The State of American Fashion: Alex Bolen

WWD: Please sum up the state of American fashion as you see it?
Alex Bolen: I think it would be awfully presumptuous of me to sum up the state of American fashion. I have one point of view, which is the point of view from our company and that’s a view as a manufacturer, as a retailer, as a designer.
I think that the term “American fashion” is perhaps a bit of an anachronism, one that used to mean some things design-wise. I think American companies were known for certain things, sportswear, whatever — and everybody’s doing everything now. And I don’t say that with any sort of sense of regret. I think it’s an evolution. So the idea of American fashion is a little more amorphous.
Now, New York-based fashion companies, that’s something else. Los Angeles-based fashion companies may have some different opinions on the matter. But I think that we as a group of manufacturers in New York could do a better job of looking out for our common interests.
I am not one who is particularly in favor of a group thing. I don’t think that solutions are one-size-fits-all, and I think that everybody has to, I wouldn’t say fend for

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22.10.2018No comments
Virgil Abloh’s First Louis Vuitton Designs Drop at London Pop-Up

OVER THE RAINBOW: The first items from Virgil Abloh’s debut men’s collection for Louis Vuitton have dropped at a pop-up store in London.
Abloh celebrated the launch of the collection on Friday with celebrities including Idris Elba, Rami Malek, Rita Ora and Frank Ocean. The space, located on Bruton Street, featured walls covered in a print from “The Wizard of Oz” showing Dorothy, played by Judy Garland, dreaming in a field of poppies.

The Louis Vuitton pop-up store. 
Courtesy

Clothes were displayed in a transparent box printed with the LV monogram in a rainbow of colors, reminiscent of the color gradient runway that Abloh set up in the Palais-Royal Garden in Paris in June, for a show that was hailed as marking a watershed in the intersection of streetwear and luxury.
Over the weekend, Abloh reposted images of items people purchased on his Instagram Stories. It was not immediately clear if items have gone on sale at other locations than the London Pop-up. Officials at Vuitton could not immediately be reached for comment.

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22.10.2018No comments
Wanda Ferragamo: A Pioneer and a Matriarch

Passionate. Intense. Kind. A flag bearer for Made in Italy.
Those were all words used by industry members to describe Wanda Miletti Ferragamo, who died Friday afternoon in Fiesole, Italy, near her beloved Florence. The matriarch of the Salvatore Ferragamo family, and honorary president of the company since 2006, was 96. She was the wife of the shoe designer and innovator Salvatore Ferragamo, who created the platform and cage heels and was instrumental in developing the company after her husband’s death in 1960, which left her not only their company but a widow with six children: Fiamma, Giovanna, Fulvia, Ferruccio, Massimo and Leonardo.
Giovanna, Ferruccio, who is president of the fashion group, Leonardo and Massimo issued an internal company memo on Friday relating the passing of their mother “with enormous pain, together with our children and all of our family.” Calling their mother an “extraordinary person,” they said “her precious teachings and the memory of her will be for all of us an example of rectitude and great passion for life.”

In another company note, Miletti Ferragamo was remembered for “her intelligence, her strength of character and her clear economic and commercial vision,” which helped build a fashion group that included ready-to-wear, accessories and fragrances from

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22.10.2018No comments
India Fashion Week: A New Sponsor — and a New Strategy

NEW DELHI — India Fashion Week here for the first time went direct to consumer, indicating the country’s changing fashion market.
The fashion week, the first four days of which were dedicated to retail buyers, also came with a new sponsor and a new name — the Lotus Makeup India Fashion Week, or LMIFW.
“The event kept the tradition of buyer sale for the first four days and added a new dimension for public sale on the penultimate two days at the same venue,” Sunil Sethi, president of the Fashion Design Council of India, or FDCI, told WWD. FDCI is the organizer of the event, which closed Oct. 15. “In its 19 years of existence, the FDCI has never thought of doing a B2C show. We have always been about business-to-business, and we are just adding on a new dimension,” he added.
Describing the changing retail market, and a year in which many designers have slowed the opening of their own stores, he said the last two days included past seasons’ designs and old inventory. “Many of the designers have been talking about the pain in retail, about downsizing a bit and reengineering their operations. In the factories, people are reassessing what to do this

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22.10.2018No comments