analysts speculated that women might abandon their beloved $98 yoga pants.
Nordstrom also got in on the yoga-wear trend, poaching Lululemon designers to curate its Zella line. And Lululemon is currently suing Calvin Klein for allegedly violating a patent they had on a certain pair of yoga pants.
The brand is continuing to innovate its clothing and stay one step ahead of competitors, CEO Christine Day said this morning in an earnings conference call.
Today's results prove that Lululemon is more than capable of excelling under pressure. It looks like the activewear retailer is here to stay.
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Kanye West, Justin Bieber, and Jay-Z may have left the MTV Video Music Awards without moonmen; however, no one went home empty handed.
Every nominee, presenter, and performer gets dibs on the envious VMA gift bag with items from brands ranging from Covergirl and Calvin Klein to Apple and Monster.
From headphones to customized iPods, see the most expensive items celebrities took home Thursday night.
New York Fashion Week is still in fully swing, and before it ends we thought we would meet the biggest winners in the fashion industry.
From big box clothes retailers to high-end designers, fashion has made some people very, very wealthy.
We took a look at the data on Forbes' latest billionaires list (which lists the net worths of the world's richest as of March 2012) to determine the 15 wealthiest people in fashion.
Net worth: $4.3 billion
Forbes billionaires rank: 248
Nationality: U.S.
Background: Wexner is the chairman and CEO of Limited Brands, which operates Victoria's Secret, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Express, among other major mall chains.
The company made $9.6 billion in revenues in the last fiscal year.
Net worth: $4.8 billion
Forbes billionaires rank: 221
Nationality: Spain
Background: Andic is the co-founder of the Spanish fashion retailer Mango.
The apparel chain today operates more than 2,000 stores in 104 countries, and finished FY 2011 with revenues of $1.8 billion.
Net worth: $5.1 billion
Forbes billionaires rank: 199
Nationality: South African
Background: Rupert is the chairman and CEO of Richemont, the luxury goods holding company that controls brands like Cartier, Alfred Dunhill, Montblanc and Chloé.
Richemont acquired e-tailer Net-a-Porter for $343 million in 2010.
Marc Jacobs is not your average fashion designer. Other designers want to sell you a dress; Jacobs wants to mess with your head.
The Marc Jacobs catwalk show is the gravitational centre of New York fashion week. This collection is the one which, more than any other, points to the direction ahead. Over six months, a team of hundreds and a budget of millions go into producing a collection of, in this instance, 45 outfits.
The show began on the stroke of 8pm. Although the industry has mostly adjusted to Jacobs' latter-day obsession with punctuality, this still forced more than a few Hollywood names to break into a run to claim their front row seats. By 8.05pm, the show was over, such was the breakneck speed at which 45 models stomped down the runway, and Jacobs had taken his bow.
Anna Wintour, a keen tennis fan, was out of the building by 8.06pm, no doubt to get back to the final of the US Open, then in its final set. The rest of the audience were left on their padded benches, gawping at the now empty catwalk and trying to make sense of what they had just seen.
Putting the catwalk on fast-forward is a psychological trick invented by Christian Dior 65 years ago. One of Dior's many innovations was to have catwalk models change walking style, swapping the traditional stately parade for a brisker stride. The effect was to make an audience who were used to taking notes at a languid pace sit up and concentrate: there is nothing like making people feel they might miss something, for getting their attention.
If Dior changed the walking pace from stately to brisk in the 40s, Jacobs is now experimenting with putting it on fast-forward. And it is an experiment of which we may not yet have seen the conclusion. Backstage after the show he commented cheerfully that "every season, I try and beat my speed record. My ideal is to have the show over before you've even sat down."
Jacobs' approach is both twisted, and perfectly logical. The scale of the fashion industry is such that any catwalk show for a major brand is a taster of what the collection as sold on the shopfloor will be, rather than an exhaustive menu. What matters is to convey a message, an image strong enough to sear into the retinas of the industry and ensure that brand has a voice in the fashion conversation for the season. And this show, for all the tripped-out energy, did just that.
"It's brutal. Just sex appeal and strength, with no romance and no emotion," was how Marc Jacobs described the collection. Thick deckchair stripes and all-over giraffe prints were stamped on to boxy dresses, coats and a new concept in skirt suits, aimed squarely at the brave: a cropped sweater with a matching A-line pleated skirt. Pointed-toe shoes and winged eyeliner added a Mod twist.
The collection began, Jacobs said, with a T-shirt dress to the floor, and a flat shoe. "We wanted a look that would accommodate a long, quick stride." After last season's eccentric, maximal, nostalgic show Jacobs and his team felt that the only way forward was to strip the aesthetic right back.
The first model wore a black-and-white striped T-shirt, with plain knickers, her hair powdered white and sprayed in a sweep over one eye. It was a look which seemed to reference both Edie Sedgwick and Andy Warhol. Jacobs denied any 60s influence and claimed Sedgwick had been a reference only for make-up. This may or may not be the truth. Like I say, for Jacobs, fashion is a way to mess with your head.
This article originally appeared on guardian.co.uk
