Ralph Lauren As the most financially successful American designer, Ralph Lauren is also the quintessential aspirational lifestyle designer. He designed an American dream that was living the idea of the life of wealthy WASPs (White Anglo- Saxon Protestants– in case you’ve been living under a rock). Ralph dug deeply into their style and brilliantly translated and updated the way they dressed. He created a brand message that captivated large numbers of customers. Ralph’s success proves his instincts were right. He wasn’t the only one who admired …
Halston and Calvin Klein Were Major Change Agents
Roy Halston Frowick established his own look, introduced a spectacular new fabric, and reinvented functional glamour. During the 1970s he was right at the very top of American designers. Halston’s ideas were original, sensual, and wearable. His elongated silhouettes skimmed the body, capturing a sophistication that was just as at home at an elegant black-tie dinner or a disco. Fluid and Sensual Halston told me the “the natural flow of fabrics allows the body to create its own shape.” This set him apart from virtually all the other …
Karl Lagerfeld: the Eccentric’s Eccentric and Gianni Versace: The Most Complicated Personality
Karl Lagerfeld was the smartest and most broadly self-educated of the Greatest Generation of Designers. He was extremely articulate and entertaining. Karl was also by far the most eccentric member of that august group. He dressed, and for the most part, lived with one foot in the eighteenth century. His fashion genius, however, was predicated on his ability to stay up to date, if not a little bit ahead of the very latest trends. Flying Solo Lagerfeld built the foundation of his fashion empire by himself without a business partner. He was …
An Insider’s Look at Yves Saint Laurent and Giorgio Armani
Becoming YSL Born in Algeria, Saint Laurent moved to Paris when he was seventeen. He studied at Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture. Yves won several fashion design contests. In one, sponsored by the International Wool Secretariat, he beat out a young German student named Karl Lagerfeld. Michel de Brunhoff, editor in chief of French Vogue, recognized the similarity in some of Yves sketches and Christian Dior’s. He introduced them, and Dior hired him immediately. Yves reportedly was so shy he said he “could not speak in front of the famous …
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Fame, Fortune…Debauchery
Genius fashion designers catapulted into fame, fortune, and even debauchery in the 70s and 80s. Their excessive talent changed the fashion world forever. Many of these extreme creatives worked and lived in beautiful, over-the-top settings, revelling in some of the best unabashedly engaged in heavy drinking, excessive drug use, and free-wheeling sex. Studio 54 was a metaphor for the time. What was it that enabled them to become fashion legends? Sure, they were creative and had great taste, but it took a lot more to change the landscape of the …
The Inside Story on Two Decades of Fashion Madness
As the top editor of Women’s Wear Daily and W magazine, and CEO of Fairchild Publications, Michael Coady had a front row seat at the collections in Paris, Milan, Rome, London, and New York for 30 years and his book is filled with personal observations and edgy anecdotes. The Robin Report is exclusively bringing you a series of five excerpts from Fashion Madness. Read on, and order Coady’s e-book to get the complete inside story. Fashion Madness Fashion was turned upside down and inside out in the 70s and 80s by the greatest collection …
Creative Brilliance Is Still Alive and Kicking in the Fashion World
The pandemic has created a punctuation mark for the fashion industry, putting it on pause. The result is that everyone is frantically looking for a new formula for creating fashion brands for when the world gets back to a sense of normalcy. Fashion Formula The new formula, however, has been underway, hidden in plain sight, for at least the last six years. The driving force is not the Covid-19 virus; it is the dramatic lifestyle changes the alphabet generations have chosen and the innovations the digital world makes possible. Let's take …
Creative Brilliance Is Still Alive and Kicking in the Fashion WorldRead More
The Future CEO
Ideally, in order to excel in today's fashion and retail marketplace a top senior executive needs to have strong engineering skills to match an experienced marketing background that informs a deep understanding of how to sell fashion products across the world. Add to this, knowledge of all the accounting requirements, investor relations skills and overall management expertise any CEO must possess. He or she also has to report to a board of directors that in many instances is only marginally educated in most of these new-world requirements. Note …