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Material World: Vanessa Friedman's Fashion Blog
blogs.ft.com/material-world
24
Vanessa Friedman's blog deals with the fashion/luxury industry from both a corporate and consumer point of view
#54342 in All

What is a “luxury lifestyle” brand?

Does anyone else feel like suddenly everywhere they turn, another erstwhile satisfied luxury brand is re-christening themselves a “luxury lifestyle” brand, talking about their “glob...

8 h ago

Stella McCartney takes first Olympic retail gold medal

If there were an Olympic medal for retail (and why not, given the ever-burgeoning sponsorship opportunities?) Stella McCartney would win the first one by a mile. British athletes, triple jumper Phill...

1 day ago

FT column: Bold platforms for France’s new agenda

I am now going to write something I have never written before; something, in fact, I never would have thought it possible I would write. But here goes: OMG – the shoes! The shoes worn by Valerie Trie...

4 days ago

Mr Prada courts flattery through imitation

Prada CEO: “We don’t want to be a brand that nobody wants to copy.” This is a quote from an interview Patrizio Bertelli, aka Mr Prada, gave yesterday to Bloomberg TV, and it is probably going to set ...

5 days ago

L’Oreal heir is the new new thing in menswear

“2% of the population under 30, and 2% of the population under 40 are millionaires who are not being catered to by the men’s knitwear market,” So said Jean-Victor Meyers to me yesterday, explaining h...

6 days ago

Weighing profit and loss from skinny models

Introducing the best argument I’ve heard yet about why skinny models are not, actually, ideal selling agents for fashion brands - -and the only one that may actually have some effect on the industry.

23 may 12

Vionnet is acquired by Goga Ashkenazi

Vionnet has gone gaga for Goga. Today the classic French brand that was relaunched by Matteo Marzotto, the ex-president of Valentino, and Gianni Castiglione, CEO of Marni, three years ago, has just e...

22 may 12

LVMH goes green

Today is the first day of Green Week, the EU’s biggest eco-conference, and to celebrate it LVMH, the EU’s biggest luxury group (in fact, the world’s) has stepped out and announced it, too , is going ...

22 may 12

Trierweiler struts into the fashion arena with YSL

I mean this title literally: yesterday at the G8 summit, Ms Trierweiler strutted out next the other First Ladies, all in their sensible mid-height heels, in YSL Tribute sandals – the shoe I would cha...

21 may 12

Adele and fashion’s final frontier

No – I am not talking about the Facebook IPO (though everyone else seems to be; poor Graff, planning their own listing in HK and valued at a notable $3-4billion, is being totally overshadowed). I’m t...

18 may 12

Marangoni to school China in fashion

You know what they say: if the mountain wont go to Muhammad....After building enormous flagships, after importing elaborate couture shows, fashion has entered yet another stage in its relationship wi...

17 may 12

Next generation brands

What high-end brands do those unpredictable but desirable, virtually-enabled, live-life-on-Facebook twentysomethings like? This is a question that obsesses luxury -- after all, some chunk of said twe...

16 may 12

French inaugural chic

Watching Francois Hollande be sworn in as French president today, I was struck by how incredibly color-coordinated the hand-over of power was. I know it wasn’t planned -- the Hollande and Sarkozy cam...

15 may 12

Ban Ki-moon becomes Vogue cover boy

Many -- ok, mostly musicians it seems: Paul Simon, Bono -- have tried; can fashion succeed? In changing Africas image, that is. The secretary general of the UN, Ban Ki-moon, seems to think the answer...

14 may 12

FT column: Why Cannes is film’s own fashion week

Forget Easter parades, with their flower-bedecked hats and pastel prints. Forget May day, and dancing around a ribbon-strewn pole among the crocuses. Forget those few days in April when the mercury s...

12 may 12

How to profit from luxury tourism

By now we hold these truths to be self-evident: that the extreme resilience of luxury brands in the face of European economic turmoil can be traced largely to the traveling luxury consumer heralding ...

11 may 12

Chanel scents a change in strategic direction

After Nicole Kidman, after Audrey Tatou, after Carol Bouquet, comes...Brad Pitt? Chanel has just announced the latter will be the new, and first male, face of their cash cow product, aka the perfume ...

10 may 12

Indian designers get a fashion fund

Those international Vogues are fast becoming the action heroes of the fashion world. Only last week they banded together to declare war on underage models, and now Vogue India has now announced it is...

09 may 12

The money-making Met Ball

Mayor Bloomberg said it in his speech: "this is the Oscars of the East Coast." Tom Ford said "Theres more fashion here than at the Oscars." They were both talking, of course, about la...

08 may 12

Amazon embraces highest-end fashion

Tonight Jeff Bezos, a man generally pictured in jeans, jackets, and no tie, will stand at the top of the grand staircase of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in a tuxedo, shoulder-to-shoulder with desig...

07 may 12

Ann Romney’s $990 presidential race T-shirt

Mitt Romney and his wife Ann Romney celebrate their victory in the Illinois GOP primary. Getty Images The elevation of Mitt Romney to Republican nominee presumptive appears to have acted as a sort of...

04 may 12

Zegna one-ups the menswear market

Will real men buy silk? And not silk ties, but silk shirts, silk suits, silk trench coats, silk sweaters and silk...seersucker? Can silk be sold, successfully, as "the cashmere of summer," an...

03 may 12

The luxury pricing problem

I’ve been thinking recently of a conversation I had with Rodrigo Bazan, President of Alexander Wang, about the problem of pricing in a global luxury world – and his rather clever way of addressing th...

02 may 12

Georg Jensen and Smythson in the headlines

Things are heating up on the luxury front. Yesterday I was talking to Ulrik Garde Due, chief executive of Danish silver brand Georg Jensen, and he acknowledged that the recent stories about brands pr...

01 may 12

Luxury CEOs reveal fears for future

Luxury brands from PPR to LVMH may be announcing more banner results this month, but according to a new report from UK luxury consultancy Ledbury Research, their CEOs are probably a lot more worried ...

30 apr 12

FT column: Squandering a royal style opportunity

Recently, a woman in the midst of a career change came to see me. This former banker, who took time off to get married and have children, was on the verge of beginning a new life in the high-end frag...

28 apr 12

PPR puts its money where its carbon emissions are

Today at their AGM PPR came out and did two things that I don’t think any other luxury brand has done so far: publicly put its money where its mouth is, officially committing to a group of specific e...

27 apr 12

How the “curator” replaced the “editor”

Anyone else noticed that these days you cant blink an eye without someone -- a designer, blogger, brand -- announcing they have just "curated" some on-line content? But isnt this simply a new...

26 apr 12

Richemont’s Russian ruling is good for luxury

So a precedent has been set in Russia. Yesterday the Swiss conglomerate won their case in the Russian Federal Supreme Court, where in they sued a Russian company that had registered the trademark Vac...

25 apr 12

London menswear’s missed opportunity

As if the Jubilee and the Olympics weren’t enough, this June London fashion will inaugurate its first ever dedicated men’s wear – well, not week. Three days! You have to start somewhere.The announcem...

24 apr 12

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