PVH Open to Offers · dress worn with a Bochic green sapphire earring, Ileana Makri white gold...

Shine Of the Times

WWD

By VALERIE DEMICHEVA

WHEN REPORTS STARTED flying earlier this month that Nike fired the majority of its FuelBand team, many questioned whether it was a big white flag of surrender in the race for truly wearable tech.

Some even suggested that FuelBand layoffs and the tepid reception of Samsung’s Galaxy Gear may usher out the wearable tech revolution altogether — unless Apple does indeed save the day with an iWatch launch.

But the true believers on the front lines at the Smart Fabrics and Wearable Technology Conference in San Francisco last week viewed the FuelBand lay-offs as an inconsequential glitch on the road to wear-able-tech progress.

“It just might not be the product for the future,” said one attendee from the tech industry who requested ano-nymity. “It’s such a generic scoring system. If I’m scoring higher in fuel points it could be just because I’m ges-turing with my hand, not running. When you’re build-ing smart products you need to make sure that the info you’re grabbing can lead to insights for the consumer.”

Nike spokesman Brian Strong did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday, but pre-viously told CNET: “As a fast-paced, global business we continually align resources with business priori-ties. As our digital sport priorities evolve, we expect to make changes within the team, and there will be a small number of layoffs. We do not comment on indi-vidual employment matters.”

Business leaders continue to be keenly interested in the intersection of fashion and technology, and

By ARNOLD J. KARR

PVH CORP. is open to suggestion.Emanuel Chirico, chairman and chief executive

offi cer of the New York-based apparel giant, told the Nomura Retail Conference Monday that the company would consider selling some of its Heritage Brands group if the right offers came long, although it is not actively shopping Van Heusen, Arrow, Izod or the Speedo and Olga brands picked up in the 2013 acqui-sition of The Warnaco Group Inc.

Chirico was speaking at the Nomura Retail Conference in New York, where other speakers included Eric Wiseman, chairman, president and ceo of VF Corp., and Karen Hoguet, chief fi nancial offi cer of Macy’s Inc.

PVH sold its G.H. Bass & Co. footwear business to G-III Apparel Group Ltd. for $50 million last year and acknowledged at the time that the retail business at-tached to its Heritage Brands had struggled.

On Tuesday, Chirico noted, “The only business [in Heritage Brands] that’s really problematic for us is our retail business — Izod and Van Heusen. It’s about a $300 million business earning low-single-digit oper-ating margins.”

The wholesale businesses in Heritage Brands “added together are all well over 10 percent operating margin businesses,” meaning operating income exceeds 10 percent of revenues, “with very low capital invest-ment required. So 95 percent of the [earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization] really turns into cash fl ow for us to invest back into the high-growth Calvin [Klein] and Tommy [Hilfi ger] businesses. And so, we like that business model,” said Chirico.

Still, he added, “we continue to look at that port-folio and think about what might be pruned as we go forward or signifi cantly shrunk to maximize the re-turns on that business.”

Last year, Heritage Brands was responsible for $1.99 billion of PVH’s $8.19 billion in revenue, but,

SEE PAGE 9

SEEKING ‘RIGHT’ PRICE

PVH Open to OffersFor Heritage Brands

Pushing the Boundaries Of Fashion and Tech

SEE PAGE 8

A metallic streak ran through the fall runways as designers turned to alluring shiny surfaces. Here, House of Holland’s leather and tulle dress worn with a Bochic green sapphire earring, Ileana Makri white gold earring, Sequin ring and Peter Pilotto shoes. For more, see pages 4 and 5.

TUESDAY, APRIL 29, 2014 ■ $3.00 ■ WOMEN’S WEAR DAILY

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PHOTO BY HUGO ARTURI; STYLED BY MAYTE ALLENDE

LANVIN’S L.A. LADIES

EMMA ROBERTS WAS AMONG THE CELEBRITIES WHO TURNED OUT FOR THE FOUNDATION OF LIVING BEAUTY GALA IN L.A.,

SPONSORED BY LANVIN. PAGE 10

PERMANENT SPACEPERMANENT SPACECÉLINE AT LAST REPLACES ITS TEMPORARY STORE IN PARIS WITH A PERMANENT ONE

ON AVENUE MONTAIGNE. PAGE 9

JIL SANDER NAMES RODOLFO PAGLIALUNGA

ITS NEW CREATIVE DIRECTOR. PAGE 2

JIL’S NEW MAN

WWD.COMWWD TUESDAY, APRIL 29, 20142

TO E-MAIL REPORTERS AND EDITORS AT WWD, THE ADDRESS IS [email protected], USING THE INDIVIDUAL’S NAME. WWD IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF ADVANCE MAGAZINE PUBLISHERS INC. COPYRIGHT ©2014 FAIRCHILD FASHION MEDIA. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.VOLUME 207, NO. 86. TUESDAY, APRIL 29, 2014. WWD (ISSN 0149–5380) is published daily (except Saturdays, Sundays and holidays, with one additional issue in March, April, May, June, August, October, November and December, and two additional issues in February and September) by Fairchild Fashion Media, which is a division of Advance Magazine Publishers Inc. PRINCIPAL OFFICE: 750 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017. Shared Services provided by Condé Nast: S.I. Newhouse, Jr., Chairman; Charles H. Townsend, Chief Executive Officer; Robert A. Sauerberg Jr., President; John W. Bellando, Chief Operating Officer & Chief Financial Officer; Jill Bright, Chief Administrative Officer. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and at additional mailing offices. Canada Post Publications Mail Agreement No. 40644503. Canadian Goods and Services Tax Registration No. 886549096-RT0001. Canada Post: return undeliverable Canadian addresses to P.O. Box 503, RPO West Beaver Cre, Rich-Hill, ON L4B 4R6. POSTMASTER: SEND ADDRESS CHANGES TO WOMEN’S WEAR DAILY, P.O. Box 6356, Harlan, IA 51593. FOR SUBSCRIPTION, ADDRESS CHANGES, ADJUSTMENTS, OR BACK ISSUE INQUIRIES: Please write to WWD, P.O. Box 6356, Harlan, IA 51593, call 866-401-7801, or email customer service at [email protected]. Please include both new and old addresses as printed on most recent label. For New York Hand Delivery Service address changes or inquiries, please contact Mitchell’s NY at 1-800-662-2275, option 7. Subscribers: If the Post Office alerts us that your magazine is undeliverable, we have no further obligation unless we receive a corrected address within one year. If during your subscription term or up to one year after the magazine becomes undeliverable, you are ever dissatisfied with your subscription, let us know. You will receive a full refund on all unmailed issues. First copy of new subscription will be mailed within four weeks after receipt of order. Address all editorial, business, and production correspondence to WOMEN’S WEAR DAILY, 750 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017. For permissions requests, please call 212-630-5656 or fax the request to 212-630-5883. For reprints, please e-mail [email protected] or call Wright’s Media 877-652-5295. For reuse permissions, please e-mail [email protected] or call 800-897-8666. Visit us online at www.wwd.com. To subscribe to other Fairchild Fashion Media magazines on the World Wide Web, visit www.wwd.com/subscriptions. Occasionally we make our subscriber list available to carefully screened companies that offer products and services that we believe would interest our readers. If you do not want to receive these offers and/or information, please advise us at P.O. Box 6356, Harlan, IA 51593 or call 866-401-7801. WOMEN’S WEAR DAILY IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE RETURN OR LOSS OF, OR FOR DAMAGE OR ANY OTHER INJURY TO, UNSOLICITED MANUSCRIPTS, UNSOLICITED ART WORK (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, DRAWINGS, PHOTOGRAPHS, AND TRANSPARENCIES), OR ANY OTHER UNSOLICITED MATERIALS. THOSE SUBMITTING MANUSCRIPTS, PHOTOGRAPHS, ART WORK, OR OTHER MATERIALS FOR CONSIDERATION SHOULD NOT SEND ORIGINALS, UNLESS SPECIFICALLY REQUESTED TO DO SO BY WOMEN’S WEAR DAILY IN WRITING. MANUSCRIPTS, PHOTOGRAPHS, AND OTHER MATERIALS SUBMITTED MUST BE ACCOMPANIED BY A SELF-ADDRESSED STAMPED ENVELOPE.

Paglialunga Named Jil Sander Designer

Neiman’s Scaling Back in ChinaBy DAVID MOIN

THE NEIMAN MARCUS GROUP LTD. LLC is tak-ing another step back from its stake in China.

The Dallas-based luxury retailer is close to disclosing that it’s pulling out of its investment in Glamour Sales Holdings, the Asian-based e-com-merce site specializing in flash sales. An announce-ment could come as soon as today.

“They are actively looking for some new capi-tal,” said Ginger Reeder, NMG’s vice president of media relations and corporate giving. “We are a minority shareholder. We don’t have any interest in becoming a majority partner. We realize that may result in our exiting [Glamour Sales]. This is being driven by Glamour Sales.”

NMG continues to operate a Web site in China. While Neiman’s ships to many countries, China is the only country where the company has a dedicat-ed site — with Mandarin translation, size conver-sion charts and customized creative.

NMG recently decided not to hold inventory in Chinese warehouses and instead to ship to Chinese customers from the U.S. Glamour Sales had been handling the fulfillment from China. Neiman’s maintains a smaller China team now, of about two dozen workers, for customer care, marketing and the Web merchandising in Shanghai.

Reeder said that Neiman’s offers its full assort-ment in China. “Clearly with the business model operating now, we still believe there is potential [in China] or we wouldn’t have a site in Mandarin,” she said. “This is a better way for us to serve the Chinese customer. We have a much larger assort-ment now and they like to see the breadth of the assortment, particularly those who have traveled to

the U.S. and seen our stores. This is a much more efficient business model.”

In March 2012, Neiman’s disclosed a $28 million investment in Glamour Sales Holdings, and subse-quently invested another $10 million in Glamour, leading to a 44 percent stake. Glamour helped Neiman’s launch neimanmarcus.com.cn more than a year ago and also has helped migrate shoppers to the Neiman’s site. In addition to products, the site features editorial content, fashion expertise and behind-the-scenes videos about luxury brands. The partnership also involves Neiman’s helping Glamour Sales expand flash sales.

Neiman’s challenge is to get Chinese consum-ers more familiar with its brand through market-ing, fashion bloggers and editorial content. Last spring, the retailer staged its first fashion show in Mainland China in Shanghai’s historic Bund water-front to generate awareness. Neiman’s also wants more Chinese to shop Neiman’s stores in the U.S., including Bergdorf Goodman.

It’s rare for Neiman Marcus Group to invest in other brands but the company has taken significant stakes in a couple of high-profile firms in the last two decades. The luxury retailer acquired a 56 per-cent stake in Kate Spade in 1999 for $33.6 million, and expressed big plans for the brand, including store openings. However, in 2006, NMG sold Kate Spade for $124 million to Liz Claiborne, which pro-ceeded to more aggressively reinvigorate the brand.

NMG also once owned Gurwitch Products, the licensee of Laura Mercier. Gurwitch was founded in 1995 by Janet Gurwitch, who was a former ex-ecutive vice president at Neiman Marcus. In 1998, Neiman’s bought a 51 percent stake in Gurwitch but sold the company in 2006 to Alticor Inc. for an un-disclosed amount.

By LUISA ZARGANI

MILAN — After several good-byes, the Jil Sander group is ready to say hello to a new creative direc-tor — Italian designer Rodolfo Paglialunga. His first collection will bow in September for the spring 2015 season.

“He is the most fitting designer to write the new pages of the Jil Sander story,” chief executive of-ficer Alessandro Cremonesi told WWD. “He has the right characteristics and the experience to evolve the Jil Sander brand in a new direction while re-specting its essential traits.”

Paglialunga started honing his skills with Romeo Gigli in the early Nineties. In 1996, he joined Prada, where he worked for 10 years, eventually becoming women’s wear design director. In March 2009, attracted by his knack for arty cuts and con-structions, former Vionnet owners Matteo Marzotto and Gianni Castiglioni tapped the designer as cre-ative director of the brand. Paglialunga helped dust off Vionnet with his distinctive, glamorous shapes and rich textures, until he left the com-pany in fall 2011.

“I’m deeply honored to have the op-portunity to take on this role. I have boundless admiration for the brand as I strongly believe in its pure vision and values,” said Paglialunga. “My aim is to carry forward the fusion between so-phistication, luxury and innovation and bring the house [to] the next level.”

The designer, who hails from Tolentino, in Italy’s central Marche re-gion, will be based in Milan, where the company is headquartered. Cremonesi underscored that he had faith Paglialunga will ensure “an evolution, not a revolution” of the label.

While recognizing that he was “very happy” with the collections produced by the design team follow-ing the exit of the brand’s namesake designer in October 2013, Cremonesi said he felt a label must be “personified by a creative mind that will clear-ly indicate a direction.” A creative director will “channel the brand with retailers and the press. In fashion, this embodiment is important,” he added.

Asked if Sander herself had contributed to the selection of a successor, Cremonesi responded that this was “the company’s autonomous decision.”

While industry observers had expressed concern over the future of the brand following the sudden departure of Sander last year and the implica-tions of a disconnect from its founder, Cremonesi

was upbeat about the company’s yet-untapped po-tential. “The label has not been tied to its founder for a long time. A number of different designers have been in charge, and we are at ease about the strength and potential of the brand. It has an evolv-ing, independent history,” he remarked. “This is a multiyear agreement [with Paglialunga], and we reason in the medium-long term.”

Cremonesi also said owner Onward Holdings Co. Ltd. stands by the brand and firmly denied any idea of a sale of the business.

The label will “continue to be positioned in the high-end range,” and Cremonesi said a prior-ity is to develop the accessories category, specifi-cally handbags and shoes. He cited the Jil Bag as “a very successful” piece. The bag is being celebrated with a traveling exhibition hitting cities including Milan, Shanghai, Tokyo, Chicago, Paris, Berlin and Hamburg, Germany.

In 2014, Jil Sander will further develop its retail network, focusing on “America, which will become increasingly more important, given its growth po-tential; Asia, and Japan,” said Cremonesi. Last year,

the company entered China with stores in Beijing and Shanghai. There are cur-rently 59 Jil Sander stores globally.

Sales last year were “flat,” said the executive, standing at 100 million euros, or $132 million at average exchange. “The year 2013 was not easy for any-body in the industry, and our company was hit by currency headwinds, also in light of the fact that the brand has a rel-evant presence in Japan,” he explained.

In October, for personal reasons, Jil Sander stepped down from the com-pany she founded in 1968. She had re-turned for the third time to her name-sake brand in February 2012, after Raf

Simons’ seven-year tenure. Sander rose to fame in the Eighties and Nineties with her tailored ba-sics crafted from luxurious fabrics. The designer sold 75 percent of her company to Prada Group in 1999, and made a highly publicized exit a year later. She was succeeded by Milan Vukmirovic, who did sporty disco flash until Sander returned in May 2003, only to split again 18 months later. After her second departure, the brand’s creative reins were handed over to its long-standing design team.

Prada tapped Simons as Sander’s new creative director in July 2005. The brand changed hands two more times during Simons’ tenure. Change Capital Partners acquired Sander from Prada in February 2006 and sold it to Japan’s Onward Holdings two years later.

ON WWD.COM

THE BRIEFING BOXIN TODAY’S WWD

PVH Corp. isn’t looking to divest elements of its Heritage Brands group but would entertain offers for the brands in its portfolio. PAGE 1 The true believers in wearable tech were out in force at a conference in San Francisco. PAGE 1 Executives attending the American Apparel & Footwear Association’s sourcing conference recounted what a tumultuous and evolutionary year it has been for the industry. PAGE 6 Uniqlo has opened its fifth Paris store in a 19th-century former factory in the Marais district. PAGE 8 Céline has opened a two-floor, 6,500-square-foot store on Avenue Montaigne in Paris. PAGE 9 The Tribeca Film Festival wrapped up on a similar note to its opening night: with a musical ode to New York. PAGE 10 Ralph Lauren will travel to London for a two-day visit that will culminate with a gala in aid of The Royal Marsden Cancer Charity at Windsor Castle on May 13. PAGE 11 Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. has invested $1.22 billion in Internet television company Youku Tudou Inc. PAGE 12 A memorial service was held in London Monday for Beatrix Miller, the former editor of British Vogue. PAGE 12 The New York Times made its NewFront’s debut Monday morning at the Dia Art space in New York. PAGE 12

Gabrielle Ouellet is the subject of “Model Call” on WWD.com.

MODEL CALL: Gabrielle Ouellet, the 18-year-old Trump-repped model, talked to WWD about working at an ice cream shop, smiling (or not) for photos and her crush on Justin Bieber. For more, see WWD.com.

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CORRECTION

Designer Kris Van Assche was in Shanghai recently to present a repeat show of Dior Homme’s winter collection. The season was incorrect in a story in a Fashion Scoop on page 19, Monday.

Rodolfo Paglialunga

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4 WWD TUESDAY, APRIL 29, 2014

FALL’S SIMPLE SILHOUETTES TAKE A STRIKING TURN IN COLORFUL METALLICS.

Ostwald Helgason’s cellulose acetate, cotton and polyester top and skirt. Ileana Makri earrings; Sequin rings.

Timo Weiland’s lambskin leather top and skirt.

PHOTOS BY HUGO ARTURI

STYLED BY MAYTE ALLENDE

w29a004(5)a;12.indd 1 4/28/14 5:40 PM04282014174546

WWD.COM5WWD TUESDAY, APRIL 29, 2014

Abigail Stewart’s acetate shirt and skirt. Bochic earring.

Azede Jean-Pierre’s cotton

acetate and polyester

blazer and pants.

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WWD.COM6 WWD TUESDAY, APRIL 29, 2014

By KRISTI ELLIS

WASHINGTON — “If anyone in this room still questions Made in the USA as a financially viable option, that’s be-hind you,” Bill McRaith, chief supply chain officer of PVH Corp., said at the annual American Apparel & Footwear Association’s International Sourcing, Customs & Logistics Integration Conference. “It’s done. We are doing it. It has happened. I think there are 400 investments going on right now in South Carolina and its way beyond electronics and automotive. It is absolutely in the ap-parel sector.”

He said he visited South Carolina in

March and saw some of the biggest mills in China — a contingency of about 20 mills from the Shanghai area — look-ing to set up spinning capability “off of the back of $300 million in investment in spinning that is going on there today through key industries.

“We are very passionate about Made in America,” he said. “In fact, for the first time in 50 years, PVH is now manufac-turing shirts back in the U.S., in North Carolina today. We are scaling up quickly because it’s financially viable, not be-cause it’s a good thing to do, not because we can make a statement but because it financially makes sense to go make those products in that location. We can respond to the consumer so fast. It is completely irrelevant how much extra I have to pay for the product. I always make more when I sell. I may have to pay $5 extra [to produce it in the U.S.] but I will make $20 at retail.”

Rick Darling, executive director of government and public affairs at Li & Fung Trading Ltd., said in an interview that he has seen “tremendous inter-est and some movement” in Made in America but has not found “the need” in particular product categories to shift production back to the U.S.

“I think maybe you are seeing two kinds of things taking place [in the U.S.] — some is real niche manufacturing of higher-end products that can be turned very quickly close to home in New York and L.A. for example,” he said. “You are also seeing some investment in the Carolinas, in the South, of building com-modity-oriented basics and I think that is really healthy. I think that will continue.”

China, the top apparel supplier to the

U.S. with a 41.5 percent U.S. apparel im-port share, will continue to lose some of that share this year, Darling said.

“What we are saying is low value-add-ed product will continue to migrate out of China as minimum wage continues to increase,” Darling said. “The Chinese government has mandated a 13 percent annual increase in minimum wage over five years, starting a year ago, so by 2017, the minimum wage will have doubled and that will begin to minimize produc-tion in our areas.”

Executives attending the conference recounted what a tumultuous and evo-lutionary year it’s been for the industry. Mounting pressures in the supply chain, ranging from rising labor costs in China

to the fallout of the factory tragedies in Bangladesh, have dramatically changed the global sourcing paradigm, they said.

Sourcing experts examined how far they have come and how far they have to go in Bangladesh, where the Rana Plaza building housing several garment factories collapsed on April 24, 2013, co-

inciding with the first day of their confer-ence in Baltimore last year. The collapse claimed the lives of 1,132 people and spawned a global backlash and the launch of two retailer-brand safety initiatives.

“Day One of this conference last year was the day the news broke about the Rana Plaza collapse in Bangladesh,” said Bryan Wolfe, vice president of inter-national trade at Ann Inc. “So it was a bit of a dark cloud that hit our industry that day and it became a profound topic…what happened there has now permeated other places in the world.”

Bangladesh, currently the third-largest supplier to the U.S. apparel market be-hind Vietnam and China, is expected to see significant growth in apparel exports to the world because major companies are committed to improving building and fire safety there, according to Darling.

“Based on all of the information we have right now, Bangladesh exports [to the world] will actually be up this year over 2013,” Darling said. “In our own experience we are up in double digits in production in Bangladesh in 2014 over 2013.”

He said he expects apparel production in Vietnam to be “very strong” this year.

“Things are tightening up a little bit,” said Rick Helfenbein, president of Luen

Thai USA and AAFA chairman, in an in-terview. “This idea that all of the horses are running out of China isn’t really true. There has been a little bit of a drop off, but you have to look at China not just year-to-year but over the last four years. China has been going down slightly and Vietnam has been going up. If you look at the two of them together, they have al-most a 50 percent market share.”

Helfenbein said Luen Thai will re-main “very involved” in China this year and also seek new opportunities in Cambodia and Vietnam, where the company recently opened its first sew-ing facility, adding, “We see Vietnam and Cambodia as growth areas.”

The Trans-Pacific Partnership ne-gotiations between the U.S., Vietnam, Singapore, Australia, Peru, Brunei, New Zealand, Malaysia, Mexico, Canada and Japan could also profoundly impact ap-parel sourcing and was a key topic at the conference.

Kim Glas, deputy assistant secretary for textiles, consumer goods and materi-als at the Commerce Department, made the case for a yarn-forward rule of origin, which most apparel sourcing executives oppose, and also shed light on the U.S. tariff phaseout proposal in the TPP talks.

The U.S. has proposed a 15-year phase-out on tariffs of “sensitive” woven-product imports and a 10-year tariff phaseout on “sensitive” knit-product imports, although no consensus has been reached by all of the TPP partners, Glas said.

She also said the U.S. is seeking to find a balance between the domestic textile industry and apparel importer needs. To that end, the U.S. has proposed “substantial” duty cuts on some of the

most sensitive textile and apparel im-ports on Day One of the agreement en-tering into force. To provide even more opportunities and flexibility to U.S. im-porters, the U.S. has proposed a tempo-rary and permanent short supply list that would currently encompass about 190 product categories.

“In terms of the phaseout of duties, 15 years is a long time…for wovens,” as is 10 years for knits, said Tom Travis, managing partner of Sandler, Travis & Rosenberg, who was on a panel with Glas. “It’s not a criticism of what you are negotiating. It’s a reality for these people,” he said, adding that the long phaseout makes the TPP less attractive to importers. “It might be a negotiat-

ing issue for you, but it’s a commercial issue for us.”

In an interview, Glass said, “We’ve always had long tariff phaseouts on sen-sitive products. What we are providing here in TPP is substantial duty cuts on sensitive products on Day One. This is a different type of agreement and we have to be very mindful of our current free trade agreements with Central America, a major export destination for U.S. yarns and fabrics,” noting that apparel and textile imports from Vietnam have in-creased substantially without duty-free benefits. “Again, we have come up with a different paradigm on short supply that will allow a level of flexibility [for im-porters] up front in the agreement.”

Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.), chair-man of the Senate Finance Committee, which oversees trade and tax legisla-tion, told the AAFA members that he plans to craft his own trade-promotion authority bill, a tool that is seen as vital to the Executive Branch to complete trade deals, including the TPP, because it only allows Congress to vote for or against trade deals. Wyden’s insistence on crafting a new TPA bill indicates that he does not support a bipartisan, bicameral bill introduced in January, which could slow down the trade agen-da and prolong the conclusion of the TPP negotiations.

“Some would like to lay blame for lack of support for the TPA proposal recently introduced in Congress at the doorstep of the White House,” said Wyden, add-ing that the President and U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman are “having a difficult time selling a product that members are not thrilled about.”

textilesExecs Declare Made in USA Real Deal

’’

’’

We are very passionate about

Made in America. We are scaling up

quickly because it’s financially viable.

— BILL MCRAITH, PVH CORP.

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Kim Glas

Bill McRaith

Rick Darling

Sen. Ron Wyden

w29a006b;4.indd 6 4/28/14 4:54 PM04282014165527

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on being named Denim Brand of the Year

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The LYCRA® brand takes pride in supporting

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in your denim collections.


By JOELLE DIDERICH

PARIS — Uniqlo is getting conceptual.The Japanese fast-fashion giant has inaugurated a new

retail model with the opening of its fifth store here in a 19th-century former factory in the Marais district, where it is sell-ing clothes and accessories alongside a selection of other products, including books.

Yuki Katsuta, head of research and design at Uniqlo, said the store, at number 39 Rue des Francs-Bourgeois, was de-signed as a flagship retail destination highlighting “the cool-est Japanese lifestyle concept.”

“We are thinking of making that store…one of the best fashion-message concept stores in the world. Mainly we’re going to be merchandising Uniqlo products. We may also mix in some different items, maybe books, maybe furni-ture,” he explained.

“It’s supposed to be a completely different store to any other store,” said Katsuta, adding that the concept could be rolled out eventually to other cities.

Designed by Tokyo-based interior design firm Wonderwall, the store spans just over 8,800 square feet across three floors.

Located in a former jewelry-waste foundry, it juxtaposes modern elements like digital screens and LED displays with original features such as an imposing 115-foot red-brick chim-ney, which literally soars through the shop’s glass rooftop.

“Please visit downstairs,” encouraged Berndt Hauptkorn, Uniqlo’s chief operating officer of Europe, during the inau-gural party on Thursday. “We created a museumlike atmo-sphere,” he noted, calling the place “a ruin” when the com-pany spotted it.

On display are several of the old, highly specialized tools for cleaning and recycling gold and other precious materials,

as well as a mock-up of the former factory.

Uniqlo has ventured beyond clothing before: In September 2012, it opened Bigqlo, a collab-oration with Japanese electronics retailer Big Camera, in Tokyo.

The Marais opening is part of an aggressive overseas growth drive that could see parent company Fast Retailing Co. Ltd. open between 100 and 300 Uniqlo stores outside Japan in 2014. Earlier this month saw the opening of the first Uniqlo store in Germany, the largest in Europe, and another in Melbourne, Australia.

The maker of light-weight down jack-ets and the popular

HeatTech line of thermal underwear also plans to open its first French store outside Paris, in the Mediterranean port city of Marseille, later this spring.

The Marais store is the smallest to date for Uniqlo in the French capital. Its flagships at Opéra and La Défense clock in at 21,500 square feet and 17,200 square feet, respectively, while the Uniqlo stores at the So Ouest and Beaugrenelle shopping malls both span around 10,650 square feet.

That required a more selective approach to merchandis-ing, said Jörgen Andersson, who joined Uniqlo from Esprit Holdings Ltd. in January as co-global chief marketing offi-cer. To wit: The store’s offer hones in on the spring collec-tion designed in collaboration with Parisian style icon Inès de la Fressange, who attended a presentation held at the new space a couple of weeks before the opening.

Andersson hailed the store as exemplifying a new re-tail model.

“The Marais as a district has really made itself known for being very creative. I mean, every company that comes there has been trying to preserve what has been there from the past and really respect the historical heritage of the area, and add something new to it, mixing the old and the new,” he noted.

“It’s much more back to where we used to be. Instead of going downtown to big flagships locations, we like to shop in the neighborhood where we live, where you have your local butcher, your local grocery store, your local Uniqlo store,” he added.

“I think that’s quite interesting. I could personally see that coming in London or any other big city around the world.”

The opening was accompanied by an outdoor advertis-ing campaign featuring four local personalities: director and actress Géraldine Nakache and DJs Brodinski, Mouloud Achour and Inès Mélia. The four were photographed by Thomas Lohr and styled by Jonathan Kaye.

— WITH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM PAULINA SZMYDKE

Looks from Uniqlo’s UT collection.

research and development people from Apple and Disney were checking out the scene at the confer-ence, although declining to comment.

From the presentations and booths at the con-ference, it is apparent that the machines are still firing up for the future. Companies such as Seattle-based startup Heapsylon presented socks made out of undisclosed “propriety 100 percent textile sen-sors” called Sensoria. The conductive material can track steps, calories, speed, distance and stride. Textile sensors and a detachable anklet power the socks. When the wearer is stagnant for too long, the sock can be programmed to alert them to move. It can even tell loved ones that the wearer has had an accidental fall. But its main hook is that it gives runners gait and speed analysis for long-term tracking or imme-diate cyber coaching.

For other compa-nies, technology is pro-viding a natural assist to safety. Reebok pre-sented Checklight, a skullcap that senses the intensity of hits during high-impact sports such as football. The light on the caps glow green, yellow or red depend-ing on the likelihood of concussion, a condition that often goes unat-tended in sports.

The question that Reebok’s vice president of advanced concepts Paul Litchfield posed was: How can one cre-ate a product that’s going to be used for a long time and not sim-ply seen as a novelty?

It seems that for the Reeboks and Heapsylons of the wearable tech revolution, the answer is to become indispensable to athletes who set the trends for the increasingly fitness-crazed masses.

For products and designers on the other end of the fashion spectrum, the path is perhaps not as simple and the value proposition is less utilitarian. Representing this camp at the conference were companies focusing on style with the help of 3-D printers and LEDs, or light emitting diodes.

While LEDs within apparel feel very futuristic, they’ve actually been around for longer than some fledgling designers have been alive. Today, it seems like only early adopters of style — performers such as Katy Perry — can get away with a bra top that outshines the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree. But many forget that regular civilians have been playing with LEDs since the Nineties when the popular LA Gear sneakers lit up footsteps across the nation (they’re still available at Sears for those feeling nostalgic).

For Anouk Wipprecht, an artist in residence at Autodesk, a 3-D software design corporation, the arts of 3-D printing and sensing technology come to-gether in a collection of dresses called Intimacy 2.0, which become transparent and sexier according to biometrics. She calls these plays with transparency a “dialect” between the wearer and the dress.

Another 3-D designer, Julia Koerner, presented a dress called Hybrid Holism, which was almost translucent to start and meant to serve as a sec-

ond skin. Koerner, an architect by trade, discussed a 3-D tech-nique called Mammoth Stereol i thography, which uses laser beams to harden polymers and transform them into fashion statements.

Her engineering background leads the way for her designs. “I wouldn’t say there’s a lot of difference be-tween designing struc-tures and couture,” said Koerner. “My ar-chitectural background and knowledge in computational design methods allow me to be able to create these complex 3-D models. These dresses are very expensive to produce and, besides various small test prints, you do not have a second chance to print the whole dress twice. Whatever I do in the 3-D file has to be per-fect and work out.”

Koerner has col-laborated with Iris van Herpen and her couture pieces have appeared on runway shows in Paris. But her view on wearability is realistic: “Currently the designs are still rather

uncomfortable due to the fact that the materials are still very hard, but I think the more flexible the ma-terial gets the more comfortable it will be to wear such garments. There is a difference between haute couture pieces, which are meant to be exhibited in a museum as an art piece and ready-to-wear fashion clothes. I don’t think we are quite there yet to talk about the clothes and their comfort parameter.”

The tech trend is set apart by its transitive nature. By way of 3-D printer, anyone can download and

print a gown for free off of Thingiverse.com, an open-source file-sharing site for makers. The high fashion Francis Bitonti Studio Dress has seen 2,353 downloads since it was published on March 11.

The hope, at least among some in the tech set, is that this new spirit of sharing could unlock couture for all.

But the rest of fashion is left to wonder when wearable technology will be ready for prime time and, if that moment does come, what it will mean for the industry at large.

Uniqlo’s 5th Paris Unit Launches New Model

Wearable Tech Still Seeks Its Place{Continued from page one}

Intimacy 2.0 dresses are made of leather and smart e-foils, which can become transparent according to the wearer’s mood.

Made by Art Center College of Design students, Axiom suits correct posture during weight training by vibrating.

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By LAUREN MCCARTHY

MARCHESA IS entering the world of fine jewelry. Designers Georgina Chapman and Keren Craig have inked a licensing deal with Prestige Jewelry to produce their foray into jewelry.

The debut collection, due out for holiday, will focus entirely on bridal and complement the brand’s bridal collection. “Our bridal business is growing rap-idly over the past few years, so it seems like a natural fit to offer jewelry in the market,” explained chief ex-ecutive officer Edward Chapman. The bridal line will consist of 20 different styles, primarily consisting of engagement rings and wedding bands. Stud earrings, pendants and solitaire stones will also be included, with prices ranging from $2,000 to more than $20,000. “The bridal business is really a very steady business,” said Rajiv Kothari, ceo of Prestige Jewelry. “It’s the

right place to launch and really get our feet into the market and establish ourselves in that space.”

The line will expand beyond bridal for spring 2015 with a full range of styles in colored gemstones and diamonds. Both collections will be available ex-clusively at select Macy’s stores and on macys.com beginning in November.“Macy’s has been a really great business partner for years,” said Kothari. “We really like the direction that Macy’s has been tak-ing overall as a company. In terms of retail, they are being very innovative and taking all the right steps to connect with the customer on all the right levels.”

Kothari sees the Marchesa customer as well versed in the realm of fine jewelry. “It’s someone who really appreciates details,” he said. “It’s some-one who wants to step outside of the regular en-gagement rings that are out there. Bridal is a chal-lenging space, and a conservative marketplace. It’s all in the detail and the quality.”

Marchesa Enters Fine Jewelry


By MILES SOCHA

PARIS — Phoebe Philo has finally bid adieu to Céline’s “temporary” store on Rue François 1er in Paris — after more than four years in the raw, no-frills space — and de-camped to a light-filled bou-tique at 53 Avenue Montaigne.

Roughly double the size of those temporary digs, the new 6,500-square-foot location sprawls over two floors, con-nected by a coiling staircase in cement and pale oak, and gives ample showcase to Philo’s ready-to-wear, leather goods, footwear, eyewear and costume jewelry collections.

The unit opened to the pub-lic Monday, and was unveiled via newspaper ads, outdoor ad-vertising and a mass e-mail.

Residential in feel, the store boasts views of a leafy court-yard, and is appointed here and there with cream sofas, armchairs, area rugs and pot-ted tropical plants.

The main floor, paved in large squares of gray Vicenza stone, is dedicated mainly to leather goods, including three travertine shelves exalting ver-sions of the label’s most popu-lar handbag styles in colorful precious skins.

Leather totes and cross-body bags hang from a sculp-tural steel rack by the Danish artist known as Fos, who also

designed bloblike terra-cotta flower pots, brass light fixtures, some shelving units, brass trays and even a water decanter and matching glasses.

Upstairs, shoppers alight on a large area dedicated to footwear, a low bench ringing a

hefty pillar. Next to it is a spa-cious rtw salon, its living-room vibe heightened by the sofas and pale parquet: broad planks of Danish oak arranged in a point de Hongrie pattern.

Chunky marble and onyx cubes are dotted throughout the boutique, and large slabs of colorful stone are embedded in

the floor under clothing rails, or wrapped around pillars.

Céline declined to provide first-year sales projections, though it has said in the past that the François 1er location was its highest-grossing unit worldwide.

The high-profile Paris lo-cation — in a Haussmann-era building next to new-look bou-tiques by Saint Laurent, Fendi and Chanel — is one of 15 new Céline stores slated to open this year. The French firm is part of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, which reported sales in its fashion and leather goods division vaulted 11 per-cent in the first quarter to 2.6 billion euros, or $3.6 billion.

Among scheduled open-ings are a 7,000-square-foot unit with 90 feet of frontage on Omotesando in Tokyo, slated to open May 31. A 5,900-square-foot location at IFS in Chengdu, one of the richest and fastest-growing cities in China, opened earlier this month.

A 4,300-square-foot store in Crystals at CityCenter in Las Vegas is slated to open May 14 and another on Wooster Street in New York’s SoHo district is budgeted for late August.

LVMH, which owns the handsome, prow-shaped build-ing on François 1er that had housed Céline’s temporary store, has yet to indicate which of its luxury brands might take over the retail space.

Larger Céline Unit Opens in Paris Warming Up to Herrera

{Continued from page one}

on an adjusted basis, $154.1 million of its $966.9 billion in earnings before in-terest and taxes. The retail component of Heritage Brands lost $24.4 million on a GAAP basis and $4.2 million on an ad-justed basis on $547 million in revenues.

“When you have a business like that,” Chirico said of Heritage Brands, “you’re al-ways looking at the components of that busi-ness and judging if they’re adding value or not, are they strategic or not. So there are some assets in there that, if the right offer was made, then we could see ourselves get-ting out of some of those businesses.”

While the divestiture of existing busi-nesses was characterized as a possibility, the PVH executive was more definitive in his discussion about picking up the rights to Tommy Hilfiger businesses outside North America and Europe, which are al-ready operated directly by PVH. Chirico pointed out that there are opportunities to bring in-house Tommy Hilfiger busi-nesses in South Korea and China and other locales in central and Southeast Asia as well as in Brazil that today are a “$500 million sales opportunity that’s being done by licensing partners” or through joint-venture partners.

“We have relatively short-term licens-es or areas where we have an option to buy a licensing partner or a joint venture partner out of those arrangements over the next three to five years,” he said.

All told, conversion of Hilfiger and Calvin Klein licenses and joint-venture arrangements could translate into be-tween $1.5 billion and $2.5 billion in sales beyond 2015 or 2016.

With the Warnaco acquisition, he said that PVH now has “control over all of the markets with just about all of the product categories that we would want for Calvin Klein.”

PVH continues to work towards re-building its Calvin Klein jeans business, acquired with the purchase of Warnaco, and Chirico said that PVH is seeing signs of progress, with many department stores

committing to shops for the second half of the year as PVH puts more effort into the product, systems marketing and point-of-sale support. He noted that last year the Calvin Klein brand grew between 8 and 10 percent in U.S. department stores, “and that’s with the jeans business down double digits in both men’s and women’s.”

In Europe, the Calvin Klein Jeans business is about $500 million but not profitable and weak on representation outside its strongest markets, Spain and Italy, two of the nations hardest hit by the euro zone crisis.

Of the $7.8 billion in retail sales generated by the Calvin Klein brand

worldwide, about 57 percent is in North America, or about $4.4 billion, and “a little over $1 billion,” mostly from jeans, underwear and fragrance, in Europe. He referred to Europe as “total white space” for the Calvin Klein brand, especially once the integration of the Warnaco busi-ness is successfully completed.

“No sportswear, no footwear, no mean-ingful accessories business,” he said. “There’s huge growth potential in Europe for the brand, similar to how the Tommy Hilfiger brand has been developed.”

Ideally, Calvin Klein could “mirror the product diversification and country

diversification” that PVH has with its Tommy Hilfiger business.

As he has in numerous exchanges with analysts and the press, Chirico noted that the Calvin Klein underwear business re-mains “healthy” and “profitable.”

Wiseman focused his presentation on macroeconomic factors and how they are impacting VF. Among his key points were:n “In general, we think the middle- and lower-income U.S. consumer is under a lot of pressure. They don’t have a lot of disposable income. When you come through a winter like this, when they’ve had to spend more to heat their homes…just something that takes discretionary income away from something else, and that’s not the kind of consumer spend-ing that shows up in the store.…For us to grow, we have to be able to gain share with them.…And we’ve been able to grow because we have been able to speak to them in a way that is relevant to them.”n “And we have seen the Chinese econo-my slow down, the consumer economy, a little bit, still leading as the fastest-grow-ing consumer economy in the world. But it’s not growing superhigh single digits, it’s come off that a couple of points. Still a great place to do business if you have platforms and know how to make money. It’s hard to get started there, really hard.”n “We said…when we announced our five-year plan last June that we were going to take [the e-commerce] busi-ness from $250 million to $750 million by growing it 25 percent a year.…We’re run-ning slightly ahead of that growth rate, which doesn’t surprise us. But if there’s a channel of distribution that’s growing faster than all others, that’s the one, and we’re beginning to get good at it.”

Hoguet touched on a variety of points, including Amazon, Bloomingdale’s and Macy’s omnichannel efforts:n “Amazon is coming. They’re trying, they’re working on it. Not having stores will be a disadvantage to them in the apparel world. The real fashion customers love

to shop. They love the ability to return in store. We offer the ability to ship returns to distribution centers for free, but nobody is using it. When they do come into the store, that’s a reason to sell them something else.”n “We started a Bloomingdale’s out-let strategy, opened 13 stores and then we paused. We wanted to make sure we learned where they did well and where they didn’t do well. Terry [Lundgren, chairman and ceo of Macy’s Inc.] is now ready to start looking at real estate and rolling out [outlets] for 2015. We’re ac-tually quite bullish on the outlets for Bloomingdale’s. People ask, ‘Are you going to start an outlet strategy for Macy’s?’ I think it would be a bad idea be-cause the prices aren’t that different than an outlet. We’re not talking about hun-dreds of stores, but a lot more than 13. It brings new customers to the base store.”n “Single View of Inventory is when you have two buyers, but one set of eyes watch-ing where you put the inventory. Dresses was one of first business where we began piloting this omnichannel collaboration. We’ve really improved the assortment. There were some dresses we didn’t have in some stores. Now, if an Internet sale comes back to the store, we have a full-size range of the dress so it wouldn’t be an au-tomatic markdown. We’re going to roll this out and test it in other families of busi-ness, and Bloomingdale’s will be doing a similar test.”n “We didn’t think buy online pickup in store was going to be important to our customers. We tested in the Washington area in 10 stores and we were wrong. Customers loved it. By July, we’ll have it in every single store. The technology we built has the ability to see real-time in-ventory by location. We don’t fully know how this is going to work, but we like what we saw. We built the technology to be able to get us to same-day delivery when we do that.”

— WITH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM SHARON EDELSON

PVH Could Reduce Heritage Portfolio

NEW YORK — September might seem eons away on the fash-ion calendar, but the Couture Council of The Museum at FIT got a jump on its annual fall lun-cheon by hosting a warm-up one Monday for this year’s honoree, Carolina Herrera.

While guests like Yaz Hernandez, Alexandra Kotur, FIT’s Joyce Brown and Valerie Steele, and this year’s cochairs Julie Macklowe and Elizabeth Musmanno wound their way through the designer’s Madison Avenue boutique for an air-kiss or two, models passed by in looks from Herrera’s archives collec-tion. Once seated, they viewed a sampling of designs from Herrera’s archive, spring, pre-fall and fall collections. During lunch, the modeling stopped any thank-goodness-winter-is-over conversations cold and prompt-ed such exclamations as, “Is that one going to the Met ball?” Another guest said of an all-gray, fur-lined ensemble, “I’ll take one of those in aisle two. That’s in my color wheel — even if it wasn’t, I’d still take it.”

At one point, Herrera, who will receive the 2014 Couture Council Award for Artistry of Fashion on Sept. 3, tried to cool all the attention. While the coun-cil’s chairwoman Hernandez spoke of the upcoming “lovefest for Carolina” and raved about the designer being “a megastar” for Latinas, the designer jokingly fanned herself, which only lead to

another compliment. “Of course, everybody knows she’s a fabulous designer. But does everybody know that she is so witty and funny, and a really good friend? As my Venezuelan husband would say, ‘She embodies the best of Venezuela,’” Hernandez said.

Steele seemed to agree, not-ing the expected 600-plus crowd will call for extra tables at the David H. Koch Theater event. With the official tribute still months away, Herrera said she is not quite ready for that occa-sion. “I am ready for resort, and the Met ball. And I’m leaving for a wedding in London Wednesday, but I’m coming back on Sunday. It’s Taki Theodoracopulos’ daughter [Mandolyna]. Reinaldo is there and the girls are coming. They are like family.”

— ROSEMARY FEITELBERG

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adding value or not, are they strategic or not. — EMANUEL CHIRICO, PVH

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THE TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL wrapped up Saturday on a similar note to its opening night: with a musical ode to New York.

The closing-night film was “Begin Again,” a dramedy starring Keira Knightley and Adam Levine, the Maroon 5 front man, as a musician couple who move to the East Village in search of fame and glory. Levine’s character finds success — and hordes of adoring female fans — and the pair break up, leaving Knightley’s character alone to record her own album, which she does with the help of a failing music executive played by Mark Ruffalo. It played like a big-budget version of “Inside Llewyn Davis.”

The movie delivers two firsts — Knightley’s debut as a singer and Levine’s debut as an actor.

“[Levine] kept going, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing, I don’t know what I’m doing,’” Knightley recalled. “But he’s such a natural entertainer. He has a boundless amount of energy; he just sort of throws it at you and you sort of pin it back at him.” Levine, who walked the carpet of the Chanel-sponsored premiere with fiancée Behati Prinsloo in a decidedly un-rock ’n’ roll navy suit, could relate to his character’s career trajectory. His band’s first incarnation, then called Kara’s Flowers,

did not have auspicious beginnings. “We were 18 and graduated high

school and thought we were going to be rock stars,” he said. “Within six months, we were dropped from the label. Basically we were a miserable failure.”

The film’s stars, including Hailee Steinfeld, were joined at an after party at the Tribeca Grill by festival founder Robert De Niro, his wife Grace Hightower and Mayor Bill de Blasio and his wife, Chirlane

McCray. De Blasio, who just stepped out for his first major social event as mayor last week, seems to be enjoying rubbing shoulders with the movie crowd.

“It was compelling, a love letter to New York, for sure,” the mayor said of the movie. “It’s very interesting to see your city again in a different way and sort of fall in love with it again…it had this beautiful sense of New York togetherness, the way anything can happen in New York.”

And how was Levine’s debut?

“It was kind of a tough role to play because he didn’t get to exactly be the good guy,” de Blasio said. “He was believable as the not-good guy, so I guess that

shows acting chops, right?” Everybody’s a critic.

— KRISTEN TAUER

MILAN-BASED Francesco Vezzoli described Los Angeles as “a city that has adopted me,” but judging from his latest oeuvre, “Cinema Vezzoli,” which opened at the city’s Museum of Contemporary Art on Sunday, it seems the relationship is reciprocal. Part of the artist’s three-museum series, titled “The Trinity,” (“Galleria Vezzoli” bowed at Rome’s MAXXI last year and “The Church of Vezzoli” will open in New York’s MoMA PS1 later this year), “Cinema Vezzoli” occupies four of MOCA’s galleries: one filled with celebrity portraits in star-shaped frames, another with embroidered portraits, a third with giant fictional movie posters and a fourth transformed into a

screening room complete with vintage chairs.

On Friday, MOCA trustees Maria Bell and David Johnson, along with their spouses Bill and Suzanne, respectively, toasted the opening with a dinner at

Hollywood’s oldest restaurant, Musso and Frank Grill. “It’s fitting that this place is on the Walk of Fame,” said Maria Bell. China Chow, Bret Easton Ellis, Liz Goldwyn, Eli Broad,

Eugenio López, Scott Sternberg and Kate and Laura Mulleavy sipped martinis in the railcar-style bar before retreating to the main dining room, whose slightly musty air only seemed to add to the atmosphere.

Vezzoli himself appeared just in time for dinner, seated between

Maria Bell and MOCA director Philippe Vergne. “Friendship is more important than art,” Vezzoli said as he greeted some old friends who flew in from Europe for the occasion.

Fittingly, photographer Matthew Rolston said he had just shot the artist for Italian Vanity Fair, in the manner of George Hurrell. “It was great fun,” Rolston said. “Getting him dressed up like an Old Hollywood icon.”

The following night, the Foundation for Living Beauty and its founder, Amie Satchu, threw its third annual fund-raiser, this year sponsored by Lanvin. The affair boasted a runway presentation of the house’s Hiver 2014 pre-collection, following in the well-heeled footsteps of Tom Ford shows the last two years.

The French fashion house’s touches were seen throughout the night, from the bevy of Lanvin-clad starlets including Emmy Rossum and Rashida Jones, to the glittering mannequins on display. A silent auction preceded the garden presentation, during which

Rossum called out from her front-row seat and demanded the opportunity to bid on a private dinner party. “She’s shameless,” quipped Satchu of Rossum, who conveniently lives three doors down. She failed to note the irony (Rossum stars on Showtime’s “Shameless.”)

Also occupying the front row were guests Olivia Munn (who was spotted leaving midshow), Ashley Madekwe and Emma Roberts. The show featured 27 looks and ended on a celebratory note with models tossing handfuls of confetti into the audience. “I want all of the gorgeous long black dresses that I’m just dying over. I love all of their collections and each one is just so different,” mused Roberts postshow.

“Once Upon a Time” star Jennifer Morrison also came to lend support, but admitted there would be no late-night festivities in store for her, noting that the next day marked her first day on set as a director for the short film “Warning Labels.”

“This will be a very in-control evening for me, but it’s a great cause,” she said. “We start filming tomorrow at 1 p.m. — I can’t wait to say, ‘Action.’”

— MARCY MEDINA AND LESLEY MCKENZIE

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Emma Roberts in Lanvin.

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Rossum, both in Lanvin.

Rashida Jones in Lanvin.

Adam Levine in Prada and Keira Knightley in Chanel haute couture.

Mayor Bill de Blasio

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Bone’s surf-inspired Numbers T-shirts, introduced in the men’s spring 2013 collection. They’re available in black, cream and dark green and will sell for $55 at Holt Renfrew stores across Canada as of May 9. — JESSICA IREDALE

MALIBU MIX: Oliver Peoples feted its new Oliver Peoples West collection on Saturday with an outdoor exhibit in Malibu, Calif., by two-time world champion surfer and photographer, Daize Shayne Goodwin. Never-before-seen prints of surf legends from Goodwin’s Ohana series were on display poolside at a private home, as were the beach- and sports-friendly frames, priced at $265 to $295.

“These were taken in 1999 when pioneer surfers really helped shape the culture,” said the Kauai, Hawaii, native, one of the original Roxy girls who has also been sponsored by Vans and Hurley.

“We wanted to do something different, that helps show the collection in a more

authentic way,” said Oliver Peoples chief executive officer David Schulte. Joining Japanese surfer Takuji Masuda, who hosted the event, were Anthony Kiedis and Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Lydia Hearst, Fuschia Kate Sumner and Sanoe Lake. — MARCY MEDINA

LONDON TIME: Ralph Lauren is headed to London. The designer will travel to the British capital for a two-day visit that will culminate with a gala in aid of The Royal Marsden Cancer Charity at Windsor Castle on May 13. The day before, Lauren will tour the Royal Marsden, a specialist cancer treatment center in London’s Chelsea. The charity’s patron is Queen Elizabeth II and its president is the Duke of Cambridge. — SAMANTHA CONTI

CHANGES ON THE VINCE BOARD: Jill Granoff, chief executive officer of Vince Holding Corp., has been named chairman of the board. She succeeds Christopher T. Metz, who has resigned. In addition, Jason Neimark resigned from the board. Neither resignation involved a disagreement with the company or any matter relating to the company’s operations, policies or practices, according to an 8-K filed Monday.

T. Scott King, managing director of Sun Capital Partners, and Jonathan H. Borell, principal of Sun Capital Partners, were named to the board, filling the vacancies created by the resignations of Metz and Neimark.

The company also expanded the size of the board to nine members and appointed Marc Leder, co-ceo of Sun Capital Partners, to the board. Mark Brody, managing director and group chief financial officer of Sun Capital, was named lead independent director. As reported, Eugenia Ulasewicz joined the board earlier this month.

— LISA LOCKWOOD

BANKING ON BRAZIL: Farfetch is training the spotlight on Brazilian design talent with a new shop that stocks 15 of the country’s hottest brands. Destination Brazil will launch as a shop-in-shop on Farfetch.com on Wednesday, with labels such as Osklen, Martha Medeiros, Lenny Niemeyer, Patricia Viera and Giuliana Romanno. The timing is meant to tie in with this summer’s World Cup in Brazil, and Farfetch will be promoting the project with dedicated editorial and fashion shoots on the site. “It’s the first time on the site that we’re giving Brazilian designers a presence outside Brazil,” said José Neves, the company’s founder and chief executive officer. “We’ve been operating a local version of Farfetch in Brazil with 90 designers. And we have 50 people in our office in São Paulo. But we’ve been selling to Brazil only and exploring the domestic market.”

Of the 90 designers, Neves said he and his team chose 15 for Destination Brazil, based on their potential appeal to a global audience. “A lot of the labels are atelier-based and ethically sourced. This is not mass fashion but luxury made in Brazil,” he said. Some of the designers will be in London this week to launch the project, meet with local retailers and visit the Farfetch offices.

Neves said Brazil has been a vibrant market for Farfetch. While there are no immediate plans to replicate Destination Brazil for designers in other markets, Neves said his message is clear: “I want to show how the Internet — and Farfetch — can be a platform for different geographies,” he said. “We’re not a London or New York-centric group of buyers. There are 25 countries represented on Farfetch.” — S.C.

APPLE SEED: Could Apple be angling for an address on Manhattan’s Upper

East Side? There are rumors that the tech company wants to roost with fashionable names such as David Webb, Milly and Ralph Lauren. According to sources, Apple is circling 940 Madison Avenue near 74th Street, a former 1921 bank building that’s now home to VBH. The store has 4,000 square feet of space on the ground floor, 4,000 square feet in the basement and a 1,000-square-foot mezzanine.

V. Bruce Hoeksema, designer and owner of VBH, the Rome-based luxury brand, hired Peter Marino to transform the space with his signature luxurious style. Apple, no doubt would renovate the space in line with its sleek minimalist aesthetic. “We’ve made no announcement about a store in that location,” said an Apple spokeswoman.

— SHARON EDELSON

CH. 11 FOR CAROL’S DAUGHTER FREESTANDING STORES: CD Stores LLC, formerly known as Carol’s Daughter Stores LLC, is in bankruptcy. CD Stores on Thursday filed a voluntary Chapter 11 petition in a Manhattan bankruptcy court. The filing listed assets and liabilities each in the range of $1 million to $10 million. The parent company and owner of the Carol’s Daughter brand, Carol’s Daughter Holdings LLC, did not file for bankruptcy court protection. The brand

sells natural beauty products for hair, body and skin care.

In a filing with the court signed by John D. Elmer, the chief financial officer and chief operating officer for Carol’s Daughter Holdings, said the plan is to restructure operations for the two New York stores. The locations are at 125th Street in Harlem and at the Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn. CD Stores is the guarantor on the 125th Street store lease. Carol’s Daughter products are sold on the company Web site and via other sites. — VICKI M. YOUNG

ACED-D IT: The Accessories Council has rolled out it first round of honorees for the 18th annual ACE Awards, which will be held Nov. 3 at Cipriani 42nd Street in Manhattan. InStyle’s Hal Rubenstein will host the ceremony, which also marks the Accessories Council’s 20th anniversary. Proenza Schouler will take home Designer of the Year; Kate Spade New York will be honored with Brand of the Year, and Shinola will be honored with the Brand Launch award.

Other honorees include: Oliver Peoples for business visionary, Google Glass for fashion and technology, Lord & Taylor for retailer of the year and Alex & Ani for speciality retailer. Guy Trebay of The New York Times will receive the Marylou Luther Journalism Award, while Rose Marie Bravo will receive the Leadership Award. Additionally, Bulgari will receive the Legacy Award, and Salvatore Ferragamo will be honored with the Hall of Fame Award. The council will reveal additional honorees and sponsors closer to the ceremony date. — LAUREN MCCARTHY

TOTES FOR TOTS: For the ninth installment of its Project H collaboration, Holt Renfrew has partnered with Rag & Bone for three limited-edition canvas totes. All proceeds will benefit Right to Play, a global organization that uses the transformative power of play to educate and empower children facing adversity.

The totes are a riff on Rag &

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By LARA FARRAR

SHANGHAI — Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. has invested $1.22 billion in Youku Tudou Inc., China’s largest Internet television company.

Youku Tudou announced the investment late Monday.Alibaba’s investment in Youku Tudou comes ahead of

the e-commerce company’s upcoming initial public offer-ing, which analysts project could be one of the largest in history. The IPO is projected to come within the next few days in the U.S.

Yunfeng Capital, a Chinese private equity firm, is also joining Alibaba in the billion-dollar purchase of class A ordinary shares from Youku Tudou.

Alibaba and Yunfeng will indirectly hold approxi-mately 16.5 percent and 2 percent respectively of the shares, according to a statement issued by Youku Tudou.

In recent months, Alibaba has engaged in a wide-spread investment spree that has extended into the

U.S. market. The company has an-nounced the estab-lishment of an e-commerce Web site in America via two of its subsidiaries.

I n M a r c h , Alibaba agreed to invest $692 million in Chinese depart-

ment store company Intime Retail to create “online-to-offline” retail opportunities. Also in March, Alibaba an-nounced the purchase of a 60 percent stake in Chinese television and film production firm ChinaVision Media Group Ltd. for $804 million.

A rationale for the investment in Youku Tudou was not provided. A recent study from the Boston Consulting Group on China’s e-commerce industry noted that Youku Tudou is one of the top-five Web sites where Chinese Internet users spend a disproportion-ate amount of time. Many brands have turned to Youku Tudou as an advertising platform as opposed to more traditional media channels.

Alibaba executive chairman Jack Ma said in a state-ment that the investment would support Youku Tudou’s “innovation in this key emerging space as well as ac-celerate our digital entertainment and video content strategy. This is an important strategic initiative that will further extend the Alibaba ecosystem and bring new products and services to Alibaba’s customers.”

NYT BETS ON VIDEO: The New York Times made its NewFront’s debut Monday morning at the Dia Art space in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood. Bruce Headlam, the Times’ managing editor of video, started the hour-long presentation with an overview of the paper’s shiny, expanded digital and marketing strategy. That strategy includes a souped-up digital hub comprised of videos organized across 14 channels devoted to different sections of the paper, such as culture, style, news and politics, sports and food. Acura is the launch sponsor of the hub, which will be home to more than 30 new series.

Some of those series will include videos by well-known columnists, such as Mark Bittman for food, Molly Wood for technology, David Carr for media and culture and Adam Bryant, who has a business column called “Corner Office.”

In a surprise appearance, Vanessa Friedman, who doesn’t start as the Times’ fashion director until next month, will also get her own program. Her videos will explore the behind-the-scenes world of fashion, and will touch on the industry’s historical, cultural and political connections, she said. “I was so eager to be here that I jumped the employment gun,” said Friedman, who is still tying up loose ends with her previous employer, The Financial Times. Although she wrapped up her column last week, she will end her employment at the British paper by moderating its annual luxury summit in Mexico City in mid-May.

Carr lightened up the mood with a self-deprecating comment about his wardrobe. Calling his tan suit a “garbage bag with a pair of legs” that is “rented and due back at 11 o’clock,” he quickly turned to the driving force behind the digital push.

“More and more because we are becoming a consumer company, I think it makes us a more powerful advertising company,” he said, offering that nyt.com gets 40 million unique visitors and 800,000 paying customers around the world. Carr — who at times sounded like he’d transferred to the marketing department, even referring to the paper as a “brand” — credited those numbers to the Times’ strong and trusted reputation.

In order to bring in new revenue, the Times has partnered with Vimeo to develop original branded content for marketers. The videos include riffs off of popular Times columns like “Modern Love,” as well

as “Verbatim,” a sketch on real legal transcripts that are reenacted by comedians.

The site will also stream Kevin Spacey’s play “Clarence Darrow” in September.

The paper launched a native advertising platform, in which brands can advertise their own videos alongside the Times’ videos. Marketer videos will be “clearly labeled,” the company said, adding that its first native video partner is Sotheby’s International Realty. The Times also expanded its cross-platform native program called “Paid Posts,” comprised of text, images and video.

But back to journalism.The Times, which posts more than 430 videos a

month, said it is training its foreign correspondents on how to use and cut video via mobile device for its site. “The Internet is the great leveler. Once video was the sole preserve of the broadcasters,” said the Times’ chief executive officer Mark Thompson, who closed the presentation. “But now, anyone with the talent and an idea can create great video and get it to a big audience. Over the past year, I’ve been lucky enough to watch the Times really get to grips with video. We’re all behind this push into video…and we’re going to back it with resources and tech investments.”

— ALEXANDRA STEIGRAD

WEBBY WINS: The Webby Award winners were revealed Monday, weeks ahead of the official awards ceremony, which will take place May 19 at Cipriani Wall Street in New York. The 18th annual awards fete the best of digital, and this year some of the usual suspects nabbed top honors, with a few newbies grabbing bragging rights. For the third year in a row, The New Yorker won best editorial writing, while Wired grabbed People’s Choice. The technology-inspired title won best magazine for the second time since 2012.

The Atlantic won for best political site, as Refinery29 received both the Webby and the People’s Choice award for Fashion and Beauty. The site beat out competitors Lucky, Style.com, Net-a-porter, Mr Porter and IntoTheGloss, among others.

The New York Times scooped up the Webby for News site, as J. Crew snapped up best fashion & beauty social media site. In that category, GQ received the People’s Choice.

While it could have won the Webby for Humor — Funny or Die took that one — Mullen got top honors for native advertising, thanks to its clever Century 21 ad, which showcases a house that looks very similar to Walter White’s home from “Breaking Bad.” — A.S.

Alibaba Invests in Youku Tudou

$1.22BSIZE OF ALIBABA’S INVESTMENT

IN YOUKU TUDOU.

MEMO PAD

By SAMANTHA CONTI

ANNA WINTOUR, Manolo Blahnik, Twiggy, Grace Coddington, Mario Testino, Bianca Jagger, Lady Sarah Chatto, Jasper Conran and John Frieda were among the guests at a memorial service on Monday for Beatrix Miller, the shy and fastidious former edi-tor of British Vogue who steered the title through the Sixties, Seventies and most of the Eighties, a pack of Rothmans cigarettes by her side and a quip forever on her tongue.

Miller, who died at the age of 90 in February, and who was known variously as “Miss Miller,” “Beatrix” or “Bea,” de-pending on one’s status, served as editor of British Vogue from 1964 to 1986. She promoted and supported generations of editorial, fashion, photographic and cre-ative talent, including Coddington, Liz Tilberis, Anna Harvey, David Bailey, Patrick Demarchelier, Bruce Weber, Mario Testino, Norman Parkinson and Lord Snowdon.

Art historian Sir Roy Strong was among the speakers at the service, which was orga-nized by Jonathan Newhouse and Nicholas Coleridge at St. George’s, Hanover Square, a few minutes walk from Vogue House in London. Strong recalled Miller telling him in the Sixties: “I’m trying to educate Bailey — I ring him up every day, and make him learn new words,” she said, referring to the coarse East End snapper whose work is currently the subject of a retrospective at London’s National Portrait Gallery.

Strong remembered Miller, “in her dark glasses, inhaling and exhaling a Rothmans cigarette,” as a self-effacing figure, a woman of trust and integrity, and “one of those rare people you did not ever want to let down.” Nicky Haslam, who wrote a column for

Miller’s Vogue, said after the service that he found her reserve “very charming. She was the very opposite of [Diana] Vreeland. She drew you out in a different way,” he said.

Sandra Boler, the former editor of Brides who had worked for Miller, recalled her “crisp, precise and economic” use of lan-guage. “She never used two words when one would do. She could be brusque — but it was a way of hiding her shyness. She was kind and sympathetic — but never senti-mental,” Boler said, adding that Miller was a “born observer.”

Miller presided over the magazine as the Sixties were coming into full swing, and she relished transforming Vogue into the title that would lead the way. “British Vogue was at its peak in the 1960s, they were the golden years,” said David Sassoon, follow-ing the service. “Beatrix did a tremendous amount for British designers — and she was wonderful in encouraging the mood of the Sixties [among them].” Zandra Rhodes said Miller’s avant-garde Vogue was a major in-fluence on its American sister title.

Joan Burstein, founder of Brown’s, ad-mitted that she was always terrified of Miller. “She was so cool, calm and impres-sive. And she was very supportive of us — in as much as she could be.”

During the service, Wintour read “Dusk in Fierce Pyjamas,” a piece that Miller had written for the 75th anniversary issue of British Vogue in 1991 about her expe-riences working for Vogue in New York, while the British title’s current editor Alexandra Shulman read “Who Wore What When” by Angela Carter, which appeared in Vogue in 1975.

Other guests included Shulman’s mother, writer and journalist Drusilla Beyfus, Caroline Charles, Barbara Daly, Min Hogg, Terry Jones, Julie Kavanagh, Patrick Kinmonth, David Mlinaric, Martin O’Brien, Terry O’Neill, Bruce Oldfield and Christopher Sykes.

British Vogue’s Beatrix Miller Remembered in London

Bianca Jagger

Alexandra Shulman

Bruce Oldfield

Anna Wintour

Caroline Charles

Zandra Rhodes

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