What Brexit Means for the Fashion Industry Today's news that Britain has voted to leave the European Union has sent stock markets plunging and hammered the British pound, which hit its lowest point in decades. Although it will likely take years for Britain to untangle itself from the EU, many in the fashion industry are left questioning what the change could mean for their livelihoods. Of course, London is a major fashion player, with the fashion industry contributing an estimated $38 billion to the UK economy in 2014, according to the Business of Fashion. Advertisement - Continue Reading Below A weak pound and uncertainty about new tariffs could mean major challenges for UK-based businesses, which often source fabrics and produce in other parts of Europe. Before last night's vote, the British Fashion Council surveyed its members and found that the vast majority—90% of members—wanted to remain in the EU. This turmoil is predicted to affect prices of items coming into and out of Britain, as well. Getty
Do high fashion and art really mix? | Art and design The meeting of high fashion and art has always been a bit of a problematic idea. They are connected social worlds, alike in so many ways – not least when it comes to their sense of self-importance – but it's never been clear whether art and fashion really mix. In the exhibition Feel & Think: A New Era in Tokyo Fashion, the organisers and curators go a long way to try to get you to consider that question. The show is collaboration between the Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation and the National Art School and features installation art works by five Tokyo-based fashion brands who go under a bewildering array of upper and lowercase neologisms including ANREALAGE, mintdesigns, SASQUATCHfabrix, THEATRE PRODUCTS and writtenafterwards. The Sydney iteration of the show, originally curated and staged at the Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, comes under the imprimatur of Dr. Fashion is like art, argues Sherman, in her introduction to this catalogue. Perhaps I'm overthinking it.
Op-Ed | What 3D Printing Means for Fashion | Opinion, Op Ed | BoF Designer Iris van Herpen has pioneered the use of 3D printing in couture fashion | Photo: Molly SJ Lowe PARIS, France — 3D printing was born in the 1980s and has long been used for “rapid prototyping.” Now, the technology is accelerating exponentially and being employed to manufacture finished products, including fashion and luxury goods. Several reasons explain this acceleration, from the expiry of relevant patents to progress in materials science and software. Today, it is easy to scan an object, turning atoms into bits, and then print it out, turning those bits back into atoms. From the moment we, as children, proudly make sand castles, we are accustomed to subtractive manufacturing, whereby a mould is filled to create an object. 3D printing is the opposite: additive manufacturing, where very fine layers of material are superimposed according to a digital design to the point where they end up building a distinct object. Yuima Nakazato Autumn/Winter 2016 | Source: Yuima Nakazato
Aries: the London label doing female streetwear right It’s undeniable: once a dirty word in fashion doomed to same the low-brow bargain bin as “sportswear”, streetwear has been accepted – no, gleefully welcomed – into the industry’s open arms. But while big brands rake in cash with logo flips and sleeve prints, London label Aries is standing resolutely away from the trend-driven crowd. If Aries was a girl at school, you get the feeling she’d be the cool older mate who gave you your first fag, burned you a Bikini Kill cd, and actually skated as opposed to just going out with a boy who did. Graphic without being obvious, tomboyish without being androgynous, and empowering without having to rely on girl power as a marketing gimmick, Aries has authenticity in shedloads. When you consider who’s behind it, it’s hardly surprising. “We all felt that we should just start doing it and see how it developed... The best example of this can be found in a graphic t-shirt, bearing the word ARIES in the style of a variety of other famous fashion logos.
Could reinvention solve our shopping addiction? Image copyright EpicStockMedia, Thinkstock Swedish retail giant H&M seems an unlikely poster child for ecological living. The High Street group, which owns brands including Monki and Cos and has more than 4,000 shops across the world, is one of the best known proponents of fast fashion. It's a cheap and reliable source of trendy clothes which can be discarded as soon as another trend comes in. Yet it has pledged to become "100% circular", ultimately using only recycled or other sustainable materials to make its clothes. It's a journey that more fashion firms are beginning to take, with the so-called "circular economy" - which eliminates waste by turning it into something valuable - being seen as a possible solution to the vast amount of clothes that end up in landfill. Image copyright Thomas Concordia, H&M Last year, a fifth of the material H&M used was sustainably sourced, and it has gathered 32,000 tonnes worth of old clothing in the collection bins it has had in all its stores since 2013.
Five emerging brands who killed it at New York Fashion Week This season, the MADE New York crew killed it with their emerging talent showcase. They had no fewer than 22 labels showing at Milk Studios and The Standard, along with a creative partnership with Tumblr Fashion and a shop where you could buy items straight off the SS17 runway. They even found time to host Dev Hynes’ Freetown Sound merch pop-up, with all proceeds getting donated to homeless LGBTQ youth. For some designers, MADE represented an opportunity to make their New York Fashion Week debut, while for others it was something of a comeback and, in the case of one brand, the chance to hold an epic casting call for NYC’s top celebrity lookalikes to model their collection. Here were some of MADE New York’s SS17 highlights. Ottolinger – the Swiss label of designers Christa Bosch and Cosima Gadient – have never been afraid to take a perfectly made item of clothing and destroy it. @ottolinger1000 @misbhv @maisonthefaux @barragannnn @raulzepol
INTO THE FASHION: Cultural Influences On Trend Forecasting For everyone who works in the fashion business it is important to be able to recognize and to foresee social and cultural movements, in order to understand the fashion environment and to be able to operate in the direction in which the fashion industry will move. Being able to anticipate what will happen in the next future is what puts a fashion designer, a retailer or a fashion buyer in the position to make better decisions in their work. And in this, fashion is not at all an isolated industry but is connected to the rest of our life. Fashion reaches beyond clothing and into the way we choose to live our lives. Lifestyle is how we communicate, how we travel, how we decorate our homes, how we eat and how we dress. Lifestyle and trends are strongly influenced by social-cultural changes, such as modernization, technological innovation and also by artistic movements. Popular culture, or pop culture, is a cultural section, which is followed, understood and appreciated by a larger audience.
The Most Influential People in Fashion -- New York Magazine Anna WintourEditor-in-chief, VogueVogue, c’est moi. No fashion figure has ever played her power as strongly and cannily as the feared, respected, sharply intelligent Wintour. She can make a fledgling’s career in a single phone call (designers from John Galliano to Zac Posen owe her a debt of gratitude), anoint the next society muse (Lauren duPont, Jessica Joffe), and raise millions for her favorite causes ($26 million for the Met’s Costume Institute in the past eleven years, $14 million for various AIDS charities). Peter MarinoArchitect The premier set designer for the luxury-shopping experience, ever since he did Barneys’ uptown flagship back in 1992. Kim FranceEditor-in-chief, Lucky With Lucky, France has broken the wall between magazine and catalogue—and thus changed how clothes are bought and sold, all the way to the factory floor. Marc JacobsHead designer, Marc Jacobs International Quietly, modestly, totally, Marc Jacobs has taken over.
how does social media shape our perception of beauty? A male friend of mine who considers himself "big on Tinder" claims the winning five photo formula is this: front-on photo, side profile photo, photo showing teeth, body photo and height photo, involving a casual scale prop such as Kylie Minogue. If you're not better looking on Tinder than in real life, you have failed. It's the most gratifying, terrifying, humanity-destroying platform ever created. But then again it's responsible for actually quite a lot of nice loving relationships… While Tinder must be the worst offender, the impact of social media on perceptions of beauty is inevitably positive and negative, depending on which way you look. You might meet the love of your life through tactful photo-editing, you might feel terrible forever, or you might be one of the mental few to enter hyperreality, transcending your human form into… well this… Of course, it's all a matter of perspective. Nick Knight also photographed paralympian Aimee Mullins for SHOWstudio some years ago.
What Technology Will Look Like In Five Years Diomedes KastanisCrunch Network Contributor Diomedes Kastanis head of technology for business unit support systems, leading Ericsson’s long-term technology vision and innovation across media, OSS, BSS and m-commerce. How to join the network As a driver of technical innovation for a software company, a huge part of my job depends on forecasting how current tech trends will play out, merge, dissipate or expand. Here are some of my predictions of what the world will look like in 2020. Revised Notions Of Ownership Think of the things you use every day: your smart phone, your computer, your desk and so on. However, in the future, you’ll probably share most of them. We’ve recently seen a huge rise in the sharing economy; not only can you stay in someone else’s house via Airbnb, but you can sail in someone else’s boat through Sailo, fly in someone else’s private plane via OpenAirplane and go snowboarding with someone’s else’s board via Spinlister. This is only the first wave. Oh, and that office?
Will Genderless Fashion Change Retail? | Intelligence | BoF (L-R) Raf Simons Menswear Spring/Summer 2014, Gucci Menswear Autumn/Winter 2015, J.W Anderson Menswear Spring/Summer 2014 | Source: Indigital LONDON, United Kingdom — Alessandro Michele’s womenswear debut for Gucci was, by far, the most anticipated show of Milan Fashion Week. How would Michele attempt to re-reinvigorate Kering’s ailing cash cow, after chief executive François-Henri Pinault said in December that the brand needed a fresh point of view and more daring shows? The answer: bookish, pussy-bow wearing boys and girls, sharing both the runway and the same tailoring, shoulder-length locks and cut-glass cheekbones. Michele is not alone in his exploration of what it means to clothe both sexes in a time when gender stereotypes read as traditional, even archaic. But will genderless work at retail? Perhaps not. “For decades, we've carried interesting clothes. “Probably around 30 percent of the total menswear buy is genderless. “It’s the future.