Jezebel: glenn murphy

Designers Find Oscar's Grouching About The First Lady's Fashion Unseemly

TatianaTheAnonymousModel — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 11:30:00 EDT

"It's not up to him to give her lessons; Michelle Obama is of her time; Oscar de la Renta is no longer," scoffed designer Azzedine Alaïa. Ooh, breaking: Oscar is on the View now. [WWD]

Chloe Sevigny might not do her Opening Ceremony line every season, because she's busy being on the TV. Still with the I-actually-design-this-crap pretense! [The Cut]
As promised, The Daily Beast now features advertising! Read all about HOW BOTTEGA VENETA IS KEEPING LUXURY RELEVANT. (Presented by Bottega Veneta.) [Daily Beast]
Isaac Mizrahi just made an announcement on The Today Show: Women, we need to be spending all our money on our hair! It's what's important in life. [Anna's Twitter]
Ads for Matthew Williamson's collection for H&M, which goes on sale May 14, have leaked. Daria Werbowy prances, mantis-like, on a beautiful beach wearing acid bright paisleys. And a bikini I really want. They gave Werbowy the same rope of loosely braided fake hair that the current H&M collection models sport in their campaign, and which I assume is not even supposed to look real. [Nitro:Licious]
Depending on the outcome of a lawsuit, Forever 21 may find itself no longer able to copy designers' offerings willy-nilly. Trovata, whose shirts the fast fashion chain shamelessly ripped off several seasons ago, has been suing the company since, and the case is finally set to go to trial. Which means a jury would decide if the "inspiration" (which extended to the placement and choice of buttons and other unique design features) was illegal. [WWD]
The chief executives of faltering fashion companies continue to get raises! After Kay Krill at Ann Taylor and Glenn Murphy at the Gap each got hefty pay hikes, Jones Apparel Group has raised the compensation of its CEO, Wesley Card, by 38%, to $5.5 million, for 2008. That was the same year Jones Apparel Group lost $765 million. The company owns brands like Jones New York, Anne Klein, and Nine West, and its sales fell 6% last year. Its share price has dropped by over 60%. [Crain's]
Experts estimate global sales of luxury goods will shrink by 10% in the coming year. [WSJ]
Marc Jacobs opened a store for his slightly lower-priced Marc by Marc Jacobs line in London. [Independent]
While women's apparel sales have been falling sharply, menswear is up 1%. Tom Ford says his stonkingly expensive eponymous men's line is doing just fine (although we can't imagine he's sold many $30,000 cufflinks lately). Savile Row tailors Anderson & Sheppard — where Alexander McQueen once trained — say they've had 20 new clients in the past month, which is a significant increase for a small business. [FT]
Splitting the difference this spring: pant suits, especially when the jackets are in that slouchy 80s boyfriend style. The Times does an apt enough job tracing the trend to its point of origin. [NY Times]
Frida Giannini, the woman who's transformed Gucci's look (and who did groundwork for that blazer trend), says she's keen to start a Gucci cosmetics line. [Times of London]
Oh, my. This latest ad for edgy lingerie company Agent Provocateur sure is very racy. I hope all the attention they get for it won't hurt their brand. [Independent]

The Gap Reports Worst Sales In The History Of Ever

Moe — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 12:30:00 EDT

The Gap will just not cease to exist, releasing new monthly sales figures even as no one acknowledges it anymore. How do you get an 18% decrease from March 2007 when the last known Gap shopper bought her last Macau-made $4.90 tank top in 2003? The Gap will manage to report disappointing sales long after liquidation.
Here, Gap CEO Glenn Murphy, in case you missed it the first time, our memo from the clothes-wearing masses.
Alexander McQueen hopes Paris Hilton sees his store and just keeps on walking because fashion is "not about celebrity" which is a total lie, and also, a blatant "neg." [Sassybella]
Uniqlo has worked tirelessly to brand its basic clothes as somehow "edgy," retaining the photography services of Terry Richardson etc. etc., but who would have guessed they would have picked such an unusual celebrity spokesmodel? [Fabsugar]

On the heels of yesterday's gloomy sales forecast, Estee Lauder hosted a decadent party to honor its celebrity spokesmodel of thirteen years. [WWD]
Londoners used to fly to Hong Kong to get deals on clothes but now they're coming here. [Guardian]
Scary Spice is putting out some sort of perfume. What impeccable timing! [Ad Age]
Few people know this, but the signature Adidas "stripes" actually originated with a sort of utilitarian function, which was once a source of jealousy to Nike founder Phil Knight, but ha ha ha, probably not anymore. [IHT

Dear New CEO Of The Gap: A Few Tips From People Who Wear Clothes

Moe — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 13:30:17 EDT

Dear new Gap CEO Glenn Murphy,
Happy first day on the job! Soooo, your company's a piece of shit, and the industry seems reeeeallly confident in your ability to turn things around. NOT! To quote the New York Post's "insider" (we're sure she didn't mean to misspell your name!) you don't know an "armhole from a sock." "It's not like they're picking a marquee guy out of the apparel world," one guy told the Wall Street Journal, although as another put it, there's an "acute dearth of talent" in the apparel retailing world. Um, because they all work at H&M, Zara, Urban Outfitters and Forever 21? Anyway, we realize you've never worked in apparel before, not that you could really tell that the Gap was run by anyone who had ever worked in apparel before before, but you can use all the help you can get. Which is just what we're here for! A few tips we culled together, after conducting a highly scientific focus group of twentysomething ladies who stopped shopping at the Gap sometime back in the "pleather" era.

Stop paying celebrities whose careers so distinctly encapsulate your precise brand of we-can't-even-believe-we're -still-doing-this desperation. (Hint: LIZ PHAIR.) You have this knack for attaching to someone at the precise point at which their shark-jumping abilities have caused us (like Peter the Apostle!) to deny we ever even cared about them and plastering our sightlines with their dumb overly-trained bodies in your godawful khakis, generally alongside celebrities whose blandness-that-inexplicably-passes-for-"edginess" (Joss Stone) makes us question our taste EVEN MORE. On second thought, why not stop paying celebrities in the first place and pass the savings onto us! Or, you know, your child laborers.
Pretend like some of your customers are not shapeless lesbians, and tailor your clothes according to the dimensions of their bodies. This may require actually designing some of your clothes once in awhile and not leaving all the work to Asians who don't really get to see a lot of fat people in person because of agriculture subsidies or something. Because fat people aren't as shapeless as your clothes would have us all believe, and normal-sized people just try on your clothes and, in the words of Intern Cheryl, "look like a fat whore coming home from a one-night stand with an I-banker."
Stop kidding yourself. When you plaster billboards all over town acting as though you "dictate" trends (boyfriend khakis) or price a pair of 1969 jeans at $88, we just sort of shake our heads in bafflement.
Bring back "Om." It was, like, the poor man's CK One and in high school it got us off the Body Shop vanilla oil we used to love. Also: Grass.
Stay open late. The American Apparel on our block is open until, like, last call, but their refusal to use sweatshop labor means a pair of "emergency" boy shorts costs as much as a glass of good Pinot Noir, whereas we know you could supply them for the price of a Pabst.
More flats, please. Everyone we know has a pair of awesome cheap flats they are totally proud to say they wouldn't have found if they didn't still occasionally go into the Gap. And occasionally, we still do. Very occasionally.