Coco Chanel once said that luxury was the opposite of vulgarity. As mega-brands fight for a slice of the booming global fashion market, some observers are asking: Where is the luxury today?
Chanel, which has become one of the world's biggest fashion firms since the death of its founder in 1971, on Friday staged a star-studded catwalk show that was one of the most hotly hyped events of Paris fashion week.
Actress Kirsten Dunst chatted with her Marie Antoinette co-star Marianne Faithfull in the front row, while a tanned and blonde Victoria Beckham stopped to kiss top fashion editors on the cheeks.
With massive global advertising campaigns, Chanel's interlocked double-C logo has become as recognizable as McDonald's Golden Arches -- and therein lies the rub.
Journalist Dana Thomas, author of Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster, believes luxury brands have lost their cachet since large conglomerates started snapping up family-owned businesses during a wave of acquisitions in the 1990s.
"It went mass -- the businessmen started hyping the brands and focusing on the logo and stamping it on everything from bikinis to handbags to scarves," she said,
"And many of these companies, as soon as they were publicly traded, started worrying more about the bottom line than how well the hemline was sewed together," she added.
In her book, she describes how many of the products being sold with prestigious "made in Italy" or "made in France" labels are in reality produced on assembly lines in developing countries, with just the finishing touches added in Europe.
"You're not buying what you think you're buying," said Thomas, who agreed not to name names in the book in exchange for being granted access to factories in countries like China.
Privately held Chanel does not publish sales figures, but industry sources estimate its annual revenues at some US$4 billion.
The firm staged its spring-summer ready-to-wear show on a bombastic set inside the Grand Palais, a recently restored 19th-century glass-and-steel structure near the Seine river.
Models strutted in star-pattered blue dresses with red-and-white striped jackets -- perfect for campaigning on the US presidential election trail next summer. Denim swimsuits and matching jackets and jeans were faded to different shades of blue and teamed with rows of pearls that gave the casual outfits an offhanded elegance.
Front row guest Claudia Schiffer said she was struck by how impersonal the shows had become since she and her fellow supermodels worked the catwalk in the 1990s.
"The models have become numbers, while in the 1990s we were all known by name," she said.
At Sonia Rykiel, they still do things the old way. Models wrapped in swirls of pastel chiffon and feather boas smiled and danced for the finale of the joyful presentation -- and you could tell they were getting a real kick out of it.
Nathalie Rykiel, artistic director of the French label founded by her mother, said the family touch was what made the brand special. She has turned down purchase offers and is determined to keep the business in private hands for as long as she can.
"I respect the money, and the business has changed and therefore you need a lot of money today to be in this business. But I feel the press and everybody in the fashion world respects Sonia Rykiel as a different company," she explained.
British designer Alexander McQueen turned his show into a tribute to his mentor, the eccentric British fashion editor Isabella Blow, who took her life last May.
The air hung heavy with the scent of Fracas, Blow's favorite perfume, and models paraded in her signature look of radical tailoring paired with outlandish Philip Treacy hats.
The mind-blowing headgear included a cluster of red butterflies that topped a skintight gray wool dress, and a glittering black lace visor with a matching body tattoo.
As a model hobbled past in a pink funnel skirt and Japanese-style sculpted shoes, one could imagine the former front-row fixture clapping with glee.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained