Fashion

Photos: An inside look at India’s digital fashion week amid the pandemic | Fashion

Emilee Geist 22 hours ago

Not to miss the October deadline, the Fashion Design Council of India converted parts of its office building into a studio in a bustling industrial area of New Delhi. It created a stage, screens and bespoke lighting to facilitate shooting of fashion films and videos by the designers.

It wasn’t easy to meet the strict COVID-19 restrictions. The entire building was sanitized, as were the designers’ clothes.

Models, film crews, photographers, designers and the design council staff could step in after they tested negative for the coronavirus. Face masks were mandatory, except briefly, for the models onstage.

Some designers even chose to film in private farm houses, their own or leased for the purpose.

Designers participating in the fashion show include Varun Bahl, Tarun Tahiliani, Suneet Varma, Shivan and Narresh, Shantanu and Nikhil, Rohit Gandhi, Rahul Khanna, Rina Dhaka, Rajesh Pratap Singh, Payal Jain, Nitin Bal Chauhan, Namrata Joshipura, Geisha

… Read More

India holds digital fashion week amid pandemic

Emilee Geist 5 days ago

AP PHOTOS: India holds digital fashion week amid pandemic

By MANISH SWARUP

October 17, 2020 GMT

NEW DELHI (AP) — Unlike a fashion show, the models aren’t swaying on a ramp in real life. They are depending on digital technology to rescue their annual extravaganza from the coronavirus pandemic.

“Phygital Edition” is India’s first digital fashion week, held from Wednesday through Sunday. It livestreams the spring-summer collections by more than 40 designers under the banner of Lotus Make-up India Fashion Week. Ten designers showcase their work each day.

For months, designers, models, make-up artists and film crews worked to create the fusion of the physical and virtual fashion, adapting to the virus restrictions.

The designers have pre-shot films that are showcased online on key digital platforms — Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Nikhita Tandon, a designer, is hopeful of a big response, considering everyone is connected in today’s digital

… Read More

ShopStyle Meets The Complex Fashion Shopper

Emilee Geist 5 days ago

The fashion category has arguably been the most complex amid the pandemic and subsequent shift to the digital-first economy. Business models have been flipped to emphasize eCommerce over physical stores. The consumer is buying more casual clothes than they were just six months ago. It’s enough to compel a retailer to make substantial changes as the holiday season heats up.

That’s exactly what ShopStyle has done. The Rakuten-owned fashion site has addressed the various complexities of the market and the uniqueness of its own business model by adding new brands, partners and entire product categories to meet shoppers where they live – online.

“Part of our 2020 strategy was to follow our mission statement, which is to embrace individuals’ style,” ShopStyle GM Alison Stiefel told PYMNTS. “And we’ve seen that people are evolving. It’s much more about celebrating that individuality. And to do

… Read More

These Platforms Are Putting Latinx Fashion on the World Stage

Emilee Geist 2 weeks ago

Latinx designers are making greater inroads into global fashion, and growing platforms are hoping to elevate these creatives and showcase the fresh perspectives and innovative designs many are bringing to the industry.

Here are four platforms working with Latinx designers to highlight their work, promote it and make it available for the world to witness and wear.

Latin American Fashion Summit

During her more than 20 years working in New York’s fashion industry, Estefania Lacayo, originally from Nicaragua, had seen many designers, entrepreneurs and writers from Latin America struggle to get noticed in the U.S. That’s why she cofounded the Latin American Fashion Summit three years ago “to empower our community of Latin Americans and also of Latinos living in the U.S. wanting to tap into this whole world of fashion.”

“They wouldn’t even know who to approach, how to go about it so they were constantly being ripped off

… Read More

Fashion Designer Kenzo Takada Dies From COVID-19

Emilee Geist 2 weeks ago

PARIS (AP) — Kenzo Takada, the iconic French-Japanese fashion designer famed for his jungle-infused designs and free-spirited aesthetic that channeled global travel, has died. He was 81.

The family said in a statement to French media Sunday that Takada died from complications from COVID-19 in a hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine, near Paris. A public relations officer for Kenzo’s brand confirmed that Takada died, but didn’t give a cause of death.

“It is with immense sadness that KENZO has learned of the passing of our founder,” the fashion house said in a statement. “For half a century, Mr. Takada has been an emblematic personality in the fashion industry — always infusing creativity and color into the world.”

Takada’s death came at the tail end of Paris Fashion Week, whose nine-day calendar is undertaking an unusual fashion season for spring-summer 2021 because of the coronavirus pandemic. It was only days ago that the

… Read More

Telfar Clemens Wins National Design Award for Fashion Design From Cooper Hewitt

Emilee Geist 3 weeks ago

The Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum planned a virtual gala for Thursday night’s 21st National Design Awards.

Instead of welcoming hundreds to the Upper East Side museum for its annual awards gala, the Cooper Hewitt took a more remote approach for the event, which doubled as a kickoff for National Design Month. To promote an all-are-welcome theme, footage of the gala and ancillary educational programs are available online at no charge for anyone to discover the importance of design.

The Fashion Design award went to Telfar, but the company’s founder Telfar Clemens was not doing any interviews at this time, according to a Cooper Hewitt spokeswoman. An interview request sent to his company was not acknowledged.

In a self-description included in the Cooper Hewitt’s press material, Clemens wrote, “Become a queer, Black 18-year-old, travel back to 2004 and establish a 100 percent nongendered fashion line out of your family apartment

… Read More

Meet The Women Decolonizing Sustainable Fashion

Emilee Geist 4 weeks ago

It’s time to wake up. On Global Day of Climate Action, VICE Media Group is solely telling stories about our current climate crisis. Click here to meet young climate leaders from around the globe and learn how you can take action.

As demand for sustainable fashion grows, so does the need to navigate its myths. Misleading information is everywhere, from corporate greenwashing to the notion that all women are empowered by eco-conscious choices. One of the most prevailing and dangerous misconceptions about green fashion is that it’s a movement conceived by the West and led by white people. Sustainable fashion has let down people of color time and time again, whether through spotlighting majority-white representatives, favoring Western branding as the prevailing and acceptable aesthetic, or absorbing the capitalist notion that it’s a lifestyle to buy your way into.

With strong historical, spiritual, and ancestral relationships with the regenerative power of

… Read More

The Ins and Outs of Selling a Fashion or Luxury Business

Emilee Geist 4 weeks ago

The global pandemic has not only generated what looks like a prolonged economic crisis, but also shifted people’s sentiment toward consumerism. How the fashion industry will be affected in the long term is a difficult question to answer.

Looking at the medium term, there is one topic that can be immediately discussed: In the current context, is it worth thinking about selling the business you built over the last few years or decades?

In short, the answer is “yes” if you believe you’ve reached the stage where the future of your firm is more likely to benefit from being part of a large group than if it were to remain independent. As you know, a large corporation can easily flex its muscle in such areas as advertising and media buying, customer data and analytics, commercial partnerships, online and brick-and-mortar retail, IT and technology, logistics and finance.

Today, large groups tend

… Read More

Walmart Launches Fashion Essentials Brand Free Assembly

Emilee Geist 1 month ago

Walmart is launching a new fashion brand dubbed Free Assembly, broadening its apparel categories since its acquisition of Eloquii in 2018 and its launch last year of Sofía Jeans by Sofía Vergara.

In a presentation in New York City last week, Denise Incandela, senior vice president of Walmart Women’s Group, elevated and online brands, described Free Assembly as a “modern fashion essentials brand that offers elevated style.” The new line will be available from Monday at some 250 Walmart locations and online on walmart.com, with some items appearing online for pre-orders.

There are some 60 pieces in the collection, and prices generally fall within the $9 to $45 price range, Incandela said.

“We’ve seen more and more men shopping for fashion in Walmart, and are excited to bring this brand to them,” she said at the presentation, which was held at a studio at Location05, an event space in the

… Read More

Is Slow Fashion the New Luxury?

Emilee Geist 1 month ago

Fashion, like trouser silhouettes, tends to change course once the pendulum swings too far in one direction. And if fast fashion defined the 2010s, slow fashion may be the marker of the new decade.

For years, the industry has pushed mass production and consumption at a clip so rapid that quick-turn, quick-churn fashion is now falling out of favor and making way for its more measured counterpart. COVID-19 has helped accelerate this redefinition of fashion — both luxury and at other price points — as clothing crafted with sustainability at the fore.

“The pandemic has helped foster a ‘buy less, buy better’ mentality with interest sparking in products with more value and longevity over disposable fast fashion. There has been a greater push on artisan products and items with a focus on craftsmanship, further backing the slow-fashion trend,” said Kayla Marci, market analyst at retail intelligence platform Edited. Creating exclusivity

… Read More