Author: VOG

“Though it’s also just a space, too,” Chait adds. “As we progress, it’s space that we can actually ‘add to’ or ‘remove from’, so we wanted to keep things slightly modular.”Clothes are meant to be tried onIt goes without saying that fashion is a tactile business and for a brand rooted in knitwear like The Elder Statesman, it’s imperative that customers can touch and feel the fabrics; that they can understand the quality they’re buying into at such a high price point (a pair of socks starts at $120).Similarly, when a brand’s language is based upon unconventional silhouettes and versatility,…

Just when it seemed pearls may have reached their peak, this year proved otherwise — they were everywhere.Every look in Giorgio Armani’s latest Autumn/Winter 2024/2025 collection had pearl details and there were jackets and dresses fully draped in pearls. Pharrell Williams, the zeitgeist-defining musician and Louis Vuitton’s Men’s creative director, incorporated pearls into the second batch of his Titan capsule collection for Tiffany & Co. Even brands known for their diamond expertise, such as Messika and Repossi, ventured into pearl designs this year, notably with Messika’s high jewellery collection Midnight Sun and Repossi’s Pearl Variation, a new take on the…

What does 30 years in the luxury fashion industry teach you? For Carmen Busquets, it’s that you can’t take anything with you when you go.The Venezuelan-born entrepreneur, who was both co-founder and founding investor of Net-a-Porter in 2000 and has invested in major companies, including Farfetch, Cult Beauty, Lyst and others since, is embarking on a purge of sorts. She’s accumulated fashion pieces from emerging designers, sustainable brands and artisans over the years. Her next project will be to sell them off next year. All proceeds will go to charity — a focus of late for Busquets is philanthropic work,…

The ‘It-girl’ is more than a person; she is an aesthetic, a cultural moment, a business distilled into human form. She embodies the zeitgeist of her era, serving as a lens through which her generation perceives and defines itself while always standing apart from it. For decades, brands have sought to align themselves with these figures, recognising their unparalleled ability to captivate and influence.But in 2024, the It-girl has evolved. No longer confined to heiresses, socialites or Hollywood-adjacent stars, today’s It-girls can emerge from anywhere — bedrooms, van-life road trips, or the front-facing camera of a TikTok post. This democratisation…

Christopher Esber is launching his first-ever retail store in the form of a Sydney pop-up.The space opened on 4 December and will last through to March 2025. It sits within The Strand Arcade in Sydney’s central business district, a heritage-listed arcade built during the Victorian era that features ornate galleries, tiled floors and timber-framed shop fronts.Esber’s store pays homage to the historical setting with 20th-century French antiques contrasted by plush carpets, polished chrome and sateen steel fixtures (referencing the designer’s signature hardware detailing). The store launches with the brand’s resort 2025 collection, including ready-to-wear, swim, shoes, handbags and sunglasses.The Christopher…

Searches for brown suede are still on the up. In October, searches for “brown suede” increased 250 per cent, according to Madé Lapuerta, who runs Data But Make It Fashion on Instagram, an account analysing fashion trends via her purpose-built AI software.It was a win for brands. After releasing brown suede handbags as part of its Autumn/Winter 2024 collection (released in the latter half of the year; a similar time to when brown was picking up the pace, Lapuerta says), Prada grew 35 per cent in popularity from August to October, she calculated. Suede is where Hsu expects brands to…

She explains that they’ve been working closer with their in-house retail and wholesale teams to “understand what product was bought, how many units and where”, in order to place the items in front of the right audiences. “We’ve been very regional this year,” Executive Friend tells me, “so instead of trying to get into a ‘Best 25 Wallets for Men’ guide, we’re focusing on pitching items for more niche guides.”This shift in strategy, she argues, has a lot to do with the rise of Substackers whose audiences subscribe to their specific tastes as opposed to more general round-ups. “We’ve noticed…

Whether lab-grown leather will be seen as offputtingly ‘unnatural’ in the current cultural climate remains to be seen, but Balti expects the Asian market to be particularly receptive to the innovation of lab-grown leather, more so than the West. Unlike lab-grown diamonds, Balti says, lab-grown leather will likely be more expensive per square metre (because conventional leather is already mass-produced and consumption is already high). This may limit its scalability regardless of consumer perception.Ioanna Topouzoglou, founder of Peta-approved vegan handbag brand Mashu, who is vegan herself, says she would be willing to explore lab-grown leather alternatives from an ethical point…

The ski slopes are slowly opening up, on mountains from Aspen to Zermatt. Halfdays is ready to gear women up for the pistes with its first permanent store in Denver, Colorado — a short drive from many of the country’s top slopes.Founded in 2020 by former Olympic skier Kiley McKinnon, Ariana Ferwerda and Karelle Golda, Halfdays launched with ski gear. It was a response to a problem McKinnon and Ferwerda identified: a lack of good women’s options for skiing.

Sullivan — of Miss Claire Sullivan — also dressed Rae for this year’s MTV VMAs, after stylist Allen reached out via Instagram DM, to much chatter online. Sullivan recalls an editor friend running up to her at a fellow designer’s presentation after the look went live to ask if she had designed Rae’s ceremony fit. “I sort of knew in that moment that it was going to blow up way more than I had anticipated,” she says. The look generated $927,000 in media impact value (or MIV, which calculates the monetary value of posts, article mentions and social media interactions) in…