The Business of Fashion

Milan Fashion Week | Commerce and creativity

While London is often the spark of new ideas and New York is confidently commercial, the Milan shows usually sit somewhere in between. They may not be the pushing the limits of fashion in terms of new ideas, but they specialise in striking the right balance between commerce and creativity.

Many buyers and editors complained of an uncharacteristically inconsistent offering from Milan's usually focused designers last week. But we think there was a lot to be impressed by in Milan, especially from the some of the heavyweight brands who show there.

Take Burberry, for example. Christopher Bailey is on a clear winning streak, softening his approach this season with the perfect autumnal mood for the urban birds who walked down his catwalk of  "optimistic melancholy." (The urban birds term was cleverly coined by Tim Blanks; Bailey loved it. We think its perfect).

Boombox: Party's over?

When London's only mega-luxury brand (Burberry) throws a launch party, invites the city's model-du-jour (Agyness Deyn), and recruits East-End club kids from the city's hippest club night (Boombox) to add to its street cred and sell its new fragance (Burberry Beat), it is definitely a formula for fashion marketing success.  Analysts and journalists have been commenting on the brand's new found hipness and pictures have appeared in all the right places, despite the extra-Zone 1 location and late start.

For Boombox, however, it's likely to be a sign that the party's over. That's not to say that Boombox hasn't had a great run. From the start, it was an ultra-cool hangout for the East End fashion and music scenesters (and a great excuse to dress up in wacky clothes). Then, almost as quickly as it emerged on the scene, websites appeared with party photos, pop-up Boombox parties were held in Paris and Milan, a book by the club's promoter Richad Mortimer was published, and most recently the "rent-a-Boombox-crowd" party was held for Burberry.

IHT Supreme Luxury: Interview with Angela Ahrendts

The IHT is pumping out these videos faster than we can keep up. Each one has revelations of interest, so we're going to keep posting them for easy reference here. Have a look at this video with Angela Ahrendts, the CEO of Burberry. Ahrendts reveals that Burberry's wholesale and retail business is almost 70% apparel, making it quite different from many other luxury brands, whose businesses are concentrated in leather goods.

She also says that Russian consumers form a significant portion of the business. Burberry's stores in Russia are amongst the most productive in the world and this productivity is based on fewer very large transactions as opposed to many transactions of a smaller size. Not only this, about 20% of the revenue from stores in London  and 30% of revenues in the Middle East come from Russian customers.