Daily excerpts of new fashion, culture, lifestyle, activism and women's news posts 2007-2019.
Raf Simons Leaves Calvin Klein | Brand Won't Show During New York Fashion Week
On Friday the Belgian designer Raf Simons and Calvin Klein announced that they were parting ways amicably eight months before his contact was up for renewal. Calvin Klein will not show during New York fashion week.
LA Moves To Ban Fur Sales & Manufacture, Following San Francisco, West Hollywood & Berkeley
Los Angeles, long associated with red carpet glitz and glamour, has voted to ban the sale of fur products, making it the largest American city to respond to a unanimous City Council vote to draft an ordinance that will ultimately prohibit the manufacture and sale of new fur products within the city.
Projected to take two years to institute, the first step is to draft a city ordinance that takes into consideration “how fur apparel is utilized by religious organizations, and possible exemptions, as well as potential conflicts with federal and state laws relating to sale of fur products derived from legally trapped animals,” writes The LA Times.
West Hollywood already has a fur ban, but the law was changed to exempt fur from animals legally trapped under state law. Berkeley and San Francisco have fur bans, adapted to comply with local laws and ordinances.
Keith Kaplan, spokesman for the Fur Information Council of America, a trade group for manufacturers and fur merchants, argued that global retail fur sales are $35.8 billion and that more than 1 million people were employed, as of 2014.
Big industry brands abandoning fur in their collections include Michael Kors, Armani, Gucci and most recently Burberry.
The current London Fashion Week promoted itself as being fur free.
L Brands Will Close Henri Bendel To Focus On Struggling Victoria's Secret & Pink
American retailer L Brands Inc, owner of Victoria’s Secret, Pink and Bath & Body Works announced that it will be closing all 23 Henri Bendel stores, including the historic Fifth Avenue Manhattan flagship to “focus on increasing shareholder value.”
L Brands stock has had a very rough ride in recent years with sales and profits in serious decline at both Victoria’s Secret and now Pink.
Henri Bendel was founded in 1895 when Henri Bendel moved to New York City from Lafayette, La to make hats for Manhattan’s elite. It was the arrival of Geraldine Stutz as president in 1959 that put Bendel on the international fashion map with stylish shoppers carrying the store’s brown and white shopping bags in all the best places.
Burberry's new Chief Creative Director Riccardo Tisci has collaborated with British art director and graphic designer Peter Saville on a new 21st century logo and red-honey monogram for the British heritage brand. The new visuals were inspired by the Burberry archives where Tisci found a logo from 1908 and a Thomas Burberry monogram.
"Peter is one of our generation's greatest design geniuses," said Tisci who joined Burberry in March. "I'm so hapy to have collaborated together to reimagine the new visual language for the House." Saville also partnered with his longtime collaborator Raf Simons to create Calvin Klein's log.
Excitement is mounting for Tisci's London Fashion Week show in September, where the designer will put his new product strategy in place. Tisci will release a limited-edition capsule collection as part of his first ready-to-wear offering in order to build on its see-now-buy-now model, and keep the delivery cycle dynamic and fresh.
Burberry's collaboration on re-imagined British heritage pieces with Dame Vivienne Westwood will arrive for December holiday selling. The Westwood collab will support the rainforest charity Cool Earth.
Eye: Nicholas Ghesquiere Honors Vintage Artistry, Coddington Cats & Leon For Resort 2019
When Nicolas Ghesquière renewed his Louis Vuitton contract at the end of May, his Instagram hashtag #notgoinganywhere made headlines. In a fashion industry spinning almost as fast and potentially out of control as a Donald Trump foreign policy speech, Ghesquière’s decision to remain at LVMH brought a stability-loving sigh pf relief.
The designer brought his vintage style vintage factor to his 2019 resort collection. Ghesquière said he wanted to pay homage to eccentricity. “What is it today to be an original, [someone] who has her own way of dressing? This bricolage . . . you can start a real movement. I love those people who are eccentric.”
Luxury conglomerate Kering announced on Wednesday that Tomas Maier, creative director of Bottega Veneta since 2001 is leaving the brand.
The Hollywood Reporter writes that during Maier's time at Bottega, Maier revived the Italian brand's 1970s brand message, "When Your Own Initials Are Enough," creating an understated luxe lifestyle brand "with a nod to '40s and '50s Hollywood silver screen style, gathering fans including filmmaker Liz Goldwyn, Selma Blair, Naomi Watts and more."
Maier made major fashion news around his Spring 2017 runway show, creating the memorable image of sending then 73-year-old Lauren Hutton down the runway with then 21-year-old Gigi Hadid.
Jennifer Lawrence continues her Dior love affair, appearing as the face of Dior's pre-fall 2018 campaign. Lawrence poses in relaxed, tailored looks designed by Maria Grazia Chuiri, Dior's creative director.
Since her appointment as the first female artistic director of Christian Dior in July 2016, Maria Grazia Chiuri has been writing a new chapter in the storied house's history, using feminism and female empowerment as a platform for her own political ends. “When I arrived, I decided to think about femininity in a way that is contemporary,” she says. “The women are different now.”
Simply stated, the Dior brand must extend far beyond cocktail dresses. And in an epic leap taken by very few luxury brands, Chiuri brings moral messaging into the topic of brand desirability.
CR blog spoke to designer friends about mood and intention in 2018. Maria Grazia Chiuri weighed in: ""My motto for 2018 is that of American artist Marilyn Minter: Resist. Because we should defend our ideas, stand our ground, and never back down. We should always be brave. All of the work that we have done to be brave enough to face reality and try to change it, the campaigning for equality and for equal rights and responsibilities, too, are part of a long-term project. Now is the time to resist and try to build something new and extraordinary."
Watching for the first time Chiuri's Dior Couture Fall 2017 video, I sense the mood of the designer's forward women's march in a collection honoring Dior's cosmopolitan, globetrotting roots. Gone are the Roger Vivier spindly heels, replaced by men's brogues and manly ankle boots.
'The Crown's' mood is everywhere in the Dior couture show: the sobriety, modest femininity and pared-down opulence.
Yet, there is a distinctly feminist, #RESIST current running through this Dior couture collection. Will it declare itself again in Chiuri's fall 2018 ready-to-wear show? I hope so. After all, the female actors like Meryl Streep, Jessica Chastain and Emma Jones are promising to wear black dresses to the Golden Globes Awards next Sunday night to protest gender inequality and sexual harassment. The women have also said that they will not answer frivolous, Red Carpet fashion questions like "who are you wearing?" Like Chiuri's countless marching women, they will speak on topics related to the act of RESISTing.
Eye: Bobby Doherty Captures The Cut's Freakebana Ugly Cool With Floral Design By Brittany Asch
I'm lovin' New York Magazine's new The Cut, and here's another example of why. Recently, The Cut introduced us to Freakebana: The New, Ugly-Cool Style of Arranging Flowers.
Ikebana is the Japanese art of arranging flowers, writes Stella Bugbee. The centuries-old discipline features spare, off-center compositions of local and seasonal foliage, positioned to emphasize form, line, and color. The practice evolved with Buddhist philosophy, rooted in minimalism and precision, with plants chosen carefully for their symbolism. And it’s an object of renewed interest of late: Deborah Needleman, writing for T Magazine, attributed Ikebana’s contemporary appeal to “its direct and personal connection to nature, its awareness of and emphasis on decay in an era in which our own ecological and environmental ruin feels more vivid than ever.”
"True," says Bugbee. "But there’s also something else happening that has less to do with nature and more to do with attitude."
Freakebana (pronounced free-ke-ba-na) is what I am calling it. The turnt cousin of Ikebana, Freakebana is the art of arranging whatever-the-hell, in a way that nods at the traditional Japanese art form, but subs out years of study for a naive, new-wave naturalism. In Freakebana, the components are more likely foraged from the corner deli, as opposed to a Shinto garden. Good Freakebana mixes sparse, eccentric elements for maximum surprise. Say: pink carnations, cubes of jello, an air plant, and Maldon salt crystals.
Enough romantic, farm-to-vase florists like Floret and Saipua. Yes, the allure of peonies and roses is intoxicating, but how about this more hallucinogenic trend? In this followup visual extravagance for The Cut, Stella Bugbee unleashes floral designer Brittany Asch with styling by Diana Tsui and photography by Bobby Doherty in a freakin' uptown freakebana tour de force.
Burberry has teamed up with British artist, designer ande pro-skater Blondey McCoy for a three-mural collab in Manhattan. Celebrating the holiday season, the murals will be in place through December.
The 19-year-old London-based model and skateboarder for brands like Palace, Adidas and Supreme
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Burberry's new CEO Marco Gobbetti, plans to change the luxury brand's focus away from competing with brands like Polo Ralph Lauren and move it head-to-head with Louis Vuitton and Gucci.
Gobbetti, who comes to Burberry from the French house Celine, says consumers either wear H&M or Zara, top-end luxury brands -- or a mix for a creative look. The middle is a dead as America's closing shopping malls.
Burberry, one of the fashion industry's most successful turnaround brands in the early 200os, has lost its pep, says Gobbetti, who is searching for a new designer.
“You want someone crazy to come in and break the mould,” said Michel Phan, professor of luxury marketing at the Emlyon Business School in France. With luxury brands captivated over Gucci's delightful and dramatic transformation.
“Young people in the fashion world don’t want to buy the same trench coat that their parents had.”
Channeling its 'Breakfast at Tiffany's heritage made famous by Audrey Hepburn, Tiffany & Co opens its first Blue Box Café overlooking the entry to Central Park and Bergdorf Goodman. The cafe shares space with Tiffany's wholly-renovated fourth floor housing its luxury home and accessories collection and represents the first major project from Reed Krakoff, who assumed his position as chief artistic officer in January.
Vanity Fair describes the effect as one of dining inside one of Tiffany’s famed blue boxes, like some Tiffany-crazed genie who prefers crisp right angles to a bottle’s curves. That is very much the point. “Design of the space began from the idea of immersion in Tiffany—not only the feeling of being inside a blue box, but surrounded by Tiffany hospitality,” Richard Moore, the vice president creative director overseeing all things store and window design, explained. Guests will first lock eyes with the view of the park, he hopes, and then they’ll see the sea of Tiffany blue, which they’ve “embraced throughout.”
Alessandra Ambrosio & Eddie Redmayne Celebrate Omega's Seamaster Aqua Terra Watch 15th Anniversary
Omega Watches has tapped Alessandra Ambrosio and Eddie Redmayne to be the faces of its new Seamaster Aqua Terra campaign for women and men, respectively. The Seamaster watch has been an important staple for Omega for the past 70 years. The Seamaster Aqua Terra model was created in 2002, making this year Aqua Terra’s 15th anniversary.
The luxury watch market has struggled to maintain its relevance as a status must-have and also in the "context of geopolitical and economic instability", advises LVMH shairman Bernard Arnault. Omega is owned by Swatch, who predicts strong growth for the brand in 2017. The Financial Times notes thatSwatch is notoriously overly-optimistic in its business projections.
Thomas Chauvet, head of luxury goods equity research at Citigroup, told FT: “It feels like the industry is only at the beginning of downsizing, but the numbers are less bad and investors want to believe we’re at the bottom. “There has been too much price inflation without innovation over the past decade. There is a danger of too much complacency — after all it was a technology company, not a Swiss company, that launched smartwatches.”
Without a doubt, this is the most dramatic 180-degree turn in the history of a great luxury brand. Ironically, in deciding to stock a collection of home wares, displayed in the context of Ruby's celebration of the American vintage quilts, Homer Laughlin coffee mugs and Rose Cabat's ceramic "Feelies" sold alongside Calvin Klein bedding, Simons enters Ralph Lauren territory.
Raf Simons assumed creative control of Calvin Klein in 2016, the number of retailers stocking the brand has increased tenfold, as stressed-out retailers strive for enticing relevance in the age of Amazon. It's interesting to watch the evolution of Calvin Klein in the age of Trump.
It's good that people of intelligence and vision are trying to understand America at the very moment America is trying to understand itself. In a country blinded with the golden glow of torches held high by white nationalists in Charlottesville last week, the color of optimism is under assault. Still, an estimated 40,000 people showed up in Boston Saturday to protest white nationalism and the resurgence of a bold racism under Trump. As Trump follows unlimited gold for his family financial coffers, we will follow the future of bold yellow optimism. America is doing much soul-searching at this moment. ~ Anne
Coach will buy handbag and accessories brand Kate Spade for $2.5 billion, an acquisition already approved by both boards of directors.
Coach CEO Victor Luis said he planned to "unlock Kate Spade's largely untapped global growth potential" and that the acquisition provides "an additional vehicle for driving long-term, sustainable growth.” The purchase also gives Coach a prestige brand with a strong Millennial following and potential to capitalize on recent success expanding into lifestyle categories like home furnishings.
Coach is also focused on its own brand, with a strategy of running fewer promotions and pulling out of discounting department stores like Macy's and Lord & Taylor. The company will employ the same strategy with Kate Spade by reducing online flash sales and its wholesale presence.
Kate Spade is the second major acquisition by Coach, who bought designer shoe brand Stuart Weitzman in 2015.
Actor Sasha Lane wears dress from Coach x Rodarte Collection April 2017
LVMH Updates Louis Vuitton Luggage & Packaging | How About JW Anderson For Ghesquiere?
The stake that animal rights group PETA has bought in French luxury brand Hermès is one single share costing $360. In buying the share, however small an investment, PETA will now have access to shareholder meetings and a range of new pressure tactics on Hermès management.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has launched a new awareness campaign to stop Hermès from using crocodiles and alligators in its iconic products, including its Birkin bags.
“PETA will be campaigning outside the company, and, as a shareholder, also working from the inside to demand a ban on exotic animal–skin accessories, including crocodile-skin bags and alligator-skin watchbands,” PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman said in a statement on Thursday. Hermès has not yet responded.
It’s easy to dismiss PETA’s strategy as ‘fringe’ but the group’s end of 2014 report documenting alleged inhumane and ‘cruel’ treatment of both crocodiles and alligators at Hermes suppliers, prompted Jane Birkin, namesake of the company’s coveted Birkin handbag, to request the removal of her name from the ‘Birkin Croco’ until Hermès employs “better practices in line with international norms.”
The company responded to Birkin’s request, saying that they will investigate practices at the Texas farm Padenga Holdings, a public company, supplying their skins via Kariba, Zimbabwe.
In the company’s vision statement, it makes no mention of animals or the conditions in which they live or die, before becoming a handbag. Bloomberg reports that Padenga harvested 40,000 crocodiles last year.
Birkin bags are notably hard to come by, Style.com reported last fall that the Himalayan crocodile Birkin bag is believed to be the most expensive one ever sold, priced at $432,000.
The 30-centimeter diamond Himalayan Birkin is possibly the rarest and most desirable handbag in the world. This bag is made of Nilo crocodile, rendered in a subtle coloration that is meant to evoke images of the majestic Himalayan mountains. This dyeing process is painstaking and takes many hours to complete—the lighter the hue, the more difficult the process. The color pairs perfectly with 18-karat white gold hardware, which is itself studded with white diamonds. The cadena lock alone is comprised of 68.4 grams of 18-karat white gold and encrusted with 40 white round brilliant diamonds, totaling 1.64 carats. On the bag, three different structural elements of the Birkin—the Touret, the Pontets, and the Plaques de Sanglons—feature more than 200 diamonds for a total of 8.2 carats. This is arguably the rarest, most spectacular, and most jaw-dropping Birkin to ever be made.
Joaquin Phoenix Discusses Treatment of Reptiles in Fashion Industry
George Clooney Stylist
Like Kanye West taking a keen interest in his wife Kim Khardashian’s style, George Clooney is deeply involved in his wife Amal Clooney’s fashion choices, reports US Weekly and picked up by Elle.com.
Clooney is “very involved in selecting her looks … ‘He’ll watch her try on clothes and will say, ‘I like that. You should get it,’ or ‘No, not that,’” a source close to the actor told the mag.
“He Clooney) installed a runway, floor-to-ceiling mirrors, and a crazy light system in their closet,” the source continued.”Amal can see every single angle and tell if her outfit is see-through!”
Amal Clooney Human Rights Lawyer
Amal Clooney arrived at the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washing, DC on Thursday to press her case on behalf of imprisoned former Maldives president Mohamed Nasheed. Clooney appeared earlier in the day at the National Press Club. In a statement, the NPC said that it’s legal team is preparing to “make public a filing to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, urging it to find that Nasheed is being held in violation of international law.”
Clooney released an in-depth op ed in The Guardian this week.
Release Mohamed Nasheed — an innocent man and the Maldives’ great hope Amal Clooney for The Guardian
It may be famous for the pristine holiday beaches of its Indian Ocean coastline but the Maldives has taken a dark authoritarian turn. In 2008, the island nation became a democracy after Mohamed Nasheed was sworn in as president after the country’s first-ever free and fair elections. A charismatic leader, Nasheed introduced liberalising reforms at home, while calling for global action against climate change in an attempt to combat the rising sea levels that threaten to inundate the low-lying nation. His remarkable story is chronicled in the acclaimed documentary The Island President.
Seven years later, however, Nasheed is in prison, having been sentenced to 13 years imprisonment for the crime of “terrorism” following a politically motivated show trial.
10 Best Luxury Resorts in the Maldives Touropia
Naladhu Resort Maldives
Perhaps the ultimate luxury destination,the Maldives has become a synonym for paradise whether it is for honeymooners, sun worshipers or scuba divers. Aside from the capital Male, there are no hotels in the Maldives, only resorts. Most resorts take up their own island, so the ratio of beach to guests must be one of the best in the world, writes Touropia
George Clooney Bartender
With Cinco de Mayo coming on May 5, George Clooney and close buddy Rande Gerber share an list of six cocktails to celebrate the Mexican army’s unlikely victory over French forces at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862.
“We meet at Café Habana Malibu and eat and drink Casamigos margaritas,” Clooney and Gerber said of their plans with equally famous wives Amal Clooney and Cindy Crawford. Note that George and Rande own the Casamigos tequila brand with their friend Michael Meldman.
The duo shares five variations on the margarita and one signature cocktial to Vogue.com readers. We share two.
Strawberry Basil Margarita
DesignTrackerV&A Talks Luxury
Open now at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum is ‘What Is Luxury’, closing on Sept. 27, 2015. Running concurrently with the blockbuster exhibition ‘Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty’, open through July 31, the collection of 100 objects set out to define luxury while predicting its future.
‘We wanted to show that no matter how gorgeous an object may be, it always exists within a larger context of ecology, economy, politics and culture,”’explains co-curator Leanne Wierzba. ‘Take Studio Swine’s ‘Hair Highway,’ (photo below) which sets human hair in natural resin, fashioning a dressing table, comb set and trinket boxes that look for all intents and purposes like wood. It’s all part of a commentary on the Chinese hair trade that highlights the material’s latent possibilities as a self-sustaining resource — one beautiful enough to put an end to the use of coral and tortoiseshell.’
The curators recognize that the future of luxury lies not with material goods but with discovery and exploration — or with time itself. Luxury has a historic and intrinsic link with craft, a relationship that will be supported and explored with the first London Craft Week, launching May 6, 2015. via
“Hair Highway” combs by Studio Swine, 2014. Studio SwineLondon Craft Week
May 6-10 London Craft Week
London has long had a Fashion Week and a Design Festival. From 2015, it will have the equivalent for the craft sector: London Craft Week, featuring the artistic flair, painstaking skills and raw talent of exceptional craftsmanship and, as a result, attracting an ever - increasing quality and volume of collectors and customers.’ says founder and chairman, Guy Salter.
Founded on the ethos of making, London Craft Week aims to introduce the talent, people and techniques behind beautifully made things to a wider audience. They will be able to experience craft not just as static branded objects in smart shops but understand the context of how they were made, why they are special and even have a try themselves.
Lagerfeld Exhibition in Bonn
Karl Lagerfeld in Bonn through September 30, 2015.
From Germany’s Bundeskunsthalle Bonn museum exhibition website:
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