1.) The “IT” Bag is Back, But Less Flashy This Time Around:
“Fashion insiders have long been predicting its death. But it seems there is still life in the old ‘It bag’ yet. Selfridges says that it has seen a 60 per cent increase in the past year in sales of ‘must-have’ luxury handbags. The rise is in part due to the success of fashion house Mulberry, which is celebrating a 100 per cent jump in demand for its bags . . . Recent research suggests average spending by a woman on handbags between the ages of 13 and 81 comes in at just over £4,000 (approximately $6,000 U.S.).”
First, I just want to say that a 100% rise in demand for Mulberry is pretty spectacular, though also not particularly surprising when looking at the new, pared down styles that are becoming popular on the runways. If the new aesthetic is one of classic minimalism, then Mulberry’s got that covered from the ground up. They’ve managed to 21st-centurize (it’s allowed for me to just make up words, right?) their upper crust, Saville Row Brit look while still retaining their dignity — which is precisely the kind of look that’s zooming into popularity at the moment, one that’s high fashion, retro-classic.
Whether it stays in popularity, however, is another thing altogether.
And secondly, the age spread the article used — “between the ages of 13 and 81″ — is rather broad, don’t you think? So broad, actually, as to be statistically irrelevant. So is it the 13 year olds that are spending $6,000 on handbags, or the 81 year olds? Inquiring minds want to know!
*Note: Mulberry offers a range of clothing and shoes, but it’s their satchel inspired bags for which they’re famous:
Mulberry Spring 2010 — candy coated classics
Wikipedia states that “The satchel is often associated with the classic image of the English schoolboy: ‘And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel’ is a phrase from Shakespeare’s monologue All the world’s a stage.”
Speaking of pared down styles: Buyers for Fashion Retail Chains and Department Stores Praise Paris’ New Minimalism — “Ken Downing, senior vice president and fashion director at Neiman Marcus, said designers showing in the French capital took the best ideas from the Sixties and Seventies and spun them forward into luxurious, minimal sportswear . . . Many retailers credited Phoebe Philo, who showed her first collection for Celine in October, for ushering in the change, sweeping away excess decoration and what had been a glut of cocktail attire. Nevertheless, some cautioned that an overload of plain clothes could be risky.”
The Phoebe Philo effect was referenced in numerous dispatches from the Paris shows, but it’s not like Paris was all workwear and no drama — Galliano offered yet another parade of layered 18th-century country estate inspired looks for Dior, Lagerfeld sloshed out models in head to toe fake fur on a runway inch deep with water and dominated by huge, carved icebergs (fake fur but real icebergs?) for Chanel, and Givenchy was a thrum of edgy glamor that played counterpoint to the reign of beige from Chloe, the muted tailoring from Stella McCartney and Philo’s pared down luxe for Celine.
Is there a significance to the fact that the three high-drama shows I mentioned were from male designers, while the three examples of collections that are actually suitable for day wear and the workplace were from female designers? Suzy Menkes wrote the following about the Celine Fall 2010 collection: “From the first moment that a model in a precise navy coat stepped on to the geometrically blocked carpet of a runway, Ms. Philo proved her worth. This was 21st-century fashion for a woman, by a woman, with all the confident modernity and emotional understanding that implies.”
As a visual contrast, here’s the video clip below for the Chanel Fall 2010 show:
Lovers of the Arctic Circle
And here’s the video clip below for the Celine Fall 2010 collection:
Scenes from a life
Two radically different approaches to dressing women for 2010 — one is utter fantasy while the other is concerned with issues of practicality and wearability. The comparison between the two is a good example of the tension we’re seeing on the runways as designers attempt to deduce what, exactly, women want.
Of course, this is not a new question, and the push and pull between fantasy and practicality has been playing itself out in fashion since we put the caves up for sale and moved to civilization, but if the pool of luxury buyers is indeed shrinking due to economic contractions (the increasing number of Chinese millionaires are simply not enough to replace the loss of nervous American and European shoppers), can fantasy collections like Chanel’s and Dior’s still be sustained on such grand scales? Or is this high fantasy necessary in order to push the ancillary products — the cosmetics, handbags, keychains and perfumes — across cultural and geographical boundaries?
Does it make a difference that Celine, Chloe and Stella McCartney don
‘t have global cosmetics and extensive accessory lines to promote (though Chloe and McCartney both offer perfumes, and all three brands sell handbags and shoes)? It could be that Lagerfeld’s and Galliano’s continued theatrics on the runway are a precisely calculated pitch to the mainstream beauty and accessories buyer, while the likes of Philo are focusing on selling the actual clothing to a much smaller, wealthier demographic.
*Note: Regarding the nervous American shoppers, a recent Wall Street Journal article reported that the U.S. millionaire population jumped 16% in 2009, partially recovering from the 27% decline in 2008. The continued job losses in the U.S., however, can’t help but cut into sales of entry-level luxury products like perfumes, wallets and cosmetics.
2.) Only 21% of Twitter Users are Active:
“What’s the definition of a true Twitter user? According to Barracuda Labs it’s someone who has at least 10 followers, follows at least 10 people and has tweeted at least 10 times. So, with activity levels set that low the definition must encompass most users, right? Wrong. According to the Internet and email security firm’s Annual Report, just 21% of Twitter users fall under their definition of ‘true users’.”
This info might send a cold arrow shivering through the heart of social media PR flaks, but there’s encouraging news in the article — Twitter users are becoming more active (a 30% increase in true users) and the number of users with zero followers has almost halved (from 30% to 17%) in less than a year. So while there’s still a lot of dead space in the Twitter-verse, the social platform’s penetration into mainstream culture is looking like it’s starting to stick.
In my case alone, I became a much more avid follower and user of Twitter once the fashion industry’s journalists and critics climbed aboard this past month and harnessed the application to send instant reports from front lines across the world. This type of use is what Twitter was made for — info bursts on events of focused interest. I’m hoping to see this continue; if not with Twitter, then with another social media platform that might be able to tap into what’s an obvious need/desire for news right *now*.
In related news from the online front: Luxury brands up their Internet advertising — “Luxury clients are increasingly recognising that display advertising in the right online environment produces targeted results and is an essential part of every marketing campaign.”
Comscore, an online research company, reports that display ads online (ads with graphics, photos, logos and/or embedded video) are having lasting effects on consumer interest in a brand: “1-2 weeks post-exposure, those viewing display ads were 75% more likely to visit the advertiser’s website; 1-2 week post-exposure, those viewing display ads were 89% more likely to query a search engine based on the advertiser’s brand; and three weeks later, those percentages were still strong at 73% and 81% respectively.”
And while overall search engine traffic has dipped, Facebook searches are on the rise: “Between January and February this year, search queries on Facebook increased 10% from 395 million to 436 million searches. Many put this down to the social network’s recent redesign, which saw the search box moved to center stage, coupled with its burgeoning user base.”
So social media applications are finding a lasting footing, with luxury brands realizing that it’s in their best interests to adjust their marketing strategies to include the number of online users and their natural gravitation to platforms that provide social connection/interaction. The BizReport also states that “Brands who deem themselves a cut above social networks, like Facebook, should reconsider in light of new research that shows not only are the majority of affluents (average income $239,300) involved in social networking, they’re also using social media to check out luxury brands.”
The Guardian UK reports that online ad spending is set to overtake print media ad spending in 2010 — another sign that the Net is shedding its reputation as an unreliable source for information among consumers: “Information researchers and analysts … surveyed more than 1,000 US advertisers last December. They found that in 2010, companies will spend $119.6bn on online and digital strategies, from search engine keywords to seminars on the web, while they plan to invest $111.5bn in print such as newspaper and magazine ads.”
This explains the recent moves by luxury conglomerates to create websites with stick — sites that a consumer will visit over and over for content and community instead of just functioning as simple shopping outlets or brand placeholders. LVMH’s Nowness and Thierry Mugler’s Womanity are two examples.
Both sites present themselves as rather abstract, interested more in the personal than the commercial, yet both are intensely about branding — creating a look, image and feel that will hopefully resonate with consumers, functioning much like the display ads mentioned above without looking overtly like advertising.
But let’s take Nowness for example — the site recently hosted an artsy video clip created for critically adored and very high-end brand Rodarte:
Mars aint the kind of place to raise the kids
Coincidentally (okay, not really), the brass at LVMH have taken a shine to the sisters behind Rodarte, and there have been whispered rumors that Rodarte is on the unofficial schedule for acquisition into the LVMH fold, so Nowness hosting the Rodarte video isn’t a paen to art as much as it is an exercise in simple branding.
Though one thing troubles me about Nowness — in perfect luxury-brand control-freak ‘tude, there are no comments allowed on the site, making it a very shiny disseminator of brand image, yet an ultimately cold and aloof destination for web users.
The Thierry Mugler Womanity site tries a little harder to engage web users in a community of sorts, but still attempts to control the interaction, offering carefully selected quotes and nuggets of commentary allegedly meant to inspire spontaneous discussions of womanhood, but placed in a confusing layout that truncates any involved or extensive conversation. In the midst of all this is an interview with designer Thierry Mugler himself that essentially boils down to: “Girls jus
t want to have fun!”
So while the interactive quotient to Womanity is at least present, it doesn’t provide much of a cover for the obvious marketing machine that lurks beneath.
Which is not to say that either effort is a failure, just that there’s certainly room for improvement. I still miss President of Marc Jacobs brand Robert Duffy and his heads-on collision with Twitter, the single most real and genuine interaction a luxury brand has ever attempted with its 21st century online consumer base. Unfortunately, the LVMH legal team must have talked sense into him and after only a few weeks he handed over the Twitter duties to a nameless, faceless assistant whose blandly PR-oriented twitters are about as interesting as watching dust collect on a glass shelf full of glittery bangles.
Which begs the question, what do 21st century online consumers want out of a brand or a brand website? If the enthusiastic reception to Robert Duffy’s passionate run-up to the Marc Jacobs Fall 2010 runway show is any indication, consumers want transparency and genuine interaction from the faces behind the names, a sense of being listened to (Robert Duffy personally responded to twittered questions) and behind-the-scenes glimpses into what’s going on at the brand right here, right now.
Nowness and Womanity offer none of the above.
To toss another log onto the digital fire, there’s a peculiar interview with Olivier Zahm, founder of the world of Purple publications (Purple Fashion and Purple Diary being the most recent iterations), at Style.com as part of its The Future of Fashion series. Glossing over the fact that portions of the conversation read like a parody of a 1970′s era Hugh Hefner interview (even the interviewer asks Zahm if he really means to sound quite so playboyish), there’s a distressing anti-digital slant to the piece that reminds me of those tedious conversations I used to have with hi-fi nuts who went on and on about the vinyl album’s superiority over the digital CD. Just substitute the terms “print magazine” and “Internet website” for “album” and “CD”, respectively, and you get the gist.
Example quote of Zahm’s rather odd view of digital media: “The Purple Diary was just a section of a bigger project I had, and because I started to take pictures every day of parties or pictures of my life, I needed an interesting way to use these pictures and not to let them go into digital archives and disappear. Because now everything disappears. It’s digital, but if you don’t copy your hard drive, pictures disappear after one or two years.”
Not let them go into digital archives and disappear? Because digital pictures disappear after one or two years? Somehow, I don’t think Mr. Zahm fully grasps the implications of digital media and websites, so it was difficult for me to take what he said about print fashion magazines being superior showcases to an online Fashion site seriously.
Besides which, the implication that fashion somehow requires the printed page to come alive sounds more than a little Ludditian. With the advent of personal technology devices like the iPad (which will only get better in size, quality, ease of use and portability), the days of a print magazine’s ability to better convey art and fashion are numbered.
3.) INDUSTRY QUICK HITS:
#1) Jennifer Aniston is the latest celebrity to jump on the fragrance wagon, though she’s partnering with the Falic Group, the duty-free focused group that owned Lacroix as it descended into bankruptcy and now farms out the Lacroix name in licensing deals for sunglasses and stationary — which leads me to believe that major celebrity perfume companies like Coty and Inter Parfums took a pass on Aniston’s so-called ability to spark consumer interest.
In other fragrance news, Inter Parfums (maker of perfumes under license for brands such as Lanvin, Burberry, Van Cleef & Arpels, Jimmy Choo and Montblanc) reports a 10% rise in sales for their 1st quarter after cutting marketing and publicity spending by 12%, and French beauty company BPI (Beauté Prestige International) has announced the launch of limited edition fragrance and cosmetics packages for the Narciso Rodriguez brand, including refillable fragrance bottles, scented blushes, scented lip balms and new light and “iridescent” fragrances that are meant to be worn as full body sprays.
#2) Lindsay Lohan got the boot from Emmanuel Ungaro, after all.
#3) American Eagle Outfitters sees an 81% leap in profits for their 4th quarter compared to last year (while declaring that it’s ditching its Martin+Osa sub-brand); Abercrombie & Fitch announces continued discounts to keep sales from faltering; Neiman Marcus finally swings back to profit after huge 2009 losses; J. Crew reports an increase in both sales and profit while cutting back on discounts; and Japan loses its appetite for diamonds.
#4) Former Pucci designer Matthew Williamson signs on to design handbags for Bulgari, Amy Winhouse is sobered up and set to design a capsule clothing collection for Fred Perry, and Madonna is reportedly helming a fragrance and fashion collection at Macy’s that will target teen girls. The brand will be called “Material Girl” and Madonna’s daughter Lourdes is said to be on board as an official advisor.
While I predict a wave of “Material Girl” designer knock offs in Macy’s future, I do have to admit that I’m looking forward to Williamson’s bags for Bulgari. Williamson has a fantastic eye for shape, color and texture, and Bulgari has been lacking a hit bag for any of their collections. It could turn out to be a match made in luxury brand retail heaven.
Take a look below at Williamson’s Fall 2010 collection and you’ll see what I mean:
Williamson + Bulgari = Financial Reward
