LVMH Battles Against Morgan Stanley in Court

LVMH Battles Against Morgan Stanley in Court
By JOHN TAGLIABUE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/18/business/worldbusiness/18lvmh.html

PARIS, Nov. 17 -Echoes of a four-year battle for the Gucci Group resounded here on Monday as a commercial court heard opening arguments in a lawsuit that pits LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the luxury goods group that lost the struggle for control of Gucci, against Morgan Stanley, Gucci's investment banker.

LVMH sued Morgan Stanley a year ago seeking 100 million euros ($118 million) in damages, accusing the bank of improperly manipulating its stock research to benefit its investment banking clients by issuing unusually negative assessments of rival companies.

A Struggling LVMH Unit Looks Beyond the Handbag

A Struggling LVMH Unit Looks Beyond the Handbag
By TRACIE ROZHON
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/22/business/22LUXU.html

Fendi, an old and worthy name in Italian leather goods and furs, but one whose label has become a bit shopworn, is rushing to refashion itself.

A squabbling founding family, dilatory deliveries and a groping search for the next hit handbag to replace the formerly hot but now stale Baguette, have taken their toll on Fendi in recent years. And the brand has not been helped by rumors that Karl Lagerfeld, Fendi's chief designer — and an acknowledged maestro of fur coats — may be on the verge of leaving. (Mr. Lagerfeld, it appears, is not leaving, at least not any time soon.)

Doori in Soho

[my neighbor kathy says i haven't been blogging lately. it's true! so here's a feeble attempt to have some more personal content in here, in addition to the digest of stuff i read, that PQ+ has become. ;-) really though, my life is boring...]

took some pictures (not the runway ones) of a cool young korean designer earlier this summer for audrey, the asian women's magazine. she's got a cute little boutique on sullivan street in soho. go check it out! she's super nice, and she has some beautiful stuff.

Calvin Klein's Successor Loosens the Corset Laces

Calvin Klein's Successor Loosens the Corset Laces
By CATHY HORYN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/18/fashion/shows/18DRES.html

It's pretentious to think that designers can't be replaced once they decide to bow out. After all, Tom Ford would not be the millionaire star that he is if he had stuck to Gucci loafers, and certainly Karl Lagerfeld hasn't spent 20 years pinning camellias on Coco Chanel's portrait. On Tuesday, as Calvin Klein, who this year sold his company to Phillips-Van Heusen, watched from the wings, 32-year-old Francisco Costa took over the designs of the house, and it was definitely a new day.

Tell Us, Doctor, What Is It About Models?

Tell Us, Doctor, What Is It About Models?
By GUY TREBAY
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/15/fashion/15DIAR.html

In 1953, Dr. Edmund Bergler, a New York psychoanalyst trained at the Freud Clinic in Vienna, focused his analytic intelligence on understanding that most sadly neglected field of human pursuits: fashion. The result was a book, "Fashion and the Unconscious," a matchless addition to the literature both of homophobia and of claptrap.

Dr. Bergler was not the first to suggest that the will to hoax womankind with fashion originates in the unconscious minds of maternally fixated, orally regressed homosexuals. He wasn't even the first to see a link between "unconscious repetition compulsion" and a tendency to writer's cramp. (Freud got there first.) But Dr. Bergler did manage to commit to the page analytic canards whose qualities of unbridled gaga can be appreciated for their humorous qualities even a half-century on.

Is Fashion Still Cool?

Is Fashion Still Cool?
By GUY TREBAY
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/14/fashion/14FASH.html

Who killed the cool in fashion? What exactly was it that drained the excitement out of this fascinating, frivolous, inspiring, transformative, gossamer and endlessly diverting business, one that also happens to be among the largest employers in New York City?

It seems mere moments ago that the attention of mainstream America alighted on the humble garment business, transforming models into household names, designers into media darlings and movie stars into dress dummies whose forays onto red carpets became notable less for celebrity pixie dust than for the labels inside their clothes.

Sleeves in His Heart, Thread in His Veins

Sleeves in His Heart, Thread in His Veins
By TRACIE ROZHON
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/01/business/01CALV.html

If all politics is local, fashion industry politics is almost claustrophobic. So when Phillips-Van Heusen was looking for people to design and shepherd its Calvin Klein women's department-store line into the Seventh Avenue spotlight, it picked a team headed by a quintessential Garment District insider, third generation.

Andrew Grossman, 44, the son of a suit maker and grandson of a pocket maker, is chief executive of the "front of the curtain" team chosen by Phillips's chief as part of the Calvin Klein licensing deal announced last week — a deal that retailing executives have called unprecedented.

Latins Are Not Lousy Lovers

Latins Are Not Lousy Lovers
By JOYCE CHANG
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/29/magazine/29STYLE.html

I dreamed that I married Nacho Figueras.

I had met him only once, on a dusty afternoon, on a farm outside Buenos Aires. But the mark was deep: dark eyes, mop of lustrous hair, perfect bones, rider's build, cowboy walk. Every time he said ''polo'' (which was a lot), round and lovely in its Spanish pronunciation, I fell deeper into amor. I saw in him what Barbara Hutton and Doris Duke must have seen in Porfirio Rubirosa, what Gisele Bundchen once saw in Riccardino Mansur. I bet Camilla Parker Bowles's heart just flutters when she sees her aging yet still dashing prince alight from his pony, an honest and expensive sweat on his brow. In my dream, Nacho dropped on one knee in a paddock where horses grazed and told me, a consummate city girl who likes neither sports nor animals, that no one understood him but me.

Struggling Tommy Hilfiger Looks for a Perfect Fit

Struggling Tommy Hilfiger Looks for a Perfect Fit
By TRACIE ROZHON
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/13/business/13TOMM.html

Faced with mounting losses and rumors of deals that never blossomed, Tommy Hilfiger is under increasing pressure to revive his business. The question is what he and the executives at his $1.89 billion clothing company should do first: buy a hot young company or pick a new leader.

"Tommy is at a crossroads," said Gilbert W. Harrison, the chairman of Financo, an investment banking firm based in New York. "The company has to prove the Tommy Hilfiger brand still has vitality, plus make the right decisions on growth acquisitions."

An Editor's Fashion Legacy Ends on a Quiet and Distant Runway

An Editor's Fashion Legacy Ends on a Quiet and Distant Runway
By SCOTT SUTHERLAND
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/11/fashion/11AUCT.html

There were barely used Manolo Blahnik shoes, some selling for as little as $50. Purses by Chanel and Prada, many new and still stuffed with packaging, sold for $175 and up. There were 15 Hermès scarves, framed and suitable for hanging, Chanel suits, Armani tuxedo pants and four Versace haute-couture pieces with handwritten labels: "X Directrice Vogue Inglese."

They had belonged to Elizabeth Tilberis, the editor of British Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, who died of ovarian cancer at the age of 51. Four years after her death, her clothing and other property found its way to an auction house in rural Maine, on a road dotted with convenience stores, bait shops and a Veterans of Foreign Wars post. The materials were sold on April 30 before a crowd of roughly 300, mostly locals, including Neil Andersen, an owner of the A-1 Diner in Augusta. He bought nine lots of Tilberis's Chanel couture — suits and jackets in the $200 to $400 range, which he called "a steal" — and a pair of Prada skis for $225.

Patrick Cox at Jourdan: The shoe fits

Patrick Cox at Jourdan: The shoe fits
Tuesday, April 15, 2003
By Suzy Menkes International Herald Tribune
http://www.iht.com/articles/93226.html

LONDON They were the favorite shoes of Lady Diana Spencer when she became Princess of Wales in 1981. Brigitte Bardot so famously loved Charles Jourdan footwear that a line snaked round the Place de la Madeleine when the first Paris store opened in 1957, in the hope that she would be there. And now Patrick Cox, the Canadian-born shoemaker, has been tapped as designer of France's iconic cobbler.

Over the Top, as He Wants to Be

Over the Top, as He Wants to Be
By RUTH LA FERLA
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/13/fashion/13ANDR.html

MUSING about the people, real and imaginary, who have shaped his career, André Leon Talley, Vogue's editor at large and one of fashion's most voluble cheerleaders, spooled off a list headed by Bennie Frances Davis, his maternal grandmother; Diana Vreeland, the legendary style doyenne who became his mentor; and influential tastemakers of the 1970's and 80's like Mica Ertegun and C. Z. Guest.

But the woman who holds the most hallowed spot in Mr. Talley's heart is Emma Bovary.

Easing his portly, 6-foot, 7-inch frame into a caramel-colored leather banquette in the cafeteria of Condé Nast, Vogue's publisher, Mr. Talley talked about Flaubert's ill-starred heroine, a country doctor's wife who dreamed of Paris. "I just loved the desperation of this woman in the boondocks, wanting something bigger," he said. "Emma Bovary had pictures of Paris interiors pinned to her wall, pictures from magazines that she used to help her decorate. This was a woman who had aspirations."

Squeezed, a Jewelry Designer Closes Shop

Squeezed, a Jewelry Designer Closes Shop
By TRACIE ROZHON
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/04/business/04GEMS.html

Angela Cummings is taking her diamonds and going home.

Ms. Cummings, one of the country's best-known jewelry designers, is closing her Manhattan office, paying off her staff and withdrawing all her diamond, gold, moonstone and enameled inventory and closing down boutiques in her two main outlets, Bergdorf Goodman and Neiman Marcus, effective June 1.

"When she told us, we had a very emotional meeting," said Ronald L. Frasch, Bergdorf's chief executive. "The saleswomen cried."

Ms. Cummings says she wants to spend more time building a house in Utah. But her departure is sending the word, not only through the high-price jewelry world, but through the fashion community as well, that even when a designer is doing well, staying in business may not be worth it.

Strutting Down the Runway With a Severe Case of the Blahs

[the aliens are here, and they're models!!]

Strutting Down the Runway With a Severe Case of the Blahs
By GUY TREBAY
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/16/fashion/16MODE.html

PARIS. In a "Sunset Boulevard" vein, Richard Avedon once reminisced about the days when fashion models had real faces. Having spent decades gazing through the lens at women as beautifully disparate as Veruschka, China Machado, Nadja Auermann, Cindy Crawford and Iman, Mr. Avedon was in a position to know. A tendency had developed, the photographer complained, for editors to fill magazine pages with young ciphers whose faces were about as interesting, he said, as pie plates with holes punched in them.

Anna Wintour Steps Toward Fashion's New Democracy

Anna Wintour Steps Toward Fashion's New Democracy
By DAVID CARR
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/17/business/media/17MAG.html

At the Marc Jacobs show at the Armory on Lexington Avenue last Monday night, the actress Liv Tyler's arrival created ripples and P. Diddy landed with significant impact. But the flashes grew most incandescent when Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue, arrived wearing a fur by Fendi. As a conga line of models began the show, viewers divided their attention among the clothes, the mannered walks of the models and the inscrutable reaction of Ms. Wintour, seated front and center with her daughter, Bee. The show ended in just 20 minutes, and before people even made a move for their coats, Ms. Wintour took three lightning quick strides and was gone.

Ms. Wintour likes being just ahead of the crowd. It was almost not so.