Those over-the-knee lace up Louboutins are to DIE for!! Carine Roitfeld, the Editor-in-Chief of French Vogue was looking extra fierce this Paris Fashion Week. Love the silhouette her jacket makes!

LINK LOVE: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RogueFashionTrends/~3/5OTK2lnodUU/b–Street-style-Carine-Roitfeld-over-the-knee-boots-2239.html

I think it’s actually called ‘Débauche de Pigments’ but close enough.

“I would do anything for a part, nearly anything. Being in movies doesn’t mean being pretty.” -Diane Kruger

The Europeans take to the streets for Fashion Night Out. We’ve got all the coverage from the nights best events.

“Designers have told me that their collections are so me, but I don’t always recognise it because if you ask me what my style is, I’m really not that sure. Really. It wasn’t until I started to work for Gucci in the Nineties that it started to become clear to me. And that’s because Tom Ford was pushing me to do the dark eye make-up, to wear high heels and to keep things very simple and lean.”

I’ve definitely got a soft spot in my heart for photographer Bruce Weber’s ”Love Makes The World Go Round,” in Vogue Paris June/July 2009 issue. Styled in innocent, nautical garb, Sasha Pivovarova and her baby-faced male model counterpart bust some Billy Elliot moves in the sand. From the emotion to the wind-blown hair, everything about this spread is natural…well, besides Pivovarova’s butt padding! 

GALLERY: SPREAD UM: “Love Makes The World Go Round” Vogue Paris June/July 2009

Thanks Coute Que Coute!

I’m a genius. I know it sounds like I’m tooting my own horn but I can pretty much talk about any subject for a lengthy amount of time without seeming like an idiot. Maybe that just means I’m a good bullshitter, but regardless, I feel like I’m a pretty smart dude.

Of course while most subjects are at my disposal, there is one I “get” more than others. I understand what’s happening in fashion today, but more importantly, what’s happening in online fashion. I’ve decided to share with you a few of my thoughts on what’s going on right now, the momentousness shift and what it will mean for publishing,  indie designers, and the industry as a whole.

I think that if we are all able to innovate, we may all survive. If we don’t, well I guess that’s that.

1. Magazines will slowly, but surely die off. First the smaller ones will fall away, then the bigger ones will begin to get lean, then more and more will jump on the web but lose readers to independent blogs that are already on the scene. Realizing that most blogs make money from their content and editorials, magazines will begin to enforce their copyright and thousands of fashion blogs will be forced to pull down images from their sites. The result will be a great blog die-off. Rather than removing hundreds of pages of content part-time bloggers will call it quits, seeing little interest in keeping up the struggle against content bloated magazines. Additionally, the publishing houses will find new ways to steal back their readers (Think Facebook Applications and Widgets).

Magazines with proper online direction will fair best. Editors like Anna Wintour, Carine Roitfeld, and others will be replaced by bloggers or web savvy editors who are capable of talking to consumers online. Ad sales will incorporate a higher expected ROI, since affiliate marketing will become a more familiar term for the new online advertiser. Affiliate programs will dominate, with blogs and the sites of Vogue and Elle, becoming nothing more than over hyped online catalogues.

Also, the network will become the new Publishing House. CondeNast is great and all, but they’ve got nothing on Glam.com when it comes to reach on the web. This will be an important factor for advertisers in the next coming years.

2. Fewer shoppers will head to department stores as trust increases in online buying and free shipping and return policies attract new customers. The magazines and bloggers will need to jump on this fact and certain blogs will be as powerful, or sell as much inventory as department stores (case in point, PurseBlog.com). This will lead to a broader spectrum of interest for brands looking to sell online, incorporating programs that talk directly to top selling bloggers. These bloggers will be influencers of markets and the smartest ones will begin developing their own affliate programs to make it easier for brands to sell on their sites.

3. The online store will become an antiquated device for selling product on the web. Fewer people will build them opting to shop through widgets and directly through their facebook profile. Suggestion shopping will leap to new bounds as visual tracking software advances. Now every page you visit on the web will offer suggested purchases, making it easier for you to purchase items while you read the latest news and stories. One-click shopping across hundreds of sites will replace the way we purchase our goods, with a full list of our purchases being provided to us monthly. l Companies that embrace these new technologies will be the first to advance and will gain respectable marketshare quickly.

4.  More purchases will be made through mobile devices meaning that retailers will need to address this. Instant purchase sites will pop up on your cell phone and with a text the item will be purchased and delivered to your home. While this doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense (who shops while on their phone) stores like Saks and Macy’s will introduce the technology to ensure that you make purchases through their store. If you ever can’t find an item in store, a simple text will ensure you purchase it through Saks.com, making the store money. Of course, Saks and others will have to address larger issues within their corporate structure before this becomes a reality.

5. The indie designer will remain small unless they address budding technology. Building a community around your brand should be the main focus. Fostering a direct relationship with your customers will be the most importantt thing a young designer can do, creating a collective of supporters and using them to further your message. Brands that don’t have a proper Social Media Directive will fail. As more and more boutiques close down, weighed down by lost customers on the web, there will be fewer spots for young designers to flourish. The way you sold in the past will not be the way you sell in the future. Designers who understand this will be the ones to succeed.

6. Fashion Indie will become the ultimate source for original fashion editorials, shopping, and the best from the fashion web. Just wait for it, it’s coming. And when it happens don’t be all surprised. Accept it as the natural progression for this crazy little fashion world. Doubt it and you don’t really get it.

If you want more info on what’s happening next in fashion, be sure to hit up Sayntly.com. That’s our services company, our bread and butter, our little engine that will.

Styled by Carine Roitfeld and photographed by David Sims, this spread features models Kamila Filipcikova and Monika Jagaciak rocking patterns.

Carine Roitfeld styled this spread herself, with the help of photographer Mario Sorrenti. Titled ‘Serie Noire,’ the spread stars models Guinevere Van Seenus and Eniko Mihalik.

Imagine waking up in your secluded New York apartment, your Yves Saint Laurent scented skin caressing your crisp, white Egyptian cotton sheets. Before heading to your extensive designer shoe collection to begin the day’s outfit choosing process, you trip on three years worth of French Vogue magazines and curse your mother for fabulously stacking them in the corner. While dressing, you choose the Versace gladiator sandals, a few vintage accessories and your Louis Vuitton blanket, just incase you opt for a brief picnic in Central Park. You are not human. You are Julia Roitfeld, Carine Roitfeld’s very own flesh and blood. Everyone wants to be be you. But nobody can. Instead, they choose to live vicariously through photos of your incredible apartment. 

Any chance you offer tours of your closet? 

GALLERY: Home Sweet Home: Julia Roitfeld’s NY Fashion Paradise

Thanks NY Mag and The Selby!

-Carine Roitfeld, to ACNE Paper, S/S 2009.

Steven Meisel’s editorial for Vogue Italia April 2009 is basically the greatest game of dress-up you could ever imagine. Poking fun at our current economic crisis, “Fashion Bailout” portrays some intense mixing, matching and accessorizing at what appears to be a second hand store. While the clothes on Darya, Portia & Eliza are a mish-mosh of Moschino, Maison Martin Margiela, Roberto Cavalli and others, this spread suggests that you can look just as couture wearing Goodwill finds. But to be honest, I would have pegged this spread the brainchild of Carine Roitfeld over Franca Sozzani.

GALLERY: SPREAD UM: “Fashion Bailout” Vogue Italia April 2009

Thanks Fashion Copious! 

So, if you live in NYC you’ve probably already been smacked across the face by a bunch of teaser ads for some website called, WhatIsTheNewBlack.TV. If you cared enough to check when you got to a computer or remembered to add .TV to the end of the address, you’ve probably come face to face with a flash site (which I was extremely annoyed with when I realized it didn’t work on my iPhone!!! Get with the times already you lazy marketers!!!) that featured some large headed blondie in all black asking you to dress her up to discover The New Black.

You select a top, an accessory, and a bottom. She heads behind a curtain and comes out to announce how your outfit is “retro”, “daring”, “classic” or some other combination of poorly chosen words to describe her look. Then some fashion meter comes out and your deemed some other describing word like “The Eclectic” or “The Anorexic” jk, and the bitch on screen tells you whether or not you’re The New Black.

I went through about a million times to see if I could get all the stars to light up, but failed. I’m assuming that if you manage to do that something more exciting will happen on this extremely two years ago site, but alas, I’m not the New Black.

Basically, this attempt at marketing is a complete and absolute joke and whoever was behind it needs to be fired. Aside from the generic model with her cheap looking Louboutanies, the poorly designed set with it’s hideous neo-modern chair, and the fashion choices which can only be deemed Liz Clairborne pre-Mizrahi, the overall look and feel at this campaign would make any self respecting fashion person cringe in their Jeffery Campbells (sorry, I’m all about cheap footwear these days).

Here are my list of qualms.

1. Who the fuck cares about “The New Black”?!?

“The New Black” is a term created by the powers that be at Vogue and Elle, a vicious attempt to get you to buy some season appropriate colors that a number of designers got together and decided would be the colors of the season. The term is completely dated and hasn’t been relevant for at least five years. Black is always “The New Black”, cause it’s always appropriate and always in season. Carine Roitfeld would tell you that any day.

2. Not Mobile, At All!!!

Mentioned this one above but needs to be rementioned. If you’re spending millions on an ad camapaign across the city for a website that solely lists a website, you’d think it would be smart to make the site accessible by cell phone!!! We all use our cellies to gather information and when a site that could technically exist mobily, doesn’t even consider this, it makes me think that someone got lazy. In this case, I’d blame everyone.

3. It’s Not Even A Good Website.

No community functions, no twitter options, no way to spread the word through Facebook!!! This is truly a ghost of website past!!! Plus many of the looks I tried to put together didn’t even register to the ditzy blonde who was trying it on. Their basic functions failed and it didn’t lead me to a purchase or to identify any set brand which means their markeing money was just flushed down the drain.

4. The Fashion Sucks.

Whoever chose these items should be shot. The bags are basic, the patterns are dull and the jeans made me want to murder someone at The Gap. If you’re going to make me waste my time with a bad site, the least you can do is give me somethiing fun to look at.

The Solution.

For this site there really isn’t much you can do. I’d leave the advertising up for a bit longer, but quickly change the front page to a spot where you can upload what you feel is “The New Black” having users share their looks for Spring. Then give them something that they might actually want, like a discount to a store or to be featured in an upcoming campaign, since who ever is behind this seems to have money. That would at least be engaging, rather than a complete disappointment like this current site.

Also, feel free to give me a call. I’d love to offer some more on how not to be a total failure on the fashion web.

“My mum told me always to wear heels. If I’m not wearing heels, she says, ‘What? You’re in flats?’ So whenever I see her, I make sure I have heels with me.”

WORDS TO LIVE BY. 

Thanks NY Mag! 

In one of the most interesting shoots I’ve seen in awhile, Yrme Stiekema poses for Patrick Demarchelier in a monochromatic, farmer’s daughter historic world. Elaborate dresses and suits complement barnyard animals and clogs that are sole-deep in hay. A large wheel of cheese and and bucket of milk (the contents of which are strategically dripping from Stiekema’s mouth) round out the props for the shoot styled by the talented Carine Roitfeld. Props to designing a shoot that isn’t even remotely close to anything I’ve seen yet this season.

GALLERY: Ymre Stiekema Shot by Patrick Demarchelier for Vogue Paris

LINKAGE: Fashion Copious

Carine Roitfeld was spotted outside Balenciaga, wearing Balenciaga. Convenient.

LINKAGE: MA FAVORITE//

Every fashion lover on the planet waits anxiously for the airing of Morley Safer’s 60 Minutes piece on Anna Wintour. Due out sometime before May, the Wintour piece seems like a far-off dream, but rest assured, March has something big (and maybe even better!) in store! Starting March 18th CNN will air Revealed, a piece documenting French Vogue’s editor-in-chief, Carine Roitfeld on her epic journey through this season’s New York and Paris fashion weeks! Now we can all live vicariously through one of fashion’s favorite people! 

GMT Time: (don’t forget to convert for your time-zone!)
Wednesday, March 18: 09:30 & 18:30
Saturday, March 21: 08:30 & 19:00
Sunday, March 22: 05:30 & 18:30
Monday, March 23: 04:00

Thanks Fashion Copious and NY Mag!

The updated Chanel girl hits the cover of the March issue of Vogue Paris, covered in full makeup, tons of logos and accessories, and no eyebrows.

Carine Roitfeld  has been putting new models on the cover of important issues of French Vogue, like March and September. For example: Natasha Poly snagged both March & September for 07, Lara Stone did March 08.

These days, it’s Anna Selezneva, Iris Strubegger making their debuts…

LINKAGE: Rock the Trend