January 2010

Luxury Industry News Roundup: 01/29/10

January 29, 2010

1.) Lagerfeld Still Knows How to Wow the Critics:“Chanel was the best show of the spring haute couture collections, in a class by itself. Those ethereal cloud colors–pale pink, blue and violet, a sudden vinegary yellow. Those subtle wool boucle dresses and jackets at the beginning with the seams magically erased by flat, random stitches. [...]

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L’Artisan Parfumeur Havana Vanille + Penhaligon’s Amaranthine: The Rebirth of Bertrand Duchaufour?

January 27, 2010

Can anyone tell me what happened to perfumer Bertrand Duchaufour? Did he go on some spontaneous spiritual junket to Tibet that blew his mind, or did he maybe slip and hit his head on a marble topped table in his foyer and suffer a near-death experience that made him question everything he’s been doing for [...]

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Vero Profumo: The EDP Versions

January 25, 2010

There’s no question as to the artistry involved when encountering a Vero Profumo fragrance, but because independent Swiss perfumer Vero Kern is basically a one-woman show, everything is done by hand (the selecting of ingredients, the formulating, blending and bottling) and in very limited quantities, which keeps the quality level consistently superior yet has the [...]

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Design It Yourself: Custom Keds

January 24, 2010

So when I posted the “DIY for the New Year” bit a few weeks ago, one link I neglected to include was the Custom Keds page at the Keds website. Not that a pair of “custom” Keds is fully custom (as in “made to measure”), but they do offer the ability to upload your own [...]

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Luxury Industry News Roundup: 01/22/10

January 22, 2010

1.) Menswear Designers Respond to an Uncertain Market:The menswear runway shows just recently wrapped up in Milan and are presently showing in Paris (London and New York will follow). The shows were diverse, but there appeared to be a subtle, underlying theme nonetheless: Give the people what they want! — which translated into collections where [...]

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Photos: Claude-André Hébert Bûcheron

January 18, 2010

Thank god for copy-and-paste, because I could never get my keyboard to do all those fancy French-Canadian accents all on its own. Never mind that there’s probably an easy enough solution, a keyboard is only as language-literate as the person pounding away on it (and the less said about the grades I received in university [...]

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Luxury Industry News Roundup: 01/15/10

January 15, 2010

1.) Just When You Started to Believe in All That “Recovery” Talk:“Retail sales drop 0.3% in December as sales for all of 2009 plunge by a record amount . . . The December drop in sales was a surprise given that the nation’s big retailers had reported better-than-expected results last week, reflecting a surge of [...]

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Photos: Teo Cabanel Alahine (parfum formulation)

January 11, 2010

In December of 2008, I made my first acquaintance with Teo Cabanel’s Alahine, and walked away unimpressed: “On the one hand, Alahine reminds me a little of the uber-sultry Roja Dove Enslaved, but on the other hand, the reminder is only in the way that, say, Robby the Robot stomping about the house in pumps [...]

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Luxury Industry News Roundup: 01/08/10

January 8, 2010

1.) Hell Freezes Over – Hermes Launches Diffusion Line in China:“The new brand will be called Shang Xia (meaning “topsy-turvy” in Mandarin), will be based in Shanghai and is scheduled to launch in Spring 2010. Shang Xia’s creative director is Qiong-Er Jiang, daughter of a noted Chinese architect. Shang Xia will include ready-to-wear and decorative [...]

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Comme des Garcons X Monocle Scent Two: Laurel

January 4, 2010

I was all set to give the fat thumbs-down on Monocle Scent Two: Laurel. After my recent encounters with the lush complexities of L’Artisan Al Oudh, Le Labo Poivre 23, Keiko Mecheri Cuir Cordoba and Vero Profumo Rubj, Monocle Scent Two: Laurel seemed at first to fall a little flat. And thin. And disappointingly wan. [...]

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