BALMAIN SHOWED THE SPRING 2013 COLLECTION OF ITS PIERRE BALMAIN LINE IN BEIJING. PAGE 6

EARLY SPRING

CYCLE CHICTHEY ARE WEARING

IN PARIS. PAGE 9

WWDGolden GirlA little boho and a touch of mystery make for some of this season’s most alluring prints. Here, Crop by David Peck’s silk organza dress paired with a Lia Sophia cuff and Manolo Blahnik for Gregory Parkinson sandals. For more, see pages 4 and 5.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 23, 2012 WOMEN’S WEAR DAILY $3.00

RETAIL FOCUS

Ralph Lauren PlansMajor Push in China

By VICKI M. YOUNG

NEW YORK — Ralph Lauren Corp. is pushing into China at last, and expects the move will lift its busi-ness worldwide.

The company plans to open 60 stores in Greater China within the next three years. The first 15 units, slated to start opening in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong around mid-fall, will bow by the end of fiscal 2013, around the end of March. Once that presence ex-pands, the company expects it will get a bigger piece of the business from Chinese tourists traveling to Europe.

The company is still identifying premier locations for the balance of the 45 new sites, and it already has a few firm commitments in place for locations in shopping malls scheduled to open in 2014.

“We are in the midst of transforming our presence in Greater China, a region that we believe will be-come an important driver of growth for us over the long term, and have some magnificent new stores planned for the next several years,” said Ralph Lauren, chairman and chief executive officer.

Comparing the company to other luxury brands, Roger Farah, president and chief operating officer, said a larger percentage of their business in Europe comes from Chinese tourists, reaching up to 20 per-cent, compared with Ralph Lauren’s 2 percent.

“We don’t have a presence in China yet, so we’re not as well known [to the Chinese consumer],” Farah told WWD. “We don’t see them coming into Europe shopping for [our] brands based on big [marketing] statements in China.”

The Chinese boost will come in handy in Europe, where Farah admitted the firm is seeing the impact of the economic travails in the euro zone. As a result, the company is cautious in its estimates for European sales since it is seeing a slowdown in the business. He said, “We [do] expect to see increases for fiscal 2013, but lower in terms of gains compared with last year,” said Farah.

SEE PAGE 3

Vuitton Gets Artsy Again

SEE PAGE 12

By MILES SOCHA

PARIS — When Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama first met Marc Jacobs, receiving him at her Tokyo studio in 2006, she presented the designer with a Louis Vuitton Ellipse bag, whose monogram canvas she had painted over with dots, the defining motif of her long career.

“That’s so beautiful, look at that,” Jacobs ex-claimed, twirling her handiwork for the camera of Loïc Prigent, who captured the encounter in his 2007 documentary “Marc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton.”

Six years later, Kusama’s dots are on back on Vuitton leather goods — and this time on a global scale.

On July 10, two days ahead of a major Kusama ret-rospective bowing at the Whitney Museum in New York, Vuitton will unveil a line of clothes and acces-sories done in collaboration with the artist. Ranging from trenchcoats and silk pajamas to a pendant neck-lace and wristwatch, the collection is due in Vuitton’s 461 stores in the days that follow the opening, with a second wave of products — hinged on monogram leather goods festooned with Kusama’s tentaclelike “nerves” motif — due out in October.

Vuitton will also herald the collaboration via its windows — without any merchandise in sight.

“In a fascinating way, the monogram canvas is as obsessional as Yayoi’s dots,” Yves Carcelle, Vuitton’s president and chief executive officer, mused during an exclusive interview to discuss the venture. He noted that the repetitive design, with the LV initials interspersed with stylized flowers, first debuted on trunks in 1896.

PHOTOS BY THOMAS IANNACCONE; STYLED BY KIM FRIDAYMOD

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Kellwood Negotiating Over BLK DNM

Vionnet Gets New Majority Owner

TO E-MAIL REPORTERS AND EDITORS AT WWD, THE ADDRESS IS FIRSTNAME_LASTNAME@FAIRCHILDFASHION.COM, USING THE INDIVIDUAL’S NAME. WWD IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF ADVANCE MAGAZINE PUBLISHERS INC. COPYRIGHT ©2012 FAIRCHILD FASHION MEDIA. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.VOLUME 203, NO. 107. WEDNESDAY, MAY 23, 2012. WWD (ISSN 0149–5380) is published daily (except Saturdays, Sundays and holidays, with one additional issue in May, June, October and December, and two additional issues in February, March, April, August, September and November) by Fairchild Fashion Media, which is a division of Advance Magazine Publishers Inc. PRINCIPAL OFFICE: 750 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017. Shared Services provided by Condé Nast: S.I. Newhouse, Jr., Chairman; Charles H. Townsend, Chief Executive Officer; Robert A. Sauerberg Jr., President; John W. Bellando, Chief Operating Officer & Chief Financial Officer; Jill Bright, Chief Administrative Officer. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and at additional mailing offices. Canada Post Publications Mail Agreement No. 40644503. Canadian Goods and Services Tax Registration No. 886549096-RT0001. Canada Post: return undeliverable Canadian addresses to P.O. Box 503, RPO West Beaver Cre, Rich-Hill, ON L4B 4R6. POSTMASTER: SEND ADDRESS CHANGES TO WOMEN’S WEAR DAILY, P.O. Box 15008, North Hollywood, CA 91615 5008. FOR SUBSCRIPTIONS, ADDRESS CHANGES, ADJUSTMENTS, OR BACK ISSUE INQUIRIES: Please write to WWD, P.O. Box 15008, North Hollywood, CA 91615-5008, call 800-289-0273, or visit www.subnow.com/wd. Please give both new and old addresses as printed on most recent label. Subscribers: If the Post Office alerts us that your magazine is undeliverable, we have no further obligation unless we receive a corrected address within one year. If during your subscription term or up to one year after the magazine becomes undeliverable, you are ever dissatisfied with your subscription, let us know. You will receive a full refund on all unmailed issues. First copy of new subscription will be mailed within four weeks after receipt of order. Address all editorial, business, and production correspondence to WOMEN’S WEAR DAILY, 750 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017. For permissions requests, please call 212-630-5656 or fax the request to 212-630-5883. For all request for reprints of articles please contact The YGS Group at condenast@theygsgroup.com, or call 800-501-9571. Visit us online at www.wwd.com. To subscribe to other Fairchild Fashion Media magazines on the World Wide Web, visit www.fairchildpub.com. Occasionally, we make our subscriber list available to carefully screened companies that offer products and services that we believe would interest our readers. If you do not want to receive these offers and/or information, please advise us at P.O. Box 15008, North Hollywood, CA 91615-5008 or call 800-289-0273. WOMEN’S WEAR DAILY IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE RETURN OR LOSS OF, OR FOR DAMAGE OR ANY OTHER INJURY TO, UNSOLICITED MANUSCRIPTS, UNSOLICITED ART WORK (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, DRAWINGS, PHOTOGRAPHS, AND TRANSPARENCIES), OR ANY OTHER UNSOLICITED MATERIALS. THOSE SUBMITTING MANUSCRIPTS, PHOTOGRAPHS, ART WORK, OR OTHER MATERIALS FOR CONSIDERATION SHOULD NOT SEND ORIGINALS, UNLESS SPECIFICALLY REQUESTED TO DO SO BY WOMEN’S WEAR DAILY IN WRITING. MANUSCRIPTS, PHOTOGRAPHS, AND OTHER MATERIALS SUBMITTED MUST BE ACCOMPANIED BY A SELF-ADDRESSED STAMPED ENVELOPE.

THE BRIEFING BOXIN TODAY’S WWD

Ralph Lauren Corp. is pushing into China at last — and expects the move will lift its business worldwide. PAGE 1 Louis Vuitton in July will unveil a line of clothes and accessories done in collaboration with Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. PAGE 1 Taobao is China’s biggest e-commerce mall, but is it a good move for a small business to run a store on the site? PAGE 3 Pierre Balmain’s spring 2012 collection was shown in Beijing, months before the normal timetable. PAGE 6 The FiFi Awards featured the usual busload of celebrities plus a tearful appearance Leonard A. Lauder, who accepted a special FiFi given in the memory of his late wife. PAGE 7 J Brand is aiming to elevate the brand’s profile with its most expensive ad campaign to date. PAGE 8 Guess Inc. managed to beat Wall Street’s first-quarter estimates despite earnings and sales that were depleted by steep drops in its European business. PAGE 8 Gucci America Inc.’s lawsuit against Guess Inc. may be over in the U.S., but the luxury goods maker is forging ahead with new cases filed in China, Italy and France. PAGE 8 Sean “Diddy” Combs, Alec Baldwin and Michelle Rodriguez were among the revelers at Chopard and Harvey Weinstein’s “Mystery” party in Cannes, France. PAGE 10 Donna Karan returned to San Francisco last weekend for a Saks Fifth Avenue-sponsored luncheon and fashion show in support of the San Francisco Ballet. PAGE 11 Tablets are gaining a strong grip on U.S. retail spending, according to a Shop.org and Forrester Research study. PAGE 12

Bicycle chic for “Beret Baguette” in Paris.

ON WWD.COM

THEY ARE WEARING: Parisian cycling enthusiasts were invited for a “Beret Baguette” ride and encouraged to dress in Thirties style to celebrate the French flair for fashion and gastronomy. For more photos, see WWD.com/eye.

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MILAN — Vionnet SpA has a new majority stakeholder: Go to Enterprise Sarl, headed by the London-based Goga Ashkenazi.

Ashkenazi, who is from Kazakhstan, has taken control of the historic fashion brand through an investment agree-ment that seeks to accelerate the development of the label. Co-owners Matteo Marzotto and his longtime friend and Marni chief executive offi-cer Gianni Castiglioni, who acquired the brand in 2009, will remain shareholders and maintain their operative roles. Marzotto is expected to become executive vice president; he was previously chairman of the brand. A third existing partner, Marco Casoni, will remain a shareholder and a manager.

Ashkenazi has been look-ing to invest in leading fashion brands for some time. She is well-known in the U.K., mak-ing headlines for her friend-ship with Prince Andrew and her opulent lifestyle, which is partially funded by oil ty-coon Timur Kulibayev, who controls the vast majority of Kazakhstan’s oil fields and with whom Ashkenazi has a son.

An upbeat Marzotto told WWD he was “very happy” with the deal, as it allows Vionnet to enter the third phase of its re-launch and “seize new oppor-tunities.” The first phase, said the executive, “was the initial acquisition three years ago, and the second phase included set-ting the foundations.”

Marzotto declined to dis-close financial details and the precise amount of shares sold to Ashkenazi, but said the in-vestment was in line with the luxury sector and that it would allow further development of the brand.

The first step of the new course is a runway show to be held in Paris in October, which will also mark the brand’s 100th anniversary. It will be the first show since 1939, when founder Madeleine Vionnet shuttered her namesake fashion house at the outbreak of World War II.

Marzotto said he plans to hold an event to celebrate the centenary. “We also want to start looking with determina-tion at opening a boutique in Paris, depending on the oppor-tunity,” he said. “This will rati-fy the relaunch of the house.” The original Vionnet boutique and atelier stood on Avenue Montaigne in Paris.

With new resources, a top priority is to invest in the Far East, added Marzotto. “On July 2, this will be the third year Vionnet is in business again. This [deal] is a positive step.”

Marzotto, the former chair-man of Valentino SpA and heir to the Marzotto textile family, praised Ashkenazi’s “great in-telligence” and “international vision.” He added that she was determined to invest “in a world she is very attracted to and very passionate about,” but that she is also a customer who will be able to provide first-hand input. “She is our target customer,” said Marzotto, noting that Ashkenazi will wear a Vionnet

gown to the amfAR event in Cannes, France, on Thursday.

“She is well-connected glob-ally and full of energy and, the more we got to know each other, the more we realized we shared common interests,” explained Marzotto. “She will be very rel-evant to the brand and partici-pate in mapping out strategies.”

Ashkenazi stated she was “delighted to join the Vionnet family, which is, without a doubt, already a success story. I admire all that the brand rep-resents, including the team be-hind what has been created so far based on the principles and vision of Madeleine Vionnet.”

An industry source said Ashkenazi, who owns a villa in Florence, has been carefully shopping for a majority stake in Italian and French brands for some time. “She really is very interested in fashion and wants to be part of this indus-try,” said the source. “She has a razor-sharp intelligence, has a strong business sense and wants to be actively involved in the fashion business.”

The first directly owned Vionnet boutique opened in Milan in December, with an atelier adjacent to the store where seamstresses work on prototypes. There also is a franchised unit in Kuwait City, which opened in February 2011.

In October, Marzotto tapped twin sisters Barbara and Lucia Croce as creative directors, suc-ceeding Rodolfo Paglialunga.

Sales in 2011 were expected to reach more than 7 million euros, or $9.7 million at aver-age exchange.

By VICKI M. YOUNG

NEW YORK — Kellwood Co. is in discussions with Johan Lindeberg to transfer owner-ship of BLK DNM, a move that would have the apparel firm re-taining a stake in the business if an agreement is reached.

The negotiations involve the brand, stores in Stockholm and New York City and em-ployees connected with the brand, according to Jill Granoff, Kellwood’s chief executive officer, in an interview Tuesday along with Marc J. Leder, Sun Capital Partners’ co-ceo, at Sun’s offices here. Granoff took over the ceo post earlier this month. An affiliate of Sun Capital acquired Kellwood for $762 mil-lion in February 2008.

While Lindeberg was known to be looking for an investor to help him take over and grow the BLK DNM (pronounced Black Denim) label, rumors surfaced in the past week that the busi-ness would be shuttered.

“We are not shutting it down,” Granoff emphasized, and confirmed that Lindeberg has indeed found a partner. The identity of that partner could not be determined at press time. Lindeberg de-clined comment.

He conceived the concept, a line featuring a European de-

sign aesthetic inspired by the culture of New York’s down-town community, and joined Kellwood in September 2010 as creative directive of BLK DNM to partner with the firm to bring his idea to fruition.

Granoff, who is just three weeks into her new job, said she is still meeting with the team at Kellwood and is in the early stages of putting together a business plan.

In the past, there was some discussions of possibly doing an initial public offering of Kellwood at some point down the road. While Sun Capital in the past has exited its invest-ments via an IPO — it did that with value-priced department store retailer Gordmans Stores Inc. in August 2010, where it re-tained a stake, with Gordmans currently planning on a sec-ondary offering — it has sold some investments as well.

“It really depends on the company. We’ve generally been more sales oriented, but with Kellwood it could go either way,” Leder said.

Granoff said she’s going to focus her resources on busi-nesses that have the “greatest growth potential.”

If an IPO is a possibil-ity, the company would likely be eyeing businesses that move the needle, more so

than in a regular sale since it’s going to have to tell a good growth story for its road show to investors. That raises the question about the future of smaller brands in Kellwood’s portfo-lio, such as yoga-in-spired brand Zobha and outdoor perfor-mance brand Isis, which would need capital to grow.

Those are two brands that Granoff

still needs to evaluate, al-though the growth rate of Vancouver, B.C.-based firm Lululemon Athletica Inc. sug-gests that the athletic appar-el market still has room for growth opportunities.

According to Leder, if Granoff concludes that the growth opportunities are there, “We’re happy to support a small brand.”

— WITH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM LISA LOCKWOOD

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Marc Leder and Jill Granoff

CORRECTION

Ron Frasch of Saks Inc. never complained about the seating of bloggers, including Scott Schuman of The Sartorialist, at the D&G show in Milan. This was unclear in a Memo Pad item on page 9, Monday.

WWD.COM

That is likely to impact the com-pany’s wholesale sales results next year, which also will be affected by the company’s continuing shift to more of a retail model and less of a wholesale one. The current fore-cast for fiscal 2013 is for a low-sin-gle-digit decline in wholesale sales and a low-double-digit increase in retail sales. Farah explained that the estimates re-flect the reduced distribution in China due to the reposition-ing effort toward more company-owned retail sites and the exit of American Living at J.C. Penney stores. He empha-sized that where the wholesale accounts were converted into retail, comps are expected to rise as sales at those doors increase.

The cautious outlook caused Ralph Lauren’s shares to slip slightly by the end of Tuesday’s trading after rising as high as $161.30 in intraday trading. They closed up 2.7 percent on the Big Board, at $150.27.

The 2013 outlook comes off of a year that saw Ralph Lauren’s

net income leap 29 percent in the fourth quarter, beating estimates by 14 cents, and 20 percent for all of fiscal 2012.

For the fourth quarter ended March 31, net income was $94.4 million, or 99 cents a diluted share, from $73.2 million, or 74 cents, last year. Wall Street’s con-

sensus estimate from analysts was 85 cents.

Net revenues rose 13.7 percent to $1.62 billion from $1.43 billion. That included a 10.2 percent rise in wholesale net sales to $828 mil-lion from $751.5 million and a 19 percent gain in retail net sales to $751.5 million from $631.3 mil-lion. Comparable-store sales rose 12

percent. By segment, ralphlauren.com posted a 30 percent increase in comps, Ralph Lauren stores gained 5 percent, factory stores rose 10 percent and Club Monaco saw a 14 percent growth rate.

For the year, net income rose 20 percent to $681 million, or $7.13 a diluted share, from $567.6 million, or $5.75, last year. Total net revenues rose 21.2 percent to $6.86 billion from $5.66 billion.

By SHARoN EdELSoN

NEW YoRK — Uniqlo this fall will launch its baby and chil-dren’s collections in the U.S.

The lines will be housed in existing stores in departments of at least 3,000 square feet, said Shin odake, chief execu-tive officer of Uniqlo U.S. With sizes from infant to 14, prices start at $5.90 for boys and girls innerwear. Heattech items start at $7.90, denim, $19.90, and syn-thetic down jackets similar to the adult premium down ultra-light collections, $29.90.

“We didn’t carry the kids Uniqlo line in the U.S., but we’ve had the kids line in Japan and other countries” said odake. “At first, we had only one store in SoHo and there were not a lot of famil-iarities. Mostly the SoHo cus-tomer is younger and not many people come shopping togeth-er with children. We have to determine whether it makes sense to carry it in SoHo.”

odake has decided that it makes sense to carry chil-dren’s wear at Uniqlo at 31 West 34th Street and the flag-ship at 666 Fifth Avenue here. Uniqlo Kids won’t be sold in the San Francisco store, a spokeswoman said. But it will bow at Uniqlo’s newest store,

a 43,000-square-foot unit at Westfield Garden State Plaza in Paramus, N.J., which will have a separate dedicated street entrance and a promi-nent facade. It’s the company’s only mall location in the U.S.

Uniqlo in March intro-duced Jun Takahashi’s Undercover label, UU Uniqlo Undercover, for men and women. There’s also a small collection for children, in-cluding 27 items for kids, and five for babies. “Uniqlo Kids

is going to be a fully designed collection and much broader than UU,” said odake. “We’re going to have enough styles to create large departments in the stores. For UU, we only had a couple styles. UU is a little more edgy. It’s part of Uniqlo’s collections and is a designer that we carry. Uniqlo Kids will have more basics than UU.”

odake said stores will con-tinue to sell Takahashi’s UU kids collection after Uniqlo Kids is launched.

Ralph Lauren Tops Estimates

Urban’s Hayne Talks International

Uniqlo Youth Lines Coming to the States

I oWN A CHINESE dESIGN concept store in Beijing called Brand New China, or BNC. Fashion accounts for at least 70 percent of our sales. We have been open now for two years and sales have grown 32 per-cent. To maintain growth, we have to expand and, naturally, the Internet is our best solution.

According to a 2011 McKinsey study, fashion is the biggest-ticket item for e-com-merce in China. And 36 percent of online spending is about fashion. This is a big number and it is growing fast.

But our first hurdle is “to Taobao or not to Taobao.”

Taobao is the biggest e-com-merce mall in China. It has huge traffic and is the most powerful business platform for big and small businesses alike. In the same McKinsey report, it was noted that the Japanese fash-ion retailer Uniqlo opened its online store on Taobao in 2009. In six months, its online sales accounted for 10 percent of total sales in China. That’s how pow-erful Taobao is.

Most importantly, Taobao provides a comprehensive ser-vice to bridge the seller-buyer trust gap. Taobao’s financial service includes ensuring the payment is only made to the seller after goods are received.

But for us, there are several major problems:n Taobao is very mass. Most consumers go to Taobao for bargain basement prices, not for quality or design. It’s not

good for our boutique image and branding.n Too many fake fashion items find their way onto Taobao. This is bad company.n A lot of the local designers we carry have already opened their own stores on Taobao. It’s a bit weird to compete with our suppliers.

The other option is to set up our shop and hire a team to create a B2C site of our own.

We talked to several e-com-merce advisers and they all recommended Taobao.

But we decided to do our own store mainly because we wanted to have total control over the branding, even if this means we have to spend more money and incur higher risk, not to mention higher capital commitment.

The first problem we en-countered was getting a spe-cial license for e-commerce. The second problem was get-ting banks to work with us for online payment. It took us two months to clear these hurdles.

For a lot of non-Chinese retailers, the Internet is still the best way to get your feet wet in China. Taobao is defi-nitely a shortcut to bypass a lot of China’s business hassles if you do not have a team on the ground. But branding is diffi-cult or even scary.

So the biggest event for me last week was when we finally opened our online store for Brand New China. As I file this report, I am anxiously waiting for our weekend sales results.

Fashion is the biggest-

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ChinaFile

To Taobao or Not to Taobao, That Is the Question

by Huang Hung

ChinaFile

By MARNI MANKo

PHILAdELPHIA — Richard Hayne believes Urban outfitters Inc. is just getting started on the international front.

“There’s an extraordinary op-portunity there,” the firm’s chair-man, president and chief execu-tive officer told shareholders at its annual meeting at corporate headquarters here Tuesday. “North America accounts for 90 percent of sales and Europe, 9 percent. International sales, in-cluding direct-to-consumer, grew 23 percent [last year].

“We have extraordinary oppor-tunity to expand offerings world-wide,” he added.

The retailer also plans to add product categories, product ex-tensions and new sizes and col-ors. Hayne said Anthropologie could do petites and electronics in the home area.

“If we do acquire a new con-cept, we want that concept to fit nicely with the current concepts,” he said.

Hayne expects the globaliza-tion trend to continue and accel-erate as localization grows at the same time. “We continue to add stores geographically,” he said. “We expect to open Free People and Urban outfitters stores in Asia in the next two years.

“Today, Web penetration is 85 percent in North America but, in the next five years, it will be al-most 20 percent outside the U.S.”

Brick-and-mortar constitutes 74 percent of the company’s sales, or $1.84 billion.

Hayne said, “Success is due to increased product assort-ment, a focus on Web marketing or paid search and social media like Pinterest that drive traffic. Social media efforts have been profound. The Free People blog has 648,000 followers.”

Hayne addressed about 75

people in the industrial mini-malist meeting room that has the original shipping hoists and hooks dangling from the ceiling.

He discussed some of 2012’s financial highlights, which in-cluded $2.5 billion in sales, a 9 percent increase over fiscal 2011. operating profits were $284.7 mil-lion, with $500 million in direct-to-consumer sales, a 15 percent hike. There were 57 new stores opened during the fiscal year, in-cluding 10 outside the U.S.

Hayne said the third quarter was the weakest, while the fourth quarter showed an increase due to promotions and markdowns.

during the fiscal year, Anthropologie opened its first store in Scotland on upscale George Street in Edinburgh; Urban outfitters unveiled units in Frankfurt and Berlin; a BHLdN bridal location opened in Houston, and a prime space for Free People was found in Center City, Philadelphia, next to Urban outfitters. Free People opened its biggest store, a 7,000-square-foot unit, in New York’s Rockefeller Center and will begin ship-ping the intimates collection Intimately Free to more stores and wholesale accounts.

Urban grew its wholesale rev-enues by 11 percent in the 2012 fiscal year.

Five proposals were put to shareholders for a vote. Two in-volved the election of directors, Hayne and Harry S. Cherken Jr. There was a proposal to ratify the auditors deloitte & Touche. Shareholder proposals included diversifying Urban’s board and en-suring women and minority candi-dates are in the nominating pool. A proposition involved changing the standard with which directors are chosen, from a plurality vote to a majority vote. The last pro-posal suggested directors stand for election once a year. The votes will be counted this week.

{Continued from page one}

Roger Farah

3 WWD Wednesday, may 23, 2012

Looks from the collection.

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printmagicFROM EXOTIC STAINED GLASS

AND TRIBAL-ESQUE MOTIFS

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DYES, THIS SEASON’S PRINTS

ARE EVER ENCHANTING.

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Burning Torch’s silk dress. R.J.

Graziano necklaces.

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iosselliani ring; r.J. graziano

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thomas Wylde’s silk chiffon dress. ten

thousand things earrings; bjørg

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minimarket’s silk wrap jacket, top and silk knit leggings. scosha

bracelet; lia sophia ring.

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6 WWD wednesday, may 23, 2012

Erdem

By Debra bruno

beIJInG — There’s one way to get ahead of the competition: roll out your spring 2013 collection three months ahead of the rest of the fashion world, and do it in beijing rather than Paris.

Pierre balmain’s new collection, shown for the first time in the Yintai Centre here, debuted months before the normal time-table for two reasons, said balmain Group president alain Hivelin. First, the gesture served to “pay a tribute” to the company’s partners and potential partners in China, he said. In addition, it brought attention to the brand in a way it couldn’t have otherwise.

“I thought, we are ready to do it,” he said in an interview moments before the Tuesday show. “If I would have waited

three months to present it on stage in Paris, new York, London, Milano, then it’s mixed with 200 or 300 brands.”

Torsten Stocker, Greater China partner at consulting firm Monitor Group, said, “I think this reflects the shift of demand from more mature to emerging markets, in particular China. It is only natural that brands are reacting to that and putting more emphasis on this market. However, I would not expect a landslide shift or anything like that, but more of a mix, with some brands introducing new collections in China first and others sticking to their existing approach.

“My sense is that as China takes a big-ger role in many sectors, brands will no longer just be rushing in but instead trying to create a balance between their different markets,” he added. “of course, there will always be exceptions, and for some brands, the center of gravity will move eastwards.”

“I think it is a good sign and beginning that international brands move not only their focus but also their stage in China to launch new products,” said Pierre Xiao Lu, author of “Luxury China, Market opportunities and Potentials” and a luxury business consultant. “The consequence will be that related industries, such as media, buyers and production cycles, will follow the fashion show premiere move as part of their journey to China. It is a natural evolution of fashion and luxury brand market devel-opment. It is very important to build a sta-tion in China for this global industry. brands have to be very close to their final clients.”

Pierre balmain’s push into China means new stores opening before the end

of the year in nanjing, Hangzhou, Xian, beijing, Shenyang, Chengdu, ningbo, Jinan and Shanghai for a total of 15 units in China by the end of the year, divided between stores for clothing and ones for accessories. The company’s goal is to open some 35 Pierre balmain clothing stores in China by the end of 2013, and an-other 20 locations for accessories.

The design of the stores will also be new. richard Moreau, one of the archi-tects who designed the units, said they will be influenced by the furniture and lines of the Fifties, with a touch of moder-nity thrown in.

Hivelin doesn’t seem much concerned about the frenetic pace. “Since we work much in advance for our collection to be able to be delivered on time,” he said, “I found out that in this industry, it’s first in, first out, so we have to deliver early. To deliver early you have to take your or-ders early. To take your orders early you have to be ready early. being ready ahead of time helps us to manufacture, to have the trends, to know where to start to have the material and to be able to answer the expectations of our customers.”

The line will be produced in both Italy and China, said Hivelin. In Italy, Ittierre will be responsible for the production of all of the men’s ready-to-wear and much of the women’s collection, as well as worldwide distribution. In China, Pierre balmain has entered into a joint venture with Pb Fashion to handle the remaining production as well as distribution of the collection in Mainland China.

While the production schedule might be fast and furious, the collection drew upon balmain’s history of using clean lines and a lack of fussy detail. The wom-en’s collection of rtw would not have been out of place on a “Mad Men” set: eyelet blouses with waists cinched by wide belts, slim pants topped by simple blazers, and flared skirts that ended six inches from the floor. one inspiration for the show, or-ganizers said, was the look in the French riviera created by French actress Jeanne Moreau in the 1963 movie “La baie des anges.” The show, in a simple setting of white leather benches and a background of eighties music from France, also high-lighted some of China’s well-known mod-els, including Sue He, Huang Xiaomen, Li Danni, Fu Zhenggang and Li Zifeng.

The simplicity of the styles carried over to colors, with solid blocks of coral red, hot pink and bright yellow paired with white or black tops or bottoms. The men’s collection was less conventional, with several jack-et-shirt-shorts combinations that almost looked as if the pants had been left out and one suit in a fabric of giant polka dots.

For the most part, the look was casual and fun but not too risky: body-flattering shorts, a gold motorcycle jacket topping a white pencil skirt, and rhinestone medallions dotting supple leather dress-es and jackets.

Chinese consumers are an increasingly sophisticated market, Hivelin said. “They don’t look at the prices so much. If they love it, they buy it. and they are more and more trendy.”

Resort 2013

Fabergé to Open First U.S. Store By raCHeL STruGaTZ

neW YorK — Fabergé will open the doors of its first u.S. store here today on Madison avenue.

Located between east 62nd and 63rd Streets on Manhattan’s upper east Side, the 850-square-foot boutique houses the brand’s fine and high jewelry lines, time-pieces, cuff links and silver lines. Prices retail from $8,000 for small egg pendants to $19,500 for precious cocktail rings and earrings from the Les Précieuses collec-tion, which is exclusive to new York, to several million for one-of-a-kind high jewelry pieces such as the romanov collar — comprised of 186.85 carats of

emeralds and 98 carats of diamonds that took 14 months to create.

Since the brand relaunched in September 2009 after reuniting with the Fabergé family in late 2007 for the first time since 1951, the company has been successful in expanding beyond the realm of precious egg objects. High jewelry eggs remain a core theme, though, according to creative and man-aging director Katharina Flohr. For example, the Les Favorites de Fabergé collection contains about 60 small egg pendants, and she said the company is

looking to make egg objects as well. “We wanted to position it as a high

jeweler at the top of the tree and make it once again known for exclusive crafts-manship and design. We relaunched with a whole new view of bringing Fabergé closer to its original concept,” Flohr told WWD, fastening the star of the Mario Testino-shot spring ad cam-paign — the Le Collier Délices D’Été — around her neck. The necklace, set in 18 karat white gold, features 1,139 multi-colored sapphires, opals and diamonds that total more than 190 carats.

The boutique’s concept is linked to the London store — with pale gray cur-tains and carpets, a back wall fashioned from purple silk tufted fabric, crystal chandeliers and a pair of lavender vin-tage chairs she acquired at an antiques show in London. Mounted on the back wall is a 17th century Spanish picture frame with a combination mirror-movie screen that showcases a branded video (from jewelry the house has made, to cov-erage from events and interviews). Flohr added that the “matching brother” to the frame sits in the London shop.

The new York store is the brand’s third overall — the Geneva flagship and London stores opened in 2009 and 2011, respectively. Fabergé also main-tains a wholesale business through partnerships with Harrods and Lane Crawford, and is looking to add addi-tional points of sale both in the u.S. and the Middle east through direct sales and select wholesale.

Flohr came on board in 2008 and works closely with cousins Tatiana and Sarah Fabergé, great granddaughters of Peter Carl Fabergé. “It’s wonderful to work together to understand what makes Fabergé relevant today, and to combine elements from the past and bring them forward to today’s discerning customers.”

Erdem: “It’s ‘Valley of the Dolls’ meets upper east Side meets amish — there’s strictness, but also irreverence.” That’s how erdem Moralioglu described his collection, in which light crepe fabrics were combined with tweeds for a patchwork effect, and digital prints of lace and sequins were worked for a “plastic fantastic fake embroidery” look.

DKNY: Donna Karan channeled a pretty-meets-tough vibe for her DKnY lineup, where tissue-weight, layered T-shirts and silk blouses were shown with leather skirts and shorts. a classic trench looked fresh and cool with leather sleeves, and skinny jeans came in a palette of pastel hues.DKNY

Pierre Balmain’s Early Spring

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By JULIE NAUGHTON and PETE BORN

NEW YORK — Jane Lynch surveyed the crowd at the 40th annual Fragrance Foundation Awards, held Monday night at Lincoln Center, before pitch-ing her own fragrance from the stage: “Because I play Sue Sylvester on ‘Glee,’ I think peo-ple must think I smell like a boys’ locker room,” said Lynch. “I would have loved to have made that fragrance, but un-fortunately Kim Kardashian owns the copyright.” Neither did Marc Jacobs escape Lynch’s humor: “Why is it that singers always come out with fragranc-es, but Marc Jacobs has yet to drop an album?”

The anniversary event had its comic moments, including a prolonged technical glitch that provided a bit of impromptu theater. But the humor quickly turned to pathos when Leonard A. Lauder stepped to the micro-phone to accept the Legacy of Excellence award given posthu-mously to his late wife, Evelyn Lauder, who was senior corpo-rate vice president of the Estée Lauder Cos. Inc. and founder of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. After watching a tribute video, the intensity of feeling apparently proved too much for him and in stepped Karyn Khoury, senior vice presi-

dent of corporate fragrance de-velopment for the Estée Lauder Cos. “What Leonard would like to say is thank you for this gift and this recognition,” said Khoury. “The love and the sup-port that you have shown to us and to Evelyn means more than we can say. The pride Evelyn took in her success as a fra-grance creator makes this eve-ning and recognition especially touching and meaningful. We thank the foundation’s board of directors for taking a mo-ment during this evening’s cel-ebration to celebrate Evelyn’s unique vision and passion.”

Lauder then returned to the microphone, saluting the audi-ence with, “You are carrying on her legacy. You are making women feel beautiful and be beautiful.”

Before the ceremonies started, Lauder spoke to WWD, recalling a time when he and Evelyn were in Europe and re-ceived a panicked call from his mother. “Mrs. Estée Lauder called and said, ‘Evie, I need your help. I have a bad cold, I can’t smell. We’re working on a beautiful fragrance. You have to come back to help me.’ And the rest is history. They worked closely together, loved fragrance, laughed a lot and it was a won-derful relationship. There’s a continuum in the family.”

Lauder also noted that, while he is the interim chairman for the BCRF, he believes a woman should head it up, and that he and the group are working to reinvent the organization. “Our great strength is fund-raising in the Northeast, but we want to expand into other areas,” he said, adding that there are plans to target corollary effects of breast cancer, any diseases to which survivors have been made vulnerable.

While this year’s ceremony included working electricity — a major problem at last year’s event — a computer crash left Nicole Richie and Cosimo Policastro, executive vice presi-dent of fine fragrances for

Givaudan, struggling to fill space while a DVD copy of the pre-sentation was being substituted. Richie — who earlier in the day had presented her first fragrance to beauty editors — confessed that the technical difficulties rattled her a bit. “I hate public speaking and wasn’t quite sure what to do when the presenta-tion kept freezing,” a Pucci-clad Richie said with a smile at the

VIP after party. “That was my worst fear, that something like that would happen.”

There was no shortage of lighthearted quips by celebrities, who were also sniffing around for possible fragrance deals.

“I don’t know if you’ve every smelled a recording studio, but tonight was a treat for my nos-trils — an absolute pleasure,” cracked singer, actor and pro-ducer Josh Groban, who has just finished filming “Coffee Town,” a comedy in which he plays a disgruntled coffee barista “who’s really in a rock band, but he sucks, so he has to take the coffee job. I’m also four songs into the next album, and re-cently sang a duet with Placido Domingo for his new record.” Groban’s album is expected late this year or early in 2013.

Mariska Hargitay, clad in a peony-hued Oscar de la Renta gown, said her scent could be called Marish, her nickname, and smell of peonies. “If I come back next year, I’m going to do a French accent — I’m hoping they ask me to host it,” she said, complimenting the acceptance speech of Christine Dagousset, executive vice president of fra-grance and beauté of Chanel and calling Dagousset her new muse. Hargitay noted that she has another year to go as Det. Olivia Benson on “Law and Order: SVU,” and that she’s itching to do a comedy. “I never thought this was where my ca-reer would end up,” she said of the police drama. “I’ve just had a 15-year delay on the comedy show. I got waylaid.”

WWD.COM7WWD WEDNESDAY, MAY 23, 2012

BEAUTY BEAT

An Emotional Evening at the FiFi Awards

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DENIM Gucci Presses Trademark Case In Other Courts

J Brand Puts Fashion Front and CenterBy KHANH T.L. TRAN

LOS ANGELES — Setting 2012 as the year to focus on its newly launched sportswear business, J Brand is aiming to elevate the brand’s profile with its most expensive ad campaign to date.

Budgeted at well more than $1 mil-lion, including media buys in maga-zines such as Vanity Fair, GQ, Love and French Vogue, as well as Web sites such as Style.com, the fall campaign marks the first time J Brand has hired an out-side art director to finesse its image. Karl Templer, the former creative di-rector of Interview magazine, was se-lected for what Donald Oliver, design director for J Brand’s sportswear divi-sion, termed his “minimal, effortless” style. Templer doubled as the cam-paign’s stylist, picking Craig McDean to photograph the campaign in New York.

Suvi Koponen, a fresh-faced blonde

from Finland, and Shaun DeWet, a South African alumnus of ads for Calvin Klein’s Truth fragrance, Yves Saint Laurent and Gap, personified the confi-dence and subtle sexiness that J Brand wanted to associate with the company.

“This was the year of elevating the brand,” said Jeff Rudes, J Brand’s chief executive officer.

Projected to grow as much as 30 per-cent this year from last year, when sales were estimated to surpass $100 million, Rudes said J Brand is in the middle of transitioning from a Los Angeles-based jeans brand to a fashion company. As

such, it purposely excluded its trade-mark skinny blue jeans from the fall im-ages. Highlighting the best of fall sports-wear, Koponen donned high-waisted leather pants, coated denim and gar-ment-dyed silk chiffon pajama bottoms with a men’s wear-inspired cashmere coat, cotton moleskin biker coat and leather and tweed peacoat, Oliver said. DeWet, on the other hand, sported dark olive jeans with a banker’s coat, wool blazer and leather T-shirt pulled from other fashion brands, since J Brand doesn’t make men’s sportswear.

“That’s all part of this fashion-brand point of view,” Rudes said. “We don’t need to advertise jeans. Jean compa-nies need to advertise jeans. Fashion companies need to advertise fashion.”

J Brand is making the fashion push as it builds its sportswear business. Barneys New York was added to the list of retailers carrying the sportswear, priced between $275 and $1,500, for fall. Stores that sold the inaugural col-lection for spring — among the likes of Intermix, Bergdorf Goodman, Saks Fifth Avenue, Selfridges, Harvey Nichols, Liberty and Montaigne Market — are continuing their support, Rudes said.

To strengthen its position with re-tail partners, J Brand is interviewing architects to build new shops-in-shop slated to open in the second quarter of 2013. Merchandised mostly with denim as well as sportswear, the dedicated re-tail spaces will open at Selfridges and Liberty in London, Tsum in Moscow and Harvey Nichols in Istanbul. Rudes added that he is looking for a store in New York to house a shop-in-shop. In addition, J Brand is planning to revamp its New York showroom. Down the road, without a set date, the company hopes to open its first flagship .

“We’re setting the stage to be the platform of growing a fashion brand,” Rudes said.

Shaun DeWet in J Brand’s new fall ad campaign by Karl Templer and Craig McDean.

By ALEXANDRA STEIGRAD

NEW YORK — One down, three to go.Gucci America Inc.’s lawsuit against

Guess Inc. appears to be over in the U.S., but the luxury goods maker is forging ahead with new cases filed in China, Italy and France.

Fresh off its $4.7 million win against Guess and its footwear licensee, Marc Fisher Footwear, in a Manhattan federal court Monday, Gucci said it remains “firmly com-mitted to take the necessary action to pre-serve the integrity, exclusivity and distinc-tiveness” of its brand.

“Gucci is extremely pleased with this de-cision, which should serve as a powerful de-terrent for those who attempt to unlawfully exploit Gucci’s intellectual property,” Gucci president and chief executive officer Patrizio di Marco said Tuesday.

Judge Shira Scheindlin, who presided over the case, may have ruled in favor of Gucci by awarding the brand injunctive relief, barring the defendants from using the green-red-green stripe, the Quattro G pattern in brown and beige colorways and certain square G marks, but she only awarded Gucci a fraction of the $221 mil-lion it was asking for.

The low level of damages awarded might send Gucci back to court to appeal the ver-dict, according to Brian Brokate, a part-ner in the law firm of Gibney Anthony & Flaherty LLP. Gucci declined to comment on whether it would appeal the judge’s monetary ruling.

“The damages were surprisingly low con-sidering the amount of time that the sales of the infringing product had been going on,” Brokate offered.

Although the lawsuit was filed in 2009, Gucci based its claims on over a decade of Guess infringement of a variety of trade-marks. Interestingly, the judge didn’t rule on Gucci’s counterfeit infringement claims, but instead on trademark dilution, which is arguably more difficult to prove, as it ap-plies to what the court must define as “fa-mous marks.”

While Monday’s decision is by no means landmark, it has legal experts linking it to fashion’s other big lawsuit: Christian Louboutin vs. Yves Saint Laurent, Gucci’s sister brand, which is also part of PPR Group. That case, which examines whether Louboutin should be able to keep its red-sole trademark, is currently being deliberated on by the Court of Appeals here.

At issue in the Louboutin case is wheth-er a color can be trademarked for fashion items. In the Gucci case, the judge said that the red-green-red coloration when designat-ed to three stripes is a viable trademark that demands protection.

“In the context of Louboutin, Judge Scheindlin tacitly affirmed that color marks are protectable,” said Susan Scafidi, director of Fordham University’s Fashion Law Institute.

While this may be the case, don’t expect the Gucci ruling to play a material role in the Louboutin case.

“I don’t see this case having a significant effect on that case,” said Brokate, who noted that while the judge’s ruling may not impact Louboutin vs. YSL, it would leave a mark on the industry.

Ending her opinion with a quote from Oscar Wilde that refers to fashion as “a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months,” the judge made it clear that Gucci and Guess should have set-tled the matter out of court.

According to sources, the “ugliness” re-ferred more to questionable lawyering prac-tices spanning the three years than the mer-its of Gucci’s claims.

Notwithstanding, Brokate offered his view on the judge’s opinion: “Aside from the Oscar Wilde quote being pretty funny, the way she ended her decision was essentially like, both parties spent a lot of time and a lot of money — and for what?”

Guess Net Again Hit by Europe WoesBy ARNOLD J. KARR

GUESS INC. managed to beat Wall Street’s first-quarter estimates despite earnings and sales that were depleted by steep drops in its European business.

Net income dropped 37.6 percent to $26.6 million, or 30 cents a diluted share, from $42.7 million, or 46 cents, in the 2011 period. Revenues receded 2.2 percent to $579.3 million from $592.2 million in last year’s quarter, while gross margin backtracked to 40.6 percent of sales from 41.9 percent a year ago.

With analysts estimating earnings per share of 26 cents on revenues of $569.9 million, investors took the earn-ings report as better-than-expected news and sent shares up more than 7 percent in the beginning of after-hours trading. Earlier, they’d closed down 3 cents, or 0.1 percent, at $24.44 before moving up past $26 in the evening.

Guess weathered drops in operat-ing income in all five of its business units during the quarter ended April 28, but none was more costly than the 62.4 percent decline in European prof-its, to $12.5 million from $33.2 million, while sales on the continent pulled back 9.7 percent to $189.8 million from $210.2 million.

Speaking of Europe, Michael Prince, chief operating officer, said during a late afternoon conference call with analysts, “We experienced declines in our more mature markets given the economic challenges in the south, while we grew our business in newer growth markets like Germany

and Russia, both of which...posted dou-ble-digit top-line increases. We grew our owned retail business in Europe where our top-line performance was stronger than we had anticipated as comp-store headwinds were less se-vere than we had planned.”

Neither in Guess’ financial state-ments for the quarter nor on its con-ference call was there any mention of the $4.7 million judgment in favor of Gucci handed down in federal court Monday against Guess and its foot-wear licensee, Marc Fisher Footwear, at the conclusion of their three-year-long trademark battle. (Gucci had sought more than $221 million in dam-

ages.) Paul Marciano, chief executive officer of Guess, who testified in the case, had said previously he wouldn’t be on the first-quarter call because of a global conference of Guess and its licensees taking place in Los Angeles this week.

Investors took heart that Guess maintained its earnings guidance of between $2.50 and $2.65 a diluted share for the full year despite projec-tions for a second quarter in which EPS is expected to land between 48 and 52 cents versus analysts’ earlier expectations of a 62-cent profit.

Guess has invested in marketing as it’s celebrated its 30th anniversary this year. Dennis Secor, chief finan-cial officer, said it “will take some time to realize the benefits from those investments....Also, the improvements we are driving at our men’s and ac-cessories businesses are expected to yield results but later in the year.” He added that same-store sales in Europe aren’t expected to turn posi-tive during the balance of the year but that conditions in Europe were showing signs of stabilizing.

Guess’ North American retail op-erations registered a 1.8 percent sales increase, to $251.8 million, on a 5.5 percent decline in comparable-store sales, and operating profit fell 8.8 percent to $17 million. Sales were up 7.9 percent in Asia, to $64.8 million, while operating income dropped 17.3 percent to $5.9 million. Strength in China helped offset weakness in South Korea, although conditions improved in April, according to Prince.

Suvi Koponen in the new fall campaign.

Guess weathered drops in operating income in all five of its business units... but none was more costly than the 62.4 percent decline in European profits.

WWDSTYLEMEMO PAD

PARIS — Squint and you could be in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, but this was a recent weekend in Paris, where bicycles, suspenders and mustaches — both real and faux — came out in full force for the “Beret Baguette” ride through the city. For more, see page 10.

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MYSTERY THEATER: Erin Wasson was among the revelers at the Chopard-Harvey Weinstein ‘Mystery’ party in Cannes. PAGE 10

THE MICKEY TOUCH: “I don’t want to get emotional, but I love this shirt,” said Millard “Mickey” Drexler, while touring a J. Crew store. A new CNBC documentary about J. Crew’s chief executive officer, which airs Thursday, shows multiple store visits as an example of how involved he is with the brand, as the cameras also follow him to design meetings and a trip to a clothing mill in Milan. Jenna Lyons, president and executive creative director, is one of the few employees he kept on after taking over in 2003. “We’d gotten into vanilla land,” she said. “I knew this man was going to take us somewhere.” She described the clothing these days as a “triple-decker sundae.”

The Drexler profile follows his career trajectory, including stops at Ann Taylor and Gap, where he led a turnaround of the brand. He was eventually dismissed after sales stalled. “I left Gap not feeling that great about myself,” he said. Since joining J. Crew, Drexler is credited with driving company revenues up 170 percent to nearly $1.9 billion last year.

The documentary shows a few snippets of his personal life, including a trip to his old apartment building in the Bronx and a lunch with old friends from the neighborhood. As a child, he slept in the foyer of his family’s one-bedroom apartment. Now, he has seven homes, including the old Andy Warhol estate in Montauk. CNBC’s David Faber asks Drexler if the number of homes he owns is a reaction to his childhood. “It has something to do with that. I always wished I had a bedroom.” Now, he has more than he can count. — AMY WICKS

STILL WORKING IT OUT: In February, Suzanna Andrews had a red-hot story on her hands. Just as the Leveson Inquiry had restarted hearings on News Corp.’s hacking scandal, Andrews had a profile of Rebekah Brooks in Vanity Fair with all the makings of a Hollywood thriller.

Gene Kirkwood, the producer behind “Rocky” and “Get Rich or Die Tryin,’” saw the potential for another movie about a tough-as-nails slugger, and two months ago approached the writer to develop it as a biopic.

The news on Monday of a deal to option the story was the kind of announcement that the Condé Nast Entertainment Group was supposed to brag about, capitalizing on a much-discussed piece from one of the publishing company’s signature brands. But the new corporate division had nothing to do with it.

The deal highlights CNEG’s growing pains. Eight months after it was launched, positioned as a cornerstone of Condé’s future, it is still searching for its niche at 4 Times Square, and a strategy on future collaborations with the company’s magazines. With Vanity Fair hot on the Murdoch beat, Andrews’ 8,000-word profile filled in the blanks about the trusted lieutenant, chronicling Brooks’ rise from a “very, very, very ambitious” secretary at a British tabloid to feared Rupert Murdoch capo and kingmaker.

The story was a natural movie vehicle — relevant, ripped from the headlines, and full of intrigue, “like ‘All the President’s Men,’” said Ross Elliot, Kirkwood’s producing partner. Elliot approached Andrews directly about two months ago, and they reached “a deal to allow them to shop the piece around,” David Forrer, one of Andrews’ agents, said Tuesday.

{Continued on page 11}

THE SOUND of frogs croaking in the night greeted guests at a villa in the hills above Cannes, France, where Chopard and Harvey Weinstein held their “Mystery” party on Monday night. In keeping with the theme, the Swiss jewelry and watchmaking firm kept the venue of the bash under wraps. Some guests were ferried to the party in a fleet of cars and vans, while others were handed cryptic directions that some compared to a treasure map.

Sean “Diddy” Combs and his on-off flame Cassie, Alec Baldwin, Natasha Poly, Anja Rubik and Erin Wasson were among those who climbed into buggies that drove them up to the Villa Domergue, where a plethora of entertainers awaited them. Inside, Michael Arenella & His Dreamland Orchestra played retro-tinged jazz, while in a tent in the garden, disco tunes had the crowd on their feet. A dancer from Cirque du Soleil dazzled with a performance that involved spinning a giant metallic cube frame.

Among the guests dripping with precious jewels, actress Michelle Rodriguez stood out with her simple gold medallion necklace. “That’s not my style. I’m a more quiet girl,” she said. So why the two burly security guards?

“That’s not me, they’re his security,” she grinned, pointing at her date.

French actress Alysson Paradis said she was in town to present “Emprise,” a short movie directed by Vincent Arnaud that is billed as a feminist film. “I play a strong woman, and it’s pretty funny,” she said.

Weinstein, meanwhile, said he had not yet found this year’s equivalent of “The Artist,” the movie he helped propel to global success following last year’s Cannes Film Festival — though he liked director Jacques Audiard’s “Rust & Bone,” which will be distributed by Sony Pictures Classics in the U.S.

“It’s with Marion Cotillard — I think she’s incredible,” he said. “So that’s a great movie. ‘The Sapphires’ is fun, that is ours, but we’ll see. There’s still a week to go.”

A great fan of French movies, Weinstein is preparing a remake of Gallic box-office hit “The Intouchables” and sees a great future in Hollywood for one of the stars of the original movie, Omar Sy. So are French movies having a golden moment?

“I think they are, and I’m having a golden moment with them,” Weinstein said. — JOELLE DIDERICH

10 WWD WEDNESDAY, MAY 23, 2012

Mystery Date

Bow Ties, Boaters and BeretsPARIS — Hipster clothes or costumes? The recently held “Beret Baguette” attracted quite a bit of both, encouraging cycling enthusiasts to dress in Thirties garb in celebration of French fashion and gastronomy. While there were plenty of women on hand, it was the men who stole the show with their spot-on sartorial choices. — Laurent Folcher

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But as president of Condé’s entertainment division, it’s supposed to be Dawn Ostroff’s job to funnel these stories into the Hollywood pipeline, grabbing a slice of the profits for Condé in the process. Last fall, she said it was a “big problem” Condé wasn’t milking dividends from the movies and TV projects inspired or adapted from its magazines, including “The September Issue,” “Brokeback Mountain” and “Eat, Pray, Love.” The new division is a key component of Condé president Bob Sauerberg’s plan to grow revenue outside of advertising, including ventures in licensing and e-commerce.

The way the Andrews deal was hammered out underscores some of still-unresolved questions about the new division inside and outside Condé. Contributing editors at Vanity Fair “traditionally” own the rights to their stories, but it’s not clear if that will change with the new entertainment division, said magazine spokeswoman Giulia Melucci. Because Andrews retains all intellectual and screen rights under her contract, she negotiated directly with the production company, Forrer said.

Elliot said he didn’t reach out to Condé Entertainment because he wasn’t aware the division existed. And he prefers a one-on-one relationship with an author.

“We like the least amount of roadblocks as possible,” he said. “It would have been harder to make a deal with a larger entity.”

Nothing to see here though, said Condé Entertainment spokeswoman Maurie Perl. She brushed aside the suggestion the new division was moving slowly, pointing out that Ostroff promised in March the first half of the year would be taken up by hiring an executive team; the first programming executives joined last month.

Unclear still is whether magazines are under any obligation to consult with Ostroff on overtures from Hollywood, or whether the division will pitch independently, allowing the magazines wide latitude in how to configure their writers’ contracts.

Perl emphasized the eight-month-old division is new, discussions with the

different Condé titles are ongoing, and Ostroff ’s future strategies are taking shape.

“It’s just premature for us to have any of those conversations and go into details,” she said. “Within a reasonable amount of time, we will have more to share.”

Meanwhile, the Brooks movie is moving forward, with or without Condé. Elliot is now pitching to writers and actresses and so far has had “significant interest by some big players.” — ERIK MAZA

WHO’S THAT GIRL: Madonna has tapped rock ’n’ roll progeny Georgia May Jagger as the newest face of her Material Girl juniors line, which is going global this summer. Jagger, the 20-year-old daughter of Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall, will appear in a back-to-school campaign for the brand. The line is carried exclusively at Macy’s in the U.S., The Bay in Canada and is set to launch in Europe and Australia this summer. Material Girl is part of the MG Icon joint venture between Madonna and Iconix Brand Group Inc., which said details on the European and Australian distribution will be available at the end of June.

“To be handpicked by Madonna and Lola as the new face of Material Girl is truly amazing,” said Jagger, in a nod to Lourdes Leon, Madonna’s daughter, who is closely involved in designing and marketing the brand.

Jagger is on an advertising tear, shooting her fourth campaign for Hudson Jeans this week in Paris, which will feature a cabaret theme. Jagger’s also starring in Rimmel London cosmetics commercials on television and in the new “Fashion Targets Breast Cancer” public service campaign in the U.K.

— DAVID LIPKE

11WWD WEDNESDAY, MAY 23, 2012

{Continued from 9}Fashion scoops KARAN’S BAY CITY: Donna Karan returned to San Francisco last weekend for a Saks Fifth Avenue-sponsored luncheon and fashion show in support of the San Francisco Ballet. “It’s amazing being back here. From an urban point of view, these women have such an elegance and consciousness about the world, so they’re really ideal customers,” said the designer, who launched her collection in I. Magnin there nearly three decades ago. “It’s also a city where women really get what the fall collection is about, from a red jersey dress to a shearling coat, they will actually wear these pieces.”

Among the guests were Marissa Mayer, Dede Wilsey, Sloan Barnett and Yurie Pascarella.

Karan also flew down to Los Angeles for meetings for her integrated treatment program at UCLA and a luncheon at the Urban Zen boutique on Tuesday — MARCY MEDINA

HALE AND HARDY: A bevy of Douglas Hannant-clad socials, including Valesca Guerrand-Hermès, Alexandra Lebenthal and actress Patricia Clarkson, turned out to support Hale House at its annual benefit on Monday at the Prince George Ballroom in New York. Frederick Anderson, president of Douglas Hannant, cochaired the event, which honored New York Giant Justin Tuck and his wife, Lauran, along with David Ushery of WNBC. “I was completely blown away by the commitment of the workers and the one-on-one attention to kids who attend the Learning Center,” said Anderson of his visits to Harlem-based Hale House.

Despite the looming work week, hardy attendees stayed for the after-dinner dancing, including Jennifer Creel, Alexandra Lind Rose, Adelina Wong Ettelson, Diandra Douglas, Hunt Slonem and designer Miguelina Gambaccini. — DAVID LIPKE

BAILEY NAMES FASHION FRINGE FINALISTS: Christopher Bailey hosted a reception at Burberry’s headquarters in London Tuesday night to reveal the three finalists of the U.K.’s Fashion Fringe program, of which Bailey is chairman and judge for 2012.

He named Haizhen Wang, Teija Eilola and Vita Gottlieb as this year’s finalists in the competition, which was set up to discover and support emerging design talent.

The three designers will now be mentored by figures in the fashion industry, including the teams at Burberry, “to get some immersion into how a big company works,” said Bailey. The finalists will also be provided with financial support and studios at the London College of Fashion to create the collections that they will show during Fashion Fringe’s show at London Fashion Week in September. There, Bailey will select one designer as the competition’s winner, who will be awarded a two-year development package to set up and sustain his or her business. — NINA JONES

PROJECT MANGO: The El Botón-Mango Fashion Awards were created to help emerging talents produce and market their collections. The competition offers the biggest prize money in its category, distributed into 10 payments of 18,000 euros, or $22,700 at current exchange, to each of the 10 finalists, and a top prize of 300,000 euros, or $381,570, for the winner. The event is held every 18 months and involves five European fashion design schools:

Central Saint Martins School of Art and Design, ESDi, Institut Français de la Mode, Istituto Marangoni and Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten van Antwerpen.

This fourth edition has a final jury that includes Carolina Herrera as the chairman. Jury members include Kate Moss, Derek Blasberg, Agatha Ruiz de la Prada, Géraldine Saglio, Saks Fifth Avenue’s Colleen Sherin and Isak Andic, president of Mango. The process starts out with 200 entries, which are culled down to 50. Those are winnowed down to 10 finalists. The final jury is responsible for evaluating the 10 finalists, who present their collections to the judges during the competition’s final gala in Barcelona. The awards conclude on May 30. — SHARON EDELSON

PICTURE THIS: Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week and Dazed & Confused have teamed to introduce Fashion Broadcasting, a digital platform that will showcase emerging talent beyond the four major fashion capitals. Dazed’s fashion director Cathy Edwards will curate a series of short films that will spotlight up-and-comers in their studios, backstage and at their respective shows during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Weeks in Australia, Germany, South Africa, Mexico, Russia and China. The flicks, which will be housed at Dazed Digital, will be shot by local filmmakers. — ROSEMARY FEITELBERG

SOLO FLIGHT: Touting itself as a “modernist metropolitan” brand, G-Star Raw has tended to avoid conventional choices for its ad campaigns, favoring nonconformists like the late Dennis Hopper and chess player Magnus Carlsen as its public faces. For its fall ad campaign it’s selected actor-musician, and recent L’Uomo Vogue feature subject, Caleb Landry Jones. Already in Cannes for the premiere of Brandon Cronenberg’s “Antiviral,” in which he’s featured as Syd March, Jones, born and raised in Texas, was conveniently nearby when the Dutch denim brand opened a store in the French coastal town Tuesday.

G-Star brought its traveling Denim Museum to Cannes for the opening and sponsored one of its acclaimed pop-up fashion shows. Anna Calvi gave an acoustic performance and DJ Jean-Benoît Dunckel performed in-store with his new project, Tomorrow’s World.

As he has done for recent G-Star campaigns, including ads for spring featuring Clémence Poésy and Vincent Gallo, photographer and filmmaker Anton Corbijn will be shooting the fall flight. But fans anxious to learn the identity of the female face of G-Star for fall will have to be patient. Her identity won’t be revealed until G-Star heads to Berlin for the Bread & Butter show in July. — ARNOLD J. KARR

POP LIFE: Lapérouse, the historic Paris restaurant that has played host to numerous fashion events, including a couple of past Miu Miu shows, has caught the pop-up bug. The site on June 1 will welcome a temporary store by the Paris-based fine jewelry brand Pietra Dura. It will feature new and old jewelry creations in “Le salon de l’Astrolabe” until June 22. The label was launched in 2007 by former lawyer Carole Midy, who specializes in unique handmade jewelry made from recycled white, gray and yellow gold, silver and precious and semiprecious stones. —DIANA RODRIGUEZ

MeMo pad

Lourdes Leon, Georgia May Jagger and Madonna.

w23a011a;7.indd 11 5/22/12 8:20 PM05222012202035

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Carcelle took pains to portray Vuitton’s latest artistic collaboration as a cultural initiative that will help animate its boutiques and burnish the brand, rather than a calculated effort to boost revenues. “It’s not to put products on shelves,” he stressed.

The executive allowed that such ven-tures “tend to be a commercial success because of the strength of the artist and the strength of Vuitton. But the whole concept doesn’t start from a commercial point of view.”

Vuitton and Jacobs, its artistic direc-tor, are famous for occasional tie-ups with contemporary artists, igniting the practice in 2001 when Jacobs asked his old New York cohort Stephen Sprouse to spray handbags with his signature graffiti.

Vuitton’s artistic collaborations reached a zenith in 2003 when Takashi Murakami rendered Vuitton’s famous monogram in a rainbow of colors, plus a sprinkling of cartoonish eyeballs. At the time, market sources estimated the block-buster collaboration yielded sales ap-proaching $350 million that year, roughly 10 percent of Vuitton’s total revenues.

Today, the multicolor monogram, on black or white backgrounds, has en-tered the lexicon of permanent prod-ucts chez Vuitton.

In 2007, Vuitton tapped American artist Richard Prince, who splashed his quirky “joke paintings” over leather goods and deconstructed the monogram. Two years later, at the height of the financial crisis, Vuitton reprised Sprouse’s rose motif, adding some levity to the retail scene.

Carcelle insisted the brand has no timetable to mount such collaborations. “It’s really not at all the philosophy,” he said, sitting in his office on the fifth floor of Vuitton headquarters, with a breathtak-ing view of the Seine River and its bridges.

Instead, he explained that they dove-tail from a cultural flash point.

A series of Kusama exhibitions at high-profile museums in 2012 — first the Pompidou Center in Paris earlier this year, now the Tate Modern in London and soon the Whitney — offered a perfect moment for Jacobs to work with one of his favorite artists, whose diverse output spans paintings, soft sculptures, installa-tions and performance works.

“It’s really charming. It has the es-sence of the spirit of her work,” Jacobs said of the collaboration, describing Vuitton’s monogram and Kusama’s spots as “both timeless and endless.”

Known for her exacting approach — each dot in her “infinity” paintings is painstakingly placed — Kusama was “very involved personally in every detail of the product,” Carcelle said.

Jacobs, too, is known for his love of cir-cular motifs, having named his latest signa-ture fragrance Dot, in a ladybuglike bottle.

Besides spots, does Vuitton share val-ues in common with Kusama? “She trav-eled through cultures and time,” Carcelle beamed, referring to her time in New York in the Sixties and her 70 years of creation.

Now 82 and living in a hospital for the mentally ill, Kusama has been painting since age 10 and applied dots to canvases, tree trunks, entire rooms and even people.

Carcelle said the Kusama products would be available in limited quantities. “We prefer for them to become collec-tor’s items. Years after, people are so ex-cited to have these bags,” he said.

Yet Vuitton is putting considerable marketing muscle behind the initiative.

Next month, it plans to introduce an iPhone app dedicated to the artist and her quirky vision of the world. No prod-ucts are featured. Rather, users can take pictures and customize them with Kusama motifs such as dots. The free app — available in English and Japanese — also allows users to share their cre-ations via social media platforms, or sub-mit them to a dedicated site at louisvuit-tonkusama.com.

Carcelle said Vuitton is also plotting pop-up shops with select department and specialty stores. He declined to name them, but hinted they would mount installations that rival what’s in the mu-seum displays. The Tate display, for ex-ample, culminates with a mirrored room in which hundreds of colored lights are strung and reflected ad infinitum.

The executive also withheld details about the windows, but promised they would shock, as Vuitton did in 2006 when it asked Danish artist Olafur

Eliasson to create light-based works for its holiday displays.

“It had a big impact. It was the first time that at Christmas that we had no product in the window,” Carcelle said. “It shows that if you sell a very interesting story, people will come to see it.”

12 WWD WEDNESDAY, MAY 23, 2012

Vuitton to Unveil Kusama Collaboration

By ARNOLD J. KARR

SMARTPHONES remain a cru-cial tool for retailers looking to influence shoppers’ paths through malls and stores, but it’s tablets that are quickly gain-ing the stronger grip on con-sumer spending.

According to the 2012 Mobile Commerce Survey set to be re-leased by the National Retail Federation’s Shop.org division and Forrester Research today, 137 million U.S. consumers own smartphones that collectively accounted for just 1.5 percent of sales on the Web last year. Meanwhile, less than half the number of consumers, 61 million, own tablets but they generated more than twice the percentage of

sales last year — 3.2 percent.Furthermore, among 55 on-

line retailers with and without brick-and-mortar stores, tablets are driving sales that are com-parable to those made in stores. The average order value on tab-lets was $159.28 versus $134.37 on smartphones and on par with in-store purchases. The site conversion rate for tablets was 2.4 percent versus 1 percent for mobile phones. Repeat cus-tomer rates were identical, 29 percent, while tablets yielded a lower “shopping cart abandon-ment rate” of 62 percent versus 69 percent for smartphones.

“We expect smartphone shop-ping adoption rates to stay low but fully believe tablet sales will continue to change how retail-ers garner the attention of new

and current customers,” said Vicki Cantrell, executive direc-tor of Shop.org and senior vice president, communities, at NRF.

The report hardly paints a bleak picture for smartphone commerce. Mobile phones’ per-centage of e-commerce is pro-jected to rise 1 point a year, with its 2 percent share last year translating into $6 billion in U.S. retail sales and its antici-pated 3 percent share this year translating into $10 billion. This is expected to put smartphone commerce at 7 percent of total e-commerce in 2016, or $31 billion, implying overall e-commerce vol-ume of over $440 billion.

The survey included inter-views with multichannel retail-ers, Internet pure-plays and manufacturers with online di-

rect-to-consumer businesses.Cantrell noted that the study

showed a growing divergence between the ways in which tab-lets and smartphones are used. When asked to identify methods of mobile marketing they employ, exactly three-quarters of the retail respondents listed quick-response codes or other barcode scanning, more than any other use. The second, third and fourth most popular activities were all tied to smartphones — smart-phone paid search campaigns (at 55 percent), mobile e-mail optimization (52 percent) and mobile display ad campaigns (41 percent). Next came tablet paid search campaigns at 39 percent.

“Smartphones aren’t going away,” Cantrell told WWD. “They’re what people carry with

them. Maybe the mobile phone becomes the next big promo-tional tool.”

In fact, QR and barcodes were ranked first by retailers with sales of less than $10 mil-lion and those with sales of $100 million or more and were sec-ond in popularity for retailers in the $10 million to $100 mil-lion range, behind only mobile e-mail optimization.

“There’s a more clear line separating tablets and mobile phones now,” she noted. “The vi-sual nature of the tablet and the rising popularity of Pinterest, which is itself so visual, is mak-ing retailers open their eyes to Pinterest-commerce. People used to sit on the couch with their laptops. Now they take their tablets to bed with them because that’s where they’ve got their books. We could find our-selves moving from couch-com-merce to bed-commerce.”

Study: Tablets Gaining Sales Traction

{Continued from page one}

Marc Jacobs with Yayoi Kusama in front of her studio in 2006.

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Here and left: Looks from the Louis Vuitton collaboration with Kusama.

For more photos, see

WWD.com/fashion-news.

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