1. style and fashion

STYLE
January 22 - 28, 2008
The Epoch Times
VANDERLEI ALMEIDA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Dolce & Gabbana, Burberry
kick off Milan Fashion Week
sari. Such a woman may look and
feel awkward in a pair of jeans or in
a miniskirt.
4. Femininity: The sari is considered a feminine garment in India.
This is very significant. A great deal
of the clothing that Western women
wear is not gender specific at all, but
can be classified as ‘unisex’ clothing. A woman who wishes to feel
and to be seen as feminine, may
wish to wear a sari as a reaction to
the unisex trend.
5. Age: Elderly Indian women
are from a generation that was less
affected by Western trends. Therefore, they are more likely to retain
the form of dressing they practiced
when they were young.
6. Interactions with men: Indian
women interact with their husbands
and sons at home. They may want
their men to think of them as traditional wives and mothers. Wearing a
sari could go some distance towards
creating that image and feeling.
7. Exotica: In the West, the sari is
seen as an exotic garment. A pretty woman in a sari may elicit more
admiring glances than she would
receive in Western clothing. I can
imagine many Indian women who
would want to keep things that
way.
The author is a man of Indian origin living in Australia. He does not
pretend to understand the psyche of
the Indian woman. However, he gives
himself permission to speculate.
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ARMOR: Bringing back a look
from the medieval days, the Gianfranco Ferre Autumn-Winter
2009-2010 Menswear collection
at Milan Fashion Week offered
a shirt collar which looks like it
could be made of metal, with an
elegantly tailored jacket.
DAMIEN MEYER/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
the toughened economic climate,
Bailey said now was a time to stick
to strengths.
“I feel very similar to what I felt
I had to represent for the show—
stay in your lane, keep doing what
you’re good at and where you come
from,” he said.
“We come from outerwear, it’s
our heritage, it’s our philosophy,
hence I wanted to stay close to the
familiar.”
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Down
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www.CrosswordWeaver.com
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Cart for hauling heavy
things
Can
Harpy
Motor vehicle
Thin
Express joy
Cliff
Diet
Irk
Islam’s head
Adroit
Lager
Mexican food brand
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Scepter
Prefix ten
Quit
Digit
Repute
Looking at
Afloat (2 wds.)
Appearance
Lawyer (abbr.)
Fountain (abrv.)
Recess
Horse’s walking sound
Unconscious states
Bird’s home
Stored
George Bernard __
Opp. of false
Time period
Boxer Muhammad
Capital of Western Samoa
Bard’s before
Hints
Loop
Miserable
Internal structure
City
X
Drug doer
North American nation
Password
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Capital of Bangladesh
Not urban
Dickens’ “__ of Two Cities”
(2 wds.)
Yoga practicer
American sign language
Foot nuisances
Graceful
Surface
Cabbage salad
Arm extensions
Jog
Self
Reporter’s question
Pro
Serving of corn
Regret
Pulls
Pain reliever brand
ITALIAN TWEED: Gaetano Navarra
showed a simple coat during Milan Fashion Week.
VITTORIO ZUNINO CELOTTO/GETTY IMAGES
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Smarter, like an owl
Project
Air Cushion Vehicle (abbr.)
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Out of style
Jacob’s father
Snack
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Grows acorns
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Bother
European sea eagle
Navy cleric
North northeast
Playing field
Sneak
Name
Upon (2 wds.)
Nile’s home
Dines
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American Football
Conference (abbr.)
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R EW
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models wore silk-like jackets, handintertwined, in white and black,
red, and pink.
Burberry Creative Director
Christopher Bailey had “modern
nostalgia” for the Burberry Prorsum menswear line, using photographer Bill Brandt as a reference.
Silhouettes were oversized and
tapered, with large black and gray
coats over dark skinny trousers.
Shirts were simple white, knotted at the collar, and topped with
trench coats.
Wearing caps, models were accessorized with large Burberry
check scarves, rolled around the
neck. They also wore knitted,
scarf-like belts at the waist. For the
evening, Bailey sent out models in
midnight blue, green, and plumcolored velvet suits.
“I wanted to go back [to] the
DNA and the roots of what Burberry’s heritage is about, which is
why I did so much outerwear, so
many trench coats, I wanted the
Burberry check to be in a very
strong way,” Bailey told Reuters
after the show.
“I feel it’s a good moment to go
back to who you are and what you
stand for.”
Luxury brands have not been
spared by the credit crunch and in
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MILAN
(Reuters)—Italy’s
Dolce & Gabbana and Britain’s
Burberry kicked off Milan’s Fashion Week last Saturday with both
design houses going back to their
roots in their menswear collections
for next winter.
Italy’s most famous designer duo
said they went back to the brand’s
origins for their Autumn/Winter
2009–2010 line, “with a black and
white portrait of Sicily, revisiting
all the hues from baroque to neorealism to aristocracy.”
Their show was one of the first
of 40 catwalk presentations during Milan’s menswear fashion
week, which run until Tuesday and
comes as the economic recession
begins to bite hard in the United
States and elsewhere.
Models, dressed in caps, were
sent out in quilted-silk trousers
with a tuxedo stripe, quilted satin
robes, and military-style jackets.
Ties were slim on mainly white and
black shirts.
Their creations were mostly in
black, blue, brown, and gray, but
fuchsia and light pink loafers added color.
Domenico Dolce and Stefano
Gabbana also showed off “Gold
Edition” jeans, featuring 24-carat
gold metal details. For the evening,
Crossword
VALUING TRADITION: Modern Indian women sometimes choose to
wear the traditional Indian women’s clothing, the sari. PHOTOS.COM
MARCIO MADEIRA/AFP/
GETTY IMAGES
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The interesting thing about Indian women in the West wearing saris is that not all of them do. Many,
especially the younger women, have
adopted Western clothing. However, most of them do not entirely
abandon the sari and do wear one
on formal occasions. At that time,
the garment becomes a marker of
the Indian identity.
In India itself, the sari is becoming less common. Women have
started changing over to the salwar kameez(a tunic with side seams
open below the waist and loose-fitting pants with legs narrow at the
bottom) and to Western clothing
with gusto. The reasons are obvious. Both the salwar and Western
clothes allow for greater freedom
of movement. The last thing a busy
working woman wants is to wear
something cumbersome.
In an attempt to explain the sariwearing trend in the West, I have
come up with seven reasons:
1. Identity: An Indian woman in
the West is surrounded by people
who are not Indian. In such an environment, she is likely to grow more
conscious of her ethnicity. She then
may feel the need to reinforce her
identity by wearing a garment that
affirms it. After all, even when she
wears Western clothes, people respond to her as an Indian. So, she
might as well embrace her identity
fully by wearing something from her
own culture. The sari also serves to
remind her of her roots. It becomes
an item of culture she can wear.
2. Modesty: An Indian woman
may not wish to wear skimpy outfits in the way some Western women do. At the same time, she wishes
to be comfortable and move freely.
The sari could be an answer to this
dilemma.
3. Comfort: A woman who is used
to wearing the sari is accustomed to
thinking of the garment as a part
of her. She may be comfortable in
it, physically and temperamentally.
Her posture, movement and body
language may be attuned to the
AFP/GETTY IMAGES
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Epoch Times Staff
MIXING PATTERNS: Another Giulia
Borges design put the same earrings with a totally different style
of outfit during Rio Fashion Week.
FRONTIER FASHION : A creation
by designer Giulia Borges presented during the Rio Fashion
Week Autumn-Winter 2009 collection, at the Marina da Gloria
on Jan. 12. VANDERLEI ALMEIDA/AFP/GETTY
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By CHERIAN PHILIPOSE
COOL: A creation by designer
Filhas de Gaia at the Rio Fashion Week presented at the
Marina da Gloria.MARCIO MADEIRA/
CIRCLES
AND LINES:
Designer
“Filhas de
Gaia” had
fun with
splashes
of color and
balloons of
fabric on Jan.
13 for the Rio
Fashion Week
Autumn-Winter
2009 collection.
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Why wear a sari
when you can
wear a tanktop
On the stage of this Brazilian
fashion capital, designers presented
their newest lines for buyers from
around the world. The Rio Fashion
Week was held Jan. 12 through 16.
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With even the hottest designers on
discount these days, there is also little
incentive to shop private label. Such
merchandise often does not carry the
same style as products from brands,
which know how to add the sizzle to
their goods.
“Most department store private
label brands don’t offer anything
Epoch Times Staff
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Ho-hum Fashion
too exciting on a fashion level,” said
Needham & Co analyst Christine
Chen, who cited Bloomingdale’s
Aqua line as an exception.
As Poser explained: “You can’t do
a blue and white shirt with a French
cuff at private label. It has to be a volume item.”
The importance of brands is seen
at Wal-Mart Stores Inc, which has
been touting the apparel labels it offers like surf brand OP and girl’s denim line l.e.i.
“Branded product is what’s moving,” said Warren Clamen, chief
financial officer of Iconix Brand
Group Inc, which owns and licenses
consumer brands, including Candie’s, Rampage, Roca Wear and OP.
“It’s the bread and butter.”
Amid fierce competition and a
consumer averse to spending, department stores need to differentiate,
said Raymond James’ Sam Panella,
speaking during a retail panel at the
conference, which invites small- and
mid-cap consumer companies.
“Getting the different brands in
there, finding the next upcoming
brand, being ahead of the curve [is
important] to get that customer in
that door,” said Panella.
A key reason department stores
have embraced the private label business is that it eliminates the middleman. Whereas most branded apparel
sold at full price carries gross margins
of 50 percent, private label equivalents can be 70 percent, said Beder.
“That was always the sexiness of
it,” Beder said.
But when discounting occurs,
as retailers discovered this fall and
holiday season, that boost in margin
evaporates, and the retailer has no recourse in recouping it.
Many vendors have also been
walking away from the private label
business, including men’s apparel
maker Perry Ellis International Inc
and Brown Shoe Co Inc, where private label makes up 15 percent of its
wholesale business, but is declining.
At Oxford Industries, the company sees growth in its Tommy Bahama and Ben Sherman brands, while
it shrinks its private label businesses
for men’s tailored clothing and dress
shirts to make that unit leaner and
more profitable.
“The smart retailers out there are
very focused on having special product, compelling product that brings
the consumer into the store,” said
Tom Chubb, the company’s executive vice president. “You have to give
them a reason to come there.” (Editing by Phil Berlowitz)
Today’s Solution
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DANA POINT, Calif. (Reuters)—
The private label apparel business is
falling out of fashion in the struggling
U.S. retail environment, as branded
clothing is seen as a more compelling
option for consumers—and less risky
to retailers.
For department stores, brand-centric is the order of the day, said apparel insiders this week assembled at the
ICR XChange investor conference in
Dana Point, California.
While shoppers have cut back
sharply on buying nonessential items
like clothing in the recession, they still
show a preference for known brands
when they do make purchases, industry executives and analysts said.
And even though stores have had
to discount those famous names
sharply—making them all the more
attractive to consumers—the retailers with clout can go back to vendors
to recapture lost margins.
“With branded apparel you have
a bailout,” said Sterne Agee analyst
Sam Poser. “You [a retailer] can call [a
vendor] and say, ‘Our margins aren’t
what we agreed, send me a check.’”
The popularity of private label—
in which retailers put their own labels
on what are often lower-priced goods
made for them by vendors—goes up
and down in retail, said Brean Murray Carret analyst Eric Beder.
“At times it’s seen as a savior and
at times it’s seen as a disaster,” Beder
said. “We had a period where people
wanted more private label because
department stores wanted a higher
margin. But now private label has become more of a burden.”
G-III Apparel Group Inc, which
does private label for J.C. Penney Co
among others, has noticed the shift
and is seeking more retailers who
want to carry their own label.
“We need more private label opportunities,” said G-III’s Chief Operating Officer Wayne Miller. “They
[retailers] want to do more branding.”
As shoppers cut back on spending,
each purchase takes on more importance, so consumers are less inclined
to buy something that doesn’t excite
them.
Rio de Janeiro
Fashion Week
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Private label eclipsed by
brands in U.S. retail slump
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