It seems crazy to be thinking about coats since I went to the beach yesterday, but when I think about fall fashion, I always think about coats and shoes. My ideal winter outfit always involves cold weather and lots of sun, so I can be wrapped up in a fabulous coat or jacket, but still wearing sunglasses (and not carrying an umbrella!) This fall might be a depressing one on the shopping front, I think I am buying a house, and therefore I need to spend my money on boring things like a new car (usually this would be exciting, but the one we are looking at is “practical” ugh) and a guest room bed. Not much money left over for shopping. Thankfully I’ve already bought my fall shoes, from Finsk of course, and I am trying to plan how I’ll be wearing them once it gets cold.

So this is part of a new feature on Searching for Style, The Stylish Dresser, which will feature some of the most stylish fashion pieces available on the web. Today’s post features fall outerwear.

This Acne Hydra oversized bomber jacket is to die for. I want it SO badly. It has a fur lined hood, the silhouette is perfect, and it looks effortless. Acne make the best oversized outerwear (remember their parkas? I never got one, and I regret it.) It is $700 USD, if I buy one more thing this fall, this might have to be it. Available from Acne online.

This boucle coat from Pop by PPQ is very cool. I like that it has a close-fitting cocoon shape, and looks like the type of coat you can snuggle in during the cold months. I rarely favour multi-coloured outerwear, but somehow the colours here work, and are quite versatile. Clara boucle cape coat for £89 from Very.co.uk.

Living in Vancouver, all you probably need is a raincoat. I’m still longing for oversized when it comes to outerwear, and I love that this one is shiny. But I have to say the model and her ridiculous hair turns me off. Raincoat by pushBUTTON, £125 on Asos.

This last one is the piece de resistance. Ever since I saw my friend Jen in London wearing a leather trenchcoat, I’ve been longing for one of my own. I doubt I’ll ever be able to afford this one, which is $9, 420 USD, but I can definitely stare at it. Leather trench coat by Alexander McQueen from Net A Porter.

I desperately want Sarah Burton to do well as the newly appointed creative director at Alexander McQueen, so I feel bad that I don’t love this collection. But I don’t dislike it completely…I just felt it was lukewarm.

I love…

weird proportions: the high buttons on the jacket and the short, wide trousers.

a coat layered over a suede jacket.

I loathe…

baggy white pants.

two-toned trousers.

those incredible McQueen prints put onto MC Hammer pants.

See the rest of my menswear spring summer 2011 coverage here.

All images from Style.com.

The CFDA awards took place last night (Council of Fashion Designers of America.) The red carpet was marginally more palatable than most events, probably because we are looking at fashion designers’ outfits, rather than celebrities. Fashion designers know more about getting dressed than celebrities do (that’s their job!) Despite this, there were some grim ensembles, but on the most part, everyone looked good.

Here are some of the award winners, and my comments.

Board of Directors Special Tribute: Alexander McQueen
-He deserves it, obviously

Womenswear Designer of the Year: Marc Jacobs
-Marc, you are fantastic, but it is boring if you win stuff every year.

Swarovski Award for Womenswear: Jason Wu
-You dress MObama = you get awards.

International Award: Christopher Bailey for Burberry
-Boring. Christpher Bailey is fantastic, but moving on please!

Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award: Michael Kors
-For using the most amount of camel in his collections, and being the most American.

Eugenia Sheppard Award: Paper’s Kim Hastreiter
-Read what Walter Cessna says about her on Thursday in my next Fashion Chat post. He has some great gossip. I’m not sure she deserves this.

L’Oréal Popular Vote Award: Ralph Lauren
-Popular vote? I guess this makes the USA one of the most boring countries in the world.

I love…

Aerin Lauder Zinterhofer in Michael Kors. She looks so fresh and happy. But who wouldn't be happy with that family fortune?

BeeShaffer in Thakoon and Anna Wintour in Carolina Herrera. This may be the first compliment Anna has ever gotten from me.

Betsey Johnson with her daughter Lulu. I am not a fan of her designs, but at least they "represent" and are great poster girls for the brand.

Gaby and Donna Karan. Another great mother/daughter brand ambassador combo.

JasonWu and Rachel Weisz in Jason Wu. That dress is beautiful. I'll bet MObama has one.

Joseph Altuzarra and Vanessa Traina in Joseph Altuzarra. She looks fantastic in that sharp, sexy dress. Too bad she is just another "waste-of-space-heiress."

Rachel Zoe in Marc Jacobs. We certainly can't accuse her of changing her style every season. At least it suits her.

Sarah Jessica Parker in Alexander McQueen. The dress looks stunning. And this is probably the last time we are going to see her out in public wearing something other than Halston Heritage, so let

I loathe…

Alexa Chung in Marc Jacobs. The dress is quite nice, but she looks frumpy and out of place.

Doutzen Kroes in Michael Kors. How can one of the hottest women in the world (even I have a crush on her) end up looking...so lame. The dress is boring, frumpy, and predictable, the shoes are disgusting, and her hair makes her look fifty. What the hell is going on here?

Kim Hastreiter from PAPER magazine. Speaking of frumpy...well actually, I'll let the necklace do the talking.

The OlsenTwins and Sasha Pivovarova, all wearing The Row. They look like a bunch of depressed goths trying to cheer themselves up by incorporating some white into their shapeless, unflattering wardrobe.

Tamara Mellon in Threeasfour with Derek Blasberg. I don

Thom Browne in his own design. This is not the way to promote your brand. You are doing yourself damage.

Vera Wang in her own design. Eat something, please.

Zac Posen and Devon Aoki, wearing Zac Posen. Two former stars reduced to dressing like they are seventy years old.

All images from Style.com.

By the way, Tommy Ton’s photos of the guests arriving at the CFDA awards are much nicer than the ones above, to see them, click here.

I watched this very interesting TED talk last week, it is Johanna Blakley talking about “copyright law’s grip on film, music and software barely touches the fashion industry … and (how) fashion benefits in both innovation and sales.” The video is 15 minutes long, but defintiely worth watching, and it also raises some intersting points about copyright protection in the fashion industry.

The video looks at how the fashion industry had fewer regulations than other creative industries, and how fashion ideas are very difficult to protect. The first example she discusses is that of Miuccia Prada, when out shopping, buys a vintage Balenciaga jacket, in order to copy the idea and put it into her own collection. My readers in the fashion industry will be aware of this type of activity, it is called research. Essentially, part of the process of finding ideas for a collection is to take other designer’s clothing, and translate it for your own collection. As the TED talk points out, in some industries this might be considered copyright infringement. In the case of fashion, it is just how we get our ideas.

Left, Steve Madden shoe, right, Balenciaga shoe.

Is this wrong? Sometimes, yes. It is wrong when Steve Madden takes Balenciaga’s shoe design,  makes a few minor changes to it, and sells it as his own. It is wrong when Topshop copies Chloé’s dress design (and they had to destroy over a 1000 dresses when Chloé protested over the design.) But top designers don’t do that, they are much smarter and much more imaginative. And they don’t want to copy other designer’s work, they just want to be inspired by it.

Left, See by Chloé dress, right, Topshop dress.

The design research process involves many sources of inspiration, including travel abroad, books, artwork, and culture. Designers also buy clothing for inspiration, which can include very vintage pieces, old costumes, traditional dress found on their trips around the world, and other pieces of old clothing. Sometimes they take inspiration from other designer’s work, usually old work, but sometimes newer work, although it is almost never direct copies of recent designer’s work. I am sure Miuccia would take the aforementioned vintage Balenciaga jacket, and transform it into her own design, making serious modifications ot the original piece.

When I was at Sonia Rykiel, we used to have a guy, (who had the best job in the entire world) whose role it was to travel to flea markets around the world, and buy items of clothing and accessories that he felt we could use as inspiration for our collections. (Don’t ask me how to get into this line of work, if I knew, that is what I would be doing.) One season he brought us a whole bunch of bags, which I assumed were all vintage pieces. At the end of the season, we got rid of the ones that hadn’t been used, so I was allowed to take two home.

A few weeks later, I discovered that one of the bags was sold in a Paris shop, located quite close to our design studios. I also realized that the bag was a design from a new brand, and was being sold as part of the current season. Soon after, I noticed that the second bag was also from a young designer’s current collection. Basically, the items we were using for ideas for our future collection were not only old vintage pieces, but also the work of unknown young designers trying to break into the industry.

At the time, it came as a surprise to me. Then I learnt that this was commonplace in the industry. The young designers were coming up with great ideas, and we were considering stealing them. Those two particular bags never influenced our collections, although I am sure that we had at some point copied other designer’s work.

Left, Marc by Marc Jacobs, right, Wallis.

There are few laws that really protect garment designs, but the ones that exist are set up to protect large companies, and rarely small designers. When Steve Madden copied Alexander McQueen’s boot, they sued him. But when a small designer gets copied by a larger brand, there isn’t much that they can do. Big brands like Louis Vuitton and Gucci have to deal with thousands of counterfeits, therefore they need to rely on the strength of their brands and the quality of their product, to convince customers that the cheap knockoff at a fraction of the price is not worth buying. But small companies, who don’t have powerful brand identities and legal teams, struggle to protect their designs and brand identities.

Left, Alexander McQueen, right, Steve Madden.

What can we do about this? Nothing really. It is the reality of the industry, which is cut throat for nearly everyone in it. Not all big brands copy from young designers, but many do. Fast fashion brands often steal ideas from designer brands, and they are rarely caught out, because copyright laws make it very difficult for designers to protect their ideas.

Sucks, doesn’t it? If you are a small brand, and patenting, trademarking, and even registering design ideas is too expensive for you, there are a few ways you can protect yourself. Keep records of everything you do. If your design is copied, you can use items like press clippings, documents from factories/printers/photographers, etc… as evidence that you designed the idea before the other company. The old fashioned way of sending yourself a copy of all your designs, before they go out into the public domain, can also help. A postdated, stamped, sealed envelope can be used as evidence in court, just make sure not to open the envelope!

Read other Fashion 101 posts:

Fashion 101: How Magazines Cover Trends

Fashion 101: Where do Fashion Trends Come From?

Fashion 101: Designers with Two Jobs

Fashion 101: How Haute Couture Works

Fashion 101: Magazines and their Advertisers

Image sources:
Alexander McQueen and Steve Madden shoe.
Chloé and Topshop yellow dresses.
Steve Madden and Balenciaga lego shoes.
Marc by Marc Jacobs and Wallis floral dresses.

If you want to see more, Fashionista’s Adventures in Copyrights posts a lot of the high street copies.

I recently heard about this Vancouver-based business that teaches women how to walk in high heels: High Heel Appeal teaches classes in person, or sells an instructional DVD. I am not sure how I feel about this. If you watch the videos, you can see the host definitely has a good strut, but it doesn’t help that the website is incredibly tacky (have a look at it here.) Does anyone really need a class to learn how to walk in high heels? I think it is about the shoe, not the skill.

If the high heeled shoe fits and it is good quality, you should be able to walk in it. Here’s a few tips:

• If your foot is is covered in blisters and in excruciating pain, you won’t walk very nicely in your heels.
• The arch needs to fit and give you support, and your foot can’t be slipping around.
• Make sure the sole is rough or covered in rubber, a smooth sole also means slipping.
• Be barefoot or wear fishnets when wearing sandals, so your foot grips the shoe properly.
• Practice wearing the shoe around the house too, that helps.
• Throw money at the problem: expensive shoes fit better. And are easier to walk in.

What's the difference between the Alexander McQueen shoe on the left, and the Lipsy shoe on the right, aside from $800? The McQueen shoe will be better constructed, more comfortable, and easy to walk in.

I had a depressing Vancouver shoe moment a few months ago when I was in the company of some fairly affluent, middle-aged Vancouver women. In typical Vancouver-style, they are all quite fit (in the healthy sense, but usually quite good looking too), live in nice, big West side homes, drive expensive cars (mostly SUVs) and have money for nice things like cabins in Whistler, expensive holidays, or costly recreational activities. They were discussing the concept of “expensive shoes” and comparing the fact that none of them owned a pair.

I wanted to sob. How can a person have millions of dollars in assets (well, at least over a million) and not own a nice pair of shoes? It is moments like this when I realize I don’t fit into the Vancouver lifestyle. I don’t have a big house, a fancy car, or a cabin in Whistler, but I have a wardrobe full of gorgeous shoes and ten years of partying in London under my belt, which leaves me with quite a few good stories. Sure, I could have saved a bit more, consumed a hell of a lot less, but would that have made me any happier today? Probably not.

People spending their weekend hiking the Grouse Grind rather than having fun. Or maybe this is fun.

My Mom, who is also a Kerrisdale, Vancouver West side woman, (but drives a hybrid instead of an SUV, and owns LOTS of expensive shoes), says Vancouver is the “no-fun” city of Canada, and I couldn’t agree with her more. In Montreal and Toronto, people go out and have fun. Here, they run 10K on the weekend. In London, people go to the gym before work so they look good when they go to the pub. In Vancouver, people exercise instead of going to the pub. So I’d like to set a challenge to all my Vancouver readers this weekend. It’s a long weekend. In England, we would either jet off to another European city and spend all our money on boutiques hotels, shopping, and expensive food and booze, or, spend the weekend complaining that it’s raining (we can do that in Vancouver too) whilst pub-hopping and wishing we remembered what happened last night.

So Vancouver, instead of doing that yoga retreat, running the seawall, or doing the Grouse grind (a ridiculous hike up a mountain), why don’t you fill your reusable coffee cups with Jack Daniels, head down to the beach, get a sunburn, and wish you remembered what happened last night. And don’t forget to buy a REALLY expensive pair of shoes for the weekend, which you can christen by scuffing as you fall over after a great night out.

P.s. I won’t be scuffing up any high heels this weekend, because I’ll be wearing cowboy boots and hitting the Cloverdale Rodeo with the Brits. I hope there will be some great photos to share… and that I’ll remember what happened!

Image sources:
McQueen shoe from Net A Porter.
Lipsy shoe from Asos.
Grouse Grind.

According to Flare magazine, "The Eccentric" is in for Spring Summer 2010.

As part 2 of my Fashion 101 on trends, I’d like to discuss how media presents trends. We covered where trends come from in the last Fashion 101, so today we will be looking at how magazines present trends to their readers.

The magazines have a job to do, they have to sell issues and they have to encourage their readers to buy more fashion, so that their advertisers are happy (more on that here.) Magazines can’t just say “here’s a pair of pants” and “here’s a top”, they need to sell their readers a story, and that is where trends come in. Rather than simply present the looks shown on the catwalks, magazines put together trend themes.

Now here is the scary part of the magazine business. After the fashion shows, each magazine team sits down together and talks through the catwalk shows. They decide what their trends are for the next season’s issues. The magazines then send out “their” trends to the PR offices, so that the PRs need to make sure they have pieces in the collections that fit into the magazine’s trend stories.

All of this means that the magazines are actually deciding what the trends are, rather than going by what the designers have actually designed. And the PR’s have to scramble to find ways to make their designer’s collections fit in with the magazine’s trends. In all fairness, the editors are inspired by what they see on the catwalks, but they could quite easily decide that a lot of black and lace on the catwalk means a gothic trend, even if none of the designers were inspired by gothic art while designing. And that is why magazine trends often have nothing to do with the designer’s inspiration, and usually look a bit…boring. Or they jsut don’t make any sense at all. I also think they sometimes treat their readers like idiots when they present trends like “long coats for winter!”  or “floral prints for spring!”, because I have never known a winter season that hasn’t included a few long coats, and there are ALWAYS floral prints in the spring.

Here are some examples of slightly disjointed trend pages from Style.com (sorry Style.com, you are the best site for catwalk coverage but your trend pages suck.)

This trend is called Pattern Play, and yes, there are obviously patterns on all of the garments, but that is about the only thing that they have in common. I don't understand how Anna Sui's fun little floral printed suit can be considered a similar trend to Ann Demeleumeester's wicked trashy, dishevelled suit with printed wings. Clockwise from top left: Balenciaga, Alexander McQueen, Anna Sui, and Ann Demeleumeester.

Game Theory: Although there are some sporty references in some of these looks, they are definitely not from the same sport and not the same style. The Olympics, American football, surfing, and snowboarding inspirations are far too different to be considered one trend. I think the editors were running out of ideas here. And I can barely even see a sport reference in A. F. Vanderforst's dress. Clockwise from top left: Derek Lam, Alexandre Herchcovitch, Alexander Wang, and A. F. Vanderforst.

This trend is Superhero Worship. Maybe I am not very imaginative, but I can't see any superhero references here, only really nice clothes. Clockwise from top left: Alessandro Dell'Acqua, Balenciaga, Calvin Klein, and Antonio Berardi.

So, next time Vogue or Elle are telling you that “Winter Garden” or “Gothic Princess” are THE trend for the season, keep in mind that they aren’t telling you what the designers are thinking, they are telling you what their editors are thinking.

Read other Fashion 101 posts:

Fashion 101: Where do Fashion Trends Come From?

Fashion 101: Designers with Two Jobs

Fashion 101: How Haute Couture Works

Fashion 101: Magazines and their Advertisers

Alexander McQueen Fall Winter 2010. Amazing.

The Times has just reported that Alexander McQueen was having financial difficulties when he committed suicide. It is so sad, yet very believable. Making money in the fashion industry is very difficult, and McQueen’s business was yet to make a profit.

The knuckleduster clutch.

What does this say about the future of fashion, if one of our most beloved designers, whose talent was celebrated worldwide, and who had the backing of one of the largest luxury conglomerates in the world, couldn’t make ends meet? The industry has changed so much since I started 15 years ago, I hate to think what it is going to be like 15 years from now.

These images were posted on a new blog I am following, called Kate Loves Me (which is pretty good!) These are from the Alexander McQueen Fall Winter 2010 press day. The pieces are stunning, and I hope I can get my hands on a piece from the last McQueen collection. See the rest of the amazing photos here.

Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood's SEX store on London's Kings Road.

There’s been so many interesting fashion stories in the news recently that I haven’t had enough time to cover, so I am doing a very quick summary on some of my thoughts on recent headlines.

Malcolm McLaren in the 70s.

• LVMH owns Louis Vuitton, Céline, Marc Jacobs, Givenchy, Fendi, DeBeers, TAG Heuer, and more.
• PPR owns Gucci Group which owns Gucci, Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney, and Bottega Veneta, Boucheron, Balenciaga, Yves Saint Laurent, and more.
• Richemont owns Alaia, Chloé, Piaget, Cartier, Alfred Dunhill, Net A Porter, and more.

Natalie Massenet, founder and CEO of Net A Porter.

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.”

Uniqlo campaign.

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.

Robert Duffy and Marc Jacobs. Photo from thecut.com

Robert Duffy, President of Marc Jacobs International, made a very interesting comment during a Business of Fashion interview a few months ago, which has stuck in my mind. He had been using Twitter for the two weeks leading up to the Marc Jacobs Fall Winter 2010 show (he has since then been replaced by someone else on the Marc Jacobs team) and during that time, he was quite efficient at responding to questions from his followers, who were primarily fashion students wishing to get into the industry.

“BoF: Why have you found these tweets from students so inspiring?

Robert Duffy: Because I’ve been there. I don’t want these kids to give up, you know? I can see how discouraged they are. And I know that if Marc and I weren’t together we would have probably given up too.
And I want to say to them, especially the ones that have talent (they send me pictures and stuff!): Don’t give up. Find a way to do it. I had to. Marc had to. We are still working two jobs to support this. But, don’t do it to become famous or to become a celebrity or it because you think it’s easy. It is not.”

His comment about working two jobs really made me think. Yes, I know that like many designers (John Galliano, Alexander McQueen) Marc Jacobs also spent many years building his career, when he was barely known and designing collections with tiny budgets. But now we all assume he is doing super well, having built Marc Jacobs as one of the leading luxury brands of the world, hugely influential, and touching a very large market with his lower-priced Marc by Marc Jacobs collection. But here Duffy explains that the Louis Vuitton gig is a “second job.” I never thought of it that way, but on reflection, I am sure that Marc Jacobs would definitely prefer to focus his energies on his own collection, rather than having to travel back and forth between Paris and New York, in order to fulfill his duties as Creative Director of two of the most well-known luxury brands in the world. A tough job, and maybe not as glamorous as it seems.

So on that note, I’d like to dedicate this Fashion 101 post to explaining why designers like Marc Jacobs, Jean Paul Gaultier, Karl Lagerfeld, and many others are able and allowed to work two design jobs for different companies.

Fendi Spring Summer 2010 designed by Karl Lagerfeld. Photo from Fendi.com

Let’s start with why any designer, who is attempting to build their own brand, would then take a second job with a very well-known brand. Marios Schwab is a great example. An established young designer based in London, Marios has had a lot of media attention in recent years, and has built himself up to be quite a well-known, respected designer. But what are the figures behind his brand? I am sure he takes a decent salary and can afford to pay a small team of people, but knowing the expense involved in running a fashion company, I am pretty sure he will soon realize he can’t properly expand his brand without more capital. How does he get capital for his business? He can get an investor, or he can take a second job, or he can do both.

By taking the job as Creative Director at Halston, he not only improves his profile as a designer (which means his brand automatically gains more credibility, which will lead to sales and the increased possibility of securing more capital for his business) and he also takes a hefty salary from them, which will mean he has more to re-invest into his own business. A fashion business these days needs to sell more than just clothing to succeed, they need to sell fragrance, accessories, footwear, eyewear, a diffusion line, etc… and all of those things require money to develop. That’s probably why he took a second job.

Halston Fall Winter 2010 designed by Marios Schwab. Photo from Style.com.

So that answers the question of why a designer would want to work for two different companies, but why would a brand want a designer who can’t be one hundred percent committed to their brand? Halston hired Marios Schwab (and Louis Vuitton hired Marc Jacobs, Hermès hired Jean Paul Gaultier, etc…) because they are designers who are already very credible and are already in the spotlight. Halston’s first designer, Marco Zanini, came from Versace, and although I have no doubt he was a talented designer, the average follower of fashion has no idea who he is. The fact that he wasn’t already getting a lot of attention in the media made it more difficult for the relaunched Halston brand to be successful (there were other factors involved in that too, but that’s another story…)

These days, its harder to make a brand successful without a very well-known creative director at the helm (although not at all impossible…) Many brands choose to hire a designer who already has a name for themselves, because they will be better known to the public, and they have proved their own worth (being a successful designer for a big brand is very different than being a successful designer for your own brand.)

Hermes Fall Winter 2010 designed by Jean Paul Gaultier. Photo from Style.com.

The last subject is about competition, if Karl Lagerfeld designs for Chanel, Fendi, and his own collection, aren’t his bosses at Fendi and Chanel concerned that he is designing for one of their competitors? Probably not. Brands will hire well-known designers as creative directors only if the brand does not directly compete with the designer’s label. Marc Jacobs and Louis Vuitton are two very different brands, so are Hermès and Jean Paul Gaultier, Marios Schwab and Halston, Chanel and Fendi. There may be a tiny bit of crossover between customers, but those are also customers who, as fans of Marc Jacobs, may choose a Louis Vuitton bag over a Gucci bag, because they know Marc Jacobs designs for Louis Vuitton.

On a final note, when brands within the same conglomerate compete with each other, which sometimes happens, it is referred to as cannibalism. For example, LVMH’s brands include Louis Vuitton, Céline, Marc Jacobs, and Givenchy and PPR’s Gucci Group brands include Gucci, Bottega Veneta, Alexander McQueen, Balenciaga, and Stella McCartney. There may be times where those brands are effectively competing with each other. Conglomerates try and avoid this as much as possible, by choosing a portfolio of brands that do not directly compete, but at the same time, there are times when cannibalism occurs within a group of brands.

Further reading: There is a great DVD about Marc Jacobs and Louis Vuitton entitled “Marc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton“, which I feel is the first fashion film to correctly portray the behind-the-scenes and the process involved in researching, designing, and showing a luxury fashion collection. So if you’d like to get a better understand of the process involved in getting that amazing handbag from concept to prototype to press piece to retail bestseller, watch this amazing film.

Read other Fashion 101 posts:

Fashion 101: Where do Fashion Trends Come From?

Fashion 101: How Haute Couture Works

Fashion 101: Magazines and their Advertisers

I didn’t like Alexander McQueen when I first heard of him. I remember when he was hired as head designer at Givenchy, in 1996. Here was a sacred brand, THE brand responsible for the Audrey Hepburn’s dresses in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, to be taken over by a brash Englishman. Then he goes and makes matters worse, by calling Givenchy “irrelevant.” I was outraged, and decided I didn’t like Alexander McQueen.

Audrey Hepburn wearing Givenchy in Breakfast at Tiffany's.

I felt similarly about John Galliano, although he is not really English, I hated this new school of young designers who were taking over the traditional Paris brands.

Naomi Campbell in Spring Summer 1997 Givenchy Haute Couture, Alexander McQueen's first collection for the brnad.

But Alexander McQueen (and John Galliano) eventually grew up and I believe it was around January 2007, when Dior presented their Spring Summer 2007 Haute Couture collection, that I realized this. I also noticed that Alexander McQueen had gone from being the “the enfant terrible of the fashion world” to being an influential, widely respected designer.

This Christian Dior Spring Summer 2007 Haute Couture collection made me start to love John Galliano.

My opinion of McQueen’s work changed in the past few years, rather than seeing it as “shock tactics”, I began to truly appreciate his talent. And I would say that the Spring Summer 2010 show was the pinnacle for Alexander McQueen, when he had finally reached the point where he could truly be described as a fashion genius.

Alexander McQueen's Spring Summer 2010 collection entitled Plato's Atlantis.

And how ironic that his suicide followed that stunning Plato’s Atlantis collection.

I was devastated to hear of his death, not only because the fashion industry lost one of its finest talents, but also the realization that being at the top of your game, and revered in your industry, does not in the least way guarantee any sort of happiness. I had just finished writing a post about some of the “real” fashion victims, the people who dedicate their lives to the industry, at the expense of their personal lives. I had just spent some time reflecting on how happy I was that I had made the decision to “choose life.”

I won’t go on too much more about his life or his death, as many journalists have done a great job.  Here are some good articles, from On the Runway, The Times, WWD, The New York Times, BBC, The Guardian, and The Cut. BBC annoyed the hell out of me by writing an article which featured quotes about McQueen by Victoria Beckham and Tyra Banks in the introduction (which I also found very insulting.) I also understand why PPR and Gucci Group have decided to keep the Alexander McQueen label alive. Business is business, and there was a lot invested in that brand. I personally prefer that the brand gets a chance to survive, as it would be very sad to see it shut down. There must be someone out there who can take the reigns as creative director. (And that’s not Gareth Pugh.)

Lee Alexander McQueen (1969 – 2010)

The Alexander McQueen Fall Winter 2010 show was apparently 80% his own work, which is why, I’m guessing, it was so small. I’m not going to do a Love and Loathe on the looks, the whole thing was beautiful. We don’t know if he knew this was going to be the last collection he designed, but if he did, it was a fitting farewell. I think Cathy Horyn summed it up very well in saying

“Someday there will be a retrospective of the fashion of Alexander McQueen, and if it ends with the 15 pieces shown here in a small salon the survey will indeed feel complete.”

The entire show photos are below, courtesy of WWD.

R.I.P. Lee Alexander McQueen

Other image credits:

Alexander McQueen at Givenchy
Breakfast at Tiffanys
Lee Alexander McQueen
Christian Dior’s Haute Couture Spring Summer 2007
Alexander McQueen Spring Summer 2010