Saturday 31 August 2013

BBC Three - Secrets of the Superbrands (Food)

Fashion week's celebrity circus

When Fashion Week Was Made of Simpler Cloth

The drumbeat for Fashion Week started a month ago in my in-box, and now it’s up to oblivion level, white noise in the black season.
I can’t get ready for Fashion Week, though. (And part of me wants to return the F and the W to lower-case status, so I don’t feel as if I am actually attending a trade show.) Maybe it’s the 45 shows on my plate that give me pause. Besides, the things I love about the four-city tour are almost all personal, like getting up at 5 every morning to “make the doughnuts” (an expression I first heard from Michael Kors to describe, in my case, a review for the newspaper) or a slow walk at night back to my hotel (Paris, let’s say) to digest the day, especially a day of decent shows and gossip.
At the start of my fashion-writing career, when in Paris, I used to send photos from The Associated Press, then near the top of the Rue du Faubourg Saint-HonorĂ©, and afterward walk down the street. It was generally midnight. Sometimes you would see models going into Thierry Mugler’s place or hanging out in the little cafe nearby. But the street was pretty empty. I was never scared, as I might be a little today. I used the time to give myself a little pep talk, along the lines of “there are good days and bad days,” and, undoubtedly, to reconnect with normal things, which in Paris were always around you.
Now, almost everyone uses a car and driver, a convenience that gradually became a necessity. As for pictures, it takes about 30 minutes to move a day’s worth of images. I like the speed of things nowadays — it has a merciless appeal — but when you are a little more footloose you can’t help but believe that decisions are more in your own hands. I think many people crave that power.
Take, for example, this business of commanding guests at shows to tuck in their legs and handbags, so the photographers can get a tidy shot of the clothes. It’s pretty embarrassing, like sitting in study hall. One of the great things about pictures of shows in the ’60s, or ’90s is that the scene is messy. The models seem at the center of a respectable orgy. Some of this realistic quality still exists. But the goal today is branding, and that expectation, that everyone will be doing it during FW, can really put the starch in your collar.

By CATHY HORYN (the times, August 23, 2013, 4:18 pm)
http://runway.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/23/when-fashion-week-was-made-of-simpler-cloth/?_r=0


Designer calls for a halt to fashion week's celebrity circus

Oscar de la Renta halves his guest list for show in New York as critics say too many poseurs crowd the runways

Some of America's most prominent fashionistas are calling time on the overcrowding, demand for endless "newness" and general hoopla that has become an obsession in the industry.
Before this week's opening round of New York spring-summer 2014 presentations, Oscar de la Renta, one of the most respected figures in American fashion, has announced that he will halve the number of people at his show. De la Renta, a former couturier for Jacqueline Kennedy, said decision-makers in the business should not have to fight their way through "30,000 people, and 10,000 who are trying to take pictures of all of those people, who are totally unrelated to the clothes".
His call for a new, sober approach to replace the traditional, celebrity-infused fashion week frenzy has struck a chord. In the New York Times, leading fashion journalist Suzy Menkes echoed his call, rueing the pace of high fashion, which she described as "a whirligig that seems to be spinning out of control", with designers being asked to produce as many as 10 collections each year.
In an earlier article, Menkes told of how she could hardly get into shows "because of all the photographers snapping at the poseurs". She wrote: "There is a genuine difference between the stylish and the showoffs – and that is the dilemma. If fashion is for everyone, is it fashion?"
In the same newspaper, critic Cathy Horyn reminisced about the messiness of fashion in an earlier era, when the models seemed to be at the centre "of a respectable orgy". With the fashion conglomerates focused on global branding, guests are commanded to tuck in their legs and handbags so that photographers can get tidy shots of the clothes. "It's pretty embarrassing, like sitting in study hall," Horyn wrote.
The notoriously fickle industry is being transformed by social media technology. As the control and judgment of a select few is challenged, designs and ideas that would once take months to reach the public are now global – and illicitly replicated – in a matter of seconds. Fashion is changing, and with it the fashion show, said industry consultant Robert Burke.
De la Renta, who this year engaged John Galliano to design some of his collection, represents a counter-reaction. "If a show is highly chaotic and a real circus, the people that do matter aren't going to be put into the best of moods," he pointed out. "Do you want to jeopardise the experience of the 100 people that matter with the 500 people that don't?"
Burke described a "circus" of bloggers and people holding out phones and posting on Instagram and Facebook. He said that the number of people taking photographs is dramatically greater than even five years ago. "Sometimes you can hardly see the show because people are jumping up to photograph each other," said Burke. "Designers want to bring the focus back to the clothing. Bloggers and celebrities are important, but there needs to be a balance."
Some designers, such as Tom Ford, already show their clothes to a select few and forbid photography. But with fashion's global audience accustomed to instant pictures and streaming, Ford's approach may not be the answer either. Business is business and, without orders, the fashion show would cease to exist.
British fashion creative Simon Doonan, author of The Asylum, a fashion memoir published this week, said that publicity is all fine and dandy, "but at the end of the day designers need orders. A discerning buyer makes their selection objectively. Their choices are not based on which designer gets the most celebs in the front row."
  • The Observer,

Friday 30 August 2013

What Most Schools Don't Teach These Billionaires - Short Documentory


This list of college dropout billionaires is based (where not otherwise noted) on an annual ranking of the world's wealthiest people compiled and published by Forbes magazine on March 11, 2009.[1] The list does not include heads of state whose wealth is tied to their position (see List of heads of state and government by net worth). College dropout refers to a person who has dropped out from a college or university before completing his/her degree. Some of the world's most famous and richest billionaires (including the second richest man in the world, Bill Gates) are college dropouts. The combined net worth of these dropouts is USD 246 billion.[2] This list is not exhaustive.

The average net worth of billionaires who dropped out of college, $9.4 billion, is approximately triple that of billionaires with Ph.D.s, $3.2 billion. Even if you remove the world's second richest man, Bill Gates, who left Harvard University and is now worth $66.0 billion, college dropouts are worth $5.3 billion on average, compared to those who finished only bachelor's degrees, who are worth $2.9 billion. According to a recent report from Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research, 20% of America's millionaires never attended college.

Learn about a new "superpower" that isn't being taught in 90% of US schools.

Starring Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, will.i.am, Chris Bosh, Jack Dorsey, Tony Hsieh, Drew Houston, Gabe Newell, Ruchi Sanghvi, Elena Silenok, Vanessa Hurst, and Hadi Partovi.

Kevin Plank: Great Brands are Like Great Stories


Kevin Plank, Founder and CEO of Under Armour, discusses his experience of founding Under Armour, and transforming a garage start-up into a high-growth global company.