Only 100 bottles of the 55-year Yamazaki will be released. And they’ll cost you.
And it comes with its own chainsaw, because you never know.
These eight stunning new suites help guests to live well—without sacrificing indulgences.
The design team shared insights before tomorrow’s panel discussion at the Design Museum in London.
If Bergdorf Goodman’s Linda Fargo had her way, Giorgio Armani would open up his archive and atelier to Dutch couturier Iris Van Herpen for a season.
“That could create some extraordinary results,” mused Fargo, senior vice president of the fashion office and the director of women’s fashion and store presentation at the Manhattan retailer. “A guest designer or collaborator can bring a fresh take on the DNA of another brand. It’s like a duet: Think Amy Winehouse and Tony Bennett.”
While Fargo’s fantasy pairing might never happen, a growing number of marquee designers and luxury brands are inviting guest designers for a one-time appearance — or basing creative leadership based on serial collaboration rather than permanent artistic direction.
WWD has learned that Emilio Pucci, which has churned through six creative directors in the past 20 years, will now invite rotating guests to interpret its brand essence, archive and spirit, starting with French designer Christelle Kocher.
Moncler is perhaps the most prominent proponent of using serial creatives. In 2018, it invited eight designers including Pierpaolo Piccioli, Craig Green and Simone Rocha to join its new Genius project, which followed having Giambattista Valli and Thom Browne design women’s and men’s runway collections, respectively, for a decade.
Tod’s
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PARIS — Gigi Hadid is joining the committee of experts for the seventh edition of the LVMH Prize for Young Fashion Designers, and will act as ambassador for its showroom in March, where the semifinalists will show their collections to the panel made up of major industry figures.
The model, who has 51.4 million followers on Instagram, follows in the footsteps of Chiara Ferragni, who last year became the first official ambassador of the initiative as part of organizers’ efforts to ramp up the prize’s digital presence.
Hadid joins influencers Caroline Daur and Leaf Greener, alongside six other newcomers, drawn from the worlds of media, e-commerce and activism, on the prize panel.
They include Irish writer, academic and advocate Sinéad Burke; art director Ronnie Cooke Newhouse, the owner of fashion advertising agency House + Holme; Natalie Kingham, fashion and buying director at Matchesfashion.com, and Lauren Santo Domingo, cofounder and chief brand officer of Moda Operandi.
Also new are Jo Ellison, editor of How to Spend It, and Ibrahim Kamara, senior fashion editor at large for i-D. Delphine Arnault, second-in-command at Louis Vuitton and a member of LVMH’s executive committee, welcomed the newcomers.
“They are witnesses and essential actors of fashion. Their vision helps to discover
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Emilio Pucci is to invite guest creatives to interpret its rich heritage, starting with Christelle Kocher, a French designer whose ready-to-wear label Koché is well-known for vibrant patchworks, prints and streetwise savvy.
Revealing the new strategy exclusively to WWD, the Italian brand said it would unveil a fall collection of rtw and accessories by Kocher on Feb. 20 during Milan Fashion Week.
The maison lauded her “couture know-how, streetwear attitude and youth culture energy” and forecast a “unique and joyful interpretation.”
Controlled by LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton for the past 20 years, Emilio Pucci has experimented with a variety of permanent designers, including Julio Espada, Christian Lacroix, Matthew Williamson, Peter Dundas and MSGM’s Massimo Giorgetti. Since Giorgetti exited in 2017, an internal team has turned out collections as LVMH executives pondered the best way forward for the Florentine house.
Engaging serial collaborators rather than a full-time creative director is becoming a more common business model, pioneered by Ruffo Research in the late Nineties and adopted in recent years by larger brands such as Moncler and Tod’s.
Sidney Toledano, chairman and chief executive officer of LVMH Fashion Group, said the approach will inject more creativity, which is a passion for the French group and its
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LONDON — The wheels are in motion again at Calvin Klein, which has just hired Tim Coppens as a consultant design director for all the brand’s men wear. The job is temporary, and Coppens is understood to be on contract until the end of the summer.
The move follows a tumultuous 2019 at Calvin Klein Inc., which exited the Collection business and has seen turnover in the ranks of marketing, digital and media — not to mention fashion. Under the leadership of Cheryl Abel-Hodges, chief executive officer, the company is still seeking a creative lead to oversee all Calvin Klein product categories.
The Belgium-born Coppens, who attended the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, has worked in the sports design department of Adidas as well as on Ralph Lauren’s RLX brand. He created the Tim Coppens brand in 2012.
Known for his unique take on athletic luxury, Coppens received the Ecco Domani Award for Best Menswear Designer in 2012, and followed that up with a Fashion Group International Rising Star of the Year award the next year and was awarded the Swarovski Award for Menswear in 2014.
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GOT A GREAT IDEA?: This year’s six finalists selected for the Lexus Design Award have presented proposals geared to anticipate, innovate and captivate.
Each will receive mentorship from renowned design specialists and funding of more than $25,000 to create prototypes for their projects. Culled from 2,042 submissions — a milestone for the annual competition — this six-pack of creatives are representatives of the U.S., China, Europe, Pakistan and Kenya. Applicants from 79 different countries were in the running.
This year’s contenders are Bio.Scales by Sutherlin Santo, a modular, carbon-sequestering air filtration system assembled from robotically 3-D-printed biopolymer scales; Feltscape by Théophile Peju and Salvatore Cicero, a “breathing felt cloud” made partially from thermoplastics that captures sound and customizes acoustics and lighting for a more serene environment, and Flash Pak by Yaokun Wu is an inflatable flotation device that can also be strapped to other Flash Paks to create a raft — all of which can be used to guide wearers to safety in flash floods via a haptic navigation system with LED lights. The other three contenders are Lick, by Irina Samoilova as a portable body cleaner for humans with a surface similar to a cat’s tongue; Open Source Communities by BellTower
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