a dv e r t i s e m e n t

Daily EDition november 17, 2016 1

Fashion. Beauty. Business.

Take ThatMarlo Thomas is launching a fashion line with HSN called “That Woman” based on her classic TV series.

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Denim R&DFast Retailing, parent of Uniqlo and J Brand, has opened a Denim Innovation Center in L.A.

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Packing ’Em InThe Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute unveils its latest exhibit, “Unpacking Fashion.”

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● As new brands Cat & Jack and Pillowfort perform strongly, the retailer says it’s ready for the bruising holiday season.

by Sharon EdElSon

Target Corp. saw its shares leap 4.6 per-cent Wednesday after the company raised its outlook for the fourth quarter.

The retailer’s shares rose 4.6 percent to $76.03 despite a drop in sales and comps. Target raised its expectations for fourth-quarter comps to the range of a 1 percent decline to 1 percent gain, com-pared with prior guidance of a 2 percent drop to flat comps. The retailer for the fourth quarter expects earnings per share of $1.55 to $1.75.

For full-year 2016, Target now expects EPS in the range of $4.67 to $4.87, com-pared with prior guidance of $4.36 to $4.76.

Target’s earnings in the third quarter improved 10.7 percent to $608 million from $549 million in the 2015 period, but sales and traffic continue to suffer.

“Our first priority is to grow traffic and comp sales,” said Brian Cornell, chairman and chief executive officer. “The flat comps

● The rental firm is opening a fashion shop in Neiman Marcus’ San Francisco store, uniting the two worlds.

by Maghan McdowEll with contribu-tions from Evan clark

Fashion’s disruptors might just need their disruptees — and vice versa.

In a lions-laying-down-with-lambs move, Rent the Runway is coming to Neiman Mar-cus — bringing in a lower-priced fashion option and possibly some new foot traffic to the tony retailer.

On Friday, San Francisco’s downtown Neiman Marcus store will give over almost 3,000 square feet that had been devoted to home and children’s items to rentals,

business

Traffic Still Thorn in Target’s Side

business

Neiman’s,Rent the Runway Link Up

continued on page 13

continued on page 13

Primates, insects and birds, oh my! Bergdorf Goodman took on the theme of “Destination Extraordinary” for its holiday windows, which resulted in

zoological and aquatic marvels filled with exotic species. And don’t forget the

human variety, decked out in some of the season’s key looks. For more, see page 4.

GettingTrippy

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november 17, 2016 3

Fifth Avenue Retailers Feel Pain, With No End in Sight● Security for the president-elect is hurting stores in close proximity to Trump Tower.

● Tracee Ellis Ross Creates An Aesthetic All Her Own

● Jil Sander Skipping Men’s Show in Milan In January

● Michael Kors: On Singapore, Seoul And the Politics of Style

● Moncler Celebrates Madison Avenue Flagship

ToP 5TRENdiNgOn WWD.COM

nEWSMAKERSThis Week’s Most Talked About names In Our Industry

Donatella Versace

Andrew Bolton

Jim Gold

Leslie H. Wexner

Tom Hanks Karlie Kloss

● Purchases in the weekend before Christmas are now likely to surpass those of Black Friday.

by vicki M. Young

The presumed easy comparisons from the 2015 holiday shopping season might not mean much anymore, given what appears to be an earlier start to the round of discounting at retail dubbed the “holi-day creep.”

And there’s a chance even deeper discounts could be coming down the pike. What that could mean is a hit on margins — particularly if discounts get even steeper as the season progresses — and potentially lackluster fourth-quarter earnings reports for some retailers.

Instinet analyst Simeon A. Siegel said brands and retailers are committed to “entering holiday with clean invento-ries” to best position themselves for what is likely to remain a “promotional holiday anyway.”

Those promotions have been ongoing since late October, although many have been dubbed Friends and Family events, or special flash sales for a few hours for certain categories. Talbots has had discounts of 20 percent off, and even 30 percent off. Lands’ End just finished a 40 percent sale and L.L. Bean just com-pleted a weeklong special of 20 percent off for everything on the site that’s made by Bean.

On Wednesday, Bon-Ton Stores unveiled an online special of “30 Door Buster Deals” every day through Black Friday. Wednesday’s “30 Hot Picks” included a “huge selection of Calvin Klein Performance active separates” for women at $24.97; 30 percent off dresses from Adrianna Papell, Ronni Nicole and others, and 50 percent off the entire stock of kids’ Adidas activewear, among other deals. Pendleton sent e-mails noting new markdowns at up to 50 percent off of wear-now styles.

Macy’s at 3 p.m. Wednesday afternoon had on its site — for at least another 11 hours — what it calls the “Ultimate Pop-up Sale,” with women’s apparel 25 to 50 per-cent off; a Smashbox step-by-step contour kit on sale at $27 from $45; select styles in men’s designer collections between 25 and 60 percent off; 40 percent off select styles in women’s shoes and boots, as well as in women’s winter accessories, and between 55 and 75 percent off of select styles in fine jewelry marked clearance, among other promotions.

Not to be left out, Lord & Taylor on Wednesday was advertising for online and in-stores a pre-Thanksgiving Super Sale featuring three-day specials through Friday. The sale was 20 percent off reg-ular-priced and sale items, with special deals for the three days, which had some items up to 40 percent off.

And if the promotions are deep now, the discounts could get deeper over the Thanksgiving weekend. According to Wal-let Hub, Macy’s Inc. has the highest overall discount rate for 2016 Black Friday ads, followed by Stage Stores and J.C. Penney Co. Inc. The personal-finance web site sur-veyed 8,000 deals from 35 of the biggest U.S. retailers’ 2016 Black Friday ads. The overall discount rate at Macy’s was 63.4 percent, followed by Stage Stores at 62.8 percent and J.C. Penney at 62.8 percent. Others advertising steep discounts were: Kohl’s, 58.2 percent, Shopko, 55.6 percent

and Sears, 43.9 percent.In the Wallet Hub study, the overall

average discount rate for Black Friday among the 35 retailers surveyed is 39 percent. The “toys” category had the biggest share of discounted items at 28.3 percent of all offers, while “books, movies and music” had the smallest share of discounted items at 0.9 percent.

After toys, apparel and accessories were second highest among share of discounted items at 18.1 percent. Comput-ers and phones were next at 10.3 percent. Jewelry was also in the top 10 categories, but at 4.4 percent was lower on the list, behind consumer electronics at 9.2 per-cent and appliances at 6.5 percent.

Within the apparel and accessories cat-egory, Gordmans offered the most robust Black Friday discount at 67.4 percent. Rounding out the top five were: Stage (across all nameplates), 64.5 percent; J.C. Penney, 60.7 percent; Shopko, 59.4 percent and Macy’s Inc., 59 percent. Discounts at retailers who didn’t make the top five include: BJ’s Wholesale Club, 42.2 percent; Fred Meyer, 58.7 percent; Kmart, 40.1 percent; Kohl’s Corp., 53 percent; Meijer Inc., 57.5 percent; Modell’s, 27.7 percent; Sam’s Club, 20.8 percent; Sears Holdings, 52.5 percent and Wal-Mart Stores Inc., 35.9 percent.

David J. Silverman, senior director in corporate finance, retail, at Fitch Ratings, a competing ratings agency, said Wednes-day, “Retail headwinds will continue into the 2016 holidays, limiting sales growth amid sharp pricing competition despite a generally benign macro backdrop.”

Silverman said brick-and-mortar nameplates have struggled to maintain market share as the consumer has shifted to e-commerce, and that “half of the projected 3 percent spending increase expected during the holidays is forecast to come online.” He also noted that “Fitch expects an increase in gift-giving of intangible items, such as media subscrip-tions and experiences that aren’t available for purchase at most retail stores.” Further, Silverman noted that the retail challenges ahead will be exacerbated by reduced time spent in malls, which impacts impulse purchases, whether for gifts or for self-purchase. Compounding

the holiday sales season is the paucity of must-have items driving significant growth in key categories such as fashion or toys.

“As a result of limited growth, the pres-sure will be on retailers to offer attractive promotions and customer service such as discounted expedited shipping and returns to create marketing excitement in a noisy marketplace and maintain market share,” Silverman said. He concluded that these “efforts will leave few retailers with positive earnings momentum in the fourth quarter, despite a weak 2015 holiday earnings season.”

Ratings agency Standard & Poor, through its S&P Global Ratings team, on Friday provided its economic forecast of 2.9 percent fourth-quarter gross domestic product growth and 2.7 percent growth in real consumer spending. That translates into a holiday season that should be good for U.S. retailers this year, but not great. The global ratings team said it expects “margin pressure to be more pronounced in certain segments during the holiday season; specialty apparel, for example, has remained highly promotional.” The team noted that fourth-quarter same-store sales from 2006 to 2015 ranged from negative to 3.5 percent, and said, “We think discounters will continue to fare better than specialty apparel, with depart-ment stores somewhere in between.”

At a post-election economic outlook presentation on Wednesday hosted by The Conference Board, the expectation was there wouldn’t be much change short-term until after the new admin-istration under President-elect Donald Trump has had a chance to review existing policies. Lynn Franco, director of economic indicators and surveys, spoke briefly about holiday, noting a recent survey shows “consumers are spending more or less the same as last year.” But the news was mixed. Franco said while fewer respondents said they plan to cut back on spending this year, it was also clear “consumers are not willing to pay full price.” Also, consumers seem willing to wait until the last minute, making the weekend before Christmas a bigger shop-ping period that surpasses Black Friday, Franco said.

business

Holiday Pricing Wars StartedEarlier, Could See Steeper Discounts

Price wars will continue throughout the holiday season.

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november 17, 2016 4

● The luxury retailer served up glamour and drama on Fifth Avenue.

by Sharon EdElSon

The holiday windows Bergdorf Goodman unveiled on Tuesday night, “Destination Extraordinary,” are delirious dioramas, based on the scenes at natural history museums but with all the over-the-top opu-lence that’s characteristic of the retailer at this time of year.

“It’s a world tour, but you’re not sure where exactly the place is,” said David Hoey, senior director of visual presen-tation, adding that the windows took nine months to create and involved 100 people, many of them artists or artisans. “One studio encrusts things with millions of tiny objects.” Other inspirations for the windows included the paintings of Henri Rousseau and 12th-century Chinese water-color mountainscapes.

In the jungle window, a mannequin wearing a dress from Marc Jacobs’ resort collection is sitting on swing made out of vines surrounded by hand-painted foliage and a menagerie of primates — chimpan-zees, baboons and orangutans embel-lished with beads, drive flowers, beans and bits of leaves — listening with rapt attention to the storyteller, who’s reading from “Zoologica.”

A lagoon window features a model wearing a CD Greene jumpsuit and holding a parasol walking gingerly over a tightrope as the active sea denizens flour-ish below. A mural of bald cypress trees has roots extending to the bottom of the lagoon where turtles, fish and alligators live, while the surface is filled with water lilies, ferns, frogs and egrets.

The grand entrance to an extravagant verdigris greenhouse is flanked by a pair of sculptural praying mantises. Grasshop-pers, beetles, bees and dragonflies wing through the winter garden where a model wears a dress from Gucci’s spring collec-tion. “I call the color Statue of Liberty green,” Hoey said.

A desert scene inspired by the Wild West features a Cavalli-dressed model riding a giant jackrabbit covered in marabou feath-ers. There’s a field of hand-painted cacti, one containing a tiny owl.

The pagoda-style treehouse in the last window along Fifth Avenue attracts a vari-ety of birds, including a white peacock. Some are drawn from nature and some are of Hoey’s invention. The birds perch near the treehouse, while in the back-ground, a mannequin wearing a Dolce & Gabbana dress and coat is seen sleeping in the bow of a giant cedar tree.

Inside, the store’s newly renovated first floor is elegant and sophisticated in shades of gray. Boiserie-inspired instal-lations with grape leaves, ribbons and birds were created by David Monn. “We love things that are organic,” Linda Fargo, senior vice president of fashion and store presentation direction, said. “This is a historic moment for the store. It’s a new look that’s a signature look.”

Reflecting on the barricades along Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue near Trump Tower that have been put in place for security for President-elect Donald Trump and to contain protests, Fargo said, “It’s deterring customers. You don’t want to fight the crowds.

“Make love and beauty, not war and hate,” she said.

business

Bergdorf Goodman Takes a Holiday

The holiday windows at Bergdorf Goodman.

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● The ready-to-wear and accessories collection will be unveiled Jan. 19 on the channel.

by liSa lockwood

Marlo Thomas has added another notch to her belt: fashion designer.

The actress, author and activist has developed a ready-to-wear and accesso-ries collection for HSN Inc. called “That Woman” by Marlo Thomas. The label is a play on “That Girl,” the classic TV series that ran from 1966 to 1971 in which Thomas starred and served as executive producer. In the show, she played Ann Marie, an aspiring but sporadically employed actress who moves from Brewster, N.Y., to New York to pursue her dream.

Thomas will introduce “That Woman” on HSN Jan. 19 during “The List With Colleen Lopez” from 9 to 11 p.m. (Eastern Standard Time.) The collection will be available for purchase on HSN.com starting Jan. 9. Thomas will appear on HSN several more times throughout next year to pres-ent new collections.

During a photo shoot at Nation Design, the line’s manufacturer in New York, the 78-year-old actress explained what prompted her to get into the apparel busi-ness. “Sometimes when I’m out shopping, I look at things that have bare midriffs, and I think, ‘Is anybody thinking about me?’” she said. She likes things that are very sim-ple, sophisticated, “a little bit flirty, but do I dare use the word, ladylike? That’s what my wardrobe looks like, kind of always has. I’ve never been a girl for big flowers, but I do love graphics.”

Thomas said they started the line from scratch and dove into the archives of dresses she wore on her TV show. “This is the iconic dress,” she said, modeling one of the designs. “This is the dress that I modified from the Sixties. It takes a lot of guts to wear something you wore 40 years ago and say, ‘How do I look in it now?’”

She explained that “That Girl” was almost like a fashion show. “I had been in Lon-don the year before doing ‘Barefoot in the Park,’” she explained. “It was the mid-Six-ties. There was Mary Quant, and Jean Shrimpton and Twiggy and white boots and fishnet stockings and all kind of graphics, miniskirts and maxi skirts and a whole look that had never been on television.”

On television at that time women were mostly wearing house dresses and Peter Pan collars, she said. “So when we came on, I said I want to wear these kind of [fashionable] clothes. My co-producers were kind of scared of it, and they said it’s going to date it. I said, ‘Everything’s dated.’ If you’re living in your own time, it’s going to be dated.” But, Thomas said, it really wasn’t dated because it was so classic.

“People would tune in just for the clothes. People loved it. I’d say, ‘Bring me Halston and Oscar de la Renta.’ And I played an out-of-work actress,” she laughed. Since Thomas was the executive producer and had conceived of the show and sold it to ABC, she had the power to make those wardrobe decisions. “When you’re young like that, you don’t even real-ize how much responsibility you’re taking on. I was 25,” she said.

Thomas has been asked to do fashion lines before and people wanted a “That Girl” line or had other ideas, but she always turned them down. “I never wanted to do

it. You have to have a reason to do some-thing. For me, it needs to be an organic rea-son. The organic reason now is I need these kinds of clothes. I bet there are millions of women who also need them.”

The “That Woman” line is composed of dresses, tops, pants, skirts, dusters, jewelry and bags. Prices for the 15-piece collection range from $39.90 for a heart choker to $79.90 for a lace-up sweater to $169.90 for a perforated moto jacket. The size range is XS to 3X.

“As a company, we are so inspired by Marlo and everything she has accom-plished,” said Vanessa Dusold, HSN’s senior vice president of merchandising, apparel and accessories. “She truly believes in empowering and supporting women, not only through her charitable work but through fashion and style.”

Thomas has a “very engaged fan base” that HSN feels will cross over to the shopping channel via her ready-to-wear collection. “Marlo’s enthusiasm for her brand is authentic and is sure to resonate with women everywhere,” she said.

Thomas, who has done Broadway, film

and TV, will appear on air in conversation with the host. She said she wants to find some women from her Facebook audience to get involved and invite one or two to the studio to be a part of the program. “I like to mingle with the audience. That’s why I love live theater,” she said. “For me the fun is reaching out and saying, ‘who are you?’ and ‘tell me about you.’ And then have them come on with an inter-esting story and let them model or then have lunch with me. People can watch it and say ‘that can be me, too. Maybe next time it will be.’ People can watch it and it makes it friendly.”

She’s always been like that and doesn’t like being the one on the podium, where nobody else talks. “Actually my husband [Phil Donahue] is like that too. On ‘The Phil Donahue Show,’ he was the first person to bring the audience on television. Maybe it runs in our family. That’s how we met. I was a guest on the show,” she said.

Asked how the deal with HSN came about, Thomas explained that a friend of hers works with HSN and other companies and suggested over dinner one night that she should do an apparel line. Thomas knew Mindy Grossman, chief executive officer of HSN, from working with St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital on HSN Cares. They do a Christmas ornament project where different stars and designers create a Christmas ornament and sell them on HSN, with all money going to St. Jude. (Thomas will again appear on HSN Nov. 29 to thank supporters.) When she told Grossman and Bill Brand, president of HSN and chief mar-keting officer of HSNI, her idea of a “That Woman” collection, they loved it, she said.

“Those of us who were ‘That Girl’ are ‘That Woman’ now,” she said. “We bring with us all the joy of being girls. It’s hard for me to think of myself in any stage of my

life…that I’m kind of pretty much the one I was 10 years ago. I have the same moral code, I have the same sort of excitement over the same kind of things,” she said. She said she’s learned more through the years and has had things happen to her, such as her parents dying and getting mar-ried. “I pretty much think that I bring with me the same optimistic view of life, a Scar-lett O’Hara view that I’ll cry tomorrow.”

Her philosophy for her apparel collec-tion is equally upbeat. “I think women will see that these clothes were designed and brought by a woman who wants other women to have a good time,” said Thomas. “And life isn’t over at 40, or 45 or 50, or any age. You can still feel desirable and confident. I feel good when I look good. If I get in the elevator, and I think I look terrible, it’s hard for me to go all the way to lobby. I want to go back up and try one other thing. My husband says my dressing room looks like a chorus line of girls got dressed there.”

Thomas loves clothes and wears designers such as Michael Kors. She’ll shop downtown at stores such as Jeffrey or in SoHo and will pick a piece here and a piece there. “I really don’t want to outfit myself the way somebody else thought of it. I like putting little pieces together. Which is what I did in this line. Mostly what I like to do is show a little skin everywhere. A little keyhole, or a little lace-up or something without being low décolletage. Something that makes you feel like a female,” she said.

“Not everybody wants to show off every body part, but a shoulder, a v-neck. We have a cold-shoulder sweater that’s ador-able. We had it made so the straps are wide enough that you can keep your bra on. I hate when you have to wear a strapless bra with a sweater and you see a big dent. I’m thinking of all the things that bug me about clothes,” said Thomas.

Thomas said she was confident about the strength of the designs, but was wor-ried about the fabrics at these price points and was pleasantly surprised.

The collection will be introduced in a two-hour segment on HSN, which broad-casts live to about 94 million households in the U.S. “At first I thought that [two hours] was daunting. We’re so used to going on the ‘Today’ show for six minutes,” said Thomas. But there will be a fashion show, people will call in and ask questions about the clothes, “or whatever they want to ask questions about.”

On her wish list would be to design a whole exercise line to work out and run around and go shopping in. She’d also like to create a piece of exercise equipment. “I exercise five days a week,” said Thomas. “I love to work out, especially my upper body. I run-walk in Central Park and go up those steps by the fountain, like, six times. It’s really good for your heart. I have an elliptical machine that I love. I do 40 min-utes of weights. I do tremendous amount on my core, I used to have a bad back. I got thrown into a water trough on ‘Bonanza’ when I was a young actress. Hoss [Cart-wright] picked me up and threw me, and it hit my coccyx. Since I’ve been working with this particular trainer for 10 years, he’s given me great core exercises, and my back is really strong,” she said.

Other categories that appeal to her are cocktail dresses, the more sparkly, the better.

As far as her other interests, Thomas said she just finished filming “Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp,” a TV series for Netflix with Amy Poehler and Bradley Cooper. She’s also getting ready for Thanks and Giving for St. Jude (where she’s the national outreach director) that starts Monday. “It’s to give thanks for the healthy kids in your life and to give to those who are not.” Since launching in 2004, the initiative has raised $500 million from holiday shoppers.

Marlo Thomas in a “That Woman” look.

fashion

Marlo Thomas to Launch ‘That Woman’ Collection on HSN

Marlo Thomas in the Sixties.

http://www.coach.com/shop/women-coach1941?CID=D_B_WWD_12055

november 17, 2016 8

● The jeweler was in New York to celebrate her collaboration with Baccarat.

by BridgEt FolEY

“Beauty takes time.”The observation by Marie-Hélène de

Taillac explains a great deal about the jeweler’s approach to her work. Hers is among numerous voices across the luxury sector questioning the ever-increasing speed at which the industry runs. “Why two new collections each year?” she mused. “Why not one?”

“We have this need of novelty, which is very much driven by the press and the stores. The stores think they need new things to sell, but in fact, the reality is we sell all things,” de Taillac said while in New York last week for a press event marking her collaboration with Baccarat, launched in July.

De Taillac spoke in blunt terms about the allure of such a partnership. “The beauty of doing Baccarat is, I do the sam-ple and then they manufacture it. I get the crystal from them and I cut it in workshops in India and I make it exactly how I want it to be made, and then they make a mold out of it. They have the distribution, they have all the stores, they can handle all the headaches of making quantities. It gener-ates income for my company and it means that I can focus on what I love, which is making special things.”

Yet one should not infer from that com-ment an affinity for over-the-top opulence. De Taillac described her aesthetic as “del-icate.” She works primarily with colorful stones, often in fanciful combinations, set into lustrous gold. The price range is vast, from $80 for a cotton-cord charm bracelet to $350,000 for a ring with a rare Padparadscha sapphire. The majority of the business falls between $3,000 and $60,000 with most pieces intended for frequent use. “I like jewelry in the day, so I don’t do so much that’s big and fancy,” she said. One exception: a piece she designed to wear to a big event at the Met. After receiving the invitation and determining that she didn’t have a piece grand enough for the event, she made a choker of dia-mond pavé circles set in platinum and dot-ted with seemingly random semiprecious stones. The double-sided pavé, she notes, is extremely difficult to execute.

De Taillac’s design process typically starts with the stones, each setting derived for maximum celebration of the gems it will contain. Her approach is painstaking down to the last detail — box included. Each piece comes in a custom box, its colors and dimensions chosen specifically for its enhancement. Yet de Taillac is anything but precious when it comes to handling the merch. While most jewelers break out the gloves for visiting guests, she prefers a hands-on approach. “Jewelry is against your skin,” she said. “It’s the most tactile thing; it’s very sen-sual. You have to touch it. If you touch it with your glove, you lose that.”

De Taillac lives in Paris with her teen-aged son and travels frequently to Jaipur, India, where she keeps her studio at the famed Gem Palace. In addition to 47 wholesale outlets in Japan, the U.S. and France, she has her own stores and show-rooms in Tokyo, Paris and New York, as well as shops-in-shop, at Isetan Tokyo and Hankyu Osaka.

Her New York showroom on East 69th Street, in a space above her store, projects like a sophisticated fairy tale, a feminine palette of blues, purples and pinks played

off of clean-lined, mid-century seating re-covered in velvet and arranged around a large, square Yves Klein table, its surface a shallow box filled with loose aquamarine stones — 46,000 carats of them.

That table represents more that de Taillac’s aesthetic; to her, it’s a visual manifestation of her independence. “This is why I never took an investor,” she said. “Because there’s nobody to tell me, ‘Why do you want to spend so much money for this table?’ Because I think it’s beautiful. Or, ‘Why are you spending money on this doing that [expensive piece]? You’ll sell

many more things at $500 or $2,000.’ I want to do what I want to do.”

To that end, de Taillac is considering cutting back on her wholesale accounts to focus on the kind of special pieces she can present at will in her stores. For example, for a project currently underway at Isetan, she reissued a number of archival pieces to note her 20th anniversary in business. “It’s a pleasure to work on [such a] on a special project,” she said. “When I do wholesale, it’s complicated — doing duplicates of things and always trying to fulfill an order.”

De Taillac finds ironic the fact that

luxury, which at its core should be about enjoyment through beauty, often takes an opposite toll on those engaged in its cre-ation. “I don’t want people be stressed,” she said. “I want people to have a nice life, [or] why do we do it? It’s your quality of life that matters.”

“When you have a business, you’re always reassessing how you want your business to be,” she continued. “At the end of the day, I can sell [it], so if I do it, I have to do it on my own terms. It’s an interesting time in the fashion and luxury business. We have to rethink the way we work. For sure.”

accessories

Marie-Hélène de Taillac’s Personal Approach

De Taillac in her New York showroom.

Necklace of pavé diamonds and multicolored stones set in platinum. Marie-Hélène de Taillac

A piece by Marie-Hélène de Taillac.

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november 17, 2016 9

● The shoe-only unit is in Ala Moana, Hawaii. Short Hills also got a renovation.

by JESSica irEdalE

In time for holiday shopping, Chanel has revamped three of its U.S. stores and intro-duced a new shoe concept this month.

On Nov. 2, two boutiques opened in Honolulu at the Ala Moana Center. The primary store, a 6,400-square-foot space, was updated with new iterations of Peter Marino’s retail design vision for Chanel, and will house ready-to-wear, handbags, costume jewelry, accessories, watches and fine jewelry, and fragrance and beauty.

Marino, who designs all Chanel stores, also revamped the second store, located on the same level as the first. It’s a 1,100-square-foot space dedicated entirely to shoes, a new concept for the brand and a testament to the importance of the category. Previously, the store housed the watch and fine jewelry collections.

“This is our first stand-alone shoe bou-tique so we’re seeing how this will work for us,” said Joyce Green, Chanel’s executive vice president of fashion. “Shoes are a very important piece of our fashion business so it’s a great link to ready to wear and to recruiting a new client.”

If Hawaii seems like a random place to test a new concept, Greene said otherwise. The store draws major tourist traffic, with

a high percentage coming from Japan. And Chanel has a history of firsts in Hawaii — the first Chanel boutique in the U.S. opened in Waikiki in 1983.

The stores opened with the 2017 Cuba-inspired cruise collection, which vibes well with the tropical local culture and unique design elements Marino

installed. A sunset palette of pink, purple and green contrasts with Chanel’s tradi-tional black-and-white decor. Venetian plasters were hand-applied by local artisans, and artwork includes black-and-white prints from Shelter Serra and Peter Dayton, and a sculptural raindrop mirror by Curtis Jeré. In the shoe store, which fea-tures the complete shoe collection, there is a custom 24-karat gold leaf display wall, white fuzzy club chairs, a citron silk sofa and blue ottomans.

The third store is at the Mall at Short Hills, N.J., where Chanel moved to a new space within the complex and doubled the size of its previous store, which opened in 2001. Opening Thursday, the store features Marino’s most recent concepts and will include ready-to-wear for the first time. “Ready-to-wear is something that our local clients in the Short Hills area have been requesting,” said Green. “We’re happy to show the complete house of Chanel with all of our product categories in this boutique.

Just beyond the entrance of the store, the space is divided into two accessories salons, one for handbags, one for watches and fine jewelry, including the limited-edi-tion Boyfriend Arty Diamonds watch, and the recently launched fine-jewelry collec-tion Coco Crush. The latter two collections are also available at Ala Moana. Short Hills also launches with the cruise collection.

The rtw salon is meant to have a res-idential feel with textured ivory plaster walls and two silk periwinkle blue sofas. There are two decorative screens by artist Nancy Lorenz, inspired by the Coromandel screens from Gabrielle Chanel’s historic apartment, as well an antique Louis XV French limestone fireplace. In the shoe salon, there’s a Maison d’art Goossens chandelier, and the three dressing rooms feature prints from Shelter Serra and Peter Dayton, and a Robert Greene painting.

● The challenged German fashion group says 2017 will be a year of stabilization, with return to growth expected in 2018.

by MEliSSa driEr

BERLIN – Hugo Boss is narrowing its focus in a series of moves designed to bring the company back to profitable growth by 2018.

In a plan revealed Wednesday, Hugo Boss said it will operate with only two brands in future: Boss and Hugo. The more casual Boss Orange and sportive Boss Green brands, both priced under the core Boss label, will be incorporated into the main Boss collection meant to cover all consumer wardrobe needs.

Hugo Boss’ stock had been recovering in recent weeks, but after the company announced the new strategy would first bear fruit in two years, its share price declined sharply. Shares were down 10.4 percent to 54.67 euros, or $58.82 at current exchange, in afternoon trading on Xetra, the Frankfurt-based electronic trading platform.

Hugo Boss outlined that overall; the Boss brand will now concentrate on its traditional positioning in the upper-premi-um-price segment. The strategy for Hugo Boss steps back from previous manage-ment’s measures to broaden the Boss brand’s luxury category, though existing high-end offerings, such as full canvas Boss Tailored suits, will remain in play.

At the same, the progressive Hugo brand, whose entry-level prices are to be about 30 percent below that of the Boss core label, aims to target a broader base of younger customers.

Hugo Boss expects the realignment of the brand portfolio to be completed with delivery of the spring 2018 collection.

Quieter times are in the offing for Boss women’s wear under the artistic director Jason Wu. It currently makes up about 11 percent of group sales and had captured a disproportionally large share of the group’s marketing budget. The company now plans to more actively focus on its sales driver, men’s wear, and said it will therefore present the Boss men’s wear collection during New York Fashion Week in lieu of Boss women’s wear.

However, the company reiterated the ongoing importance of the Boss women’s segment, adding the cooperation with Wu “will continue to provide significant inspi-ration to the women’s wear business.”

In a press call on Wednesday morning, Hugo Boss chief executive officer Mark Langer emphasized the company “will continue to provide all the necessary resources” for the ongoing development of the women’s business, including marketing support that, at about 20 to 30 percent of the total outlay, remains above women’s current share of group sales.

“We remain highly committed to wom-en’s, and Jason Wu remains responsible, working with the team in Metzingen, [Ger-many], and the atelier in New York. There is no change here,” Langer said.

Global price harmonization is the second key pillar of the Boss strategic development plan. Though Langer noted exchange rate fluctuations, transport costs, taxes and customs duties will always have an effect, Hugo Boss is working to eradi-cate major inconsistencies in its brands’ price architecture by 2018.

This will result in further price decreases in Asia, while average prices in Europe are expected to rise slightly. This will be most felt in the group’s home mar-ket of Germany, where entry-price level of Boss suits will rise from 499 euros, or $534 at current exchange, to the harmonized European price of 599 euros, or $640. Suits under the Hugo label are set to start at 400 euros, or $428.

In its London Investor Day presentation later in the morning of Nov. 16, Boss further outlined its price architecture, which aims for a maximum differential of 30 percent by the end of 2018. Boss prices in America are to remain virtually unchanged at about 20 percent above European levels, with Asian prices set to further fall by a midteens percentage point, bringing prices there to a maximum of 30 percent above Europe. The effect of the price adjustments will be neutral on a global level, the company said.

At the same time, Langer emphasized the group is working to further upgrade the quality of its entry-level assortment and is expanding those offerings across all distri-bution channels, which includes its own retail, wholesale and online platforms.

E-commerce is at the core of the group’s digital strategy, which aims to increase

online business in the short term via ongoing optimization of the recently over-hauled Hugo Boss web site and the newly launched mobile application.

However, the group’s digital roadmap also envisions a digitalization of the exist-ing business model and the addition of new business models to innovate how the company operates. Agility and speed are the goals to help Hugo Boss get on the fast track and adjust collection content based on short-term trends, replenishing sold-out bestsellers within the season and taking a more flexible seasonal approach.

“We are not turning the company on its head,” Langer told journalists. “These are strategic, not restructuring measures.” The group’s most recent forecast was again reconfirmed, which calls for currency-ad-justed sales to grow steadily or fall by up to 3 percent and operating results (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization before special items) to be between 17 percent and 23 percent. Langer would not discuss further financial details or percentage goals.

For 2017, which is expected to be a year of stabilization, further consolidation of America’s wholesale distribution will con-tinue, and as previously reported, about 20 more stores are to be closed globally. The pace of new openings will be slowed, but further refurbishments of existing stores are to continue apace.

The majority of the changes outlined will become effective in 2018, at which time the group expects to return to growth.

As reported, Hugo Boss posted a 9 per-cent decline in third-quarter net income to 80.6 million euros, or $90 million at average exchange. Its sales were down 6 percent in the three months ended Sept. 30 to 703 million euros, or $785 million, dented by negative currency effects.

business

New Strategy Set for Hugo Boss

Chanel’s first shoe-only store opened in Ala Moana, Hawaii.

business

Chanel Opens First Shoe-Only Store, Revamps 3 Locations

http://www.coach.com/shop/men-coach1941

november 17, 2016 11

● The Wage and Hour Division found violations at factories making clothes for retailers including Ross, Forever 21, TJ Maxx and Nordstrom.

by khanh t.l. tran

The U.S. Department of Labor said sweatshops persist in the California gar-ment industry, disclosing violations of min-imum-wage and overtime laws at contract factories that made clothes sold at Ross Stores, TJ Maxx, Forever 21, Nordstrom, Macy’s and other retailers.

At a press conference held at East Los Angeles College in Monterey Park, Calif., on Nov. 16, the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division reported that 85 percent

of the 77 cases it investigated this year were found to be guilty of violating federal laws. As a result, more than $1.3 million in back wages were determined to be owed to workers. Ross, TJ Maxx and Forever 21 were the top three retailers cited as clients of the contractors who were found not to be in compliance with the laws. The contractors also produced clothes sold at Dillard’s, Charlotte Russe, Windsor and Fashion Nova.

“We have sweatshops in America,” said Ruben Rosalez, regional administrator for the Wage and Hour Division. “Our next step is to try and engage the retailers. We’d like them to do monitoring. They really have the power at the top.”

A key issue is the apparel industry’s practice of paying workers for each piece of clothing that they produce. That’s how

Maria Ramirez, who has spent 26 years trimming and finishing clothes, averaged $5 to $6 an hour, or half of the state mini-mum wage set at $10 an hour, in earnings. She worked for a contractor called Sam’s Fashion that makes clothes for Ross.

“I didn’t even have enough for the things that I needed, like rent, food and a babysit-ter for my kids,” she said. “I basically had enough to live in poverty.”

Rosalez said his team has met with Ross and Forever 21, offering them findings from the investigations prior to the announcement. A meeting with TJ Maxx is scheduled for Thursday.

Ross, the Dublin, Calif.-based operator of discount stores that totaled $11.9 billion in sales in 2015, added 93 new locations thus far this year for an overall count exceeding 1,340 stores. On its Web site,

it publicizes a policy regarding product sourcing and human rights. Rosalez said most of the efforts to assure compliance are geared for overseas factories.

“The supply chain is not monitoring for this problem,” he said. “[Retailers] have been open; they acknowledge it is a prob-lem. They want to find a solution but they haven’t gone far enough.”

To goad the retailers into action this holiday season, Garment Worker Center, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit organiza-tion that advocates on behalf of low-wage apparel employees, plans to stage a picket line in front of Ross’ store near The Grove on Nov. 19.

In response to the investigation, a spokeswoman for Ross said, “Ross Stores takes labor issues very seriously and we require our suppliers to uphold our ethical standards. We also work with the Department of Labor to make sure our vendors understand and comply with the applicable federal, state, local and international laws related to products we purchase and sell, and this is an ongoing and continuous effort.”

Forever 21 and TJ Maxx didn’t respond to requests for comment as of press time.

business

Department of Labor: ‘We Have Sweatshops in America’

● The Japanese company that owns Uniqlo and J Brand is proving its seriousness in the jeans market by opening an R&D center focusing on denim.

by khanh t.l. tran

Fast Retailing Co. is proving its serious-ness in the jeans market and its commit-ment to premium denim label J Brand by opening its first center focusing on denim innovation in Los Angeles.

A 15-minute drive from the two-story brick building that houses both J Brand’s headquarters and a factory that produces clothing specifically for the premium denim line, the Denim Innovation Center is the sixth in Fast Retailing’s worldwide network of research and development sites. Its main R&D center in Tokyo, where Fast Retailing is based, is devoted to product design. One facility in Shang-hai is entrenched in the production process as it is close to the factories that manufacture clothes for Uniqlo. A spot in New York specializes in trend research and conceptual work, and another center in Paris allows Uniqlo to work with Euro-pean collaborators such as Christophe Lemaire. It also runs a location in Los Angeles separate from the denim-specific center. It declined to disclose how much it has invested in the Denim Innovation Center, which employs 10 people.

“Los Angeles is very important. Not only the wash houses, there are many brands here and many good retailers,” said Masaaki Matsubara, who is J Brand’s head of design as well as the director of Fast Retailing’s Denim Innovation Center. “We are thinking more deeply in development, using the many resources of group brands into one category.”

With the opening of the Denim Inno-vation Center in Los Angeles earlier this month, Fast Retailing has joined a rarefied circle of denim producers that operate proprietary laundries where they can experiment with new washes. Citizens

of Humanity has its own laundry near its studio in Huntington Park, Calif., which is also used by its sister brands, A Gold E and Goldsign. Most other companies depend on independent wash houses to help them test new treatments. Candiani Denim, the 78-year-old fabric mill from Italy, went as far as investing in a laser machine and other equipment for it its own sleek lab, tucked between L.A.’s Fashion and Finan-cial Districts, to serve its customers.

Matsubara said the research in Fast Retailing’s global hub for denim will cen-ter on fabric, fit and finish. “It’s not just one particular thing,” he said. “The idea is all related to denim, not only bottoms [but also] denim shirts, denim jackets [and] knitting.”

Up to now, innovation in Uniqlo’s denim centered primarily in fabric. Integrating thermal technology, it introduced Heat-Tech Denim for women in fall 2010 and followed with a men’s version in fall 2015. A style made of lightweight fabric, dubbed Air Denim, premiered in the men’s busi-ness in spring 2015.

Matsubara said the Denim Innovation Center serves as a laboratory rather than a production site. Uniqlo and J Brand continue to rely on contractors in Asia and Southern California, respectively, to handle the washes on a large scale. The first season to show the creative and tech-nical handiwork of the Denim Innovation Center is set for fall 2017. Matsubara said the center also will benefit Fast Retailing’s

other brands — including Comptoir des Cotonniers and GU — that offer denim.

Uniqlo’s jeans sell for between $39.90 and $49.90. Retail prices for J Brand’s designs range from $178 to $298 for denim bottoms, $88 to $358 for ready-to-wear and $598 to $1,298 for leather.

While other brands such as Seven For All Mankind and Hudson Jeans have been sold or divested by their owners during the recent challenging period in the denim market, Matsubara said Fast Retailing remains devoted to J Brand, which has been posting losses on lagging sales.

With J Brand’s business, “we try to be better,” he said. “We are changing our concept of design.”

For instance, the men’s fall 2016 collection proffered a tapered style that trimmed the inseam on a popular slim fit by more than two inches. Moreover, the women’s pre-fall 2017 collection features three new fits.

“We think of everything like lengths and inseam and wash — details,” Matsubara said.

fashion

Fast Retailing Opens Denim Innovation Center in Los Angeles

A laser machine at Fast Retailing’s Denim Innovation Center in Los Angeles.

november 17, 2016 12

● The influencers will host an event for the brand to toast the holiday collection and its #ChangeDestiny campaign.

by rachEl Strugatz

SK-II is today unveiling the holiday version of its bestselling Facial Treatment Essence — producing more units than ever before to meet consumer demand.

The brand looked to ancient Japanese marbling technique Suminagashi, or “float-ing ink,” to create the three limited-edition bottles, painted in either a vibrant red, green or blue. Each one retails for $229, the same price as the original Essence.

“We wanted to be a little closer to our Japanese heritage [with Suminagashi], but also tell the story about change,” said Markus Strobel, SK-II global president.

The brand is hosting an event in New York tonight that’s a two-for-one: to unveil the holiday collection and toast its global #ChangeDestiny initiative in the U.S. Actress Priyanka Chopra and influencer Olivia Palermo are hosting the event, iden-tified by Strobel, as inspiring women “who had something to tell.”

“We started this whole thing with special designs [for the holiday season] two years ago. It took off like a rocket, and we ran out of stock at the beginning of Decem-ber,” Strobel said during an interview Nov. 15. The first collaboration in 2014 was with Taiwanese digital art designer Po-Chih Huang, who created a series of digitized

flowers that were printed on bottles. Because the product sold out weeks before plan — the number of bottles were sup-posed to last through the holiday season — SK-II upped production for last year’s run by 40 percent.

“We said, ‘OK, this is something we’re going to do every year and come up with a new design and story each year,” Strobel said. Chinese New Year and Cherry Blos-som limited-edition bottles are also pro-duced annually, but they aren’t promoted in the U.S.

Stock of last year’s butterfly motif Essences, a metaphor for change and a tie-in to the #ChangeDestiny campaign that kicked off last fall, lasted a bit longer, but still sold out before it was intended to. This year, Strobel explained, the brand pro-duced just 15 percent more than last year’s — to meet demand but still keep distribu-tion limited to give a feeling of exclusivity.

fashion

SK-II Taps Priyanka Chopra, Olivia Palermo To Launch Essence, #ChangeDestiny

SK-II’s limited-edition Facial Treatment Essence.

● Causeway Bay in Hong Kong and Paris’ Avenue des Champs-Élysées rank second and third, respectively.

by SaMantha conti

LONDON — Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, and more specifically its stretch between 49th and 60th Streets, remains the priciest bit of commercial real estate worldwide, according to the latest global retail report by Cushman & Wakefield.

Rent costs $3,000 per square foot per year there, compared with the number two, Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay, where landlords are charging $2,878.

The Avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris ranked number three, with prices at $1,368 per square foot per year, despite a decline in tourist numbers and spend fol-lowing the terrorist attacks and changing tourist patterns.

The annual report pointed out that rental values have decreased in New York and Hong Kong as brands “balance the demands of physical and online presences,” and demand for flagship space slows.

Cushman said in 2016, upper Fifth Ave-nue saw its first decrease in annual rents per square foot since the financial crisis.

The report dovetails with a statement made earlier this year by François-Henri Pinault, chief executive officer of Kering, parent of brands including Gucci, Alex-ander McQueen, Stella McCartney and Christopher Kane.

“We are present today in the most important cities and locations in the world. Our priority is to extract more value from them,” said Pinault, as he urged his brands to increase sales per square foot.

Property consultants Cushman & Wakefield’s report covers more than 450 top retail streets. In it, London’s New Bond Street ranked fourth. Space costs $1,283 per square foot per year, and the street has

seen rents rise strongly, alongside other new retail hubs such as Covent Garden and Sloane Street. Cushman said the British capital continues to be a “massive pull” for luxury brands.

The report said London saw some of the strongest rental growth across Europe and the Middle East region, with retailers willing to pay a premium in order to secure sites and capitalize on healthy footfall figures.

New Bond Street saw rents rise by 14.3 percent over the last 12 months, although that figure was outstripped by Covent Garden, where rents were up 31.6 percent over the same period. Sloane Street saw its rent charges rise 27.3 percent in the year.

Covent Garden and Sloane Street have both undergone major overhauls at the hands of ambitious property developers Capco and the Cadogan Estate. Covent Garden has recently become home to Nars, Mulberry and The Watch Gallery, while Robert De Niro is planning to open a hotel in the neighborhood.

The area around Sloane Square is lined with stores including Delpozo, Red Valen-tino, Boutique 1 and Oliver Peoples.

Justin Taylor, Cushman and Wakefield’s head of retail for the Europe and Middle East region, said brands are raising the customer-experience bar. “Leading exam-ples include Primark’s new store in Madrid and Apple’s refitted store on Regent Street in London. More and more brands are opt-ing to offer e-commerce options alongside a physical presence,” he explained.

Taylor added that demand is strong for the right space in the right location, “and the lack of supply along the majority of Europe’s main thoroughfares is seeing rents rise further and expanding the boundaries of well-established streets. This is exemplified by the growth seen in some of London’s premier streets, including Bond Street and Oxford Street.”

The report added that Milan’s Via Mon-tenapoleone recorded 20 percent price growth over the year to June, “reaffirming

the allure of the city for both mass-market and luxury retailers.”

In the Asia-Pacific region, Causeway Bay rents are falling, which Cushman said is cre-ating opportunity for some retailers looking to snap up units on prime pitches with good rental terms. As reported, Burberry has downsized its flagship in Hong Kong and is negotiating aggressively on rents in the city that has been suffering from a major fall in Chinese tourist numbers and from China’s crackdown on bribery.

Cushman said the country is facing “stiff competition” from the growing e-com-merce market, with brands looking to create “online-to-offline platforms” in an attempt to capture the changing trend in consumer behavior. Retailers and landlords are also improving the “experience” they offer to consumers by expanding the food, beverage and leisure offerings.

Theodore Knipfing, Cushman & Wake-field’s head of retail, Asia-Pacific, said retailers continue to be cautious in their store expansion across the region due to concerns including continued global eco-nomic instability. “We see this continuing well into 2017,” he said. “When expansion does happen, the focus is typically on qual-ity over quantity.”

In the U.S., Cushman said publicly traded apparel chains remain under “immense pressure” from Wall Street to be more efficient and this has meant closing underperforming stores, cutting overheads and improving margins.

“This trend has particularly affected the high street and mall sectors in the U.S. and it will continue heading into 2017,” the report said.

Gene Spiegelman, Cushman & Wake-field’s vice chairman, head of retail services for North America, said the larger question for next year and beyond in the region “will be the unrelenting rebalancing of sales origination — bricks and mortar versus e-commerce.”

Spiegelman said he believes the urban retail sector will continue to benefit from global brands “seeking tangible connections with the consumer, while the pressure will build upon enclosed malls and open-air shopping centers to continually enhance their shopping experience and differentiate their market positions to maintain compet-itiveness in the continuous advancement of the ‘bricks-and-clicks’ model.”

business

Upper Fifth Avenue Retains Crown for Highest Retail Rents

The Bulgari flagship on London’s New Bond Street.

november 17, 2016 13

returns and exchanges through the seven-year-old fashion rental service. There are plans to open a few more Rent the Runway shops in Neiman Marcus doors next year, but both sides were mum on specifics and the financial details of the partnership.

Jennifer Hyman, the rental firm’s cofounder and chief executive officer, said San Francisco is the center of inno-vation in the U.S. and is an appropriate place to bring disruptive commerce to the luxury segment.

The Rent the Runway shop in Neiman Marcus will host a rotating selection from what Hyman calls Rent the Runway’s “dream closet,” made up of dresses, jump-suits, jewelry and more from over 400 designers, including Diane von Fursten-berg, Derek Lam, Jason Wu and Marni.

To keep things fresh the assortment will change daily and be coupled with for-purchase products from Neiman Marcus such as shoes, handbags, under-garments and cosmetics.

Hyman called “buy-rent” the new “high-low.”

“It competes with fast fashion, which is really just unlimited variety, and that is the same thing that we are offering,” she said.

The deal is a sign of the times for both sides.

Younger, techie companies have real-ized that they can’t operate in an online vacuum and largely benefit from a more traditional brick and mortar presence. Before Rent the Runway came to Nei-man Marcus, Nordstrom Inc. invested

in Bonobos and started carrying the bottoms-centric brand. And others, such as Warby Parker, have moved heavily into the world of physical stores.

(Last year Neiman Marcus also entered into a strategic partnership with consign-ment site The Real Real, forming a gift-card program designed to get consigners to head to Neiman Marcus with money they make from selling their luxury wares).

In general, the last generation of buzzy e-commerce startups have found busi-nesses that sell only, or even mostly, online are difficult to scale, i.e. Nasty Gal, which was scrambling for capital and finally went into bankruptcy last week. Amazon has grown to be a giant by spending heavily on infrastructure and temporarily foregoing profits to become one of the few players with true e-commerce scale.

That leaves many retailers and tech dar-lings looking to benefit from one another, although there is potential for each to steal business from the other.

Jim Gold, Neiman Marcus’ president and chief merchandising officer, said even though many of the brands that Rent the

Runway offers are also Neiman Marcus merchants, the partnership offers the opportunity to attract new, potentially younger, customers who might eventually graduate to purchasing the same design-er’s pieces after discovering them through a rental.

“We love the idea,” said Gold, who acted as an adviser when Hyman pitched the idea of the company while at Harvard Busi-ness School. “It’s an opportunity to bring in new customers who don’t shop with Neiman Marcus. It’s mutually beneficial.”

Although San Francisco represents one of Rent the Runway’s top-five markets, this is the first time its customers there will access a physical outpost for the service, which started online but has been growing in the brick-and-mortar field and will have seven of its own locations overall by the end of the year.

Gold emphasized the customer service benefits that will attract potential new customers – the store will be staffed by Rent the Runway employees who will work closely with Neiman Marcus staff.

Rent the Runway will update its app to

coincide with the opening, and customers will be able to search and select items to pick up in specific stores. They can book a styling appointment or chat on the app with an in-store stylist to request services such as a street-level hand-delivery of an order. Customers can also exchange rent-als they received in the mail that do not fit.

Modeled off of Apple’s Genius Bar, a RTR Bar will offer quick advice or services. Members of Rent the Runway’s subscrip-tion service, Unlimited, can also pick up and drop off in-store.

Gold said with this first iteration he would be looking at whether the store is seeing new customers and what they can learn about these clients. “Are they buying other things from us? Are they coming back when they aren’t renting something?

“We love that RTR gives women an opportunity to try brands they haven’t tried before, and there’s a tremendous opportunity to capitalize on that,” Gold said. “We love the idea of being able to complement the rentals with a much deeper experience — to talk about other needs and create long-term relationships.”

Neiman’s, Rent the Runway Link Up CoNTINuED FRoM PAGE 1

A rendering of Rent the Runway’s new outpost in Neiman Marcus.

for the first nine months of the year are well below our expectations. We believe we can achieve sustainable top- and bot-tom-line growth over time.”

The retailer faces a brutally competitive holiday season and deflation in the food category has been impacting all mass retailers, although food accounts for only 20 percent of Target’s total sales compared to 55 percent at Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

“We saw another small decline in food in the third quarter due to deflation,” said Cornell. “We’re focused on delivering stronger growth in food.”

Sales in the third quarter ended Oct. 29 declined 6.7 percent to $16.4 billion from $17.3 billion in last year’s third quarter, while comps fell 0.2 percent, near the high end of the retailer’s guidance of flat to down 2 percent.

Adjusted EPS rose 22.1 percent to $1.04 in this year’s quarter from 86 cents per share in 2015, surpassing Wall Street esti-mates of 83 cents a share. Cornell noted that Target’s EPS has grown more than 3 percent in the first three quarters of 2016 in spite of flat comp-store sales growth.

Segment earnings before interest expense and income taxes, which is Tar-get’s measure of segment profit, were $1.06 billion in the third quarter, an increase of 9.9 percent from $962 million in 2015.

Third-quarter earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization and earnings before interest and taxes margin rates were 9.9 percent and 6.4 percent, respectively, compared with 8.6 percent and 5.5 percent, respectively, in 2015. Third-quarter gross margin rate was 30.2

percent, compared with 29.4 percent in 2015, reflecting the benefit of the sale of Target’s pharmacy and clinic businesses and strength in signature categories. “Sales in signature categories out-comped by three percentage points sales of non-signa-ture categories,” Cornell said.

Third-quarter sales were driven by back-to-school and back-to-college. Denim was singled out as a top performer, driven by new fashion and fits for adults and kids. Home saw a double-digit increase in digital sales.

The selling, general and administrative expense rate for the third quarter was 20.3 percent in 2016, compared with

20.7 percent in 2015, reflecting continued expense discipline across the organization.

Cornell said the third quarter reflects “meaningful improvement in our traf-fic and sales trends and much stron-ger-than-expected profitability. Favorable gross margin mix and efficient execution by our team drove third-quarter EPS well beyond our guidance.”

Target last year launched a compre-hensive cost-savings effort with the goal of taking $2 billion out of the company’s expenses. Cornell said Target exceeded the $2 billion goal and will continue to look for additional opportunities for cost-cutting.

Smaller, flexible-format stores are showing strong performance, he said. “We opened five in the third quarter, including our TriBeCa store. When we open, we go beyond legacy systems, personalizing the environments,” Cornell said. “We’re now operating 30 of these stores and we increasingly see the opportunity of operat-ing hundreds of flexible format stores over time. For moving into densely populated urban centers or college campuses, this is a critical growth vehicle.”

Digital sales rose 26 percent and contrib-uted 0.7 percentage points to comparable sales growth. Year-to-date, digital sales are up by 20 percent.

Cornell said Target has “devoted capital and experience” toward improving the dig-ital functionality and made a reference to past glitches during high-volume periods, including Cyber Monday of 2015. “We ran a promotion that allowed us to stress-test our systems,” Cornell said. “We offered 10 percent off our entire assortment both in-store and online. The digital comp was particularly high on that day. Our systems performed very well, as we prepare for even greater traffic.”

Comps in electronics and entertainment outperformed the company average in the

third quarter, which bodes well for the holiday period.

“We feel very good about our plans for the fourth quarter,” Cornell added. “In entertainment, we have a combination of new, exclusive items and items that are on-trend. We’ve had a great reaction to our toy and gifting catalogues. Those catego-ries trended downward in Q3, but we’re in a good position for Q4.”

Cornell said Target’s “Expect More, Pay Less,” tag line may be in need of a tweak. “With our signature categories performing [strongly], we continue to deliver on the ‘expect more’ side. Early this year, we fell short on ‘pay less’ and value side. We’re communicating value more clearly now.”

Cornell is watching Amazon with a degree of fascination and trepidation. He said working on the value side of the equation and addressing fill-in guests will position the retailer for success. “The strat-egy we have allows us to be very competi-tive and will allow us to win in the current retail environment,” he said.

Noting that more than 90 percent of all retail shopping takes place in physical stores — a slight jab at Amazon — Cornell said Target’s investments in elevating the store experience will pay off with shop-pers. “We’re combining that with out-standing merchandise and value,” he said. “In addition, we’re giving guests the choice of shopping any way they want. We’re building out capabilities and leveraging stores as flexible fulfillment centers. We’re using stores to deliver the last mile. It’s a huge competitive advantage.”

For example, last year, 460 stores were able to ship directly to customers. This year, Target extended the service to another 600 stores, so more than 1,000 stores that will be shipping one-third of the company’s digital volume from Thanksgiv-ing through the holiday season.

Traffic Still Thorn In Target’s Side CoNTINuED FRoM PAGE 1

Brian Cornell

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november 17, 2016 14

● Brand founder Sheikh Majed Al Sabah attracted crowds to the retailer on Tuesday.

by alliSon collinS

No one selfies like Sheikh Majed Al Sabah.The man behind perfume brand The

Fragrance Kitchen put his selfie pose (squat so his tall frame was closer to his fans, arm stretched as far upwards as possible to capture large groups of people, occasional spins for videos) to good use at Bergdorf Goodman on Wednesday afternoon, posing with fans as he unveiled his latest exclusive with the retailer. The crowd rewarded him by singing him a belated rendition of Happy Birthday.

As of Wednesday morning, Bergdorf’s was carrying about 300 bottles of a new fragrance that Al Sabah created for Sheikh Hamad bin Abdullah Al-Thani of Qatar. Al Sabah, a social media star with an esti-mated 1.6 million Snapchat followers and 300,000 Instagram followers, attracted yet another crowd to Bergdorf’s beauty floor.

The last time he made an appearance, in April, the crowd also flooded the retail-er’s first floor and the sidewalk outside, as fans waited for their chance to take photos with the Sheikh. The crowd Wednesday was smaller, but just as lively. Al Sabah meandered through, passing out tickets to his birthday party at Lavo and making sure every person — from a toddler to the 12-year-old girl whose broken leg bound her to a wheelchair — got the selfie they came for. Industry sources estimated the brand did about $45,000 in sales during the appearance.

For Sheikh Hamad, a collector of Indian jewelry whose pieces have traveled through museums including the Metropol-itan Museum of Art and London’s Victoria

and Albert Museum in Kyoto, Al Sabah crafted 1,000 bottles of fragrance with notes of rose, oud and amber from the Middle East, he said. They’re housed in white bottles, priced at $495.

“The typography is done by a local artist in Dubai and he created this monogram and his [Sheikh Hamad’s] name as a cal-ligraphy and you can see it, tone on tone, across the bottle,” Al Sabah said.

“We saw it and we loved it — we smelled it and we thought our customers would respond really well to it,” said Pat Saxby, vice president and divisional merchandise manager at Bergdorf Goodman. “We got a limited supply of it. I hope it lasts through the holidays, but I can’t say beyond that.”

“We wanted to give something spe-cial to…New York City,” Al Sabah said, detailing a story of when he started his career as a retailer in Kuwait and many European brands wouldn’t work with him. “In November of 1991, I came to New York City and New York City embraced me,” he said. “And Seventh Avenue was my home for seven years, where I had launched for the first time in the Middle East all the top brands from back then, from Donna Karan to Geoffrey Beene and Todd Oldham

and all the guys back in the early Nineties that were hot and cool, and my business started in New York City.”

His fragrance business, however, didn’t officially start until 2010, though he dabbled in mixing up his own juice well before then.

“[In] 2005 when Tom Ford left Gucci, we had lunch together in London and we decided to develop a fragrance for the Middle East, which I called Arabian Wood, and he picked up the scent, which I blended…John Demsey [executive group president at Estée Lauder, which owns Tom Ford] called me after months and he said, ‘it’s ranked in the top three best-sell-ing fragrances worldwide,’ and that really switched me on, and I said, ‘OK, it’s about time to do something myself.’”

Then The Fragrance Kitchen was born, he said. When the brand moved into Berg-dorf ’s in April, it was with an exclusive fragrance — something Al Sabah crafts for every new city The Fragrance Kitchen enters — called a Rose With a View, which has not been easy to keep in stock, he said. The Fragrance Kitchen also contains 65 core fragrances, which are edited as new ones come out, plus exclusive scents for other locales.

In the U.S., Neiman Marcus in Beverly Hills is the only other point of distribution, and a shop-in-shop is planned there for March, Al Sabah said. Also in March, The Fragrance Kitchen is launching a collection of six scents under its Avery Perfume Gal-lery line. The new fragrances are: Stardust, composed of orange blossom, nutmeg, orange, raspberry, cinnamon, tonka bean, labdanum, amber cedarwood, vanilla and musk; Skylight, with notes of black pepper, cumin, bergamot, lemon, cinnamon, nutmeg, labdanum, vetiver, incense, oud, sandalwood, patchouli, musk, and amber; Orion, featuring notes of amber, raspberry, saffron, ciste, labdanum, rose, cedarwood, vanilla and sandalwood; Midnight, with notes of rose, ciste, labdanum, oud, amber, vanilla, musk and patchouli; Cosmos, with green notes, black pepper, grapefruit, bergamot, rose, marine notes, mint, pine-apple, moss, sandalwood and musk; Blue Eyes, with rose, bergamot, black pepper, ciste, geranium, cloves, buds, labdanum, leather, vanilla and incense.

New distribution is also slated for next year, with Germany and Printemps in Paris signed on to carry the brand. Industry sources have pegged the brand’s sales at around $22 million.

For holiday, Al Sabah has created a three-layered candle as a gift, and is work-ing on something “weird” for next year, he hinted.

“We are similar to Supreme, [a skater fashion brand],” he said. “We come in and out with different sorts of weird products. We did the chocolates, next year we have something quite a little bit weird…some-thing a little big more crazy. Hopefully we can do it in the U.S. We’re definitely going to touch the technology area and the fash-ion area and beauty and the home areas, so we just need to come in with something a little bit more edgy.”

● Pierre-Emmanuel Angeloglou will succeed Cyril Chapuy, who is to take up another position at L’Oréal.

by JEnniFEr wEil

PARIS — There’s a changing of the guard afoot at L’Oréal Paris.

After more than six years running the brand, Cyril Chapuy is poised to start in “a new and important position with the group,” a L’Oréal spokeswoman confirmed to WWD. Pierre-Emmanuel Angeloglou has been named his successor.

Chapuy became global president of L’Oréal Paris, the world’s largest beauty label, in 2010. He is credited with driving a host of technological offerings, marketing initiatives, tie-ins and product innovations.

Under Chapuy’s tenure, L’Oréal Paris — with estimated sales of nearly 6 billion euros, or $6.4 billion at current exchange — has greatly upped its digital ante, introduc-ing simulator apps such as Makeup Genius. It further tapped into the Millennial zeitgeist by naming 15 digital influencers to

spread the brand’s message for a year and also signing on a blogger as an ambassa-dor, meant to serve as a bridge between

classical advertising and the consumer.L’Oréal Paris has continued to expand

its lineup of faces that counts the likes of

Julianne Moore, Naomi Watts and Blake Lively, by adding Susan Sarandon, among others.

Earlier this year, L’Oréal Paris became an official Paris Fashion Week Sponsor in a partnership that involves nurturing young fashion talent. Dovetailing from that, the brand opened in September its first makeup boutique in the French capital, which it billed as a new concept designed to look like the backstage of a runway show. The shop shines a spotlight on newness, as well, with monthly exclusive limited-edi-tion makeup collections, for instance.

Recent novelties on the product front for L’Oréal Paris include the trio of Pure-Clay mud masks, hybrid cleansers and treat-ments, for the mass market.

Angeloglou has for the past three years served as general manager of L’Oréal’s Consumer Products Division in North Asia, based in Shanghai, according to his LinkedIn profile. Prior to that, he spent four years overseeing that division in Brazil and two years as LaScad’s general manager in Paris. Angeloglou started at L’Oréal in 1996.

Chapuy joined L’Oréal Paris after having been global brand president of Maybelline New York for four years.

In other L’Oréal Paris-related news, as reported, Karen Fondu is retiring as president of the brand’s U.S. division at the end of this year.

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The Fragrance Kitchen Launches Next Exclusive Fragrance With Bergdorf’s

Susan Sarandon, Naomi Watts, Julianne Moore and Cyril Chapuy.

beauty

L’Oréal Paris to Get New Chief

Sheikh Majed Al Sabah with guests.

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● ”Masterworks: Unpacking Fashion” reminds visitors of the evolution of fashion.

by roSEMarY FEitElBErg

NEW YORK — The abstract packing crate near the Viktor & Rolf dress at the entrance to The Costume Institute’s “Masterworks: Unpacking Fashion” is meant to be a visual metaphor figuratively and literally.

Visitors see from the start that some serious unpacking has been done at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in selecting the show’s 60 pieces. With guidance from curator in charge Andrew Bolton, assistant curator Jessica Regan has essentially cre-ated a master class, spelling out how highly technical pieces have changed the course of fashion from the early 18th century to today. Rather than race to the spring 2015 blazing red wool, nylon, flannel patent leather Commes des Garçons ensemble or the fall 2012 Iris van Herpen black dress embroidered with PVC strips, the exhibi-tion’s chronological layout is set up to give room for thought.

“Masterworks: Unpacking Fashion” bows Friday in the Anna Wintour Costume Center and runs through Feb. 5.

During a Wednesday morning preview, Regan said, “In order to understand the contemporary references, it is essential to cover the historic dress as well. So many designers in our collection and generally have studied historical dress and were inspired. It also provides a context for explaining where we are today.”

Museum goers walk through fashion’s

evolution starting with a 1730 robe volante, the negligee-inspired one-piece gown that caught on after the death of Louis XIV and the subsequent acceptance of more informal fashions. While the range is wide, the show itself is compact, though visitors will be inclined to take a closer look to examine such how-did-they-do-that details as the butterfly-shaped neckline and the appliquéd bands of mousseline that con-cealed seams on an 1898 silk satin brokers House of Worth gown. (Patrons who miss gallery tours will find cheat sheets on the gallery wall texts.)

“Masterworks: Unpacking Fashion” fea-tures significant acquisitions from the past 10 years. One find is the evening dinner jacket Elsa Schiaparelli created with a Jean Cocteau sketch that was embroidered by Lesage. “Jean” is even embroidered on the edge of the jacket, which is paired with a

1947 Gilbert Adrian dress made from a Sal-vador Dali-designed fabric imprinted with profile and the artist’s motif of fractured anthromorphized rocks. Another pairing is a spring 1994 Azzedine Alaïa two-tone acetate dress opposite a 1951 Charles James ivory silk La Sirene evening dress. A 1929 embroidered pink silk tulle Madeleine Vion-net evening dress is displayed with a spring 1999 peach nylon lace John Galliano one to show how her body-skimming styles inspire contemporary designers. Even more strik-ingly current is a 1931 Jean-Charles Worth evening dress embroidered and fringed with silver glass bugle beads. After the com-pany started advertising for the first time in the Twenties, it tried to win over younger clients with more modern designs.

The passage of time can also be found near a 1787 redingote, a dress inspired by English men’s riding coats. A placard

refers to an excerpt from Louis-Sébastien Mercier’s “Tableau de Paris,” which reads, “Women’s clothing must have a gender and this clothing must contrast with ours. A woman must be a woman from head to toe; the more a woman resembles a man, the more she surely loses.”

It’s important to think about the pieces in a broader context, to understand the influ-ences on contemporary fashion and how designers are taking elements of the past and making them relevant today, she said. “It’s easy to lose sight of those connections if one is only looking at the contemporary. It’s important to see it in conversation. There are certain periods that continue to serve as a regular source of inspiration, like the 18th century in particular. That’s such a favorite of fashion designers.”

Prized looks like a 1967 green silk gazar Balenciaga dress and a 1928 Lanvin “Travi-ata” robe de style are showcased on their own, and the stop-you-in-your-tracks effect is intentional. Regan said, “Absolutely, the idea was that each of these pieces would be able to stand on their own as a master-work of fashion and that would represent very different approaches.”

The final gallery is a tribute to for-mer curator-in-charge Harold Koda who stepped down last year. Bolton approached a number of designers asking if they might donate something from their archives to The Costume Institute’s col-lection in honor of Koda, and more than 30 obliged. Raf Simons, Rick Owens, Tom Ford, John Galliano, Jean Paul Gaultier, Miuccia Prada, Gareth Pugh and Proenza Schouler’s Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez are among those who did so. Each also described Koda’s influence on fashion and their quotes are featured either near their respective designs or in a digital display in the gallery. Regan said, “Many of them spoke to Harold’s influence on them and how his exhibitions were inspiring to them. He will really have a lasting legacy.”

The Costume Institute’s fall exhibition, “Masterworks: unpacking Fashion,” on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art beginning Friday, features significant acquisitions of the past 10 years.

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● U.S. Ambassador James Costos hosted a lavish party bathed in red light.

by BarBara BarkEr

MADRID — “Absolutely speechless: I did not expect this,” Carolina Herrera remarked as she gazed at the art and flow-er-filled party at the American ambassa-dor’s residence here to mark her 35 years in the fashion business.

Ambassador James Costos and his part-ner Michael Smith, the White House deco-rator under President Obama, hosted the cocktail Monday night for about 350 guests, who nibbled tapas-size Indian wraps and mini chicken burgers in rooms bathed in red light, a wink to Herrera’s favorite shade.

The designer was in a black party coat and polka dots while daughter Carolina Herrera Jr., with bullfighter husband Miguel Báez (El Litri), wore a black strap-less ankle-length dress with bowed bodice and cutouts.

Regarding his pending departure in the wake of Donald Trump’s election sweep, Costos demurred: “The exit strategy has yet to be determined.”

“We’ve been so lucky; everybody has stayed here — we have Karlie [Kloss] tonight, the Obamas, John Kerry, Anna Wintour, Harrison Ford, Sarah Jessica Parker. We love it here,” Smith said of the residence, musing that the couple might buy a Madrid pied-à-terre for the future. “Please write that I am dangerously thin,”

he added with an impish grin.Guests included heavy financial hitters

like Marc Puig, chief executive officer of Barcelona-based Puig and owner of the Herrera brand, plus a bevy of socialites, royal relatives, designers and models.

In a mustard jacquard blazer and roomy black pants, Madrid designer Carmen March, who resurrected her women’s wear label in June, said, “The first collection sold fantastically; we’re working on the second one which like before, we’ll pres-ent in Paris.”

Arnaud Maillard and Alvaro Castejón, co-creative directors of Alvarno, talked up their launch of a capsule Mickey Mouse collection as part of their ongoing

collaboration with the Disney company to benefit a local children’s charity. The duo was due to attend a premiere here of Tom Ford’s “Nocturnal Animals.”

Also on the guest list were: Carmen Martínez Bordiú, granddaughter of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, and her mother, Duquesa de Franco; Blanca Suelves, Duchess of Albuquerque, in a black jew-eled sweater and pants the color of heavy cream, with husband Joannes Osorio; Maria Zurita, niece of former King Juan Carlos, in a red jacket by Mango; Rafael Medina, Duke of Feria, of Massimo Dutti and stylist wife Laura Vecino; Kloss who called the Herreras “rare ladies;” Eugenia Silva in a frothy powder-pink confection by Herrera

with partner Alfonso de Borbón; Madrid interior decorator Pascua Ortega; and from ACME, the Madrid-based designers associa-tion, Modesto Lomba, president, and Pepa Bueno, executive director, in a blue velvet sheath by Angel Schlesser.

The next morning, Herrera – in a plaid skirt and white shirt (“People think I live — literally — in white shirts,” she laughed) —presented her book “35 Years of Fash-ion” to the media at the stately downtown home of legendary banker Alfonso Fierro.

Prior to the presentation, ceo Puig told WWD, “Spain is one of the [Carolina Her-rera] brand’s most important markets after the U.S., and depending on the product, other major markets are Latin America, the Middle East and Russia.”

In the Eighties, Herrera was discovered by Fernando Aleu, then head of Puig in the U.S. “He liked the way she smelled,” Puig said. They inked a deal to produce and dis-tribute her fragrances and in 1995, became official partners. Puig lauded “the great luck to work with such an elegant person, and I hope to do so for many more years.”

Herrera returned the compliment. “Fashion and fragrance are totally differ-ent. I am so lucky to have found the Puig group,” she said, adding that one of the keys to success is to “keep your eyes open, do something new to please the eye and be open to change. To change your mind in an instant is feminine instinct. Fashion isn’t easy; it’s hard work and complicated, but it’s been a wonderful journey.”

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Carolina Herrera Marks 35-Year Milestone in Madrid

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The Met Costume Institute to Reveal ‘Masterworks: Unpacking Fashion’

Miguel Báez, Carolina Herrera de Báez, Reinaldo Herrera, Carolina Herrera, Ambassador James Costos and Michael Smith.

november 17, 2016 16

Different Strokes, Different FolksMoMA honored Tom Hanks at their Chanel Film Benefit, while Whitney loyalists turned out for the annual Art Party.

"it's odd to look at your life right before your eyes and not be dead," began Tom Hanks, taking the stage inside of the basement theater at The Museum of Mod-ern Art in Manhattan. The captive crowd had just watched a reel of highlights from his movies — and there have been a lot of them — which MoMA nodded to Tuesday by honoring him at its annual film benefit, presented by Chanel.

Many of Hanks' friends and coworkers came out to congrat-ulate him. There were the three Steves — Steve Martin (sans banjo), Stephen Colbert and Ste-ven Spielberg — as well as Aaron Eckhart, Emma Watson, Wendi Deng Murdoch and Meg Ryan. Clint Eastwood and Oprah Winfrey made appearances via video.

If the luster of picking up awards

is starting to wear off, the exu-berant actor didn't let on. "What's great about this is, look, we do this a lot, and commerce is usually in-volved in trying to sell your product, in trying to hoodwink journalists into believing your movie is pretty good," Hanks said. "I look at any-thing I've ever done, and I just see a checkered collection of things that did and did not work. I yearn to see things that I don't remember doing, and unfortunately it's very hard to do...I can't see [my films] at the end of the day as objects of art. I look at them as dinette sets that I made in my wood shop, and wish I had another pass with the glue."

Nearby, his wife Rita Wilson pawed at her diamond necklace. "By the way, I'm in Chanel," she whispered. "Loaners, but I'm just saying. At least I have them for

the night."Commerce is always involved.“We’re a two-for-one deal

tonight,” Karlie Kloss said Tuesday night, linking Champagne-toting arms with Brandon Maxwell from the third floor of the Whitney Mu-seum of American Art. The muse-um had gathered their now-usual downtown art and fashion crowd for their Art Party, held for the sec-ond year in the new Meatpacking District building, which proved a selling point for cohost Kloss.

“I live in the area, this is my local museum,” she continued. “One thing that I really love about working in fashion is that I feel like fashion and art and music and so many creative industries are so intertwined and inspire one another.”

Between otherwise tame

servings of short rib and passed trays of miniature doughnuts, Fischerspooner took to the stage to awaken dinner-goers with new music. “I’m feeling very pissed off, post-Trump,” said frontman Casey Spooner, looming on the catwalk in a harness getup (and not much else). “So I decided to go kind of f--got riot gear. I’m getting gayer! You didn’t think it could happen. But I’m getting gayer.”

“I think the Whitney museum is where artists can have a voice, no matter what walk of life they’re from — once [the art] gets here, people from all over the world can appreciate it,” said Common, who’d signed on to be a host at the urg-ing of his stylist, Micaela Erlanger. “As Paul Robeson said, ‘artists are the gatekeepers of truth.’ A lot of the truth and the inspiration that

we need is in the art."But leave it to Maxwell to one-

up all, and spin the night into the utmost sunny light. “I was thinking about that today — I don’t love talking about politics because I was raised to not, but I was think-ing today, weirdly in the shower by myself, what a great time it is to be here tonight,” he said. “Because you see the news, and there’s obviously a lot of things disap-pointing going on in the world, and I think what’s upsetting is the anger and hatred you’re seeing. The thing that’s always healed me in different times in my life has been art, that’s what’s gotten me through, and that’s what’s bonded me to other people. That’s what we need right now, a little love.” — Kristen tauer and Leigh nordstrom

● The show will mark 20 years since Diana’s death in Paris.

by SaMantha conti

It’s shaping up to be a year of aristocratic wardrobes on display. Kensington Palace plans to examine Princess Diana’s style with a big show set for February, marking 20 years since the royal’s death in 1997.

The announcement of “Diana: Her Fashion Story,” follows the news that Chatsworth plans to showcase 500 years of fashion, textile and clothing from the archives of the Dukes of Devonshire with an exhibition scheduled for March.

Kensington Palace, Diana’s former home, will host the two-year show that aims to trace the evolution of her style, from the more romantic outfits of her first public appearances, to the glamorous ones she embraced in later life as she became ever more confident about her style and friends. Her favorite designers included Gianni Versace and Bruce Oldfield.

The Estée Lauder Cos. Inc., a longtime supporter of programs at Kensington Pal-ace, is the show’s sponsor.

“Everything Diana wore was closely scrutinized, and the exhibition will explore how she navigated her unique position in the public eye: learning to use her image

to engage and inspire people, and to champion the causes she cared about,” organizers said.

Pieces to be displayed include eve-ning gowns worn on engagements in the Eighties, to the Catherine Walker suits that made up Diana’s working wardrobe in the Nineties.

The palace said the princess’ relation-ship with her favorite designers will be explored through a display of some of their original fashion sketches, created for her during the design process.

On show will be the pale pink Emanuel blouse worn for Diana’s engagement por-trait by Lord Snowdon in 1981, and Victor Edelstein’s ink blue velvet gown, which Diana wore when she danced with John Travolta at the White House.

A blue tartan Emanuel suit, worn for an official visit to Venice in the Eighties, will go on display in public for the first time. The suit, a rare example of the princess’ daywear, was only recently rediscovered and acquired by Historic Royal Palaces, the charity responsible for Kensington Palace, at auction.

The show will open on Feb. 24.

fashion

Kensington Palace to Showcase Princess Diana’s Wardrobe in 2017

Conservator working on the blue tartan suit.

Damian Lewis and Tom Hanks

Meg Ryan

Common and Victor Cruz

Casey Spooner performing.

Steve Martin and Diane Sawyer

Karlie Kloss and Brandon Maxwell

Emma Watson

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Fashion ScoopsA New godfatherErmenegildo Zegna has secured Robert De Niro to front its spring advertising campaign, WWD has learned.

Reached by phone, artistic director Alessandro Sartori said he could not confirm this, but revealed that he had “decided to change the concept of advertising and communication” for the Italian men’s wear powerhouse. “We are thinking of a communication platform that can trigger emotions, in line with the values of the group and my artistic direction, and that will tell the story of the brand and not that of the product, in a collage of characters with different iden-tities but with stylistic affinity engaged in conversations,” said Sartori.

According to sources, De Niro will be flanked by actor McCaul Lombardi and the campaign, photographed by Fran-cesco Carrozzini in Los Angeles, will also feature a video.

It would be a coup for Zegna to work with De Niro, who has a long-standing relationship with Giorgio Armani. In fact, the actor attended Armani’s men’s show in Milan in June 2015.

Sartori joined the Ermenegildo Zegna Group in June, with responsibility across all Zegna brands and for all creative functions. His first collection will bow for fall and be unveiled in Milan in January. — Luisa Zargani

Back in Townthe new generation Kent & Curwen, which is part owned by David Beckham and designed by Daniel Kearns, will make its London Fashion Week Men’s debut on Jan. 7 as an on-schedule show.

The British Fashion Council has released its men’s schedule for January, with other additions including Vivienne Westwood who, as reported, will show men’s and women’s on the runway, and MCCVIII, the upscale sneaker label creat-ed by Will.i.am and his brother Carl Gilliam.

Westwood had revealed in August that she would showcase her fall 2017 Red La-bel women’s wear and Man ready-to-wear collections under one Vivienne West-wood brand name, during London Fashion Week: Men’s in January. Her main unisex runway collection, now known as Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood, will continue to show in Paris.

Other new names on the schedule, which runs from Jan. 6 to 9, include Qa-simi, which had previously only shown by

appointment, and Michiko Koshino. She has shown during the London women’s collections in the past, and has also taken part in the Designer Showrooms at Men’s for the last few seasons. — samantha Conti

Their Eyes onlyKendall Jenner may be pulling back on her public presence — relinquishing her Instagram account this week. But the same cannot be said of her fashion label with younger sister Kylie.

The two Jenners’ brand, aptly known as Kendall + Kylie, is set to launch a range of eyewear. The reality stars’ eyewear launch further extends their foothold in fashion. They launched their own con-temporary apparel line in 2015, in retail stores such as as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. They also have a foot-wear line under the same name, manu-factured by Marc Fisher Footwear. Before launching their eponymous lines, the sisters dabbled in successful collabora-tions with PacSun and Topshop. Kylie also has separate deals with Puma, as well as her wildly successful beauty line, which dominates feeds on Instagram every time a new color palette is launched.

“This is all us. It’s enjoyable to be able to fully create,” Kendall told WWD at the time of the apparel launch. “It’s a lot different from our Topshop and PacSun collections because those were both collaborations, so they obviously had a say in everything.”

Added Kylie: “I feel like we’ve both real-ly evolved our styles, and this represents

what we want to wear.”The sunglass styles will retail from

$145 to $220 at Nordstrom, as well as at specialty boutiques. They will become available for sale in February.

The eyewear will be distributed by Allure eyewear, a subsidiary of Marchon. The collection is largely comprised of ac-etate frames, and comes with specialty lens colors — such as rose gold. Its intro-duction adds to Kendall + Kylie’s already robust repertoire of ready-to-wear, shoes and handbags.

Said the sisters of the eyewear launch: “We’re [pleased] to offer our new collection of sunglasses. Eyewear is the finishing touch that elevates any look. We can’t wait for our customers to see the world through our eyes.” — mistY White sideLL

Putting on a Showlaure Hériard Dubreuil opened her fourth The Webster boutique at South Coast Plaza on Tuesday with a luncheon and fashion show that drew Los Angeles fans including Alexandra von Furstenberg and Dax Miller, Dree Hemingway, Langley Fox Hemingway, Roxanne Mesquida, Erica Pelosini, Marta Pozzan, Jayne Min and Destry Allyn Spielberg. In addition, Los Angeles-based designers Juan Carlos Obando, Rebecca de Ravenel, Elisabeth Weinstock, Tori Praver, Lisa Marie Fernandez turned out, as did a few friends from abroad, including Ahlem Manai-Platt, Bill Skarsgård, Ezra Petronio

and Maor Cohen.“I wanted to be able to express the

store’s point of view for the West Coast audience with a fashion show, which is not something I’ve done for my other openings,” said Hériard Dubreuil. “The way we mix merchandise doesn’t nec-essarily vary from city to city, because it’s a global look and a global customer, but this store is a big moment for us so I wanted to do something special.”

The show, styled by Victoria Sekrier, featured The Webster’s mix of luxury fashion brands and emerging designers including Acne, Alexander Wang, Au-relie Bidermann, Balenciaga, Balmain, Charlotte Chesnais, Dior, Gigi Burris, Edie Parker, Galvan, Givenchy, Mark Cross, Pierre Hardy, Proenza Schouler, Loewe, Off White, Olympia Le-Tan, Stella McCart-ney, Tome, Thom Browne and Valentino.

The 4,000-square-foot store features some of the same design details present in the South Beach, Bal Harbour and Houston locations, such as mint green terrazzo marble flooring, signature blush wool carpeting and rich brown walls. A mix of custom and antique furniture rang-ing from Milo Baughman, Jansen Kari Springer and Kazuhide Takahama min-gles with a custom table by artist Nada Debs, as well as works from California natives Dennis Hopper and Aaron Young. There are also brightly colored acrylic home furnishings from von Furstenberg’s AVF Home, adding a playful, sunny nod to the West Coast. Additional custom pieces include racks made with Rosso Levanto marble and antique brass.

Hériard Dubreuil headed to Houston Wednesday for a trunk show, then she’ll be busy planning several events in her Miami store for Art Basel, including exclusive launches for Henzel Studio Rugs x Andy Warhol Foundation, Design Miami x Maison Kitsune, Lanvin x Cedric Rivain (for men), Coach x Gary Baseman

Collection (a capsule for both men and women), Ellery x Ben Barretto (custom denim) and Bamford x Enoc Perez Watch Department. The Webster will also host book signings for J.W. Anderson x Loewe and Matt Black during the fair. — marCY medina

Joining With JustinGilt is teaming with Justin Timberlake and his longtime friend and business partner Trace Ayala on a dedicated shop for their William Rast line on its web site. The shop, which launches Thursday at 9 p.m., will feature an assortment of the William Rast collection including some styles that are exclusive to Gilt. These include a suede jacket in caramel, sunglasses and footwear and the first access — for one week — on a collection of relaxed chinos, denim jackets and an embroidered bomber jacket. The collection will range in price from $69 for accessories to $369 for outerwear. Timberlake, who considers himself more of a “curator of culture” than a designer, said his style in influenced by everything from “cities, landscapes, textures, music and people like Sinatra, Johnny Cash, James Dean.” His favorite style in denim — a hallmark of the William Rast label — is a “relaxed fit with a slim leg” that he often pairs with his favorite accessory, “a good hat,” he said.

This season also offers some key footwear models, notably sneakers — another favorite of Timberlake’s. “Collect-ing sneakers has always been a hobby of mine, so it was a natural fit for us,” he said. Ayala added that the collection “has a little something for all occasions. We fo-cused on great basics that work whether you’re going out in the city or hanging out in the woods.” — Jean e. PaLmieri

Memo PadUnivision Targets Fusion Media Univision Communications, the Span-ish-language cable giant and owner of digital properties such as Fusion Media and Gizmodo Group has slashed 6 percent of its workforce, or roughly 200 to 250 jobs.

Fusion, which joined the Writers Guild of America East last week, took the brunt of the cuts. According to Fusion’s union, 15 digital editors were offered buyouts, with the majority of the layoffs coming from the business and television side. The news was not entirely surprising to those on the sales and marketing side. Months earlier, company execs had gathered for an off-site meeting to discuss how it would reorganize since

parent company Univision scooped up Nick Denton’s Gawker Media in a bank-ruptcy auction for $135 million.

It was no secret that those sites, now called the “Gizmodo Group,” would need to be integrated into the already hefty portfolio of digital properties, which included The Onion, Fusion and The Root. While employees did expect some consolidation, they did not expect the magnitude of the layoffs.

According to insiders, Fusion’s mar-keting team was brought into a confer-ence room on Wednesday morning and were told they were being let go. This included Fusion’s branded content unit, Lightworks. Top execs who were shown the door included Fusion’s vice president and creative director Stephen Leps, who headed up Lightworks, as well as Megan Gilbert, the director of branded content. A source estimated about 20 cuts from that team. A handful of marketing staff-ers were asked to stay on.

Fusion did not respond to requests seeking comment.

Under the reorganization, The Onion chief executive officer Mike McAvoy will take a larger role heading up sales for the Fusion Media Group.

On the editorial side, John Cook, editor of the Gizmodo Media Group, will oversee a 10-person investigative unit beginning Jan. 1, as Kate Drummond will become executive managing editor of the group.

Univision’s digital, entertainment and news chief Isaac Lee told staffers in a memo that Cook’s team will report to Keith Summa, and that the changes will necessitate a search for an editor in chief of Gizmodo Media. The Root, a site that covers the African-American com-munity, will now fall under the oversight of Fusion editor in chief Dodai Stewart.

Donna Byrd, publisher of The Root, will remain in her role.

Fusion’s Real Future vertical, which covers technology, will be folded into Giz-modo. Real Future editor Kashmir Hill will find a new leadership role at Gizmodo.

Elsewhere, Lee said it is looking into extending Gizmodo’s brands, Jalopnik, Jezebel, Lifehacker and others into TV, while it “streamlines” its video production efforts across the company under Jigar Mehta. The exec laid out other initiatives including a newly formed podcast unit, the expansion of Rise Up, its social impact team and other things.

Lee ended his note offering: “Unfortu-nately, as a result of some of these chang-es, and along with a broader streamlining of operations across Univision, some posi-tions across FMG’s business, operations, and editorial teams are being eliminated. Constantly adjusting our scale and our processes is a reality of the business we are all in, and is not unique to us. As you

have all no doubt read in recent weeks, media companies of all sizes are having to better manage costs and staffing levels. For us, these necessary changes come as we look to strategically bring together several distinct digital media companies into one powerful and nimble digital pub-lishing entity, with many distinct passion points for many distinct, growing groups of readers, listeners and viewers.”

Univision had a third-quarter net loss of $30.5 million on total revenue of $735 million, down 8 percent. Fusion Media be-gan as a joint venture between Univision and Disney’s ABC, as an effort to appeal to Latino millennials. The new venture, which launched roughly three years ago, had reported steep losses approaching $20 million. Even though Fusion began to show improvements, which included a more refined editorial voice targeting young, multicultural consumers, ABC sold its 50 percent stake to Univision in April. — aLexandra steigrad

Fusion logo.

Laure Hériard Dubreuil at The Webster South Coast Plaza store.

Justin Timberlake in a Gilt exclusive with Trace Ayala.

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