DESIGNER Archives - FASHION HOPE

UTA Launches Fashion Division, Extending Push To Diversify Its Business

As it continues to diversify its business with in-house moves and M&A deals, UTA has launched a fashion division.

UTA Fashion, which will be led by fashion industry vet Anne Nelson, will focus on expanding client activities in the fashion and beauty sectors.

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Nelson has held exec posts at IMG, Elite Model Management and, more recently, CAA. She has served as a mentor to many models on the rise, helping to guide their career paths.

“Anne is one of the most respected fashion executives with deep and established relationships across the industry,” UTA Board member and Partner Blair Kohan and Partner Darnell Strom said in a joint statement. “She has a true passion for her clients and has been the architect behind many top career moments in the fashion world. For UTA, bringing her on board is a natural next step in the work we’ve been doing in this space, and we can’t wait to see what she will accomplish.”

The fashion industry, which is worth upwards of $2 trillion globally, is in the midst of a dramatic shift away from longtime economic models. It has also been increasingly cross-pollinating with the entertainment business. One recent example was the appointment of rapper and producer Pharrell Williams to oversee menswear design for French luxury fashion house Louis Vuitton.

UTA’s latest move follows the acquisitions of publishing agency Fletcher and Company, top UK talent and literary agency Curtis Brown Group, and entertainment and marketing advisory firm MediaLink. UTA also received backing last July from private equity firm EQT.

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AIFD showcases students’ work during Paris Fashion Week

The Asian Institute of Fashion Design – Iqra University through its students is all set to showcase a collection of work at the Hôtel d’Évreux located in Place Vendôme in Paris, France on March 5.

Place Vendôme is the most prestigious square in Paris and is home to designer brands like Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Dior and Cartier. AIFD Students will be showcasing their work in Paris during Paris Fashion Week for the very first time, putting Pakistani designers at the forefront of the fashion landscape.

AIFD’s show in Paris will begin with their first ever student-made Fashion Film, ‘Enchanted Odyssey’ which will be followed by a showcase of the Top 10 looks from the AIFD Thesis Collection 2022. The collection is going to be showcased at Hôtel d’Évreux in Place Vendôme which was built in the 17th century, the Hôtel d’Évreux is a model of Period architecture. With its 18th Directoire and Napoléon III style rooms, it’s a jewel of the Paris historical and assets heritage.

Fashion Weeks provide one’s brand a platform to be part of a prestigious and momentous global event. Young designers are given an opportunity to present their collections during off-schedule slots or presentations during Fashion Week. Many Fashion Weeks have events or spaces specifically designated for emerging designers to showcase their work during this coveted time of the year. Any brand that wishes to make an impact begins with Paris, during Paris Fashion Week. Propitiously this relates to the storyline of our Fashion Film, where a young girl’s dream of entering the fashion world is akin to how AIFD students envision themselves. “As the CEO of AIFD, I wanted to break away from the norm and do the extraordinary and raise the bar for Fashion Institutions in Pakistan. At first, my team and I presented

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Adidas could be forced to burn $500M in Yeezy stock after Kanye West’s anti-Semitic outbursts

Adidas could be forced to burn Yeezy sneakers worth around half-a-billion dollars after rapper and fashion designer Kanye West’s anti-Semitic outbursts.

The sportswear brand is struggling over what to do with its massive stockpile of the shoes, which retail for between $200 and $600, after it dramatically cut ties with the disgraced rapper last year.

Analysts now say Adidas, which has already said the debacle hit revenues by $1.3bn, could be forced to burn the stock – because it risks a PR nightmare if they are still sold at a discount.

The company’s decision to drop West capped the rapper’s fall from grace after a pattern of increasingly erratic behavior and anti-Semitic outbursts.

In October, he said in a social media post that he would go ‘death con 3 on Jewish people’, then doubled down in media interviews with comments that included vile remarks about Jewish people.

Kanye West, pictured in October last year, was dropped by Adidas and several other brands after a series of anti-Semitic outbursts

Adidas is now stuck with Yeezy stock worth about $500 million – and could even decide to burn the stock rather than be seen profiting from from a collaboration with an anti-Semite

Wedbush analyst Tom Nikic told the Washington Post that the Yeezy line was worth about $2 billion per year in revenue for Adidas, adding: ‘What makes this so dramatic is how big it is.’ He said the commercial dilemma was confounded by the ‘abruptness’ of West’s downfall.

Nikic said stripping the trainers of the Yeezy label and selling them at a discount as ‘zombie Yeezys’ was a risk because the brand could still be seen as ‘profiting off of a collaboration with someone who made blatant anti-Semitic statements’.

Burning or otherwise destroying the shoes would be the most extreme option

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Fashion’s Millennial Man

Daniel Lee made his much-anticipated debut at Burberry, in a vibey show with a runway that snaked through a black tent, set to music by the British electronic musician Burial.

Was it revolutionary? No, but fashion rarely is. Instead, it was an astute debut by one of the industry’s most millennial of millennial designers. It felt like a cousin to what Lee did at Bottega Veneta, suggesting that the playbook he patented during his brief tenure there is back in the larger fashion atmosphere.

As the creative director of Bottega Veneta from 2018-2021, Lee cultivated a new model for fashion relevance. He made great products—bulbous rubber boots at relatively affordable prices, covetable handbags, genuinely weird and exciting clothes—and introduced a new definition of what it means to be cool in fashion. He made digital zines stuffed with artists, creatives, and out-of-the-mainstream musicians; he didn’t seek relevance through dressing the stars of the moment, but seemed much more interested in anointing his own. Or celebrating his own taste; Neneh Cherry and Missy Elliott were his muses. His projects, and his motives, could appear quixotic to the fashion press—why show in Detroit? Why leave Instagram?—but customers had far less compunction. (Though you may recall that it was fashion editors, buying the bags of their own volition, who first made his intrecciato bags a bonafide streetstyle phenomenon.)

Lee was absent from fashion for just a blip in the grand scheme of changing hem lengths and rejiggered logos, but he reenters a world in which Pharrell Williams, the musician and fashion savant, has been named the creative director of Louis Vuitton menswear, raising questions of whether the celebrity designer has supplanted true design talent. (My thoughts: absolutely not.) His debut at Burberry on Monday night demonstrates how he’s tweaked his playbook and showed that

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For Silvia Venturini Fendi, Fashion Is Family

It wasn’t so long ago that inheriting the family business, particularly in Italy and especially in the luxury sector, was considered a noble act of duty, rather than proof of entitlement. Control of Gucci, established in 1921 by Guccio Gucci, was passed down to three of the founder’s sons, Aldo, Vasco and Rodolfo, and later to Rodolfo’s only son, Maurizio. Prada, a leather goods boutique opened by the brothers Mario and Martino Prada in 1913, was taken over in 1958 by Mario’s daughter, Luisa, and eventually her three children, including Miuccia, the brand’s longtime lead designer. And the shoe company that Salvatore Ferragamo started in 1927 remains in the family.

But even in Italy, dynasties are beginning to diversify, making Venturini Fendi ever more of a holdout: Following years of infighting among the Guccis, the company was sold in 1993 (and later acquired by the France-based conglomerate now known as Kering); in 2020, the Belgian designer Raf Simons was appointed co-creative director of Prada alongside Miuccia and, in January, Miuccia and her husband, Patrizio Bertelli, stepped down as co-C.E.O.s of the group. Although the Ferragamos are still involved in the business side of the brand, its new creative director, Maximilian Davis, is a 27-year-old from England. Yet when the multinational luxury goods group LVMH bought a controlling stake in Fendi in 2001, its chairman, Bernard Arnault, validated Venturini Fendi — and perhaps surprised others in the industry, who saw the acquisition as a moment for reinvention — by asking her to stay. “When we sold, it was kind of a liberation,” she says. “Because I said, ‘Finally, I’m here because I am who I am, and not because of the name.’”

IMAGES OF LINDA Evangelista wearing Fendi are plastered throughout Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci airport. In the historic

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What Will AI Mean for Fashion?

PARIS — The race to create new artificial intelligence tools promises to revolutionize the fashion industry, from product design to brand communication — but will computers eventually replace creatives?

Underpinning the competition between tech giants is a new era of “generative AI,” a creative artificial intelligence that starts from a prompt and produces original output, like ChatGPT, which is capable of generating elaborate written responses on the basis of a few words.

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The technology has also been infiltrating fashion, through a variety of apps and platforms including art and image generators Midjourney and Stable Diffusion. The development could upend the industry by reducing the need for many junior positions, such as assistant designers, product developers and graphic designers.

Launched in October, supply chain platform Cala’s generative AI feature is built with the deep learning model developed by OpenAI, the U.S. artificial intelligence research laboratory behind ChatGPT. It can throw out designs in seconds with simple word combinations.

Cala and other image generators have catalogued every image that already exists on the internet, and brings together elements to create new images – reality-based but remixed with the AI’s imagination.

A prompt such as “red jacket” will give a user hundreds of iterations, while a more detailed description such as “jacket like Brad Pitt in ‘Fight Club’” will create original variations on the theme.

“You can iterate very quickly through an idea without ever needing to sketch something,” said Cala chief executive officer Andrew Wyatt. Through Cala’s mobile app, a user can also create a design on the fly. “Instead of drawing on the back of a napkin at a coffee shop or a bar, you could just start rendering a real garment,” he said.

Users can also upload their own image and have the AI produce variations of

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8 key spring/summer fashion trends to know about now

The catwalks are king when it comes to predicting the colours, cuts, fabrics and fashions that will dominate each season.

Looking at the spring/summer 2023 designer collections, there was an eclectic mix, with everything from floaty gowns and silky slips to laidback tailoring and utility-inspired separates.

Bold blues, retro denim and glitzy, party-ready looks offer lots of inspiration for the warmer months – that are not too far away now.

These are the eight most important spring/summer fashion trends to have on your radar, as we head into the new season…

1. Full skirts

London Fashion Week favourites Richard Quinn and S.S. Daley turned up the volume with A-line skirts in luxe floral fabrics, as did Maria Grazia Chiuri at Dior, styling black midi skirts and dresses with sheer stockings.

Midi skirts are fast becoming a transitional fashion favourite for 2023, teamed with ankle or knee boots.

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2. Luxe lingerie

The ‘underwear as outerwear’ trend is back in a big way this spring, championed by the likes of Christopher Kane, Victoria Beckham and hotly-tipped London-based designer Nensi Dojaka, who all sent nightie-style dresses down the catwalk.

For a more sustainable take on the trend, opt for a vintage lace-edged slip.

Take a styling tip from the Christopher Kane runway and wear it with a pastel-hued cardigan.

Christopher Kane SS23 (Christopher Kane/PA)

3. Utility

Major fashion houses including Fendi, Balmain, Dior and Versace declared cargo pants a SS23 must-have – albeit soft, slinky trousers in pretty colours, rather than the starchy, beige kind.

Alternatively,

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Skye Tan talks AUPEN, his fashion accessories brand that’s approved by Kylie Jenner

Have you heard of AUPEN, one of the buzziest fashion brands making waves internationally right now? If you haven’t, consider yourself acquainted now. Helmed by Singaporean Skye Tan, who is Head of Product & Design, with Lydia Maurer, Head of Concept, AUPEN’s bag designs boast a clean silhouette and distinct asymmetrical design.

Skye and Lydia’s names may not ring a bell, but trust us — they hold weight in the fashion world. Lydia Maurer is the ex-artistic director of fashion powerhouse Paco Rabanne, and has had stints working at Givenchy and Yves Saint Laurent.

As for Skye, he has come a long way. An HDB boy at heart (his words, not ours!), Skye is now based in the glamorous Big Apple. The fashion photographer, an alum of the prestigious School of Visual Arts of New York, cut his teeth working with industry heavyweights Ralph Lauren, Louis Vuitton and Paul Smith, to name a few.

Despite having just entered the scene, the brand has already caught the attention of A-listers — Kylie Jenner and Gabrielle Union have both been spotted clutching an AUPEN bag.

Ahead, we chat with the fashion insider who spills all about AUPEN and his journey in the fashion world.

Tell us all about Aupen! We’d love to learn how it came about and the meaning behind the name and brand.

The name AUPEN is a portmanteau of the words “AU-thentic” and “o-PEN”. At AUPEN, we strive to bring sustainability and transparency to the forefront of fashion — both in terms of our environmental usage as well as promoting mental health.

I conceived AUPEN’s concept on a late night on the streets of Brooklyn after I had one too many drinks… so nothing too interesting there. Visions of bag designs appeared before my eyes, and the

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Why 1997 was a pivotal year for fashion

The 12 months between October 1996 and October 1997 proved a pivotal time for fashion. Two of its stars — Gianni Versace and Diana, Princess of Wales — died; arguably the first “It” bag, the Fendi Baguette, hit the market; and LVMH owner Bernard Arnault, who had amassed a portfolio of heritage fashion houses over the previous decade, including Christian Dior and Givenchy, first decided to shuffle them all around.

In October 1996, he moved designer John Galliano from the house of Givenchy to Dior; 27-year-old Lee Alexander McQueen was the replacement at Givenchy. That was only the beginning. Over the coming year, LVMH appointed Marc Jacobs to Louis Vuitton, Michael Kors to Céline and Narciso Rodriguez to Loewe; Hedi Slimane was named creative director of Yves Saint Laurent’s menswear; Stella McCartney was appointed to Chloé; Nicolas Ghesquière began to design for Balenciaga.

“It changed the structure of fashion,” says Alexandre Samson, curator of the forthcoming exhibition 1997 Fashion Big Bang at the Palais Galliera in Paris.

We are speaking on Zoom two weeks before the opening, and he is feeling stressed. Stressed because a specific dress requested for display by the couturier Christian Lacroix to represent his autumn/winter 1997 haute couture collection had been altered for a celebrity and had to be painstakingly reconstructed by one of Lacroix’s former atelier heads.

Stressed too because the formidable Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons had heard of the exhibition and disapproved of the initial selection made from her spring/summer 1997 “Body Meets Dress, Dress Meets Body” show. The “right” pieces are now on their way from Japan.

A model in white trousers and jacket, with a coat slung over her shoulders and a furry hat with golden horns — Alexander McQueen’s haute couture spring/summer collection for Givenchy in 1997 . . . © Vogue

A model in bright pink ball gown — . . . and Christian Lacroix’s autumn/winter show that year © Guy Marineau/Christian Lacroix

Among fashion exhibitions, this one

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Category: DESIGNER

UTA Launches Fashion Division, Extending Push To Diversify Its Business

AIFD showcases students’ work during Paris Fashion Week

Adidas could be forced to burn $500M in Yeezy stock after Kanye West’s anti-Semitic outbursts

Fashion’s Millennial Man

For Silvia Venturini Fendi, Fashion Is Family

Top Fashion Stories of the Week: March 3

LVMH Is Reportedly Considering Acquiring Cartier’s Parent Company

Rihanna Announced the Return of Fenty x PUMA

8 key spring/summer fashion trends to know about now

Skye Tan talks AUPEN, his fashion accessories brand that’s approved by Kylie Jenner

Tell us all about Aupen! We’d love to learn how it came about and the meaning behind the name and brand.

Why 1997 was a pivotal year for fashion