On PGA Tour, fashion runs according to script

Viewers of the final round of golf’s U.S. Open two weeks ago might have noticed Billy Horschel’s name near the top leader board. They almost certainly noticed his pants, navy blue with a white octopus print.

Reactions from fans and media ranged from “Where can I get some of those?” to “Who dresses these guys?”

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For apparel sponsors — in Horschel’s case, Polo Ralph Lauren — that’s exactly the point. In a crowded and competitive marketplace, on-course fashion decisions are more carefully orchestrated than ever before, but they’re not being made by the players themselves. Rather, the companies who supply the clothes tell the pros not just what to wear but when to wear it.

In an effort to increase visibility and spark sales, most companies “script” their sponsored players’ outfits for each day of a major championships (the Masters, U.S. Open, British Open, and PGA Championship). Horschel, in fact, had been scheduled to don his cephalopod slacks during Saturday’s third round of the Open, but once he played his way into contention, Polo executives switched them to Sunday, when TV viewership would be highest.

Golf companies have been asking players to wear certain clothes for decades. Greg Norman, the game’s most visible star in late ’80s and early ’90s, said his sponsors “had reports down to the second” of how much airtime he and his apparel were getting.

Scripting outfits, though, traces its roots to April 13, 1997. That day, a 22-year-old in a red sweater with a white swoosh blew away his competition, became the Masters’ youngest-ever winner, and catapulted Nike golf to the head of the golf apparel class.

Nike’s rise in golf “is because of Tiger” said Matt McCabe, Golfsmith’s Vice President of Soft Lines (footwear and apparel) said. “He wears the swoosh, he wins a lot, and people want to wear it.”

Men’s product director for Nike Golf Eric Schendler says the company emphasizes scripting to take advantage of “major moments” and “define what an athlete’s look will be and make a statement as a brand.”

Nearly every other apparel company followed Nike’s lead in recent years, sharing scripts with the media prior to each major.

“Honestly, I think [scripting] is played out a little bit,” said Jennifer Hawkins, Director of Marketing for Greg Norman/Dunning golf, who said her company has been scripting for six or seven years. “You used to kind of stand out, but now all the brands have it. Once there’s that much noise, it sort of loses its impact.”

So companies have had to get creative to establish a niche.

One method is what Hawkins calls “statement dressing”: the use of bright colors, bold patterns, and octopus prints to stand out on the course.

Adidas/Taylor Made employed what Senior Director of Global Marketing Davide Mattucci calls “team scripting” at this year’s Masters, dressing all its sponsored players in the same outfits. Though Mattucci said the company’s Web site was “flooded” with orders for those products, he said the company hasn’t decided whether or not to try it again.

The article is from http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/othersports/on-pga-tour-fashion-runs-according-to-script/2013/06/28/0686e90a-e015-11e2-963a-72d740e88c12_story.html

3D-Printed Fashion Show Draws Inspiration From Nature

When you think about it, the fashion and tech industries aren't so different. Both create products that people use daily, follow extremely fickle trends and insist upon remaining on the cutting edge.

It's unsurprising, then, that the two worlds would eventually collide. While tech has been a presence in the fashion industry for years, it's only been in the past two that 3D printing has cropped up as a way for designers to rethink their process. This year, Belgium-based 3D printing company Materialise approached fashion designer Melinda Looi, who has won numerous awardsfor her experimental designs, to design a collection for Asia's first 3D-printed fashion show.

SEE ALSO: This Robotic Spider Dress Will Make Your Skin Crawl

"Creating fashion with technology has always been something I wanted to do," Looi told Fast Company. "The collaborative effort involving people from different fields and backgrounds truly reminded me that exciting and beautiful things happen when art and technology meet."

With the help of Materialise and a few engineers, Looi designed a collection inspired by birds, consisting of winged accessories and patterns that echo natural forms. Designing, printing and fitting the collection took a long time, but once it was complete, the team presented their work in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

3D-printed fashion accessory or new-age Bluetooth headpiece? You decide. Image courtesy of The Photoz

A 3D-printed wing harness. Image courtesy of The Photoz.

SEE ALSO: Shape-Shifting Dresses Respond to Stares

The visionaries behind the collection have stated that none of the pieces are actually meant to be worn, but rather to show that fashion and tech can work harmoniously. Still, we think these 3D-printed wedges are pretty fierce.

3D-printed wedges. Image courtesy of The Photoz

The article is from http://mashable.com/2013/06/28/3d-printed-fashion-show/

The revolution will be -- stylized? From fashion statement to social symbol

(CNN) -- When Texas state Sen. Wendy Davis made headlines for a filibuster opposing an abortion bill, it was more than her speech that generated buzz. Davis donned hot pink running shoes as she attempted a 13-hour stand against a Texas bill that includes a provision to ban abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy.

As Davis went on, her filibuster became a trending topic on Twitter and the shoe an iconic visual behind the hashtag #standwithwendy.

Davis' footwear joins a long line of apparel that has become symbolic of resistance, from the Trayvon Martin hoodie to Pussy Riot's balaclava face masks.

The shoes were designed for comfort, but Davis told CNN's AC360, "I underestimated how difficult it would be both physically and mentally. About two hours in, I realized I was in for a long day."

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Davis also said she didn't expect her shoes to catch national attention. Mizuno, the makers of the now-famous sneakers, told CNN they were surprised at the sudden hype surrounding the shoe, called the Wave Rider.

"The Wave Rider is designed to give the comfort and cushioning needed whether it's a 5K, a marathon or 10+ hour filibuster," Mizuno spokeswoman Harper Cornell said in a statement.

Cornell wouldn't share sales data for the $115 shoe, but the resulting attention has increased traffic to MizunoRunning.com and the Wave Rider 16 product page, she said. Daily website traffic totals nearly doubled compared to the same day last week. The shoes have garnered rave reviews on online retailer Amazon.com, too.

"We do appreciate Ms. Davis' choice in athletic footwear," the company's statement said. "However, we do not maintain a corporate position related to the topic in discussion."

The article is from http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/28/living/wendy-davis-fashion-statement/

Cheap, trendy ‘fast fashion’ in demand, despite factory dangers

Cathy Anderson likes clothes — trendy, cutting-edge clothes that look as if they’ve come right off the runway. And she wants them now and she wants them at bargain prices.

Anderson, a 28-year-old District resident, could be a poster child for those who graduated in a down economy but still feel the need to look fashionable.

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Young men and women like Anderson have turned to stores such as H&M, Zara and the Gap. Inexpensive clothing has always existed, but these retailers have racked up huge sales by mastering the art of “fast fashion”: identifying hot designer trends immediately, ordering up inexpensive copies and stocking their stores with the look-alikes, often within weeks of their runway debuts. And they do so at a fraction of the designer price, making them accessible to a broad range of consumers. (These are not knockoffs in the traditional sense because no one is trying to pass them off as designer originals.)

“Fashion used to be . . . really an elite thing to do. Now it’s not,” says Daniel Benkendorf, an assistant professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology.

In April, a factory in Bangladesh involved in producing “fast fashion” collapsed, killing nearly 1,300 people and seriously injuring scores of others. Advocacy campaigns for safe conditions and worker protections swung into high gear. Protests, including one scheduled for Saturday at a Gap in downtown Washington, are part of an effort to urge — some would say shame — retailers into signing a legally binding accord aimed at improving safety conditions and standards in Bangladesh factories. H&M and Zara have already signed on; the Gap has declined and is pushing its own agreement. (On Thursday, the Obama administration also announced the suspension of U.S. trade privileges for Bangladesh, although this action does not apply to textiles.)

Have the revelations about the dangers to faraway workers turned off consumers — often educated and otherwise globally-conscience consumers — from clamoring for the latest peplum top or high-low skirt?

Not really. Although profits for many of fast fashions’ biggest names dipped in the first months of the year, fluctuations in currency and diversion of money for long-term investments seem to be the most prevalent causes. And global sales at H&M have recently bounced back, with a 14 percent spike in the first two weeks of June, reports trade publication Women’s Wear Daily.

“They’re not the best fabrics, they’ll probably last a season, the seams rip, the material balls up, but for the moment we can buy it it feels good,” says Jennifer Baumgartner, a clinical psychologist and author of “You Are What You Wear: What Your Clothes Reveal About You.” “Then we’re bored and we start up again.”

Positive reinforcement for snatching up trendy clothes at bargain prices also drives some consumers. Haul videos — clips on YouTube showing shoppers brandishing piles of new purchases — can rack up hundreds of thousands of views. Public figures such as first ladyMichelle Obama and Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, (a.k.a. Kate Middleton) are hailed for wearing inexpensive, fashionable brands including Zara and Asos, along with designer pieces.

The article is from http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/cheap-trendy-fast-fashion-in-demand-despite-factory-dangers/2013/06/28/b10ceb74-d906-11e2-9df4-895344c13c30_story.html

Milan Men’s Fashion Week, the Sun Also Sets

“In Italy,” the Master wrote, “we see a charm in things which in other countries we should consign to the populous limbo of the vulgarities.” Case in point: last weekend’s GQ party honoring Jim Nelson, the style bible’s editor, on his 10th anniversary on the job.

In New York, trade parties celebrating personnel milestones properly fall under the heading of line-of-duty. (As the decorator and socialite Robert Couturier once remarked, “You go to leave.”) In Italy, and specifically in this fortresslike city of high walls and hidden gardens, palaces concealed behind blank facades, sheer beauty dispels all thoughts of vulgarity’s limbo. So inured are Italians to the beauty around them that they tend to take it for granted. Wide-eyed Americans do not.

“I kind of can’t believe this even exists,” Mr. Nelson, the editor, said before a thronged cocktail party that was a social high point of the men’s Fashion Week, an evening that was like being set loose in a petting zoo of fashion celebrity.

Mr. Nelson was referring to the location, the gardens of theVilla Necchi Campiglio, a modernist masterpiece constructed from 1932 to 1935 by the Milanese architect Piero Portaluppi for Nedda and Gigina Necchi, sisters who had inherited a vast fortune built on sewing machines.

Invisible from the street, the villa is an intact historic monument surrounded by wide lawns, a swimming pool and tennis courts. GQ guests crunched down paths of white pea gravel beneath mature chestnut trees flanked by pots of carmine geraniums. They gathered poolside under trees strung with fairy lights and a rare super-moon, which hung so low and shone so brightly, it seemed like a theatrical prop.

Designers in this sober city of industry are not the collegial group you might imagine. Except for Dean and Dan Caten of Dsquared, they are not even partyers in general.

Luring Giorgio Armani from his palace apartment on the Via Borgonuovo, where he lives quietly with his beloved black cat, Angel, is an accomplishment. Getting him out to mingle with a crowd that includes Frida Giannini, Tomas Maier, Diego Della Valle, Gaia Trussardi, Thom Browne, Ermenegildo Zegna, Italo Zucchelli, Stefano Pilati, Neil Barrett, Umit Benan, John Varvatos, Kean Etro, the soccer stars Hidetoshi Nakata and Henrik Lundqvist and many others is a feat.

“The crowd is amazing,” said Claudio Castiglioni, the chief commercial officer of Tod’s, adding that probably only GQ, with its editorial power, could wrangle such a guest list.

“Look who’s coming!” hissed another guest, the model Hanneli Mustaparta. Nudging a companion, Ms. Mustaparta pointed toward Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, whose card readings cannot have been too positive lately, given that days earlier an Italian judge had handed them a 20-month suspended sentence and levied a heavy fine on the pair for hiding hundreds of millions of euros from tax authorities in a dummy company.

Far from seeming perturbed, the tanned and bespectacled designers appeared relaxed as they air-kissed friends and spoke of their haute couture show in Venice. The theme is a masquerade ball. Invitations in the form of individualized masks have already been delivered. Guests are expected to dress accordingly. Don’t even think about come-as-you-are.

A RECURRING THEME in Milan involves talk of the “fashion system,” made to sound like a planetary group formed in the remote past around a central sun and subject to immutable laws. In reality, the Italian fashion system is fairly scattered, decentralized, factional and altogether as recent an innovation as the notion of capital-F fashion itself.

The machinery to generate the global fashion juggernaut we all now know was devised here in the 1950s by a nascent trade group that came to be called the Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana. Over the decades, though, that group seemed to lose some sense of its original mission, and the city its luster as an incubator of the new. Yet, because so much production remains centered here, buyers had little choice but to keep Milan on the radar. Its advertising power insured that editors did the same. Even so, many agreed that Milan was no longer the creative powerhouse it had once been.

“Go back to the ’80s, when you had Versace, Armani,” said a major American retailer who, reluctant to compromise business relationships, would speak only anonymously. “In those days, you had to come to Milan.” Cities like Paris or London seemed like “secondary places,” he added. Still, they came.

Now that is beginning to change. If a full-scale alarm was not set off by the recent decision by Burberry and Alexander McQueen to quit the Milan calendar and show in London, the buzz generated by London Fashion Week surely jolted the Milanese awake.

At an impromptu news conference early last Sunday, a group seldom seen in one another’s company announced emergency plans to revitalize Milan as a fixture on the fashion map. Some of the most famous names were represented: Mr. Zegna, Patrizio Bertelli, Angela Missoni and Mr. Della Valle, the owners, respectively, of Zegna, Prada, Missoni and Tod’s.

“Without Italian fabrics, Italian know-how, there would be no fashion,” Mr. Bertelli said.

Whether or not this is so, there is no doubt that the multibillion-dollar fashion industry here, one employing roughly one million workers, direly needs infusions of creativity and youth.

In New York, the Council of Fashion Designers of America, and the Vogue editor Anna Wintour, mobilized early to recruit and support a new generation of designers — and also to build out Fashion Week’s presence on the Web and across social platforms. The Camera Nazionale, meanwhile, continued to operate like a club with vague governance, a wobbly institutional message (what does “Made in Italy” mean, anyway, when so many Italian goods are manufactured in Eastern Europe and sent back across the border to have a label sewn on?) and a tendency to communicate by fax.

“London is a reality,” Mr. Zegna said in a phone interview. “Paris is strong. We have to be competitive. For the first time, you have a group coming together and putting up our own money to defend our position.”

Already the new body has collectively pledged five million euros (about $6.5 million) to the cause, he said.

In an e-mail message, Mr. Bertelli added that what matters most is innovation: “I think this concept should apply not only to the collections, but also to all the aspects of the fashion week.” Mr. Della Valle said, accurately if to no particular end, that, in Italy: “there is beauty all around us. We should dust off the beautiful things.”

Leave it to Mr. Armani, who has refused to join the group, to take a hardheaded approach. “To my mind, all Italian brands should go back to holding their fashion shows in Milan,” he wrote in an e-mail. “This ‘return’ to Milan would be seen as a strong signal, strengthening the concept and value of Italian fashion worldwide.”

A FINAL WORD on fashion innovation in Milan: Japan.

Everywhere you looked in the city last weekend there were Japanese men in blousy white shirts over black hot pants worn with white bucks; in drop-crotch trousers accessorized with lug-soled Prada shoes; in Prince of Wales checked shorts-suits worn with crisp white shirts and Grenson oxfords; in vintage overalls shorts from Gap (yes, ’90s Gap is now vintage).

“The Japanese have really gotten it together recently,” said Scott Schuman, the street photographer of The Sartorialist. “There’s a new, younger generation of guys that loves fashion and pushes it,” though not to the point where they look like a punch line.

The article is from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/30/fashion/milan-mens-fashion-week-the-sun-also-sets.html?pagewanted=all

Asian designers centre stage at Paris fashion

AFP - Asian designers on Thursday took to the catwalks at Paris fashion week with the sharp lines of South Korea's Wooyoungmi's scorched desert-inspired collection vying for attention with young Japanese designer Yusuke Takahashi's colourful exploration of traditional dyeing techniques for Issey Miyake.

In a collection described as a departure from Wooyoungmi's "steady focus on her ideal man as a source of inspiration" the South Korean drew on winter thoughts of a "scorched desert landscape".

Working with denim for the first time, Wooyoungmi -- who was the first South Korean designer to venture into menswear - offered offered sharply tailored jackets, button up shirts and stiff-bodied t-shirts in cactus green, sky blue, sandy beige and python print.

The 27-year-old Yusuke Takahashi meanwhile presented a collection using handmade traditional techniques of dyeing.

Long flowing coats and Nehru jackets, in intricate irregular patterns, stripes or large checks were teamed with shorts or wide-legged trousers and caps.

Explaining one of the techniques, the label said that after dyeing fabric black using the itajime method, blue and red were then printed on top by silkscreen printing.

In another, the batik dyeing technique involved many layers of anti-dyeing glue being printed on cloth which was then hardened and broken by hand.

"The dye penetrates between the cracks, leaving individual complex patterns," it added.

Later Thursday, influential Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto will also present a collection while Friday will see shows by two more Asian designers -- Juun J. of South Korea and Junya Watanabe of Japan.

Juun J. is known for his oversized garments layered together in one piece, with military references said to be inspired by his national service in the South Korean army.

Junya Watanabe, meanwhile, likes to experiment with cutting edge fabrics and usually bases his collections around deconstructing and reconstructing a single concept.

A show by another Japanese designer, Miharayasuhiro, who first made his name in footwear with a collection created while he was still a student, is also scheduled for Saturday.

Noted for a muted, monochromatic signature style, Miharayasuhiro launched his first store SOSU (prime number) in Tokyo in 1998 before expanding into menswear.

Dozens of men's collections for spring/summer 2014 are being shown over five days in Paris this week.

They wind up on Sunday when men's fashion will give way to four more days of haute couture for autumn/winter 2013/2014.

The men's fashion highlight is expected to be Hedi Slimane's Sunday show for Saint Laurent while Christian Lacroix's return to Paris fashion after a four-year absence will undoubtedly be the must-see show of next week.

The article is from http://www.france24.com/en/20130627-asian-designers-centre-stage-paris-fashion

‘Future Beauty’: High fashion as high art at SAM | Art review

The mannequins in Seattle Art Museum’s fascinating exhibit “Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion” stand on the balls of their feet, heels up, as if poised on the edge of a cliff. In a sense, they are: These dozens of garments, unique and beautiful and strange (sometimes all three), represent a shift in the fashion world — a moment when innovative Japanese designers began to make an international impact, changing the way we think about clothing.

Beginning austerely, with a grouping titled “In Praise of Shadows,” the exhibit immediately takes us back 30 years, when Rei Kawakubo’s landmark early-’80s work shocked the fashion world. These garments, standing quietly in a row, are made in a tattered rainbow of black and cream — early, controversial signals of the now-common sight of intentionally torn or unfinished garments, and of black as a default “color.”

These garments, and most in the exhibit, do not hug the body, but drape it (the kimono was a strong influence) and reshape it. A Rei Kawakubo black skirt and top — the second garment in the exhibit — looks like the fabric just dropped onto the body from above and elegantly puddled there, creating its own landscape.

Standing nearby, like distant acquaintances, are four more recent black garments, including perhaps the exhibit’s most conventional-looking dress: a stunning full-skirted silk taffeta ball gown by Yohji Yamamoto that would look perfectly at home on a red carpet — and yet, beneath its folds peeks a polka-dot underskirt; the garment’s playful exclamation point, reminding us to look for the details.

Moving through the exhibit, we see more experiments with color, fabric and shape, some remarkably innovative. Issey Miyake’s short, spiky cocktail dresses look startlingly modern on the body; folded up on the floor, they appear to be intricate origami shapes, representative of an ancient art. Junya Watanabe’s “Techno Couture” collection, made of polyester intricately folded and pleated into honeycomb form, seems to hover around the wearer like an electric cloud; you wonder if they’ll float away. A Kawakubo “wedding dress” is made from what appears to be quilt batting; a Jun Takahashi black dress has a conventionally form-fitting silhouette, but is covered with patches from which long red threads trail, like scars dripping blood. Koji Tatsuno’s golden brown nylon dress is wired in dramatic swoops and swirls, both embracing and entrapping the woman inside it.

Later in the exhibit, rooms are devoted to several individual designers: Miyake, one of the first Japanese designers to establish a Paris presence; Kawakubo, with examples from her famously controversial 1997 “Body Meets Dress, Dress Meets Body” collection (complete with shape-distorting pads sewn into the garments; it was less charitably called the “Lumps and Bumps” collection in the press); Yamamoto’s romantic deconstruction (a cream satin gown seems to meander adventurously around the body, twisting as it goes); Takahashi’s fascination with all-over pattern; Watanabe’s playful takes on classic shapes, including a hoop skirt that seems to be escaping its wearer.

This is SAM’s first exhibit focusing entirely on fashion, and there’s no question, as you walk through the exhibit and take in the details, that these garments are works of art. Seeing them gathered together, as if assembled for some marvelously avant-garde party, is a rare opportunity to see a page of fashion history; don’t miss it.

The article is from http://seattletimes.com/html/thearts/2021280992_futurebeautyxml.html

High Fashion Eyes Hi-Tech: Dresses That Know You’re Looking

A Montreal-based fashion designer has created a pair of dresses that react to the viewer’s gaze by lighting up and moving on their own. Working with glow-in-the dark thread, structured plastic, and super-organza commonly used in costumes for the Paris Opera House and Europe’s top fashion brands, Ying Gao constructed the spotlight-loving dresses. “The gaze-activated dresses are embedded with eye-tracking technology that responds to an observer’s gaze by activating tiny motors to move parts of the dresses in mesmerising patterns,” Dezeen magazine explains. But that’s just the start: Once activated by the viewer, the dresses move in a pre-programmed fashion.

(MORE: NUIA EyeCharm Promises Eye Tracking on the Cheap)

While one of the dresses is reminiscent of swimming jellyfish and the other has bands that evoke strands of DNA, Gao says her direct inspiration came from Paul Virilio’s 1979 essay, “Esthétique de la disparition” (The aesthetic of disappearance). As she explained to TIME in an email, “Virilio’s essay is about speed, light and disappearance, so while creating these dresses, I must have unconsciously related to it as the movement of jellyfish.” Gao remarks on her site that “a photograph is said to be ‘spoiled’ by blinking eyes – here however, the concept of presence and of disappearance are questioned, as the experience of chiaroscuro (clarity/obscurity) is achieved through an unfixed gaze.”

“Whether it is a direct visual contact or through a camera, the artistic concept of gaze has always appealed to me. Therefore, when my robotics designer Simon Laroche and I started working on the project (no) where (now) here, we thought a lot about how to bring both the conceptual and technological level together,” Gao explains. Despite all the robotic technology, each dress weighs no more than half a pound since super-organza is the world’s lightest frabic.

(MORE: How to Build a Jellyfish — and Why You’d Bother)

According to the artist, the project will be on exhibition this fall at Montreal’s Centre de design UQAM and Shanghai’s Power Station of Art (PSA), and at Toronto’s Textile Museum of Canada in the Spring of 2014.

The article is from http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/06/27/high-fashion-eyes-hi-tech-dresses-that-know-youre-looking/

Chanel In China Is Most Sought-After Fashion Brand, According To World Luxury Index

The fashion world can be quite fickle, leaving brands to duke it out for top positions in the market. The latest Roman Empire to fall is Louis Vuitton, left in the dust byChanel.

According to the World Luxury Index, Chanel is now the most sought-after brand in China. Previously, Louis Vuitton had held the top slot, but Digital Luxury Group, the company that conducted the market research, claims that Chanel's edge in the lucrative beauty industry pushed it ahead. (Louis Vuitton currently has no stake in beauty.)

It's no wonder Chanel is all the rage in China. Aside from hawking some pretty covetable bags and perfumes, the fashion house has been a model for many of its competitors with its emphasis on exclusivity, especially when it comes to China. After the company opened stores in Shanghai last year, Chanel's president of fashion, Bruno Pavlovsky, told CNN: "We try to get the best three boutiques in Shanghai instead of having 10 boutiques."

Are you listening, Louis Vuitton? Perhaps you just need to launch a fragrance and play a little hard to get so that you can get back into China's good graces.

The article is from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/27/chanel-in-china-brand_n_3509369.html

Plane carrying Missoni fashion director found off Venezuela

(CNN) -- Nearly six months after it went missing off Venezuela's coast, authorities have located the small plane that was carrying Italian fashion boss Vittorio Missoni and five others, the country's Interior Ministry announced Thursday.

The aircraft disappeared on January 4 as it left Los Roques, an archipelago and resort, for the international airport outside Caracas, about 90 miles away. Vittorio Missoni, his wife, and four others -- including a pilot and copilot -- were all on board. All are presumed dead.

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Missoni, 58, ran the famed Missoni fashion house with his siblings, Luca and Angela. Neither sibling was on the plane.

With the help of an American ship with special oceanographic technology, the plane was located off the coast of Key Carenero, within the Los Roques archipelago, according to a family statement published by Italy's ANSA news agency.

"At this time, efforts are underway to recover the wreckage," the families of those aboard the plane said in the statement. "The families would like to thank the Venezuelan and Italian governments for its commitments in finding the wreckage and the family is confident that the investigation into the cause of the incident."

Family: 'We will not give up'

Venezuelan authorities had launched intensive search efforts with boats, helicopters and divers scouring the area for any sign of the missing plane. A bag from the plane washed up on the island of Curacao some 124 miles away from where the aircraft disappeared three weeks after the aircraft went missing.

The fashion house, which boasts such celebrity clients as Katie Holmes, Cameron Diaz and Nicole Richie, is a high-end fashion label known for its patterned knitwear and signature zigzag stripe.

The private company, based in Milan, Italy, has estimated annual sales of between $75 million and $100 million.

The brand, first created in 1953 as a knitwear workshop in Gallarte, Italy, has expanded from apparel to housewares, a fragrance line and a chain of hotels.

Stefano Tonchi, editor-in-chief of W magazine, called the Missonis "one of the most important Italian fashion families," crediting their move to Milan in the late 1960s with helping make the northern Italian city the fashion hub it is today.

Vittorio Missoni and his siblings took over the brand in 1996 with an eye toward marketing to a younger consumer.

The fashion house partnered with Target in 2011 to produce a more budget-friendly collection for the discount retailer, which caused Target's website to crash due to the high demand.

The article is from http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/27/world/americas/venezuela-missoni-plane/index.html

Fashion Scavenger Hunt: Help Find This Earring's Long Lost Twin

Welcome to Fashion Scavenger Hunt, a column to help you track down your favorite products — clothes, makeup, shoes, whatever — that have been discontinued or otherwise lost in the passage of time and quickie fashion trends. Email katie@jezebel.com to submit your own "wanted" ads.

From Krystal:

I need help tracking down a pair of earrings. I bought them while in college at a bead shop (the owner made them, I think) and it has since closed down. I lost one of them, and I've never been able to rock the asymmetrical, one earring look. Please help? They're my favorite!

Help her find some similar ones, at least?

The article is from http://jezebel.com/fashion-scavenger-hunt-help-find-this-earrings-long-l-587677235

Amidst a Profusion of Fashion E-Commerce Models, What’s Working?

In recent years, we’ve seen a veritable renaissance in online fashion retail, with venture money pouring into fashion e-commerce companies with a wide range of models. In the first of a series of articles on the current state of fashion e-commerce, sponsored by e-commerce software and platform solutions company Magento, BoF examines some of the models getting the most traction.

Source: Shutterstock

NEW YORK, United States — “We’re still at the tip of the iceberg.” So goes the refrain sung by a chorus of fashion e-commerce entrepreneurs and investors. After all, apparel is the fastest growing e-commerce category in the US — estimated at $41 billion, according to GP Bullhound — and the second largest after consumer electronics. Meanwhile, “three-quarters of online sales in China are in apparel,” said Althea Peng of A.T. Kearney in a report published earlier this month.

Considering these encouraging numbers, combined with fact that the majority of traditional fashion brands have been slow to embrace digital and a dominant ‘Amazon for fashion’ has yet to emerge, perhaps it’s not surprising that the number of sites vying for a piece of the online fashion market is now over two thousand, up 126 percent year-on-year, according to GP Bullhound, while venture money continues to pour into the space. Only a few days ago, Fab.com, which plans to increase its focus on fashion, raised a $150 million Series D round from investors including Andreessen Horowitz and Chinese tech giant Tencent at a $1 billion valuation.

Big-time exits have been few, however. In 2009, Yoox’s IPO valued the company at €217 million (about $283 million, at current exchange rates) and resulted in a €21 million payout for founder and CEO Federico Marchetti, while, in 2010, Swiss luxury conglomerate Richemont, which already owned 29 percent of Net-a-Porter, acquired the remainder of the company from other shareholders including founder Natalie Massenet, in a deal which valued the e-tailer at about £350 million pounds ($530 million). But amidst these success stories, companies are failing. The rise and fall of flash sales, daily deals and group deals sites has been well documented. Subscription commerce sites have also run into trouble, while the recent flurry of online consignment, or “re-commerce,” companies have met with mixed results.

So which models are showing the most promise? We spoke to a number of leading founders and investors to find out.

Social Curation

“I think the biggest online-only opportunity in fashion is related to and focused on discovery and connecting people to inspiration,” said Kristen Green, managing partner at Forerunner Ventures. And indeed, social curation sites, which offer consumers a way to discover inspiring content and product selections handpicked by others, have gained significant traction.

“To date, the majority of innovation in e-commerce has been around price efficiency for the consumer. Either people knew what they wanted and searched for the best price, or they sought out outlet models, like daily deals, group deals, flash sales” but the next round of e-commerce successes will have to deliver on “surprise and delight,” said Joseph Einhorn, founder of social commerce site The Fancy, a social commerce site which has attracted over 7 million users and does approximately $36 million in annual sales, according to figures supplied by the company.

Lyst is another curation site showing signs of traction. But critically, the site allows users to follow products curated by brands and retailers, as well as other consumers. “We only share interests with certain facets of social groups. I go to gigs with only 10 percent of my friends, or take book recommendations from 5 percent of my friends. I have a lot of engineer friends — they’re great, but I don’t want fashion recommendations from them,” said Lyst founder and CEO Chris Morton.

Lyst users are invited to follow the brands and retailers they like, generating in a personalised shopping feed that is specific to their tastes. “It’s a totally unique, bespoke experience that could never exist in the real world,” added Morton. The company has attracted 2 million active users, works with over 500 affiliates and drives over $1 million of sales each month.

Collaborative Consumption

Outside fashion, companies like Airbnb and Zipcar have proven that collaborative consumption — a model whereby people rent access to products, rather than owning them — is a compelling consumer proposition. With a total of $54.4 million in funding from the likes of Condé Nast, American Express and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Rent the Runway has successfully brought the collaborative consumption model to fashion, enabling consumers to rent designer fashion and accessories for a few days at a time.

“Women come to Rent the Runway because they want permission to play dress up,” said founder and CEO Jennifer Hyman. “It’s a similar value proposition to Zara — that you can wear something once and not feel guilty.” The company has attracted over 3 million members, who rent more than 10,000 dresses every week.

Vertically Integrated E-Commerce

Several of the most promising online fashion and accessories e-commerce players are vertically integrated businesses, who design, produce, market and distribute their own products, earning higher margins in the process. One of the most compelling examples is eyewear company Warby Parker, which has raised a total of $55 million since 2010 and seen sales grow by over 500 percent in its first two years of business, according to figures supplied by the company.

Warby Parker has also launched a fully owned and operated offline store in New York’s Soho, followed by a second location in Boston. “More and more online brands will have a physical presence too,” commented Robin Klein, a partner at Index Ventures. “I expect the winners of tomorrow to combine an element of physical and online retail presence,” agreed Frederic Court, general partner at Advent Venture Partners.

Online Marketplaces

Online marketplaces, which connect buyers and sellers without taking on the risk of actually buying and holding inventory, have also met with success. Farfetch, which connects fashion consumers with carefully selected product from a large and diverse network of independent fashion boutiques, hit $129 million in sales in 2012, a 145 percent increase on 2011.

Building on this momentum, Farfetch, which has raised a total of $42.5 million from investors including Condé Nast, Index Ventures and Advent Venture Partners, plans to leverage its global network of over 250 boutiques, with a combined total of over 750 outlets, to connect the physical and digital shopping experiences and offer a layer of multi-channel services. But ultimately, it’s the company’s winning product assortment that is the biggest driver of its success. “What helps us win is our unique product,” said founder José Neves.

Indeed, rather than a novel model, great product is perhaps the most important element of a successful fashion e-commerce business. “Many investors forgot this and overfunded businesses more focused on a specific model (subscription, flash sales, etcetera) than offering a great product,” said Court. “But product is the key to a successful e-commerce businesses, ahead of any parameter.”

This article is sponsored by Magento, an e-commerce software and platform solutions company used by more than 150,000 firms. Magento offers a range of resources, support and consulting services to help their customers get the most from their Magento deployments, including education, training, and developer certification programs.

The article is from http://www.businessoffashion.com/2013/06/amidst-a-profusion-of-fashion-e-commerce-models-whats-working.html