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Daily EDition march 24, 2017 1
Fashion. Beauty. Business.
CFDA’s RevealThe CFDA unveiled the nominees for its awards and honors, including Demna Gvasalia and Rick Owens.
Page 4
A Manor of StyleThe fashions of the famed Devonshires are on display at the English country estate Chatsworth.
Page 17
Bagging A WinnerChloé hopes to maintain its momentum in handbags under new creative director Natacha Ramsay-Levi.
Page 5
● The web giant’s private-label push is emphasizing basics.
By Evan Clark
Amazon is many things — restless tech giant, consumer-obsessed disruptor and e-commerce innovator.
It is one of the top companies to watch in fashion, setting the tone for how to serve shoppers online, experimenting with how to sell to them in a physical environ-ment through its new book stores and beckoning brands with billions of con-sumer clicks on its marketplace.
But will it grow into a fashion power-house under its own brands?
That could be one of the most important questions facing the industry right now as the economics of retail break down, the web gains steam and store traffic slips away.
The answer starts with the eight brands Amazon already is developing into its pri-vate-label stable. They open up a window on its in-house fashion ambitions and show a company looking to take advantage of its scale and traffic with basic looks that can
● Chef-driven restaurants and food halls are at the forefront of the trend.
By Sharon EdElSon
If you feed them, they will come.That appears to be the hope of retailers
and mall operators throughout the U.S. as they rush to install a plethora of food formats to lure finicky and tight-fisted consumers to shop.
“The typical department store is losing ground every day,” said Jaime Fasja, co-chief executive officer of Thor Urbana, the Mexican affiliate of Thor Equities. “We see what’s happening with the big depart-ment stores in the U.S. We believe that the centers of future will have new anchors
business
Amazon EyesIts OwnFashionEmpire
Food:Retailers’LatestFashion
continued on page 13
continued on page 11
Natural beauty is booming and as new brands rush into the mass market, established players are scurrying to keep up. For more, see pages 8 to 10.
Money Treephotograph By gEorgE ChinSEE
Experience Matters
4 march 24, 2017
Media Industry Mulls Potential Time Inc. Sale● Time Inc. continues to entertain takeover bids as consolidations looms for publishers.
● Which Retailers Are Closing Stores in 2017
● Michael Strahan Likes Being on Top of Tom Brady — Literally
● Target Adds Jessica Alba’s Honest Beauty to Its Expanding Assortment
● Jennifer Fisher, Off-White Collaborate On Earring Design
ToP 5TrendIngOn WWD.COM
nEWSMAKERSThis Week’s Most Talked About names In Our Industry
Terry J. Lundgren
Diane von Furstenberg
Inès de la Fressange
Kiernan Shipka
● Chief executive officer Emanuel Chirico criticized the transactional nature of online shopping.
By kali hayS
Emanuel Chirico said PVH Corp. plans to keep investing in Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, which are growing steadily abroad, while layering in some more online savvy, potentially through digital acquisitions.
Chirico, who leads the company as chief executive officer, said the recent deal to acquire intimates e-commerce player True & Co. is bringing in a “rela-tively small” business that can help PVH a build a larger digital platform and pick up expertise in consumer data mining.
“It could be a very exciting acquisition
for us as we go forward,” Chirico added.Looking to the next year or two,
Chirico said the “strength” of Calvin and Tommy means PVH will continue to focus on those brands in terms of investments and marketing, but that certain license buybacks, as well as further acquisitions, could come to pass sooner than later.
“If there are opportunities from a digital point of view or we can make an investment, gain expertise — because it’s very expensive and challenging to go out and get the talent — that’s necessary,” Chirico said. “Sometimes it’s easier and more efficient to buy that talent like we did with the True acquisition.”
Chirico added that the current uncer-tainty around the “tax situation” in the U.S. makes it difficult for PVH manage-ment to “plan for any major acquisition.
“That does give us a little bit of pause,
but I’m hoping over the next three to six months, that situation will become more clear…and hopefully we’ll have more clarity on our decisions going forward,” he said.
(President Trump has promised to remake the tax code lowering corporate taxes, but there are still more questions than answers on exactly how that will play out for different types of businesses or individual companies.)
PVH also intends to make further investments in digital for Calvin and Tommy specifically, but Chirico declined to specify what level of e-commerce busi-ness either brand does currently.
Both brands saw growth internation-ally, mainly in Europe and China, helping PVH to grow revenue by 2.3 percent to $8.2 billion during 2016, but struggles in North America weighed on the company’s results, leaving net income for the year to fall 4.1 percent to $548.7 million.
Nevertheless, Chirico told analysts that PVH is looking to capitalize on momentum abroad, and without giving specific numbers, said both the Calvin and Tommy businesses in China could double over the next five years. Chirico did say that the Calvin brand is three times the size of the Tommy brand in the region right now.
As for changes in consumer habits related to the continued ascent of online shopping, Chirico said that’s a ques-tion still in need of an answer, but as a wholesaler and retailer, something that concerns him is the absence of impulse buying when a shopper has been properly romanced in a store.
“I’m not sure the impulse nature of online is as significant as it is in brick and mortar, where you are able to romance the consumer more. I think that is a chal-lenge,” Chirico said.
He went on to note that PVH’s brands, as well as their strategic partners, need to create a fuller online shopping experience.
“We need to be better…about making the online shopping experience not only efficient and effective, but also, we are in the fashion industry, and we need to romance that consumer much more than we do today,” Chirico said. “I think some players do it well and some players don’t do it well — [an online sale today is] like buying a bar of soap — so we really need to make that experience much better.”
● A familiar crop of American designer names will be on the ballots, plus several imported from abroad.
By JESSiCa irEdalE
NEW YORK — The American fashion award season is upon us. The CFDA revealed the nominees Thursday night for the 2017 CFDA Fashion Awards, which are set for June 5 at the Hammer-stein Ballroom.
CFDA chairwoman Diane von Fursten-berg did the honors, unveiling the list at a reception at Rascale Studios. The nominees are: Joseph Altuzarra, Raf Simons for Calvin Klein, Marc Jacobs, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernan-dez for Proenza Schouler, and Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen for The Row for Womenswear Designer of the Year; Raf Simons for Calvin Klein, Robert Geller, Thom Browne, Tim Coppens, and Todd Snyder for Menswear Designer of the Year; Stuart Vevers for Coach, Irene
Neuwirth, Rachel Mansur and Floriana Gavriel for Mansur Gavriel, Paul Andrew, and Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen for The Row for Accessory Designer of the Year; Laura Vassar and Kristopher Brock for Brock Collection; Gabriela Hearst, Laura Kim and Fernando Garcia for Monse, Vir-gil Abloh for Off-White, and Sander Lak for Sies Marjan for the Swarovski Award for Emerging Talent. The CFDA decided to combine the Swarovski Awards for accessories, men’s and women’s into one single award this year.
Also new is the Swarovski Award for Positive Change, which honors an individ-ual in the U.S. fashion industry who has made a positive impact on American com-munities and has improved the welfare of others. Kenneth Cole is the award’s inaugural recipient.
Rick Owens will receive the Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award. Pat McGrath will take the Founder’s Award. Demna Gvasalia will receive the Interna-tional Award for his work at Balenciaga and Vetements. Cecile Richards, Gloria Steinem and Janelle Monáe will receive
the Board of Directors’ Tribute for their work for women’s rights. Finally, Franca Sozzani will be honored posthumously with the Fashion Icon Award.
business
PVH Wants Retail ‘Romance’ Brought to Digital Shopping
fashion
CFDA Announces Fashion Award Nominees
The Tommy Hilfiger spring runway show.
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● The industry turned out in force to honor Macy’s departing ceo.
By david Moin
Everyone knew Wednesday’s gala at the Marriott Marquis honoring Terry J. Lundgren and supporting the FIT Founda-tion and the University of Arizona’s Terry J. Lundgren Center for Retailing, would be huge, given Lundgren’s popularity and Macy’s clout. Yet it still surpassed expec-tations, drawing 1,000-plus guests, raising more than $4.5 million for the schools and generating piles of praise for Lund-gren, who this week stepped down as Macy’s chief executive officer, passing the baton to Jeff Gennette and shifted to the transitional role of executive chairman.
Appearing in person or on-screen were, among others, Sean “P. Diddy” Combs, Robert Kraft and Ryan Seacrest, who hosted the evening and sells his clothing line at Macy’s, as well as former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who called Lundgren his personal shopper who covered him in clothes. “Thank God Macy’s has a good return policy.”
In a rare public appearance, Ralph Lauren said, “I don’t know anyone in this industry who could fill up this room like this. Terry, you hit a home run.”
Anna Wintour said that thanks to Lund-gren, she once found herself schlepping
to a Macy’s branch in Flushing, Queens, to kick off a Fashion’s Night Out event. “There was no other option than to be there at Macy’s and this was because of Terry.”
“What an amazing journey,” said Michael Kors, referencing Lundgren’s long career at Macy’s. “And he looks like a goddamn 1940s movie star.”
“He’s always been there from the begin-ning of my career,” Vera Wang said.
Tom Brady, showing a creative side, pro-duced a farcical video depicting Lundgren
haphazardly testing fireworks for Macy’s Fourth of July Fireworks spectacular.
“He’s handled every situation with calm and grace — and not a hair out of place,” said Lundgren’s wife Tina.
“That Blue Mercury purchase was brilliant,” said Leonard Lauder, who on the red carpet earlier in the evening recalled the Macy’s acquisition in 2015. “Terry knew Macy’s needed small, start-up brands and that was the best way to get them. I’ve known him since he first started
his career at Bullock’s in Los Angeles. I fol-lowed him every step of the way, and he’s been brilliant every step of the way.”
The run of tributes concluded with Combs on-screen singing “Happy Birth-day” to Lundgren, who just turned 65, and chef Daniel Boulud personally presenting Lundgren with a birthday cake in the form of a stack of chocolate golf balls.
Lundgren began his speech roasting Seacrest a bit. “What you might not know about Ryan is that he produces great edu-cational television like ‘Keeping Up With the Kardashians.’”
Turning serious, Lundgren gave shout-outs to his family, his mentors — the late Sy Stewart and the late Stanley Marcus, as well as Michael Steinberg and Allen Questrom — and his successor as ceo, Gennette. “I loved working with Jeff, for a long time.”
Lundgren also recounted that none of his siblings or parents went to college, but somehow he decided to, and had to work his way through much of the experience after his father cut him off for having too good of a time and neglecting the studies. Lundgren ended up shucking oysters and peeling shrimp in a restaurant to pay his tuition. “I needed to learn that lesson,” Lundgren said.
Then he suggested to the crowd to not think of their support for the schools as donations. “Think of it as an investment in innovation that will propel our industry.”
business
Lundgren Gala Nets $4.5M for EducationRyan Seacrest and
Terry J. Lundgren
● According to Chloé’s ceo, the brand’s top category will be “amplified” by Ramsay-Levi.
By MiSty WhitE SidEll
Chloé is in transition mode.The French label, a subsidiary of
Compagnie Financière Richemont, has welcomed new designer Natacha Ram-say-Levi following the exit of Clare Waight Keller, who has departed to join Givenchy.
Waight Keller leaves behind a legacy of commercial success, particularly in the accessories category. WWD has learned that the house’s Nile bag for spring 2017 — a small saddle style with a metal bracelet for a top handle — has sold out at multiple key retailers, some within 24 hours. Store buyers are now heavily investing in the accessories from Waight Keller’s final col-lection for Chloé — including its circular, ring-handled Pixie bag — to maintain the momentum for fall.
“At Chloé, there is a continued trend. The Nile sold out on Day One, and we bought into their new fall runway bag that they are calling the Pixie bag, with that same bracelet. It’s a good brand for the price point in luxury,” said Cassie Smart, accessories buying manager for Matches-Fashion.com.
The Nile style is priced from approxi-mately $1,450 to $1,690 depending on size, and the Pixie is expected to range from $1,490 to $1,945.
Chloé chief executive officer Geoffroy de la Bourdonnaye said the company plans to continue its blend of “value, craftsmanship
and creativity” under Ramsay-Levi’s watch to sustain its accessories success. Chloé’s existing leather goods atelier will remain in place during her tenure.
“We expect that the creativity of our studio will not only be continued, but amplified by the new creative energy of Natacha,” said the ceo.
De la Bourdonnaye declined to com-ment on the percentage of Chloé’s overall business from accessories, but noted it is “the number-one category, followed closely by ready-to-wear.”
He said there are multiple hallmarks for the Chloé bag, which buyers have long pointed out to WWD as a commercial boon for their competitive pricing and unique designs.
“I think it’s the attitude first of all. We are not a logo brand, we are known for having bags with very successful shapes that are very identifiable: the Paddington, the Marcie. Even though the shape has no logo, it’s still recognizable. When you look at the competition, most of the brands use the very typical shapes created by one of them, and then they all put their logo on it,” the ceo said.
Ramsay-Levi addressed Chloé’s world-wide staff for the first time last week. De la Bourdonnaye said: “The granddaughter of [Chloé founder] Gabrielle Aghion was particularly moved by the words Natacha used to express her pride and joy to take over from her predecessor and a founder whose personality she finds very daring, very genuine, very warm.
“She is the only granddaughter of Agh-ion and that suggests to me that [Natacha] is very much a Chloé girl, and different
from all the designers who have been in the maison before.
“She spent a lot of time explaining how she sees Chloé as the intersection of the savoir faire of couture, the atelier, the craftsmanship of Paris, but also the attitude of youth and the energy coming from the young generation,” he added of her address.
Shoes will become a particular area of focus for Chloé in the coming years, as the company looks to boost the catego-ry’s success to equal that of its handbag business.
The brand will wind down its 15-year-plus licensing agreement with Onward Luxury Group for the manufacturing and distribution of its shoes. Chloé has already taken ownership of its distri-bution and will now begin to gradually transition to its own manufacturing facilities, in a shift expected to take a few years’ time.
“Shoes are becoming very important for us, we are in the process of investing in our own development and controlling the manufacturing of shoes. You will see very soon a new, refreshed portion of shoes,” said de la Bourdonnaye.
“I think it was a very good license, we are keeping OLG as the main source of shoes but have taken over distribution and will start gradually taking over some other manufacturing, but discussing with them how we do that in a way that is mutually beneficial.”
accessories
Chloé Readies for Accessories Renewal Under Natacha Ramsay-Levi
Chloé’s successful spring 2017 Nile bag (left), and fall Pixie bag (right). The creation of both designs was overseen by the recently departed Clare Waight Keller.S
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Digital Download
● The beauty company’s chief creative director noted the unexpected and subtle ways brands can win on social media.
By MarCy MEdina
Social media has long ceased to be a disruptor in and of itself. In branding, par-ticularly in the prestige beauty world, even the new — read: five minutes old — rules are made to be broken, and brands can reap huge rewards for taking risks.
In a panel at Variety’s Massive Enter-tainment Marketing Summit Wednesday at the Four Seasons Beverly Hills, Donald Robertson, chief creative director at the Estée Lauder Cos. Inc., and Matt Seiler, president of creative marketing solutions at Studio71, gave straight talk about influ-encers and Instagram and why the West Coast rules.
“I am the [senior vice president] of creative disruption at Estée Lauder,” Robertson told the audience. “I was very comfortable in the magazine world, but I realized at one point that the entire thing was shifting to Los Angeles so I moved my entire family to L.A. because what I am finding is there is more crazy awesome stuff going on here to reach people more than ever.”
Of his much-followed personal Ins-tagram feed, he said, “I use it as bait to attract people. Sega [the gaming com-pany] had found out that 41 percent of their gamers for ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ were women, and they reached out to me because they know my Instagram and they follow me. They said, ‘We have no way of reaching these women because we market to teenage boys.’ I was working with the founders of Glamglow and I thought, ‘When women are gaming, why not have
them masking and gaming?’ Sega just sort of stared at me.”
Cut to Glamglow creating a blue mask that became known as the Sonic the Hedgehog mask that is now the num-ber-one mask at Sephora. “None of this could have survived a focus group,” Robertson said. “If you look on #gamin-gandmasking you’ll see we are now living in this world of completely and truly crazy linkups where the weirder the idea the better.
“Just when it couldn’t be any better, my daughter said, ‘Dad you need to go on Instagram because Nina Dobrev has just blown that blue mask through the roof.’ She has like 15 million followers and she just posted and posted. I mean, I could retire at this point. All from this completely bizarre L.A.-based thing that’s happening on social media right now, and in prestige beauty.”
Robertson said the buzzwords change daily; today’s it’s microinfluencer. “One day you will be paying someone to do an endorsement because they have 20 million followers and the next day you realize that all your business is coming from this girl in Iowa who is making vid-eos in her basement. So you have to keep your ear to the ground and be watching and listening.”
He also admonished, “You need to be on social media. You can’t hire a kid to do it for you. You have to know about it yourself because all of your instincts are going to be better than theirs.”
Seiler added, “The micros are a cheaper way to test yourselves and they have a really connected audience, but the macros have an unbelievable audience that is hard to get through to. The under 25s are living their lives with these creators.” In working with Lauder and other clients, he said he uses a combination of content creators to authentically market brands.
Not only can brands not do the same
old, same old — “if your idea feels com-fortable, throw it out. You need to be sick to your stomach seconds before a launch because basically the world is numb and you cannot pitch a new mask product with a lady splashing water on her face,” Robertson said. But they should launch in the most digitally savvy ways possible, i.e., through an app, not in-store.
And be subtle. “People like to dig for content; they don’t like when you put it in their face. Don’t be so obvious. Be cool; try and play hard to get,” he said, using the example of placing a Clare V bag in the background of a video of his twin boys fighting in the kitchen.
“For people who are watching content, when you see a brand there you should wonder if anyone got paid for that or you shouldn’t even notice there was an actual brand there because it just made sense it was there,” Seiler said.
And for those who still think of social media as a side note, he said, “Don’t rele-gate this to a social media agency within a media group. This is what you do; it’s not a tiny little division. Get it up to [chief mar-keting officer] or publisher level to where the real money is spent. Make it matter.”
“I got more comments on the purse than I did on the boys. It’s sort of a trick, but it’s not. It’s the way people like to discover things. It’s something the agency taught me,” said Robertson.
To wit, Robertson called out Lauder’s acquisition last year of Too Faced Cosmet-ics for $1.4 billion.
“This L.A. brand had been building this YouTube channel with an audience that is so devout. I’ve watched it twice in my career — when Lauder bought MAC and again today,” Robertson said. “They are not buying brands, they are buying people whose relationship with their audience is so rock solid that people want to be in that.”
So who’s the next big thing? “I think everyone should be watching Jeffree Star.”
Estée Lauder Touts Social Media Disruptors
Janko Roettgers, Donald Robertson and Matt Seiler.
BossJason Wu skipped the runway for his Boss women’s collection this season, showing the lineup a month after New York Fashion Week in the showroom. The reasoning was that Boss opted to direct its runway resources into a men’s show this season. Without the catwalk, the collection felt more low-key but was still stocked with strong pieces. Wu’s key messages were soft tailoring, fluid shapes and an emphasis on sweater dressing and blown out checks.
“Last spring was much about knock-ing the stuffing out of the suiting,” he said. “It’s about making it more approachable and much less office-y.”
To that end, he successfully worked the brand’s signature tailoring in lightly constructed, almost pajamalike jackets, showing black-and-white checks on a pair of wide-leg statement pants and a chic, deconstructed tailored dress.
There was a sporty side, too, with polished quilted puffers, and pants and knit tops in orange and blue trimmed in athletic stripes. There were day-to-eve-ning looks in a checked camisole dress and skirts cut with sensual movement, and also some beautiful straight-up eve-ning dresses cut with lean architectural bodices and soft, pleated chiffon skirts cut for raw texture. — Jessica Iredale
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● Products set up shop in the mass market.
By EllEn thoMaS
Natural beauty is big — and it’s only going to get bigger.
As a result, the mass market has more options for consumers, but is more frag-mented than ever. Shopper demand for mass natural beauty is rising so fast that brands once sold only through natural product retailers are rushing into the drugstore and discount channels faster than an avocado ripens. Brands born in the natural channel are crossing over into mass. Meanwhile, leading beauty brands are scrambling to ramp up their own naturally positioned products in order to better compete with smaller niche players pouring in from the health store sector.
The latest example is at the Walgreens Boots Alliance in the U.S. Next month the chain will introduce its The Plant One campaign for the recently modernized Botanics line, in tandem with repackaged and reformulated products that are enter-ing Walgreens stores. Boots Retail USA managing director Lyle Tick said in order to be competitive, Botanics, which has been on shelves in the U.S. for some time, was in need of a serious makeover.
“We’ve all seen the same numbers,” said Tick. “[The revamp] was driven by the category. Naturals is growing superfast...and is predicted to grow.”
Tick is right.A 2016 Kline study reported that the
natural personal-care market in the U.S. — $5.4 billion wholesale — grew more than 9 percent last year, and is projected to bal-loon by 40 percent in the next five years. Shoppers are increasingly curious about natural beauty — in a recent Mintel survey, 37 percent of consumers shopping in nat-ural grocery and health-food stores agreed that they buy more natural personal-care items than they did one year ago.
The better-for-you-beauty trend began in the niche luxury sector, where a $250 face oil infused with African jasmine is the norm. But as U.S. consumers continue to view their beauty routines as an intrinsic part of a holistic lifestyle, linked with healthy eating and exercise, natural beauty and personal care is manifesting in the mass landscape, fragmenting the market even more than it already is.
“This is such a fundamental shift in interest for beauty shoppers,” said Wendy Liebmann, chief executive officer of WSL Strategic Retail. Over the course of the next five years, “the marketplace will transform itself so there will be a spec-trum of choice. If you want to buy natural from a big national brand, you’ll be able to because they’ll have [introduced] natu-ral ingredient stories.”
It is no longer an option for mass retail-ers to not carry natural brands or product offerings — it is a mandate, according to experts. CVS has been cultivating a natu-ral section for some time and Target Corp. just doubled down on natural offerings. On the brand side, the same is true for product assortments — having a natural option is essential.
“I don’t see any other way around it,” said Naira Aslanian, project manager at Kline & Co. “A lot of brands are trying to keep that market share by infusing their product lines with natural ingredients.”
It appears to be working. At a time when sales are sluggish in mass personal care, brands that have adopted natural positioning are the ones seeing the signifi-cant growth.
Take the hair category, which mass consumers are using as a gateway point to natural beauty. According to Kline & Co. research, hair care recorded the highest growth of any natural category last year, growing 11 percent in 2016 as consumers increasingly opt for products that are “free of” chemicals considered to be harmful, such as sulfates. According to IRI data tracking the 52 weeks ending Feb. 19, all categories in hair were down except shampoo and conditioner. In the shampoo and conditioner categories, OGX nabbed the number-one spot by a landslide. Shea Moisture was up 74 percent in shampoos and 54 percent in conditioners. Garnier Whole Blends, which launched last year, recorded double-digit growth in both cat-egories and Carol’s Daughter grew double digits in conditioner. Hask, which focuses on trend-driven natural ingredients such as clay, charcoal and superfruits and launched a Greek yogurt-based line earlier this year, also tracked significant growth.
It’s a similar story in skin care, where cleansers and moisturizers are driving the category. In cleansers, Kao-owned Bioré grew 59 percent after releasing splashy charcoal-based launches last year. Burt’s Bees was up 10 percent and Freeman’s line of facial cleansers featuring hot ingre-dients such as apple cider vinegar was up 27 percent. Garnier’s SkinActive line — the Clean Plus range offers charcoal and clay-based cleansers for acne — tracked double-digit growth.
beauty
Natural Beauty Enters the Big Leagues
Schmidt's Naturals
products.
Mass hair products with natural positioning.
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natural beauty companies are eyeing a lot more than their ingredi-ent labels these days.
Green brands are looking to diversify retail opportunities beyond their natural grocery bases. It’s a complicated undertaking that requires retailers to step up their natural merchandising games and green brands to shell out the cash to scale up.
That dynamic is one of the factors behind the influx of natural brands wading around the capital markets in search of a buyer or investors — among them Andalou Naturals, Derma E, Kiss My Face, Mineral Fusion and MyChelle Derma-ceuticals, which are all considering transactions, multiple financial sources have said.
“All these [natural] companies, to try and get scale, need a helping hand,” said Andrew Shore, managing director at Moelis & Co. “That help-ing hand can come in the form of a strategic buyer or private equity.”
“What happens with any niche brand is it reaches a point in its life cycle where it feels like it needs cap-ital to grow, so it many cases, they put themselves on the market,” said Martin Okner, managing director at SHM Corporate Navigators.
Even though consumers are more aware of product ingredients than ever, there is still not nec-essarily a clear path for natural brands into the mainstream beauty consumer’s cabinet. Certain tactics — like packaging changes or big box distribution — can alienate a tree-hugging consumer base. But retaining positioning that focuses solely on “good-for-you” ingredients can prevent a more mainstream shopper from forming an emotion-al bond with the brand, industry experts noted.
That note of caution aside, natu-ral beauty is seen as a fast-growing category, where more retailers are looking to play. Target, for example, already sells Beautycounter and is gearing up for Jessica Alba’s Honest Beauty to hit shelves. Bluemercury has launched a test program for green beauty, stocking Indie Lee, One Love Organics, Ilia Beauty and Tracie Martyn, and Nordstrom has rolled out natural outposts featuring Tata Harper, Youth to the People and RMS Beauty.
“Demand for natural products is going to remain high moving forward,” Okner said. “Natural and organic ingredient stories have be-come part of a mainstream consum-er’s daily life.”
Here are five natural beauty brands industry sources say are seeking a sale or investor:
andalou naturalsAndalou, founded by the same
team that built Avalon Organics, Alba Botanica and other brands such as Stacey Kelly Egide and Mark Egide, is considering doing a deal, according to several industry sources, who estimated the growing brand has between $30 million and $40 million in sales. Andalou makes about 120 non-GMO Project-verified face, hair and body products with an ingredient focus on fruit stem cells. The company’s offerings span 1,000 Roses Rosewater Mask, $14.95, to Purple Carrot + C Luminous Night Cream, $24.95, to Argan Stem Cell Age Defying Thinning Hair System, $29.95, to Lavender Shea Firming Body Butter, $13.95. Andalou is sold primarily in the natural grocery chan-nel, including at Whole Foods, and has launched at Target, and recently Ulta Beauty. The brand recently updated its packaging and debuted a new display at Expo West.
Derma EDerma E makes skin-care, hair-
care and body-care products that are vegan, cruelty-free and free from parabens, sodium lauryl sulfates, petrolatum, mineral oil and artificial colors. The brand’s offering includes a Purifying Two-in-One Charcoal Mask, $19.50; Skin Hair and Nail Oil, $15.50, and Skinbiotics Treatment Cream, $21.95. Derma E’s products are sold through Whole Foods, Sprouts, Ulta Beauty, CVS and Walgreens, as well as its own web site. Financial sources indicated that the business hired Piper Jaffray to conduct the sale process, and that the business has around $30 million in net sales.
Kiss My FaceKiss My Face, another mass-mar-
ket naturals line, is said to have hired Intrepid Investment Bankers to consider a transaction. The busi-ness makes a full range of person-al-care products from toothpaste, $5.95; facial care, $2.99 to $21, and
sunscreen, $8.95 to$21.99. The company has a line of more than 100 products, sold in more than 19 countries, and in retailers such as Whole Foods, Walgreens, Bed Bath & Beyond and Kroger. The business also sells on Amazon. Kiss My Face has been backed by Caltius Equity Partners since 2010 — it was founded by Bob MacLeod and Steve Byckiewicz in 1981.
Mineral FusionMineral Fusion makes natural
products that span the beauty spectrum — makeup, skin care, body care, hair care and even nail products. The brand’s products are paraben-, gluten-, artificial color- and phthalate-free. Industry sources indi-cated that Houlihan Lokey has been tapped to shop the business, which was founded in 2007. Historically, Mineral Fusion’s products have been sold in the natural grocery channel, but that brand recently branched into CVS. Products are priced between $7.99 and $32.99.
MyChelle DermaceuticalsMyChelle makes a line of natural
skin-care products formulated without sulfates, artificial fragrances, colors, genetically modified organ-isms, gluten or parabens. Some of the brand’s latest launches have an antipollution tilt, aiming to protect the skin from the elements. Recent prod-uct introductions include Quick Clean Micellar Water, Sun Shield Liquid Tint and Perfect C Pro Serum 25%. MyChelle is sold at Whole Foods, Ulta Beauty and online. The business launched in Canadian retailer Murale, owned by Shoppers Drug Mart, in September. At that point, the retailer touted green beauty as an “important and growing category.” MyChelle, founded in 2000, is backed by private equity firm Encore Consumer Capital and is said to have hired Threadstone Partners to sell the business. My-Chelle has about $15 million in sales and is growing at about 15 percent, according to industry sources. — Allison Collins
In Boots’ case, the product was already in place — like a natural answer to No 7’s skin-care range, with a less overt focus on antiaging — formulated with plant extracts as the active ingredients. But the pack-aging and brand messaging needed an overhaul, said Tick. “We weren’t showing up in a way that reflected where the con-sumer and category had moved.”
Consumers want clarity in the mass naturals space, according to Tick, who said the old Botanics line had grown too cluttered for consumers to navigate.
“It’s not the clearest [category]. It’s a relatively new, growing category, and consumers [aren’t] sure if natural is effica-cious, what the benefit [of plant extracts] is and what they can do for you,” said Tick.
The products, which tout star ingredi-ents such as clary sage, ginkgo biloba and rosehip, were formulated in partnership with Kew Gardens scientists in London. The stockkeeping unit count has been streamlined from over 140 items to 42, and are packaged in sleek, simplistic col-or-blocked designs. The outer packaging of each product references a single active natural ingredient, and the inner packag-ing explains exactly what the ingredient can do do for skin — for instance, hibiscus extract brightens.
Tick could not go too deep into details on The Plant One campaign, which will drop in April, but noted that it will be “graphical, simple and fun,” evoking the message that the products deliver straight-forward, natural ingredients.
The name of the campaign — The Plant One — is a reminder that of the proprietary Boots lines available in the U.S. — Botanics, Soap & Glory and No 7 — Botanics is liter-ally “the plant one,” or the most natural offering that brand has.
As companies like L’Oréal and Johnson & Johnson introduce naturally positioned products into the market, questions arise as to just how natural those products are.
The answer doesn’t necessarily matter, experts agree.
“There’s a little bit of a war about what’s really natural,” said a source in the financial sector. “As long as you are clear about your message to people at what you are meant to be, it’s fine. I don’t think the non-natural channel consumer cares that much.”
For the most part, consumers will be able to determine for themselves just how “natural” a product really is, agreed Lucie Greene, worldwide director of the J. Walter Thompson Innovation Group. “The term ‘natural’ is broader and more nebulous than ever, but you have a consumer who is more engaged than ever.”
“People are increasingly conscious of whether something is natural or more health fully produced,” said Liebmann, who also noted that transparency is key. “They want to make their own choices, whether it’s organic or natural or ‘free from.’”
Even as traditional mass brands race to churn out natural product innovations, smaller ones are swooping in from the health product channel, stealing customer attention in drugstores.
Schmidt’s Naturals, a Portland, Or.-based deodorant brand, entered Target last month. It was previously sold only in natural grocers, but consumer fears around aluminum in deodorants have made the brand’s aluminum-free prod-uct a hot proposition. Industry sources estimate Schmidt’s does about $20 million in annual net sales, and the brand tracked 269 percent growth last year. Chief global strategist Michael Cammarata said Schmidt’s is on track to grow 300 percent
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Natural Beauty Brands Hunt for InvestorsAndalou Naturals, Derma E, Kiss My Face and others are said to be on the market.
MyChelle products.
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this year, and will introduce new cate-gories as well. An industry source with knowledge of the brand noted it will bow in Kroger supermarkets later this year.
While Schmidt’s is riding the natural deodorant craze, most natural channel brands need more cache to enter the mass market.
“Back in the Nineties, consumers buying these products in the farmer’s co-op
weren’t looking for the trendiest item,” said Julie Marchant-Houle, senior vice president and general manager of person-al-care products at Hain Celestial Personal Care. Hain Celestial owns a portfolio of beauty brands, including Alba Botanica and Avalon Organics, both of which have made strides into mass-market distribution. Avalon Organics skin care is now at Target, and Alba Botanica is sold at Ulta Beauty.
“As we’ve moved into mass, consum-ers today aren’t willing to make those trade-offs. They want an affordable product that doesn’t look crunchy and granola, and they want their trendy item when [it’s in vogue in the marketplace].”
Marchant-Houle noted Alba Botanica has significantly ramped up its innova-tion pipeline, introducing trend-driven launches that remain true to the brand’s heritage, such as its Hawaiian volcanic clay line.
According to another financial source, brands that don’t get the aesthetics memo will face challenges in crossing over from natural retail distribution to the mass channel. “When you look at natu-ral coming out of prestige, they’re cute and cool and sexy,” said the source, who noted brands such as Mineral Fusion and Derma E, which lack modern packaging, are less attractive to buyers. “They’re not
aspirational. They’ve rested on their laurel of ingredients, which the natural consumer cares about, but the mass consumer wants something fun as well.”
“I’m a beauty junkie,” said Stacey Kelly Egide, ceo of Andalou Naturals, which started in the natural channel and is cross-ing over to mass. “I love seeing what the hot trends are, and how we can make that within our natural and organic standards and put our natural twist on it.”
Another hot brand is Pacifica, which relies on brightly colored splashy packag-ing and trendy formulations, like micel-lar water and foaming masks. Industry sources say the brand, which is available in Target, Ulta Beauty, Whole Foods and natural grocers, is growing 80 percent year-over-year.
According to Spins data, Andalou is the skin-care brand with the most market share in its database of natural grocers. And Egide knows something about marketing natural brands to mass consumers — she started Alba Botanica and Avalon Organics before selling to North Capital Partners, which turned it over to Hain Celestial.
As more natural brands crowd the mass market and the word “natural” remains without a standard definition, the indus-try is beginning to conclude that having a point of view and maintaining transpar-ency will be key in keeping the customer’s attention on naturals.
Some say that responsibility falls on the retailer. “There will still be a significant role for brick-and-mortar stores to curate a natural destination for shoppers to discover and learn about the segment,” said Jim Geikie, general manager for Burt’s Bees. “[These retailers] play a critical role in helping people choose the best options in what is generally a confusing and unreg-ulated landscape.”
Target has done this with its designated natural beauty section but, according to Liebmann, the “introductory period” of natural beauty will soon come to an end and it will be up to brands to help con-sumers differentiate between the influx of different lines. Liebmann envisions natural products ultimately being taken out of designated areas and placed into aisles alongside traditional brands.
Brands who are counting on designated natural sections to sell their products shouldn’t hold their breath, according to Liebmann.
“In the beginning [of a trend], there’s value in separating out brands because people want to be educated and spend time learning about their choices,” said Liebmann. “Ultimately I see [natural beauty] weaving into the broader market because if you want to grow the business, you have to put it where the traffic is.”
Greene noted that the market will continue to fragment as natural brands enter the mass channel, especially given the continuing momentum of natural beauty ingredient trends mirroring those in food. The more food trends there are, the more consumers will want to see them manifested in beauty. She listed everything from different types of protein to ayurve-dic diets and even marijuana as growing natural product trends.
The variety of microtrends within the natural category is one way for brands to define their own take on natural beauty.
“Brands will define what their position is within the category,” said Harvey-Tay-lor, the Pacifica cofounder. “For us what’s really important to our consumer is us being vegan and cruelty-free, using the best ingredients, safety, more sustainable packaging, which is a big deal.”
“I liken it to food,” said Marla Beck, ceo and cofounder of Bluemercury, which just boosted its natural skin-care offering. “Whether its vegan or raw ingredients, organic or probiotics, everyone has their different beauty diet they want to be on.”
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— food and beverage is the new fashion.”Traffic at North American shopping
centers has been declining since 2015, when it fell 8.1 percent in December, and it remained in negative territory through December of 2016.
The confluence of interrelated reasons include consumers’ continued shift to online and digital. There is also the diffi-cult-to-engage Millennial cohort, the coun-try’s biggest demographic, which values experiences over purchases. Department and specialty stores have been closing at an alarming rate. The 2017 tally so far is about 1,000 stores, including Macy’s Inc., Sears Holdings Corp., The Limited, American Apparel, BCBG Max Azria Global Holdings, Wet Seal, J.C. Penney Co. Inc. and Abercrombie & Fitch Co. units.
Now mall owners and retailers are hoping elevated food offerings and chef-driven restaurants can give consumers an appetite for, well, shopping.
MAPIC, producer of the world’s largest international retail real estate conference, in May will make food and beverage the focus of its Milan event featuring a diversity of cuisines, because “food consumption is breaking all records. Because of the shop-ping center evolution, mall owners want to find the top trends from authentic food to natural and healthy, to street food, to made-to-order dishes,” said Nathalie Depetro, MAPIC’s show director, noting that it’s all part of “the gourmet-ization of food.”
New Italian flavors will be sampled such as Fattorie Garofalo’s mozzarella bistro concept; Aromatica, showcasing a different top chef each month; Bistrot’s menu created with the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, Italy, and Pizzikotto.
Attendance at February’s Entertainment Evolution Experience in Santa Monica, Calif., doubled over last year, which in 2016 had twice as many participants as 2015. “All the mall guys were there,” Garrick Brown, vice president, research, Americas, Cush-man & Wakefield, said. “There were all the big players. The place was a zoo. It’s really indicative of where the market is going. Every center is trying to upgrade and shift the tenant mix and build more space for upscale dining and food halls.”
Cushman & Wakefield reported that “food is a major growth driver every-where,” noting that consumers last year spent $730.6 billion on meals eaten away from home, surpassing for the first time the amount spent on food consumed at home, $718.1 billion. In New York City, res-idents in 2016 spent 40.5 percent of their disposable income on food.
Gross leasable space occupied by food uses has more than doubled in shopping centers to 15 percent from seven percent a decade ago, according to JLL, which esti-mated the number will grow to 20 percent in the coming years.
Brown is even more bullish. “In an age when every retailer is looking at shrinking its footprint, malls are trying to plug better food offerings into that space,” Brown said. “If you were to ask Westfield Corp., Simon Properties and GGP 10 years ago how much space they set aside for food and beverage, they would have said 10 percent. Now, it’s 20 percent and rising.”
Another reason for the enthusiasm: food and beverage can increase a shop-per’s dwell time. Researchers Jikyeong Kang and Youn-Kyung Kim in a 2001 study
found that shoppers who experienced a high level of enjoyment spent more time at the mall. Subsequent research found no correlation between the length of stay and average spend, however, entertainment and restaurants established a center as the dominant player in a market.
Thor Urbana allots 32 percent to 33 per-cent of gross leasable area to restaurants and bars. “For us to do the volume we do, increasing the entertainment and food and beverage concepts is key,” Fasja said. “If people stay longer, it translates into higher sales.”
Calle Corazon, the company’s 150,000-square-foot project in Playa del Carmen, boasts seven dining spots and boîtes, including a branch of New York’s Catch, Argentinian steakhouse Harry’s Grill, Panaderia and 20 Laviente Cantina, among others.
“We’re all about creating culinary des-tinations, where you have local, regional and national players,” Fasja said. “It becomes the center of gravity. The stores stay open until 11 p.m. You see people shopping after their meals at 10 p.m.”
The food hall is the plat du jour, with the number in the U.S. expected to increase from 25 in 2010 to 200 in 2019, according to Brown.
This isn’t news to European department stores such as El Corte Inglés, whose Plaza Callao in Madrid offers a Gourmet Experi-ence and Le Bon Marché with is La Grande Epicerie de Paris.
Eataly’s immersive Italian gastronomic tour featuring coffee bars, restaurants and markets can be found at the Prudential Center in Boston. A location was unveiled at Westfield World Trade Center in Man-hattan last year and Eataly will anchor Westfield Century City’s 400,000-square-foot expansion in Los Angeles.
“Department stores are underperform-ing in terms of sales and traffic,” Brown said. “The truth is, department stores haven’t been up to the task of anchoring shopping centers for some time. Dominant malls have turned to food halls as traffic drivers. Eataly’s doing no less than $1,200 a square foot in sales.”
Malls are watching San Francisco’s China Live, which hopes to do for Chinese food what Eataly did for Italian. The high-end operation features three restaurants, including one serving live lobster. Todd English’s 12,000-square-foot American
Food: Retailers’Latest Fashion CoNTiNueD fRoM PaGe 1
Whole foods Market in Manhattan.
Manhattan West announced that Whole foods Market will open.
a rendering of Manhattan West’s rooftop terrace.
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“In an age when every retailer is looking at shrinking its footprint, malls are trying to plug better food offerings into that space.”
— Garrick Brown, cushman & wakeField
Experience Matters
12 march 24, 2017
Market by Todd English, set to bow in Times Square, will also be followed closely.
“We’ll be announcing a 40,000-square-foot food hall operator for [Manhattan’s] Hudson Yards in 30 days,” said Kenneth Himmel, president of Related Urban Devel-opment. “It’s a very well-known, highly regarded chef brand that will be new to the project.”
An emphasis on elevated dining has long been the approach of Related Cos., which lured Thomas Keller, the celebrated chef of the French Laundry in Napa Valley, to the Shops at Columbus Circle, where he unveiled Per Se and Bouchon.
“We’re applying all those learnings [from the Shops] on steroids to Hudson Yards,” said Himmel. “If you look at Shops, especially the third and fourth floors, we wouldn’t do that kind of sales volume if we didn’t have any restaurants. Some restau-rants at our properties do $14 million to $15 million in annual sales in 7,000 square feet of space.
“The retail world is waking up to the fact that food is vital,” Himmel added. “You can’t think of your restaurants at the end of the planning process. You have to pick the right restaurants and chefs. Sometimes you have to invest [money] in them. You have to be their partner.”
Hudson Yards’ dining options are all but guaranteed to be sophisticated since Keller is opening a classic American restaurant and advising on the selection of the more than 12 dining establishments slated for the one-million-square-foot development on Manhattan’s West Side. So far, José Andrés will unveil a Spanish restaurant, and Cos-tas Spiliadis’ Estiatorio Milos will have a grill area and market.
Brickell City Centre, which in November bowed in Miami, has been feeding the city’s financial district. “There’s 100,000 hungry daytime office workers in an area that’s been underserved,” said Debora Overholt, president of retail at Swire, one of Brickell City Centre’s developers. “A lot of malls are fairly low-traffic during the day. It’s important for us to reach those daytime office workers; we need to have dine in and carry out.
“Visitors account for 60 percent of retail sales in Miami,” Overholt added. “They’re not cooking at home. We’ve been careful to find food and beverage uses that accom-modate a full spectrum of tastes.”
Brickell’s menu includes Pubbelly Sushi, Quinto la Huella, Luke’s Lobster, Big Easy Wine Bar & Grill and American Harvest. An Italian food hall is opening later this
year. “It’s a really big coup for us. The uniqueness of it and the variety it will offer in 38,000 square feet will be a big draw,” Overholt said, referring to Saks Fifth Ave-nue Food Hall by Pusateri’s.
Time Out Market, a gourmet food hall from Lisbon, is reportedly planning to open in Miami near Lincoln Road. Time Out received high marks from tourists who praised its Portuguese bites.
Westfield World Trade Center has more food planned, including Lon-don steakhouse Hawksmoor, and a 7,000-square-foot restaurant overlooking the Oculus from chef Daniel Humm and Will Guidara, whose Make It Nice group is responsible for the three Michelin-starred 11 Madison Park.
“A focus on food is paramount in Century City’s $1 billion makeover,” said William Hecht, Westfield’s chief operating officer. Besides Eataly, Century City’s ros-ter of eateries will have an international bent with Javier’s Finest Foods of Mexico based on cofounder Javier Sosa’s family recipes; Din Tai Fung’s xiao long bao, or soup dumplings, and Petros, whose owner Petros Benekos is also opening Kafe for Greek tavern fare and Cafe Bugasta desserts and coffee.
“The restaurants on the way to [Los Angeles’] Westfield Century City are part of a clear strategy — to make Westfield completely relevant, social, and on trend. That means emphasizing influencer brands more than ever before, as well as making Westfield the best place to experience exciting events, entertainment and fantas-tic food,” Hecht said.
In Manhattan’s gritty Chelsea neighbor-hood, Chelsea Market still has the patina of the former Nabisco factory it’s housed in. When it opened in the Nineties, many of Chelsea’s tenants were wholesale busi-nesses. As the neighborhood grew — and office tenants such as Google and the Food Network moved in — demand for retail space at the market rose.
Jamestown Properties, Chelsea Market’s owner, has expanded to the lower level, where a pop-up restaurant from Michelin two-star chef Laurent Gras is opening along with a grocery selling raw food.
“We’ve always had a food-centered strategy,” said Michael Phillips, Jamestown principal and president. “Nationally, I think more people are focused on food.”
Phillips is trying to create synergies between restaurants and stores in close proximity. He gave ABCV restaurant, a spinoff of ABC Kitchen at ABC Home, as an example. “It was the perfect example of food and experience,” he said. “I bought the table settings that were on the table, a dozen settings.”
At Atlanta’s Ponce City Market, a pass-through and glass wall between Williams Sonoma and chef Jonathan Waxman’s restaurant “cross-inspires” diners, who envision making the meal they’re eating using cookware from the store and tempt-ing Williams Sonoma shoppers to try the restaurant, Phillips said.
Industry City in Brooklyn consists of a 40,000-square-foot food hall; retailers such as Design Within Reach, the Wanted-Design Store, Li-Lac Chocolates and Brooklyn Brine; pop-up shops, and 10,000 square feet of communal space. “It’s a real lab for us,” Phillips said. “The coffee bar sells customized filtered coffee for $18 a cup. We have a butchers, noodles and a new distillery project rolling out.
“We work really hard to collaborate and incubate concepts,” Phillips added. “Typ-ically, our way of investing in restaurants tends to be a percent of rent to help with build-outs.”
Restaurants and retail are not new. Bar-neys New York in 1993 tapped chef Marc Straussman for Freds restaurant when the retailer opened its Madison Avenue flagship. With its earthy Italian fare, the spot quickly became a go-to for the fashion industry. Giorgio Armani has built a net-work of restaurants and bars worldwide.
Other retailers, including Uniqlo, Target and even Wal-Mart — the two mass merchants have latched onto the same Chobani Café concept — are using food to distinguish their stores from the competi-tion. Ralph Lauren installed a coffee bar, Ralph’s Coffee, at its Polo flagship on New York’s Fifth Avenue, while its Polo Bar next door replicated the one in Paris and is one of the hottest restaurants in town.
At RH’s six-floor, 70,000-square-foot Chicago gallery, there’s “no demarcation between the store and the restaurant,” said ceo Gary Friedman, noting that a restaurant, wine vault and tasting room and espresso bar serving pastries from RH hospitality partner, restaurateur Brendan Sodikoff, keeps guests sated. “If they’re not eating, they’re drinking — customers walk around the store with a glass of wine.”
RH is planning to unveil a 14-room guest-house in the Meatpacking District near the future site of a six-floor, 80,000-square-foot RH Gallery on Ninth Avenue. The company this month received approval from the Landmarks Preservation Commission to move forward with the plan, however, pres-ervationists are battling to halt it in court.
Target in October launched its TriBeCa flexible-format store with a Chobani Café serving sweet and savory yogurt creations, sandwiches, soups and coffee, while Bed Bath & Beyond’s Brooklyn unit contains Cost Plus World Market and Bay Market Kitchen, which serves locally brewed craft beer and casual American fare.
Saks struck a deal for its flagship with Paris restaurant L’Avenue, operated by the Costes family, which has a reputation for creating hotels and restaurants that fairly drip with ambiance. The Avenue Mon-taigne spot is said to be a luxurious experi-ence with diners in balconies overlooking the Champs-Élysées.
Beyond food, entertainment is seen loom-ing large on the horizon. Punch Bowl Social, described as Dave & Buster’s for Millenni-als, features table games, bowling, vintage arcade and karaoke. Escape Room, which combines elements of TV’s “Survivor” and brainteasers such as Stratego, chess and MindTrap, locks participants in a series of rooms and gives them an hour to escape. “It’s a white hot concept,” Brown said.
Non-animal circuses such as Teatro ZinZanni are ripe for megamalls. Cirque du Soleil is in residence at Disney Springs in Orlando, Fla.
With all this food and entertainment going in, though, experts fear the the pen-dulum may be swinging too far — and that consumers actually might soon become overwhelmed by too many offerings.
“I’m concerned about how many enter-tainment concepts the market will be able to support,” said Brown. “The restaurant market is getting too crowded.”
Food: Retailers’Latest Fashion CoNTiNueD fRoM PaGe 11
Spiller Park Coffee and Biltong Bar at Ponce City Market, atlanta.
all of Thor urbana’s properties in Mexico emphasize food and entertainment.
Thor urbana’s the Landmark Guadalajara.
march 24, 2017 13
build replenishment businesses.These are the brands Amazon has
started with and is supporting actively, according to sources familiar with the effort:
• Lark & Ro: dresses billed as “Styles you’ll love, season after season.”
• Ella Moon: women’s wear described as “Globally inspired, everyday beautiful.”
• Mae: bralettes and panties.• Paris Sunday: dresses and tops.• Amazon Essentials: basic polo shirts,
shorts, women’s intimates and the like.• Buttoned Down: men’s dress shirts
starting at $39.• Goodthreads: casual men’s shirts and
pants.• Scout + Ro: kids’ styles.(More are expected in the future. For
instance, the company was looking earlier this year for someone to “build authentic activewear private-label brands.”)
The picture has been muddied some-what as the outside world looks in and tries to determine just what’s going on behind the scenes at Amazon, which
seems more likely to quietly test a new idea than making a splashy new rollout.
Some brands that Amazon sells were holdovers from the now-shuttered MyHabit.
An Amazon Fashion spokeswoman declined to discuss the company’s broader private-label efforts, but did note that, “Franklin & Freeman, Franklin Tai-lored and Society New York were MyHabit private brands whose inventory was transferred to Amazon after the subsidi-ary closed in July of 2016.”
Those brands tended to have more of a style-sensitive slant, giving the impres-sion that Amazon was going after the fashion customer directly. But its core
private-label offering shows an interest in at least starting simple.
“Similar to what they’ve done in diapers and baby wipes and batteries, they’re entering the market with, from what I can tell is an emphasis on the basics side of things,” said Matt Kaden, managing direc-tor at MMG Advisors.
Kaden said the web giant is learning from its broader fashion business.
“Amazon aggregates all this data on the markets and then with their private-la-bel program they’re coming in to take market share,” he said. “There’s a ton of data, they’re going to process that data and use that to inform their product development.”
Kaden said Amazon, which is working with private-label producers to make the goods, is starting with small orders and then looking to replenish.
“If you’re a maker of basics, you should be watching them very closely,” he said. “They’re a promotion machine, they’re going to promote their own content. In high fashion, maybe it’s a different story.
Or maybe not — to be determined.”The notion of private label is, of
course, very familiar to the fashion world, where brands have long resided next to and been compared with house-made goods.
Ed Yruma, managing director at Key-Banc Capital Markets and a close observer of Amazon, said the company’s private-la-bel efforts are “looking closer and closer to your traditional — this is kind of a bad word today — your traditional department store.”
Amazon’s fashion brands are value oriented and are complemented on the site by branded merchandise from outside vendors.
“They’re kind of checking all the boxes now and this private label is really filling the same role that [it would] at Nordstrom or Macy’s,” Yruma said. “We think they’re going to continue to grow the private-label business and continue to be strategically focused on apparel.”
David Lamer, founder of fashion tech consultancy Core Brand Advisors, pointed to Lark & Ro and said Amazon was build-ing “very sharply priced product — it’s basically easy items that people will gravi-tate to and search for.”
While many industry executives see Amazon as a competitor, Lamer said the danger tied to Amazon isn’t so much that the web giant is going to steal business from apparel companies, but that apparel companies aren’t going to keep up.
“Amazon is a threat to the fashion industry because it’s a technology that the fashion industry ought to be embracing in a big way and they’re not,” he said. “It’s not the future, it’s here.”
Amazon Eyes Its Own Fashion Empire CoNTiNueD fRoM PaGe 1
● The NYCEDC is proposing alternative manufacturing space at Sunset Park in Brooklyn.
By JEan E. PalMiEri
NEW YORK — A standing-room only crowd turned out Wednesday night for the first public hearing on proposed zon-ing changes within the Garment District, which, if implemented, could impact the area’s 400-plus fashion firms and 66,000 workers.
The Land Use Committee of Manhattan Community Board 5 hosted the special meeting that started what will be an “ongoing conversation,” according to its chairman Eric Stern, about options for the district, which runs from Fifth to Ninth Avenues between 35th and 41st Streets.
In a presentation by New York City Economic Development Corporation, the issue of relocating some firms to Sunset Park in Brooklyn was a point of con-tention for several fashion firms whose representatives spoke during the public comment portion of the meeting. One contractor said that if fashion companies, already reeling under the weight of a shrinking American industry, are forced to move to Brooklyn, “you will kill it completely. Our staff is not going to go to Brooklyn.”
A lack of transportation options — only one subway line services the Sunset Park area now although a ferry service will be launched this summer — and an
inconvenient location for visitors were also cited as concerns, according to speakers.
Lydia Downing, vice president and dep-uty director of the NYCEDC, and her team stressed that the group is exploring the pros and cons of moving to Sunset Park, but “no one is being relocated, pushed out or asked to move.”
For companies facing “real estate
pressures” in the Garment District, this new manufacturing hub presents a viable option.
Sunset Park boasts 265,000 square feet of garment manufacturing with an additional 500,000 square feet of indus-trial space becoming available this summer at the Brooklyn Army Terminal at rents that average $16 to $25 a square foot. An additional 200,000 square feet is expected to be available by spring 2020 at the Bush
Terminal at the same average price.There is also 2.4 million square feet
available in the private market, the NYCEDC said.
Since the Fifties, when 90 percent of all clothes were made in New York, to today, when that number is under 1 percent, gar-ment industry manufacturing in the city has been in steady decline, according to the presentation. And since the Garment District was created in 1987, employment has dropped 83 percent.
A zoning requirement in place since the district was established was also an ongo-ing discussion at the meeting. Under the existing statute, there is a requirement that any space currently used for manu-facturing that is converted to commercial or residential use must be preserved by replacing it with another similarly sized manufacturing space within the district.
But that law has proven to be ineffec-tive and has not protected the industry, the NYCEDC said, noting that since 1987, more than 90 percent of the production space within the district has been lost. As a result, a proposal to eliminate that requirement is being considered.
Overall, the fashion industry represents more than 5 percent of the city’s work-force, or 182,000 people, and its 13,300-plus businesses generate more than $11 billion in wages and $2 billion in annual taxes, according to the NYCEDC.
The group has committed more than $15 million to the fashion industry through programs supporting design, education, production, financing and retail. It works with the CFDA and has awarded $2.3 million in industrial and innovation grants.
The presentation ended with the NYCEDC saying it would continue to reach out to the community and the industry and it urged garment manufacturers to complete an online survey as it works to finalize its strategy for ensuring the future of the garment industry in New York.
business
Industry Gets First Glimpse at Garment Industry Rezoning Plan
The Garment District runs from fifth to Ninth avenues, with Seventh avenue being
the most well-known location.
amazon’s private-label offering is focusing on basics.
Amazon is building “very sharply priced product — it’s basically easy items that people will gravitate to and search for.”
— David Lamer, Core Brand Advisors
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14 march 24, 2017
In Focus: Business Insights
● Omnichannel communication with consumers, personalization and constant connectivity are three of these emerging trends.
By traCEy grEEnStEin
Instant gratification coupled with a higher degree of tech-driven personaliza-tion will be the key trends for the retail industry, according to a recently launched study from Synchrony Financial.
The financial services company offered these perspectives from its Future of Retail: Insight and Influences Shaping Retail Inno-vation report, which examined consumer behavior and shopping trends forecasted to impact the retail industry by 2030.
The study culled insights from retailers, industry experts and consumers, and aimed to resolve expectations for the future of shopping as well as define expectations for retail’s evolving landscape. The multiphase study was conducted earlier this year, gleaning quantitative insights from 1,016 consumers and retail experts spanning across a variety of retail segments.
Findings from the study were divided into six core themes: Do-It Yourself Retail; Automation Nation; Retail On-Demand; Retail Comes to You; Brick-and-Mortar’s
Reason for Being, and Less Is More.With DIY retailing, technology will pro-
vide new methods for how shoppers access, select and pay for goods. The “self-serve” retail model includes stores that will stay open 24/7 with robot-assisted drive-thru windows and the introduction of interactive mirrors, both of which are said to eventu-ally become mainstream. Almost half of participants’ surveyed, 47 percent, agreed that interactive touchscreen mirrors in dressing rooms are in the “top three most exciting innovations” for the future of retail.
Personalization is another key theme noted from the study. In the chapter on automa-tion, researchers discovered that consumers are more than willing to provide personal information to retailers, assuming they will receive customized products and offers in return. Technology such as RFID in phones, wearables and finger or palm scanner biomet-rics will inform retailers to send immediate and personalized sales offers to consumers. And, in-home chatbot devices and “digital assistants” will also become commonplace.
The researchers also said the study showed that consumer expectations for products’ instant availability and stream-lined return services will continue. Of those surveyed, 77 percent wish for streamlined return processes for future online purchases, which include return buttons in retailer apps (enabled to repackage and pick-up items),
real-time inventory views and simplified ship-to-store options. The “on-demand” model also includes mobile, on-the-road retailing such as stores on wheels and “trunk” stores as well as continued growth of pop-up shops and subscription services.
Omnichannel communication strategies in tandem with high-definition camera tech-nology will also allow shoppers to secure in-home retailer services. The report said consumers will be enabled to shop in 3-D, purchase on demand via smart labels or QR codes, and access instant try-on features.
Bart Schaller, the executive vice president and chief marketing officer at Synchrony Financial, said, “Why have anything altered
again? Shoppers will be able to take a per-fectly dimensioned picture of a person’s body, type and form and upload it to retailer apps. Without moving from the sofa, a pair of pants will arrive at their doorstep ready to go.”
The future of brick-and-mortar will center on authentic brand experiences. More than 55 percent of participants look forward to the amalgam of in-store and entertainment experiences, predicted to integrate across coffee shops, cafés, music, bars and compli-mentary samplings of products or services.
Heightened consumer expectations means high-level delivery from retailers. “Brands of the future must have a strong reason for being,” according to the report, as 57 per-cent of consumers agreed that retailers must focus on “doing one or two things well.”
Whit Goodrich, the chief marketing offi-cer for retail cards at Synchrony Financial, said, “By having a pulse on the evolving desires of the American consumer, we’re able to pioneer new solutions to help retail-ers deliver a better shopping experience with tailored loyalty benefits and rewards.”
Goodrich continued, “The future of retail will look dramatically different in 2030 than it does today. We’re urging retailers to begin planning for that future now, and our emerging trends analysis is just the start.”
business
Anticipating a ‘Dramatically Different’ Retail Experience by 2030
● LIM College graduate Erica Young shares fashion industry career advice.
By traCEy grEEnStEin
Erica Young knows a thing or two about carving out your own niche.
Young is the director of marketing for digital commerce and social media at Ashley Stewart, a plus-size women’s fashion brand. She found her calling in the plus-size fashion industry after a diver-sified career that included founding two web-based fashion companies focused on the plus-size market, as well as roles in healthcare, nonprofits and institutions of higher education.
Young has been with the Ashley Stewart brand since 2013 and leads the marketing efforts for its 89 stores in 22 states, includ-ing the company’s e-commerce presence at ashleystewart.com. She is a 2006 graduate of LIM College. Here, Young talks to WWD about studying at LIM, her fashion industry career and the importance of mentorship.
WWD: How did your coursework
and your experience at LIM help inform your career decisions?
Erica Young: The years I spent at LIM College were extremely formative for my career. During my junior and senior years, I was able to do two internships, one in trend forecasting and the other in product development. These internships helped me to fully understand how society and culture influence fashion and how products are cre-ated from this inspiration. My senior year internship in product development led me to a full-time role and the start of my career.
WWD: If you could go back in time and give career advice to your younger self, what would you say?
E.Y.: I’d probably tell myself to have more fun. You’re going to make mistakes, you’re going to experience hard moments, but you only get stronger, wiser and more apprecia-tive of the good moments by persevering through the hard ones. There’s also no need to stress about things you cannot control.
WWD: How would you describe your career path? What were some of the challenges you faced?
E.Y.: It has not been a straight path, but
I’ve learned that you can’t expect it to be. When you’re in school, you assume you’ll start your career and it will move upward in a solid diagonal line. In today’s profes-sional world though, that’s not the reality. You hit bumps and turns along the way. You have times of adversity and times of great opportunity.
I started my career working in product development and buying for a large fashion conglomerate. After five years, I was ready for a change and started an affiliate mar-keting company with a former colleague. Having my own business was amazing — we were able to accomplish many things and got a great deal of press for it.
I ended up selling my stake in that company. That may sound like a great success for a first company, but it was actually really hard and a bit sad to leave a business that was born through my own blood, sweat and tears. However, the way I marketed my company through social media was noticed by my colleagues in the industry, which led to consulting jobs and eventually working at Ashley Stewart.
While I’ve had twists and turns in my career, great times and hard times, the key through all of it was to maintain a level head and to keep pushing forward. It’s all about perseverance. If you can keep mov-ing forward, you are going to get to where you want to go.
WWD: Have you had mentors at LIM or in the industry? If yes, how have they helped you?
E.Y.: I’ve had numerous mentors
throughout my career. Some of these men-tors were colleagues that I worked with for years, while others came into my life for a brief moment but played a formative role in inspiring me to try something new or go after a dream.
I know some people look for very formal mentorships, which can be hard for both parties to maintain. Today, I believe you really have to find people whose achieve-ments and character you admire and put yourself in situations where you can work and/or learn from them. You have to look less for formal mentorships and more for good environments filled with people you would be proud to emulate.
WWD: What advice would you give someone considering a career in the retail and fashion apparel market?
E.Y.: From the outside, the fashion industry can look extremely glamorous. There is definitely some mystique and glamour, but it’s also a lot of hard work. To be successful in this industry, you need to discover and develop skills that help you stand out and find a role you can be passionate about.
The retail-fashion industry has very busy seasons that require long hours. Loving what you do makes those times enjoyable and rewarding.
You should also look to work at a com-pany filled with people you admire. You spend so much time in the office — the peo-ple around you will help you achieve your goals, grow personally and professionally and make your day a little bit brighter.
business
Ashley Stewart Executive On the ‘Twists and Turns’ Of a Career in Fashion
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16 march 24, 2017
the mere thought of seeing a ghost is enough to scare some of us silly but not Kiernan Shipka. The 17-year-old actress shared her hopes for a ghostly encounter at a screening for "The Blackcoat's Daughter," hosted by A24, DirecTV and The Cinema Society.
"I’ve never seen a ghost before — would love to," she said. "I’m so mad that I haven’t, to be quite honest."
Shipka, who plays a possessed girl in the "The Blackcoat's Daughter," revealed that she's a horror film fanatic. She named "The Shining," "Rosemary's Baby" and "A Clockwork Orange" as her favorites, adding, "some of the best art films are horror films."
Shipka may be down with the genre, but castmates Lucy Boyn-ton and Emma Roberts are more hesitant. The two joined Shipka at the screening before heading to the after party at Jimmy at the James Hotel.
"Before ['The Blackcoat's Daughter'], I avoided horror films at all cost," Boynton shared.
"I see one scary movie every few months because I get so easily scared," Roberts explained. "I’m still recovering from 'The Conjuring.’" My friends are always laughing that I do so many scary things. They’re, like, ‘You are the
biggest scaredy-cat in the world and you’re on "American Horror Story," "Scream Queens" and you’ve done all these scary mov-ies.’ It’s a little ironic."
Roberts revealed via Insta-gram earlier that day that she was starting a book club called
Belletrist with her friend, Karah Preiss.
"We live in such a digital age that I think it’s important to remind people the beauty of tangible things like books," she explained. "Obviously, we all love being on our phones all the
time and we totally can, but I like the idea of creating something outside of that, but being able to talk about it online."
First up for Belletrist's mem-bers is "South and West" by Joan Didion — not a horror, one might add. — AlexA TieTjen
Kiernan Shipka ‘Would Love’ to See a GhostThe cast of “The Blackcoat’s Daughter” came out for the film’s screening in New York.
Lucy Boynton, Kiernan Shipka and emma Roberts.
Gabriel-Kane Day-Lewis
Tommy Dorfman and Timo Weiland
Olivier Saillard Talks Fashion Shows on a ShoestringThe curator’s latest fashion performance shares an intimate perspec-tive on the creative process as well as the ephemerality of fashion.
Designers looking for tips on how to stage a fashion show on a shoe-string budget should check out cu-rator Olivier Saillard’s latest piece, “Couture Essentielle,” which wraps tonight at the Centre National de la Danse in Pantin, France, on the outskirts of Paris. “The challenge was to create the cheapest fash-ion show ever produced,” quipped Saillard backstage following the Wednesday night performance of the show. “We bought some piec-es of fabrics totaling around 150 euros [$162 at current exchange rates], asked four models to walk and then we set about inventing,” he added. “I liked the idea of cre-
ating a show that disappears as it takes place.”
Clad in black leotards, tights and Roger Vivier heels, veteran models Christine Bergstrom, Axelle Doué, Claudia Huidobro and Anne Rohart throughout the performance took turns to create silhouettes out of single squares of fabric, draping them around their body with the solemnity of a couturier in front of mirrors positioned at the end of the aisles. The other models would then move in and fix the looks into place with their hands before marching in a pack up and down the aisles, mock catwalk style.
Taking in the show were Jean Paul Gaultier, Martine Sitbon and Elie Top.
Discussing ideas for future projects, meanwhile, Saillard said it would be his dream to select a range of his favorite shows and re-create them. He has already approached Yohji Yamamoto to propose a restaging of his 1998 "Wedding" collection. The designer seemed up for it, he said, though nothing concrete is lined up for now. “It’s quite tricky because a lot of fashion designers are not comfortable about the idea of presenting a past collection in its entirety today, but a collection can
say a lot about a period.”In June, Saillard will stage an
exhibition on traditional Span-ish costume at the Maison de Victor Hugo in Paris, as well as an ephemeral fashion museum at the Palazzo Pitti in Florence, in tandem with the Pitti Uomo men’s trade show. The curator in September will open an exhibition on Mariano Fortuny at the Palais Galliera, as the museum’s director. He’s also busy preparing for the Margiela retrospective planned for the Palais Galliera next year. “It’s a very simple project but based on some ideas that are quite subversive. Wait and see.” — KATyA ForemAn
Saillard’s latest piece, “Couture essentielle.”
olivier Saillard
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“it’s about friendship, it’s about art, it’s about fear of failure, and it’s about maybe waiting to be recognized after you die,” observed Diane von Furstenberg at a screening Wednesday of “Cezanne et Moi” at the newly opened Whitby Hotel in New York.
The screening of the film, which traces a stormy lifelong friendship between 19th-century painter Paul Cézanne and novelist Émile Zola, was fittingly hosted by the designer who has maintained a more than 40-year bond with the movie’s director and writer, Daniele Thompson.
“When we met we were in our 20s and [our friendship] is part of our youth,” explained Thompson in a delicate French accent. “To keep a friendship alive is very hard, but I think we are both very wise wom-en. We look [at the world] alike,
which is the opposite of these two men [Cezanne and Zola]. As Diane and I grew older, we had parallel ideas and parallel choices.”
As important to the film as its dynamic characters is the majestic cinematography shot on-location in Paris and Provence, which von Furstenberg described as “like being in a painting” by the post-Impressionist artist.
“I’m jealous of the entire 19th-century painters,” said per-formance artist Marina Abramov-ic ahead of the screening. “They live in the south of France, good wine, lots of women. You didn’t have to hustle and have all the hell we have today.”
But the Yugoslavia-born artist realizes that being born a century earlier would likely have prevent-ed her from practicing her often radical works like a 2010 MoMA
performance entitled “The Artist Is Present,” which saw Abramovic sit silent and static for more than 736 hours.
“I would be burned like a witch,” she continued. “I am even now the black sheep. I probably would be a warrior and dress in men’s clothes and have a sword and go to the wars for the justice.”
Following the screening guests filtered upstairs to The Orangery, an airy enclosure being used for the first time for the cocktail re-ception. As guests including Ellen Burstyn and Jessica Joffe filtered upstairs to the chilly space, writer Fran Lebowitz wearing her signa-ture blazer and jeans marched firmly through the lobby clutching a pack of Marlboro Lights. “I have zero sympathy for anyone who voted for [Trump],” announced the outspoken author to friends at
the intimate soiree. “You are not entitled to that level of ignorance.”
“I’m so cold,” exclaimed von Furstenberg who didn’t remove her fur-collared jacket throughout the party. Across the rectangu-lar gallery, von Furstenburg’s billionaire husband Barry Diller lamented the progress of a yet-to-be-completed floating park in the Hudson River for which the couple donated an unprecedent-ed $113 million to the city.
“I keep using this word ‘ambi-tion’ and now it’s starting to scare me,” he revealed to pals. “What the f--k have I done?”
This grand public project, which is slated to open by 2020, is a certain way for the power couple to ensure a lasting legacy far more quickly than Cezanne or Zola could have ever imagined. — Andrew nodell
DVF Discusses Legacy and FriendshipThe designer hosted a screening of “Cezanne et Moi” at the Whitby Hotel in New York.
Family Ties: A Step Into the Spotlight“House Style: Five Centuries of Fashion at Chatsworth” is a close-up of the aristocratic family over five centuries.
Diane von furstenberg
and Marina abramovic
lonDon — "Never Marry a Mitford."
That warning, which was not heeded, was just one of the inside jokes emblazoned on a stack of navy wool sweaters worn by Andrew Cavendish, the 11th Duke of Devonshire, part of a grand — and quirky — exhibition that opens March 25 at Chats-worth House, one of England's largest and most famous stately homes, and the family seat of the Dukes of Devonshire.
Six years in the making, "House Style: Five Centuries of Fashion at Chatsworth" is a close-up of the aristocratic fam-ily over five centuries through the lens of their lifestyle — their fashion, uniforms, jewels, parties, art collections, traditions and love of the natural world."
"Chatsworth is a magical place, not a monument, but a home," said Alessandro Michele, creative director of Gucci, who used Chats-worth as the setting for two ad campaigns last year. Michele said he loves seeing the natural world blossom around him at the house — the lush gardens, the bejeweled bug pins that the 11th Duke gave to his wife Deborah Mitford, the carved serpents on walls and columns (one of the family sym-bols), the cutout paper butterflies slipped into scrapbooks, and the
family's meticulously labeled rock, fossil and crystal collections.
"Animals and nature are very powerful, and the family has always understood that," said the designer, whose collections for Gucci are alive with bee, flower, bird and snake motifs.
The show is the brainchild of Laura Cavendish, whose husband William is the Earl of Burlington and heir to the dukedom. She said the idea came after "rustling around" the storage rooms with her moth-er-in-law, Amanda, the Duchess of Devonshire, and that watching it take shape was an education, "and a very good way to get to know my husband's family." Clothing came from the Chatsworth storage rooms, but also from the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Museum of London, and the Dior archive, and other sources.
The new show is also a tale of the strong women of Chatsworth — the Devonshire duchesses, daughters, sisters and nieces who shaped the family's history with their power and pizzazz.
"It all starts with the women," said Patrick Kinmonth, who designed the exhibition, including all the sets, interviews and films, with Antonio Monfreda. "Backed by their husbands, women were allowed to make a major statement here," he said of the
unconventional bunch who lived large and loved their fashion.
The dynasty was founded by Bess of Hardwick, the 16th-centu-ry countess, businesswoman and close friend of Queen Elizabeth I, who built Chatsworth. Since then, the family has counted women including the Georgian-era fashion plate Georgiana Spencer, Kathleen "Kick" Kennedy, Adele Astaire, and Deborah, known as Debo, Mitford, the late Dowager Duchess of Devonshire and the youngest of the bright and — often controversial — Mitford sisters.
The stylish Debo, and her granddaughter Stella Tennant, play a big part in the show. Pieces from their wardrobes — Balmain, Chanel, Balenciaga, Christian Dior, Oscar de la Renta, Erdem, Christopher Kane, John Galliano and Alexander McQueen — are on display, as are a rubber chicken handbag and coin purse (property of Debo), and the Converse high-tops (regularly whitened by the valet) that her husband Andrew, the 11th Duke, wore in the Seventies.
"There was extravagance — and thrift — everywhere," said Hamish Bowles, who curated the show, adding that when Laura invited him to have a look at the boxes of clothes that were piled to the ceiling at Chatsworth, he found a vast array of pieces, many of them
from Debo's closet: "mid-century French couture, Marks & Spencer and things she bought from agri-cultural fairs," Bowles said.
The show highlights all those extremes: There are rooms dedi-cated to the famous Devonshire House Fancy Dress Ball in 1897, that had forced guests to dash to the House of Worth — and other couturiers of the day — to create their lavish costumes, inspired by Salammbo; Zenobia, queen of Palmyra; Dido, queen of Car-thage; and the Black Prince.
Another room is filled with tailor-made tweed shooting, fishing and riding garb, while an-other showcases those navy blue sweaters with their funny slogans, and a pair of the 11th Duke's tapes-try slippers (a Christmas gift from Debo, his Mitford wife) as worn and tattered as a puppy's chew toy.
There are so many intimate glimpses of everyday life and fam-ily tradition — christening gowns, ermine and velvet coronation robes, wedding dresses, memen-to mori and stacks of scrapbooks, sketchbooks, travel diaries, photo-graphs and pictures. Many reveal the family's silliness and sense of humor: a small profile painting of the seventh Duke as a teenager shows him dressed in formal attire — and suffering from the mumps. The back of the picture
reads: "William in the DUMPS with the MUMPS."
The show also puts the spot-light on the Cavendish family's compulsion to collect precious things: There are ceramics and sculptures on show next to simi-larly shaped hats by Prada, Lanvin and Philip Treacy, as well as Inigo Jones sketches and drawings, and portraits of generations of duchesses by painters including Thomas Gainsborough, John Singer Sargent, Diego Velázquez, Lucian Freud and Pietro Annigoni.
Rizzoli is to publish “House Style: Five Centuries of Fashion at Chatsworth,” with a foreword by the 12th Duke of Devonshire who calls it "the most ambitious and amazing show that Chats-worth has ever done." The exhibi-tion is part of a three-year pledge by Gucci to support cultural ac-tivities at Chatsworth House and the Duke said the brand's support allowed the Chatsworth House Trust charity to "think bigger than it had ever dared before."
"House Style" runs from March 25 to Oct. 22, and Laura Cavendish has said she hopes it will travel abroad after that. “I’d love it to go to America maybe — that would be wonderful. We’ve worked long on this, and I think it’s an exciting show for us.” — sAmAnThA ConTi
The exhibition showcases clothing from the past 500 years which belonged to the Devonshire family.
antonio Monfreda, Patrick Kinmonth, Hamish Bowles, Laura Cavendish, alessandro Michele, Duchess and Duke of Devonshire.
Gwendoline Christie
a piece by Gucci on display at The House Style exhibition at Chatsworth House.
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Fashion Scoops
Memo Pad
newcomer Focusnikelab is turning its attention to up-and-coming designers.
The brand tasked Stavros Karelis, the founder of Machine-A, a boutique in Lon-don, with selecting five new designers to create looks based on the Air VaporMax sneaker, a new style that will be released on March 26, which is Air Max Day.
He chose Azar Rajabi, a Canadian de-signer who has interned for Damir Doma and Prabal Gurung; Shizhe He, a Chinese designer based in New York, and Central Saint Martins graduates Liam Johnson, Paula Canovas and Wanbing Huang.
Each of these designers used the VaporMax as a starting point for their creations.
Shizhe He utilized plastic packaging film that’s typically used to protect furni-ture during transit to build a dress. Rajabi used pearlized Neoprene mesh and texturized vinyl for her hooded creation. Johnson played with buoyancy and light-ness for his abstract piece that’s meant to mimic clouds. Canovas worked with nylons and knots. Huang built a head-piece and full-length bodysuit inspired by the woven Flyknits.
NikeLab recently partnered with Riccardo Tisci to redesign the Nike Air Max 97 and they also opened a NikeLab store within Bergdorf Goodman’s men’s department. — AriA hUGhes
StarwatchingWatches aren’t all that’s on show at Baselworld.
Guests at the watch and jewelry fair in Switzerland jostled for a glimpse of “Grey’s Anatomy” star Patrick Dempsey at the Tag Heuer booth, where he premiered a short film for the brand that he directed and appears in, while Bulgari introduced its latest global watch ambas-sador, Spanish model Jon Kortajarena.
At a packed press conference on
Thursday, Dempsey was flanked by Tag Heuer chief executive officer Jean-Claude Biver and Jack Heuer, the great grandson of the founder and honorary chairman of the Swiss watchmaker, which is owned by LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton.
“To Jack,” Dempsey’s black-and-white short film, shows the actor — a friend of the brand and keen car racer — looking pensive as he drives a vintage, open-top MGA sports car across a striking Cali-fornia landscape, to a jazz soundtrack by Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah.
The film features the Autavia, a legend-ary Heuer timepiece originally designed for cars and planes, and now revived.
“I had to stay calm to realize the vision,” said Dempsey, best known for his role as neurosurgeon Dr. Derek “Mc-Dreamy” Shepherd on “Grey’s Anatomy,” in words that echoed the brand’s tag line: Don’t Crack Under Pressure.
“I’d really love to do more,” he added. “And we will. There’s more coming.”
On Wednesday night, Bulgari — anoth-er LVMH brand — had Kortajarena join a group including Jasmine Sanders, aka Golden Barbie, and Caroline Vreeland —
the brand’s digital ambassadors — as well as actors Laura Harrier and Kris Wu.
Kortajarena wore Bulgari’s newest world-record-breaking timepiece, the Octo Finissimo Automatic, featuring what the brand claims is the thinnest automatic movement on the market. — hAiG simoniAn
Match PointWhile much of the media and sports enthusiasts are obsessively trying to predict when Roger Federer will retire, the tennis star seems to be floating on a cloud of unwavering confidence. In the midst of the Miami Open, he was calm, fo-cused and simply savoring the moment.
Federer, 35, was all smiles and charm during Moët & Chandon’s cocktail party, held in his honor as the company’s global ambassador. Still basking in the glory of his comeback this year, after beating Stan Wawrinka and winning Indian Wells last Sunday (for a fifth time) and the vic-tory against Rafael Nadal in Australia in January, which earned him with his 19th Grand Slam title, Federer was almost childishly innocent when describing his
mood ahead of his first Miami Open match since 2014.
“I’m feeling really good,’’ he said from the 40th floor of the East hotel in Miami. “I love Miami, there is this incredible energy here, with lots of people who want to see me play and who want me to do well.”
The Swiss-born star is also making time for fashion. During his down time away from practice in Miami, Federer has been working on his long-running col-laboration with Nike. He picked samples
for the U.S. Open 2018 on-court styles, and was in a photo shoot the morning of March 22 for his NikeLab collaboration, in which he is the designer.
“I really enjoy the off-court design work because I can really be creative and think about style,” he said. “For the on-court collections, it’s really all about performance: the clothes are made considering sweat, rain, heat. It’s fun, but I don’t have a whole lot of room to go crazy.” — AdriAnA BrAsileiro
The Cuts Arrivelayoffs came even earlier than Us Weekly staffers expected. Sources say that around 40 people have been let go as of Thursday afternoon. It is estimated that Us Weekly has around 115 employees.
The job cuts come a week after Amer-ican Media Inc., which owns National Enquirer, Star, OK! and Radar Online, closed on a deal with Wenner Media to buy the celebrity tabloid for a reported $100 million.
Among those cut were editor in chief Michael Steele and editorial director Jaimee Zanzinger, both of whom had to lead the meetings about the job cuts. Design director Victor Thompson, deputy editor April P. Bernard and online executive editor Justin Ravitz were also let go, as was the entire L.A. editorial team, WWD has learned.
An AMI spokesman did not immedi-ately respond to requests for comment.
Following the announcement of the deal last week, panic spread through the newsroom as the staff braced for inev-itable layoffs and consolidation. AMI’s chairman and chief executive officer David Pecker is known for serious cost cuts and running a lean ship. AMI already has a centralized news structure and a consolidated back office. In January, the company consolidated the staff of Men’s Fitness and Muscle & Fitness. The changes translated to about 16 layoffs,
the bulk of which came from the editorial staff of Men’s Fitness, as well as the departure of Dave Zinczenko, executive vice president and editorial director.
Back in New York, there were tears in Wenner’s Midtown headquarters when staffers were notified, an insider said. Over the past week, staffers were interviewed about their jobs as part of a reapplication process. According to an in-sider, some staffers were asked to “throw others under the bus,” while others were questioned about work flow and the pro-cess of reporting and posting stories.
But according to a source familiar with the deal, the meetings were little more than a formality. As expected, the majority of the print side was let go.
Severance details have not yet been worked out. — KArA BloomGArden-smoKe
nocturnal AnimalsRobert Pattinson’s brooding presence is played off against scenes of Paris by night in the new Dior Homme campaign, which breaks on the brand’s social media today and in print next week.
The fall pre-collection ads are set to appear in Italian daily La Reppublica’s Album Uomo supplement on March 30 and in the French edition of GQ magazine on March 31.
For his third ready-to-wear campaign for the brand, the “Twilight” star again posed for Karl Lagerfeld, who captures the same intensity already evident in his night-themed spring campaign for Dior Homme featuring Pattinson on a Paris street after dark.
This time, the actor stayed in the studio, posing against a black backdrop in items designed by Kris Van Assche for Dior Homme’s Black Carpet collection. They range from a classic black tuxedo to a more casual jacket embroidered
with a hand-drawn pattern.Launched for spring 2017, the capsule
line is conceived as “a connection between the classic masculine evening wardrobe and the more rebellious aspects of his street and sportswear inspirations,” said Dior Homme.
Lagerfeld has previously described Pattinson as “very easygoing and easy to photograph. But at the same time there is something mysterious about him, which I love.”
Dior Homme runs multiple cam-
paigns customized for various media channels, with faces ranging from rapper A$AP Rocky to actor Rami Malek and singer and DJ Boy George. The spring and fall campaigns feature pre-collections, while the winter and summer campaigns focus on the runway line.
Pattinson has been the face of the Dior Homme fragrance since June 2013 and currently appears in ads for its flanker, Dior Homme Sport. — joelle dideriCh
Robert Pattinson in the Dior Homme campaign.
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Patrick Dempsey at the Tag Heuer press conference.
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