Shop Talk

Forget lights. See your name in jackets, bags, dresses…

For the self-promoting designers out there who have always dreamed of having their own initials printed on fabric, a la Louis Vuitton, Fendi or Coach, Hewlett-Packard has brought you a step closer.

“Anyone could design their own fabric” with HP’s new TouchSmart notebooks and PCs, said Emilio Sosa, an independent designer and contestant on Lifetime television’s reality show ”Project Runway”. Sosa won Thursday night’s episode, in which the designers were challenged to design their own textiles using the computers, and then use it to design an outfit.

“To me, branding is so important,” Sosa said at a champagne brunch on Friday morning. ”That’s why I went with my initials and a heart on a bright blue background.” He used a cotton sateen to make his printed fabric, which he used for a slim halter dress, paired with a black jacket.

“In just 24 hours, I went from concept to printed fabric,” added Sosa, who plans to make his debut with a collection at New York Fashion Week in September. “With sketches, you have to FedEx them to a factory in the Orient.”

The HP TouchSmart tm2 notebook ranges in price from $699 to $899, while the desktop version — which can also be used as a television — goes for $1,599 and up.

Check Out Line: Olsen twins try mass-market fashion again

Check out America’s famous twins at it again.

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.

Also in the basket:

RadioShack profit misses estimates

from Raw Japan:

Denim deflation

James Dean smouldered in his, the Marlboro men looked rugged in theirs, and now me and hordes of other Japanese people can feel frugal in ours. Jeans -- practical, durable and with just a hint of  rebelliousness -- are at the centre of a price war in Japan, as struggling retailers look to lure cash-strapped customers back through their doors.

With the country slipping deeper into deflation and its jobless rate rising, shops have for some time been marking down almost everything from bags of cereal,  to laundry detergent and bicycles.

But curiously it is jeans that have emerged as a symbol of this deflationary race as major retailers roll out dirt-cheap denim in bids to undercut each other.

Fast Retailing, which operates the Uniqlo casual fashion chain, started the phenomenon in March when it said it it would start flogging jeans for 990 yen (about $11) a pair at its g.u. stores.

Back then, this was widely seen as an astoundingly cheap offer -- the price was around a quarter of  some jeans sold at Uniqlo, a chain known for its competitive pricing. The 990-yen jeans drove up sales at g.u., which had suffered from little consumer recognition until that point.

And the move sparked a round of tit-for-tat discounting, that this week continued with supermarket operator Seiyu, a Japanese unit of Wal-Mart, starting to sell jeans for 850 yen. "We would like to keep our price leadership," a Seiyu spokeswoman said.

The trend could also indicate that deflation in Japan is worse than government statistics show as this kind of price competition is not fully reflected in official figures.

A Runway Paved with Gold

   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.”

         What’s next? DeBeers Presents Dennis Basso?

Reuters Photo by Yuriko Nakao

Butterflies and birds byte into NY Fashion Week

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.

Check Out Line: Lazard looks at fashion

Check out what’s hot in fall fashion.    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.   Also in the basket:   Tween Brands Q2 loss narrower than expected

BJ’s Wholsesale profit beats Street, raises FY view 

Popcorn, a hidden source of antioxidants, study says (ABC News)

(Reuters photo from 2004, because leggings always come back)

from Global Investing:

Financial crisis helps Berlin take root for fashionistas

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.

Gunn guns for gay marriage

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.

Meanwhile, the battle rages with each side pulling out all the stops. 

Luxury apparel, redefined

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.

from Fan Fare:

Lining up for Topshop New York – would you?

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?