fashionologie

Tony Blair to Attract New Clients for LVMH?

fashionologie — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 06:27:03 PST

>> Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair may soon have some say in the world's largest luxury group - LVMH. Although LVMH had no comment on the matter, the Telegraph UK reports a source close to Blair has confirmed that he is in the final stage of negotiation a position with the company. Blair and LVMH head Bernard Arnault are said to be close friends; Arnault has hosted Blair and his children numerous times at his various homes. Blair is expected to start consulting later this year:

Mr. Blair won’t be joining the board but he will be acting in an advisory role, working very closely with Mr Arnault. In particular, his job is likely to involve attracting new clients.

If the deal goes through, Blair would likely be paid a six-figure sum for his part-time role.

PPR Update: Tomas Maier Recycling Unused Material for Bottega Shoes, YSL Reporting $24M Loss, and Pinault "Impressed" With Son

fashionologie — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 13:52:03 PDT

>> Even designers are shopping the closet when it comes to piecing together their latest collection. Fortune's Peter Gumbel writes in his new profile on Francois-Henri Pinault of PPR: "All the brands have been scouring for ways to save cash. Hiring and salaries have been frozen since last September. Bonuses for this year have been halved too. Inventiveness has become the order of the day."

Robert Polet, CEO of PPR's Gucci Group, illustrates with a story of how he found Tomas Maier on the floor of Bottega Veneta's headquarters in New York City with his shoe manager last November, going through a pile of books filled with leather and skin samples. Fortune relates: "They were checking how much of each material they had in stock, planning to use it up in the next collections. 'I left the room and thought, Wow,' Polet says. 'Finding ways to manage down inventory has almost become a sport.'"

So how does Pinault feel about YSL's losses? »

fashionologie — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 11:58:26 PDT

>> Bernard Arnault, Francois Pinault Are Playing Nice, Still Rich -With the lapse of almost a decade since the fight over Gucci, LVMH's Bernard Arnault and PPR's Francois Pinault are experiencing a detente, symbolized by their willingness to appear on the cover of French business magazine Challenges together this week. The accompanying story credits Arnault's wife, Helene, with the warming of feelings when she embraced Pinault's wife Maryvonne at an event last November. Since, the Arnaults invited the Pinaults to dinner on May 26. The magazine also tabulates France's largest fortunes, with Arnault (14.58 billion euros) in second, the Hermes family (7.68bn euros) in fourth, Pinault (4.95bn euros) in sixth, and Alain Wertheimer and family, owner of Chanel, (3.5bn euros) in tenth. [WWD]

Venice Biennale Overflowing with Fashion Figures and Their Families

fashionologie — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 14:09:06 PDT

>> Where art goes, fashion is soon to follow, and with the contemporary arts Biennale going on in Venice right now, there are plenty of designers, editors, and even models in town. On Wednesday, Olympia Scarry’s installation brought out Patrick Demarchelier, Vogue Russia's Aliona Doletskaya, and POP's Dasha Zhukova, as well as Justin Portman and Natalia Vodianova, the latter whose face was reflected in a luminated, aged sketch on display called Dorian Gray, by artist Dasha Fursey.

Naomi Campbell and boyfriend Vladislav Doronin stopped by a lunch for the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, and popped up again yesterday at the opening of Francois Pinault's new museum, the Punta della Dogana. Stella McCartney was there with husband Alasdhair Willis to support her financier in his new endeavor, as were Franca Sozzani and Marc Jacobs, always the fan of contemporary art, who apparently kept exclaiming, "This place rocks."

Meanwhile, down the river, Angela Missoni held her annual party on boyfriend Bruno Ragazzi's yacht. It was quite the family and friends affair: Angela's daughters Margherita and Teresa, plus son Francesco were all mingling, Franca Sozzani brought son Francesco Carrozzini, and Vladimir Restoin-Roitfeld arrived with Carine Roitfeld, who neglected to follow the rest in taking her lace-up shoes off: "It would just take too long to undo them." Bee Shaffer was sans Anna Wintour, but Jefferson Hack brought fiancee Anouck Lepere.

Even those who aren't in Venice in person are there in spirit - Mario Testino sent one of his art consultants to scout the exhibition.

View Slideshow ›

Naomi Campbell's Reality Show, Kate Moss's Charitable Portrait, and Linda Evangelista's Child Support

Justin Fenner — Tue, 01 May 2012 15:47:57 PDT

Those stories and more in our daily news roundup.

Naomi Campbell is set to star in her very own reality modeling show called The Face. The show, which will air on Oxygen starting next year, will see Campbell and two other as-of-yet-undetermined supermodels supervising three teams of models who will compete until one is chosen as the face of a brand in the United States. "With The Face the audience will get a real insider's look at this exciting industry that has been so good to me," Campbell said. [The Huffington Post]
Kate Moss is donating a portrait of herself taken by Solve Sundsbo to a May 17 auction sponsoring Britain's National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. The portrait features Moss wearing nothing but a pair of gold pants and crossing her arms to cover her breasts. Its starting price is £3,000, or $4,866 at current exchange. [Vogue UK]
Linda Evangelista will find out this week whether a judge will grant her the $46,000 a month in child support she requested from PPR CEO François-Henri Pinault to help raise their 5-year-old son, Augustin. Evangelista revealed that Pinault was Augustin's father when she filed for child support in late 2011. Pinault is married to actress Salma Hayek; the two have a 4-year-old daughter named Valentina. [The Cut]
Alice Temperley is working with British high street label John Lewis on a capsule collection that will debut in September. Called Somerset by Alice Temperley, the line will range from $50 scarves to a $1,600 sheepskin coat. Day dresses will hit the $160 mark. "I wanted it to be very much a collection of essentials and to design a collection that would provide a feminine and functional wardrobe for women in their everyday life," Temperley said. [The Daily Telegraph]
There's been no formal explanation of why The Gap fired its creative director Patrick Robinson, but former members of the retailer's executive team say "his designs seemed lost on Gap customers." He also didn't want customers to see clothes styled any other way than how he showed them originally. "Merchants were literally told, 'You don’t get to change the product as it's presented,'" one former merchant recalled. [Fashionista]

Hedi Slimane Confirmed as Yves Saint Laurent's New Creative Director (Update)

Christina Perez — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 05:53:51 PST

>> It's official. Yves Saint Laurent has named Hedi Slimane its new creative director, effective immediately. In a statement released earlier today, the company said that Slimane will "assume total creative responsibility" at the house, but will also continue to pursue his career in photography. "Hedi Slimane's exceptional talent and understanding of the spirit of Yves Saint Laurent heralds a promising new chapter in the story of the maison," CEO Paul Deneve said. Slimane's first outing for the label will be the Resort collection, presented in June.

The sentiment was echoed by PPR Chairman and CEO François-Henri Pinault. "As one of the most important French fashion houses, Yves Saint Laurent today possesses formidable potential, which I am confident will be successfully harnessed and revealed through the vision of Hedi Slimane."

Slimane replaces Stefano Pilati, whose contract with the house ended Monday after a successful - if sometimes rocky - eight years.

The Tom Ford Influence-Alberta Ferretti Employs Real Women as Models for Pitti Show; Erin Wasson Has a New Design Collaboration

fashionologie — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 12:26:02 PST

Alberta Ferretti took a page out of Tom Ford's book and had the likes of Camilla Belle, Carmen Dell'Orefice, Poppy Delevigne, Paz de la Huerta, and Marisa Berenson walk in place of models as part of her Florentine show to open Pitti Immagine Uomo last night, for which she created an exclusive 30-piece collection [Style.com, Fashionista]
The Costume Institute received a donation of $10 million from Jonathan and Lizzie Tisch to create a new gallery space; although this gift was the "tipping point" to start construction next year, fundraising for the project started several years ago and has been helped in large part by Anna Wintour and the Costume Institute Gala benefit [NY Times]
Gucci Group parent company PPR just created a new business unit dedicated to developing online retail. CEO François-Henri Pinault called e-commerce a "strategic priority," adding: “My goal [is] to increase our digital presence and accelerate our growth in online sales, which should reach 10 percent of Gucci Group and Puma’s consolidated revenues over the next few years” [WWD]
Bibhu Mohapatra, Pamela Love, Mandy Coon, The Lake & Stars, M. Patmos, and Study NY were all awarded $25,000 Ecco Domani Fashion Foundation grants to put toward their upcoming New York Fashion Week shows [WWD]
Erin Wasson is designing a capsule collection for Zadig & Voltaire [ElleUK]
W's February 2011 cover features a first look at sweet-looking Rooney Mara's transformation into punky Lisbeth Salander for David Fincher's upcoming The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo film [W]
Instead of pouting across the board as in seasons past, models have notably been captured smiling in both the Valentino and Chloe Spring 2011 ad campaigns [Garance Dore]
Jessica Stam's left arm is in a sling after she sprained and fractured it while snowboarding in Montana over the holidays [Modelinia]
Using the same technology that made the Death Star explode in Star Wars, Loewe blows up its Amazona bag over and over in a new brand video [Style File]

Where Will Karl Lagerfeld, Naomi Campbell, Alexander Wang, and More Be For Fashion's Night Out 2010?

fashionologie — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 07:47:07 PDT

>> Fashion's Night Out is back with even more bang in its second year: in addition to a CBS special documenting the occasion, the official directory for the event - scheduled Sept. 10, from 6-11 pm -boasts almost 1,000 events, including a public fashion show for the first time ever. Check out some of the highlights, below.

1. Karl Lagerfeld Will Be In Town

He's hosting a Chanel dinner the night before Fashion's Night Out, and accepting a Fashion Visionary Award (from the Couture Council of The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology) at a luncheon the day of, so he's definitely in New York for the occasion. Word is he'll be at Chanel's Soho store - where they're also offering complimentary manicures and selling the forthcoming Les Khakis de Chanel nail polish collection for one night. Alternatively, the 57th Street Chanel boutique is offering visitors the option to color-customize their very own pair of iconic Chanel ballet flats.

Block parties, exclusives, and models galore »

fashionologie — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 16:36:34 PDT

>> INSIDER WIRE -It's rumored that Harvey Weinstein helps get his wife Georgina Chapman's Marchesa creations on the red carpet, but another Francois-Henri Pinault definitely helps his wife Salma Hayek out with red carpet fare. For this year's Golden Globes, she says, "Francois was my stylist. It was Christmas and I was just overwhelmed with so many things to do. He said, 'Let me help you. How can I help?' And I said, 'Well, I have to pick a dress for the Golden Globes.' So Bottega Veneta sent swatches and sketches, and François worked with the designer Tomas Maier, and he took care of everything." [The Dish Rag]

*image: source