Top Men's Fashion Trends to Drop in 2020 - Grit Daily |
- Top Men's Fashion Trends to Drop in 2020 - Grit Daily
- Collaborations are providing fashion brands a gateway to the Chinese market - Glossy
- Why Fashion Brands Today Have Such Strange Names - Wall Street Journal
- Ed Filipowski, 58, Pioneer of Fashion Public Relations, Dies - The New York Times
- The Race to Connected Fashion Continues With Eon Group - WWD
| Top Men's Fashion Trends to Drop in 2020 - Grit Daily Posted: 13 Jan 2020 12:00 PM PST As we head into the middle of January, it's probably be safe to assume that most of us have let down our New Year's Resolution at this point. For example, my goal was to finally get in shape and now my Planet Fitness membership will never see the light of day ever again. However, like many other men out there, another resolution of mine was to become more fashionable. Nothing quite grabs attention than a man who knows how to dress. You know what they say: the clothes make the man. However, there are some current trends out there that should definitely stay behind with the 2010s. Here are some men's fashion trends that you should definitely drop in 2020. The Crossbody Bag
It was a hot street wear staple in 2019 and we can expect it to stay in 2020. Young men all over America are rocking crossbody bags due to the hype from companies such as Gucci and Supreme. Personally, I believe that the crossbody bag has always been a bit of an eyesore in men's fashion. It just kind of looks like you're rocking a purse. If that's your thing, more power to you, but if you're a guy looking to impress, you might wanna leave this trend behind. Spray on Jeans
Seriously, who thought these were a good idea? As a man, spray on jeans just seem a bit impractical. I mean, we have some valuable assets down there and the last thing we need is to wear a pair of denim or pants that constrict the life out of your lower body. Don't get me wrong, skinny or slim fit denim will most likely be in style for years and years to come, but if I can see a guy's quad muscles through his jeans, it's probably best you leave it in your closet for the year 2020. The Long Line Tee
These super long, almost dress-like shirts became widely popular thanks to streetwear icons like Kanye West. Not only does it look impractical due to its length, but it also completely throws off the proportions of the body. Any guy that rocks this looks like he has a really long torso with really small legs. Kanye West can pull this off on account of being Kanye West, but guys like me and you? We should probably ditch this trend for the brand new decade. Purposefully Worn Out Shoes.
First off… take a quick guess as to how much those suckers cost. That's right, they cost north of 800 bucks! And if you cringed at that number, then you're probably wondering why in the world this is such a popular trend. Brands like Gucci and Balenciaga are currently going through this phase of selling the UGLIEST shoes that are already beat up and charging an outrageous price for it. I guess if you're so bougie that you need to have people wear out your clothes for you, this might be your thing. As for the rest of us, let's just keep this one in the 2010s. The Male Romper
Let's be honest… I mean… I'm all for fashion being equal in the sense that if women can wear fuzzy socks, why can't men? However, with the male romper, it just looks so uncomfortable and tight to the point where it just begs the question: Why was this ever a thing in the first place? If you're going to do it, at least there's a zipper fly. The LAST thing I wanna see is a dude stripping down at the urinal whenever nature calls.  |
| Collaborations are providing fashion brands a gateway to the Chinese market - Glossy Posted: 13 Jan 2020 09:05 PM PST  Earlier this month, fashion designer Alexander Wang released a collaboration with McDonald's in the form of picnic basket- and lunch bag-inspired handbags in his signature shade of black. In the U.S., that type of brand collaboration might be seen as overdone, but the collection, sold through Alibaba's Tmall online platform, proved a hit with the local audience. The 300 baskets that were made sold out in seconds, according to Alibaba, and the 30,000 lunch bags sold out in less than 10 minutes. Brand collaborations like these are incredibly popular in China, and their frequency and popularity are growing each year. A June report from Gartner L2 showed that the percentage of fashion brands promoting brand collaborations on the Chinese social network Weibo had jumped up from 62% in the first quarter of 2018 to 80% by the midpoint of 2019. As the Chinese market continues to slow down after several years of being the fastest-growing market in fashion, these kinds of collaborations can provide the necessary boost brands need to keep Chinese customers engaged. "We've seen a big ramp-up in brand collaborations recently," said Christina Fontana, head of fashion and luxury for Tmall Europe. "The retail environment in China is very competitive and very fast. Brands always want to create buzz and give people a reason to talk about them. It also helps them reach new customers. I work mostly with European luxury brands, and their customer in China tends to be about 10 years younger than their customer in Europe, so it requires a different strategy." Essentially, China is a unique market. Collaborating with other brands already popular in China can help newcomers figure out who their audience is and the best way to reach them. A diverse array of fashion brands and platforms have turned to collaborations, particularly when trying to introduce themselves to the market for the first time. "We know China is a unique market, and if we use the same strategy as in the U.S., we'll likely fail," said Eddy Lu, CEO of Goat. Goat launched a separate app in China a few months ago, working with WeChat to tailor the user experience for Chinese customers. "We are building [our Chinese app] with a local team in order to provide the Chinese consumer with a better, more personalized experience." Like many brands looking to appeal to China, Goat did so by partnering with a brand that is known and loved throughout China: the NBA. The resale platform sponsored the often-photographed walk-in area where players arrive, banking on the NBA's massive popularity in China to boost its China launch. There are more NBA fans in China than there are people in the U.S. Thanks to China's unique cultural sensibilities and various platforms to advertise and sell on, many brands have found that hiring locals with first-hand knowledge of the market to be crucial. Offering guidance and advice on selling in China has been one of Alibaba's primary attractions to Western brands. Certain brand collaborations have succeeded in China, while others have failed. A collaboration between Uniqlo and visual artist KAWS was a sensation in China, spawning dozens of viral videos of customers swarming Uniqlo stores. An H&M and Moschino collaboration in 2018 drew similar uproar in China when it was released in 2018. Meanwhile, a collaboration between H&M and Versace was initially popular but later saw a high number of returns, according to reports in the Chinese press. While H&M and Moschino were a cohesive fit, H&M and Versace proved to be too jarring of a combination. Many showed up for the Versace name but were disappointed to find the clothes were of H&M quality. "The collaborations have to fit the brand identity," Fontana said. "In the Moschino example, it's a fun brand with a kind of irreverent tone. Collaborations fit perfectly with its pop-art style, like the one it did recently with Budweiser. With Versace, they have a different identity that didn't fit with the collaboration quite as well. When brands find collaborators that amplify their message, it works much better in China." In a statement released by Alibaba, Christine Xu, CMO of McDonald's China, emphasized the Chinese market's desire for novelty and newness. "Chinese consumers have a strong appetite for innovation and new ideas," said Christine Xu, CMO of McDonald's China, adding that the country's unique consumer dynamic has made it a hotbed for creative experimentation and played an important role in the collaboration's success. "This is driving brands to deliver truly innovative ideas and experiences," she said.  |
| Why Fashion Brands Today Have Such Strange Names - Wall Street Journal Posted: 13 Jan 2020 08:51 AM PST    IT MIGHT SEEM perverse. Perhaps it's strategic. But new clothing labels are picking stranger and stranger brand names, as became clear to me last week when I found myself weaving through the booths at Pitti Uomo, a biannual men's fashion trade show held in Florence, Italy. The brand names I encountered ranged from the elaborate and multipartite ("Grunge John Orchestra. Explosion") to the groan-inducing ("Rewoolution") to the perhaps not-safe-for-work ("Fabric Porn"). SHARE YOUR THOUGHTSName your top three weird fashion brand names! Join the conversation below. Once upon a time, labels were content to rely on a founder's name. That gave us Brooks Brothers (founded by Henry Sand Brooks in 1818), Alden Shoes (started by Charles H. Alden in 1884), Salvatore Ferragamo (established by Salvatore Ferragamo in 1927) and scores of other familial monikers. Today, instead of charting a direct line from a founder's name to a shirt's label, nascent brands seem determined to confound us with names like 99%is, Suicoke, Come Tees and Pink House Mustique. Competition is fierce. The over 1,200 brands at Pitti Uomo represent a sliver of the fashion industry. Given the almost incalculable number of brands, "most of the obvious names are taken, so you kind of need to go down some more obscure avenues to find something that is available," explained Eli Altman, the creative director at A Hundred Monkeys, a firm based in Berkeley, Calif., that specializes in naming companies. And when Mr. Altman refers to a name being "taken," he talking not merely about the inability to trademark it, but several other closed doors: important internet URLS, top slots in Google search results and social-media handles. " 'Once a brand owns a name, that doesn't mean the headaches cease.' " This can force entrepreneurs to chase workarounds. In the early 2010s when Samuel Bail and his co-founder Abel Samet came across the word "troubadour" in a poem, they thought it jibed with the identity of the London-based bag brand they were developing. However, as Mr. Bail told me during Pitti Uomo, a pub in California already occupied Troubadour.com. So Mr. Bail and Mr. Samet tacked on the word "Goods"— troubadourgoods.com was still open. It's not always as simple as adding a word. In 2003, years before search engine optimization and URL competition emerged as principal concerns, Japanese designer Eichiro Homma still had trouble securing the trademark for Seven Seas, his first-choice name. "Seven Seas for us was very difficult to register, because as a brand name it's quite popular," explained Mr. Homma during Pitti Uomo. Eventually he landed on Nanamika, a Japanese word that roughly translates as "houses of seven seas." Still unsatisfied, he felt the k "didn't look good," so he tweaked the name to Nanamica. This confused even Japanese shoppers, but the word's exclusivity allowed Mr. Homma to register it as a URL, claim the @nanamica Instagram handle and appear at the top of Google results when shoppers searched for the brand by name. Once a brand owns a name, that doesn't mean the headaches cease. Adam Cameron and his wife Charlotte, who co-founded a five-year-old English clothing company, had no trouble securing its name "The Workers Club." Though Mr. Cameron notes in passing that when you Google the phrase, an identically named club in Australia pops up, lately he's been troubled by the launch of newer labels such as whose names closely resemble his brand's. Coincidentally or not, across from Mr. Cameron's stall at Pitti Uomo was the booth of a Swiss bag brand named Officine Federali, which I initially mistook for Officine Creative, a higher-profile Italian shoe brand. Adding to the (perhaps intentional) confusion, there is also Officine Generale, a well-known French clothier. Soundalike names confronted me everywhere at Pitti Uomo. I saw a stand for a brand called Best Company, which I mentally connected to New York's Best Made Company. Passing Olow, a French brand, I thought of Orslow, a Japanese brand. And a sign for France's Kytone reminded me that I needed to go visit the booth for Italy's Kiton. Before ecommerce and Instagram, closely or even identically named brands coexisted for decades, oblivious of each other. They were sold in different regions and registered in different countries. It was unlikely that any shopper would ever draw the connections I did at Pitti Uomo or fall victim to subtle attempts by an interloper brand to co-opt a more successful label's reputation and credibility. Today, in the context of multi-brand online stores and social media platforms that catalog brands from all over the world, the potential for a shopper to make those connections and for a soundalike brand to exploit them is more of a factor. But the soundalike strategy has its risks. To avoid being overlooked in a scroll of seemingly interchangeable names, the founders of other brands are choosing creative names that range from the amusing to the memorably asinine. My colleagues and I recently had an extended Slack exchange about the peculiar qualities of the brand name 99%is which is hard not to see as a typo. An unconventional name will "get people talking, get people writing, and the more [the brands] can do that, the more presence they have," said Ken Pasternak, the president and chief strategy officer at Two by Four, a creative agency that works on branding in Chicago and San Francisco. Hoping for newness, brands like 99%is refuse to limit themselves to the 26 characters of the English alphabet. At least two brands—Reese Cooper and Ambush—have affixed the registered trademark symbol to the end of their names. English designer and asterisk fan Samuel Ross operates A-Cold-Wall*. And designer Virgil Abloh's brand is officially known as Off-White c/o Virgil Abloh. Such extreme originality can also backfire, however. "Sometimes their names are so out-there that they're hard to remember," said Mr. Pasternak. Worst still, some names are so downright bizarre that they keep shoppers at bay. I'm sure the Los Angeles label Skin Graft makes nice clothes, but with a name like that, I'm not sure I'm willing to find out. The Wall Street Journal is not compensated by retailers listed in its articles as outlets for products. Listed retailers frequently are not the sole retail outlets. Write to Jacob Gallagher at Jacob.Gallagher@wsj.com Write to Jacob Gallagher at Jacob.Gallagher@wsj.com Copyright ©2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8  |
| Ed Filipowski, 58, Pioneer of Fashion Public Relations, Dies - The New York Times Posted: 13 Jan 2020 02:59 PM PST  Ed Filipowski, a public relations executive who became one of the fashion industry's most influential behind-the-scenes players through his work with companies like Gucci, Versace and Marc Jacobs, died on Friday at his home in Manhattan. He was 58. Rachna Shah, a partner at the firm, said the cause was complications of a recent operation but gave no other details. In an industry of large personalities, Mr. Filipowski blended into the scenery. But over the course of 30 years, he and his main partner, Julie Mannion, established a worldwide footprint for their firm, KCD. They organized fashion shows for Prada, turned mere store openings for Chanel into celebrity-fueled media bonanzas, and handled P.R. for John Galliano during his largely successful comeback at Maison Margiela, after he had been fired from Dior for making anti-Semitic remarks. The designer Tom Ford, in a statement, described Mr. Filipowski as a daily sounding board about branding and press strategy. Donatella Versace, who relied heavily on KCD in the wake of her brother Gianni's killing in 1997, called Mr. Filipowski a mentor. KCD was a pioneer in a globalizing business. Before it came along, fashion public relations was mostly built on hype and drama. Eleanor Lambert started a famous best-dressed list that was as memorable for who got left off as for who made it on. Pierre Bergé, the longtime partner of Yves Saint Laurent and the voice of his label, was famous for orchestrating fights with journalists and competitors. Mr. Filipowski, and the employees who came to work for him and Ms. Mannion, operated differently. They were simultaneously friendlier and more corporate than their predecessors. "They were not driven by emotion," said Paul Cavaco, the C in the company's name until he sold the firm to Mr. Filipowski and Ms. Mannion in the early 1990s. "That's what Ed was really good at. He was steady." It was KCD that helped make headsets standard at fashion shows, its employees coolly walking the periphery of the runway in chic black suits that recalled the Agent Smith character from "The Matrix." The idea was for them to fade into the background, reflecting both Mr. Filipowski's asceticism and his aesthetic. He was most sentimental about his work with Helmut Lang, which in the late 1990s was the industry standard for urban minimalism. Edwin John Filipowski was born on June 27, 1961, in Monessen, Pa., just outside Pittsburgh. His father, Edward, was a steelworker. His mother, Stella, worked in various jobs, including at the retailer JCPenney, according to a 2003 profile of Mr. Filipowski in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Mr. Filipowski graduated from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in 1983 and moved to New York, where he took a job at the advertising agency Jordan, Case & McGrath. At the time, the stylists Kezia Keeble and Paul Cavaco, best known for their work on ad campaigns for Calvin Klein and Gianni Versace, were opening an agency. The hired Mr. Filipowski to be head of public relations. Their idea was to use prominent photographers like Steven Meisel and Bruce Weber for ad campaigns, organize fashion shows and exert influence on which journalists would profile designers. That last task often fell to Mr. Filipowski. Then, turmoil engulfed the agency. Mr. Cavaco and Ms. Keeble, who were married, divorced, and Ms. Keeble married John Duka, a former New York Times fashion writer. He became a partner in the agency, which named itself Keeble Cavaco & Duka, later shortened to KCD. In 1989, Mr. Duka, who had been found to have AIDS, died. A year later, Ms. Keeble died of breast cancer. Soon after, Mr. Cavaco sold the firm to Ms. Mannion and Mr. Filipowski, who became the chief strategist. "Everyone predicted" that the company was "going to die with two of its founders," The New York Times fashion critic Amy M. Spindler wrote in 1996. Instead, she wrote, KCD emerged as the "one company" that was "poised to inherit the wide new world of global fashion public relations." Along with its minimalist aesthetic, the agency also became known for handing out highly detailed ''dresser cards" backstage. "They told the dresser how the back sash is tied, how far the zipper is supposed to go up, how many buttons are buttoned and if the collar is in or out," said Anna Sui, who has employed KCD since 1991, when she opened her company. "Everything was pragmatic. Everything was about being correct." Marc Jacobs, who worked with Mr. Filipowski for more than 30 years, praised his unflappable nature. "In the moments that are the most stressful — events or especially fashion shows — Ed kept his sense of humor, kept his wits," he said in an interview. Gucci, Alexander McQueen and Chloe joined the company roster. When Mr. Ford was named as Yves Saint Laurent's creative director in 1999, Mr. Filipowski set up a KCD office in Paris, a first for an American fashion public relations company. Fast fashion companies like H&M came along and did more than produce clothes that closely resembled the high-end versions designed by KCD's clients; they also hired KCD to handle their store openings and media campaigns. KCD came to represent the Council of Fashion Designers of America, the industry's main booster organization in the United States. Anna Wintour, who effectively runs the annual gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, selected KCD to manage the flow of celebrities on its red carpet. And when Ms. Spindler died in 2004, KCD oversaw her memorial at the Rainbow Room atop Rockefeller Center. "We have two clients here," Mr. Filipowski said in a 2014 interview with the Medill School of Journalism's alumni magazine. "The designer or the fashion house, and the media. Our job is to take care of both, not one or the other." Mr. Filipowski was married to Mark Lee, the former chief executive of Barneys New York. In 2014, they began investing in Broadway shows, among them Terrence McNally's "Mothers and Sons" and "It's Only a Play." The couple divorced recently. Mr. Filipowski's survivors include his mother; a sister, Janet; and a brother, Edward. Many of his business associates knew little about his personal life. Ms. Wintour said his ability to recede was part of his gift. "For someone who preferred to be behind the scenes," she said, "he was at the center of absolutely everything."  |
| The Race to Connected Fashion Continues With Eon Group - WWD Posted: 13 Jan 2020 06:01 AM PST  This is what the "new normal" looks like at @Fendi. The collection offered a fresh take on classic tailoring, house codes and accessories. Venturini Fendi revisited the brand's money-spinning accessories for a new era. The Baguette acquired new hardware around the bottom and a fuzzy, chunky chain handle, while the Peekaboo bag is now a travel trunk hybrid. Even the humble FF dustbag metamorphosed into a leather drawstring pouch, its squishiness reminiscent of Daniel Lee's designs for Bottega Veneta. Tap the link in bio for more. Report: Samantha Conti 📸: @kukukuba — #wwdfashion #fendi #milan  |
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