Fashion’s Night Out, the shopping initiative driven by Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, returns as a bigger event next month, extending to 250 US cities. But there seems to be a sharper focus on industry stars — including designers, red carpet experts, and makeup artists — instead of the Hollywood celebrities who grabbed headlines the past two years.
The event aims to draw consumers into stores on one night during the all-important fall retail season by making shopping an exciting, interactive experience with how-to sessions, music, refreshments and glimpses of insider glamour.
This year’s event is Sept. 8, with New York still clearly its home base, but many national retailers and mall operators joining in: For example, stylists will be at select Nordstrom stores, and Neiman Marcus has special events planned at more than two dozen locations.
Photo: Bloomberg
And for people who don’t live in the US, Shopbop.com is streaming footage of its fashion gurus visiting stores.
The buzz, however, will likely still come from Manhattan, where Michael Kors plans to stand in the window at Bergdorf Goodman, Rachel Zoe will visit Bloomingdale’s to debut her new collection and model Coco Rocha will talk up the Karl Lagerfeld line at Macy’s Herald Square. Georgina Chapman and Keren Craig of Marchesa are among the judges of Bergdorf’s best-in-show dog contest, and Lloyd Boston gives you “seven ways to wear it” at Lord & Taylor.
At Saks Fifth Avenue’s flagship, shoppers can have their photo snapped with Stella McCartney models and have it loaded to Facebook, and Yigal Azrouel is partnering with surf brand Sundeck to “surf” on simulators in the store.
Photo: Bloomberg
The New York Jets Flight Crew Cheerleaders will be signing their 2012 calendar at Lord & Taylor.
It’s not quite Naomi Campbell dancing in the streets — which she did last year in front of Dolce & Gabbana — but as Fashion’s Night Out looks to become an annual appointment on the fall fashion calendar, there is a shift toward directing people to new merchandise and makeovers instead of jamming stores to get an autograph.
The inaugural Fashion’s Night Out was held in 2009 as a way to restart sales after a disastrous year, especially at the luxury stores the recession hit very hard. ShopperTrak, an independent reporter of consumer traffic, estimates that night saw a 50 percent jump in retail foot traffic.
Photo: Bloomberg
There is also a designated fund-raising Fashion’s Night Out collection, including a graphic T-shirt modeled on the Web site by Karlie Kloss and photographed by Craig McDean. Hundreds of stores will have Fashion’s Night Out items that send 40 percent of proceeds to benefit The New York City AIDS Fund in the New York Community Trust. Meanwhile, Barneys New York announced it will donate 10 percent of sales from its Fifth Avenue store, as well as Barneys.com, to the National September 11 Memorial and Museum.
Photo: Bloomberg
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless
Approaching her mid-30s, Xiong Yidan reckons that most of her friends are on to their second or even third babies. But Xiong has more than a dozen. There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There is Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from morning to night. Boop and Pan, both goats, are romantically involved. Dumpling the hedgehog enjoys a belly rub from time to time. The list goes on. Xiong nurtures her brood from her 8,000 square meter farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous district in northern Thailand’s