The Business of Fashion

Industry chatter | Prada's IPO

At a time when all fashion advertisements are beginning to look the same, you can always count on Miuccia Prada to keep things interesting. Her new campaign for Spring/Summer 08 reflects the sweet optimism of her collection shown last September in Milan. It could have come right out of A Midsummer Night's Dream with all its nymphs and fairies.

Remarking on Prada's dramatic move away from tougher designs in seasons past, Sarah Mower said "when Miuccia is fed up with being perverse in the anarchic-fierce way, she'll change tack yet again and go against the grain by being so sweetly unchallenging you (almost) can't recognize her." 

But are things as rosy for Prada on the IPO front?

Everyone's talking about: Men's underwear

Every once in a while, we notice the media -- all kinds of media from blogs to arty fashion mags to the mainstream press -- talking about the same topic in a contemporaneous burst of discussion. In the past few days, the talk has been about men's underwear. Or rather, the advertising campaigns behind this burgeoning business segment. Not since the 1980's and Bruce Weber's campaigns for Calvin Klein have we seen so much media interest in men's underpants. 

Tim Blanks explores the subject at length in VMAN's Fall/Winter 2007 issue in The History of the Male Supermodel. And, according to an article in today's International Herald Tribune, men's underwear is big business.
Two Italian fashion brands are trying to get in on Calvin Klein's underwear action using sexually-charged photos to heighten awareness of their presence in the market.

Industry chatter: PPR Going after Clarins?

If rumours floating around Paris yesterday are on the ball, then PPR's Francois-Henri Pinault has now got his acquisitive eyes fixed on Clarins.

The French cosmetics company saw its stock jump 7.7% on the speculation that PPR would make a bid for company in the coming days, pushing its market capitalisation to more than 2.6b euros. This rumour follows previous speculation that L'Oreal would make a bid for Clarins, after the death of its founder Jacques Courtin-Clarins in March of this year.

Acquisition rumours like this are a dime a dozen. But, this one might actually have some legs. An industry insider sitting next to me at last evening's Walpole Awards said that attempts to reach PPR and Clarins to comment had been completely futile. Neither party had confirmed or denied the rumours - it was just radio silence and phones were just not being answered. It was precisely because of this that he was thinking twice about whether these rumours deserved more serious attention.