Hurricane Sandy's Impact on Retail to Total in the Billions

Most major retailers from North Carolina to New England remain closed today due to Hurricane Sandy, which last night made landfall in New Jersey and has wreaked havoc on Lower Manhattan as well as coastal Brooklyn and Staten Island. The economic impact of the storm is not yet known, but retail analysts say the lost sales could top $500 million per day for the whole East Coast, including $30 million per day for New York City alone. NYC’s mass transit system is still shut down and over 700,000 people are currently without power. Macy’s, Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Belk are among the department-store chains to have closed, variously, dozens or hundreds of stores, corporate headquarters, and distribution centers located in Sandy’s path. PPR head François-Henri Pinault was also forced to cancel a trip to NYC. [WWD]

• Robert Pattinson’s face will soon be attempting to sell you Dior perfume. For his services, the actor will be paid a reported $12 million. [E!]
• Ever wondered what Tamara Mellon does on her own time? The New York Times reports:

Recently, she opened her apartment to a salonlike gathering of friends and associates (a group The New York Post later called “some of New York’s most beautiful”) to hear the psychoanalyst Mark Solms discuss “The Brain in Love.” She said she will host more talks with the Neuropsychoanalysis Association, including one on child brain development. “If I wasn’t in fashion, I would have been a psychiatrist,” she said.

• Fascinating. (Yes, this is still the same bullet point – this CMS is not my cup of tea, okay?) Mellon is also publishing a book – part memoir, part business tome, she says – and working on a new, namesake fashion venture set to launch as soon as her non-compete with Jimmy Choo expires next year. [NYTimes]
• The C.E.O. of the British fashion chain Whistles, Jane Shepherdson, says that Kate Middleton wearing a Whistles blouse “didn’t do anything for sales” even though it did increase the company’s Web traffic. Shepherdson continued:

“I suppose the biggest impact has been on a dress she wore at the [Olympic] Opening Ceremony. It’s a style that’s been very successful for us anyway – a printed silk dress. That weekend, we sold out of it. Well, of what we had.

“The thing is that we don’t do huge runs of anything. We might have sold out of it, but there might only have been 150 units. People still ask about the ‘Bella’ body con dress she wore from Whistles. We have a lot of customers who phone up and ask for it. And, to be fair, every time we have done that dress in a different print, it’s sold out, but I couldn’t say it lifted our total sales by 50 percent that week, because it didn’t.”

• Did someone in a position to know just cast doubt on the whole “Kate Middleton is Magic and Makes Every Fashion Thing She Touches Sell Out” story the media loves to run with? [Business of Fashion]
• Schiaparelli is pushing back the date of its relaunch as a fashion house to next “June or July,” according to spokesmodel Farida Khelfa, rather than January, as had been expected. [WWD]
• Blake Nordstrom and Pete Nordstrom topped Footwear News’ annual list of the most powerful figures in the U.S. footwear industry. Coming in second was Nike’s Phil Knight and Mark Parker. Third, and the most highly ranked designer on the list, was Christian Louboutin. [FN]
• In other list-related news, British Tatler has named Net-a-Porter’s Natalie Massenet, Edie Campbell, Cara Delevingne, Jourdan Dunn, and Amber Le Bon to its annual list of the “most eligible” people in the U.K. [Telegraph]
• Speaking of Cara Delevingne, she is on the cover of the new issue of Style.com/Print. [FashionEtc]
• Donna Karan released a book dedicated to her late husband, the artist Stephen Weiss. Entitled Stephen Weiss: Connecting the Dots it mostly comprises black-and-white photos of the couple. [The Cut]
• “I must have been a koala in my past life,” says Miranda Kerr. [Telegraph]
• Rag & Bone opened a store in Los Angeles. [WWD]
• The New York Post ”hears” that Carine Roitfeld may be developing a celebrity perfume. [Alexa]
• Garance Doré will begin selling posters and prints of her fashion illustrations in the next few weeks. Posters will start at $35. [WWD]
• The U.S. Navy has successfully trademarked a pixellated camouflage pattern known as NWU 1. [The Fashion Law]