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Fashion
Friday, May 31, 2013
International
Fashion writer Suzy Menkes to sell her own clothes online Reuters
AP Photo/dpa,kevin Kurek,File
FILE - In this April 6, 2013 file picture Dortmund’s Santana . reacts during a German Bundesliga soccer match between Borussia Dortmund and FC Augsburg in Dortmund, Germany.
Adidas and Puma take rivalry to European soccer final
LONDON - Suzy Menkes, doyenne of the fashion press, says she plans to auction off part of her own label-strewn wardrobe at a twoweek online sale in July. The International Herald Tribune fashion editor, a regular on the front row at catwalk shows of the world’s top designers from Giorgio Armani to Diane von Furstenberg, will open bids for 80 lots of clothes on July 11 in the Christie’s sale. “I have never thrown anything out of my wardrobe since 1964,” she said in a statement on Tuesday. Menkes will sell coats, dresses, skirts, tops, jackets and accessories that she has laid in a “tomb of trunks” from designers such as Ossie Clark and Emilio Pucci, to Yves Saint Laurent and Christian Lacroix. “They need to live again and this auction provides the opportunity for them to walk out in the sunshine, to dance the night away and to give someone else the joy that they gave to me,” she said. Estimates for individual lots start at 200 pounds ($300), with the majority on offer for under 1,000 pounds. The star lot of the sale is an Yves Saint Laurent cocktail jacket from his 1980 collection ‘le soleil’ estimated at up to 2,000 pounds. Menkes follows in the footsteps of British designer Vivienne Westwood, fashion trendsetter Daphne Guinness, English model Erin O’Connor and Italian fashion writer Anna Piaggi by selling much of her collection via a single-owner auction at Christie’s. The New York Times Co, which owns the Herald Tribune said earlier this year that it would be rebranding the paper as the International New York Times.
Cannes festival hit by second suspected jewellery theft Reuters
Reuters
FRANKFURT/LONDON - German sportswear makers Adidas and Puma renew their own decades-old rivalry when soccer teams Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund meet in Europe’s Champions League Final at Wembley on Saturday. Adidas is the long-standing kit supplier to Bayern and owns a stake of around nine percent in the Bavarian club, while Puma became the sportswear partner of Dortmund a year ago. The German companies were set up after a falling out by the Dassler brothers in the Bavarian town of Herzogenaurach in the late 1940s and remain among the best known global sports brands. However, while Adidas and U.S. rival Nike dominate a soccer market estimated to be worth up to 4.5 billion euros ($5.8 billion), Puma is playing catch-up after years of focusing more on fashion than performance sportswear. As well as supplying Bayern’s kit, Adidas is also providing the match ball and uniforms worn by the referee and his assistants for the first all-German Champions League final. Adidas CEO Herbert Hainer said new Bayern replica shirts were selling
well, as was the “Finale Wembley” souvenir ball. “This is not only an opportunity to showcase the brand to the world but also to have some commercial successes,” Hainer told Reuters at an Adidas promotional event in London.
DORTMUND DECISION PAYS OFF Puma’s decision to partner with Dortmund yielded an instant return when the club made it to the final - the biggest prize in European club soccer and expected to attract a global television audience of over 150 million. “They have overachieved our expectations,” Puma Chief Commercial Officer Stefano Caroti told Reuters. “The exposure that we are having, especially this weekend, will make the club not just a local asset but it will become a truly global player,” he added in a telephone interview.
Retailers in Japan, Malaysia and Britain have been signing up to buy the new Dortmund kit which will be launched next month, Caroti said, adding that the publicity the team has generated created a “halo effect” that would boost sales by bringing more customers into stores. Dortmund’s success has provided a rare bright spot for Puma, which warned last week of shortfalls in sales and profit. Adidas by contrast reported its highest ever gross profit margin earlier this month. A renewed focus on soccer has seen Puma pull out of sailing and European rugby, saving money in order to plough it into sponsorship deals that will bring it more business. Caroti said the success of Dortmund and individual deals Puma has done with top players including Cesc Fabregas of Barcelona and Radamel Falcao of Atletico Madrid had helped to give its “leaping cat” brand renewed credibility in soccer.
CANNES - The Cannes film festival was hit by a second suspected jewellery heist on Thursday after a diamond necklace worth 2 million euros ($2.6 million) disappeared during a star-studded party, according to upmarket jeweller De Grisogono. Fawaz Gruosi, the founder of the Swiss firm, said the necklace was part of the company’s 20th anniversary collection paraded by 20 models at the glitzy event at the Hotel Du Cap-Eden-Roc in Antibes outside Cannes on Tuesday night. Sharon Stone and Paris Hilton were among the guests. Gruosi said 80 bodyguards, local police, hotel security, and De Grisogono staff had been on duty but when a check was made at the end of the night the diamond necklace was missing. “We don’t know exactly what happened ... it was one of the most beautiful items we had,” Gruosi told Reuters Television. “The police are trying to figure out what happened.” A Cannes police source said authorities were investigating whether it was a theft, a problem of inventory or a loss, the source said. Another Swiss jeweller, Chopard, had gems worth $1.4 million stolen in the first week of the 12-day festival on the glamorous French Riviera, which attracts thousands of actors, filmmakers and journalists. Police said the Chopard jewellery had been in the safe of a room at the Suite Novotel hotel in central Cannes, which had been rented by an employee of the jeweller. The entire safe was removed from the wall and taken during the night of May 16. Someone entered without forcing the door or using the magnetic key card, a police source said. A spokesman for Chopard, a sponsor of the Cannes festival, later played down the report, saying the value had been exaggerated. Jewellers and fashion houses use the world’s largest film festival at Cannes as a promotional showcase, lending gowns and accessories to celebrities who are photographed on the famed red carpet and at parties along the palm-lined Croisette waterfront.