Fashion Industry News Roundup: 10/022/08

What If You Threw a Party and Everybody Wanted to Come?:
"A select group of international guests will dine at award winning Natalie's in Camden Maine when author and perfume critic for the New York Times Chandler Burr will lead dinner guests on a journey of scent and flavor during a special "Scent Dinner" on Thursday, October 23. In less than 8 hours after publication the scent dinner was sold out . . . Raymond Brunyanszki the co-owner of the Camden Harbour Inn and Natalie's said . . . 'I think this must be a new record; at least it is a record for us. The phone went crazy today and within hours the event was sold out.'"

When Chandler Burr first began writing about the fragrance industry, insiders and execs were mostly resistant to his questions, unwilling to reveal the commercial/industrial side of perfume creation and horrified that he intended to pull back the curtain of romance and glamor they'd shelled out billions of dollars of good PR cash to buy -- but information loves to be free, and the public is eating it up (literally, in the case of Burr's Scent Dinners).

But is this exposure of the science/business behind the glamor helpful or harmful for the industry? Based on some of the latest sales figures, I'm tempted to conclude the former: "Coty Inc, the world's largest fragrance company with high-end perfume brands such as Calvin Klein and Vera Wang, is due to report that its 2008 annual sales rose over 20 percent to $4 billion . . . The company is now targeting annual sales to touch $5 billion in 2010."

Behold the intersection where glamor and YouTube collide:

"The top has like a crown thing on it and it has like upside down hearts."

Economy Goes Down, Chanel Prices Go Up:
"Just a heads-up to all Chanel lovers and soon to be Chanel Classic bag owners, despite the poor economy America is facing the classic bags are scheduled for a 20% price increase on November 1, 2008! That means if you're buying a Classic Caviar Jumbo Flap Bag for $2850 (before price increase) the price will increase to $3420- a $570 increase!!"

If you have to ask the price, you have no business buying it . . . right? Whatever. Thank god I'm a guy and I don't have to deal with what seems to be a soul-screaming ache for exactly the perfect social-status signifier that can be slung across the shoulder to the tune of only $6,000.00 . . . in purple quilted patent leather . . . with white gold hardware. IT Bag, thy name is hell.

Wait! Oh god, not the men, too!

"And it's all shiny and so nice . . . so, uhm . . . yeah."

More Proof That Splashy, Uber-Exotic PR Campaigns Work:
"According to the 51-country Global Luxury Brands survey by market research firm Nielsen, 43 percent of UAE shoppers think luxury brands provide significantly higher quality than other products. Three in five (59 percent) of those surveyed said they wear designer brands to project social status, and if money were no concern, Chanel and Louis Vuitton were the brands most people would buy . . . UAE shoppers ranked second globally as the biggest fans and purchasers of Gucci (31 percent) and Chanel (21 percent), and third globally for Giorgio Armani (19 percent)."

Fall/Winter ad campaign for UAE favorite Gucci below:

"I'm deathly thin and dance like a stoned hippie -- envy me!"

Judge Tells Luxury Brand Counterfeiters to Drop Dead:
"Louis Vuitton ... today announced that the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York has awarded the company $3,000,000 in statutory damages and over $500,000 in attorney's fees and expenses in its lawsuit ... for trademark counterfeiting . . . In justifying the size of the award, the Court found the goal of deterring similar conduct by others requires 'a substantial award,' and that the Defendants have shown by their willfulness in obstructing the litigation, engaging in discovery abuses, and violating Louis Vuitton's trademark rights that 'a slight damage award is unlikely to deter them from continuing their illegal business.'"

It's about frickin' time. Fining the luxury brand counterfeiters some negligible amount was obviously not solving the problem. By making it much more expensive to play, there will be fewer profits and greater risks -- not really the ingredients for a counterfeiter's dream job.

Yeah, Sure, But Does It Smell Like a Trashy Mink Coat?:
Chandler Burr savages the new Danielle Steele perfume: "It would be a stunning, amazing perfume! It would be exquisite but avant-garde. It would be timeless but also trendy, classic but also contemporary. (Elizabeth Arden Internal Creative Team nodded its collective head vigorously. Yes, yes! it said.) Young women would wear it, but middle-age women would wear it, too, and everyone would want it and everyone would love it because in the time it had taken to conduct the creative meeting with the Elizabeth Arden Internal Creative Team, Danielle Steel had sold 500 million books."

I was secretly hoping the Danielle Steele perfume would smell something like this:

"My wife with the tongue of a doll that opens and closes its eyes."

Self-Righteous Stella Gets the Smackdown from Lagerfeld:
"(Stella McCartney) sent copies (of a PETA anti-fur video) to a bunch of designers who continue to use fur, but not all of them were willing to watch it. 'Karl Lagerfeld, rather predictably, felt he needed to return the video to me!' Stella writes. 'Dolce & Gabbana were disgracefully rude about it, too' . . . Stella has one hypothesis: 'I frankly don't think most designers have the balls to watch animals writhing and being slaughtered; they don't want to admit they're responsible for such suffering.'"

Or maybe they just found it insulting to get preached at by a designer whose father's fame, fortune and connections had a huge role in getting her to where she is while, for example, Lagerfeld came from nothing and struggled his way to the top through decades of sheer hard work and massive determination. While Lagerfeld might be open to respectful criticism from his peers, McCartney is more like a clueless teenager lecturing the adults in the room. Her willingness to subsequently sling public insults about Lagerfeld, who's been working in the design business since before she was born, is just more evidence of her sense of entitlement ("Thanks for buying me my own design house, dad!") and her unfortunate lack of manners. Just a thought.

J. Crew Makes Its Bid for the Upmarket Crowd:
"Millard S. Drexler, known as Mickey, the chief executive of J. Crew ... chose just about the worst week in financial memory to introduce a J. Crew collection priced in the stratosphere of Gucci and Prada . . . The first thing you see inside the store is a jacket covered in hand-painted French sequins to look like tortoiseshell, with a price of $3,000 . . . In the first three days, the store sold three of the $3,000 jackets and a surprising number of silk flower pins priced from $50 to $200 . . . 'J. Crew is such a big company, I don't think people understand that there is a whole group of people here who love design,' said (Jenna Lyons Mazeau, the creative director of J. Crew). 'We don't just bang it out.'"

Video below of J. Crew ad campaign shot in Paris . . . and I don't mean Paris, Texas:

J. Crew. In Paris. Who'd of thunk?