>> 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.'"
Tomas Maier
PPR Update: Tomas Maier Recycling Unused Material for Bottega Shoes, YSL Reporting $24M Loss, and Pinault "Impressed" With Son
Good on Tomas Maier: Bottega Veneta Is Currently PPR's Only Brand Seeing a Rise in Sales
>> Just a few days after LVMH reported a decline, causing all marketing to be cut save for its top-performing brands, PPR reported a 76 percent decline in first-half profits. Tomas Maier can breathe a sigh of relief: the company's only area of growth was Bottega Veneta, on which PPR has been focusing, which saw an 8.6 percent rise in sales in the second quarter.
At flagship brand Gucci, which accounts for the bulk of Gucci Group's profits, Frida Giannini was credited by PPR chairman Francois-Henri Pinault for bolstering PPR as a whole with sustained demand for her bags in China.
>> 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]
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Maier Works the Grace Kelly Angle for Bottega Veneta Fall 2009
>> Tomas Maier is ever working the understated, the investment dress angle at Bottega Veneta — and the Grace Kelly twist he took for Fall 2009 seems so right. The gauzy goddess gowns with rectangle-shaped tiers in the skirt were full-on glamour of the best kind; sure to be snapped up for a red-carpet appearance here, an editorial there. But even the simple chocolate nappa leather or mauve velvet strapless dresses resounded — warm tones in a season full of cold blacks and grays. Resisting full-on ladylike, Maier slipped in "sly fetishistic" underwires and seams cupping the breasts into his dresses, and first-hand viewers called the collection "breathtaking" and "dreamy." The only lack of beauty shown? Apparently the pit photographers screamed at the models in Italian, and the "front row was appalled."
*image: source
Kurt Geiger
Antik Batik
Meltin Pot