DAILY EDITION OCTOBER 25, 2016 1

Fashion. Beauty. Business.

New ChiefBalenciaga has tapped Cédric Charbit to be its next CEO.

Page 2

Altering CourseCarven parts ways with its design duo of Alexis Martial and Adrien Caillaudaud.

Page 2

Wiseman ReflectsVF’s Eric Wiseman thinks back as his tenure nears its end.

Page 8

● Online operations can add 2 percent to a retailer’s overall cost structure.

BY ARTHUR ZACZKIEWICZ

Specialty stores better be careful about e-commerce.

That’s the view of Antony Karabus, chief executive officer of HRC Retail Advisory, whose latest report outlines the pitfalls for specialty retailers selling online. His analysis shows that fulfillment costs, free returns “and the challenging issues of refurbishing and getting returned product into a resalable state and to the location most likely to sell the returned product at the best margin” can add more than a whopping two percentage points to a retailer’s cost structure.

“And this is not sustainable,” Karabus told WWD.

His report on specialty stores and e-commerce follows a similar detailed analysis of about 20 major U.S.-based department and specialty stores, which revealed that efforts to boost online revenue had eroded both sales of physical

● The new head of partnerships comes from Liberty of London, where he held the title of managing director and was instrumental in growing the business.

BY DAVID MOIN

The Hudson’s Bay Co., determined to feed its growing international array of depart-ment stores with exclusive products and innovative concepts, has hired Ed Burstell as head of partnerships, WWD has learned.

It’s a new position at HBC, where Burstell will lead efforts to bring differen-tiated merchandise and formats to all HBC divisions, which include Saks Fifth Avenue, Hudson’s Bay, Lord & Taylor, Saks Off 5th, Find @ Lord & Taylor, Home Outfitters, Gilt, Galeria Kaufhof, Galeria Inno and Sportarena. He joins HBC on Dec. 5.

Burstell has led a colorful life on both a professional and personal basis. He’s well-known in retail and fashion circles and comes to HBC direct from Liberty of Lon-don, where he held the title of managing director and was instrumental in growing

BUSINESS

HRC: RethinkE-commerce

BUSINESS

HBC Recruits Ed Burstell

CONTINUED ON PAGE 13

CONTINUED ON PAGE 12

Designers keep finding ways to be more creative with the classic button-down. At Tokyo Fashion Week, they gave shirts experimental treatments with asymmetric construction and embellishments, like this six-arm version from Mikio Sakabe. For more on Tokyo, see pages 4 to 6.

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OCTOBER 25, 2016 2

HBC Recruits Ed Burstell to Accelerate Innovation● HBC sees Burstell engaged in bringing innovative concepts to all of its divisions.

● Balenciaga Names Cédric Charbit as CEO

● Nanette Lepore Files Lawsuit Against Bluestar Alliance

● Lululemon Lab New York Launches Capsule

● Demna Gvasalia Celebrates at Balenciaga’s Rodeo Drive Boutique

TOP 5TRENDINGON WWD.COM

NEWSMAKERSThis Week’s Most Talked About Names In Our Industry

Antony Karabus

Gigi Hadid

Orla Kiely

David Rockwell

● A product and marketing executive at Yves Saint Laurent, he will take over Isabelle Guichot’s role.

BY MILES SOCHA

PARIS — Balenciaga is to welcome a new chief executive officer with a merchan-dising bent — and a strong track record at Yves Saint Laurent.

Confirming a report on WWD.com, Kering said Cédric Charbit, currently executive vice president of product and marketing at YSL, is to take over the management helm effective Nov. 28 and report to François-Henri Pinault, chair-man and ceo of Kering.

He is to succeed longtime Balenciaga chief Isabelle Guichot, who will take on new responsibilities within Kering, the French parent of Balenciaga, Gucci, YSL, Puma and other brands.

Balenciaga is in the midst of a creative overhaul under Vetements founder Demna Gvasalia, recruited one year ago, propelling an underground fashion hero to the helm of a storied couture name.

He has brought strong shoulders, streetwise puffer jackets and quirky leather goods to a house that was previously led by designers Alexander Wang and Nicolas Ghesquière, the latter now devoted to women’s collections for Louis Vuitton.

Charbit, 39, becomes the second executive from YSL’s executive ranks to snag a ceo role within Kering, suggesting finance and sales is no longer the main path to the management helm of a mod-ern fashion company.

Last May, Emmanuel Gintzburger took over as ceo of Alexander McQueen. He was previously YSL’s worldwide retail and wholesale director.

Charbit, who joined YSL in 2011 as director of product strategy, was pro-moted last May, and is also worldwide communications director.

He assumed a role with the same responsibilities YSL ceo Francesca Bellet-tini held at Bottega Veneta — overseeing all aspects of merchandising, visual display and communication — before she took the management helm of YSL in 2013.

Before YSL, Charbit was deputy general manager at Emilio Pucci. Previously, the Frenchman held management roles in retail — as general merchandise manager for women’s wear at Harrods in London and Printemps in Paris.

Charbit is a graduate of ESC Toulouse business school and is prized for his strong fashion instincts and complicity with designers, having forged strong relations with YSL’s previous creative director, Hedi Slimane. Anthony Vacca-rello took over last April and showed his first collection during the most recent Paris Fashion Week in September.

Charbit joins Balenciaga as it gears up to mark two major milestones in 2017: the 100th anniversary of the founding of

the label and the 80th anniversary of its landmark store on the Avenue George V in Paris.

Market sources estimate Balenciaga generates revenues north of 350 mil-lion euros, or $394.5 million at current exchange, and is profitable.

The next move for Guichot, who spent nine years at the brand and managed three delicate creative transitions, was not ascertained. She could not immedi-ately be reached for comment.

One senior vacancy at Kering includes ceo of the group’s luxury couture and leather goods emerging brands following the recent exit of Grita Loebsack.

Recruited from Unilever, Loebsack had been given responsibility over Alexander McQueen, Balenciaga, Brioni, Christopher Kane, Stella McCartney and Tomas Maier, but exited after less than a year in the role.

In a statement, Kering said Guichot “made a fundamental contribution” to Balenciaga’s “growth and reputation on a global scale.”

Charbit’s mission is to support the devel-opment of the house and further acceler-ate its international growth, Kering added.

● The Paris brand plans to name a new artistic director to succeed Alexis Martial and Adrien Caillaudaud.

BY MILES SOCHA

PARIS — Fashion’s revolving door contin-ues to spin furiously, with Carven’s duo the latest to depart after a brief tenure.

Alexis Martial and Adrien Caillaudaud, named artistic directors for Carven’s women’s collections in March 2015, are departing “by mutual agreement,” the house confirmed in a brief statement.

It noted a new artistic director would be appointed at a later date.

Martial and Caillaudaud’s last collection was for spring, presented in Paris last Sept. 29 at Paris Fashion Week.

It delved into the heritage of the house and its late founder, Marie-Louise Carven, employing such house codes as the Carven crest, the green and white stripes from the Ma Griffe perfume packaging, scarves and

Carven’s obsession with flowers.The pair, who met at the Atelier Char-

don Savard fashion school in Paris and both went on to work at Givenchy, had succeeded Guillaume Henry, who exited to join Nina Ricci.

Martial began his career at Givenchy in 2007, working as a knitwear designer on the ready-to-wear and couture lines.

After getting his start designing shoes at Marc Jacobs, Caillaudaud joined

Givenchy in 2009 and was responsible for the design of accessories, includ-ing jewelry, leather goods, men’s and women’s shoes. More recently, he has consulted for Tod’s and Jil Sander.

Fashion is enduring a period of many designer exits, with Marni founder Consuelo Castiglioni bidding farewell and Roberto Cavalli parting ways with designer Peter Dundas.

In July, Carven parted ways with its men’s wear designer Barnabé Hardy, an alum of Balenciaga, after 18 months.

The contemporary label, owned since May by Bluebell Group, decided to put the men’s line on hold and focus on the women’s collection.

Bluebell is a Hong Kong-based, family-owned company that distributes fashion, fragrance, food and home brands throughout Asia.

The house of Carven was founded in 1945 by the late Madame Carven, the French couturier who traveled the world with her collections and brought back a trove of exotic influences.

BUSINESS

Balenciaga Names Cédric Charbit as CEO

FASHION

Carven Parts Ways With Designer DuoBackstage at Carven’s

spring show.

Balenciaga is in the midst of a creative makeover under Vetements

founder Demna Gvasalia.

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we are endlessly insp ired by your d ist inct v is ion

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your partners at luxott ica , ralph lauren eyewear

OCTOBER 25, 2016 4

Shirting

The boldest shirting options in Tokyo came with asymmetric, off-kilter constructions

and plenty of volume to spare.BY ANDREW SHANG

Acuod by Chanu

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OCTOBER 25, 2016 5

TrendsTokyo

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Mint Designs

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OCTOBER 25, 2016 6

● New sponsor Amazon didn’t make vast changes, while the local industry was open to the instant fashion experience.

BY KELLY WETHERILLE

Tokyo Fashion Week wrapped over the weekend, marking an end to the first sea-son with Amazon as its headline sponsor. The company chose to use this initial foray as a learning opportunity, not making many changes to how Mercedes-Benz had run things. But many buyers and industry insiders hope to see fresh new designers come into the mix next season, and most expect see-now-buy-now to become a larger component.

Amazon has indicated its interest in this new, faster moving style of fashion.

“We’re ready to do [see-now-buy-now] now. We have absolutely zero barrier right now to be able to do that. So as soon as the designer community is ready, we’re hand in hand, we’re ready to go,” said James Peters, vice president of Amazon Fashion in Japan. “The customer is obvi-ously dictating that there’s some change happening, and the industry is reacting to that in a really cool way. And Amazon will be able to support that because the lights are already on for us. A lot of people are going to have to build that out and there’s a lot of, I think, barriers for everybody. We have the technology, the platform and the people to do that today.”

As for whether or not see-now-buy-now is actually good for the industry and good for business, most buyers seem to agree that there’s benefits to — and room for — both models.

“I think it’s a good thing. Tokyo brands are actually already doing that,” said Kazuyoshi Minamimagoe, senior creative director of Beams, citing Tokyo Girls Col-lection, a consumer-centric, in-season fash-ion event that originated with the concept of see-now-buy-now. “In Tokyo, multibrand shops like ours carry quite a bit of weight, and those kinds of places are already mak-ing private labels in a manner that is similar to see-now-buy-now. I think the Japanese market is well suited for that.”

London-based Taiwanese designer Johan Ku is the first Tokyo Fashion Week designer to begin the move toward see-now-buy-now, offering his collection for pre-order on his web site starting Nov. 1, with deliveries being made roughly a month later.

Alex Kasavin, owner of the men’s bou-tique Idol in Brooklyn, was one of several buyers invited to Tokyo Fashion Week by the Japan External Trade Organization, known as JETRO. He also feels positively about the concept.

“A lot has been talked about see-now-buy-now, so there are clearly two sides,” he said. “I don’t think it would hurt any brand anywhere to do a collection and add spot releases that are available to their stockists. That’s a very Japanese thing that I think the whole industry can learn from, and that way you don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater.”

Last season, many buyers felt under-whelmed by the mix of designers present-ing during Tokyo Fashion Week, as several of the more directional brands had made the leap to showing internationally. That sentiment continued into spring, although there were some brands that stood out.

“I don’t think the overall quality of Tokyo Fashion Week has improved. From this season, the sponsor changed to Amazon, and everyone had a kind of anticipation about that, but for now even

Amazon said that this time it wasn’t chang-ing anything,” Minamimagoe said. “On top of that, last season we saw some big brands leave [Tokyo to show abroad], so [many were] wondering what was going to happen. Actually, the number of interna-tional designers increased, which I think is good to show Tokyo as the fashion hub of Asia, but the current Tokyo designers are still very small and subdued. That was the overall impression, but if you look closely, there actually were some quite interesting brands. This is good, but they have their work cut out for them moving forward.”

Minamimagoe said some of his favorite collections this season were Mint Designs, Discovered, Sulvam and Uemulo Munenoli. The latter is designed by Munenori Uemoro, who previously worked as a design assis-tant at Costume National and Jil Sander. Minamimagoe described the collection as “minimal, but layered in a very cool way.”

Motofumi “Poggy” Kogi, director of United Arrows & Sons, said that while his budget for Japanese brands is down slightly this season, he was very interested in Bed J.W. Ford. He also enjoyed watching Umit Benan’s show, which he said local designers could learn from.

“The venue [for Tokyo Fashion Week] is different from Paris and other places in that it’s indistinct, so all the shows start to look the same,” he said. “So I thought the way they changed that to create the show venue for Umit Benan felt like it was similar to a show done abroad.”

Shogo Terazawa, a women’s buyer at Isetan Mitsukoshi, concurred.

“I think the shows shouldn’t only be held at [one venue],” he said. “I think if the designers expressed themselves

more, right from the choice of venue to the way they stage it, more people would come and it would be more fun for inter-national buyers.”

Terazawa’s budget for Tokyo brands has also decreased somewhat this season, as he said international brands are selling better and are also easier to buy at the moment due to a strong yen.

“Overall, I don’t think [the Japanese brands] are very strong,” Terazawa said. “The difference between Japan and other countries is that it has a unique capital city, but the young designers aren’t really incor-porating the culture into their work or work-ing hard to create a unique showpiece.”

As with recent seasons, buyers agree that there are more strong men’s brands than women’s brands. Yuji Takahashi, who also works for Isetan Mitsukoshi but as a men’s wear buyer, said his budget for local brands grew slightly this season. Both he and Terazawa are jury members for the Tokyo Fashion Award, which selects six winners each year.

“This time I really thought all the brands that were chosen as winners were the ones I personally liked the best,” Takahashi said. “We were able to get a very close look at many brands, and these ones really stood out.

In particular, Takahashi said he was interested in the men’s brand Doublet, designed by Masayuki Ino, who formerly worked at Mihara Yasuhiro. Takahashi said Doublet is carried by an Isetan store in Kuala Lumpur and has been received well there, so he is considering adding it to his mix in Tokyo as well.

While buyers were less than enthused by the brands showing this season, there is

also a consensus that Tokyo has plenty of great design talent. The challenge seems to be getting fashion week to feature some of the more interesting, newer brands.

“Amazon is saying that it wants to help to grow new brands, but actually now there is a change toward see-now-buy-now, so I don’t know if these young Tokyo designers will want to do an orthodox fashion show,” Minamimagoe said.

Umit Benan, who skipped Paris this season and instead showed in Tokyo after being invited by fashion week organizers, also had strong opinions on the matter.

“You have a country where the con-sumer is the highest; you have a country where the creator is the highest; you have a [country] where the buyer is most cre-ative, almost as [much] as the designer. I think everyone needs to get together to make the Japanese fashion week much better. I think you need a new generation of designers in fashion week in Japan to support the system, because you have the highest level of every single creativ-ity, from every aspect of fashion,” the designer said after his show.

As for what changes can be expected in Tokyo’s fashion week next season, Peters said he couldn’t yet give any specifics.

“I think that every day everything’s evolving and we’re part of that evolu-tion, and we want to do that with fashion week,” the executive said.

This season’s shows drew a total of 21,000 people, slightly more than the last installment in March, but down from a year ago. Of these, there were 414 Japa-nese buyers and 307 buyers from 29 other countries, including China, the U.S., Hong Kong and Canada.

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TFW: Watching for See-Now-Buy-Now

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● Following its third-quarter earnings report, VF guided its 2016 outlook for earnings per share to rise 3% to $3.13.

BY VICKI M. YOUNG

Anticipate change.That’s the mantra at VF Corp. and one

that has served the company over the years, as chairman and chief executive offi-cer Eric Wiseman gets ready to hand over the ceo reins to Steven Rendle in January.

VF on Monday posted third-quarter results that missed Wall Street’s consensus estimates, and WWD caught up with Wise-man following his last earnings call to Wall Street analysts.

“When I look back at my 21 years at VF, the company has done a better-than-aver-age job of anticipating the future and act-ing appropriately to take advantage of it,” Wiseman said. He explained how the com-pany in the Nineties transitioned its man-ufacturing model to include a bigger focus on sourcing, particularly in Asia where it has a sourcing office in Hong Kong. The individual who headed that operation is now VF’s head of global sourcing. “One of the strengths of VF — and I’ve spent half of my adult life here — is that we are used to anticipating change and then organizing around it,” Wiseman said.

One initiative more recently that has had an important impact on the group is the company’s big push to go global — Wise-man said, “I don’t know where we would be had we not done that” — and then move more into the business-to-consumer space. International is currently half of the company’s business, Wiseman noted,

adding that percentage-wise, it was just in the midteens about 10 years ago. “We made a deliberate push to go international and then a push to speak to consumers ourselves,” the ceo said.

He added that the company still has its international partners, but that the real opportunity in understanding its customer base comes from “owning our own stores, [and that has] made us a better wholesale company. We can go to our wholesale cus-tomers and advise on what we’ve learned from our stores and what [merchandise] makes for good bets.”

One question Wiseman said he was asked a lot over the years, more so when he first took over from Mackey McDonald nine years ago, was, “What keeps you up at night?” The ceo said his answer — and big worry — was not knowing whether the

company had the talent to grow from $7 billion in annual volume nine years ago to the $12 billion it is today. He said VF has undergone a transition in what it does to develop talent, and that some of that is evident in its innovation of products across the organization. According to Wiseman, the company in 2010 shifted gears in how it thinks about product and branding, as well as where it thinks the world is headed in terms of innovation and use. The difference in mindset is more than just about color change or shape change, Wiseman said: “It’s about bring-ing features that are important to activi-ty-based brands and to help the customer do what they want to do.”

According to Rendle, currently presi-dent and chief operating officer, that ques-tion and answer on talent are likely the same ones that will keep him up at night, too. “You can have the right strategy, but can you execute on it…. We aspire to con-tinue to grow as a growth company, and that comes down to talent in all of the key leadership positions within the brands,” he said.

Rendle said it isn’t just about the ability to be good marketers of VF’s brands, but also being intellectually curious and motivated to evolve and stay focused on the needs of the changing consumer. He noted that the company is working with advanced analytics to enhance its ability to access both consumer and supply-chain information and drill down by region and distribution channel so “VF can stay at the forefront” of driving the right product to consumers.

Looking ahead, Rendle also said a relatively new initiative that’s about a year

old is its One-Commerce Platform, which is “looking holistically at VF’s stores and online.” That is helping the company understand what needs to be done to be competitive, whether it’s “better knowledge of its consumers to in-store engagement, inventory everywhere and anywhere that the consumer is looking for it, merchandising and planning of assort-ment, frequency of delivery and storytell-ing of our brands,” Rendle said.

The company is planning an investor day late in the first quarter of 2017 to update the investment community on ini-tiatives and strategic vision going forward.

VF Corp.’s shares were down 2.9 percent to $53.07 in Big Board trading on Monday. Investors were reacting to the company’s lowered fiscal-year 2016 guidance, which now expects earnings per share to rise 3 percent to $3.13, compared with prior estimates of a 5 percent increase to $3.20, and a revenue forecast of a 2 percent rise to $12.2 billion from prior guidance of 3 to 4 percent growth.

For the third quarter ended Oct. 4, net income was up 8.4 percent to $498.5 million, or $1.19 a diluted share, from $459.9 million, or $1.07, a year ago. On an adjusted basis excluding a tax benefit, earnings per share for the quarter were $1.14. Total revenues slipped 1.2 percent to $3.49 billion from $3.53 billion. Wall Street’s consensus was $1.15 a share on revenues of $3.63 billion.

On Jan. 1, Wiseman will shift from chair-man to executive chairman, and while he won’t be actively managing the day-to day-operations, he will continue to be involved to assist the company and Rendle and his team “in any way needed.”

● A drop in tourism and a lackluster luxury market impacted the performance of the Italian luxury group.

BY LUISA ZARGANI

MILAN — A slowdown in tourism and weak consumer spending in the luxury market, along with lackluster performance in its leather goods category dented Tod’s SpA revenues in the first nine months of the year. In the period ended Sept. 30, consol-idated sales were down 3.7 percent to 757.7 million euros, or $841 million, compared with 786.9 million euros, or $873.4 million, in first nine months last year.

At constant exchange rates and includ-ing the related effects of hedging contracts, sales would have decreased 4.4 percent to 751.9 million euros, or $834.6 million.

“As expected, the sales figures for the nine months reflect a volatile and uncer-tain economic and financial environment, characterized by the persistent weak-ness of consumption in many important markets for luxury goods,” said Diego Della Valle, chairman and chief execu-tive officer. “The fall season started only in the second half of September; the collections now in stores are registering

positive feedback. Customers appreciate the focus on high-quality products, shoes, handbags and small leather goods in the first place, all of them well reflecting the craftsmanship, the Italian way of life and the strong innovation that characterize our brands. We think to be in the right direction in our strategic growth plan for the coming years and we are continuing with determination on this road. We remain focused on organic growth of the stores, accompanied by a selective and prudent strategy of network develop-ment, limiting ourselves to few openings and to special projects. We attribute also great importance to the wholesale channel, which is evolving continuously and which we carefully monitor in order to react to its dynamics. We continue to invest in communication and in market-ing, with the same investments as in the past years, giving particular emphasis to digital. To implement our plan, we are hiring, as we did in the past, people with the necessary characteristics, in particular from a stylistic and marketing perspective. We are also maintaining a strong attention to operating cost control. We are therefore confident on the perfor-mance of the last part of the year and on the group’s future results.”

The company, which is publicly listed on the Milan Stock Exchange, is no longer expected to release earnings in the quarter, as per a recently introduced regulation.

In a conference call with analysts, asked about the digital strategy, chief financial officer Emilio Macellari said the com-ments were made “more about digital as a channel of communication rather than of distribution. We are growing and improv-ing it as a distribution, but it represents a very limited part of our turnover. Online is below 2 percent even if it is growing.” He said the group is “learning to communicate with clients,” and setting up “different ini-tiatives, fine-tuning a different approach.” He pointed out that stores are reassorting collections every two months. “The Inter-net is making things old very soon. Today, according to expectations, we should change collections in stores every week. That is not possible, but we can do so every couple of months, adapting distribution and offer to the market.”

In the nine months, sales of the Tod’s brand declined 7.5 percent to 419.4 million euros, or $465.5 million. The com-pany attributed the decrease to the weak-ness in consumption in major markets for luxury goods, mainly due to the sharp

decline of tourist flows. Hogan sales were down 2.8 percent to 171.9 million euros, or $190.8 million, hurt by the weakness of the Italian market, also accentuated by the sharp decline in tourist flows, driven in 2015 by the holding of the Expo in Milan. Revenues of the Fay brand were up 4.1 percent to 45.5 million euros, or $50.5 million, lifted by strong results in the Asian markets, which grew in the double-digits. Roger Vivier revenues grew 6.9 percent to 119.8 million euros, or $133 million, accelerating the third quarter, although its performance was dented by a slowdown in the U.S.

Dollar figures were converted from the euro at average exchange for the periods to which they refer.

In the first nine months of 2016, sales through directly operated stores were down 6.1 percent to 453.6 million euros, or $503.5 million. The Same-Store Sales Growth, known as SSSG, rate, calculated as the worldwide average of sales growth rates at constant exchange rates was down 14.6 percent, entirely attributable to the months of July and August and linked to weakness of consumption of luxury goods. Starting from September, the figure is better; the positive trend is continuing in the current month of October.

BUSINESS

VF’s Eric Wiseman Looks Back As Steven Rendle Looks Ahead

BUSINESS

Tod’s Revenues Down in First Nine Months

Eric Wiseman

http://www.guthy-renker.com/

OCTOBER 25, 2016 10

● Color Therapy, a line of 38 argan-oil-infused polishes, a top coat and nail and cuticle polish is set to enter mass doors in November.

BY FAYE BROOKMAN AND ELLEN THOMAS

With the merger of 41 Procter & Gamble properties complete, it’s time for the new Coty Inc.’s coming out party — and the new innovations are already under way, starting with Sally Hansen Color Therapy, the brand’s biggest launch since the block-buster Miracle Gel.

Coty declined to comment on pro-jections, but industry sources estimate Color Therapy could produce retail sales between $80 million to $90 million in the first 18 months.

While that sum doesn’t rival Miracle Gel’s enviable $120 million within 18 months — the biggest launch since intro-ductions started being tracked in mass market doors, according to IRI — it should provide a considerable jolt to the languish-ing nail category.

The polish line fuses color and care by imbuing a nourishing and moisturizing proprietary oil blend into 38 splashy, trend-driven hues, a top coat and a nail and cuticle oil. Shipping into mass doors next month, it is entering the market at an opportune time, as women seek strength-ening and conditioning remedies from damage due to salon-applied gel nails, without sacrificing color.

The launch marks a return for Sally Hansen to its treatment roots, and while the nail category is down overall, the timing is significant, as retailers depend on the brand to serve up innovation that moves the needle.

“Sally Hansen has long stood for both

color and care and the Color Therapy line represents both of these,” said Shannon Curtin, senior vice president of North America for Coty’s consumer beauty division. This marks Curtin’s first major launch since leaving Walgreens to join the company in May. “Consumers are seek-ing exciting news to give them a reason to buy that extra bottle of polish given they increased their purchase rate the last couple of years,” explained Curtin. “Color Therapy offers the unique bene-fits of instant moisture and nourishment while providing a noticeable improvement to natural nails…with a gorgeous shade palette so she doesn’t have to sacrifice wearing the color she loves.”

Color Therapy ushers in the use of argan oil in the mass nail category. Heralded for its therapeutic properties, argan oil also resonates strongly with the mass consumer, according to Chandra Coleman, vice pres-ident of U.S. marketing at Sally Hansen. Though Color Therapy contains a propri-etary blend of argan, acai and evening primrose oils, Coleman said argan oil was chosen as the hero ingredient because of its familiarity — and if consumers don’t know

its healing properties intimately, they’ve likely seen it in other beauty products across mass.

The fusion of color and nail care was the result of intense consumer listening. “Color Therapy was inspired by ‘her’ telling us that while she’s hard on her nails and needs a break from polish-wear, she doesn’t want to go a day without color because they look dull,” explained Jeremy Lowenstein, Coty’s vice president of global marketing of Sally Hansen.

“This isn’t a ripple, it’s a tidal wave,” he added, referring to consumer demand for vibrant color with added conditioning properties.

In the U.S. prestige market, nail care brought in $6 million for the 12 months ended May 30, up five percent from the previous year, and the premium mar-ket has already seen a bounce in sales from healthier products such as Orly’s Breathable Treatment + Color and OPI’s Gel Break, a professional in-between gel manicure treatment system.

“Color Therapy is a unique fit in our portfolio,” Lowenstein said. “It is entirely incremental and addresses different con-sumer needs. It isn’t Miracle Gel; it isn’t Insta Dri. We aren’t just innovating to inno-vate, this is innovation with a purpose.”

In fact, the company expects minimal cannibalization from existing color offerings since Color Therapy delivers new benefits. With a suggested retail of $8.99, it is priced $1 below the two-step Miracle Gel’s price tag and in line with Complete Salon Manicure.

For the first time ever, Sally Hansen’s Global Color Ambassador Madeline Poole handpicked the shades. Just because there is a “good for your nails message,” Poole said that didn’t eliminate the drive for on-trend colors. Her final edit, designed to flatter all skin tones, includes three palettes — the Rich Tones; the Pinks and Corals, and

the Nudes. “Each color is highly pigmented, which lends itself to simple, sophisticated nail art as well,” Poole added. And to help navigate the right shade selection for skin tone, there’s Coty’s mobile app, ManiMatch, which will carry all the Color Therapy shades starting in November.

To distinguish Color Therapy from Complete Salon Manicure and Miracle Gel, a rose gold cap inspired by jewelry trends was adopted.

A 360-advertising-campaign is set to launch late this month, beginning with viral online sampling campaign to generate ratings and reviews. Efforts will include digital, TV, print and an influencer and multimedia public relations outreach.

Faced with a somewhat intricate message to parlay, Lowenstein called the campaign “immersive,” fusing on and off-line tactics to educate, with digital as the primary focus. “Digital continues to be a bigger piece of how we talk to our consum-ers,” Lowenstein said.

One strategy is the use of cinemagraphs, a hybrid of a video and a still photo where one or two elements are animated to catch attention. “We are one of the first nail brands to use this,” he said.

There is also ample use of a droplet image to signify the oil in the formula which is hammered home in a social campaign called #dropeverything. That theme encourages women to “drop everything” and take time out for themselves. “What we heard from women about why they get a manicure or pedicure is the want a moment of me time — to drop everything,” Lowenstein said.

Retailers familiar with the line have been waiting for what they called a “spa manicure product” from Sally Hansen. But first, buyers hope it can return the luster to the nail-care category. “There are so many knockoffs of gel polishes, we’re ready for something new,” observed one buyer.

● Beauty iQ, a home shopping network with a social media focus, is targeted at the beauty-obsessed consumer.

BY ELLEN THOMAS

QVC is set to launch Beauty iQ, a home shopping channel devoted solely to beauty, WWD has learned.

According to industry sources, the new venture, which will be launched Oct. 31, could initially reach an estimated 40 million homes through partnerships with cable conglomerates DirecTV, Dish and AT&T U-Verse. A Beauty iQ e-commerce site will be launched in tandem with the cable channel, and products mentioned on air will be available for purchase there as well.

Beauty iQ is speculated to launch with over 50 of QVC’s current prestige beauty vendors, including Givenchy, Tarte, Becca Cosmetics, Peter Thomas Roth, Josie Maran, Nest Fragrances, It Cosmetics, Nudestix, Laura Geller, Edward Bess and Dr. Dennis Gross. “Any of the big [beauty] vendors” on QVC are set to be involved with the channel in some capacity, said a source.

Sources noted that live programming will be scheduled five nights a week, Wednesday through Sunday starting at 8:00 p.m. Eastern. The rest of the content,

according to sources will be produced and slated for repeats throughout the week at the West Chester, Pa., studios.

A big social media play is expected, and one source noted Beauty iQ content will be created for Facebook Live, YouTube and Instagram, and brands will host Beauty iQ content on their own social channels. The source noted that it’s a way to capture the attention of the “beauty enthusiast,” or a shopper obsessed with beauty products who is turning away from the QVC channel when a beauty brand isn’t live on-air. Industry sources estimate that beauty cur-rently makes up 17 percent of QVC’s total business, and is one of the “faster-growing categories” on the network. One sourced noted that a separate QVC beauty channel already exists in the U.K.

There is also some speculation that the introduction of the new channel is a play to grab the attention of Millennials, who are less interested in watching scheduled TV, and more interested in consuming media and content when and where they want to. Though it’s no big revelation that Millennials are a key demographic to tar-get, it’s the so-called “beauty enthusiast” who is important for QVC to capture.

Wendy Liebmann, chief executive officer of WSL Strategic Retail, noted that QVC isn’t a brand known to attract a younger

audience, and is likely facing the same concerns as other traditional retailers over their beauty business losing share to e-commerce businesses and niche purvey-ors. Beauty IQ, she said, could be a solu-tion to both issues. In order to attract both the Millennial and the “beauty enthusiast”, “they have to disrupt themselves,” said Liebmann. “Beauty consumers are absorb-ing content on Instagram and YouTube in a transparent, flexible format. They’re look-ing for new content all the time, and in a very personal approach, not as formulaic as you’d see traditionally on QVC.”

Meanwhile, rival HSN has ramped up its beauty business significantly this year, giv-ing its beauty section of its website a major overhaul and listening to customer needs

in order to determine what new brands to add. Liebmann, however, doesn’t see the new Beauty iQ as a direct play at upping the competition for HSN. “They’ve both been quite aggressive lately in beauty in trying to get more established and emerging brands,” said Liebmann. “I don’t see it as a direct competition — the beauty business is becoming increasingly frag-mented and it becomes a big issue for any traditional retailer to hold on to share.”

Karen Grant, global beauty industry analyst at NPD, noted that attracting a Mil-lennial consumer to the Beauty iQ channel will actually help bring in other consumer generations as well. “It’s wanting to get that younger consumer, but not lose their core consumer,” said Grant. “Millennials are very much engaged with their moms and grandmas, and they’ll introduce to them to what they’re being targeted for [as well].”

The beauty category is the fastest-grow-ing of all categories that NPD tracks, and Grant called a beauty-centric shopping channel is a smart move on QVC’s part, but noted they’d need to meet consumers “more than half-way” by placing a big focus on digital efforts and social media.

“Color is having such amazing growth, and so much of it is coming from a video media format,” a source noted. “QVC is trying to recognize the power of the beauty enthusiast within their current audience, and they’re willing to partner with more brands on their own social media channels and to try different approaches to con-tent — they’re evolving the classic, main channel presentation.”

BEAUTY

Coty Prepares for Sally Hansen Launch

BEAUTY

QVC to Launch Beauty Channel

An ad for Sally Hansen Color Therapy.

Jamie Kern Lima, ceo and cofounder of It Cosmetics and frequent presenter on QVC.

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A round of applause to Ralph Lauren, an icon of style and deserving recipient of the first-ever John B. Fairchild Honor. Congratulations.

LIVING THE AMERICAN DREAM

OCTOBER 25, 2016 12

● The new store features Kiely’s ready-to-wear, handbags and accessories collections.

BY LISA LOCKWOOD

NEW YORK — Orla Kiely, a favorite of the Duchess of Cambridge’s, is moving into a new retail location at 372 Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village here on Thursday. She had been at 5 Mercer Street for the past five years.

The new 1,100-square-foot store will feature Kiely’s ready-to-wear, handbags and accessories collections. It will also carry the entire L’Orla collection, which is a collaboration between stylist Leith Clark and Kiely, and will be the exclu-sive retailer of Kiely’s sunglass line. The designer has four other store locations — two in London, one in Japan and one in South Korea. This is her only freestanding store in the U.S.

“I’ve always loved Bleecker Street. I’ve always loved Greenwich Village,” said Kiely, the Irish-born designer who is based in London. “It has that neigh-borhood spirit, and it has the same vibe

as our other store in Covent Garden, which is really nice...It [Bleecker Street] feels like a creative, interesting, village-y neighborhood.”

She said the store is a U-shape, so you can go in one side, meander around, and come out the other side. It has two front doors.

Kiely said the shop features encaustic tiles which she designed especially for the store and are used in Victorian houses. They provide a nice patterned backdrop to the colorful offerings, which include rtw, accessories, jewelry, watches and handbags. “We put lots of rich colors on the walls,” she said.

Asked what distinguishes the Orla Kiely collection, she said, “We do our own thing. We’re very much print and color led. That’s what informs us. Our customers are creative people, architects and graphic designers, and people who like color.” Kie-ly’s collection is manufactured in various places, including Portugal. The designer has been in business 20 years, and whole-sales in Europe, Australia and the U.S. Among its U.S. accounts are Anthropolo-gie, Cloak and Dagger and AltHouse.

The rtw retails from $268 to $806, and the handbags retail from $228 to $528.

FASHION

Orla Kiely to Open New Bleecker Street Boutique

the business and forming innovative collab-orations with the likes of Hermès, Manolo Blahnik, Nike, Uniqlo, Kenzo, Marc Jacobs, Doc Martens and others. Liberty of London operates a historic, 141-year-old flagship on Great Marlborough Street in London’s West End which sells upscale luxury goods and is famous for its floral and graphic prints.

“Ed has a tremendous and well-de-served reputation in the fashion industry,” said Jerry Storch, HBC’s chief execu-tive officer. “He is very experienced in developing the kind of partnerships and exclusive relationships we are looking for. He works well with people.” Burstell will report to Storch.

“Our objective is to clearly differenti-ate our offerings and bring products and experience to customers that they can’t get anywhere else,” Storch added. “The department store industry is changing very rapidly. It’s more important than ever to have constant uniqueness in our offering.”

Asked if department stores show enough initiative to innovate, Storch replied, “You can never do enough. We have always innovated, with pop-up shops, shops-in-shops,” he said, citing HBC’s Topshop collaboration in Canada and Germany. “You can always do more and in this envi-ronment you need to do more.”

“As a merchant, it’s your responsibility to provide innovation, something that is exciting and tempting to customers,” Burstell told WWD. It’s the job of the mer-chant to ensure “the experience creates loyalty and curiosity.”

Burstell said he’s motivated by his next assignment because it entails “engaging the consumer across all HBC platforms and price points...It might be something in ready-to-wear, designer, home, or beauty. It’s just as limited as your imagination.”

He said retailers, generally speaking, suffer from “this weird culture of same-ness. A lot of stores have abdicated their DNA. There is an awful lot of leased shops. The store might as well just be a

street with a roof.”Storch said HBC, working with Burstell,

would seek non-endemic partnerships, conceivably involving intellectual proper-ties, media, celebrities, consumer goods and other kinds of companies. “It’s a broad range of possibilities with very different match ups and pop up experiences.

“The department store needs to feel like a world’s fair, a grand bazaar, a great exhibition, with all kinds of ideas that you can’t get at a traditional narrow specialty store,” Storch added. “Department stores were once places to experience the world, to experience technology and innovation. We can learn much from the past.”

While department stores of today are often viewed as losing relevance and customers in the age of the Internet, there are signs that some are focusing more on new concepts and offerings. Macy’s, for example, earlier this month opened the first Apple shop inside a U.S. department store, at its Herald Square flagship, and over the last several seasons has signed

partnerships for in-store shops with Sun-glass Hut, Best Buy, Finish Line and Lids, among other brands. Justin MacFarlane joined Macy’s last February in the new role of chief strategy, analytics and innova-tion officer, with responsibility for strate-gic development, consumer and customer research, data analysis, innovation and development of business opportunities.

At Nordstrom, Olivia Kim, formerly of Opening Ceremony, serves as vice president of creative projects. She joined Nordstrom in February 2013 and launched Pop-In@Nordstrom, which rotates its merchandise every four to six weeks to introduce a fashion trend or theme or a particular brand or vendor. Partnerships have included Hermès, Nike, Topshop/Topman, Warby Parker, Converse, Poketo, Liberty London, Rag & Bone, Dylan’s Candy Bar and the U.S. debut of Hong Kong fashion collective I.T. Pop-Ins are in select Nordstrom locations including four flagships in Vancouver, Chicago, Seattle and San Francisco.

Kim also launched Nordstrom’s Space shop concept, primarily focusing on emerging designers. Space shops are also in select Nordstrom doors as well as online and have housed such labels as Simone Rocha, Shrimps, Acne, Aries, Vetements and Anthony Vaccarello.

HBC over the last several years has formed some of its own unique partner-ships with Kleinfeld’s, the bridal store, as well as Topshop/Topman for in-store shops in Hudson’s Bay and Kaufhof units. HBC also sells Black Brown 1826, a men’s wear collaboration with designer Joseph Abboud, and the Lord & Taylor division has been rolling out Birdcage shops selling a range of seasonally themed contempo-rary and gift-oriented merchandise, much of it exclusive.

Storch said it’s difficult to quantify how much of HBC’s offering is exclusive, but he did say that 10 to 20 percent of business, depending on the retail banner, is private label. That range doesn’t include exclu-sives to the store provided by designers and brands.

Burstell started as a spritzer at Macy’s, led a sex ’n’ drugs lifestyle and rose to top jobs at Henri Bendel and Bergdorf

Goodman, before joining Liberty where he’s been working with the store’s major-ity shareholder and chairman Marco Capello, an Italian private equity investor, to revive the store, and position it for a possible initial public offering. He’s been a mentor to young people aspiring to have retail careers; he wrote an autobiography, and actively supports the Hetrick-Martin Institute, which helps lesbian, gay, bisex-ual and transgender youths.

According to HBC, Burstell’s initia-tives contributed to Liberty of London’s double-digit year-over-year growth. He served at Liberty of London for eight years and earlier was a senior vice president of accessories, footwear, fine jewelry, designer jewelry, cosmetics and fragrance at Bergdorf Goodman. Before that, he was general manager of Henri Bendel, where he was involved in many partnerships and capsule collections with other designers, including Diane von Furstenberg, Rick Owens, Patricia Field and Stephen Burroughs. He said he “championed” British designers.

In addition to Burstell bringing ideas to HBC, the company has some ideas of its own for Burstell “to sift through,” Storch said, without specifying any. Seeking newness and innovation, Storch said, “Of course, we do this all the time. Bringing Ed in is above and beyond, to accelerate the pace of newness and go outside the box.”

“After eight years, what I set out to accomplish has been done,” Burstell said. “In strict numbers, Liberty of London was trading at 38 million pounds in 75,000 square feet when I arrived. It’s now trading at 100 million pounds [or $122 million at current exchange]. The store is doing really well. The fabric business is doing well. We have a small wholesale business that is really healthy.”

He said his first order of business at HBC will be “to get know the culture and have to understand each one of the business models. I see a lot of people who rush into a new job,” and make changes fast. “I think that’s a big mistake.”

Nevertheless, “I have a millions ideas rolling around. We will have a lot of con-versation to see which ones are appropri-ate. I can’t help always being curious.”

Ed Burstell

HBC Recruits Burstell To Further Innovation CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

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The Bleecker Street boutique.

OCTOBER 25, 2016 13

● Moody’s Investors Service summarizes how the sector is moving to stay in the game.

BY VICKI M. YOUNG

U.S. department stores still face many challenges, but credit ratings agency Moody’s Investors Service said the sector is “moving in the right direction for 2017.”

The ratings agency, in a report Monday called “Department Stores Battle to Stay Relevant,” concluded that after a “difficult 2016, the sector will swing to 4.6 percent operating income growth as sales trough and margins improve from better inventory management.”

The report noted at the outset that department stores face challenges as consumers have prioritized value and convenience as product pricing becomes increasingly transparent. It noted that increased markdowns to clear merchan-dise by major players such as Macy’s Inc. and Nordstrom Inc. dampens consumers’ willingness to pay full price. Moody’s also said the sector’s “Achilles heel” is the slow supply chain, which can have inven-tory backlogs when consumer demand quickly shifts.

Moody’s said tepid apparel demand, along with the growth of the off-price sector, has squeezed department store operators. The agency expects the sector as a whole to post an 11 percent decline in operating income for 2016. Moody’s projected the off-price sector to grow to 10 percent of apparel sales by 2018 from 8.8 percent in 2015.

Declining mall traffic has reflected the shift to off-price retail and e-commerce competitors. That change has required department stores to build out their technology platforms and fulfillment capabilities in order to compete. According to Moody’s, Nordstrom’s full-line business and Neiman Marcus Group have made the most notable inroads in their e-commerce penetration to nearly 20 percent and over

25 percent excluding mytheresa.com, respectively. In comparison, most regional department stores have lagged at less than 10 percent, Moody’s said. The ratings agency also noted that Dillard’s Inc. and Belk Inc., both regional players, are more insulated from the broader competition due to their more loyal customer bases, but they’ve also invested less in building online and have lower penetration than many of the larger players.

Moody’s also said one of the sector’s biggest challenges is right-sizing the brick-and-mortar footprint as more sales shift to the online platform. No surprise that the obvious solution is to either reduce store sizes or close stores or both, but Moody’s also noted that having physical locations gives department stores a competitive

advantage for product pickup or returns, as well as a point of distribution to increase supply efficiency.

For holiday, the department store sector is better positioned this time, after paring inventories in the first half to better align with weaker mall traffic. That’s one factor expected to help retailers as they head into 2017, Moody’s noted. One other suggestion the agency had for the sector was the creation of a “scarcity effect” to get shoppers to buy under threat that delay would mean an item would sell out. Moody’s said, “To create the scarcity ‘aura,’ however, means limiting product overhang. Retailers will need to reduce inventory positions and create fresher product presentations so customers feel compelled earlier in the cycle.”

Moody’s also said that for the sector to stabilize and improve market share, retailers have to keep pushing beyond their traditional channel role. It said the sector is moving in the right direction as key stores are implementing new approaches and offering merchandise that are either exclusives or are limited in distribution. Further, companies that control brands will be better able to adapt as exposure to multiple channels allows them to shift as consumers change their shopping behaviors.

All these approaches, plus a “de-weath-erize” that reduces the dependency on apparel — J.C. Penney introducing appli-ances again and increasing its focus on the home category — are efforts that will help the sector’s performance in 2017.

BUSINESS

Report: Department Stores Find Ways to Stay Relevant

stores and profitability.That was mainly due to the combination

of the primary focus being on chasing online sales along with the impact of man-aging e-commerce fulfillment (that often includes free shipping), rather than on a more balanced focus on physical stores and online.

Karabus found the same financial trends in the latest, follow-up study, provided to WWD exclusively, which focused on 20 specialty apparel retailers. The specialty retailers had annual sales of $400 million to $16 billion. HRC focused on mature retail businesses and excluded chains “in the early- to midstage of their expansion,” the firm noted.

Some of the key findings of the report include that Amazon Inc. is an apparel juggernaut that is “continuing to increase market share and expand into new catego-ries.” Karabus noted that Amazon’s mer-chandise sales rose 32 percent in the North American retail sector in the most recent quarter, which is on top of a 31 percent gain in the same period last year.

Amazon’s gains are clearly having an

impact on the retail market. For the spe-cialty apparel retailers in the HRC report, compound annual online sales as a group showed a 9 percent gain last year, which compares to 19 percent for department stores. Karabus said these gains repre-sent a deceleration in the growth rate of online sales, which was previously 12 per-cent for specialty apparel and 29 percent for department stores for the previous four years.

Karabus said 60 percent of the spe-cialty apparel retailers opened 14 percent more stores over this period “even as their online penetration rate of total sales reached a very high median rate of 19 per-cent in 2015...versus 9.1 percent in 2011.” But that is not necessarily all good news.

“The sharp increase in e-commerce penetration rates for brick-and-mortar retailers is coming at a very high cost, especially as most e-commerce sales are coming as a result of a channel shift, rather than being purely incremental,” Karabus said.

“The combination of so many physical store additions plus the shift to online resulted in these chains experiencing a median 6 percent decline in sales per store between 2011 and 2015, with 2015 itself reflecting a 4 percent decline in sales per store,” Karabus noted in the report.

Combined with the department store report, the results indicate that “e-com-merce sales typically represent true

incremental sales when additional market share is won from competitors, and when e-commerce customers are in geographical

areas where the particular retailer does not have a physical presence. Few custom-ers have the disposable income to increase their total size of wallet spending, so it is all about how they allocate their share of wallet between retailers and between channels,” Karabus said.

While the shift to online sales is driven by consumers it results in a “transfor-mation of retailer costs from a largely fixed-cost structure for traditional physical stores to the new paradigm where retailer sales need to continue to support this fixed-cost structure plus a very costly vari-able-cost infrastructure to enable e-com-merce,” he said.

Karabus reiterated that this “economic model” and the related profitability metrics are not sustainable and offered several recommendations, which include establishing “a methodology to better exploit data insights to drive customer-fo-cused decisions” while exploring “how to re-think and enhance real estate decisions in the light of the channel sales productiv-ity issues.”

The ceo also suggests that retailers “decide which omnichannel capabilities will be most valued by their specific customer, rather than investing in all capabilities” and to prioritize “important decisions such as price-matching, free shipping, free returns, fulfillment centers and full inventory visibility,” among other recommendations.

HRC Report RecommendsRethinking E-commerce CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

The Moody’s report highlighted challenges those in the sector have faced, such as a slow supply chain and weak apparel demand.

Antony Karabus is ceo of HRC.

OCTOBER 25, 2016 14

● Net sales rose 3.2 percent in the quarter despite some softness in the U.S.

BY GORDON SORLINI

MILAN — Italian eyewear giant Luxottica Group SpA on Monday reported a 3.2 per-cent increase in net sales as consumers in Europe and Latin America kept snapping up designer frames even as markets like North America and China softened.

Luxottica on Monday reported that net sales in the three months ended Septem-ber reached 2.23 billion euros, or $2.42 billion. At constant exchange, the increase would have been 3.5 percent. Adjusted for a change in the way the company reported some revenues from EyeMed-related activ-ities, revenues increased by 1.2 percent, at current currencies (1.4 percent at constant exchange), the company said.

In the latest three-month period, retail sales — which made up just over 60 percent of total revenues — jumped 7.2 percent, helped by the opening of some 130 stores in the period, and more than compensated for a 3.2 percent decrease in wholesale revenues. In adjusted terms, retail sales were up 3.8 percent on the pre-vious comparable period while wholesale dropped 3.2 percent.

Luxottica’s executive chairman Leon-ardo Del Vecchio and chief executive

officer for product and operations Mas-simo Vian said the reason for the decline in wholesale channel revenues was mostly due to the “decision to sharply reduce sales to online operators in North Amer-ica and the withdrawal of goods from Chinese independent distributors who were not aligned with the group’s new distribution strategies.”

Looking at markets, the company — whose portfolio includes its own brands like Ray-Ban, Oakley and Oliver Peoples, as well as licensed brands like Giorgio Armani, Michael Kors and Prada — said Europe and Latin America (especially Mexico) remained strong. The only market in Europe that did not perform strongly was Turkey, where political insta-bility has impacted consumer sentiment, said Stefano Grassi, the company’s chief financial officer.

In North America, although wholesale performed poorly, retail sales expanded slightly, thanks mostly to Sunglass Hut.

Among the challenges the company has faced over the July to September period, Vian pointed out that summer started late in June, but that the company “executed well.” However, he said LensCrafters faced a more challenging situation as the U.S. optical market was “particularly soft and we struggled with comparables.” The company “struggled with weaker traffic” in stores, he said. Meanwhile consumers

were more price conscious and “we, too, were more disciplined with a lower level of back-to-school promotions.”

E-commerce sales outshone the other channels, up 18 percent on the year-ago period.

Meanwhile, U.S. wholesale performance was impacted by the implementation of the group’s MAP (minimum advertised price) policy, which prohibits wholesale customers from advertising Ray-Ban prod-ucts at deep discounts compared to retail and has been in effect since July 1, as well as by the integration of the Oakley sport channel, the company said.

In Asia, the company said that while Hong Kong continued to remain negative, there were signs of stabilization in the third quarter and China was negative as the company continues to exit relation-ships with some distributors and focus on developing the retail channel, Grassi said. Retail comparables are “double-digit” in China; “the efforts we are taking are

paying off.”Regarding 2017, Grassi said next year

was going to be “a year of acceleration for us” with growth in the “midsingle-digit range.” While in terms of expected prof-itability, referring to earlier targets, he said that growth in operating income at 1.5 times sales “is not a question of ‘if ’ we are going to do it but ‘when.’ We are going through the budgeting process now. We will be more precise in early 2017.”

He confirmed the company targets some 15 billion euros in annual sales by 2024, compared with 8.8 billion euros in 2015.

The executives also shed light on growth plans for the rollout of LensCrafters shops in Macy’s stores in the U.S., with Grassi saying the company targeted some 47 by the end of 2016.

The company will continue to remain on the lookout for opportunities for mergers and acquisitions. Responding to a question about remarks in recent interviews that Luxottica was on the hunt for possible acquisitions, Vian said the company would continue scouting and was particularly interested in eventual opportunities more on the distribution side, “where there are areas we could accelerate.” He said that in terms of brands, the company couldn’t add much more to its already powerful portfolio: “Our portfolio is rich and we have to find ways to not compete against ourselves.”

● His appointment begins Nov. 1 and he will report to ceo and founder Jos van Tilburg.

BY LORELEI MARFIL

LONDON — G-Star Raw has named Aitor Throup as executive creative director of the men’s and women’s mainline ranges and Raw Research, a men’s line, WWD has learned.

Throup will report to chief executive officer and founder Jos van Tilburg. He will start on Nov. 1. The London-based designer will relocate to Amsterdam, where the brand is based. The role is a new one and Throup will encompass Pierre Morriset’s role, who has been with the brand for 27 years. Morriset will continue to collaborate with the brand on collection development and will take on a mentorship role for the design department.

Throup has worked as a creative consul-tant for the Dutch denim brand since 2013. The label, which set up an innovation lab within its Amsterdam headquarters last year, appointed Throup to lead the team.

With the new appointment, Throup said he doesn’t feel like he is “taking over” the helm of the label, and refers to designing products as “a collaborative process.”

“It’s more like an evolution of my involvement with them,” Throup said. “There’s so many amazing people involved in so many incredible teams, all involved in creating this one thing. I guess I do feel a sense of responsibility, and I’m incredi-bly happy to have this opportunity. For me the most exciting thing is that there’s never been this role at the company, so there’s a lot of incredible people doing incredible things in each department, but to have the opportunity to help align all of those and bring a sort of perspective, to help all of

them be as strong as possible by having the same variation, it’s very exciting.”

“I genuinely believe in the brand’s manifesto to become the definitive denim brand of the 21st century so I just want to facilitate that through a really focused vision and commitment to innovation, but not only innovation, also doing things in a different way because we can. We’re not complacent. We’re not stuck in the way that things should be done. My vision is to continue that commitment and to drive product forward.”

Under Throup, the designer took his cue from how his own studio operates and implemented a “shared ownership of the product” concept.

“There’s definitely a lot of opportunities to find optimal ways to develop and create

product,” Throup said. “In the past year or so, I’ve been directing a small team with which we developed the capsule collec-tion Raw Research, and within that team I changed our internal approach to design and development of product, actually to mirror my own studio in that everybody involved in the design and development process actually sits together.”

“There’s no separation between design and machine, product, development, etc.,” Throup added. “So there’s a shared owner-ship of the product, which I really believe in. It has worked incredibly well, to the point that every single person involved feels equally responsible for the product once it arrives from wherever it’s been actually manufactured. And that cross-departmental integration is something that I’m already looking into extending for my other brand.”

As a consultant, the Buenos Aires-born and Burnley, England-raised 36-year old has worked on a number of projects and clothing ranges for the company. This includes his first collection under G-Star Raw Research — a 20-piece an experimen-tal men’s wear capsule which included outerwear and trousers — shown during Paris Men’s Fashion Week last June.

His next collection for the company will be released in Paris during men’s collections in January. In addition, he created the concept of the brand’s flagship in London, directed the “What Is Raw?” advertising campaign, and designed the 3-D denim Staq pants.

Throup completed his bachelor’s in fashion design at Manchester Metropolitan University before earning his master’s in men’s wear from the Royal College of Art in 2006. An artist, designer and a creative director, his design house A.T. Studio develops his conceptual men’s label New Object Research, which debuted on the

London Fashion Week: Men’s calendar earlier this year.

Throup will continue to run his men’s label alongside his role at G-Star. “I’m fully committed to G-Star, so at least for this initial period I’m choosing to really have G-Star as our primary project,” Throup said. “But also at the same time continuing my own men’s wear brand in our own way. So we’re continuing the development of that as well.”

Throup has worked for brands including Stone Island and C.P. Company. He was the creative director of British rock band Kasabian and worked with Umbro on a number of projects, including England’s football kits for the World Cup.

According to the brand, the designer shares the same “design ethos that is rooted in innovation and identified by 3-D construction.”

G-Star chief marketing officer Thecla Schaeffer said of the appointment: “We’re proud to welcome Aitor as our creative director. Since 2013, Throup has been collaborating with us on a range of projects and collections so this step feels as a natural evolution. Both G-Star and Aitor share a design ethos rooted in innovation and identified by 3-D construction. As creative director, Throup will creatively lead a variety of strategic G-Star projects spanning both men’s wear and women’s wear, with the ultimate aim of globally aligning G-Star’s continuing ethos of denim innovation.”

Launched in 1989, G-Star Raw designs men’s and women’s premium denim and is headquartered in the Netherlands. The brand has more than 60,000 points of sale globally in 70 countries — 500 of which are monobrand stores — with flagships in New York, London, Paris, Tokyo and Amster-dam. It is sold at retailers including Asos, Bloomingdale’s, Macy’s.

Earlier this year, Pharrell Williams became co-owner of the brand and bought back Iconix Brands Group Inc.’s 50 per-cent interest in BBC Ice Cream LLC, owner of the Billionaire Boys Club and Ice Cream streetwear brands.

BUSINESS

Latin America, Europe Drive Luxottica’s Sales Growth

FASHION

G-Star Raw Taps Aitor Throup

Ray-Ban was one of the standout brands for the group in the third quarter.

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OCTOBER 25, 2016 15

Ti West Releases His First WesternThe director discusses his latest film, starring Ethan Hawke and John Travolta.

Soko on the RiseThe French singer talks about toughening up on the big screen, why L.A. is a vegan heaven and her love of fashion.

Ti West

Soko in “The Dancer.”

Stéphanie “Soko” Sokolinski

“Music nerd, alien lover, white Goth, hyperemotional being” is how Soko describes her multifac-eted self.

In fact, these are the words the French indie-singer turned big-screen actress chose to headline her colorful Instagram account — a testament to the 30-year-old’s quirky personal-ity and knack for flamboyant, retro-romantic dressing.

“I love to be in character, which is also why I act,” says Stéphanie “Soko” Sokolinski, sporting a mélange of ruffled blouse, flouncy skirt, gargantuan platform sandals and eclectic mix of jewelry from the latest go-to names in fashion. “This is Gucci, this is Giamba, Rochas, Pamela Love,” she says pointing to her Victorian-tinged outfit, “put together by a vintage fan — moi,” she giggles, then adds in a husky voice: “I’m like a punk — but I’m very, very healthy.”

She swears she is not much of “a party head” — “I am really very sober, definitely need my eight hours of sleep,” and that this is partly due to her agoraphobia — “a crowd of drunk people looking for hookups until 5 a.m. is like the last thing I want to put myself into.”

Fortunately, Soko has found ways to cheat herself into having fun in big crowds. The singer is a fixture during fashion week, often spotted DJing for big brands — tucked away safely behind her spinning table.

Perhaps the best proof of her affable versatility is her choice of recent acting parts. Soko is promoting “The Stopover,” where she plays a tormented soldier

on leave following fierce battle in Afghanistan, as well as “The Dancer,” based on the real life of modern dance pioneer Loïe Fuller, a contemporary of Isadora Duncan, played by Lily-Rose Depp, Johnny Depp’s daughter.

Both films competed in Cannes this year. “The Dancer” is to hit theaters across France on Oct. 28.

Fuller’s expressive dance rou-tines, which involved the frantic swirling of giant dress sleeves carried by her via long, wooden sticks, left Soko as fit as a boxer.

“Stéph [Stéphanie Di Giusto, the film’s director] didn’t want to make it a dance movie made by women with a predominantly female cast, chichi and shit. We were making a portrait of an artist that is a fighter. Nothing else matters. Therefore, she’s training like she’s getting into the ring,” Soko explained.

That meant two hours of daily training “with a straight-up sports coach,” engaging her in running, swimming, weight-lifting, “and like all-around toning, because I needed to have enough muscles and endurance,” which she then topped with five hours of dance per day.

It’s safe to say that Soko is as much of a fighter off the screen.

When she lost her father at the age of five, her mother launched an ambitious plan to divert her daughter’s attention, unknowingly laying the cornerstones to her fu-ture career. “My mom wanted me to have distractions, so I did piano lessons, judo, swimming, horse-back riding, dancing and theater class. All of it makes sense now because I can use it — even the

horseback riding. Stéph is like: ‘You think you can ride a horse?’ and I’m like: ‘Hell, yeah.’”

Using acting as an artistic and somewhat therapeutic act of ex-pression, she admits it’s hard at times to dissociate herself from her roles. “I get so wrapped up in what I’m doing, I‘m very much like Loïe — she is such a hard worker, she has no room for intimacy or personal life, nothing other than her whole heart is devoted to making art and that I feel is what my life is about. Everybody keeps telling me I have to protect myself, but how the f--k do you do that?”

The dark side of her newly gained celebrity status already caught up with her through a much too public breakup from girlfriend Kristen Stewart. Soko says her personal life gets regularly “shattered.” “Everything collapses around me, I can’t answer the phone, I can’t see my friends, it’s so bad, it’s a lonely journey,” she laments.

Thank goodness there is music.

Once her red carpet obliga-tions are over, she wants to go back to her studio in Los Angeles, where she took roots eight years ago. The perfect place for a veg-an, she concludes — “you don’t just have green salad and French fries as an option.“

And then there is perhaps a future behind the camera. Soko recently discovered a band called Bleached — “I think I wanna direct a video for them,” she noted, before adding with her disarm-ingly charming honesty: “I’m also hyperactive.” — PAULINA SZMYDKE

Ti West's latest movie took him out of the horror genre into Tom Ford's backyard.

After making his mark in the indie horror genre, West decided to tackle the most traditional of cinematic American genres, the Western. Starring Ethan Hawke and John Travolta, "In a Valley of Violence" is a revenge tale influenced by the aesthetics of Spaghetti Westerns. West wrote the script with Hawke in mind for the leading role. "I pitched him the idea, and he sort of dug it," West recalls. "I was like, 'Well, I’m gonna go write the script, and I’ll send it to you. If you don’t like it, don’t worry about it, we’ll never talk about it again. But if you do like it, let's make this.'"

Hawke jumped on board and West found a secondary leading actor in John Travolta, who plays a mustachioed town marshal. "Travolta got the script and liked it, and wanted to meet and have dinner," West said. "It was a supersurreal evening, he was such a wonderfully nice, smart, great guy, who totally got the script on every level. He got the humor of the script — all of it," he continued. "I think John Travolta likes character roles, and this is one that he can kind of disap-pear into."

The cast also includes James

Ransone, and Taissa Farmiga and Karen Gillan as bickering sisters, who add a dose of feminism to an otherwise male-heavy genre.

In the movie, which opened Friday, Hawke's character is Paul, a loner ex-soldier who wanders into a dusty, deteriorating mining town on his way to Mexico. There, he encounters a local gang, led by the son of the town's marshal. Much of the plot line is driven by a sense of cabin fever and machis-mo within the town. "Hopefully you see the characters act in certain ways, and you can relate to it — that’s the goal, and even with the violence in this movie," West said. "I think all these people are really desperate for something better, and they’re all making pretty poor choices in how to go about it."

The film's most central char-acter, however, doesn't have any lines. When Paul's loyal sidekick, Jumpy the dog, is killed by the marshal's son in the middle of the night, Paul abandons his re-serve for violence and returns to the town to exact revenge. West noted that his decision to use the (impressively trained) dog as a catalyst for action instead of, say, a romantic interest, is partly due to the oversaturation of violence in film.

"As audiences, we're so

desensitized to violence," West explained. "However, the threat of the dog in this movie makes ev-eryone incredibly uncomfortable," he continued. "When you see something happen to an animal, it kind of wakes you back up to 'Oh, this is actually awful.'"

The Western and horror genres are both tethered to violence, although West noted that his approach is not to use violence as a cinematic device for shock value alone, but is instead an exploration of "how violence affects people and how they deal with it."

"Everyone is in way over their heads and they don’t handle the situation like they would in a movie at all, they handle it like dips--ts in real life," he explained of the characters in his film. "That was always the interesting idea to me, finding this weird clumsy sense of realism in a very archetypal situation." Also, "because it’s a revenge movie, suspense plays a part in it," he explained. "I think I’m most interested in suspense more than anything else."

And where does Tom Ford come into the picture? "In a Valley of Violence" built out an existing Western film set located on the Cerro Pelon Ranch in New Mexico, which is owned by the designer-movie director. "Basical-

ly there are about three Western sets in the country that are left over from other movies," West explained. "They kind of get canni-balized — another movie will come in and knock down buildings and put up a new church or whatever. They're going through various stages of disarray."

This particular set has been used previously for films such as "Silverado," "Wild Wild West" and "3:10 to Yuma." In the vein of tra-ditional cinema, West also chose to shoot using 35 millimeter film. "I just had this feeling that if we had shot it on video, the very first frame would look like either a reenactment or like the behind-the-scenes of a movie, not a real movie," West explained. "I’ve shot all my movies on film for the most part, and I’ll try to keep doing it as long as it's around."

Or for as long as he's around making movies. West has a few other projects in the works, including a horror TV series, a sci-fi film, a Sixties "hippie" story and an old-fashioned horror movie. "We’ll see! Those things or it could be none of those things," West said, knocking on a wooden table. "You have to [have a lot of projects in the works] because most of them will evap-orate into thin air." — KRISTEN TAUERS

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OCTOBER 25, 2016 16

Memo Pad

Fashion Scoops

GearheadThe New York Times Co. has acquired gadget and gear blogs The Wirecutter and The Sweethome in an all-cash deal that closes Oct. 24. The Times did not disclose how much it paid for the properties.

The properties, which serve as product recommendation sites, were founded in 2011 by technology journalist Brian Lam, a former editor at Gizmodo and Wired. Lam will stay on in an advisory role, while Jacqui Cheng, editor in chief, and Christopher Mascari, product director, will remain in their roles. Ben French, vice president of NYT Beta, will serve as interim gen-eral manager and will work to integrate The Wirecutter and The Sweethome

into The Times Company.According to The Times, both blogs

bring in revenue primarily through affiliate links, meaning they earn money by offering direct links to retailers in exchange for a share of the sale. Retailers span from Amazon to smaller, niche shops.

Publishers have found some suc-cess in affiliate marketing. Under Nick Denton, Gawker Media, which included Gizmodo, was able to reap over one-third of its revenue from affiliate com-merce, or about $10 million, according to reports. The business strategy isn’t nearly as lucrative as more direct meth-ods of e-commerce, but it also carries much lower risk than holding inventory, for instance. — ALEXANDRA STEIGRAD

Garden PartyJust call her MC: Marion Cotillard’s initials are spelled out in color badges

on the strap of the Lady Dior bag she cradles in her latest campaign for the house.

Photographer Craig McDean cap-tured the actress in a luxuriant garden at the childhood home of founder

Christian Dior in Granville, France — now a museum. She wears looks from Dior’s cruise 2017 collection that was paraded at Blenheim Palace outside of London and designed by the team of Serge Ruffieux and Lucie Meier awaiting the arrival of the French house’s seventh couturier, Maria Grazia Chiuri.

Cotillard has fronted Lady Dior campaigns since 2008 — here assum-ing a natural and romantic guise amid verdant greens and pink roses. Dior is said to have discovered his apprecia-tion for flowers, which inspired many of his designs, at the cliff-top villa, known as Les Rhumbs.

The ads are slated to break Thurs-day in Brazilian Harper’s Bazaar and Gioia in Italy. — MILES SOCHA

Ooh La LaVictoria’s Secret said it is to stage its annual fashion show in Paris, confirming a report in WWD on Sept. 13 that it was eyeing the French capital.

The show is to be broadcast on Dec. 5 on the CBS Television Network and is watched in more than 190 countries.

Musical performers at the extravaganza are to be revealed at a later date.

It is understood the event will be filmed on Nov. 30 and include a lingerie show featuring such Victoria’s Secret Angels as Adri-ana Lima, Alessandra Ambrosio, Lily Aldridge, Elsa Hosk, Jasmine Tookes, Josephine Skriver, Lais Ri-beiro, Martha Hunt, Romee Strijd, Sara Sampaio, Stella Maxwell and Taylor Hill.

While often held at the 69th Regiment Armory in New York, the show has also been staged in cities including Miami; Los Angeles, and Cannes, France.

It moved to London in 2014 and returned Stateside last year.

The glitzy event has featured musical performances by the likes of Taylor Swift, Selena Gomez, The Weeknd and Ellie Goulding, along with its cast of famous models.

Elements of the program include model profiles and behind-the-scenes looks at the entertainment spectacle. — MILES SOCHA

Take A Hint?Francisco Costa, the former women’s creative director for Cal-vin Klein Collection, may be ready to reveal his next chapter.

The designer, who parted ways with his former employer in April after 14 years to make way for Raf Simons, posted a sketch on Insta-gram over the weekend showing both a man and a woman. The man was dressed in an oversize white shirt and black pants while the woman was in a flowy white dress with black accents.

Could the sketches be the precursor to Costa revealing his next design gig? He could not be reached for comment but because it was not his choice to leave Calvin Klein, he is not believed to have a noncompete that would impact him joining another company.

Costa and Italo Zucchelli, the creative director for Calvin Klein men’s collection, were let go in advance of Simons joining the firm in August.

The Brazilian-born Costa has lived in the U.S. since the Eighties and attended the Fashion Insti-tute of Technology. He worked for Oscar de la Renta and Bill Blass before joining Calvin Klein in 2003. He received the Council of Fashion Designers of America’s Womenswear Designer of the Year award in 2006 and 2008 and the Cooper Hewitt National Fashion Design Award in 2009. — JEAN E. PALMIERI

Fun With FendiSaks Fifth Avenue is getting festive with Fendi, with an exclu-sive holiday capsule collection, window displays launching Thursday and the Fendirumis characters making their U.S. debut at Saks flagships on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue and in Beverly Hills.

“Fendi has found such a fun and clever way to bring their iconic product to life — almost literally,” said Tracy Margolies, Saks’ chief merchant.

The Fendirumis are two furry cartoonish costumed perform-ers, Piro-chan and Bug-kun, who pay homage to Japan’s Kigurumi pop figures. They’re not to be con-fused with the costumed charac-ters roaming Times Square.

“We’ll be watching them at the flagship New York store on Thursday as they unveil their spin on our iconic center six windows,” Margolies said. “Each one will include a Fendirumi take on the exclusive Saks x Fendi holiday collection, alongside new Fendi holiday accessories and ready-to-wear pieces.”

On Saturday, the Fendirumi will appear at Saks Beverly Hills.

The capsule collection will be sold at the Beverly Hills; Boston; Bal Harbour, Fla.; Phoenix; Na-ples, Fla.; Atlanta; San Francisco, and Manhattan stores. At the New York flagship, Fendi mer-chandise will be visible in several areas including the third-floor atrium, 10022-Shoe and the “wow wall” on the main floor. — DAVID MOIN

A Special JacketAside from being an omnipres-ent fashion trend and an age-old plot narrative, “Boy Meets Girl” is also the name of a painting by the artist Ed Ruscha.

In one of the more unusual alliances in recent months, the artist has lent the design of his 1987 acrylic painting depicting a grid of lights, overlaid with the words “Boy Meets Girl” for one bespoke Huntsman jacket. Only one jacket will be made for a man or woman. That opportunity will be auctioned at the Alzheimer’s Association’s Rita Hayworth gala in New York on Oct. 25.

The collaboration was bro-kered, so to speak, by Anthony Peck whose father Gregory was a Huntsman loyalist. After seeing

Huntsman’s printed silk linings with works from Francis Bacon and René Magritte, the younger Peck suggested to chairman Pierre Lagrange that Ruscha would be a good candidate to team up with. Lagrange paid a visit to Ruscha’s California studio, and the artist liked the prospect and was keen to support the Alzheimer’s Associa-tion charity and support research.

The process, understandably, required great care. Ruscha approved each stage of printing the lining and then cutting it to fit the garments. Huntsman general manager Carol Pierce was re-sponsible for finding a top-notch digital printer that could create the design with the right inks, quality of print and color palette. She said, “Technically, it’s quite a task that you have to take on, be-cause you cut the actual lining so that all the detail of the painting

matches up perfectly.”To ensure that every element

was up to snuff, samples were sent back and forth between the printer, Huntsman’s tailors and Ruscha’s studio. Far from a rush job, all of the parties involved spent nearly a year exacting the design until the printing of Ruscha’s work on the silk was approved.

Five artist’s proofs were made, but those are not for sale. Lauren Hutton, the owner of the original “Boy Meets Girl” painting, and a Huntsman client, has one of the jackets, as does Ruscha. His son Eddie, an artist in his own right, has a slate gray velvet smoking jacket lined with “Boy Meets Girl,” and fitted by Huntsman head cut-ter Campbell Carey. Art dealer Larry Gagosian, who represents the elder Ruscha, also now has a jacket in his closet. The Gago-sian gallery in London will show Ruscha’s “Extremes and In-be-tweens” through Dec. 17.

Lagrange scored the fifth jacket. Bidders will vie for their own at the Cipriani 42nd Street event, which honors HSN presi-dent Bill Brand. — ROSEMARY FEITELBERG

Statement PiecesThere’s enough feathery, lightweight jewelry on the market

these days. Rashida Jones want-ed something on the opposite end of the spectrum for her fine jewelry collection, launched in partnership with online jewelry company Iconery.

“Things have gotten so dainty in terms of fine jewelry,” Jones said. “I wanted a return to Seven-ties, Eighties bold, iconic symbols and what better way to do it than make it yourself?”

The collection includes a mix of rings, earrings, bracelets and necklaces. There’s a mariner chain choker and bracelet made of 14-karat gold fill and a 14-karat gold vermeil square ring with a black diamond and matching square bangle. Other pieces use symbols such as the ankh or hamsa decorated with black diamonds.

Prices range from $95 for a pair of 14-karat gold vermeil ankh stud earrings to $875 for an ankh pendant necklace with black diamonds.

“It is bold and chunky, but it’s all very light, too,” Jones said.

Her foray into the jewel-ry-making process was the 2013 collaboration with Dannijo, but the deal with Iconery is the first that’s truly her own, she said. Iconery, which raised an undisclosed seed round of funding nearly a year ago, sells its pieces in its online store and uses 3-D printing in its produc-tion process.

“We power and produce fine jewelry collections for influenc-ers, designers and brands so this is not a temporal type of thing,” said founder and chief executive officer Ivka Adam. “We work hand-in-hand with the influencer to produce their collections for them.”

That mix of partnerships has had the company working with Stone Fox Bride, Luv Aj, Ariel Gor-don, Maya Brenner and VivaLuxu-ry among others.

“I had little experience in terms of designing. I had an idea and Iconery’s been superhelpful in executing and making it real,” Jones said. “What’s nice is you think you don’t know what you want and then when you see what you don’t want, you can correct it. I’m obviously not a professional jewelry designer, but once I saw [samples] I could tell what I wanted it to be.” — KARI HAMANAKA

Marion Cotillard with a Lady Dior bag in Dior’s latest campaign,

photographed by Craig McDean.

The Fendirumis

Ed Ruscha and his son Eddie wearing their Huntsman jackets.