Featured: Why Relaunch Old Fashion Houses?

PARIS, France — “Would you like me to tell you about the brand’s heritage?” a velvet-gloved salesman in a bespoke suit asks every visitor who crosses the threshold of the Moynat leather goods store which opened a few months ago on rue Saint Honoré, a step away from the trendy Hotel Costes. An affirmative answer prompts a long and winding story that starts with the inception of the brand in 1849, accompanied by a book of pictures bound in ornate orange card that is given to all visitors to the store. In theory, the bags on display could speak for themselves. Even an untrained eye can appreciate their exceptional level of finish. So why bother wasting time on history?

Moynat is one of the oldest French trunk-makers. Their first atelier was opened in Paris in 1849 by trunk-makers Octavie and François Coulembier. They joined forces with Pauline Moynat, a specialist in travel goods, to open the first store of avenue de l’Opera. Moynat was one of the very first leather goods houses of its day. Known for its traditional know-how and skills base in handcrafting made to order luggage and travel goods, the house became famous for its designs for the automobiles, as well as for its technical innovations such as making its trunks lighter and waterproof, and for its notable participation in the various World’s Fairs

Although the house was founded more than 150 years ago and became famous for luggage especially suited to the automobile, this is now the only Moynat store in the world. Indeed, for the past three decades, the brand was dormant. And that’s a sufficient length of time for people to forget.

Last year, LVMH chairman Bernard Arnault acquired the rights to Moynat via Groupe Arnault and began to awaken the brand from its long hibernation. Despite the fact that the name and logo are the only real connection between the designs of Moynat’s past and those of its present incarnation, the relaunch reflects an important trend happening across the fashion industry: major luxury groups seem to prefer reviving fashion houses with thick roots, rather than setting up new brands.

Berluti, a French men’s shoe and leather goods company founded in 1895 by an Italian cobbler and known for its meticulously handmade shoes and highly selective distribution, is another example. LVMH acquired the brand back in 1993. But earlier this year, at men’s fashion week, Berluti revealed the fruits of a new strategy. While shoes were still at the heart of the collection, new designer Alessandro Sartori, formerly of Zegna, expanded the range into areas completely foreign to the Berluti heritage, including suits and tailored garments, leather coats and accessories. The brand’s distribution is also set to expand significantly in the near future, as Berluti aims to become a central, stylish player in the growing market for men’s fashion and perhaps even compete with fashion houses like Gucci or Zegna.

Then there’s the case of Belstaff, which last summer was acquired by Labelux, together with Tommy Hilfiger and Harry Slatkin. Founded in Longton in 1924 and known for its coated, water repellent fabrics and iconic four-pocket jacket, tied at the waist, the brand has all the right ingredients to threaten more established British heritage brands like Burberry. Indeed, earlier this year at London Fashion Week, Labelux relaunched Belstaff with an Autumn/Winter 2012 collection designed by Martin Cooper, formerly design director at Burberry, where he worked for more than 16 years. Slim leather trousers with chic motorcycling details, for both men and women, were paired with a breathtaking collection of coats that made use of exceptional materials, from PVC to exotic skins, in dramatic and powerful silhouettes, which referenced the 1930’s and 40’s. The accessories collection was also broadened and featured items made of snake or crocodile leathers.

But the recent Moynat, Berluti and Belstaff moves, which give new personalities to existing brands, prompt a critical question: given that acquiring rights and poaching top design talent come with significant costs, why not start from scratch? Why not invent a new label or invest in a young designer? About a decade ago, Gucci Group did just that, launching Stella McCartney and Alexander McQueen. But today, these cases are extremely rare and financial support is much more likely to flow towards fashion brands with a history. Why?

The answer lies in a single word: authenticity. In an age of rapid globalisation and fast fashion, when high street retailers sell instant copies of runway trends and designer collaborations with cheap-chic chains abound, consumers crave what is authentic. And you cannot fake history.

“The more contrived the world seems, the more we all demand what’s real,” argue James Gilmore and Joseph Pine in their seminal book Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want. “As reality is qualified, altered and commercialised, consumers respond to what is engaging, personal, memorable — and above all, authentic.”

And when the primary thing that distinguishes one bag from another is the story told about it, buying a history that’s ripe for revival is much easier than building a new one. It’s the authenticity that’s the hardest thing to capture.

Liroy Choufan is a consultant and reporter based in Israel. This article was originally published in Hebrew at http://fashion.walla.co.il/

Reblogged via BusinessOfFashion

Featured: Female Jackets + Colours

Have had this pictures with me for awhile now.. Got them from different blogs. I love them.. Something about colours, oversized female jackets and the way they wear them.. Mix of Street Fashion

I love to see ladies wearing this... Well Next Fashion Night Out is at Q-lounge.. What will you be wearing?

Featured: Post-Galliano Era and the Lesson Learnt

"Today [fashon design] is a real office job that goes beyond any normal conception of what time one should devote to work. I work 24 hours a day, essentially. I have to make a collection every two months. You have to be in shape; you have to be more athlete than football stars. When you go outside that world and meet the 90 per cent of society who have no clue what you're doing, you end up choosing to go back home with your friends. Or maybe you run away for ten days and party like an animal, and then it takes you ten days to recover and you hope nobody noticed. Today, excess has to be kept within the private sphere. But you know about my past and that I used to get high.

When I used to really use, *****, a guy found out, and he told me, "Well, Some Nigerian Acts made their best records when they use *****" That was maybe the last time I felt that there was a slight acceptance of what I was doing. Today that kind of stuff is just impossible. Without getting right into the dirt of it, John Galliano really kind of put an end to that sort of option."

The designer called the Galliano scandal, which saw him removed from the helm of Dior in March 2011, a "tragic situation, both for him and for the maison".

You have to come to terms with your responsibility and choices, If you're a guy who has his own little things going, you can do that, but then you can't expect to stand next to Charlize Theron in front of millions of people. If you stand on that stage next to Charlize Theron, you have to be able to stand up and talk coherently. Shit, if you can't even talk normally, and you arrive two hours late f**ked out of your mind just to leave after ten minutes after two glasses of wine, well, it might be best if you just stayed home.

"You can do what you want, at home. But when you go out, keep it together. Look, it was a tragic situation, and I'm not justifying anybody's actions. If I must choose sides, I might justify him, but I do so with sadness. It's just sad. I don't feel bad for him, though."

15 years of Hard-Work with Christian Dior lost just bacause of a single racist outburst influenced by the use of drugs

At HaRKEN, we are not perfect but we will never give chances to racists, rape, discrimination, drugs, physical outburst that we know about, except that its not within our knowledge but for real the management will visit the issue and will be sorted out accordingly just as Christian Dior has done theirs

Its a lesson learnt. Thanks and God Bless

Featured: BOF celebrates 5 years in London

God Bless Business Of Fashion!

Featured: D'banj at Irving Plaza New York

Was just going through blogs this morning and i saw this.. I realized i showcased almost same design of jacket at a runway last year... Am i allowed to say 'Nice Jacket Dapo Oyebanjo'?

Tell me what you think about the 2 jackets...

Featured: WHY WE SHOULDN'T TREAT RAP AS POETRY

From the definition of POETRY, we can deduce that its a literary work written in verses, in a particular verse writing of high quality, great beauty, emotional sincerity or intensity, or profound insight
It could also be defined as the poems written by a particular poet, in a particular language or form, or on a particular subject

I thought deeply about this and i made up my mind that if we call rap as poetry then where should we place ghostwriting.

Ghostwiritng, the practice of one artist supplying lyrics to another to perform, has been around rap's beginning. However, given the audience's expectation that rappers' words should be their own, it has almost always been transacted behind the scenes.

Rap lyrics are so closely associated with the identity of the artist that the idea of a distinction between writer and performer seems counterintuitive. Nonetheless, rap is in its essence, a collaborative art form, from the tapestry of its densely layered samples to its borrowed lyrical riffs and reverences. For the purposes of this anthology, we have elected to include all lyrics under the names of the their performers. We do this for both practical and aesthetic reasons. Practically, we recognize the impossibility of discerning with absolute certainty which artists wrote their own lyrics and which did not

There are situations when an artist would want the writer to write something that would make him/her sound like ICE-PRINCE, or MODE 9 without passing through what they went through to get the motivation to write their verses.

So should this be classified as POETRY?

No!

Because it has not met the condition of an emotional sincerity or intensity, or profound insight.

The origin of rap is in music, I mean the place where it gets its fundamental power in immediate creation, not its historical origin but the fact that it uses certain devices of poetry doesn't necessarily make it poetry.

There are some exceptions, and that of course means that certain lyrics are brilliant, and certain ones are poetry. But that doesn't mean that you should treat all rap as poetry. It simply means that certain lyrics are so well-crafted that they can stand up on their own in two genres of art.

Regardless of how you define what poetry is you can't escape the basic fact that it's primary concentration is language. You are using language as a medium to create beauty and along the way, to help out, you can enlist devices like rhythm, repetition, performance. But Rap is performance-BASED.

Its power and purpose are found in performance, not in language. The language may say things the artist wants to say, and may certainly be beautiful, but it's not the primary focus of what they're doing.

Rap is great and rap does what it does magnificently, but like everything else in this world, Rap cannot be all things to all people in all circumstances. And no matter how unhappy that makes you, it's just something you have to deal with. A book cannot be Twilight and The Odyssey at the same time. It's either one or the other.

Rap is entirely inseparable from its lyrical content, and its lyrics are inseparable from their insecure claims to authenticity, and inevitable descent into exaggeration and self-aggrandizing. The constant use of the first person and the notion that rap is “street reportage” makes ghostwriting a problem for RAP, because the Yale Anthology cares more about the content and primary document aspects of rap than the editors care to admit. Isolating the lyrics from both the music, the performance, and the author makes them utterly uninteresting as art. But it does provide a means for them to treat rap as poetry, and that’s what they want to do. Because you can make books of poetry, and you can’t make books of rap.

Rap is so many things to so many different people. But at its core, it is made up of rhyming verse. But just because Dr. Dre and Dr. Seuss both use the same medium Shakespeare used to tell stories, it doesn’t necessarily follow that either of them are poets.

Thats is if you were yo say 'Rap is Poetry' and 'Shakespeare is Poetry' and then let those sentences bump into each other.

Consider this proposition in reverse to see how absurd it is: For my graduate thesis, I am going to give Calvin Trillin a bunch of half-assed instrumentals and have DJ Drama help him put together a Gangta Grillz mixtape, and then we’ll evaluate him alongside Gucci Mane and Cam’ron, and other rappers who have made Gangsta Grillz mixtapes. That would be awesome, but it would not provide any more insight into the how and why Calvin Trillin does what he does. It would simply provide me the opportunity to take someone else’s work, put it in a different context, and call it something different.

Treating rap as poetry explains away too much of the sloppy realities about how and why it happens. We should just go back to treating rap as rap. It’s far more enjoyable to embrace the mess.


Thank You and God Bless!
Read Up: The Anthology Of Rap Adam Bradley, Andrew DuBois

Featured: Dragon Tattoo Girl ROONEY MARA

November 2011, I came across this video. It was produced for VOGUE. The girl with the dragon tattoo was among my pick for some of the most fashionable movie/film that i encouraged people to go see..

Personally i have a copy of this movie and i am never tired of seeing it. Always getting something new everytime i see the movie.

In this video, VOGUE caught up with ROONEY MARA and they discussed.

The Movie is presently in the Cinema for the viewing pleasure of everyone. Dont dull... Go out and Have some fun.

Get Familiar!