Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, the former child actresses turned fashion designers, are launching a new juniors’ sportswear and accessories line for J.C. Penney. The travel-themed line is called Olsenboye, with each collection highlighting a new city.
The mid-priced line features clothes, shoes and handbags priced from $20 to $50.
Fashion is not new for the sisters, who were television stars from infancy and grew up to have a quirky bohemian style. They currently have high-end lines, such as The Row, which sells at Bergdorf Goodman, and Elizabeth and James, which sells at Neiman Marcus. They even once had a line of girls’ clothes at Wal-Mart, though it no longer exists.
Items from the new line will be available for a limited time in select JC Penney stores and online starting Nov. 6, with a full launch set for spring 2010. Let’s see if it lasts longer than the line at Wal-Mart.
Who needs the runway when Goldfinger’s got your back?
Fashion industry watchers wonder whether more designers will use Times Square’s neon signs as a virtual runway in the future, like Carmen Marc Valvo did with his spring/summer 2010 show during New York Fashion Week. More to the point, will more designers follow his lead next time by asking the World Gold Council and the Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. – or other financial markets players — to help foot the bill?
A Valvo spokesman says the cost was “about half” that of a runway show in the Bryant Park Tents. The tab usually starts at $100,000 and can run $250,000 or more, depending on how many models and special effects are involved. This was perhaps the flashiest example of how designers, hit hard by the recession, are seeking more sponsorships to finance their New York shows than in the past. Check out this video of the Times Square show, which ran on the neon signs of Nasdaq, Thomson Reuters and Fox:
Even with gold trading above $1,000 an ounce, that’s still less than what some of Valvo’s gowns go for at Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue.
The World Gold Council’s Duvall O’Steen said the group paid 10 models and other show expenses — the first time it’s taken such a high-profile role at Fashion Week. Check out this video as O’Steen talks about fashion and gold jewelry:
In fact, the World Gold Council is getting more requests now for corporate event sponsorships than it can accommodate, O’Steen said. And it’s happening after a year when a drop in world gold mining production curbed its budget for such affairs.
Bruce Aust, Nasdaq’s executive vice president of the corporate client group, also explains why the made its first foray into fashion:
Michael Quintanilla, who covers fashion for the San Antonio Express-News and two other Hearst newspapers, told Reuters: “Times Square was the perfect place for a fashion show. With all that neon, it’s very ‘Blade Runner.’ I loved the format. You could drop in when you wanted, have a cocktail, talk to Carmen, see the clothes and leave, without being herded into a space like cattle and being forced to wait.”
Spotted at New York Fashion Week: Butterflies and hummingbirds hovered inside the tents, but these particular species came equipped with at least a gigabyte or two.
Designer Vivienne Tam’s“Butterfly Lovers” digital clutch laptop from Hewlett-Packard made its debut on the runway with her Spring and Summer 2010 collection. Just inside the entrance to the Bryant Park Tents, a hummingbird was ready for its close-up — on the cover of one of the Palm Pixi Artist Series limited-edition cellphones on display.
Just two of the most colorful examples of how fashion is using technology to court design-savvy customers, one of the biggest trends seen at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, which wrapped up late Thursday night.
“For me, fashion plus technology equals ‘double happiness,’” Tam told Reuters backstage.
Indeed, the “enter” key on her latest HP laptop is imprinted with the Chinese characters for “double happiness.”
The champagne-gold laptop will have more capacity and more features than her first limited-edition HP digital clutch with the red “Peony” print cover, which Tam unveiled on the runway last September. The “Peony” laptop — light enough for a woman to carry like a clutch evening bag — has 1 gigabyte of RAM, according to the Neiman Marcus online catalog, where it’s listed “in stock” for $699.99.
Tam says her inspiration came from the classic Chinese love story, the “Butterfly Lovers,” who are regarded as China’s “Romeo and Juliet.” A classical music lover, Tam noted that this year is the 50th anniversary of the Butterfly Lovers Concerto.
HP sees fashionable tech for women as a golden market, with plenty of opportunity to expand with wireless mice, storage devices and other accessories, says Satjiv S. Chahil, senior vice president of global marketing.
Check out this video of the “Butterfly Lovers” laptop on display at the Fashion Week party in Vivienne Tam’s boutique:
Meanwhile, Palm aims to serve fashion-conscious men and women with its Pixi Artist Series phones with limited-edition covers designed by five artists. The Hummingbird cover by artist Cole Gerst in bright orange and green on a light turquoise background looks unmistakably feminine, while the Skull by artist Jeremy Fish in cream and black appears more in sync with a male aesthetic.
The new Palm Pixi phone line will be launched for the holiday season in partnership with Sprint Nextel, says Palm senior product manager Mike Akamine. Each artist’s design will be offered on only 5,000 phones — for a total limited run of 25,000 units, Akamine told Reuters.
Each phone will have about 7 gigabytes of available internal user storage.
Check out the Palm Pixi Artist Series phones:
For a look at another designer using tech to reach more customers, check out this video of Norma Kamali showing her spring clothes outside the Apple store in Soho:
Take a look at Reuters story:
Technology in starring role at New York Fashion Week
http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE58H4TD20090918
Lazard Capital Markets looked at 10 September fashion magazines and identified these trends:
Boots, with Jones Apparel getting seven call-outs in the magazines.
Skinny denim and leggings, both getting play with looser, less form-fitting tops.
Motorcycle jackets, military jackets, trench coats, sheath dresses and one-shoulder tops.
Also, “studs appear everywhere in clothing and accessories, including handbags, belts, shoes, dresses.”
Companies best capitalizing on the various trends include Jones, Gap, American Eagle and Guess, among others, Lazard said in a research note.
We were going to toss in a kicker of some fashion trend that is never coming back. But face it, they all seem to come back at some point. We expect to pull out our Members Only jackets any day now.
Berlin is slowly but surely establishing itself as one of the top global catwalks for the bold and the beautiful of the world of high fashion -- and the global financial crisis seems to be doing nothing to slow it down.
For the fifth time, up-and-coming fashion designers are meeting in the German capital to present selections from their latest collections at the Berlin Fashion Week, which is attracting increasing interest from the international fashion scene.
Maia Guarnaccia, vice president at IMG Fashion Europe, which organises the fashion week in Berlin as well as similar events in New York, Miami and Amsterdam, said last year marked a turning point for Berlin.
“Since July (last year) people are now calling us to be here,” he said, adding that it used to be the other way around.
“Berlin still is an oasis,” Guarnaccia said. “Because it is more accessible” than other fashion capitals like Paris, London or Milan, where the cost of living as well as production and rents are a lot higher, he said. This, he said, attracts young designers especially in a time of global economic recession.
“People get more creative in times of a crisis,” he said, having also worked for British fashion designer Vivienne Westwood in the past.
One of the fast-rising stars is designer Pablo Ramirez. Born in Buenos Aires in 1971, Berlin marks one of his first international shows.
“Berlin is another important door to Europe,” Ramirez said after the show. He was invited to come to Berlin after winning top fashion awards in Argentina. “I’m very nervous and excited,” he said.
His summer 2010 collection featured mainly elegant black dresses and suits and was accompanied by almost melancholy sounding strings.
It was followed by a bright, colourful and upbeat show by South African designers Jacques van der Watt and Danica Lepen with their Black Coffee label -- which featured red, blue and red silky smooth wrap-around dresses adorned with golden laces.
A few minutes walk away from the main venue, another show launched in a big white tent set up at the heart of the city, next to the opera house. The German natural clothing brand Hessnatur show is the latest collection with other ecological designers in several rooms of Berlin's famous Adlon Hotel.
Hessnatur was founded more than 30 years ago by environmentalist Heinz Hess and won over designer Miquel Adrover as creative director in 2007. Hessnatur decided to show in Berlin after his gig at last year's the New York Fashion Week triggered a wave of media interest. “Requests have risen brutally,” said Chief Executive Wolf Luedge.
Why so busy? Well, actress Julia Roberts recently ordered some clothes for her next movie and Vogue just did a photo shooting with Cameron Diaz wearing Hessnatur’s frocks.
While the future looks bright for the company, there is still a great deal of uncertainty. Hessnatur is part of German retail and tourism group Arcandor which filed for insolvency last month.
Luedge could not say what would happen to his company now, but said: “Hessnatur will come out of this one unharmed. I am not worried. Not at all.”
IMG’s Guarnaccia added more optimism. Berlin would make its way, he said: "The success will be a blend of German brands, established designers and newcomers.”
Popular “Project Runway” mentor Tim Gunn has three words for California’s gay marriage advocates: “Make it work.”
And the urbane advisor — who won the hearts of audiences with his advice to aspiring fashion designers on the fashion design reality television show – put the emphasis on W-word.
“If we are going to change the hearts and minds of people throughout the state, it’s going to take you and me working for it,” Gunn said in this video for the Courage Campaign.
Gunn, who also is creative director at Liz Claiborne Inc, is working with the group to rally Californians to repeal Proposition 8, which bans gay marriage in the nation’s most populous state.
California voters approved Proposition 8 in November. The California Supreme Court in May backed the proposition, which defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman.
Despite losses in the California courts and at the ballot box, gay rights advocates have made major strides in recent months with marriage and domestic partner rights in a handful of states, including Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut and Iowa.
American luxury retail has been, well, in shambles.
Since department store revenues began to plummet in September, luxury’s glossy image transformed to one that brings to mind strewn-about merchandise on a Saks Fifth Avenue floor.
Pricing structures have come under pressure as shoppers seek deep discounts, or worse, question price guidelines after aggressive reductions at the end of last year. In the spring, markdowns crept dangerously close to the start of the season. Clearly, discounts really are not what designers want their labels to be known for.
“For younger, newer designers, image is everything,” said fashion consulting firm Launch Collective’s Rob Spira, who recently co-curated the New York City Save Fashion pop-up shop to celebrate independent designers.
“Before, designers were coming to us for ideas to build funding,” Spira told Reuters at the Save Fashion store, which popular style Web site Refinery29 also co-curated. “Now they’re looking for creative ways to sustain in this kind of environment.”
Refinery29 Editorial Director Christene Barberich said many rising designers complained recently that upscale department stores were canceling orders despite interest in their brands.
“These smaller companies don’t really have the resources to sustain their $60,000 orders when stores cancel,” said Barberich.
Save Fashion, around for a one month stint in the city’s Port Authority bus terminal, allows designers grappling with lower profit margins and less marketing money to sell their overstock at half-off or more. The bright space houses about eight fresh designers every week — including Helmut Lang, Steven Alan, ACNE, Earnest Sewn, Rachel Comey, and Rogan — in a way that won’t recall “a shabby sample sale,” Barberich said. Rather, she dubbed it a “dream capsule department store.”
Save Fashion’s ad campaign, depicting a model wrapped solely in an American flag, says a lot. The event indicates a shift in how Americans may define high-end products once the smoke clears.
“Most of the designers here aren’t considered ‘luxury,’ but there is something about them that shows a future of luxury: smaller quantities, more care, more attention,” Barberich said, adding that some of the brands make their own patterns and trademark their own textiles. “Here, it’s not dirt cheap, but it’s as cheap as it can be where the designers are still making some money or at least falling flat instead of going into the red.”
Refinery29 Founder Philippe von Borries talks about alternative retail from the Save Fashion store
Department stores are expected to see a bumpy road to recovery this year. In March, Fitch Ratings Services said it sees same store sales for luxury department stores underperforming the broader sector, with double-digit sales declines continuing in the first half. Standard & Poor’s cut five department store credit ratings in April, sending Macy’s and J.C. Penney to junk status, and Neiman Marcus into even riskier territory. Saks received a speculative B-minus rating from both agencies due to weakening store sales.
Meanwhile, the Dubai investment firm that owns Barneys New York gave the high-end store a capital injection last month to help it pay for its remaining shipments, one day after S&P cut Barneys to a deeply distressed ratings level.
“The nature of retail is changing,” Launch Collective’s Spira said. “Despite the fact that we’re in challenging times, to the consumer it has to seem like everything is still beautiful.”
Ayone who has been into Topshop's Oxford Street store in London on a Saturday will know that there are normally so many shoppers inside that it is almost difficult to move.
So when the trendy British mass market fashion retailer -- for which supermodel Kate Moss designs a clothing line -- opened its first U.S. store in New York this month it was no surprise that people were lining up to get in the door.
On Saturday, despite drizzling rain and less than spring-like temperatures, the line outside stretched half a block, although the Soho shop appeared less packed inside than the Oxford Street store on a Saturday morning.
With bouncers outside only letting shoppers in as others left, Topshop New York resembled more of a nightclub.
Would you line up to get into Topshop? Or any other clothing stores?
Just in time for Father’s Day shopping, Sears will roll out a line of men’s suits made of the first high-tech fabric that blends wool with polyester spun from recycled plastic soda bottles.
The suit separates, sold under Sears’ Covington Perfect brand, will be on racks in about 500 U.S. Sears stores in May. Price: $175 for the jacket and $75 for the pants, according to Tim Danser, vice president of marketing for Bagir Group Ltd., the Israeli manufacturer that tailors the garments for Sears’ private label.
And get this: This suit is machine washable and can be tossed in the dryer, eliminating the need for dry cleaning and upping the eco-friendly ante, Danser said.
“This isn’t the polyester of the 1970s,” Moses Cohen, sales and marketing manager for N.I. Teijin Shoji (USA), Inc., the New York arm of Teijin, the Japanese chemical company that makes the suit fabric, said during a men’s fashion briefing at the swanky Kitano Hotel on Park Avenue in Manhattan.
Teijin, which developed fabrics made of recycled plastic blended with wool, viscose and cotton or with other synthetics, also partners with retailers to recycle used polyester clothing back into fabric and new clothes.
“This has a nicer hand to it,” Cohen said, running his fingers over the sleeve of his own jacket, acknowledging that “polyester still has some bad connotations” due to the quality of the “disco era” fabric of more than 30 years ago. (For devotees of the 1981 cult comedy film, “Polyester,” this is your cue: Thanks a lot, John Waters!)
“We do not use any oil,” Cohen said of the process used to turn plastic bottles made from polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, into fabric yarn. In Japan, men’s suits from Teijin’s recycled fabrics are sold by retailer Aoki.
“We think the stars are aligned for this,” Cohen said, referring to the growing interest in green manufacturing in the United States. “It started with Al Gore and his film, ‘An Inconvenient Truth.’ We can also thank President Obama” for his emphasis on saving energy and protecting the environment.
So how did Sears, known for its Energy Star home appliances, decide to join fashion’s green front?
As Cohen recalled, Sears was the first retailer to “have the guts and the vision” to commit to the line.
“In addition to providing a handsome suit at a great price, men can feel good about their purchase, knowing they are taking a step towards helping the environment,” a Sears spokeswoman said in an e-mail.
The suits tested well in Sears stores in Boston, Chicago and the metropolitan New York area (hello, Hackensack, N.J. and Long Island) — the three top U.S. eco markets, Bagir’s Danser said.
Fun fact: It takes 25 plastic soda-pop bottles (2-liter size) to make enough polyester yarn to produce the fabric for one suit.
Backstage at the Miss Sixty show at NY’s fashion week, Italian label Miss Sixty’s head designer and co-founder Wichy Hassan speaks about the effects of the recession on the show and the possible future price of garments at the label’s stores.
From New York and Milan — where the label hails from — he says the industry is feeling the pinch.
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Check out America’s famous twins at it again.
