The five US women’s soccer stars who recently sued the US Soccer Federation over pay discrimination won a show of support yesterday (May 26) from the US Senate. In a unanimous vote, the body approved a resolution urging the sport’s governing body in the US to eliminate the wage gap between female and male players.
It started with a series of raids. In March 2015, investigators from the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority swept through the offices of some of London’s top modeling agencies, seizing hard drives and documents. The investigation, led by Stephen Blake, senior director of the CMA’s Cartels and Criminal Group, was searching for evidence that the agencies were acting in collusion.
The music blares around him as he crosses the stage. “It’s just not gonna work,” one student says. Approaching the table, Mike Senatore stops and starts, swinging the water bottle in practice. Suddenly he pauses. As the music falls away, in a motion requiring finesse and perfect concentration, he flips the bottle, which spins through the air twice, and lands perfectly upright. The crowd erupts, and Senatore walks off in triumph.
Facebook has found itself in a bit of a situation. The company has apologized after banning an ad from a Melbourne-based feminist talkshow, Cherchez la Femme, claiming it violated a policy blocking ads that make people feel badly about their bodies. The ad features Tess Holliday, a well-known model who is a size 22, promoting an upcoming show about body positivity and “fat acceptance.”
Nike’s innovative and experimental high-end division, NikeLab, has a big new collaboration coming out, and it’s a perfect storm of fashion, activewear, and Instagram.
Alibaba has seriously ticked off a number of high-end fashion brands. It caused a big rift in a major anti-counterfeiting group, the International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition (IACC), when the group in April welcomed in the Chinese e-commerce giant.
Business has been brutal for Gap Inc. The retailer’s sales were supposed to bounce back this spring. It’s just not happening. To recharge growth, the company now apparently is considering a new tactic: selling through third parties, including Amazon.
For decades, retailers have treated women who wear plus sizes as an entirely different species of shopper. There was even a special set of rules for selling to them: Avoid bright colors. Never do horizontal stripes.
They star some of Hollywood’s most famous faces and enlist big-name directors like Martin Scorsese and Baz Luhrmann. They can cost millions to produce. And they’re created by brands that are viewed as taste makers across the globe. Yet perfume ads are famously, bafflingly terrible. Have you ever wondered why?
A message of female empowerment is at the core of Ivy Park, Beyoncé’s new clothing line. “It’s really the essence: to celebrate every woman and the body she’s in while always striving to be better,” the singer said in her recent cover story for Elle magazine.
Modest fashion is about more than covering up. It’s still fashion, full of variety, color, and embellishment intended to make clothing look beautiful, and there’s a huge audience for it. The global Muslim clothing market reached about $230 billion in 2014, or 11% of global spending on apparel according to a report produced by Reuters (pdf). If it were a single country, it would be the third largest fashion market in the world, behind the US and China, the report says.
Nike has been on an incredible streak in the past few years. The sneaker giant continues to smash its own sales records as it turns out great performance products and rides a wave of people adopting gym wear as everyday fashion. The Nike image, as synonymous with cool as ever, is benefiting.
Amazon peddles just about everything, but one industry that’s resisted selling through the site is designer fashion. The products would lose their exclusivity and prestige if hawked alongside electronics and books on the the cluttered, sprawling marketplace.
Here’s a familiar experience for Facebook users: You do a little shopping online, maybe check out some sneakers you want to buy. Perhaps you add them to your cart, but then leave them there for another time. And later, when you check your Facebook feed, there’s an ad for those same sneakers.
Abercrombie & Fitch has been going through some major remodeling. After years of flagging sales, in 2014 it ousted CEO Mike Jeffries, the man who built the brand into a retail force known for collegiate prep. Last year, the clothing company hired a new designer and turned away from its old marketing track, trading glamour shots of abs and oversexed summer-camp fantasies for a more sophisticated, fully clothed look.
In April, the International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition (IACC) accepted Alibaba as a member. It’s not a move everyone would expect of the organization, which says it is the longest-standing of its kind. Alibaba, China’s largest e-commerce platform, is notorious for sales of fakes, including knock offs of products by IACC members, such as Apple, Burberry, and Adidas. Until recently, Gucci and Michael Kors were on that list, too.
Fast fashion is notorious for copying. Zara so thoroughly imitates French label Céline at times that you could mistake a Zara lookbook for a Céline shoot. ”Zeline” is what some call it.
The gorgeous, tree-lined thoroughfare of El Paseo del Prado in Havana became a runway last night (May 3). It was the setting of Chanel’s new cruise collection, which mixed the house’s signature styles with riffs on early 1950s suiting, mid-century glamour, and the vintage cars that have filled Havana’s streets since time stopped with the 1959 revolution.
American clothing retailers including Gap, J.Crew, Abercrombie & Fitch, and a slew of department stores are suffering. Mall traffic is down. Shoppers are spending less on clothes and looking for discounts when they do. Amazon and fast fashion are stealing their customers.
IBM Watson isn’t a name you’d typically associate with the Met Gala. Officially, fashion’s biggest party is a fund-raising event for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s fashion department, but ever since Anna Wintour, Vogue’s high-powered editor, took over as chairwoman in 1999, it has turned into the industry’s equivalent of the Oscar’s red carpet, bringing together an invite-only list of dressed-up celebrities and bigwigs.
Gucci’s battle against Chinese knockoffs has reached a new plane of existence. The Italian luxury label is warning Hong Kong shopkeepers to stop selling paper lookalikes of its bags, which people burn at funerals and include in the annual celebration of Qingming Jie to accompany their loved ones in the afterlife.
Here we are again, fewer than 100 days away from another Olympic games, which means it’s about the time countries begin revealing their teams’ ceremonial uniforms. Australia, South Korea, the US, and a few others have already done so. If those unveilings, and decades of history, are any indication, we’re in for another round of dull, unmemorable outfits that have no correlation whatsoever with the dynamism of the world’s greatest athletes.
They’re everywhere: Adidas Stan Smiths and Superstars in all their simple, stripped-down glory. Walk around a city such as New York, or check out street-style photos from around the globe, and you’re bound to see them.
It’s been years since Coach looked this good. On an earnings call with analysts this morning (April 26), CEO Victor Luis was practically giddy as he declared that third-quarter sales, profit, and earnings had all returned to growth for the first time in years. ”I could not be more excited with the momentum in our business,” he said.
