Daily EDition october 24, 2016 1

In our inaugural Global Forum, WWD headed to China and, with SKP, assembled some of the industry's directional thinkers to explore fast-moving consumers, digital acceleration, branding and retail strategies. For more, see pages 7 to 12.

WWD Global Fashion Forum

In Beijing

http://www.rkf.com/

october 24, 2016 3

Rihanna Shuts Down Debate Chatter With Political Statement of Her Own● She's #withher.● Jennifer Lawrence

Proves Her Friendship To Emma Stone at 'La La Land' Screening

● Why 'Silicon Valley Fashion Week' Is Not a Joke

● Karen Elson on Working in Fashion Even After Being Rejected From NYFW Due to Lack of 'Body Type Diversity'

● Peuterey Instagram Account Hacked

TOP 5TRenDingoN WWD.com

NEWSmAKERSThis Week’s most Talked About Names In our Industry

Bernard Arnault

Azzedine Alaïa

Raf Simons

consuelo castiglioni

● Francesco Risso will become creative director of the label.

by Luisa Zargani

MILAN — Another designer exit is shaking up the Italian fashion scene – perhaps a casualty of an increasingly competitive industry rattled by changes in consumer spending, geopolitical uncertainties, currency volatility and growing competi-tion. This time, however, it’s not a case of yet another revolving-door exit as its the brand’s founder who has decided to leave.

On Friday, Consuelo Castiglioni said she was parting ways with Marni. Her hus-band Gianni, who held the title of pres-ident and who co-created the company in 1994, is also leaving, as are their two children – Carolina, director of special projects, and Giovanni, who worked in the operations department.

Francesco Risso, a Prada alum, will succeed Castiglioni as creative director of the label. His first collection for Marni will bow for fall 2017.

“These were hectic and exciting years, which absorbed all of my energies to create a project I am proud of,” Consuelo Castiglioni said. “Thanks also to the con-stant support of my family, who allowed me to stay true to my idea, I built a brand with a precise and recognizable iden-tity. The time has now come to dedicate myself to my private life. I thank all the people who believed in this project and who, with loyal dedication, have helped me along this fantastic journey.”

Market sources indicated Castiglioni’s decision was personal, a fact empha-sized by OTB, the conglomerate owned by Renzo Rosso that took full control of Marni in 2015.

“The world pays tribute to the original vision of Consuelo, and to a unique brand which we are proud to have in our group. I wish her the very best,” said Rosso. “I am happy to welcome Francesco, whose talent will contribute to writing a new chapter in the history of this house, which is Italian at heart and global in spirit. I am confident that the creative team and the management of Marni, which have contrib-uted to this success, will continue to make this brand reach exciting new goals.”

Market sources speculated the pres-sure to deliver increasing profits and sales and to expand the brand may have been contrary to Castiglioni’s nature. “Marni has always been a niche brand and turning it into a commercial business is not really part of her modus operandi,” said one source.

“It’s one thing to develop a family company and it’s something altogether different to be part of a big holding,” said another source.

One luxury analyst said “usually, after an acquisition, one keeps the pre-existing structure when things go well, but these are times when everybody is struggling. These are VUCA times – volatile, uncer-tain, complex and ambiguous. It’s hard for big powerful brands, and Marni has a niche dimension—it’s even harder.”

In 2015, Marni revenues grew 15.4 percent to 150 million euros, or $166.5 million, compared with the previous year.

A day after the presentation of the Altagamma Observatory, Armando Branchini, vice chairman of Italian luxury goods association Fondazione Alt-agamma, reiterated that the industry saw more than 20 changes in chief executive officers and creative director appoint-ments in the last 10 months alone.

“We are in a more complex and more competitive moment and this brings

changes as a consequence—just see the frequency of changes in business and style,” said Branchini. As reported, according to the Altagamma Worldwide Market Monitor 2016 and a study by Bain & Co. sales of personal luxury goods are expected to drop 1 percent to 249 billion euros, or $273.9 billion, this year.

Castiglioni's exit isn't the first time Rosso has had to deal with the depar-ture of the founder of a company he has acquired. In 2009, the Italian business-man saw Martin Margiela exit his name-sake fashion house seven years after Rosso acquired a majority stake in it. According to sources at the time, when Margiela decided to walk away from the company he wanted to pour creative energies into painting and wished to leave the fashion business. In October 2014, Rosso tapped John Galliano as creative director of Mai-son Margiela and the British designer has revived buzz around the brand.

Rosso is now betting that Risso, who has a solid reputation for his work at Prada, will be able to be pick up where Castiglioni has left off at Marni. To be sure, there is common ground between the design sensibility of the two brands, created by two designers who have a clear and independent vision of fashion.

Risso studied at Florence Polimoda, New York’s Fashion Institute of Technol-ogy and Central Saint Martins in London. His work experience started at Anna Molinari, and after stints at Alessandro Dell’Acqua and Malo, in 2008 he joined Prada Group to work on the brand’s women’s show collections and on special brand endorsement projects.

The understated and reserved Castigli-oni, who shuns the limelight and cher-ry-picks interviews, has built her brand with constant research into new fabrics and materials, unusual color combina-tions, artistic references, eccentricity, deftness with precision, and asymmetric cuts. She epitomizes the seasonless trend many are beginning to embrace.

“Either you love or you hate Marni,” she told WWD last April. “Those that first approach it always loyally come back, perhaps because there are no seasons, you don’t throw pieces away, you keep them and wear them again.”

A self-described instinctive designer, with a passion for the arts, who worked with a close-knit team of 10 designers, she admitted she did not follow trends nor did she ever agonize over commercial concerns, focusing on strength of charac-ter and an independent spirit.

“I do listen to [merchandising] unfor-tunately, but only up to a certain point, otherwise [the collections] become banal if you follow what the commercial office wants. I logically listen to the demands of the market, especially from our stores

but one [should proceed on one’s own path],” she said in April.

Marni’s first season, launched in 1994, was a fur collection, meant to diversify the production of Gianni Castiglioni’s family company, Ciwifurs, a storied licensee for several designer brands. Retailers started asking for apparel to go with the furs and then accessories.

The Castiglionis first showed men’s wear together with women’s wear for spring 2002 and the category had its first solo runway show for fall 2006. Marking the increasing relevance of the brand in men’s wear, Marni was guest designer at Pitti Uomo in Florence in January 2015 at the Marino Marini Museum.

A friend of the Castiglioni family, Rosso first took a stake in Marni in 2012 to help expand the brand. Gianni Castiglioni had told WWD a few months earlier that he was seeking a financial partner to support the company’s growth and retail development. Previous talks with private equity funds fell through as Castiglioni resisted pressure to grow the company at the expense of the brand’s integrity and niche positioning.

As reported, currency fluctuations, the repositioning of Diesel and invest-ments in Marni dented OTB’s profitabil-ity in 2015, on the back of a gain in sales compared with the previous year. In the 12 months ended Dec. 31, net profits dropped 36 percent to 3.5 million euros, or $3.8 million, from 5.5 million euros, or $7.3 million, in 2014.

Revenues rose 1.9 percent to 1.59 billion euros, or $1.76 billion, compared with 1.56 billion euros, or $2 billion, in the previous year.

Last November, OTB completed the acquisition of Marni, taking full control three years after buying a 61 percent stake in the Italian fashion company. OTB has worked on the development of Marni, investing in the brand’s first ad campaign. OTB chief executive officer Riccardo Stilli said Marni was "growing at a very good double-digit pace.” Last year, boutiques were opened in Milan, London and San Francisco. The company has expanded into children’s wear and the first collection of eyewear under a new license signed last year with Marchon was presented during Milan Fashion Week in February. Marni last year also signed a license for the production and distribu-tion of the brand’s men’s wear line with Staff International.

The company counts 82 directly oper-ated stores and around 20 franchised units.

OTB controls Diesel, Maison Margiela, Viktor & Rolf and manufacturing arms Staff International and Brave Kid, and produces and distributes collections for Dsquared2.

business

Marni Joins Italy's Fashion Shake-up

Backstage at Marni's spring show.

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For Inquiries Contact: Robert Siegel or KT Stallings Bren

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● The designer had most recently been freelancing after running his own label and working at Cerruti and Jack Wills.by Patty Huntington AND LoreLei MarfiL

SYDNEY — Plans for a memorial service for Richard Nicoll were still being finalized Sunday following the designer's sudden death from a heart attack here at age 39.

Nicoll reportedly was taken by ambu-lance to St. Vincent's Hospital from his Kings Cross, Sydney, apartment in the early hours of Friday morning.

Nicoll is survived by his parents and sister.

“We are terrifically saddened by this news," said Australian Wool innovation chief executive officer Stuart McCullough. "He was a great contributor to the improvement of wool’s reputation, both in Australia and abroad. We send our condo-lences to his family and friends."

“We are all deeply saddened by the news that the wonderful, kind-hearted and talented Richard Nicoll passed away. He had been part of Newgen, Fashion Forward, shortlisted for the BFC/Vogue Designer Fashion Fund and BFC/GQ Mens-wear Fund, and showed both at London Fashion Week and the first few editions of London Collections Men. He had many friends here and in the British fashion community and he will be truly missed,” said Caroline Rush, chief executive officer of the British Fashion Council.

Fabio Piras, Central Saint Martins MA course director, said: "It is with immense

sadness that I heard the news this morning of Richard’s passing. My thoughts are with him and with his family and many friends. Richard will be remembered as both a very talented designer and a charming and elegant human being. I knew him first as a kind-hearted, sensitive and gifted student, and he took these qualities with him throughout his successful design career. Richard was one of these special alumni who touched and inspired his fellow students. He showed them that to find an original and audible voice you do not necessarily have to shout. He will be greatly missed."

"Richard Nicoll was a perceptive and extremely sensitive designer. He was versatile and had the most acutely honed sensibility for color of all the designers of

his generation," continued Willie Walters, Central Saint Martins BA fashion course director. "As an individual he was reserved and wore his talent lightly. He was thought-ful and had a great sense of humor. I am very saddened and shocked by his sudden death. It is difficult to believe he is gone."

“I collaborated a lot with him,” said former Vogue Australia editor in chief Kirstie Clements. “I remember going to see his first Cerruti show. I was seated next to his family and everybody was so excited. He was super talented. I saw him recently, and he was really happy to be home and beginning a new chapter in his life. That’s really sad,” she added, of his passing.

"Richard was one of the quiet stars of fashion. He was a true gentleman, a won-derful friend and a much-loved son," wrote his family in a statement. "Anyone that had the privilege of knowing him knew that he had a heart of gold, an innate kindness, and a modesty and humility that some-times didn't allow him to acknowledge his own exceptional creative talent.

"He loved his life in Australia," the Nicoll family continued. "He had recently con-firmed a new role at Adidas and a collabora-tion with Woolmark, both of which he was excited about. We will miss his handsome face, his sense of humor and his love."

An Adidas spokeswoman confirmed Nicoll was preparing to assume a leading creative role at the company's headquar-ters. "Adidas is deeply saddened to hear the terrible news about Richard Nicoll," the company said in a statement. "He was an incredibly talented individual, and we felt honored that he would be joining our team in January. Our thoughts are with his family at this time."

Born in London in 1977, the designer moved to Perth with his family at the age of three, departing again for the U.K. 14 years later.

He graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2002 with a BA in men's wear and an MA in women's wear, and established his

women's wear label in London in 2005, debuting at London Fashion Week the following year. In 2008, Nicoll won three Association Nationale pour le Dévelop-pement des Arts de la Mode prizes and took the Best Young Designer category at the Elle Style Awards in 2009. He was a two-time British Fashion Council Vogue Fashion Fund finalist.

Nicoll was the creative director of Cerru-ti’s women's wear label from 2009 to 2011. Between February 2014 and October 2015, he served as creative director of British clothing brand Jack Wills.

Nicoll closed his own label in late 2014 to focus on freelance projects under the Nicoll Inc. brand name. Projects included a Sydney-based surfwear brand called Double Rainbouu in collaboration with Toby Jones and Mikey Nolan, which was unveiled off-schedule during Mer-cedes-Benz Fashion Week Australia in May.

Nicoll’s last social media commentary was a series of “Throwback Thursday” postings on his private Instagram account one week ago – three photos of what would be his final collection, for spring 2015, including the glow-in-the-dark fiber optic “Tinker Bell” dress that was produced in collaboration with show sponsor Disney.

“I launched my label 12 years ago and it was obviously a very, very different envi-ronment economically and commercially,” he told WWD in July at the International Woolmark Prize 2016-17 regional finals in Sydney, at which he was a guest judge.

“I was able to ride this wave of Central Saint Martins graduates and there was a sort of celebration of pure creativity at the time. And I think what’s different now is that the designers need to be very, very mindful of price point and margin, and there’s not really the room to be sort of particularly free with creativity, if it's not sort of backed with commercialism," he said. "To start now you have to have a pretty solid commercial foundation and thick skin, I guess."

Fashion

Richard Nicoll, 39

Richard Nicoll

● The designer will present his spring line on Feb. 1 during the biannual event.

by Jean e. PaLMieri AND aria HugHes

New York Fashion Week: Men’s just got a marquee name to add to the roster for its fourth edition: Raf Simons.

The Belgian designer said Friday that he will join the Council of Fashion Designers of America’s official men’s schedule and will show his men's collection on Feb. 1 in New York City for the first time. In the past, he has shown his signature collection in Paris. He has not yet revealed the venue.

Steven Kolb, president and chief execu-tive officer of the CFDA, said the addition of Simons to the lineup is part of the group’s ongoing efforts to attract internationally known designers to the fledgling event. “He’s a very talented guy and a world-class designer who brings a whole new level and perspective to the shows,” Kolb said.

Whether other high-profile names jump on board remains to be seen.

“We won’t start scheduling designers for a few weeks,” Kolb said. “But we were happy to announce him joining the roster. From our side, we’ve worked hard to build something strong over the past three

seasons and we’re excited Raf wants to show in New York.”

The news that Simons is shifting his men’s show to Manhattan comes on the heels of the designer being appointed creative director at Calvin Klein. The New York-based Calvin Klein has not said when Simons will show his first collection for that company, although speculation is that it is likely to be during the women’s shows in February rather than during New York Fashion Week: Men’s. The brand has shown its men’s line in Milan during that city’s men’s fashion week in January in past sea-sons. Simons was traveling and unavailable to comment further and spokespeople from Calvin Klein did not respond.

But with Simons now committed to showing in New York, it may lead to other big names jumping in. While the shows lost some well-known brands last July — Rag & Bone opted to show men’s and women’s together during the women’s shows, and Billy Reid chose to do something in his home town in Alabama — the CFDA is open to them returning. “We will continue to bring people back who've left and bring in new people, and adding someone of the caliber of Raf will only add to the roster,” Kolb said.

The men’s shows will be held Jan. 30 to Feb. 2 at Skylight Clarkson North in Tribeca,

the CFDA said Friday. This places the runway shows about a week after the trade shows that traditionally draw retailers to New York City in January. Project, Liberty Fairs and MRket will be held Jan. 23 to 25. Last season, Liberty Fairs and Capsule over-lapped with the runway shows while Project and MRket were held the following week.

The addition of Simons to the New York show calendar will undoubtedly give the season a major boost. While the shows have generated buzz over the last few sea-sons, retailers and press have complained that the New York edition has lacked a major name to put it on par with Milan, Paris, or even London. While Ralph Lau-ren, Tommy Hilfiger, Michael Kors, Thom Browne and other New York designers

have held events or presentations during the shows, none have held a runway show. John Varvatos, Joseph Abboud and Todd Snyder have staged shows, however, as have many emerging designers.

Kolb bristled about the criticism that the big-name designers don’t participate in NYFW: Men’s. “Just because Thom shows in Paris and Calvin in Milan and Ralph was not there, people say it’s some kind of statement against NYFW: Men’s. But it’s a business decision that each brand makes and what the CFDA does is support designers to make the decisions that are best for them. We don’t see it as a negative, we celebrate it.”

He also sees the New York men’s shows as an opportunity to showcase new faces. “When you look at American men’s wear, there’s a lot of sportswear and athleisure,” he said, “and we’re focused on developing the more-directional designer brands.” He said that while some of the emerging labels participated in a Samsung-sponsored showcase including Brett Johnson, Devon Halfnight Leflufy, Garciavelez, Second/Layer and others, “they’ve been over-looked.” But with Simons’ participation, that could change next year.

“I’ve heard a lot of conversations about the demise of NYFW: Men’s, but that’s so far from the truth,” he said. “We’re committed to it.”

CFDA also said that its sponsors are returning for another year, including Ama-zon Fashion, East Dane, Cadillac, Axe and Samsung, among others. The application to be listed on the official NYFW: Men's schedule is now open for all returning designers, with new designer applications launching on Oct. 31.

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Raf Simons to Show at New York Fashion Week: Men’s

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WWD Global Fashion ForumIndustry leaders and pioneers met in Beijing to share thoughts on the

Chinese market and the evolving consumer who shapes it.

Tommy Hilfiger’s see-now-buy-now fashion extravaganza during the women’s shows in New York last month marked only the first step in “moving the needle in the fashion business in a brand new way.”

Soon he’ll do an encore for his male customers.

“We believe we are at the forefront of changing the way people are buying fashion, the way people are looking at fashion and the way we are presenting fashion,” he said during a keynote address titled “How Global Brands are Built and Remain Relevant.”

“We have to listen to the consumer, and the consumer is demanding imme-diate gratification,” he said. “We believe it is the future. I strongly believe that the consumer today does not want to see something on the runway in February and wait until September in order to buy it. By that time, it’s old news. By that time, she’s seen it on celebrities, on social media, in magazines and she wants something new. Therefore we are answering to her needs and in the very near future we’re doing the same thing with men.”

The American designer touted the Sept. 10 event on a pier, which spotlighted a collection he designed with model du jour Gigi Hadid, as an unqualified success with the hashtag #tommynow earning 2.2 bil-lion impressions and virtually all products selling out in the immediate aftermath.

The event resonated strongly in China, where it was the most viewed live-streamed content that day, attracting an audience of 3.8 million, according to Hilfiger. What’s more, the content trended on Tmall.com for 48 hours and traffic to the brand's online shop in China increased

by 300 percent, the designer said.Hilfiger followed up the Manhattan

event with a tour whose impact he likened to that of a rock band. It took Hadid to Shanghai, Tokyo and Dubai to meet cus-tomers and relive elements of the event’s carnival mood and setting.

“The crowds were so enormous, we had to close down street corners,” he said. “It’s about being part of pop culture and being a part of what’s happening in the world of social media today. Because we’re talking about tapping into influencers and tapping into a consumer base that keeps our brand young and fresh.”

The designer recounted his journey from People’s Place, the groovy store he launched in Elmira, N.Y., with $150 and 20 pairs of bell bottoms as a junior in high school, to a global megabrand boasting 484

stores in the People’s Republic of China.While he acknowledged the need to

adapt products, events and ambassadors to match local tastes and interests, he touted that the “same taste level” exists globally, a refrain heard from many speak-ers at the one-day event.

The designer characterized his com-pany, founded in 1985, as a serial disrupter, starting with its controversial billboard touting Hilfiger alongside design greats like Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein and Perry Ellis. The brand went on to become Estée Laud-er’s first fragrance licensee in 1992 and one of American fashion’s early initial public offerings the same year.

The business then initiated a global expansion and today comprises 454 stores in the Americas generating $3.3 billion in revenues; 624 locations in Europe

generating $2.4 billion, and its Chinese network representing $650 million in revenues.

As his businesses matured in the U.S. and Europe, Hilfiger entered the Chinese market in 2004 with a licensee, moving to a joint venture in 2011 and this year to a fully owned and operated model, touted repeatedly as the preferred option at the conference.

“We focus on the Chinese consumer now, we listen to what he and she wants and needs,” Hilfiger said. “From colors and sizing and fabrics and events, we’re always molding and shaping to the regions.”

While Hilfiger’s products are sold on Tmall, part of online giant Alibaba, the designer recently launched his own e-store in China, touted as another disruptive first.

“We really believe that being innovative is the way of the future,” Hilfiger said, flashing slides showing the company’s digital show-room and virtual reality goggles that allow users to step behind the scenes of a fashion shoot with Hadid. “We also feel that if we’re not on the edge of technology and we’re not on the edge of social networks and what’s going on in the world today, we’ll be left behind. We want to stay a step ahead.”

Hilfiger said he and other company principals spend time in Silicon Valley in California to stay abreast of digital devel-opments, partnering with tech giants like Facebook to develop its “chatbot” to aid online transactions and present additional purchase suggestions.

“We are really sustaining the brand into the future,” he said, calling the see-now, buy-now model emblematic of its approach.

“We like the young consumer who buys on a regular basis, and grows up with our brand. We like to keep our brand youthful, affordable, accessible, democratic, fun and always changing,” he said. — miles socha

When Pierre Denis stepped into his role four years ago as the chief executive officer of Jimmy Choo, he faced an uncomfort-able question. He knew that China was a priority for growth, but the brand was a latecomer to the market, small and had no obvious logo.

At the time, Jimmy Choo had a turnover of around $500 million and its China oper-ations were run by a franchisee — one of the first things he did was to take the China business back in-house. He also felt that the company needed to build up the brand first and foremost. For that, luckily, Denis could look to lessons in the brand's history.

"I lost my Choo," uttered by Sarah Jessica Parker on "Sex and the City," became its founding moment for Western women.

"Amazingly, the same thing happened in Asia," Denis said. The South Korean hit soap opera "My Love From the Star" featured a scene where a main character asks, "Now you're copying my shoes?" while wearing a gray, pointed Jimmy Choo pump. The model sold out not only in South Korea but in China, too.

"We made our name on the red carpet," Denis said. "We recognize that the same

recipe could be played with the Chinese movie scene, trying to target all the actresses and celebrities."

For example, Jimmy Choo shoes have graced famous feet including actress Liu Shi Shi in Bali at her much publicized wed-ding to Taiwanese heartthrob Nicky Wu.

Denis adds that the gray, pointed pump is "still our bestseller."

"It's hard for American and European movies to penetrate China," Denis said, referring to the limited number of foreign films allowed to be released in the country. "As a consequence, you have a really strong cinema scene in China, which his going to transfer into Chinese TV shows. I am a true believer that you can replicate the [South] Korean wave and it is going to come in the

Chinese television and soap operas."Once Jimmy Choo found its footing with

pop culture and branding, the firm started working on distribution. It also helped that the macro winds in the market had turned in its favor. More discreet, logo-less brands became in vogue and consumers were tiring of the big powerhouse luxury brands that had entered China in the first wave. Gifting had fallen away as part of the anticorruption drive, hurting watches and jewelry the most. Shoes had the advantage of being something women usually bought for themselves.

Denis acknowledged that the issue of parallel goods in the gray market, spurred by the high taxes imposed, was a problem for everyone in the industry but Jimmy Choo had a few things going for it.

"A pair of our shoes is about 500 pounds [about $560 at current exchange]," the ceo said. "Even if it's 20 to 30 percent more expensive, you are still discussing about 50 pounds. It's not so extreme that you would wait six months when you are traveling to buy."

Jimmy Choo Asia sales now make up 16 percent of its total revenues, double what they were in 2012.

Operating under the assumption that around a third of the brand's business should be derived from the region, Denis said, "It means that we are half of the way in terms of our expansion." — Tiffany ap

● Tommy Hilfiger ToutsThe Power of Now

● How Pop CultureFuels Jimmy ChooIn China

Tommy Hilfiger

Pierre Denis

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WWD Global Fashion Forum

A fast-growing middle class in China, a consumer base in Europe that is finally catching on to “accessible luxury” brands and an ever-evolving digital landscape are just three of the reasons Coach Inc. chief executive officer Victor Luis is upbeat about the prospects for his company.

During a wide-ranging conversation with WWD editor in chief Edward Nar-doza, Luis, who became Coach’s ceo in 2014 after running the company’s interna-tional operations, was candid about the challenges the iconic American accesso-ries company and the rest of the retail industry are facing. Terrorism, currency fluctuations and the slowdown of the Chinese economy are all valid concerns but should be taken in stride, he said. The longer-term market prospects for an affordable luxury player like Coach are still very bright, he concluded.

“Anyone who's been in this industry for 20 to 25 years, as I have, has seen various shocks over the course of the development of luxury retail in general. Whether there was SARS in the early period, of course [the financial crisis of 2008] and there will be future shocks and future ups and downs,” he said.

For the third quarter ended March 26, Coach reported a 27.7 percent increase in net income to $112.5 million. Net sales rose 11.2 percent to $1.03 billion from $929.3 million. The period reflects the company’s first quarterly growth in three years for top-line, operating income and

earnings per share. Under Luis, the com-pany is embarking on a major cost-cutting drive. In April, Coach revealed plans to cut 300 jobs.

Just the day before the WWD Global Fashion Forum, China released its third-quarter gross domestic product fig-ures, showing 6.7 percent growth. While that number is still much higher than that of many other developed countries it represents a slowdown from the growth China has clocked in previous years. Luis remains bullish about his prospects for the country.

“GDP driven by consumption does not make me nervous,” he said, referencing the country’s economic shift away from manufacturing. “It makes us happy.”

Luis said China offers a compelling mix of a fast-growing middle class, rapidly expanding cities and world-class infra-structure. Recent government policies aimed at boosting consumption at home are also promising for brands like Coach, he said.

“We have a lot of optimism about China,” he said, adding that Coach’s pur-chase of footwear brand Stuart Weitzman gives the company another reason to be upbeat on China.

“It’s doing incredibly well in mainland China, which is one of the reasons we made that acquisition because we could see how it was growing in relevance inter-nationally,” he said of Weitzman.

As for other markets, Luis said Macau is starting to improve “sequentially” after a tremendous amount of volatility over the last three to four years. He also noted the transformative power of Chinese tourists on the retail scene in Southeast Asia and Japan over the past few years.

“People were looking to sell their [Tokyo] Ginza properties. Now people are looking back to buy and get into Ginza,” he said.

He also noted the strength of Coach’s business in Europe, a place where consumers are finally seeing the value of accessibly priced luxury brands. The

company bought back its business there from a partner three years ago. At that time the brand did sales of about $30 million in the region but they came in at $135 million for the last fiscal year, he said, adding that sales continue to grow at a double-digit pace.

Looking further afield, Luis said it is far from certain that India or South American economies will ever grow at rates compa-rable to China.

“Two or three years ago, there was a lot of attention on Brazil. There was a lot of attention on India. And I think now what we’re seeing is that the next geography, beyond China, from a growth perspective is not necessarily so evident,” he said.

Digital also plays a big role in Coach’s future expansion efforts, especially in China. Last month, the brand decided to shutter its store on Alibaba’s Tmall in favor of selling through its own e-com-merce site and social media platform WeChat, which has an embedded elec-tronic payment system.

“We experimented with Tmall, fol-lowing one or two other luxury brands that experimented [on the platform]. We learned a lot, [but] we felt it was better to just focus on our own web site and where we could control the assortment, manage better and have a much more direct rela-tionship with the consumer,” he said.

Coach has been an early adapter to social media in China, first on Sina Weibo and then on WeChat, Luis said.

“[WeChat] has been a terrific platform for us and who knows, there’s probably one or two more on the horizon that are not yet born that we will join as well,” he said. “We like to be on the forefront of what is new.” — amanda Kaiser

Tory Burch founded her company in New York in 2004 and she was already thinking about two things that would come to radi-cally transform the nature of the retail busi-ness over the course of the next decade: the e-commerce revolution and globalization.

“People told me that no one would ever buy online. That I was crazy to launch with one store,” she told Miles Socha, WWD’s executive editor, Europe, during a conversation at the WWD Global Fashion Forum. “Since then we’ve really embraced social media and it really has helped build up our company.”

In another stroke of forward thinking, Burch linked with Hong Kong-based Lane Crawford to make her brand’s first foray into international markets. In 2009 the company opened its first store in Japan and in 2011 it expanded to mainland China with SKP. Today, some 20 percent of her customers are Chinese. She also has locally based management overseeing her mar-kets in Japan and China.

“Asia has always been a great opportu-nity for us. We’re doing China on our own. One thing we realized is that running China from New York did not work,” Burch said, stressing the importance of having people on the ground in local markets to interact with customers and learn about local tastes and shopping patterns.

While Burch was quick to jump on e-commerce at home, her brand has yet to

make similar moves in Asia. She said she plans to correct that.

“We know that e-commerce will be part of what we need to do in Asia but we are not there yet,” she said, adding that her Asia plans include a measured roll out of more brick-and-mortar stores in the region — about four per year.

“Certainly I don’t want to get into a posi-tion where we go into a territory full force without really understanding it and then having to pull back,” she said.

Certainly Burch will have some assis-tance in that area. This year she has

bolstered the management ranks of her company, which reportedly generates over $1 billion in sales. Over the past few months she has hired former Ralph Lauren Corp. executive John Mehas as president and Burberry alum John Douglas as chief technology officer. In 2014, Roger Farah, former vice chairman of Ralph Lauren, was named co-chief executive officer.

Burch said she made the decision to bring in new managerial talents to make sure her company had a solid foundation to continue to grow as a privately held concern.

“When I hired Roger Farah, everyone

assumed it was to take the company public. But in fact, it was the opposite. It was to keep it private,” she said. “I want growth but I want healthy growth….I feel that for now — I’m not going to say never — being private is that luxury and I’m very happy to keep it that way.”

Burch may want to take it slow when it comes to plotting sales growth but she is all about speed in terms of getting new prod-ucts in her stores.

“What I’m interested in is the idea of fast-tracking and testing product and quicker delivery,” she said. “If we have a handbag we like, we can test it in 10 of our stores and we can really see a quick reac-tion of whether it is working or not so we can test it online.”

Burch said she is focusing much of her energy on her year-old Tory Sport line of activewear. The company currently has three stores in New York selling the retro chic collection of clothing, bags and accessories for sports like running, tennis, golf and swimming. Burch revealed that the company is gearing up to sell the line inter-nationally with Net-a-porter. She definitely wants to bring the line to China, a move that would tap into burgeoning demand for activewear and sports gear in the country.

Her sports foray has also helped bolster her following with men, an intriguing devel-opment for the designer.

“One day maybe men’s would be inter-esting,” she said. “I think it’s funny because men are wearing our sport line, including my three boys…I don’t know if they’re my muses but they definitely said that they would love to have it and I think it would be interesting to do a capsule.” — amanda Kaiser

● Coach Turns to China, Social Media For Growth

● Tory Burch onExpansion and Staying Private

Victor Luis

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A video montage of vintage clips of ski-ers cutting through snowy mountain trails set the stage for Moncler chairman and chief executive officer Remo Ruffini’s talk. It was an appropriate introduction — and not just because the French company Ruf-fini bought in 2003 is known for inventing the first waterproof down jacket. Ruffini spoke about concepts like consistency, flexibility, speed and commitment — val-ues that resonate equally in the worlds of sport and retail.

“I feel that telling a story, my story — although it is an interesting one — is not enough. I’m asking you today to start thinking of style as if you were entering into a new dimension of time, the Moncler Beat,” he said.

The executive, who took 64-year-old Moncler public in 2013, said the company is pursuing a consumer-centric model that places an emphasis on retaining customers

and boosting the sizes of their purchases. Stealing a page out of fast fashion’s play-book, Ruffini stressed the importance of having a “fast rotation” of merchandise in stores to spark consumers’ curiosity.

“My vision of the future is a company focused on flexibility and speed, adjusting our step day by day and with a careful pres-ence in the world [that best expresses our brand values],” he said, explaining that his company is working to optimize its ware-house management and directly controlled supply chain to be as efficient as possible.

It’s a model that requires close communi-cation with the client base and acting swiftly to respond to their needs, said the execu-tive, whose company posted an 18 percent jump in first-quarter sales to 237.3 million euros, or $261 million at average exchange.

“Listening is the key. Never impose, but convince. Never push, but advise,” explained the executive, stressing the importance of an integrated consumer database. “We want a more direct and frequent contact with our clients.”

Intelligence is key, according to Ruffini. “Style means knowing the secrets of things and offers ideas that can be understood

and loved.”Once that knowledge has been gleaned,

it’s important to invest in research to develop new products. For example, Moncler is expanding in areas like knit-wear, shoes and soft accessories, although Ruffini stressed these new items need to be recognizable to consumers.

“Moncler is always new and yet it feels like going back home,” he said. “We want to continue producing special products with a specialist approach.”

Moncler, which used to suit up climb-ers of Mount McKinley in Alaska, as well as France’s Olympic ski team at the 1968 Winter Games in Grenoble, is also placing a big emphasis on China. Ruffini said the brand needs to "raise the bar” of its retail experience in China and introduce new product categories to the market. The Ital-ian executive said Moncler is channeling its focus on growing business through its existing network of about 22 stores in Asia rather than new openings.

“We must sell Moncler here, not just a jacket. It’s a strong market for us,” he said. “It’s the future for our brand.” — amanda Kaiser

According to Feng Lu, an econom-ics professor at Peking University’s National School of Development, volatile housing markets, income inequality and environmental degrada-tion are among the biggest challenges to China’s economic growth in coming years.

“We are facing a lot of problems and challenges,” Feng said. “Challenges in the delays of a crucial reform agenda, a widening income gap and the wors-ening situation with the environment and pollution.”

Feng said perhaps the biggest challenge the government faces is land reform. In recent months, property prices have been chaotic in China, with values skyrocketing in some cities and falling dramatically in others. This is because of local government monopoly on the supply of land that is usable for urban development. At times, he said, the available supply is tightened, resulting in housing bubbles.

“To reform the system, you need to reform the land regime,” Feng said. “If you cannot get rid of that problem, I think the prospect of China’s eco-nomic growth in the future will be very gloomy. It is not easy to do that.”

Income inequality “is still a prob-lem,” he said. “We talk about fashion goods. We talk about luxury goods, but we need to support it with income growth. If social tensions are too big, that is not good for the poor or the rich as well as for fashion and market growth.”

Yet, Feng is optimistic about con-sumption, advocating for reform in the sales of luxury goods, such as lowering tariffs, which he said would result in the domestic sale of luxury products to be “substantially higher than the growth of national consumption.”

Feng also said that if trade barriers were reduced for luxury products, up to 400,000 new jobs could be

generated in the sector in China. Consumption of luxury goods globally by Chinese has increased from around 2 percent to 22 percent over the last 15 years, Feng said, adding that domestic sales of luxury goods has only made up about a third of national consumption by the Chinese.

He estimates that within a decade, annual sales of luxury goods in China could be up to one trillion yuan, or $147.8 billion. Also within a decade, Feng said he estimates that if reforms are successful, more than 500 million Chinese will have a per capita income of $30,000.

Fashion has “higher income elastic-ity,” he said. “Usually the growth of the consumption of luxury goods will be higher than income growth.

“In my observation, if reforms were implemented to reduce transaction costs in the [luxury] sector, the trade barriers, I think the expansion of domestic sales would be substantially higher than the growth of national con-sumption,” Feng said. — l.f.

● Moncler's Ruffini Talks a Consumer-Centric Model

● Feng Lu onObstacles To Overcome

Remo Ruffini

Feng LuFeng Lu

Starting a Chinese luxury brand from scratch isn't easy.

Recruiting skilled craftsmen from dispa-rate parts of the country — from Sichuan Province in the south to Inner Mongolia in the north — is a challenge. Execution is key. The brand must not only appeal to China’s burgeoning class of sophisticated luxury con-sumers but also to consumers abroad, both of which historically have seen goods made in China as substandard, cheap and, in some cases, even dangerous.

Finally, timing is crucial. Less than half a decade ago, consumers in China were not quite ready to accept an understated luxury brand incorporating Asian aesthetics with modern design, made from locally sourced products, such as bamboo, porcelain, cash-mere or silk, and meant to not only reflect but also reinvigorate, perhaps even redefine, Chi-na’s rich cultural heritage in the 21st century.

“It is true that to launch a Chinese high-end luxury brand is not an easy project,” Jiang Qiong Er, artistic director and chief executive officer of Chinese luxury brand Shang Xia. “Chinese people have been brainwashed for the last 30 years that made in China is bad quality, counterfeit, copies and no creativity.”

Jiang founded Shang Xia in 2010 with backing from Hermès International, which wanted to create a label specifically for the Chinese market. Hermès had been working on the project with Jiang, who had created Hermès display windows in China for about three years before the first store opened in Shanghai. Now Shang Xia also has retail locations in Beijing and Paris.

“We want to be one of the first to show to the world that this is not true for today’s China,” Jiang said, adding that up to 90 percent of clientele who visit Shang Xia stores in Beijing and Shanghai are Chinese. “We arrived at the right time. More and More Chinese customers, even international cus-tomers, are looking for their own style. They are coming back to the Chinese culture and the lifestyle we present.”

Shang Xia’s products range from furni-ture to home objects, ready-to-wear, jewelry

and accessories.Jiang, who studied at the École Nationale

Superieure Des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, detailed how the brand aims to subtly envelop consumers in a sensual experience in its retail spaces, particularly in the Maison Shang Xia, which opened in Shanghai in 2014.

There, customers can meditate in an incense room or drink tea in a VIP pavilion. The music played in-store is inspired from sounds generated during the creation of handcrafted products.

“We wanted to translate the five basic senses into a retail experience,” she said.

Shang Xia’s products are generation-less, appealing to both younger and older genera-tions, she said, which was ultimately the goal for the brand. They are made in partnership with craftsmen from across China.

The designer showcased an ad campaign featuring her nonagenarian grandmother sitting in a handcrafted chair made in a style from China’s dynastic period. The idea is that Shang Xia’s products will accompany an individual for a lifetime, reflecting not only China’s history but also personal memories of those who purchase them.

“Shang Xia is about time and emotion,” Jiang said. “We try to bring emotional value into all of this different heritage.” — lara farrar

Jiang Qiong Er

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● Shang Xia's QuestTo Woo Chinese Consumers

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Keeping up with China requires a keen understanding of its young generations, who are playing a leading role in changing consumption patterns.

So says Andrew Y. Wu, who couched his opinion as “less as an executive of LVMH and more as a native son of China.”

Wu, president of the group in greater China, spoke mainly about the period from 1980 to the present, when the country underwent such dazzling changes that its citizens could barely keep up.

To be sure, urbanization and wealth creation has occurred at warp speed. Shenzhen, a fishing village with perhaps 30,000 residents in 1980, has trans-formed into a megacity of 10.8 million residents with “vibrant entrepreneurship” and a per-capita GDP that is rivaling Hong Kong, Wu said as a slide flashed of the gleaming metropolis.

When Forbes began tracking Chinese wealth in 1999, it took only a $6 million fortune to make the top 50. Flash to 2015, and $850 million only gets one into the top 400. The number of Chinese billionaires leaped to 345 this year, more than double the 168 in 2013.

Wu outlined three phases of Chinese consumption, from “desperation” in the Eighties and early Nineties after decades of shortages and queuing for basic neces-sities to a period of “massive showing off” in the late Nineties through 2009. Since 2010, a more sophisticated mind-set has taken hold and “this is something we are feeling very, very strongly” as China has “moved away from quantitative obsession to a qualitative focus.”

For example, Chinese citizens have begun to openly question the conse-quences of too-rapid growth in the wake of the July 2011 train derailment and widening concerns about the choking pollution in cities like Beijing, often cloaked in smog and haze.

While the government’s role in the economy has shifted, with more than 90 percent of employment generated outside the state, its recent anti-corruption crack-down bit hard.

Wu mounted a slide showing one female

government official toting a luxury satchel in the pre-crackdown period, then a plastic folder in 2013 and today no carryall for her documents and cell phone.

In his view, “self-gifting” is a more sustainable trend, and now “almost all the consumption growth has been driven by new consumers.

“Despite the appearance of the same institutions, the same marketplace, we’re dealing with very, very new consumers today and this is a very, very positive sign for years to come,” he said. “China is mov-ing into an era of differentiation.”

And one in which young generations will play a key role. Nearly half of China’s 1.34 billion citizens were born after 1980, a slice of the population that “has not seen any-thing but economic growth, and they are playing an increasing role in consumption.”

The generation born in the Eighties com-prises 219 million consumers; the Nineties 171 million consumers; and the “new cen-tury” 175 million. The latter generation, he asserted, will “not just follow international fashion, but probably be the first able to lead fashion.

“Growing youth power is going to continue to challenge us, how we can keep with the Chinese consumer,” he added.

To be sure, today’s Chinese are increas-ingly mobile. While only 28 million people traveled when the Golden Week shopping period was first introduced, almost 600 million did so during the most recent one earlier this month, underscoring how decades of material deprivation has con-tributed to pent-up demand.

In 1972, China resembled North Korea in terms of isolation, when there were only 210,000 passports in circulation, mainly offered to diplomats. In 2015, some 65 million passports were in use. While that represents a small fraction of the popula-tion, it “offers you a feeling of the scale and the impact of the scale,” Wu said.

The number of students traveling over-seas has almost doubled over the past 20 years to more than half a million. “China is getting increasingly connected with the rest of the world,” Wu said, noting that digitization is speeding that sense of connectedness.

“Youth-driven change actually influences many of the brands’ development for decades,” he said. "The strong brands, the brands that adapt obviously grow, and if you fail to adapt, you won’t.” — miles socha

● Keeping Up With Youth Key in China, Says LVMH’s Wu

Andrew Y. Wu

After more than two decades in China, Tom Doctoroff said he’s reached one con-clusion about the country: it is decidedly not Western.

Which may seem obvious to some. But clearly it isn’t to everyone. Otherwise, Doctoroff, a best-selling author, advertising guru and former chief executive officer of J. Walter Thompson Asia-Pacific, probably would not have spent so much time on the topic during his presentation at WWD’s Global Fashion Forum in Beijing.

“China is becoming modern. It is becoming international, but it is not becoming Western,” said Doctoroff, who recently relocated to New York. “The secret of success in China — whether you are targeting Millennials or a mature generation — is to make sure you bring a brand into alignment with a different worldview without abandoning that DNA or essence of the brand.”

While individualism is emerging in China, Doctoroff said it is “taking place in an executional framework that people want to have freedom inside of.”

This framework is predicated on the premise of stability and harmony, con-cepts that have been endemic to China’s culture for centuries, manifesting in Con-fucianism, for example, or in Taoist beliefs as well as the way in which the country has and continues to be governed.

The notion of individualism in the West, which is disruptive, the antithesis of stability, grounded on challenging estab-lished conventions or breaking barriers, simply does not translate in China.

“Stability is the only absolute good and chaos is the only absolute evil,” he said. “You have to have something solid in order to make progress. Every strain of Chinese thinking reinforces this fact. It is sociologi-cal order and yes, it is still relevant.”

Brands need to realize that there is a push and pull between projection of status and protection of the status quo in China. Within the innate desire for stability, there is also an innate desire to establish one’s identity within Chinese collectivism.

It is complicated.“Projection and protection are always

in tension with one another. Ambition versus regimentation, standing out to fit in, the ambitiousness of Chinese people

has to be reconciled with a fundamen-tally conservative self-protection,” Doctoroff said.

“Projection is big and bold. Protection is much more conservative and guarded,” he said. “Projection and protection are what people want to reconcile.”

Against this backdrop, foreign brands should prioritize three key marketing strategies.

To charge a price premium, public consumption must be highly visible and dramatized, meeting the desire for consumers to project their social status to the collective. Doctoroff used Star-bucks as an example, noting how the coffee chain created large spaces with big tables where “people come to gather to proclaim their affiliation with the new generation of professional elite.”

“This is a culture that does not like coffee, yet they pay more for a cup of Starbucks coffee here than people do in New York,” Doctoroff said. “How did they do that? They conformed to the public consumption imperative. Brands that don’t conform to this have a little bit of a problem. It is always harder to charge a price premium for goods that are con-sumed inside the house.”

Second, brands need to realize a prod-uct is a means to an end, with benefits that are externalized, and, that “need to pay off.” In other words, consumers here will not buy a bottle of expensive cognac just for the taste, but rather if it is con-sumed in a social setting where network-ing opportunities take place, rendering it useful in other areas of life.

In the West, spas are marketed as places to relax whereas in China, they are places to “recharge your batteries,” Doctoroff said. Travel has increasingly become the new social currency, with Chinese buying products on trips or posting photos to illustrate to friends their status in society.

“You need to have something pay a div-idend over time,” Doctoroff said. “Experi-ences that just evaporate are not useful.”

Reassuring consumers that products are authentic and high quality is the third factor. This extends into retail spaces where reassurance is on a social level, becoming “an experience that is going to bring people into something that is more than just transactional,” Doctoroff said.

“The Chinese worldview is a Confucian worldview where stability is not only good, it is a platform on which progress is constructed,” he said. — lara farrar

● China Is Becoming Modern, Not Western

Tom Doctoroff

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Laure Hériard Dubreuil, whose The Web-ster multibrand luxury boutiques can be found in Miami, Houston and Costa Mesa, Calif., has bucked a number of modern trends in retailing on her road to success.

Dubreuil jumped into operating her first luxury multibrand store in a converted Art Deco hotel in South Beach, Fla., at the height of the global financial crisis after being a merchandiser for Yves Saint Lau-rent, and Balenciaga before that.

According to the French-born retailer, the concept worked because The Webster catered to a clientele in Miami that was cry-ing out for diverse yet highly curated luxury products, and also because she focused on giving people more than just a place to purchase those products.

“It’s definitely about the experience. At The Webster time stops, you can take off your shoes, spend the day, people end up eating there and having drinks and trying everything,” Dubreuil said in a conversa-tion with Miles Socha, WWD's executive editor, Europe.

Organically growing The Webster brand from that initial store, with feedback from customers guiding her new location hunting, the latest outpost of The Webster concept recently opened in Costa Mesa.

“I’m very happy about this new opening,

it opens up the Asian market and the Chi-nese market to us, which is very exciting,” Dubreuil to the audience at the WWD Global Fashion Forum in Beijing.

This was something of a homecoming for Dubreuil, who was returning to China’s capital years after first arriving in the city as a young student.

“I’m very happy to be here in Beijing because I haven’t been here for a long time. In a past life I started learning Mandarin as a teenager and came to China to study,” she said. “Being here helps me to see where the market is at and also dis-cover some designers, retailers and great fashion brands.”

Though Dubreuil is adamant that she

is first and foremost a brick-and-mortar retailer, that doesn’t mean she is totally ignoring the trend for e-commerce, working with platform Farfetch, and opening her own e-commerce operation as a comple-ment to The Webster’s physical stores.

Dubreuil admits she is late to the e-com-merce party, but she’s less concerned with timing than with experience, which she is has worked hard to incorporate into her own e-commerce, in keeping with the ethos of The Webster.

“I want to keep the way I mix all the brand together and the way we commu-nicate with our clients, even though it’s online,” Dubreuil explained. “I think [e-commerce] will be very important, but

at the same time I am a brick-and-mortar retailer and that’s what I know how to do, that’s what my clients like and I think it’s paying off to go against the trend here.”

Another key to raising both her profile, as well as that of The Webster, has been col-laboration. Both with her clientele, whose feedback helps dictate everything from product assortment to new locations, but also with other companies — with everyone from Target to The Ritz partnering with Dubreuil for exclusive product designs.

The Target collaboration in particular was instrumental in putting The Webster on “a different map” and was instructive for Dubreuil in how her luxury clients were less attracted to exclusivity and price than they were in products with unique design elements. As well as seeing the 200 pieces she designed stocked in more than 2,000 Target stores across the U.S., Dubreuil also stocked a few of the pieces in The Webster, only to see them snapped up immediately.

“What was incredible was that the price point was much lower than the brands I have in The Webster, but the customers at our stores went crazy about the pieces I was stocking there. I had Mr. Valentino himself buying pieces from the Target collection for his friends,” she said, adding that these col-laborations continue to be a positive stream of revenue, as well as an effective way to attract attention and new customers.

“For me that has been the recipe for suc-cess, I have to do something from my heart and something I want myself. That’s where these pieces come from, they are things that I want myself and then it ends up selling really well.” — casey hall

Laure Hériard Dubreuil● The Webster’s Laure Hériard Dubreuil on the Importance of Experience

Striking store designs, exclusive and emotional experiences and “high-touch” services are among the prescriptions for a luxury sector transitioning to a new world increasingly dominated by social media, travel and online and off-price spending.

So says Paolo de Cesare, chairman and chief executive officer of Printemps, which operates 18 department stores in France, four Citadium units for sport/lifestyle and the Place des Tendances web site. The French retailer boasts 70 million visitors per year and stocks more than 3,000 brands.

A no-nonsense executive with a socio-logical bent, de Cesare argued that the main drivers of luxury over the past two decades are yielding to new dynamics, putting the onus on merchants to surprise, enchant and engage consumers who are changing spending patterns and priorities.

For example, sales of luxury cars grew roughly 8 percent, luxury hospitality 7 per-cent, fine art 6 percent and designer furni-ture and fine foods 4 percent between 2014 and 2015, eclipsing the meager 1-2 percent gain in spending on personal luxury goods, de Cesare said, citing data from Bain & Co.

He also noted that online, off-price and duty-free are the fastest-growing chan-nels for luxury goods, already accounting for 23 percent of the market. He forecast they could grow to 40 percent in the next 10 years.

At the same time, the boom in Chinese tourism — expected to swell to 142.4 million

outbound travelers this year — is starting to plateau, meaning a principal engine of the recent luxury boom is sputtering.

“We cannot continue to expect that growth will continue to be driven by Chinese tourism,” said de Cesare, whose Boulevard Haussmann flagship has felt the pullback as visitors shun the French capital in the wake of a series of terror attacks.

De Cesare characterized luxury goods as one of the best industries in the world, having expanded more than three times over the past 20 years to an estimated 253 billion euros in 2015.

But with the sector slated to grow per-haps 1 or 2 percent this year, trailing global GDP expansion, “it means luxury is not keeping up,” he lamented.

Most of the drivers of the luxury boom of the past two decades are yielding to new realities, de Cesare said.

Star designers like Tom Ford, John Galli-ano and Karl Lagerfeld, who led Gucci, Dior and Chanel respectively, to new heights over long careers, are yielding to a revolv-ing door that spins ever faster.

De Cesare touted the recent arrivals of Gucci’s Alessandro Michele and Dior’s Maria Grazia Chiuri for introducing “retro chic” and “romantic rock” respectively, new aesthetics to excite consumers and animate heritage brands.

Seasonal advertising campaigns by star photographers have been swept aside in the social media age by “disposable” imagery with a life cycle of perhaps a few hours, the executive said.

What’s more, personalities are trump-ing institutional media and even brands. He mounted a slide showing a photo of model Kendall Jenner, a member of the Kardashian clan, modeling a swimsuit in

Vogue. The image earned 200,000 likes on the magazine’s web site, trailing the 2.2 million it earned on Jenner’s personal Instagram account.

Other tactics that are running out of steam are category expansion and retail rollouts, with some brands reaching up to 450 stores, versus about 100 only two decades ago.

“Are we being too opportunistic?” De Cesare asked as he highlighted the homoge-neity in store designs across various chan-nels of distribution, including travel retail.

Yet the executive argued that the desire for luxury is there to be captured. “Custom-ers have money, but they want to spend it on experiences,” he said.

Enter department stores, which have the capacity to excite and educate consum-ers via bold architecture, transporting

displays, designer events and exciting brands to discover.

In January, Printemps plans to unveil its new men’s building in Paris, overhauled by Yabu Pushelberg with a soaring six-story escalator bank and vast VIP suite designed by Jean-Michel Wilmotte.

And spying an opportunity in bridal, it has assembled a range of designer brands including Elie Saab, Valentino, Viktor & Rolf and Lanvin and recently staged an in-store wedding fashion show for 1,000 customers.

Temporary installations, such a mini Sicilian village to showcase the collections of Dolce & Gabbana, have also resulted in strong sales.

“The role of a department store is to provide a customer experience, as opposed to being just a selection of brands,” he said. — miles socha

Paolo de Cesare

● Printemps SeesExperiences, Emotion Spur Luxury Sales

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Matches Fashion's chief executive officer Ulric Jerome thinks waiting a day is too long. While many retailers would be envious of the British retailer's ability to deliver same-day, Jerome wants to push the bar further. Soon he wants the shop-pers who browse the 420 brands on the Matches site to be able to get their hands on the goods within the hour.

"I think in the next 18 months in major cities, one-hour delivery will be the norm. This is what we're currently working on...and that will be launched soon," Ulric said.

Unlike online juggernaut Amazon, which has been exploring the prospect of using drones to deliver packages, Jerome said the airborne devices are not essential to hit his target.

"The drone, while I completely under-stand and it's an amazing opportunity, it's certainly not going to happen tomorrow in more of a mainstream way so it's not necessarily going to touch the mass," he said, citing tricky airspace regulations.

Still, he believes that "anything in terms of speed of delivery will happen. First about instant on-demand delivery and then drones will go after that."

Since taking the reins at the company last year, Jerome has made it his mission to position the Matches e-commerce web site and its five London stores not as "everything for everyone" but rather

"everything to someone."And that "someone" is a person Ulric

and his team know well.Matches' average shopper is buying

four times a year and has a lifetime value of close to 2,000 British pounds, or $2,250, Jerome said. Its top 10 percent of the most active customers have a 90 percent retention rate while overall it's about 65 percent. More than 48 percent of sales are done currently via mobile — though he's hoping to edge that up to 55 percent in the next two years — and 30 percent are done over smartphones rather than tablet devices.

The world of e-commerce is saturated with data points retailers should be taking advantage of, particularly, as he pointed out that luxury consumers hap-pen to be "the most connected customer in the world."

One word to the wise Jerome has for online sellers? When looking at data, examine customer behavior over how each brand is selling.

"When you start with the customer, the opportunity to make mistakes gets lower," Jerome said. An average basket size that's up 15 percent this year suggests the strat-egy seems to be working.

Matches is already producing highly stylized shoppable fashion films but its next frontier is 360-degree videos which customers can play and interact with, and beyond that, virtual reality.

"We are working to give the customer the best experience so that they can find the physicality they find in stores, digi-tally...We first start with 360 and then go into virtual reality." — Tiffany ap

● Ulric Jerome: One-Hour DeliveryWill Be the Norm

Ulric Jerome

Sung-Joo Kim, founder, chairperson and chief visionary officer of Sungjoo Group and MCM Holding AG became the first Korean to purchase a heritage European luxury brand when she acquired the Ger-man leather-goods brand MCM in 2005.

At that time, the brand was doing $60 million to $70 million in annual sales worldwide. Ten years after Kim’s acquisi-tion, MCM was seeing revenue figures of $600 million from over 500 points of sale in more than 40 counties.

Her story is indicative, not just of the worldwide trend for globalization as more people move between countries and cultures, but also of the changing nature of internationalization. According to Kim, whereas historically Asian people have been the ones internationalizing themselves by becoming more West-ernized, today this internationalization works both ways — from East to West, as well as West to East.

“I grew up in Korea until college, when I went to America and started to learn English in the late Seventies. Apart from language, there was a totally different way of thinking,” she said “At that time it was about adopting Western behavior, the beauty ideals were Western — blonde hair, tall and slim — the internationaliza-tion was about Asian people becoming more Western.”

After returning to Korea and refusing a marriage arranged by her parents, Kim found it wasn’t feasible for her to stay in her homeland and returned to New York, where she started her career in fashion retail at Bloomingdale’s.

In 1990, she once again returned to Korea and opened her own fashion retail company, bringing international luxury brands such as Gucci and Yves Saint Lau-rent to the Korean market.

“When I was working with Gucci in the early Nineties, at that time a lot of the color scheme was brown, khaki, what-ever, I would tell them that our Asian customers like red but they wouldn’t lis-ten — now Gucci and everybody is doing red,” Kim said.

“Asian features require bright strong

colors as contrast, if I wear beige, you don’t even see me. The sizes have also changed to fit Asians better, we are short, and petite and we pay attention to details, embellishments.”

These days, according to Kim, it’s com-mon for brands to cater designs to Asian tastes. As consumer power has shifted, so have design norms, and eventually standards of beauty also follow suit.

“Since 2008 the consumer center for luxury has moved from West to East and more than half of the world’s population in the world lives in Asia,” Kim explained.

“I have seen the whole shift. Now the consumer power has changed to Asia, and in particular China, so has the style shifted and even the advertising and the look of the models on the catwalk. Before globalization meant Westernization, now it more and more means Easternization.” — casey hall

Sung-Joo Kim

SKP has long been a favorite haunt of China's most fashionable set, but on Friday it also played host to leading creative and business minds in fashion.

After a full day of talks at the WWD Global Fashion Forum, the crowd — from a host of brands including Hermès, Hugo Boss, Printemps and many more — gathered at SKP to sip prosecco and tour the mall. Ji Xiao An, Chairman of Beijing Hualian Group, hosted the event.

While China's blockbuster growth has dimmed somewhat, the view from most executives was that there is signif-icant potential to tap if brands do their homework.

"We're just really at the beginning for the China market," Claire Chung, Yoox Net-a-porter Group China general manager said. "There's wealth creation in the younger generation, especially in China. You don't

see that in Europe. If brands truly invest now and really understand that consumer, that's going to be their consumer for the next 20 years."

Nicholas Houze, chief executive officer of Galeries Lafayette had flown in from Paris said the French department store was planning to open another location in the country.

"We opened three years ago [in Beijing] we have been increasing the business by double-digits every year, this year we will make 100 million euros ($110 million) gross, so it’s quite a good operation and now we are looking for a store in Shang-hai," Houze said.

Referring to speeches earlier in the day from Tommy Hilfiger, Tory Burch and Coach chief executive officer Victor Luis, LVMH China chief executive officer Andrew Wu said it seems American brands were starting to devote more resources interna-tionally and pay attention to China.

"American brands tend to be more America-focused," Wu said. "Europeans from very early on, knew that they depend on international business to survive. I could

be wrong but I don't think that there is any European brand that could be dependent on one European country."

Given that Chinese customers appear less interested in high-end luxury goods, Amer-ican brands could be particularly poised to make headway in China.

"A retail space like [SKP mall] is showing the trend in China to be more open to have

luxury brands, but also affordable luxury — the retail sector here is becoming more democratic," said Gianfranco Ditadi, Ralph Lauren’s managing director for Greater China. "It’s not just about shopping but also having entertainment and making people comfortable to spend time in a place and then they will also spend money." — Tiffany ap and casey hall

● MCM’s Sung-Joo Kim On the Changing Face Of Luxury

● WWD ForumAttendees Mingle At SKP in Beijing

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Azzedine AlaïaThis brisk and pretty show - with a gust of sportif and a smattering of shine - blunted the aggravation of its inexplica-ble timing on a Sunday afternoon more than two weeks after the close of the international fashion circuit.

While Parisians were out brunching and taking advantage of fine weather and Sunday shopping hours in the Marais dis-trict, Azzedine Alaïa loyalists packed into his headquarters to witness his take on athletic style, merged with shapes from the Sixties and groovy optical prints.

Zippered blousons, swingy tennis skirts and plunging swimsuit bodices felt like new territory for the exacting designer, who replaced the leisure in ath-leisure with glamour, paving bodycon dresses with silver studs or jet beds and boxy tanks with crystals. He tempered the volume at the hips and the signature skater flare of his skirts, which is looking dated.

Flat shoes and sandals in hole-punched leather – and hair wound up in laces, like ballerinas during rehearsal - heightened

the active allure of the collection.A series of gently flaring shifts with

bars of color seemed liked a new take on Yves Saint Laurent’s famous Mondrian dresses, a comparison Alaïa rejected backstage, saying he designs without ref-erences, “the same way I always have.”

Crisp white blouses and jersey jump-suits came with ballooning bishop sleeves, bang in line with a big spring trend.

“I loved it,” Melissa George said after the show. She flicked through the camera roll on her phone to show Alaïa holding her infant son, Raphael, who has accompanied her for fittings, sitting on the designer's lap while he sketches. “Now I want to bring my second to meet the master,” she said, referring to her 10-month-old.

The Australian actress just wrapped “The Butterfly Tree,” in which she plays a burlesque dancer who is the object of a father and son’s affections. George said she rehearsed to the hilt, even though her character is “not a very good dancer."

“But I wanted her to be the best she could be,” she said with a smile. — Miles Socha

Azzedine Alaïa

● On view from May 4 through Sept. 4, 2017, the show will examine Kawakubo’s fascination with the space between boundaries.

by Lisa Lockwood

“Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons” will be the spring exhibition at the Metro-politan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute.

This confirms an exclusive WWD report in August that Kawakubo was going to be selected.

On view from May 4 through Sept. 4, 2017, the exhibition will examine Kawaku-bo’s fascination with interstitiality, or the space between boundaries. Existing within and between entities – self/other, object/subject, fashion/antifashion – Kawakubo’s work challenges conventional ideas of beauty, good taste and ultimately, fash-ionability. This thematic exhibition will be The Costume Institute’s first monographic show of a living designer since the Yves Saint Lauren exhibition in 1983.

“In blurring the art/fashion divide, Kawakubo asks us to think differently about clothing,” said Thomas P. Camp-bell, director and chief executive officer of The Met. “Curator Andrew Bolton will explore work that often looks like sculp-ture in an exhibition that will challenge our ideas about fashion’s role in contem-porary culture.”

The Met’s Costume Institute Benefit, also known as the Met Gala, will take place on Monday, May 1. Co-chairs will be Katy Perry, Pharrell Williams and Anna Wintour. Kawakubo will serve as honorary chair. The event is The Costume Insti-tute’s main source of annual funding for exhibitions, publications, acquisitions and capital improvements.

The exhibition and benefit will be supported by Apple for the second year in a row, as well as by longtime sponsor Condé Nast and Farfetch, H&M and Mai-son Valentino.

“Rei Kawakubo is one of the most import-ant and influential designers of the past 40 years,” said Bolton, chief curator in charge of The Costume Institute. “By inviting us to rethink fashion as a site of constant creation, re-creations and hybridity, she has defined the aesthetics of our time.”

Kawakubo said, “I have always pursued a new way of thinking of design…by deny-ing established values, convetions and what is generally accepted as the norm. And the modes of expression that have always been most important to me are fusion...imbalance…unfinished…elimina-tion…and absence of intent.”

The exhibition will showcase about 120 examples of Kawakubo’s women's wear designs for Comme des Garçons, dating from her first Paris runway show in 1981 to her most recent collection. The show will be organized thematically, rather than chronologically, and examples will examine her revolutionary experiments in interstitiality or “in-between-ness” - the space between boundaries. Such dualities as East/West, male/female and past/pres-ent will be eexplored. Mannequins will be arranged at eye level with no physical barri-ers, eliminating the usual distance between objects on display and museum visitors.

In addition to Bolton’s curation, Nathan Crowley will serve as the exhibition pro-duction designer for the fifth time, work-ing in collaboration with The Met’s Design Department. Raul Àvila will produce the gala decor, which he has done since 2007. The exhibition will be presented in the Museum’s Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Exhibi-tion Hall on the second floor.

The Japanese designer behind the Comme des Garçons label and Dover Street Market specialty stores, Kawakubo is a fashion maverick whose Paris fashion shows remain a highlight for the interna-tional retail and design community. She has done collections based on two-dimen-sional shapes, the color red and the “Cer-emony of Separation,” the latter show a spectacle opening with a dress composed of neatly knotted white hobo sacks.

Fashion

'Rei Kawakubo/Commes Des Garçons' Is the Met's Spring Costume Institute Exhibition

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Bernard Arnault on Fondation Louis Vuitton's ExhibitionThe show unites major works acquired by Russian collector Sergei Shchukin, one of the greatest art patrons of the early 20th century.

advantage Bernard Arnault. The Fondation Louis Vuitton on Thurs-day inaugurated what is being hailed as one of the most import-ant art exhibitions ever held in Paris. The show, entitled “Icons of Modern Art. The Shchukin Col-lection,” unites 130 major works from the collection of one of the greatest art patrons of the early 20th century, Sergei Shchukin, a visionary Russian collector of French modern art.

Shchukin was a leading Muscovite textile manufacturer who in the late 19th century, on his trips to Paris salons, became part of the Parisian circles championing artists in the Impressionist, post-Impressionist and the Modern movements. He is credited with assembling a col-lection of the most avant-garde art of his day, one that powerfully influenced contemporary art in Russia.

“What is really for me unbe-lievable is to have, with my team, been able to convince our Russian partners, the Hermitage Museum and the Pushkin museum, to unify this fabulous collection here in Paris. Following the revolution in Russia it was [broken up]. The first time it has been reunified is here in France in the Fondation Louis Vuitton. It's very emotional,” Arnault told WWD, as he walked through the exhibition.

Asked if he had a favorite room, Arnault replied: “Not really, because there are so many in-credible rooms. What I can tell you is sometimes, in this room here [the Matisse room], people cry – it's so strong.

“Shchukin was incredible because he was able to as-semble, in the beginning of the 20th century, what today is the national treasure of the Russian museums. And it's a fabulous collection that he assembled in a relatively short period of time, 10 years, I believe,” continued Arnault. “It's unbelievable. We can only dream of achieving something like that. Times have changed, things are very

different today. At that time, when he started, great artists like Matisse or Picasso were not recognized, so he was able, because he had a fantastic eye, to choose them and to buy them relatively easily. Just imagine, these fantastic paintings left France at the beginning of the 20th century, when they had only just been finished, to go to Russia because of him.”

The exhibition, which includes 29 paintings by Pablo Picasso and 22 works by Henri Matisse as well as pieces by Claude Monet, Paul Gauguin, Henri Rousseau, Paul Cézanne and Vincent Van Gogh, spreads across four floors and 14 exhibition rooms, organized in monographic and thematic ensembles like landscapes, self-portraits and still lives.

Corridors leading into the various galleries feature wallpa-pers based on old photographs of Shchukin’s Moscow residence, the Trubetskoy Palace. The col-lector would open his home to art lovers, critics and students every Sunday and give personal tours. To highlight the influence this had, works by avant-garde Russian artists who were inspired by the Shchukin collection, like Kazimir Severinovich Malevich, Aleksandr Rodchenko and Lyubov Popova, also feature in the show.

Screened in a separate room is a multimedia work by British filmmaker Peter Greenaway and Saskia Boddeke based on the relationship between Shchukin and Matisse. Nodding to the Ballets Russes, which were also a major influence in the early 20th century, meanwhile, a program of dance and musical performances has also been lined up to accom-pany the show, which ends on Feb. 20, 2017.

Louis Vuitton’s Nicolas Ghesquière — who attended the opening along with fellow LVMH group designers Dior’s Maria Grazia Chiuri, Dior Homme’s Kris Van Assche and Berluti’s Haider Ackermann — said he was par-ticularly taken by the Picassos,

which included “Woman with a Fan” one of two works Shchukin bought on the spot when Ma-tisse took him to see Picasso’s Montmartre studio in 1908. “I think what's amazing is to see all these fantastic paintings in the same location — and what a location,” said Ghesquière. “You know how much I'm a fan of old and new, and this is a great combination of modernity and classicism.”

By his side, Catherine Deneuve said she planned to “pop back up to see the incredible Matisses,” after the dinner that was held in an auditorium overlooking the site’s cascading fountain.

Perusing works by Monet, Xavier Veilhan related the artist's “Water Lilies” series, “this idea of creating a whole environment that he invented,” to a work he’s preparing for the French Pavilion for the Venice Biennale next year, inspired by German artist Kurt Schwitters’ “Merzbau” construction from the Twenties. “I’m working on this idea of a recording studio that looks like it has been through an earthquake. So you'll go through a series of rooms with musicians recording works, it's multidisciplinary,” said Veilhan, who revealed around 100 musicians will be involved in the project, including Air’s Nicolas Godin and Quincy Jones.

Diana Picasso paused in front of a portrait of Benet Soler made by her grandfather Pablo Picasso in 1903. “It’s very moving to see one of the most spectacular col-lections in the world by a collec-tor who had the courage to buy such works so early, a visionary,” she said.

Speaking at a panel earlier in the day, André-Marc De-locque-Fourcaud, Shchukin’s grandson, said: “I can say I have seen a miracle in my lifetime. Five years ago nobody here had heard of Sergei Shchukin and the best curators of France are here today. One hundred years ago, the collection was completed, and 100 years on here we are in this wonderful location. As [Mikhail Piotrovsky], the director of the Hermitage Museum, said there’s something mystical about it. The world will be divided into two parts, those who have and those who haven’t seen the Shchukin collection.”

Jean-Paul Claverie, who helped head up the project, said he believes the show’s accompa-nying 500-page catalogue, “full of interesting scientific content and references,” will become a “landmark reference for all of the art libraries in the world.”

Marina Loshak, director of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, said: “Sergei Shchukin’s spirit is moving around us in this room, we can feel it.

“What would have become of Matisse if Sergei Shchukin had not been there to support him? What would have become even of Picasso, maybe?” she contin-ued. “Sergei Shchukin was able to understand what others could not understand. People thought he was mad and was wasting his money. You will feel the soul of this collection and everything that emanates from it.” — KaTya foreman

Bernard Arnault in front of the painting “Red Room (Harmony

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Millennials Trade Computers for Theater Seats in New Wave of Performing ArtsAt the American Ballet Theatre gala, actresses, designers and artists weighed in on how Internet overload has been driving scores of Millennials to the theater.

new york’s performing arts scene has found newfangled fandom from the twentysome-thing set.

Just under a decade ago, the age group’s Internet-addiction was proclaimed a death-knell for theater, ballet and opera. But it would appear that a pendulum has now swung, with Millennials welcoming an opportunity to sit — phones powered off — for a two-hour stretch, taking in classical, orchestral music and age-old art forms. Ironic #uptown images have flooded downtown-goers’ Instagrams this fall cultural season.

According to distinguished guests at Thursday evening’s American Ballet Theatre fall gala, this switch from digital immersion to a hankering for in-person sub-stance is not unexpected.

The event drew Maggie Gyl-

lenhaal, Misty Copeland, Julianna Margulies and a coterie of others — many of whom have noticed a renaissance of the theater in what’s become a post-Hamilton New York arts scene.

“The more we live in this Internet, there is a natural yin and yang where people want to go and do things that are physical and in real-time. This new interest in theater and dance opera, some of the more physical arts is part of this natural swing of things,” said Bergdorf Goodman senior vice president, fashion Linda Fargo, who has recently enjoyed performances of Fuerza Bruta.

Moda Operandi cofound-er Lauren Santo Domingo exclaimed that attending the theater today, “feels very modern.” Artist George Condo said, “[Theater] is like painting, it’s never going to die. Nothing

else replaces the vivacity of live performance.”

“There was a lot of material that was overlooked as the result of this mirage of super-ficial consumerist information that came out on the Internet. People started to return to substance, and realized that this is where you find it — places like Lincoln Center, The Whitney, The Guggenheim,” added Condo, who recently enjoyed friend and collaborator Kanye West’s The Saint Pablo Tour at Madison Square Garden.

Actress Elizabeth Olsen had a terser outlook on the performing arts’ renaissance. “I think [the Internet] has really backfired with [Donald J.] Trump being the Republican nominee. I think there is a culture now where the truth has been skewed because of technology and I think it’s going to have a big backlash. It has to go back to the way it was — I think this is a phase with overconsumption. Things like the Brexit wouldn’t have happened if we didn’t become a click-bait culture,” she said.

Olsen, who grew up with a family heavily involved in the performing arts, says that she recently enjoyed Natalia Osipo-va’s postmodern residency at Saddler’s Wells in London.

Margulies feels that programs targeted at younger audiences — subsidized ticket prices and updated repertoires — have contributed to Millennials’ about-face. “I remember seven years ago being invited to the Met Opera gala and they said, ‘We want younger people to come —

we need to keep it up, we need to keep it going,’ and I think they’ve done an incredible job between dance, theater and opera, trying to make it more affordable.”

ABT artistic director Kevin McKenzie described the topic of affordability as, “the next big barrier we have to climb.”

“It’s very expensive to come to the ballet, and short of finding a government that values the power of the performing arts, it’s up to the likes of us to raise huge amounts of money at these events [to subsidize those programs],” he said. “There’s only so much soul technology can give you, there is nothing that can replace a live theatrical production.”

According to Calvin Klein, New York’s youth is smarter than they may let on. “Young people and people at every age are well aware that you can’t see the same experience on film or online,” he said.

In that experiential vein, Fargo felt that the same ethos now ap-plies to the retail industry, where consultants have been stressing ‘experience’ as a necessary element for success. “Nothing replaces human contact, we can enjoy passing of notes to each other, but it’s never going to be the good time you and me have by being in this room together,” she said.

Added Margulies: “I think [the theater] needs to stay alive be-cause we need art in our culture, not just for the art itself but for everything — art is what will be left behind when everything else is gone.” — misTy WhiTe sidell

● The Museum at FIT held its 16th academic symposium, "Proust's Muse," on Thursday.

by kristi garced

Who was Élisabeth, Countess Greffulhe — and why should we remember her?

That's exactly what The Museum at FIT sought to unpack in its 16th academic symposium, "Proust's Muse," held on Thursday in the Fred P. Pomerantz Art and Design Center. The daylong event explored the intersection of fashion and literature, among other subjects, and served as an accompaniment to the museum's current exhibition, "Proust's Muse: the Countess Greffulhe," which opened in September.

FIT's exhibit was produced in collab-oration with Palais Galliera, Musée de la Mode de la Ville de Paris, which last year unveiled the first-ever exhibition dedicated to Countess Greffulhe's wardrobe, "La Mode Retrouvée," organized by Olivier Saillard. The exhibit — an edited version of the one in Paris — showcases 28 of the Countess' garments and various accesso-ries, including her famous red velvet heels.

Supported by the Couture Council and the Coby Foundation, Thursday's

symposium featured a dozen speakers, including Dr. Joyce F. Brown, FIT's presi-dent; Laurent Cotta, head of graphic arts at Palais Galliera; Laure Hillerin, author of "La comtesse Greffulhe: L'ombre des Guermantes," a biography of the Count-ess; Susan Hiner, a professor of French and Francophone studies at Vassar, and Philippe Thiébaut, the curator of patri-mony with the Musée d'Orsay.

Valerie Steele, FIT's museum director and chief curator, discussed her curation of the exhibition on the Countess, who served as a muse for Marcel Proust and was the inspiration behind the glamor-ous Oriane, Duchesse de Guermantes

character in his 1913 novel, "In Search of Lost Time." "I felt that for Americans, it would be necessary to introduce [the Countess] via Proust. Proust had, in a sense, immortalized her," Steele said.

Joined onstage by Cotta, who helped to install FIT's exhibition, the two painted an in-depth picture of the Countess in an hourlong conversation. Born in 1860, Countess Greffulhe was beautiful but poor, so her parents arranged for her to marry Henri, Count Greffulhe, in 1881. "He was extremely rich, but as it turned out, also a philistine, jealous and unfaithful — a very unsatisfactory husband," Steele said. (A lousy husband who supported her finan-cially, that is.)

Celebrated for her "aristocratic and artis-tic elegance" and her "distinguished but often eccentric" sense of style, according to Steele, what ultimately set apart Count-ess Greffulhe's interest in beautiful clothing was a genuine desire to stand out from the crowd.

"She started to work with the design-ers to create these very striking clothes," Steele said. "The press said that she preferred to look bizarre rather than banal. She didn't want to look like anyone else. Were her dresses made for her or by

her? They always had to be different than anyone else's….She was a fashion icon, but not a trendsetter, because no one could really copy her."

"Those dresses are extremely expen-sive, and she was extremely daring in her choices…it was something completely close to her personality," Cotta said. "She had to look absolutely unique." (As the story goes, in 1904, the Countess wore one of her most exquisite pieces — the "Byzan-tine" dress, a gold taffeta, tulle and lamé gown trimmed with fur from the House of Worth — to her daughter Elaine's wedding, completely outshining the bride.)

Another thing that set apart the Count-ess was her fascination with the arts and sciences: she was known to stage her own photographs, she was a supporter of the Ballets Russes and she raised significant funding for the scientist Marie Curie, help-ing to finance the creation of the Institute of Radium, founded in 1909.

"Proust's Muse, The Countess Gref-fulhe," which runs until Jan. 7, is the first of several French fashion exhibitions to be held at The Museum at FIT. Next up is "Paris Refashioned, 1957-1968," curated by Colleen Hill; followed by "Paris, Capital of Fashion," curated by Steele.

Fashion

FIT Holds Symposium on Countess Greffulhe

Dr. Valerie Steele

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Memo Pad

Fashion Scoopsgoing With gosha Againtopman has enlisted the Russian streetwear designer Gosha Rubchinskiy to shoot the high street label’s holiday advertising campaign and video.

The images shot by the Moscow-based designer were styled by the Topman team. The shoot took place in London in a warehouselike setting with models posing against rough, exposed brick walls or on broken, uneven pavement.

In the campaign, models are wearing looks including hoodie sweatshirts that were paired with nubby coats or quilted down jackets and worn cropped trousers or denim. Tailored suits were matched with patterned dress shirts or a paja-ma-style top.

Topman creative director Gordon Richardson said of Rubchinskiy: “Gosha’s unique vision and understanding of that disaffected youth culture drives the vision of this campaign — really focusing on today’s young, their creative power and influence as individuals through their style and bold projection of it.”

The company declined to say where the ads will break.

This is the second time the designer has collaborated with the high street label. The Comme des Garçons protégé was tapped to shoot the brand’s summer 2016 look book earlier this year.

Last month, he launched his fra-grance in collaboration with Comme des Garçons and introduced Paccbet, a skate brand that he has incubated and is the brainchild of skateboarder Tolia Titaev and his friends. — lorelei marfil

Keeping it Low-KeyBalenciaga creative director Demna Gvasalia hit Los Angeles this week to attend a cocktail party Thursday night at its Rodeo Drive boutique, which opened in July. In keeping with the house's low-key vibe, there was no battalion of press covering the event, not even a house pho-tographer. That didn't mean there weren't a few notables in attendance among the customers, stylists and editors.

"Transparent" actress and model Hari Nef was hard to miss in one of Balen-ciaga's floral print patchwork frocks. "I'm stalking the clothes," she said while flipping through the racks of voluminous wool and puffer jackets. "A lot of these

looks fit me really well, which can be hard when you're tall. I'm not a sample size like a teenager." In fact, Nef was out with several of her Parisian friends celebrating her 24th birthday, which is today. "Maybe I'll get to keep this dress," she said hopefully.

"Happy Birthday," Gvasalia told her. "Thanks," she replied, adding, "All my friends in New York bought the Balencia-ga sweaters for fall."

Gvasalia noted the crossover trend among his customer, with women buying pieces from the men's collection and vice versa. "I want people to mix things up, so that it's not one look from head to toe," he said. During his few days in Los Angeles, he visited retailers, meticulously examin-ing how his pieces are merchandised. "I spent a lot of time in Barneys," he said.

Though this was a work trip, Gvasalia said he adores Los Angeles, having spent most of his August holiday here. Like many designers, he scoured vintage shops for inspiration pieces. "I'm not really looking for specific eras or design-er clothes. I like things like old uniforms or costumes from Hollywood productions. I could search for days and days," he said.

While several tall, beautiful and androg-ynous-looking members of Gvasalia's posse milled about in pieces from the fall 2016 collection – one wore Balenciaga's ex-aggerated shoulder men's jacket over the women's leather legging boots – there was one person who went with a local get-up.

Lionel Vermeil, Kering's director of luxury and fashion intelligence, showed up wearing the white Sleepy Jones pajamas he found in his room at Sunset Tower -- the hotel's logo was embroidered on the pock-et. "It's my favorite brand of pajamas, and I thought it looks right for L.A.," he said.

Coincidentally, the hotel's owner Jeff Klein was also at the party and nearly burst into tears of happiness when he spotted his pajamas. "Wait, who is this person? This is one of the best fashion branding moments of my life," he exclaimed. While Gvasalia may have admonished against wearing a look head-to-toe, Vermeil really went for it. He accessorized with a Sunset Tower emblazoned shoe bag from the ho-tel, inside of which he stashed the Do Not Disturb sign, a pink cardboard oval which read simply, "No." — marcy medina

Modern ClassicsSalle Privée, a new luxury men's wear label offering a highly curated edit of classic pieces, has launched online via its own e-commerce site.

The Amsterdam-based brand is the brainchild of Patrick Munster, creator of contemporary label Scotch & Soda. It will adopt a direct-to-consumer approach, selling globally through its own Web site and retail store in Amsterdam, which

is set to open later this year. There are also plans to roll out shops in other key markets as the label expands.

"What I wanted to create wasn't about fashion, it's about good quality and a seasonless wardrobe," said Munster, pointing out that in an over-saturated fashion market he finds that more and more consumers are on the lookout for "trend-less" classic pieces.

Munster traveled to Italy to work on the first Salle Privée collection with Ulrika Lundgren, designer of the women's ready-to-wear brand Rika, who partnered with him on the label's creative direction. The two produced the full range in a factory outside Venice, which also works with big Italian labels like Jil Sander and Prada.

The inaugural collection features a neutral palette of navys, grays and camels, and adds a modern, minimalist sensibility on men's wear classics from double-breasted wool coats and denim trousers to suiting. Trousers are made to look more contemporary with a slimmer fit, while suits are layered under turtle-neck sweaters and coats are meticulous-ly crafted. Each style will be carried over as the brand's ethos revolves around avoiding trends and adopting a season-less approach.

The brand also aims to communicate personal stories about style and to do so has tapped a series of men of differ-ent backgrounds to feature in its first

campaign and act as its ambassadors. Each shares his relationship with style and clothes in short videos featured on the Web site.

Photographer Wayne Maser, for instance, reminisces about shooting for American Vogue at the beginning of his career and being sent to have a suit made. Artist Robert Kelly, interior de-signer David Netto and children's fiction writer Paul Kane are among the men who will be featured on the label's site next.

Munster also plans to add categories as Salle Privée grows, with a perfume al-ready in the works. — naTalie Theodosi

Jumping ina.l.C., the contemporary brand by Andrea Lieberman, launched its own e-commerce platform this week at alcltd.com. Designed with the brand's in-house team and Sweden Unlimited, the site serves the U.S. market and carries the ready-to-wear collection, handbags as well as exclusive merchandise. Lieber-man estimates that the site will account for 10 to 15 percent of total company sales within two to three years.

Lieberman launched A.L.C. in 2009 after a successful career as a high-pro-file celebrity stylist with clients including Jennifer Lopez. The collection is primarily rtw driven, but also includes handbags. It is carried at Barneys New York, Bergdorf Goodman, Saks Fifth Avenue, Intermix, Harvey Nichols, Harrods and Matches-Fashion.com. “I'm beyond excited to finally launch the A.L.C. online shop," said Lieberman. "One of my favorite parts of being a stylist was the emotional relationship to getting dressed. To be able to connect to our customer in a more intimate and personal way is truly a dream come true."

The timing of the e-commerce launch tracks with the strategy and growth plans Lieberman has laid out for her company since selling a majority stake to Interluxe, an investment arm of Lee Equity Partners, a little more than a year ago. Interluxe was established in 2014 by chairman Gary Wassner of Hilldun, and also holds a controlling interest in Jason Wu. The cash injection has fueled major moves at A.L.C., including a slew of senior management hires and the opening of a sprawling, Fifth Avenue showroom in New York in June. Since taking on Interluxe as an investor, Lieberman has put e-com-merce and digital strategy at the top of the agenda, as well as opening a brick-and-mortar store likely in Los Angeles. — Jessica iredale

A visual of Topman's holiday advertising campaign photographed by Gosha Rubchinskiy.

Moving into Mediaiman oubou has taken a circuitous route to the world of media.

A former Miss New York U.S., a runner up for the Miss Colorado U.S.A. pageant (then owned by Donald Trump) and a bioengineer, Oubou has always viewed her career as a journey or a learning ex-perience of sorts. The Moroccan native, who was crowned Miss New York U.S. last spring, launched a podcast that would shed light on the careers of female busi-nesswomen, the day after winning the pageant. The podcast, "Entrepreneurs en Vogue," became a platform for Oubou to educate her listeners on how to achieve their goals, and in doing so, it helped her realize her next step, namely to launch a digital property.

"I never saw myself in media. I went to

school thinking I was going to become a doctor," Oubou said. "I've always been inspired by other people's stories and with women with untraditional journeys. I've always fed off of those stories."

Called Swaay Media, her company is gearing up to launch its web site (swaay-media.com) today, which, she said hopes to bridge the gap between women's and business magazines.

Oubou likened Swaay's content mission to something in between Forbes and Vogue, namely a business-oriented publication, which addresses global entrepreneurship and mentorship for young women, while nodding to fashion and women's issues. She sees a white space, explaining that most women's magazines focus on appearance rather than self improvement, while the majority of business publications are geared towards older, white men.

Before delving into that further, the

chief executive officer also mentioned the need for empowering women's cover-age in light of the presidential election.

"Everything that is happening with Trump and the way he talks about women, about their appearance, that shouldn't be the focus of our conversation at all," Oubou said, before noting that she was a contestant in a Trump-owned pageant.

"Back in the day, I was so sad I didn't get to meet him, but now I'm thinking thank god I didn't meet him because I'm such a feminist," she said, claiming that some of her former pageant friends were made to "rate" each others' looks by Trump.

Returning to Swaay, which has raised an angel round from private investors of $500,000. Oubou noted that the compa-ny's goal for the first round is to hit $1.4 million. Although she wouldn't disclose investors, she did characterize main investors as global economic players from well-known foundations.

Part of that international backing comes from Oubou's ties to North Africa, as well as her desire to tap into female entrepreneurship in the Middle East and Europe. One topic she'd like to address is how women can go about raising money as they start their businesses; another is to address cultural challenges they may face.

"Fashion and lifestyle magazine content isn’t what’s going to turn young women into the leaders that we need. How do we bridge that gap?" said Oubou, who while acknowledging that many "women's media" brands produce stories on female leadership, they also some-times focus too heavily on celebrities and reality stars.

The ceo said through featuring "real" trailblazing women, who may be more un-der the radar than others, she hopes to create a network of contacts for readers.

"We want to write about entrepre-neurs but also relatable women who peo-ple can reach out to and meet with," she said. "Women want to help each other."

Swaay's launch sponsor is Valentino. The fashion house will give away premi-um handbags to four randomly selected Swaay readers who sign up for the site's newsletter over the course of this month. — aleXandra sTeiGrad

A look at the Swaay Media site.