Fashion Headlines, April 2010

There’s no denying Malcolm McLaren played a huge role in defining what we today consider as street fashion. When McLaren and his then-girlfriend, Vivienne Westwood opened Let It Rock, a store selling teddy-boy style clothing, on the Kings Road in 1971, they began to change fashion history. But it wasn’t until he returned from a trip to New York City, and began designing stage outfits for The New York Dolls, that he found himself immersed in the punk rock scene. In 1976 he began to manage the Sex Pistols, who managed to cause quite a stir in the two short years they were together. By then, McLaren was made, and between his role as manager of the Sex Pistols and Westwood’s fashion designs for the Kings Road store (renamed Too Fast To Live Too Young To Die and then SEX) they brought the punk style into the limelight, which has had an incredible impact on the way we dress today (studs and skulls anyone?) So his death is a sad one, the fashion and music worlds have lost a great influencer and troublemaker.

Before I start, here’s a quick 101 on luxury conglomerates:

So what happens when one of the big luxury conglomerates takes hold of the most successful online luxury retailer in the world? Well, I am sensing that LVMH and Gucci Group might be a bit worried…Neither has managed to successfully sell their products online, and now Net A Porter is owned by one of their competitors. LVMH has launched NOWNESS, described as ” an editorial website that offers an exciting new way to experience luxury lifestyle online.” Sounds a bit vague, yes? I haven’t had the chance to properly explore NOWNESS, but I do know that it is not the next Net A Porter. LVMH and Gucci Group are going to have to come up with a better concept to successfully sell their products online, now that Richemont owns Net A Porter. I’m still shocked at how slow some of the major luxury brands have been to warm up to online retailing.

Anyway, well done to Natalie Massenet, the founder of Net A Porter, for banking 50 million on a business that was “never going to succeed, because people don’t buy luxury online.”

And finally, here’s something very exciting for North America, Uniqlo has just signed for a giant retail space in New York City, in which they will pay over 300 million dollars in rent for the next fifteen years.

“What’s set to be Uniqlo‘s biggest store in the world, with a whopping 90,000 square feet of space in total between 52nd and 53rd streets, is a clear statement of intent. Fast Retailing (the company that own Uniqlo) president and chief executive officer Tadashi Yanai–Japan’s richest man, according to Forbes–is determined that the Uniqlo name will become as ubiquitous elsewhere as it is in Japan.”
-Wall Street Journal

Let us all hope and pray that this will be the beginning of a massive North American expansion of Uniqlo, including shops here in Vancouver. They are the best for basics, they do what Gap does, but way better and a bit cheaper. And they have Jil Sander designing collections for them. Yay!

Image sources:
Malcolm McLaren image.
SEX boutique on Kings Road.
Natalie Massenet.
Uniqlo image.