Why is Paris the new Paris?

They have been saying "Paris is the new Paris" in the fashion industry. Paris had enjoyed the status as THE fashion capital of the world for a long time, then the power had been diverged to the passionate Milan, edgy London, and city chic New York. Designing talents had been flourishing in all these fashion capitals in the recent era, yet the roulette seemed to have rotated back to Paris recently. After the F/W 2007 shows, it is almost a unanimous consensus that the calibre of the shows in Paris was a level above its Milan, London, and New York counterparts. While London and New York were never threatening contender to the throne of the world's top fashion capital, I would like to explore why Paris' closest rival, Milan, had been losing ground in the recent days. Yesterday, when I was waiting to attend some department store Trunk Show, I flipped through the Economist magazine. There was an article about the Italian luxury goods market, and I think that article sheds lights on my recent intrigue with the threats of withering in the Italian fashion houses. It is obvious that there are new designing talents budding everywhere in the world, and Italy is no exception, breeding wonderful talents like Stefano Pilati. Nonetheless, we see that the Paris fashion houses have given much more opportunities to the new designers and are more willing to take the risk to let these designers take on more important roles in the prestigious names. We see new designing stars like Alber Elbaz, Nicolas Ghesquiere, and Marc Jacobs respectively leading the designing job in the traditional houses of Lanvin, Balenciaga, and Louis Vuitton, which all are characterized by substantial historical heritage. This is by no mean a coincidence.


In France, many of the prestigious brands have tapped into the deep capital market or have been bought out by luxury conglomerates like the LVMH. Contrarily, many of the largest and arguably the most successful Italian brands, such as Armani, Prada, and Ferragamo are still held privately as family business. Giorgio Armani believes that "capital markets do not understand fashion", and many Italian designers who share his view perceive that once the brand is sold or is brought to an IPO, designing control might be lost in favour of commercial returns. Although that is a probable disadvantage, leveraging into the capitals provided by public market could also open the brand to new possibilities. With richer capitals, the brand would be enabled to take more risk, which put the brand in better position to allow the introduction of young designers as creative directors, vigorous expansion in the emerging markets, and ability to experiment with new concepts. There could be a more frequent introduction of new design talents to bring new perspective and freshen the brand image.


Looking at the overwhelmingly commercial designs in the New York shows, it could be argue that too much capitalism could lead to conformity and deem detrimental to fashion innovation. However, as we witness from the Paris fashion scene, capital infusion could also encourage new talents to shine. One part of that difference could attributable to the presence of well established brands with long history. These traditional houses serve to nourish new talents in the industry, and the requirement in terms of quality of design and material would inevitably be higher to live up to these brands' long established reputation. By the time these young designers are ready to build their own brand, they have their own talents, as well as the craftmanship and standards that they have acquired from the traditional houses, to their disposal to develop their labels. The luxury of learning from the archive of inspiration and craftmanship in hisotry-rich houses is less accessible to the American designers by comparison, and many of the young desginers are showing under their own labels very early in their career. Constraint by capital, or return requirement from their sponsors, these young desginers are much more subjected to profitability and their designs are inevitably more commercial. The deprivation from taking their innovative perspective to the fullest early in the young designers' careers could arguably take away the potential lustre in the American fashion scene.


In conclusion, since Milan shares the blessing of well established fashion houses and history of design and craftmanship, it could be a big step forward if the Italian fashion giants could also take advantage of the capital markets. I would love to see the Milan fashion scene to flourish and prosper again in the near future.

Luxury Luggage

Designer luggage is something that I never even considered using, for the following reasons:

1. It is never a good thing to attract too much attention at airport/ custom. Particularly if you are travelling in places where pick pockets are common, or places that aren't safe in general; or if you live in country where they levy heavy taxes on purchases you bring home from your trip. Using designer luggage will only make you look like a good target to rob/ to tax. (essentially I consider taxation and robbery not significantly different from one another) Thanks to terrorism, the customs are now much stricter when it comes to examining luggages, especially in the States. I would feel pretty terrible if they cut my LV or Chanel luggage apart to examine inside :S

2. The so called "designer" luggages usually involve very little "design" by the designer. They usually just look like normal luggage plastered with monograms. Monograms are cheesy enough on handbags, the much larger surface area on monogrammed luggage only esculate the cheesiness and are not elegant at all.

3. Indeed, some of the luxury luggage do have better quality. Louis Vuitton started business as luggage artisan, it had been said hat the luggage that they produced survived the destruction of Titanic and was subsequently recovered. (Although now they are better known as an artisan of hideous looking hand bag then quality luggage) The quality of the leather on Chanel luggage is just irresistible. That being said, what is the point of using quality leather for luggage anyways? So that the luggage transportation workers can keep their skin nice and supple since they are handling luggage with soft buttery leather? Luggages are inevitably thrown around in traffic, as long as they provide enough protection so your belongings are safe, it is fine. Brands like samsonite and victoroix can do the job just fine, and I won't wince when they throw around my samsonite as opposed to a Chanel.

So my conclusion is, rather than paying $2000 for a luggage, I'd rather buy a high quality well designed bag with that money. That being said, I do agree some luggage are pretty well designed and looks nice. Like the luggage line that was born under Alexander McQueen's collaboration with Samsonite above, is innovative, edgy, and you can tell there's designing talent behind it! The skeleton shaped luggage is controversial, some find it a little freaky. Although I do find it a bit freaky, I still think the design is brilliant! I really like the shape of it. Seems like more and more designers are entering the luggage production market, but most of them did not show the kind of committment to design. Like the MICHAEL by Michael Kors below, is sold at 500+ at www.nordstorm.com and there is no way I'm purchasing that designless ugly monogrammed chunk.