In The News

We are a day late reporting the news, but we are reporting nonetheless. Taylor Jacobson, who worked for Rachel Zoe, is no longer with Rachel Zoe Inc as of yesterday. The news is conflicting whether Taylor was fired or quit. If you followed the Rachel Zoe Project (one of my many guilty pleasures), Taylor Jacobson continued to express her disdain for her job and where her job was going. Though the end of the season showed things looking up between Tay and Rachel, Taylor is gone. Continue reading →

Everyone at Luna Boston loves a good party, and a couple weeks ago was no exception. The Diane von Furstenberg event was one of the biggest we’ve ever had – there was a line around the block to get in before the doors even opened! Amanda and Jennifer started setting up for the event at 9am and didn’t stop until 10 minutes before the event started, when they finally had time to get ready!

For those of you that weren’t able to attend, we held the event in a penthouse suite at the FP3 condominiums in the Fort Point section of Boston. I felt like a rockstar at this place – it has 2 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, a terrace, and a roof deck! (And it’s on the market for a cool $2.5 mil if you’re interested!) Hillary France, our representative from the Diane von Furstenberg showroom, was there to help us show the Fall collection to attendees. (Did we mention that Hillary looks like a goddess? Tall with long, bright red hair, looks awesome in everything she wears… Basically, she’s perfect. We’re jealous. But I digress.)

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I’ve got some good news, kids: we just might make it after all.

Making an even better case that luxury brands need to step up their online game, online sales for July 2009 were up almost 16% from the previous month, and 17% from July 2008, which was before the year’s economic collapse took place. The fastest growing sector? Clothing, shoes and accessories.

Since online sales on the whole are gaining at a steeper rate than those of brick-and-mortar locations, luxury brands look like dinosaurs more than ever for their reluctance to enter a marketplace that could save their businesses. More importantly, sales of luxury goods in particular are down in stores, while the same types of goods are experiencing a bit of a resurgence online, and most of the brands we know and love are poorly equipped to reap the benefits of this rally.

We’ll have a more in-depth look next week at what the slowly recovering economy means for designers and brands, but for now, an increase in consumer confidence and willingness to spend, encouraged by new collections and enticing discounts, means that the brands you love are more likely to live to fight another day and more able to take design risks and fully flush out their vision. But none of that will matter if they can’t get their products placed in a way that makes them enticing to consumers that are increasingly looking to shop online.

I must admit, this came as quite a shock tonight. As I was sitting at home watching one of the best movies ever, Kindergarten Cop, and browsing the Purse Forum, I stumbled upon a story that I could not believe.

Perez Hilton, notorious trashy celebrity blogger, will be launching a sister site tomorrow named CocoPerez which will be a fashion focused site.

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The Internet and luxury have always been sort of mutually exclusive. The Internet is broad, democratic, and welcomes all kinds; it has changed the way that consumers interact with corporations in fundamental ways that are constantly evolving. Luxury brands are narrow, elitist, and target a very specific clientele. They require a bit of mystery and aloofness in order to be aspirational and make their traditional brand identities work, and they’re generally not interested in changing how their companies interact with…well, anyone. “The way it has always been done” is idealized and worshiped in an almost religious way, and even though many below-the-surface practices have evolved in recent years (most notably, manufacturing), the way that brands want you to perceive them has remained largely untouched for decades.

But the problem with this whole Internet thingamabob is that it’s kind of insidious and it’s changing the way that people of a variety of incomes and social standings shop and inform themselves about potential purchases. Fashion shows are no longer private events for an elite group of celebrities, editors, and clients; they’re presentations of goods that can often be seen in their entirety by average customers within minutes of their completion. There may be exclusivity left in the invitation to attend a show, but not in the information that one gains by attending.

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I am trying to be as open minded as possible but truly having a hard time. I came across this video and had to share with you all as I saw it being a very interesting blog debate. Pet groomer, Danelle German, found many of her clients bringing in their Persian cats and asking for their hair to be shaved off. Danelle German thought it was a waste to let the Persian hair go into the garbage can, so she decided to turn the cat hair into a handbag. After borrowing a spinning wheel from a friend, she began spinning the hair into yarn and then knitted the cat hair yarn into a handbag.

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Another major design house has joined the world of social media. As of August 1st, Yves Saint Laurent became official on both Twitter and Facebook to reach out with their fans and share news on fashion shows, products, special products and events, campaigns, and celebrity dressing.

Also, Yves Saint Laurent released the fifth edition of Manifesto featuring Christy Turlington, which was photographed by Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin. The Manifesto will be distributed in the streets of Paris, New York, Milan, London, Tokyo, Hong Kong and for the first time in Seoul on Saturday, September 12, 2009. We will bring you more on the Manifesto when it goes live.

Barneys New York took a major leap in a recent window display. But the chances they took on this window display may have cost them more than they thought. The mannequins in the Barneys window were dressed to kill, with a blood splattered window display and mannequins being attacked while wearing Helmut Lang and A.L.C..

The display did not stay up long. Once Racked.com covered the display, news stations were calling Barneys to ask about it. Though Simon Doonan, creative director of Barneys, was out of town as the display went up, he said this crossed the line and compared it to “someone seeing a bad Hitchcock movie.” Be assured heads will be rolling from creative display team after this incident. [More via NY Daily News]

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With all the recent news about swine flu, everyone has clean hands on their mind. We use our hands all day everyday. There was a recent study that is not entirely shocking but rather disturbing. I am going to go out on a limb and say that most handbag lovers on Purse Blog and Purse Forum are entirely conscious of keeping their bags clean and off the ground. Either way, our hands pick up germs everyday and our handbags are on the receiving end of man-handling our most prized accessories. So keep your hands clean and your handbags in turn may stay a bit cleaner. The other other advice given is to wipe down your bag with a sanitizing wipe and not place your bag on the ground. What do you think?

We wanted to find out what kind of germs a woman’s bag might pick up along the course of a day. A lab tested more than two dozen handbags for traces of various bacteria. Even the scientist who conducted the tests was surprised at what she found.

“I had no idea that it would be that much bacteria,” said microbiologist Amy Karren of Nelson Labs.

This was not just the harmless kind of bacteria you find around your house, this was the kind that makes you sick.

“We found pseudomonas, staphylococcus aureus, E-coli family and salmonella”, she said.

Pseudomonas can cause eye infections, staph aureus can cause skin infections and E-coli and salmonella can cause serious intestinal problems.

The test found leather or vinyl purses were generally cleaner than cloth bags and women with kids tend to have dirtier purses than singles.

[Article Via]

Yesterday the world lost arguably the biggest pop star in the world. A man that redefined the music industry as we know it today, the world is remembering Michael Jackson. While many mourn, many are playing his music and remember the musical genius. Michael Jackson sold 3/4 of a billion albums, was known for his moonwalk, was in the music scene for 40 years of his 50 year life, and became known for his fashion choices such as his glittered glove. His influence on the music industry can be seen by many of the artists we listen to today and his fashion choices influenced the world of fashion as well.

The Rebecca Minkoff Matinee flaps on either end of the bag were designed after the legendary red leather jacket Michael Jackson wore in his Thriller video. We covered this bag before when we first saw the resemblance, which was then affirmed by Rebecca. Without knowing it, Michael Jackson’s influence made its way into the handbag world.

A small way for us to say we will remember the King of Pop. Rest in peace Michael Jackson.