2016 04 25 ab2fdc650688525943d08bdae46937d6(1)

DAILY EDITION 25 APRIL 2016

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Fashion. Beauty. Business.

Fast, Present, Future Trailblazers gathered at Millbank Tower for the annual WWD Digital Forum in London, where speakers covered a range of topics affecting business in the Internet age, including marketing luxe online, maximizing data for growth, monetizing content and brand-building in the social realm.

For complete coverage of the event, see pages 5 to 9.

Red Carpet Coverage from the Year’s Premiere Events.

Prestige, Praise & Privilege An Advertising Opportunity

The Met Gala

Cannes Film Festival

The CFDA Awards

Issue: May 4 Ad Close: April 20 Materials: April 25

Issue: May 11 Ad Close: April 27 Materials: May 2

Issue: May 25 Ad Close: May 11 Materials: May 16

FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT PAMELA FIRESTONE, ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER AT 212 256 8103 OR PFIRESTONE@WWD.COM

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25 APRIL 2016

FASHION

Brands, Organizations Criticize ‘Fashion Transparency Index’ ●

Livia Firth was among the speakers at the Houses of Parliament.

BY NATALIE THEODOSI WITH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM LUISA ZARGANI AND KRISTI ELLIS

A report that called out leading luxury and fast-fashion brands for a lack of visibility in their supply chains has been roundly criticized by the companies themselves as well as other nongovernmental organizations involved with workers’ rights and supply chain issues.

The study by the London-based group called Fashion Revolution and Ethical Consumer, which is a nonprofit magazine and Web site, created a Fashion Transparency Index that ranked more than 40 global retail companies based on their level of transparency and support of workers’ rights. Based on its own rankings, the group criticized luxury brands including Chanel, Hermès, Prada and Louis Vuitton for what it claimed was a lack of transparency, while praising Levi Strauss, Inditex, Nike, H&M and Adidas.

The group’s critical study was reported online by Vice and also picked up by Vogue.com.

But the index was based on methodology that immediately stirred criticism.

WWD contacted a series of industry organizations that work on sustainability initiatives but they declined to comment. A spokesperson from one of the organizations said “it is really hard to comment on research that is so poorly executed and tells us nothing.”

The group said in the report that it received 10 questionnaires from brands and retailers out of a total of 40 that were sent to companies. While 10 of the companies received scores based on their replies to the questionnaires and other publicly available information, the other 30 companies were scored based solely on publicly available information on Web sites and in annual reports, from which the group’s researchers drew their own conclusions.

“For the companies that did not reply, it is impossible for our researchers to know anything beyond what they are communicating publicly online,” the report said. “Therefore these companies may have received lower scores while companies who did fill out the questionnaire had the opportunity to tell us more and thus potentially score higher,” the report said.

The group said companies could have their scores “updated” if new information is made available to its “research team.”

In a statement, a Chanel spokesman questioned the report, stating that it only highlights how well companies communicate their sustainability initiatives.

“This index in no way measures actions regarding social, societal and environmental responsibility, but only evaluates the communication policies

of brands relative to these topics. Like three-quarters of the companies questioned, if Chanel chose not to answer the questionnaire, it is because the reality of our actions seems more important to us than any related media coverage.

Chanel’s ready-to-wear products are manufactured exclusively in France, Italy and Scotland; this proximity allows us to be extremely familiar with our partners, most of whom have been working with us for many years. Furthermore, we perform regular audits of our subcontractors’ social, societal and environmental responsibility policies and actions. Chanel is extremely vigilant with regard to all ethical, social, societal and environmental issues in all of its fields of activity, even though this is not part of our communication strategy,” a company spokesman told WWD. A Fendi spokesperson said, “Fendi is committed to promoting responsible relations with its partners, suppliers and subcontractors. It monitors, audits and evaluates its suppliers and constantly aims at improving situations that are suboptimal. Fendi shares common tools and organize training courses for suppliers in Asia, the U.S. and Europe.

We are compliant with the Suppliers Code of Conduct of LVMH and all its Maisons, available on The Group Web site as are the details of the relations with third parties [notably on pages 84-86 of the 2016 Document de reference].”

Fashion Revolution is a nonprofit organization based in the U.K. and was founded by Carry Somers and Orsola de Castro following the 2013 collapse of the Rana Plaza. Before launching the organization, Somers operated her own sustainable label Pachacuti, as did de Castro who began upcycling in 1997 with her label From Somewhere.

De Castro had also launched Esthetica under the British Fashion Council in 2006 which aimed to promote designers who worked sustainably.

Fashion Revolution said it selected brands with an annual turnover of more than 400 million pounds, or $575 million, at current exchange, as “those brands have the most to lose through lack of transparency, and the most to gain through better practice,” according to a Fashion Revolution spokeswoman.

The group said it took more than a year to put together the research.

According to the organization, the survey revealed an absence in longterm thinking in brands’ sustainability strategies, with only 40 percent of the companies surveyed having a system in place to monitor labor standards.

According to the group, the survey takes a “bold brushstroke approach” to illustrate how much brands reveal about their supply chains. Some of the criteria used as part of the assessment include the standards and goals a company sets for the protection of workers, its engagements with NGOs or unions, and the ways a company checks its supply chains for compliance with international standards and local laws.

“The public do not have enough information about where and how their clothes are made. Shoppers have the right to know that their money is not supporting exploitation, human rights abuses and environment destruction,” Somers said.

Fashion Revolution said it plans to continue publishing the Fashion Transparency Index and will be including up to 100 brands as part of next year’s ranking.

As part of Fashion Revolution Week last week to mark the three-year anniversary of the Rana Plaza factory collapse, the British MP Mary Creagh hosted a talk at the Houses of Parliament in London to discuss garment workers’ rights.

Speakers at the event included Livia Firth, the creative director of Eco-Age; Roberto Ridolfi, director of the European commission for sustainable growth and development; Jenny Holdcroft, policy director at global union IndustriALL; Mike Cain, shadow minister for international development, and Allanna McAspurn, chief executive officer of the nonprofit organization Made By. The discussion quickly turned to the Brexit referendum, which will take place on June 23, and how Britian’s role in the EU impacts its support of workers’ rights.

“I believe we should remain in the European Union because it’s a world leader in advancing worker’s rights and protections. We heard last year that the EU has worked closely with the government of Bangladesh to change employment laws and improve factory standards and inspections after the Rana Plaza tragedy. It is vital for the U.K. fashion industry to understand how we can achieve change and improve the lives of garment workers around the globe,” Creagh said.

Firth shared a similar view. “United we are stronger, the matter is as simple as that for me,” she said, adding that garment workers’ rights would only be reinforced with robust legislation.

“Otherwise it’s difficult for brands to start talking about human rights,” Firth said. “Countries need to start speaking to each other and set transnational wages. In Bangladesh at the moment this is impossible because the factories are not communicating, they are being put against each other by the brands.”

The panel commended Hennes & Mauritz for its sustainability initiatives and for being transparent regarding issues such as workers’ rights. Last week, H&M announced its aim to become 100 percent circular and only use ethically sourced materials by 2020.

Firth added that a change in consumer attitudes is also essential.

“Fashion is a feminist issue, as women of the West, why do we shop with this bulimia to constantly get something new and make a disservice to women on the other side of the world? Why do we want to wear the unhappy stories of other women?”

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25 APRIL 2016

San Francisco Celebrates Dior Opening With Jaime King ●

The new Dior women’s boutique in San Francisco pays homage to the old and new.

FASHION

Wataru Tominaga Scoops Fashion Prize in Hyères ●

BY MAGHAN MCDOWELL

SAN FRANCISCO — The new Dior women’s boutique here pays homage to the old and new, starting with the exterior of the building itself. The facade at the corner of 185 Post Street is encased in a glass curtain, as if it’s being preserved.

It’s always a mix of feminine and soft with modern utility, said model and actress Jaime King, who came to town to celebrate the opening with her husband, director Kyle Newman.

She would know; King, who turns 37 on Saturday, said she’d been working with the house since she was 14, and was there for all the John Galliano shows. The new two-floor women’s boutique opening in one of her favorite cities (she would live in San Francisco, if she could, she said), was very French, with extreme romanticism and attention to detail. She pointed out the Pisces constellation, twinkling in lights in the ceiling of the fine jewelry and watches salon; Dior himself was a Pisces.

To be sure, although the exterior and the prime downtown location are spectacular, Katie Traina agreed that the “the inside does not disappoint.” The San Francisco style set was certainly eager to see it; less than an hour after the doors opened to the party, the fire marshal paid a visit to ensure that the doormen didn’t let more people in.

Those who managed to make it through included Anne V, designer Andrew Gn (who had a trunk show in the city earlier in the day), former Mayor Willie Brown and the familiar patrons who came to both show off their Dior shoes and bags and to perhaps do a bit of shopping, as a portion of sales from the evening and the following day went to benefit the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Traina said she planned to come back when the store wasn’t so crowded.

Husband Todd Traina, a film producer, said the mirrored staircase, created with a video art wall by artist Oyoram, was like something seen in a Wes Anderson film. He also made a point to recommend that Dior make an appearance at tech-world destination Burning Man, an otherworldly desert festival filled with billions and artists; in other words, oh so Dior.

Jaime King

The Japan-born, 28-year-old designer impressed judges with his playful men’s wear silhouettes.

BY LAURE GUILBAULT

HYÈRES, France — Wataru Tominaga has won the Première Vision Grand Prize at the 31th edition of the Hyères International Festival of Fashion and Photography.

The Japan-born, 28-year-old designer — who graduated from Central Saint Martins last year — impressed judges with his playful men’s wear silhouettes, which involved pleated sleeves, cotton shirting, dyed corduroy and printed trousers with flocked stripes.

“It’s unbelievable what he does, the way he mixes prints and constructs volumes.

He’s like a young Issey Miyake,” said Julien Dossena, Paco Rabanne’s creative director for women’s wear, who presided over the fashion jury. “He has a very pop and constructed universe.” Other jury members included designer Pierre Hardy; jewelry designer Charlotte Chesnais, 2015 winner of the ANDAM Accessories prize; and Tomoko Ogura, Barneys New York senior fashion director.

“He’s my favorite,” said designer JeanPaul Lespagnard, a winner of the 2008 Hyères competition. “The choice of materials and colors is bold and ambitious. I was very impressed by the ‘wow’ effect of his clothes at the show. It’s pure joy.”

“I want to have a bit more fantasy in

clothes, especially in men’s wear,” Tominaga explained, adding he’s inspired by designers ranging from Madame Grès to the German brand Bless.

The Hyères festival has been a springboard for designers such as Viktor & Rolf and Anthony Vaccarello. “It’s a great opportunity to meet many people. I want to find a job in men’s wear, something playful. I like Bernhard Willhelm, Walter Van Beirendonck and Craig Green,” Tominaga said.

He was one of 10 international designers competing for the prize, valued at 15,000 euros, or $16,829 at current exchange, a list that was whittled down from around

300 applicants. He is also awarded the chance to work with the specialty ateliers that Chanel controls through its Paraffection subsidiary, a prize also valued at 15,000 euros.

Chloé, a major partner of the festival for the past five years, awarded 15,000 euros to Finnish duo Hanne Jurmu and Anton Vartiainen.

Jurmu and Vartiainen, respectively 26 and 23, who are students at Helsinki’s Aalto University, also received a jury’s special mention.

Vendula Knopova from Czech Republic won the Grand Prize of Photography, whose jury was presided over by William Klein. Jean-Paul Goude was also on jury duty.

Highlights of the four-day festival included a master class with Dossena; a round table on digital and one on sustainability with speakers included Carlo Capasa, president of the Italian Chamber of Fashion, and Marie-Claire Daveu, Kering’s chief sustainability officer; dinners hosted by Chanel, Petit Bateau and French fashion’s governing body, and a bash at Hyères’ racetrack cohosted by Paco Rabanne, ID magazine and Cicciolina.

Wataru Tominaga

FASHION

Front Row at the Hyères Fashion Show ●

Gareth Pugh was front row at the International Festival of Fashion and Photography show in Hyères, France.

BY LAURE GUILBAULT

Designers’ Row: Gareth Pugh, Julien Dossena, Pierre Hardy, Charlotte Chesnais and William Klein were among the guests who sat front row at the fashion show at the International Festival of Fashion and Photography in Hyères, France, which ends Monday. Dossena, Hardy and Chesnais are on the jury that will choose the winner of the Première Vision Grand Prize on Sunday.

“I don’t often go to fashion shows,” said Pugh, a member of the photography jury this year, which is presided over by Klein. It marks the first time Pugh has attended the festival, which has been a crucial launchpad for many fashion designers, including Viktor & Rolf, Christian Wijnants and Anthony Vaccarello. Pugh, who for his part scooped the 2008 ANDAM award, has one piece of advice for young talents: “There is a lot of greed around. Do things that feel genuine and honest; it’s good to do your

own things, not listen to much.”

The designer is working on costumes for a production at Paris’ Opera Garnier, slated to open in September. “It’s called ‘Eligabalio.’ It was written 300 years ago by Cavalli, not Roberto — Francesco,” he said with a laugh. Before that, he’s off to New York next week for the Costume Institute Gala on May 2. “I did an interview with Andrew Bolton for the catalogue of the exhibit ‘Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology.’

I am going to wear a very classic tuxedo for the ball. Huntsman is dressing me. It is quite nice to wear something from Savile Row for this exhibition,” he said.

“The exhibition is great,” Klein remarked about the showcase staged at the landmark Villa Noailles to celebrate the 50th anniversary of his film “Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?” The photographer has another exhibition in the pipeline: a major retrospective opening on June 15 at the Palazzo della Ragione in Milan.

Galeries Lafayette, a patron of the festival, financed the live stream of the Hyères fashion show on Saturday night, beaming images to the Palais de Tokyo museum in Paris, the city center of Toulon as well as Beijing and Shanghai, at the Galeries Lafayette units there.

Gareth Pugh

Pugh photograph by Giovanni Giannoni; King by Drew Altizer

RETAIL

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25 APRIL 2016

DIGITAL SUMMITS

The Digital London Forum ●

Executives from some of the most innovative brands and retailers on the Web gathered in the British capital to discuss the constantly evolving digital landscape.

Mytheresa.com Ramps Up Convenience, Curation

● “What can you do in seven seconds?”

Michael Kliger, president of Mytheresa.com, said that’s roughly how much time an online retailer has to engage a customer on her smartphone, upping the ante for creating compelling content and ensuring a seamless transaction experience.

“She tells us what she’s interested in and she tells us adamantly that she wants to browse and shop on her smartphone and we have to adapt to it,” the executive said. “We believe the customer need is essentially about convenience.”

Unique in its focus on elite luxury brands for women only, the Munich-based e-tailer knows it has limited windows of opportunities to seize its customer’s attention.

The fact that women in Paris, London and Milan — cities with high concentrations of luxury boutiques — shop at Mytheresa.com suggests that the online channel is a time-saver and an indulgence for working mothers.

“She has a passion for fashion. The only thing she doesn’t have is time,” Kliger said, describing one common opportunity as the end of the day in bed, “husband sleeping, 30 minutes on the iPad.” Citing a Google study, Kliger stated 69

percent of consumers say convenience is the most important reason for buying luxury products online. Sixty percent also lauded that buying line can be done anytime, anywhere, with no stress.

“The Web site needs to be simple and easy to navigate. We are not a magazine,” Kliger said, stressing that the site design is driven by the customer need “to quickly find the product and quickly buy. This is the segment we try to serve. Packaging, shipping, customer services. This is so important. You don’t put your customer on hold and play stupid music to her. You pick the call up after three to four seconds.That’s our service level agreement. Ninety-six percent of calls must be picked up after three and a half seconds and we take this seriously.”

Founded as a physical boutique by the Botschen family in Munich in 1987, Theresa went digital in 2006, trumpeting its “boutiquelike shopping experience” based on the “finest edit in luxury fashion.”

“A real retailer angle, curating and editing,” Kliger stressed.

The company now employs about 300 people and in 2014 was acquired by Neiman Marcus Group. “We couldn’t be more happy with an owner that understands us so well. Also, they not only understand luxury, they also understand

Michael Kliger

digital because Neiman Direct was one of the very first [online] businesses and, to this day, is one of the prime examples of a large business as part of a brick-and-mortar operator.

“We see ourselves as part of the luxury fashion industry,” he continued. “If you ask what our business is based on, it’s not on technology. What it is based on is relationships with the most prestigious brands in the industry.”

Kliger acknowledged that the share of digital in luxury is “still very low” — about 8 percent of the global market in 2015, according to McKinsey data. But he is confident that it can quickly assume a 20 to 30 percent share. “All the debates

Zalando Touts Apps as Next Wave in Mobile Commerce

Photographs by Antonio Salgado

● Apps — a magnet for young, tech-savvy women and an opportunity to seize more revenue — represent the next wave of disruption for e-commerce.

So says Moritz Hahn, senior vice president of market and category management at Zalando SE, who described app customers as more loyal, more engaged — and more apt to spend freely.

“Those app customers are crazy good customers, I have to say. They come more often, and when they buy, they buy more,” the executive said, noting more than 16 million people have already downloaded the Zalando app.

While he didn’t give precise numbers, he said the revenue share of app customers is higher than the traffic share. They spend twice as much as desktop users; four times more than mobile site users, and visit up to six times more than other channels.

Echoing other speakers at the London Digital Forum, the German retail executive described rapid adoption of mobile technology, which he described as the “entry point” for app users.

Already, 60 percent of Zalando’s traffic is mobile, up from 48 percent 12 months ago, and spiking as high as 70 percent during the peak holiday period.

Consequently, Zalando takes a “mobilefirst” approach to service, content and technology enhancements. “We always pioneer with the app,” Hahn said, while stressing that customers will enjoy a “similar experience” across other devices, including desktop computers.

“The big advance with mobile is that we

Dr. Moritz Hahn, Zalando

know where you are. In the past, we only knew where you lived,” he said.

Hahn opened his address by describing Zalando’s wish to become each customer’s “fashion companion,” an expert who can advise on the latest brands and styles

— and also “take care of the boring stuff,” meaning payments, deliveries and returns, if necessary.

Zalando offers free shipments and returns, and encourages at-home fittings, billing only once the customer has

are over: All categories will go digital,” he said. “Even for the next three or four years, the digital luxury market will triple or quadruple so we are operating in a very nice space,” he said, while noting that “there is very intense competition to satisfy best the customer need out there.”

To that end, the e-tailer closely monitors customer feedback.

“I myself read every Friday the weekly customer feedback and she writes a lot,” Kliger said. “She writes compliment but she also writes critique and it is so helpful.

We got so many good ideas from our customers. I can tell you, when they don’t write to you anymore, you know it, it’s over.” — MILES SOCHA

committed to the item. “Pay as you keep,” is how Hahn dubbed it. This generous approach, plus a large assortment, is meant to position Zalando as the go-to e-tailer for “every occasion.

“We’re your fashion companion if you go to the Berghain club or to a conference like this or a beach holiday,” Hahn said, name-dropping the famous Berlin techno temple.

Besides a comprehensive assortment, Zalando also focuses on “relevant personalization” to help users wade through the choice, along with a “frictionless” transaction experience and a “lovable” brand personality.

Given Zalando’s scale, it has assembled a “huge number of attributes” about its customer base, data that allows it to make relevant recommendations.

For example, via algorithms, the retailer is able to “find your fashion twin,” a customer who bought the same items, enabling Zalando to recommend with confidence brands and specific styles. “If he clicked on bomber jackets or specific sneakers the likelihood that I love the sneakers too is unbelievably high,” Hahn enthused.

He characterized its scale and data pool as a powerful selling point to bring on new vendors. “We can introduce your brand to the right audience,” he said, arguing that multibrand retail apps are more compelling for the customer.

“With this app situation, I don’t know if you want to have your stand-alone luxury app. For me, luxury is more often a mixand-match approach and I would rather bring it into the mix-and-match funnel.”

— M.S.

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25 APRIL 2016

Data by Design: Using Numbers to Bring Customers to Life

● Luxury and data haven’t always been great bedfellows, but that can change if a fashion company’s different divisions start sharing more insights, said Matthew Keylock, director, data insight, Yoox Net-aporter Group.

Keylock said there is so much data out there, and so many ways to use it that big companies are often overwhelmed or paralyzed by it. Alternatively, different divisions will often pursue their own agendas and view certain data in isolation.

“We may have all the right instruments, the violins, the cellos, the wind instruments and the percussion ones, but they may be playing to different conductors.

Unless we start connecting these up we can’t start getting beneath certain challenges,” Keylock said.

“It also means there is a lot of confusion and ambiguity in the business. Sometimes data can actually slow you down and make things worse than it might otherwise be,” he said. “Maybe you are driving conversions that you are not really seeking, because not every sale is equal, and not every customer is equal.”

For big companies in particular, the solution lies in having a common vision aimed at bringing the customer to life by looking ever closer at how he or she is shopping, what their particular needs are, and qualities such as whether or not they are an early adopter.

External data — as opposed to payment data — is a critical way to learn about the

Matthew Keylock

customer and should not be underestimated, Keylock said.

“It can help identify opportunities and needs, so we can bring to life who our real customer is, where they go on holiday, whether they shop when they are on holiday, or before, and if so, how much before?

“Can we gather new data from the customers about the events they are going to?

it to understand customer behavior, they should also use it to make more strategic choices and delve even deeper into consumer habits and behavior.

“Do people buy marked-down on Net-aporter, and then do most of their shopping on The Outnet — or the other way around?

We have a good understanding of how different types of customers cross-shop, and that allows us to work out how we position those brands, how we buy the right brands, and how we price the mark down in the right way.”

He added that reading farther into big data also helps a company like YNAP remain nimble in an industry driven by trends and constantly changing tastes.

“If you take groceries, you kind of know there are things that customers are going to buy again and again. In our case it’s not the same. A lot of the stuff is perishable.

A trend that was around last year might not be around this year. Or a brand may have changed designer and be going in a different direction, so the data helps us identify those trigger points, and behaviors that allow us to understand that broader spectrum.

“From a personalization point of view we’ve got to work out how much of (a consumer’s shopping) history is relevant to what we personalize right now, and that means not only understanding the customer, it also means understanding the product. Some brand loyalties go way beyond a customer’s most recent purchase, and we need to weigh those things for different customers.”

‘I’m going to Ascot,’ ‘I’ve got two weddings this summer.’ All of those sorts of things will be helpful to build that really rich picture of who our individual customers are, and then allow us to apply that across all of the different social channels and start to use this data in a way that optimizes our business,” he said.

While companies can parse data and use

— SAMANTHA CONTI

working with Estée Lauder on a survey that allows customers to figure out suitable skin cleansing regimes, and on a separate “magic makeup” program that allows users to test colors virtually and share with friends. They’ve also done a “magic match” with clothing and accessories, that allows shoppers to ask brands on the site for help putting together an outfit.

Alibaba also has a technology tool that allows shoppers to snap a picture of someone wearing an outfit, and instantly search the site’s entire platform to identify it and potentially purchase it.

She said the aim with fashion is always “to create an exciting environment that

lends itself to the category. It really is about social, about latest trends, about differentiation.”

In terms of other trends Chande and her team are seeing — at least among the younger consumer base — is an interest and a willingness to purchase at full price.

“As the e-commerce market has evolved, we see that it originally started just the same way as it did in the West, as a clearance outlet, where you could go for off-season merchandise. Today, it’s often the first place shoppers will go for the latest trends and there is an increasing willingness in the under-35 age group to purchase full price,” she said. — S.C.

China’s Under-35s, Middle Classes to Fuel Growth

● Despite reports of a slowdown in

Amee Chande

from a time to mope or moan with fellow singletons into a shopping bonanza that is now 4-5 times bigger than Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined.

Last year Alibaba tempted shoppers on 11/11, asking them to shake their mobile phones to create shopping opportunities.

In past years the e-commerce giant has staged a massive TV production at the Beijing National Stadium, also known as the Bird’s Nest, with a countdown to 11/11 sales promotions.

Alibaba doesn’t need Chinese singles, or special days, to create personalized or special shopping experiences, however. Chande said the company has been

Photographs by Antonio Salgado

spending, China remains a growth story, with consumers demanding ever-more personalized services and fun ways to shop, according to Amee Chande, Alibaba Group’s managing director U.K. and Europe.

“Even if you take the bottom end of the growth projections in China, and you forecast that out until 2020, the growth of consumption in China would be larger than the entire market of the U.K. or Germany.

And that is at the bottom end of the forecast,” said Chande.

Chande said the growing middle classes; people living outside tier 1 and tier 2 cities, and the under-35s — who have come of age in a digital-retail environment — are driving the growth, and are embracing innovation.

“By 2020, there will be half a billion middle class consumers and it’s particularly interesting to pause and think about the fact that they are middle class. This increasingly large population is not just interested in luxury products, but in everyday products to increase the quality of life.”

She cited some compelling statistics, and how China’s e-commerce giant is leveraging those numbers to create more demand and grow its business.

By 2020, 42 percent of the growth in consumption will come from e-commerce; more than 65 percent of consumption is being driven by those under the age of 35, men and women who think digital before they think brick-and-mortar. China has drastically less brick-and-mortar retail square footage per capita than the U.S., she said.

On Singles’ Day, more than 63 percent of consumption on Alibaba’s platform was done through a mobile device. According to the site’s internal forecasts, that figure is set to reach 75 to 80 percent in the next couple of years.

It was Alibaba, Chande said, who transformed the traditional Singles’ Day

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25 APRIL 2016

The Rodial Group’s Maria Hatzistefanis Discusses Social Media Strategies

● President and founder of the Rodial Group Maria Hatzistefanis learned quickly that social media can be both a boon — and a curse.

The high-end, independent skin-care brand was founded in 1999, and includes the labels Rodial, Nip + Fab and Nip + Man. The company chose not to hire social media experts, but to manage everything in-house, and learned though experience and by making mistakes.

On the plus side, Hatzistefanis met Kylie Jenner via Instagram in 2014 and eventually tapped her as face of Nip + Fab, which is the company’s lower-priced line of treatment products.

“The story couldn’t have unfolded better,” said Hatzistefanis. “One day Kylie came across our products at a shoot and she went on Instagram saying how much she liked them to her 22 million followers.

It got half a million likes in one picture.

“Now, we could have just retweeted it and left it at that but instead, we elevated this moment into a strategic asset and decided to work with her. Here was someone who already had a connection with the brand, including me, so we brought her to London to launch her as the Nip + Fab ambassador and we created a competition to invite her fans to join us and we committed to all the assets that we used over the course of six months.”

Hatzistefanis said the collaboration with Kylie helped the company expand its U.S. distribution and add to its overall distribution channels. “It also gave us U.S. brand awareness while gaining a new audience.

On the social media front, this collaboration increased our followers from 30k to almost 100k in a few weeks and our likes reached record numbers.”

Hatzistefanis said she is personally involved with the brand’s social media accounts and has developed her own voice for a separate, personal Instagram account where she shares her likes, dislikes and experiences.

Thinking Fast and Slow: Rituals Cosmetics Takes a Holistic Approach to Beauty

Photographs by Antonio Salgado

● The Amsterdam-based Rituals Cos-

metics has built a business on consumers’ needs for living in the fast lane, and learning how to sit still.

The brand, whose products are inspired

by Eastern rituals and traditions, carries a range of beauty products and fragrances at accessible price points.

Chief operating officer and co-owner Arjen Schouten discussed the brand’s consumer-centric strategies, and understanding the mind-set of “slow shoppers” as well as ones that value speed and efficiency.

The company, which is 15 years old, has long been taking an omnichannel approach. “We believe we have to be extremely flexible in how we service our client because nowadays clients want everything. They want to shop anywhere, either in our stores or online, or any channel,” he said.

For logistical operations including inventory and shipping, the company has implemented a cloud system and established a new network where staff can receive product information and sales histories via mobile devices.

Thanks to the cloud, “If you see clients in-store, you know which things get picked up. You can refer to that or you can crosssale, or upsale on the basis of that product.

The idea is, using all the data that we have, we’ll try to be flexible with all the systems in place so we can always interconnect

Maria Hatzistefanis

Authenticity is key when it comes to social media, Hatzistefanis said, adding that the various channels must be handled with care.

“Social media can be your best friend or your worst enemy. As much as it is a platform and a tool to develop your brand, it can turn against you, if your customer senses that all you want is selling product.

We learned very early on that our force has

with the data and the client wherever we are, in every store, Web shop and device that we have.”

Another digital initiative is the Rituals app, which not only includes a shopping area but also a “relax” section, gifting area, store finder and a magazine. One of the most popular features of the app is the meditation area that offers fifteen different guided sessions.

“We have clients who like to go fast,” said Schouten “But we also have clients who like to go slow, so you have to offer a different solution for every client. You need to be flexible.”

The company has been notching 35 to 40 percent growth year-on-year, and has been launching approximately two stores per week. It has a total of 450 stores globally and a growing international presence with their shops-in-shops.

“We believe that if we really start to think omnichannel and start to connect some channels then we can even grow faster,” said Schouten.

Future rollout plans for the brand include opening additional stores overseas that have a loyal customer base. “We are opening up another ten stores in Manhattan this year, with flagships in Flatiron, Fifth Avenue and [One] World Trade Center,” said Schouten.

“We truly believe that in the U.S. we have to operate in a different way, it’s a very difficult market, a very competitive market, a retail graveyard, but we’re still there, we still survive. But we also know

to be our own voice, it cannot be forced, promotional or boring. You always want to offer authenticity and what we try to do at Rodial is connect our stories to the customer and the brand, and by connecting they’ll come back and check the Web site regularly or visit our social media platforms regularly to check what’s happening.

You need to become the friend, you need to be part of their lives and you need to get

them to listen to you and the brand.”

Hatzistefanis also shared tips on creating a social media following, including “finding the right platform that your customer uses.

It’s always tempting to go and get on the latest platform,” said Hatzistefanis. “But you need to be persistent and you need to keep updating, otherwise there’s no point in being there.”

She noted that while Snapchat is a popular platform it didn’t work for her when she first tried it out, but she aims to take another chance with it. She considers YouTube a great asset and launched the “Mrs. Rodial Project,” a reality show with guest appearances from designer Henry Holland and model Erin O’ Connor.

“We take our customers behind the scenes and show them the drama and the glamour of Rodial and the world of beauty, fashion and celebrities,” said Hatzistefanis.

“The series has had phenomenal success, and we received over half a million views, but not only that. We got real customer engagement and created brand awareness.”

She also said companies should find a brand ambassador, and partner with someone that resonates with the audience, like she did with Jenner. “A long-term partnership is also very important,” she said, adding that the relationship should not be one-off, but last between three to six months.

If a brand cannot afford supermodel-grade ambassadors or top celebrities, Hatzistefanis suggested that brands tap talents who are just beginning to make their mark.

“Ambassadors come in all shapes and forms,” said Hatzistefanis. “You can work with bloggers, YouTubers, with international personalities or model personalities, so just look at your audience and stick to your budget.”

“There are options these days for any kind of budget and the other thing that really made it work for us is trying to identify new talent and people who are starting, so that you can get them for cheaper.”

— LORELEI MARFIL

Arjen Schouten

that if you’re going to make it there you have to be outstanding.

“Our dream is to build a global company in the next five to ten years with the presence of a thousand stores or a bit more,” said Schouten.

“The two channels that we think we

must do more are e-commerce, as we are at 5 percent but it’s doubling every year now. So we invest heavily in that. Also in duty-free travel where we are now at 5 percent, but we want to reach 10 percent with duty-free being the ‘sixth continent.’”

— L.M.

8

● Juliet Warkentin, director, brand

and creative, Amazon Fashion Europe, said the consumer sits at the heart of the site’s strategy, and that Amazon wants to be seen as a fashion inspiration — and enabler — for a broad range of customers.

“We want to be able to enable them and we want to give them the best search that we possibly can, and we want to inspire them,” said Warkentin, during a conversation with Samantha Conti, WWD’s London bureau chief.

Before the conversation kicked off, she showed a short film called “I Wish I Could Wear” that launched in November last year. Shot by Rankin, it features a trio of women talking about how they reconcile their love of fashion with their “flaws” — too tall, pale or curvy.

Guided by three fashion bloggers with similar physical characteristics, they’re able to dress the way they want.

The short, which has an emotional tug similar to Dove’s successful “Real Beauty Sketches” campaign, has been viewed 56 million times.

Warkentin said she believes the film’s success was due to it’s being a “very sharable” piece of content, but also because Amazon considered its customer before making it.

“That kind of content is some of the stuff that says ‘Look, this is how you can put it together, if you want to put it together that way.’ We have a lot of content now that we’re building that inspires people to really think about fashion in their own way,” she said. “In terms of inspiring, we have content that we create for the site, we have content that we create for social for YouTube, for Instagram.”

Warkentin also talked about the site’s

advice-led content, which is driven by search terms, what people are buying, and how they’re shopping. A monthly “Stylist in Residence” story takes a problem and builds content around a particular wardrobe dilemma, which is then seeded across the site’s social networks, and on the website.

Warkentin also expanded on previous campaigns that have featured Suki Waterhouse and Chiara Ferragni, talking about how famously glamorous women fit into the company’s message.

“We are in the fashion business, aren’t we? We are all looking at how we engage with the customer and how we actually bring the customer into our conversation, but we also want to be able to inspire,” she said, adding that it was important that Amazon use ambassadors with a point of view of their own.

Talking to trends in the different European markets in which Amazon Fashion operates, Warkentin noted there is little difference between the countries. “You will see some localization as you always would, like with young brands coming up that we would stock in specific countries. But those big fashion trends tend to be pan-European,” she said.

With regard to Amazon.com’s recent partnership with Moda Operandi in the U.S., Warkentin said it showed just how flexible brands and businesses can be when they work with Amazon.

“You can work with us in terms of retail or you can decide that you want to operate in the marketplace. It depends on what your business model is and what you are really interested in pushing,” she said.

Warkentin also talked about Amazon Fashion Europe’s recent collaborations, with the London-based jeweler Solange

Juliet Warkentin

Azagury-Partridge for enamel and silver jewelry, and with the designer Osman Yousefzada on eveningwear and men’s wear collections. She said they were both part of a carefully considered approach to partnerships that need to benefit the designer, Amazon and, primarily, the customer.

Click-to-Buy: Brands Make Images Shoppable

● Apu Gupta, cofounder and chief executive officer of the visual commerce platform Curalate, discussed how brands can leverage the imagery they already have — and imagery from online fans — to entice customers and make them buy.

“Today, consumers discover in more places than ever and form opinions from more places than ever,” he said. “We consume content not just from TV and print but from the Web, from apps, from social, from blogs — and the number of touch points just continue to grow. Every one of these touch points is increasingly being dominated by images and that is leading to a tremendous explosion of content that is being created both by you and for you,” he said.

He pointed out that content created by brands for their dot-com sites was just a small slice of the overall content being created around the brand by fans, influencers and blogs.

“We almost never use that content and it’s a shame because that content is incredibly powerful, it’s beautiful,” he said, pointing to the aspirational, lifestyle images that appear on Instagram and other social media sites. He compared them with the straightforward product shots that are regularly used on e-commerce sites, created for accuracy rather than beauty.

“The problem is we create these incredibly powerful assets for aspiration and we put them on channels where those assets die in mere minutes,” he said. “The life of content on [social media] is minutes to hours at best. Unlike the stuff that sits on our dot-com, this really powerful content that we have deployed to all these other channels has no information about the

Apu Gupta

products.”

He added that the really forward-looking brands “are starting to connect these images to the products that are contained within them. If you can do that, you can deploy them anywhere, any touch point that a consumer might discover you on.

You can influence discovery and ultimately conversions across any touch point.”

As an example of a brand that is managing to tap into that rich vein of underutilized aspirational imagery, Gupta held up Forever 21, which has a huge following on Instagram. The brand uses the

Curalate-created Like 2 Buy platform that makes Instagram images shoppable.

“Historically, Forever 21 would take great photos and post them out to Instagram and now what they are doing is connecting those pictures to products. When a consumer engages with their Instagram account, they can actually discover the products that this model is wearing,” he said.

“The first two weeks that Forever 21 launched this capability on their Instagram account, they delivered 38,000 visitors to

She said those sorts of initiatives work to position Amazon as an “aspirational destination,” as does the site’s support of the British Fashion Council, and the recent opening of a major, 46,000-squarefoot photographic studio in east London, the city’s epicenter of cool.

— JULIA NEEL

their Web site. And those visitors stayed on site 24 percent longer than a typical mobile user.” Likewise, Guess used its Instagram imagery on its app, connecting those to products to purchase.

Alternatively, Gupta said that Target didn’t want to just leverage new forms of content, it wanted to leverage new sources of data to simulate the experience of browsing and discovering in a shop.

The store used data from its social media channels to identify the Target products that were most talked about.

From this, it created a new site called Awesome Shop, populated by the products most pinned on Pinterest. “It helps consumers discover things they may never have known they wanted,” he said.

Blog content created by brands is another source of imagery that can be used to drive sales conversions. Crate & Barrel does this by leveraging influencers to create this content. But, instead of a clunky list of links to products beneath an image, the store made the images shoppable, so that by hovering over a product, a consumer could click straight through to a product to purchase.

“As a result of this, they are now sending twice the traffic from their blog to their e-commerce site than they ever did before,” said Gupta.

Shopbop.com has begun distributing shoppable content to blogs that are part of its affiliate program. When these influencers embed that image on their blogs consumers who discover theses things can instantly go to the right place.

“Ultimately the point of purchase is going to move to the point of discovery,” Gupta said, but it’s still a way off. “Five to ten years at least, while the technology catches up with consumer behavior.”

— J.N.

Photographs by Antonio Salgado

The Customer as Stylist: Amazon Fashion Europe Appeals to Range of Women

25 APRIL 2016

9

25 APRIL 2016

Secrets of SEO: How to Help a Brand Stand Out

● Lisa Templeton, senior manager of search marketing and paid media at PFSWeb, an international provider of e-commerce solutions, wants brands to pay closer attention to SEO. Focusing on five ways that search engines are changing, she outlined a road map for 2016 that brands should adopt to maximize their traffic and resulting sales conversions.

She said the SEO skill set is core to digital businesses and encouraged attendees at the WWD Digital Forum London to look at it with a different perspective — “beyond the typical title tags and meta tags that you are going to put on your e-commerce site or marketing sites” — if they want to maximize the number of new visitors, and make themselves more attractive to Google.

Templeton encouraged brands to think of SEO managers as “the people who understand the consumers’ wants, needs and wishes,” taking their cue from what’s typed into a search bar and translating that into content that’s going to “meet those needs, surface that into a search engine, which is still a really great discovery tool, and promote it so that it gets credibility.

Your brand needs visibility across a wide [spectrum] of sites, from your content marketing sites, social sites, your channel partner sites, the list goes on, so there’s a real need for this,” she emphasized.

According to Templeton, SEO contributes to about 18 percent of a brand’s total site traffic and on average generates about 16 percent of the revenue. She said it’s also responsible for 55 percent of new visitors.

“So that’s where you have to stop and think that this is a channel we have to be in early.”

Her first point was on SERPs, or search engine result pages. Templeton explained that Google is making changes to the layout of SERPs, with up to four paid ads appearing at the top of results pages, meaning a decrease in organic search

Photographs by Antonio Salgado

Using Mobile to Bridge Digital, Brick-and-Mortar

● One of the earliest U.K. retailers to get behind click-and-collect was John Lewis, which introduced the shopping concept in 2008, eventually rolling out the service to its Waitrose supermarket chain.

The service has grown substantially over the years, with the retailer adding new elements to enhance the customer experience. John Lewis is trialing in-store beacon technology so that it can shorten delivery times and ideally get packages to customers while they are still browsing in-store via a mobile phone alert.

Sienne Veit, director of online product at John Lewis, spoke about the rise of mobile technology, the “master shopper,” and the retailer’s latest digital initiatives.

She said the consumer shift to mobile has grown with portable devices becoming today’s “shop window.” As a result, the company has aimed for a seamless fashion experience when designing their shopping channels for an increasingly impatient, digitally savvy consumer.

“Our shopper knows what she wants, where she wants it, how she wants it.

And she wants it as soon as she can get it,” Veit said. “She’s gone to social media.

She’s checked out every possible source of inspiration. She’s sought out advice from her friends. She knows not just one retailer’s product — she knows them all.

She can move from site to site and find the best price, the most available stock and the best delivery service. That’s really key. So we need to make sure that we can provide an experience that is absolutely fit for this master shopper and what she wants. The power has shifted to the customer.”

Lisa Templeton

space on a page.

Additionally, there are new Knowledge Panels appearing on the right hand side of brand searches, often populated with information from a third-party content provider like Wikipedia. These also include verified social media handles and links to competitors. “I’ve heard that they are also thinking of adding an ad unit to this, so this is a space to definitely be aware of,” she noted.

Video and image units on a Google search page were two organic

Veit said consumers are consulting the computer screen, the mobile screen — and the shop floor — before they make their purchases.

“When you come into a John Lewis store you get the best possible impartial advice,” she said. “But the sale, the actual transaction, might not happen in the shop, it might happen elsewhere. Equally, the shop might be where you pick up your goods, it might be a distribution or a fulfillment center. So we need to think about the role of online shops differently.”

The retailer has also amped up its online customer service, offering wish lists and personal styling appointments. It has also introduced a new feature called “Find Similar,” which discovers multiple items that closely resemble a customer search.

It has also upgraded its loyalty program, and customers can now access their My John Lewis card via the store’s app. Users can scan in their purchases via the app and they are awarded points, while the company is able to gather their personal data and use it to create more personalized communication.

The app also features an area that stores receipts from in-store or online purchases.

“It’s also beneficial because it means that when someone asks me ‘Where did you get those shoes?’ I can give a product number,” Veit said. “Even if I bought them last year, the information is in my account.

That is fantastic for customers because they don’t have to remember stuff, they can just know that it’s all there in one place.”

Veit said the store’s “secret sauce” comes from a mix of polling customers

opportunities that brands can harness, particularly with the current focus on content marketing.

She showed an example for a search on “how to apply foundation.” About 22,000 people per month in England search for the exact phrase, but adding in all the variations of that phrase, it’s more like 1.8 million people per month.

“So there’s a lot of volume, a lot of eyeballs, and Google noticed and they like to surface content that’s very clear, stepby-step, very clearly meeting that need to

answer that question,” she said, adding that the first video to appear was an exact match for that phrase. “So applying SEO tactics to the videos you’re putting up on YouTube can be very beneficial for your brand to get this type of positioning.”

Her second point centered on the need for sites to be as fast as possible, ideally loading in under three seconds. “Google likes fast sites, they prioritize fast sites in the algorithm…if the site is not rolling fast we know we’re at risk of loosing not just Google rankings, but conversions and increase in our bounce rate as well,” she said.

To improve speed, she said that brands planning a redesign with a mobile-first approach were on the right track. If a brand isn’t planning a redesign, she suggested teaming SEO and creative teams to make sure that images aren’t too hefty and time-consuming to load, and also tasking development teams to look at and clean up old site redirects.

Another topic was HTTPS, or hypertext transfer protocol secure, used by secure sites. “Since 2014 Google has been really pushing the concept that all sites need to be 100 per cent secure,” said Templeton, adding that includes not just the back-end of a site and the card payment process, but the entire site.

Despite this, it hasn’t been adopted widely as yet, but she advises brands to start planning to implement HTTPS in the next 12 months, considering third-party integrations and code changes, upgrading certificates and SEO transition.

She also suggested applying a common core vocabulary — or shema — to the way brands code their sites. “If you refer to your price and your product name and your product description and your product images in the same way, using the same common vocabulary, it’s going to be a lot easier for Google to understand,” she said.

— JULIA NEEL

Sienne Veit

and testing new initiatives in the London stores.

“We have brought our customers into our head office. There is a big customer lab and we bring in customers and take them through their own shopping missions. Our team is watching from the viewing room, to deeply understand our customers’

needs. But we also bring people from around the business into the viewing room so that they can understand our customers, too. The entire organization can now be focused on customer and making sure that we are creating propositions that are inspiring and also easy to use and seamless.” — LORELEI MARFIL

10

25 APRIL 2016

FASHION

Rosita and Angela Missoni on the Family Business ●

The Italian label widely known for its zigzag knitwear’s cofounder joined her daughter at the 92nd Street Y to describe how the company was built.

RETAIL

Aéropostale Shares Now Trade OTC ●

BY ROSEMARY FEITELBERG

Rosita Missoni has covered a lot of ground in the 63 years since she and her husband Ottavio started their namesake brand. And Thursday night, with the help of her daughter Angela, the company’s creative director, she recapped some of the company’s more memorable moments during a Q&A with at the 92nd Street Y with Fern Mallis.

The younger Missoni described the undercurrent that runs through their lives: “Home and the factory were theism.”

Rosita Missoni on developing the signature look.

R.M.: “At first we made black and white dresses, and then Tai [her husband] started to make stripes and zigzags, and then checks and things. It was difficult to have a pattern designed by Tai without purple in it. But in Italy, actors hate purple because it’s not good luck. It’s a superstition. Even when we did costumes for La Scala if there was a gigantic black cape, he didn’t care if there was some purple in it.”

On Tai Missoni’s request to build a factory, but in a place where they would like to go on weekends.

R.M.: “He found out that we could be part of a special law in 1968 to increase work for women if we built the factory in Sumirago. This place had a beautiful view from a hill of the Alps. Building the factory there was the best thing we could have done. We built a beautiful factory with a huge park around it with oak, pine and chestnut trees around it. To do creative work, it’s important to be in a beautiful place. Four years later, we built a house.”

Angela Missoni on the first fashion show in Milan in 1965 at the age of seven.

A.M.: “Since then, I have witnessed every single show. A year or two later there was one in a swimming pool in Milan for a collection made with Emmanuelle Khanh. They had inflatable chairs designed by her husband that were from one end of the pool to the other. They also had an inflatable house in the middle and all of a sudden the house collapsed. But it was a happening with all of the girls in the water. It became a big party.

I was standing by my mom and I remember Anna Piaggi coming in with a dress that was half-black and half-white and saying, ‘Rosita, look at what I’m wearing.’ In 1967, she was wearing a vintage Missoni.”

On her decision to join the company: A.M.: “I started by editing the shows. Then I realized there were always new things flourishing in the collection but they were always submerged in the history of Missoni. In the beginning when I was asked what I was doing, I would say, ‘I’m just cleaning.’ I started to pull out the essence of Missoni. In 1995, I hired Mario Testino and Carine Roitfeld to do the campaign. We worked together for seven years.”

On designing 400 products for Target.

A.M.: “They had come to us two or three years earlier, but I didn’t really trust them much. When I saw how they were treating the label and marketing on such a high level, then I really pushed [the idea] with the family. Not everyone in Italy understood at that time what Target was. It was huge because it was the first time they were doing a full lifestyle [collaboration.] Then I realized how many people in the states love Missoni and that there was a generation that loved it without knowing it was Missoni. We would do it again. We did it a year and half ago with Target Australia. It was very successful.”

A possible bankruptcy filing is still looming on the horizon.

BY VICKI M. YOUNG

Shares of Aéropostale Inc. are now trading over the counter.

The teen retailer said Friday that shares of its common stock are now trading on the OTC-QX Best Market, effective immediately. The common stock’s new trading symbol is “AROP.” The OTCQX market is operated by the OTC Markets Group Inc. The company said that it received notice from the New York Stock Exchange, where the shares had been trading, that the Exchange was planning to delist the company’s common stock because of the “abnormally low” trading price. Aéropostale elected not to appeal the decision, moving the trading instead to the OTCQX market.

It’s the latest headache Aéropostale executives have had to face, although not the most serious. On Thursday, word surfaced that the teen specialty chain might be eyeing a bankruptcy filing before the month is over. That speculation fueled a 27.7 percent drop in its share price, resulting in the Exchange suspending trading of the company’s common stock midafternoon. The stock price for Aéropostale shares when trading was halted was 15 cents. In its first day of OTC trading, the intraday trading range was a low of 5 cents and a high of 12 cents, with nearly 27 million shares changing hands. The stock closed the trading session at 7 cents.

The share price and listing issue have been kicking around for some time. The teen chain disclosed on Oct. 30 that the NYSE reached out about the

listing requirement because its global market capitalization over a certain period was less than $50 million. And at the end of September, the Exchange had sent the retailer a separate notification regarding the average closing price of its common stock and how it was below the $1 minimum listing requirement.

Aéropostale on Friday was quick to note that the transition to the OTCQX market “does not affect the company’s business operations and does not change its public reporting requirements with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.”

Right now the chain’s most immediate problem is the expected bankruptcy filing, making it the latest to file among the retail players in teen land. The company has already said it is exploring strategic options and financial alternatives, including a sale of the company or a restructuring.

Further, in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on April 15, the company said it was still locked in a dispute with MGF Sourcing over what it said is a “violation of a sourcing agreement.” The filing noted that the alleged “violation is causing a disruption in the supply of some merchandise, which if unresolved, could result in further liquidity constraints on the company.”

The teen market has been a pressured one for the last few years. Pacific Sunwear of California Inc. filed a Chapter 11 petition earlier this month.

Last year saw the filings by The Wet Seal, Quiksilver, Mexx and American Apparel, while 2014 saw Deb Shops and Delia’s enter bankruptcy proceedings. They’ve all faced the same pressures from the lack of teen spending on fashion.

Abercrombie & Fitch Inc.’s chairman Arthur C. Martinez has told WWD that

BEAUTY

Following SEC Filing, Coty Provides Detail On P&G Deal ●

The information includes financials for Procter and Gamble’s beauty business, including assets the manufacturer isn’t buying.

BY ALLISON COLLINS

Ahead of consummating its acquisition of 41 Procter & Gamble Co. beauty brands, Coty Inc. filed an S-4 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that sheds more light on the

business under P&G as a whole than on the brands it’s picking up.

Coty said it will provide more detail — including further information about how the deal has changed now that the Dolce & Gabbana and Christina Aguilera fragrance licenses dropped out — on its May 3 earnings call. Coty agreed in July to acquire 43 brands from P&G for $12.5 billion.

The 41 brands that are making the transition accounted for a 1 percent decline in organic net sales for fiscal 2015 at P&G, and a 2 percent decline in organic net sales for the first half of

the “larger trend of the Millennial consumer spending more on electronics and eating out will continue. It makes the share of wallet available for fashion that much smaller.”

Walter Loeb on Friday said, “Teens are shopping for items, not fashion trends. When they shop at the fast-fashion retailers, they are basically limiting what they are buying. Fast fashion is now dictated not by the stores and not by their parents, but by the teens’ peers.” He is predicting that there could be more teen retailers that could be eyeing a chapter 11 down the road.

Citi Research analyst Paul Lejuez said earlier this month that a teen retailer probably has a 10-year span from 15 to 25 to sell to its customer before he or she moves on. The result is that “every 10 years” the retailer has to turn over their customer base completely, putting more pressure on them to “consistently attract that 14-year-old to replace the 26-year-olds they are losing.”

A few of the chains are now going through their own stages of growing pains, and at least appear to be holding their own. American Eagle so far saw a strong start to the first quarter. And Wolfe Research’s Adrienne Yih Tennant said that management meetings earlier this month show Abercrombie on the “recovery path.” Abercrombie’s younger teen sibling Hollister has shown improvement through product offerings and its value proposition.

The remodeled stores are also easier to shop, with wider aisles and improved in-store lighting. Abercrombie’s corporate president, Fran Horowitz – she was also formerly Hollister’s brand president who took charge of the updated store concept — said both the teens and parents have been receptive to the in-store changes.

fiscal 2016. As a group, several brands that were never part of the P&G/Coty transaction — Laura Biagiotti, Puma, Rochas, Giorgio Beverly Hills and Naomi Campbell — accounted for a 1 percent decline in net sales for fiscal 2015 and a 2 percent decline for the first half of fiscal 2016.

The filing breaks down P&G’s beauty business by percentage of net sales reaped for the fiscal year ended June 30. In that time period, the retail hair and cosmetics unit, which includes Clairol Nice ‘n Easy, Cover Girl, Max Factor and other brands, was responsible for 38 percent of net sales. Fine fragrances brought in 36 percent of net sales. The salon professional segment, including Wella Professionals, was responsible for 26 percent.

Coty said it expects synergies, working capital benefits, one-time changes and one-time capital expenditures may be higher than previously announced amounts, and said it will provide an update on those figures on the May 3 call.

11

25 APRIL 2016

Christina Mongini Talks ‘Silicon Valley’

The HBO show’s third season premiered Sunday night.

The third season of “Silicon Valley” began Sunday.

Silicon Valley certainly isn’t known for being a center of fashion, but the style there does say a lot about start-up culture. Inspired by the bubbling tech scene in San Francisco, HBO original series “Silicon Valley” focuses on a cast of the characters who orbit within that technerd sphere.

“There’s so much money and power there, and it’s very causal. You don’t see a lot of ties being worn to the office,” explains the show’s costume designer Christina Mongini.

“It’s understated wealth. You can go to northern California, and you’re not going to be able to pick out who is what.

They don’t show their power sartorially or aesthetically.”

Instead, what you do see are many of the familiar tropes of start-up culture: hoodies, baggy cargo pants, untucked button-ups. For season three of the show, which premiered Sunday, the characters on “Silicon Valley,” grow up a bit, sartorially speaking.

“They’re not having huge epiphanies about changing their look,” Mongini said.

“But as the characters have evolved throughout this season, we definitely streamlined some of the characters a bit more, gave them a little more focus. We’re not doing a lot of T-shirts with things on them, that youthful edge has sort of fallen away a little bit.”

The main characters shed some of their casual schlubbiness, subbing hoodies for sweaters, at least for business meetings.

“We have [Richard Hendricks] more in his sweater oxford looks when he goes to meetings. He’s trying to dress up more to be ‘the guy in the room,’” Mongini explains of the main character. “[Erlich Bachman] is in sport coats a lot this season, and it helps give him that slightly more serious edge in terms of his involvement and his mind-set, and trying to be in control.”

To create the look of a future tech-mogul, Mongini looked to many sources, from current retail to consignment shops. “In somebody’s closet, you have stuff from years and years ago. It’s not all stuff you bought that season,” she said. “For me, it’s more about re-creating the silhouettes of a look. It might not be what it looks like on the outside, it might be more expensive. It’s sort of a treasure hunt just to get the right colors and right patterns.”

No luck in getting your hands on the same hoodie that Branson wears — Mongini wouldn’t disclose the sources, although she did offer one clue: “They may not be what you think.”

Hey, even luxury brands have loungewear.

— KRISTEN TAUER

Five Minutes With Alexa Chung: Fashion Apps, Social Media and Her Hatred of ‘Clique-y’ Coachella Fashion

Chung photograph by Katie Jones

The “It” girl discusses making an app, influencing young women and hating the commercialization of festival fashion.

Alexa Chung wants to show that she’s more than another “It” girl. In addition to pulling pieces from Marks & Spencer’s archives for a special capsule collection and prepping to shoot her fall ad campaign for AG this week, she’s revving up interest in her fashion app called Villoid.

Formerly known as Sobazaar, the tech company hosted a garden tea party at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood on Thursday. Before greeting her friends, including Poppy Delevingne and Kelly Osbourne, the 32-year-old chatted with WWD about becoming an app-maker, influencing young women on social media and hating the commercialization of festival fashion.

WWD: What makes Villoid different from other fashion apps?

Alexa Chung: Basically it’s a social-fashion app with more emphasis on the social. It’s an opportunity for people to make mood boards with items from our affiliates such as Net-a-porter or MyTheresa.com. We’ve got loads of different brands you can play with. And you can assemble a dream mood board to showcase your style without having actually to own any of the clothes or worry about what they look like on your figure or any of these things that might affect how you get dressed and how you express yourself. It’s like Pinterest and

Instagram with a “buy” button. It’s more about sharing your ideas, sharing your kind of vision. It’s a chance to express yourself.

WWD: What does the name Villoid mean?

A.C.: Nothing. I thought So Bazaar just didn’t seem right.

WWD: What exactly was your role at Villoid?

A.C.: I was brought in to creative-direct and to help bring new brands in and to establish some kind of social media strategy and all these other components.

WWD: Why did you want to add app-maker to your résumé? You’re busy doing other projects.

A.C.: The same reason I do anything.

I’m quite keen to learn different areas of business. And I felt like when I met Jeanette [Dyhre Kvisvik] and Karin [Kallman] and the rest of the team from Norway, they were just really passionate about this project. Any opportunity to be creative and to be able to have creative input is very appealing to me.

WWD: This party is conveniently squeezed between the two Coachella weekends. Did you go the first weekend?

A.C.: No. WWD: Are you going to go the

second weekend?

A.C.: No. I went for about 10 years, which really ages me. It’s a wonderful festival. Last year, queuing for a taxi for three hours was like the final nail in the coffin for me.

WWD: Are you going to any other music festivals this year?

A.C.: Yes, Glastonbury, Governors Ball and Way Out West looks fun. I don’t know. I’m always up for a festival.

WWD: What was your reaction when you heard the news about Prince’s death?

A.C.: I was very sad. I was actually in the party shop buying the arrangements you see hanging through the trees.

WWD: Did you ever see Prince perform? He played Coachella one year.

A.C.: No, I never got to see him. There was a rumor that he would always play Glastonbury every year — “and the third act is going to be Prince” — because they announce the headline acts in dribs and drabs. I was sad to have never seen him.

WWD: What’s your take on festival dressing? A lot of people are doing festival collections.

A.C.: No, I can’t. That’s actually the thing that turns me off about it now, I think. I just don’t like people to be dictated to. I think you should dress however

Alexa Chung you want. Again, it’s another opportunity for what seems quite clique-y to be “this is how you should be.” And everyone gets on the bandwagon. I think it just homogenizes something that should be about self-expression and being yourself. That’s the whole point of a festival. You get to finally see the music and the bands that really inspire you.

When there is a uniform surrounding that, again — it’s another exclusive kind of thing that, I think, is a bit annoying.

WWD: What’s your approach to dressing for a music festival? Is it based on the weather?

A.C.: Yeah, big time. Most of the ones I go to are in Britain and that’s kind of rainy. I do like to dress up for festivals.

I think it’s fun. You can get away with more in that scenario than perhaps you can at a cocktail party or somewhere else. Yeah, weather first, really.

WWD: What advice do you have for women who admire your style and need to pack for a festival?

A.C.: Well, the first year at Coachella I

did it all with one rucksack. I was in L.A. for a week. It’s possible to take three things and look all right, I think. Make sure you just take shoes you don’t really care about because they’re going to get really sandy at Coachella. Footwear is always the first thing to start with a festival. If it’s muddy, you need Wellie boots. I think when you look at how people are dressing, the ones that seem the coolest are the ones that seem weather-appropriate, when you think about it.

The more things are ridiculous, given the climate, the less cool it seems.

WWD: Do you sense a responsibility with having all these fans that follow you and your style on social media?

A.C.: It depends on what day it is.

Sometimes I’m like, “No! I didn’t choose this. Whatever.” Then other days I’m like, “I have this opportunity to influence young women and I should think of something quite powerful and important to say.” I haven’t come up with it yet, though.

— KHANH T.L. TRAN

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Fashion Scoops Camera Ready

Karl Lagerfeld, who is heading to Havana next month to show his cruise collection for Chanel, will also unfurl an exhibition of his photography.

Factoria Habana is to host “Obra en Proceso/Work in Progress” from Thursday to May 12 as part of a monthlong celebration of French culture in Cuba organized by the Alliance Française. The 200 photographs are to be grouped according to the subjects that catch Lagerfeld’s eye most — fashion, architecture and landscapes — and reflect his use of a host of cameras and printing techniques.

Chanel is organizing an opening party for May 1, while the cruise show is scheduled for May 3.

This will be the second exhibit devoted to the designer’s photos. As reported, a an exhibition of Lagerfeld’s photos also will take place at Pitti Uomo in Florence in June.

— MILES SOCHA

Standing Firm

Alexander McQueen is robustly defending itself against

claims by an English bridal designer that the Duchess of Cambridge’s wedding gown was inspired by her sketches.

According to a report in The Sunday Times of London, Christine Kendall, a bridal designer who works in Hertfordsdshire, England, is suing the British fashion house for breach of copyright with a claim filed at the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court in London.

The paper quoted Kendall’s lawyer saying her designs were “unfairly taken and copied” by the fashion house. The dress, designed by creative director Sarah Burton and handmade in the McQueen studio in London, was kept a secret until Kate Middleton appeared at Westminster Abbey on April 29, 2011.

A spokesman for McQueen said the house is “utterly baffled” by the legal claim.

“Christine Kendall first approached us, at Alexander McQueen, almost four years ago, when we were clear with her that any suggestion Sarah Burton’s design of the royal wedding dress was copied from her designs was nonsense.

“Sarah Burton never saw

Memo Pad

“Work in Progress” photograph by Karl Lagerfeld; McQueen by Paul Rogers/WPA Pool/Getty Images

On the Phone

Brazilian beachwear brand Osklen has partnered with Apple to shoot its latest spring campaign solely on an iPhone 6 plus, designer Oskar Metsavaht revealed to WWD. The campaign marks the first time Apple has partnered with a global fashion brand to photograph and film a collection, according to the firm’s fashion marketing director Anna del Mar said.

Rather than using physical models, Osklen will use 20 iPad Pros to unveil the collection featuring 25 looks. It will be unveiled in its new flagship in São Paulo’s Vila Madalena quarter on Tuesday as part of São Paulo Fashion Week.

Metsavaht said the partnership enables “two global contemporary brands to work and innovate together.”

By shooting with his iPhone 6, “I can get closer to my audience, show my style point of view,” Metsavaht said, adding that he uses his iPhone to create his collections, to come up with elements, colors and textures. “I love fashion photography and use the iPhone in my work. It’s such an intimate, every-daylife instrument.”

Apple could not be reached for comment.

Brazil’s stinging recession is hurting Osklen, Metsavaht said, adding that the label, owned by textiles giant Alpargatas, will close 10 stores this year to leave its count at 60 standalone units in the country.

“It’s much harder [to do business] but I believe we have a strong proposal and the real has fallen, making our exports more competitive and allowing us to have better prices.”

Metsavaht declined to provide an earnings forecast for Osklen, where earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization fell 50 percent in the first half of 2015, according to an Alpargatas statement.

Despite the recession, Osklen’s U.S. expansion remains on track with the firm hunting for ideal New York and Los Angeles locations to open flagships.

The sustainable fashion brand recently opened a New York showroom, said Metsavaht, adding that it will launch a special collection of Brazilian fish-skin bags, footwear and accessories in June.

— IVAN CASTANO

A look from Osklen.

any of Ms. Kendall’s designs or sketches and did not know of Ms. Kendall before Ms. Kendall got in touch with us — some 13 months after the wedding. We do not know why Ms. Kendall has raised this again, but there are no if’s, buts or maybes here: This claim is ridiculous.”

Kendall’s legal team could not be reached for comment at press time.

In 2012, Burton was awarded an OBE, or The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire honor, for services to the fashion industry at Buckingham Palace.

“I’m very lucky,” she said after the event. “I’ve been given some amazing opportunities — to work for someone as amazing as Lee [Alexander McQueen] and then having the honor of doing the wedding dress.”

At the time, Burton also said she was surprised to receive the royal commission: “It came completely out of the blue, it was very exciting, and I felt very privileged.”

The Duchess of Cambridge has continued to wear McQueen for special occasions.

Most recently she donned a red printed peplum skirt suit

Kate Middleton in an Alexander McQueen gown by Sarah Burton.

A photo from “Work in Progress.” to meet with survivors of the 2008 Mumbai attacks during an official trip to India earlier this month.

— SAMANTHA CONTI

If the Shoe Fits

Schutz’s Beverly Hills store lit up Beverly Drive Thursday evening.

The Brazilian shoe company unveiled its second door in the U.S. after New York at 314 North Beverly Drive and managed to pack a full house for its opening party, cohosted with Vogue.

The evening’s guest list drew

a mix of celebrities, models and influencers who mingled among the sea of shoes and included Olivia Palermo, Alessandra Ambrosio, Whitney Port, Johnny Wujek, Chriselle Lim, Rumi Neely, Shea Marie and Danielle Bernstein.

The opening was timely with the region gearing up for the coming weekend with the second and final iteration of the annual Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, which Ambrosio said she was likely attending. The model came out to support the shoe brand, which she’s worked with in ad-

vertising campaigns. “I love the boots. I love the sandals, but I think their flat, summer sandals are always the most beautiful ones,” she said.

Guests nibbled on light bites and sipped from cups screaming 314, per the company’s style of naming flagships after the streets where they take up residence.

“We believe that a flagship store has to be streets,” said Alexandre Birman, chief executive officer and founder of the company. “We don’t have flagship stores in a mall and Beverly Drive is the combination of very high-end public traffic, very close to the national luxury brands, you have foreigners and the space here is really big.

It allows us to showcase all of our collection.”

Store growth is a step-bystep process for the company, Birman said, adding Beverly Drive and New York are “just the beginning.”

The ceo went on to say the company’s next move in the U.S. will be a mall door that is expected to more significantly kick off the company’s presence here with Birman saying “to really have a business you need to be in the mall.” He declined to say whether the mall store would be in California, citing nondisclosure agreements, but added “hopefully yes.”

— KARI HAMANAKA

RETAIL

L2 Report: Instagram Vs. Snapchat ●

The study noted Snapchat’s use by brands in the fashion, beauty, retail and activewear segments is rising.

BY ARTHUR ZACZKIEWICZ

While Snapchat has a long way to go before it can generate the same ad revenue and user engagement as Instagram, it is poised to become a dominant player in the social media realm.

A just-released report from L2 comparing the two concludes that the platforms are distinct and each possess different strengths — Instagram is best for more “editorialized” content while Snapchat works well for more casual, less formal content. Moreover, Snapchat — as the “new kid” on the social media block — already has a compelling amount of market share with younger demographics and a high level of “stickiness” with most users.

Moreover, the adoption rate for Snapchat by brands in the fashion, beauty, retail and activewear segments is rising, according to the report, which suggests through case studies that leveraging both platforms may be a smart idea.

“Snapchat recently surpassed Instagram as the ‘most important’ platform for U.S. teens,” the L2 researchers said in the Intelligence Report: Instagram vs. Snapchat. “With these advances, Snapchat is projected to earn $300 million in revenue in 2016 — seven times higher than 2015 projections.” L2 noted that Instagram’s projected mobile ad revenue this year is

pegged at $3.2 billion, which compares to $1.9 billion in 2015.

By way of framing the analysis, the L2 study noted that Snapchat’s market share of total posts is currently two percent, which compares to 77 percent for Twitter, 10 percent for Instagram and 11 percent for Facebook. And when it comes to engagement of users, Instagram is clearly in command with 87 percent share of interactions. This compares to 12 percent for Facebook and 1 percent for Twitter. Snapchat has yet to even move the needle.

“Most staggering is the rate at which Instagram has become the defacto platform for user engagement with branded content — measured in terms of likes, comments, shares, favorites and retweets,” L2 analysts said. “Looking at the beauty industry as a proxy for consumer categories, Instagram — which previously accounted for less that 50 percent of interactions in 2013 — has ballooned to 90 percent of actions taken across social channels, establishing the platform as the connective tissue between consumers, products, visuals and brands.”

Regarding market penetration, Snapchat skews to a more younger crowd with

58 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds using the app while 27 percent of those aged 25 to 34 use it and 8 percent of those 35 and older. This compares to Instagram’s 55 percent user rate for 18- to 24-year-olds and 57 percent for 25- to 34-year-olds.

The rate of Instagram users between 35 and 44 is 37 percent and for those between 45 and 54, the rate is 29 percent.

The L2 report also featured several case studies including an analysis of Calvin Klein’s #mycalvins campaign.

The analysts noted that the brand used distinct strategies for each platform. “Instagram content was curated and well-produced, mimicking some off-line content, while Snapchat content featured the same campaign in a more raw, conversational capacity using video.”

The researchers said that Calvin Klein also “leveraged Instagram to drive to its Snapchat page, assisting with discoverability, a barrier brands experience on the platform.”

Other key findings from the report includes that Instagram “continues to be the destination for editorialized, curated content, while Snapchat is best leveraged for casual, creative interaction with consumers.”

The report also concluded that while both platforms “offer e-commerce capabilities, their capacities are nascent.”

“Until Instagram is able to provide more sophisticated advertising models, and Snapchat releases updates that allow for more engagement within a snap, brands should utilize the platforms to build traditional brand equity and awareness,” the L2 researchers said.