American Apparel Not Going Bankrupt As Rapidly As Before
LatestAmerican Apparel finally had a quarter where the company’s financial results weren’t a total disaster. Same-store sales, a key measure of retail health, didn’t plummet. They didn’t rise, either, but they didn’t fall! This is the first time that’s happened since the month of January, 2009. And the company, which had a measly $5 million in cash on hand earlier this year when it was forced to seek emergency financing to avoid bankruptcy, actually turned a modest $3.7 million profit. Mazel tov. [BusinessWire]
The riots in London have obviously hit the city’s retail sector hard. Last night, a mob looted a Debenhams store in
Riot police are protecting major shopping malls. “With high streets under pressure anyway, at least some of the businesses destroyed will not be able to re-establish themselves,” says the head of the British Retail Consortium. [Vogue UK]
Sarah Jessica Parker continues her tour de covers with the September issue of Marie Claire. [FGR]
Korean model Hye Jung Lee waited five hours in line to see the Alexander McQueen show before it closed. “It was totally worth it. I got goose bumps.” [WWD]
Carine Roitfeld not only styled Barneys New York’s fall ads — according to this grainy preview published on Twitter, she modeled in them. [TFS]
In other news of unexpected appearances in front of the camera, Twitter co-founder David Karp is now a Uniqlo model. [NYObs]
Photographer Willie Christie was married to Grace Coddington from 1974-8. Although Coddington was no longer modeling professionally by then — she was already a fashion editor — she posed for him, and Christie still raves about it, calling her, “photographic heaven. She was so brilliant as a model because she had an appreciation and understanding of art in all its forms; mimicry; gentleness and serenity. She understood everything that the clothes were trying to do. She became the image. She had then and still has, an absolute passion for all that she does.” [Vogue UK]
Here’s Gisele Bündchen on the cover of i-D, shot by Emma Summerton. [FGR]
Vivienne Westwood has a handbag she’d like to sell you. For Kenya. [Telegraph]
DKNY created a diamond-and-sapphire studded perfume bottle (with a representation of the New York City skyline, “that is so iconic to the DKNY brand.” It’s worth over $1 million. This perfume bottle’s going to tour the world, doubtless impressing many with its sparkliness and white-gold accents, before being auctioned off for charity. [Luxuryes]
- Lifetime has announced its Heidi-replacement for Project Runway: All-Stars, and it’s…Angela Lindvall. Joanna Coles of Marie Claire will step into Tim Gunn‘s shoes as the designers’ “mentor,” and Isaac Mizrahi and Georgina Chapman will round out the judging panel. [AceShowbiz]
- Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana have some tips for the ladies on actin’ sexy. For one, no rhinoplasty: “I love a woman with a real nose,” says Gabbana. “A nose is character. Many women want to change their noses, but for me, I’m fascinated.” And two, put a brawr on. “You never see a woman from the south of Italy without a bra,” says Dolce. “Never!” Three, the higher the heel, the closer to God. “For me, it is impossible to see a woman in flat shoes.” Gay men explaining what makes women “sexy” really never gets old. [Telegraph]
- Also a fan of heels? Nicole Miller. If the designer sees too many of her employees wearing flats, she’ll send a critical memo about it. “Well, I’m not a fan of flats,” she explains. [TONY]
- Prabal Gurung thinks a lot of the world’s problems would be solved if there were greater equality between the sexes. “I’ve always loved intelligent girls, no matter how they look,” he tells Rolling Stone. “To be able to hold a conversation with someone is so important. The moment someone acts dumb, I lose interest. I think about the subtext and layers of a person when I design. I design for someone who has interest in the space around her, who is aware of her relationship with the world, someone a little evolved, a little concerned. I think putting more women in power will help solve a lot of problems in the world. It troubles me that the media celebrate women acting like bimbos on TV — it’s not cute, it’s ridiculous. I call it ‘Paris Hilton Syndrome’; there’s a place for that superficiality — but it must neutralized by an equally powerful, intelligent counterforce in culture. I don’t want to perpetuate the wrong ideal.” [RS]
- Betsey Johnson boarded a bus from the Hamptons, sat next to a pocket square designer, and told him, “You’ll never make it as a fashion icon until you’ve failed at least once.” [P6]
- The weak dollar, coupled with rising production and labor costs in China, has led to a very slight resurgence in domestic apparel manufacturing and textile production — but mostly at the low-volume middle and high end of the spectrum. The hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs lost since the U.S. rag trade’s heydey in the ’60s and ’70s are not coming back. Even the decade-long trend is still terrible: New York City lost 64% and 75% of its apparel manufacturing and textile production jobs from 2000 to 2010. [WWD]
- Soon-to-be YA author Tyra Banks admits, “I question when ‘celebrities’ write books. But I don’t consider myself a celebrity. I consider myself a businesswoman. I’m in business school. I’m a producer and a creator and a storyteller, so it’s a little bit different than being an actress and being like, ‘I wrote a book!'” [LATimes]
- Lauren Bush and David Lauren held an engagement party, and Nacho Figueras came. Then her mom talked about grandbabies. [P6]
- Daisy Lowe tells Playboy that her relationship with her biological father, Gavin Rossdale, has recently improved. Lowe had thought that Danny Coffey of Supergrass was her dad, and Rossdale was her godfather, but when at the age of 15 she found out Rossdale was her bio-dad, he abruptly cut ties with her. “After seven years we’ve worked out how to be a family,” the model explains, and she says she enjoys the time she now spends with Rossdale and his wife Gwen Stefani. “I guess you can’t deny my rock-and-roll heritage! Both my parents — or all four of them — have done well in the music scene.” [Playboy]
- Keith Urban didn’t want to call his celebrity perfume “Keith Urban.” “I was imagining a woman saying to a man, ‘You smell good, what is that?’ And I didn’t want the man to have to say ‘I’m wearing Keith Urban.’ I just find that a little awkward,” he says. “I’m wearing ‘Phoenix,’ the Keith Urban celebrity perfume,” on the other hand, is much more natural. [Allure]
- Marianne Nestor, who was secretly married to designer/lothario Oleg Cassini from 1971 until his death, is suing Vanity Fair and writer Maureen Orth over Orth’s piece on Nestor’s probate dispute with Tina Cassini, the designer’s daughter with actress Gene Tierney. Cassini, who famously dressed Jackie O., willed only $1 million of his estimated $52 million fortune to Tina, and another $500,000 to his disabled older daughter. But according to Cassini’s divorce settlement with Tierney, the daughters should be entitled to half of both parents’ estates upon their deaths. Nestor, who refused to be interviewed for Orth’s story, has been engaged in a bitter legal battle with Tina Cassini since Oleg’s death in 2006. Nestor alleges that the fact-checking process somehow slandered her, that the written story libeled her, and that Vanity Fair profited unlawfully off of her image. [WWD]
- Helen Marden, who is married to fellow artist Brice Marden, confronted a Vogue writer at a restaurant and angrily demanded that she leave, according to several witnesses. The writer, Helen Lee Schrifter — who is also married — is Brice Marden’s “muse,” and “sources” say that when Marden told her she needed to find a different restaurant to eat in, the other diners applauded. [P6]
- Gilt Groupe‘s foray into full-price e-tailing — the men’s wear site known as Park & Bond — has launched. [Official Site]
- You should probably be following @CondeElevator on Twitter. Shit’s funny. Example: “Old dudeitor: You goin’ to that thing tonight? Young dudeitor: What thing? Old dudeitor: Ah, guess not.” [@CondeElevator]
- You should also read this essay by Tim Gunn, who is now a self-described celibate gay man, about a love affair he once had with a flight attendant named Daniel:
- In 1992 I was working for Parsons School of Design as associate dean. I was the liaison to our campuses abroad, and I flew to Asia once a month for eight years. I met a flight attendant named Daniel, and I became very fond of him. On one of the flights, there was a baby broker coming back from Korea, bringing back babies who had been adopted in the United States. He didn’t have enough handlers, and I was sitting in an exit row, and I thought, I’ll hold a baby. This was a bonding experience for me and Daniel. When I left the plane, he asked if he could call me. I said yes.
- Warning: we give this story three Kleenex boxes. Sniffle. [TDB]
0 Comments