For almost a week there has been all the buzz about the new Instagram feature currently being tested. The platform is coming up with shoppable tags for the businesses’ profiles and it is hard not to be excited as the process of buying for us as consumers gets increasingly easier. But what exactly are the opportunity and the challenge for the brands? According to Instagram research, 60% of the application users admit they learn about products and services on the platform; 75% say they take actions like visiting sites, searching, or telling a friend after being influenced by a post on Instagram. Try recollecting how many times you wanted something…
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The Cleavage Gate: Vogue Under Fire
According to British Vogue, cleavage is “out.” In Kathleen Baird-Murray’s Desperately Seeking Cleavage, featured in the December issue of the magazine, she notes the distinct lack of pertinently pushed-up breasts everywhere from runway to red carpet. “The tits will not be out for the lads. Or for anyone else, for that matter,” she states. In the edition she explores the history of a “bosom focused” fashion industry and analyses the different approaches women of today take cleavage. As per usual, the Internet was not having it, with articles being published left and right, attacking the magazine for dictating the closets of women and seemingly degrading a woman of a certain body type.…
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Fashion Photography: Telling a Story about Storytelling
Storytelling about evolving lifestyles. This is the essence of fashion photography. From a more practical point of view, it is a mean to show and describe what is going to be offered to public, to persuade people to desire it, to make us fall irremediably in love with the Zeitgeist. Due to the fluctuation of people tastes and the happenings influencing society, fashion photography has to keep itself up-to-date. How is it possible? Thanks to its Bards. The strength and effectiveness of a fashion image is due to the ability of the one who stands behind the camera and the editor supporting him/her, whose mantra is: “everything or anything for…
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American Apparel’s Farewell ?
American Apparel, the Los Angeles-based clothing manufacturer, figment of Dov Charney’s imagination and entrepreneurial nature, running since 1989, is now indisputably one of the largest apparel manufacturer in North America. At least virtually… A growing rumor, supported among others by Bloomberg, has it that the double A brand would be preparing its second bankruptcy filling within the next few weeks, making it the second one in less than two years. But one shall fully comprehend what American Apparel has been through also by considering the founder’s attitude, Mr.Charney, whose role in the brand’s downturn is not to be ignored. Let’s have a quick remainder of what happened up to now.…
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From London, With Love!
I was lucky enough to pass the week in London! As it’s my first time in the city, I have to say I’m really enjoying myself. As an American girl living in a fashion capital, Milan, my eyes of course went immediately to the fashion of the locals. From afar I’ve always said that the London fashion was a bit daring for me personally. The animal prints, the oversized jewels, the colors and oh so many textures… I could never pull it off. Now that I am up-close, I’m able to reanalyze and recognize that there is a really elegant spirit underneath the loud exterior. I noted that Britain seems…
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The G(h)o(s)ths Week.
Outside is dark. Winter is knocking at the doors. Fog is winding through the streets on the notes of “The Dark Side of the Moon”. This is the week in which everyone wants to be a Goth. But how to? How can one actually pretend to be so, even for one night? And what does it mean? Is it still a contemporary style? Everything started at the end of the Seventies, in the train of the Punk Era. Many of the so called Post-Punk music bands found the headquarter in the just opened Batcave nightclub in London, developing a social music movement and a new dress code characterising it. So,…
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A chat over dinner with Alberto Baldan, CEO of La Rinascente
You may think that I am exaggerating, and to some extent it is true. I did not dine privately with Mr Baldan, but this is how the evening felt like to me. When I saw the event promoting a tasty aperitivo with the CEO of the most famous department store in Italy, I thought of one of those networking events where the guest awkwardly speaks for 5 minutes and then has to rush away. But I couldn’t be more wrong: organised by Hub Giovani, a group of inspired young students and professionals who get together to discuss about work, culture, innovation and much more, the aperitivo with Baldan was so enjoyable…
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Il Nuovo Gucci: in the Backstage of the Italian Empire’s Rebirth.
We’re in December 2014, and the mutli-brand luxury group Kering announces the departure of Patrizio di Marco and Frida Giannini, respectively Gucci’s CEO and artistic director. This wave of departures from Gucci comes as no surprise, and marks the beginning of a fresh start for the Florentine brand. Set up in 1921 by Guccio Gucci and acquired in 1999 by the ancestor of Kering, PPR, the double G brand was, at the time, going through a rough patch. 2013 has proved to be a downturn in the brand’s sales, a situation that worsened in 2014, with lower sales volume of 1.8% at 3,49 billion euros. Considering that Gucci is the…
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Decades of Fashion: the 60s
“Hey mama hey mama – Look around -Everybody’s groovin’ to a brand new sound” Welcome to the 60s, Hairspray At the beginning of the Sixties, the world felt that something was changing. A rush of optimism was spreading around cities and, with the election of the new president of US, John F. Kennedy, in 1961, people believed that a new golden age had to start. The key actors of those years where those who were born after the World War II, also called the baby boomers. Having reached the teen age, the joyful, lighthearted youth embraced the pleasures of life without the knowledge of the dreads of past wars. They…
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Fashion Eliminates the Y Chromosome
As we learned in biology lessons, chromosome Y defines human gender. However, as we are learning from fashion today, at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter. The boundaries between masculinity and femininity are increasingly blurring and this seems to be more than a fast trend. In the past, when fashion was way more conservative, one could tell for sure what is appropriate for a man and what suits a woman. Today we see the stereotypes melting: while ladies wear boyfriend jeans, oversize shirts, T-shirts and hoodies, the aesthetics leaving their looks find place in menswear with brands like J.W.Anderson and Gucci introducing the man of unconventional, androgynous…
