Holiday Party Wardrobe Guide

Post Halloween and especially after Thanksgiving hits there is a constant opportunity for Holiday parties for anyone with even modest social and/or professional circles. It’s a great time of year to add a touch of glam to an otherwise mundane wardrobe routine. As you’ll see in the up-coming Manifesto, however, we at The Fashion Cult don’t support impulse are trend-driven shopping. Instead, pull together these five basic wardrobe staples to make the season stylish and special.

Essentials include a classic cocktail dress, precious earrings, a decorative clutch, bright or shiny shoes, and a special fragrance. See the full holiday party wardrobe guide at TheFashionCult.com.

Fashion’s Collective: Prestige Should be ‘Hard to Attain’

Photo: A view of Fashion’s Night Out 2010 fashion show – the biggest ever public fashion show in NYC history. via WWD.com

“For something to be considered prestigious it must be of high quality, well reputed, and – perhaps most of all – hard to attain. After all, how impressive would a Harvard degree be if half of the U.S. population held one? Elite brands in fashion trade and media rely on this prestige quotient to stay above the fray and command high levels of respect and retail price. Yet as the fashion industry moves toward what many are calling a more ‘democratic’ model, these brands are at a crossroads. They must adapt to increasing demands of accessibility, while maintaining a sense of exclusivity. To do so, new approaches to doing business are evolving daily.”

Read the rest at fashionscollective.com.

About Fashion’s Collection:
Fashion’s Collective is a resource focusing on the unique opportunities and challenges faced by the fashion and luxury industries online. Divided into marketing and style insights, Fashion’s Collective covers both the pragmatic business opportunities, as well as the fascinating stories of the brands behind them.

Game On! Fashion’s New Interactive Trend

Once upon a time gaming was relegated to the Dungeons-and-Dragons sort of crowd. Yet as our lives evolve to include the more and more time spent with computers and mobile devices, games and other interactive applications are becoming the norm for everyone. The fashion world is no exception to this trend, as brands and media outlets are devising fresh ways to interact with new millennium fashion fans…

  • Dress-Up Games & Stylist Sites
  • Facebook Games
  • iPhone Apps
  • Augmented Reality

Brand awareness is certainly a big motivator for those that advertise online, but what these companies ultimately want is for us (readers, shoppers, and whatnot) to take action. Creating games and other interactive features does help to prompt a web surfer to act, but whether that action leads directly to sales remains to be seen.

Read the full article at the FashionStake Blog.

Tom Ford Criticizes the ‘Immediacy’ of Fashion 2.0

Tom Ford Womenswear Spring 2011 Sketches

Above: Sketches from Tom Ford Womenswear Spring/Summer 2011. Photos from the recent New York fashion week presentation are being witheld until January of next year. The designer explains:

“The way the system works now, you see the clothes, within an hour or so they’re online, the world sees them. They don’t get to a store for six months. The next week, young celebrity girls are wearing them on red carpets. They’re in every magazine. The customer is bored with those clothes by the time they get to the store. They’re overexposed, you’re tired of them, they’ve lost their freshness… In addition, all of the fast-fashion companies that do a great job, by the way, knock everything off. So it’s everywhere all over the streets in three months and by the time you get it to the store, what’s the point?”

Read more at the FashionStake Blog

Suno is ‘The new Dries’

According to Matches womenswear buyer Georgina Gainza, fledging NYC brand Suno is the new Dries Van Noten. Gainza tweeted the above in response to her colleauge, Fashion Director Bridget Cosgrove’s tweet that the London retailer had just bought pieces from Suno’s Spring 2011 collection. The placement at Matches will mark the label’s first availability outside of the U.S. See looks from the collection below.

via @GeorginaGainza & wwd.com

Wardrobe Stylist Eighty Jane Featured on Polyvore Blog

Read the full interview at the Polyvore Blog.

Polyvore is the leading community site for online style where users are empowered to discover their style and set trends around the world. With over 6 million unique visitors and 140 million page views a month, Polyvore’s global community has created over 20 million fashion sets that are shared across the site. The company collaborates with prominent brands such as Calvin Klein, Diane Von Furstenberg, Lancôme, Net-a-Porter, Gap and Coach to drive product engagement; and its user-generated fashion campaigns have been judged by Lady Gaga and Katy Perry.

Find out more about the company at the Polyvore Crunchbase listing.

Blogs Move Fashion from Dictatorship to Democracy

***The following has been republished from FashionStake Blog***

This year Milan Fashion Week was shook with the news that US Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour would only be attending three of the five days of shows. Labels were in a panic, trying to rearrange their schedules to make sure the real life “devil” in Prada would be able to attend their presentations. Why would an entire city of fashion elite get their collective panties in a bunch for one tiny woman?

For decades, fashion magazines were the ultimate bridge between the fashion world and the all-important consumer. This system created centralized powers like Anna Wintour who can make or break a brand with one swipe of their editor’s pen. But with steady cultural and technological changes, the tide is shifting away from the oligarchy of print and other “old” media and toward the democracy of online media like blogs.

Blogs are like the lighter, faster cousin of the magazine. Consumers no longer have to wait six months for fashion rags to publish a sliver of what they deem to be worthy from a new season of collections. Instead, fashion fans can turn to the agile blogosphere and see new collections the same day the mighty EICs see them. More importantly, blogs invite readers to participate in the dialogue of fashion, making the comment section as much a part of an article as the contents of the post. While a magazine dictates, blogs allow readers to be a part of the determination of what’s “in” fashion. In this way blogs are helping democratize the fashion industry.

Smart brands have picked up on this new power and have given bloggers access to the holy grail of fashion influence, previously exclusive to the most important magazine editors and celebrities: The Front Row Seat. Placing bloggers in these highly coveted spots has created a small backlash from a few members of the old guard, as when Grazia magazine’s style director Paula Reed lashed out at 13-year-old blogger Tavi Gevinson who was seated in front of her at a Dior couture show. The blogger wore an over-sized bow in her hair, which became the object of Reed’s public ire. Still, the entire industry seems to recognize the power of harnessing public opinion using the online arena and, accordingly, blogs are here to stay.
***

Pictured above is blogger Susie Bubble, who is a virtual celebrity in the fashion blog circuit. See her very popular personal style blog at www.stylebubble.co.uk

Wardrobe Tips: Transitioning from Summer to Fall

We may not like to admit it to ourselves, but it can’t be denied: summer is coming to a close. Pretty soon bare arms and flip flops from sun up to sun down just aren’t going to cut it. As the sunny season fades and fall comes rushing in, we all start looking for ways to cover up but still be cute. But if you’re like most people, you don’t get your new season wardrobe in one fell swoop. Rather, you gradually build new pieces into your existing selections. So before you pack away all ALL your summer gear, have a look at the following tips to help stretch your summer wardrobe into the fall season.

Read the rest at the Shopparel Blog

TFC Fashion Gig Tipsheet: August 2010

Fashion Jobs

“Living in Alabama and telling someone you want to pursue a career in fashion is like telling your parents that you’re planning your financial future around winning the Florida lottery. They just look at each other and sigh”.

The above cute quip from DailyFashionJobs.com contributor Mary Caitlin Ward. Read the rest of her charming article about breaking into the fashion biz despite small town roots here. *Caveat: Ward hasn’t actually “broken” into the industry just yet (she’s a student), but she’s a great writer and has sound advice beyond her years.

See this month’s job listings at TheFashionCult.com

Celebrity Handbag Personalities

In some ways, celebrities have the world at their fingertips. With heaps of money and access to just about anything, they get their pick of the finest luxury to be found anywhere. So when a celeb makes a choice it’s reflective of their tastes, personalities and even their values. Have a look at what these handbags might say about their owners.

Find out what Halle’s bag choices say about her + more celeb handbag personalities at the Coco Designer Bags Blog.