Well, that didn’t take long.
William Middleton, a former Paris bureau chief of WWD and W magazine, just signed a book deal with HarperCollins to write “an unconventional biography” of Karl Lagerfeld and how he turned himself into a cultural icon. Lagerfeld died Feb. 19.
Middleton, who met Lagerfeld in 1995, did many stories with him when he worked in Paris and developed a friendship along the way.  Middleton is the author of “Double Vision,” about the powerful art-world family headed by Dominique and John de Menil that was published last spring.
Middleton said he had proposed a book to Lagerfeld about a year ago, and the designer was not interested in delving into his past. “I don’t think the history of Karl is the most interesting part. There are some elements of his past that are interesting. But it’s really what he turned himself into that’s so fascinating. I didn’t want to do a normal biography,” he said.
Immediately after Lagerfeld died, Middleton wrote a three-page proposal and e-mailed his agent, Binky Urban at ICM. “By 9 a.m., she had me on the phone [with HarperCollins vice president and executive editor Sara Nelson] and we had a contract the next week. It all

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Can sustainable fashion be both polished and quirky?
Hong Kong-based designers and childhood best friends Phyllis Chan and Suzzie Chung are banking on it with their premium knitwear brand YanYan, which utilizes deadstock and leftover yarns from mills and knitwear factories.
The two are aiming to create a youth factor around sustainability, blending grandma elegance with a playful spirit in their designs, and simultaneously touching on hot-button issues facing the fashion industry — including low-waste production, experimental retail strategy, reacting to the pace and competitiveness of fast fashion, and putting out product with more long-term, less trend-driven, potential.
“We thought about what’s a good and interesting way to create product,” Chan said on a call with Chung from Hong Kong, adding: “We didn’t want to put stuff out there that doesn’t contribute anything new. We wanted to make sweaters that were special. We wanted to challenge ourselves and make sweaters that aren’t traditional. The knitwear market is starting to grow. It’s a space for people to have fun and experiment.”
Knitwear was a natural venture for Chan, too, who moved back to Hong Kong after spending nearly a decade at Rag & Bone in New York, most recently as the director of knitwear until

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Guillaume Philibert was 19 when he started Filling Pieces.
A student of architecture, he was listening to a lot of Pharrell and Kanye West rapping about designer labels. Philibert couldn’t afford the pieces at the time so he set out to create something in line with his wallet but also his interests in design and DJing — something he still does.
The brand asserted itself in the market with high-end footwear and one and a half years ago got into ready-to-wear presenting a minimalist line of well-constructed pieces — think funnel neck puffers and gaberdine trenches with a punch of colorblocking in the back paneling. Now, at nearly 10, Philibert’s line is ready for retail with the planned opening of Filling Pieces’ first flagship in Amsterdam in the fourth quarter of this year. That’s expected to be the start of a number of branded doors rolling out in key markets over the next few years.
“In the past couple years, I personally really found out how to run a business,” Philibert said. “So my background in design gave me the ability to design products, but I learned so much more about how to build a brand and how to build a company, so

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Donna Karan has teamed with Mashonda Tifrere’s nonprofit Art Lead Her to put on an all-women exhibit called “King Woman” at Karan’s store and community space Urban Zen.
Pieces from Reisha Perlmutter, Delphine Diallo, Swoon and 12 other emerging and midcareer artists lined the walls of Urban Zen during a recent visit. Tifrere, dressed all in black just like Karan, pointed out one piece that especially moved her by Perlmutter. It’s a painting of a woman with vitiligo, her face peering above a pool of water in which her body’s submerged. Her hair is wet and slicked back.
“Reisha wanted to portray the woman in the portrait as strong and beautiful in her own skin,” Tifrere said. “On opening night, the woman came, and when she saw her picture hanging on the wall, she started bawling.”
There are individual stories like this one behind most of the pieces included in “King Woman”; Tifrere, who curated the showing, said it was imperative to forge relationships with the artists after selecting them to be part of the exhibition. She added she’d found all of them by looking around on Google and Instagram, then meeting them in person at art fairs.

Delphine Diallo’s “Highness” is on

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Ssense has snagged the exclusive for the launch of the Marine Serre’s first men’s designs.
The 22-piece collection includes fleece jackets, dégradé tracksuits, bike shorts, T-shirts and accessories that are rich in Nineties nostalgia.
The collection retails from $95 for a whistle-festooned lariat to $2,270 for a floral-print blanket coat.
Ssense is a luxury retailer based in Montreal that has a strong following with men and women under the age of 34.
Serre, a Parisian-based designer, has been a winner of the LVMH Prize, and made her mark with crescent-moon print bodysuits and dresses made from upcycled silk scarves for women. Her clothes blend futuristic, athletic and couture references.

She had interned at Maison Margiela and quit her job in the studio of Balenciaga in September 2017 to focus on her own label. This is her first men’s wear capsule.

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BAD MOVE: Child abuse allegations against the late pop star Michael Jackson have been hitting fashion hard, with Savile Row tailor Gieves & Hawkes among the brands to get caught up in the controversy.
The British tailor has removed from its display a replica of the military jacket that Michael Jackson wore on the “Bad” tour in 1988. Bad was the first solo concert tour by Jackson, spanning 16 months from 1987.
Gieves, which famously sits at No. 1 Savile Row and is one of the oldest tailoring companies in the world, said: “In light of the disturbing allegations made in the documentary, the replica garment was removed from the premises several weeks ago.” Child sex abuse allegations against the late pop star resurfaced in the HBO “Leaving Neverland” documentary.
Earlier this week, Louis Vuitton announced it would not produce any item “that directly features Michael Jackson elements.” The brand’s fall 2019 men’s wear collection drew inspiration from the “Thriller” singer’s pop-culture legacy.
Gieves & Hawkes, one of the Fung family’s brands owned through Trinity group, made the original jacket, with its intricate golden military frogging and embroidery, for the tour that included 123 concerts across 15 countries.
There were dazzling fashion moments with costumes

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LOS ANGELES — Soccer jerseys in suiting, as eveningwear and patched into new life forms.
Adidas charged four stylists and designers, each hailing from different backgrounds in fashion, to put their spin on Major League Soccer’s jerseys. The results bore out in an interesting display of fashion that marched down the runway Thursday evening at City Market South in downtown Los Angeles.
Adidas’ Seams event was the latest in a long-running partnership between the brand and Major League Soccer that was most recently extended to 2024, with the sportswear firm providing the league’s 24 teams with uniforms, footwear and training gear, among other things.
“The idea was to launch the 2019 MLS jerseys in a new creative way,” said Jennifer Valentine, senior director of soccer at Adidas. “We want to celebrate the culture of each individual city that the jerseys represent.”
The idea was to pull together individuals in fashion as deemed by the brand to be creative and authentic with varying ties to streetwear, Valentine said.
Pierre Davis, founder of the gender-neutral brand No Sesso, turned to something more formal through the use of patchworking and hardware to create trains and volume for dresses.
“My idea was to take athletic wear and turn it into more

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LONDON — Xcommons, a Shanghai-based biannual designer support and crossover platform, is teaming with Alibaba’s business-to-consumer channel Tmall to help talented Chinese fashion designers to collaborate with some of the biggest commercial fashion brands in the region.
In the upcoming fourth edition, which runs from March 28 to 31 during Shanghai Fashion Week, Ximon Lee, Andrea Jiapei Li, Haizhen Wang and Minki Cheng will present their fall 2019 collections, as well as capsule collections with Chinese brands Peacebird, Blue Erdos, Blink Gallery and Bloomin, respectively.
“We value Xcommons for their high-quality designers and strong executions,” said Ricky Xie, Tmall Fashion’s senior marketing director. This season, the e-commerce platform is launching a “digital trend project” on March 30.
“Through Tmall’s intelligent trend discovery mechanism, companies can catch up with fashion trends faster and more accurately. In this context, Tmall Fashion forecasts the color, product category and crossover trends, and we work with Xcommons and Chinese designers and commercial brands to bring unique products to our consumers during the upcoming Shanghai Fashion Week,” Xie said.
All collaborations will be sold exclusively on Tmall Fashion. Customers can customize the color and pattern of the capsule collections during Shanghai Fashion Week and products will be delivered in two

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