Nathalie Massenet left Net-A-Porter, suddenly and unexpectedly for the most.
Could the merger with Yoox really have been the last drop to fill her bucket? You will thank me and The Business of Fashion for the whole story.
Style.com is GONE. It is now called Vogue Runway as it was incorporated by Venus-fly-trap US Vogue. I am not a reader, fan nor follower of the Wintour-ed brand and I enter the new era with quite a load of scrupulous questions. I will have the answers as early as next week when Fashion month kicks-off in NYC. The moment of truth though will be when the caravan migrates to Milan.
WHAT HAPPENS IN ROME
Shut down: everyone is on vacation.
I have worked every August 15 as usual and still, after 19 years, it still bugs me that nobody in the US knows what Ferragosto is and nobody in Italy remembers that.
It is what it is, frustration like confetti.
HURRICANE COUTURE
Scorching hot: 1000% humidity with temperatures in the high 90s is no good. Anybody willing to convince me that this heat is sexy, chic, elegant and acceptable?
B R I N G I T O N
August 24 is my friend Fernanda's b'day and the anniversary of the most devastating hurricane that recent history remembers in the Southern Riviera.
That doesn’t make Fernanda a natural disaster, but right up that alley, first week back-to-school we went though the first hurricane scare. We all bought water, supplies, food, wine, champagne (I don’t drink beer) that will last until Thanksgiving when we will end up donating to Miami Rescue Mission. Trying to make us all look good here.
Note: alcoholic beverages will not make it there, as, some of you may already know it, I have been inducted to the “wining mothers” Hall of Fame.
Go figure, normally summer is the low season here and yes it took me years to get acquainted with the idea that, while I grew up where summer is the epitome of the high season, I live in the same hemisphere yet this is the time of the year when either you leave and go to … Europe or you stay put until better times come.
ROLE PLAY
The first Monday of the month was sealed with a cocktail at the Moore Building in the Design District celebrating the opening of ‘Role Play’ the Steven Meisel traveling exhibition sponsored by Loewe and Phillips Auctions. Nice groove, pleasant conversations and engaging networking.
Is it Miami up to something that I am missing?Tthis looks like Milan before everyone leaves for the beach: keep up the great job.
MY LITTLE PARIS
It continued in Bal Harbour.
From Vogue to EIC at Harper's Bazaar, Kate Betts, the fashion journalist born under the wings of Mr. John B. Fairchild turned author, drew Miami's crème de la crème of style to Bal Harbour for a lavish luncheon at Makoto hosted by Lara Shriftman and Sarah Harrelson. A reading of her recently launched book ‘My Little Paris’ followed suit at Books & Books which is becoming the new fashion salon literaire in Miami.
Bal Harbour stepped up its game from when I was working there, starting with the activities around The Fashion Project curated by Cathy Leff.
#GucciCruiseNYC
This didn't happen in Miami, it was Chelsea, NYC but it marked the calendars as the re-birth of the Gucci legacy.
Cruise was the first collection that Alessandro Michele, th new man at the helm of the Florentine heritage brand, was able to design with enough margin of time. He blocked off a whole City block to have the models strut across a street in Chelsea and walk the catwalk: the cement floor of an art gallery covered in Persian carpets.
Michele’s new Gucci has been called weirdo, nerdy, deliberately grannified, a rag-bag parade of vintage, a fantastical story and a mismatched patchwork of everything.
In reality the core of the Gucci brand had been long hidden under the carpets like dust, relegated to the closets, stuffed in the attics as a reliquiam of a time gone that we were supposed to forget.
Michele's sensibility brought it back by digging in those same armoires, those same that one's grandmother has with a romantic and urban feel.
credit @angelicahicks on Instagram
The connection? Fashion, with the capital F
I am kinda breaking the rules by putting together the two fashion conglomerates of Bal Harbor and Miami Design District, that are in an unspoken battle of opposite pulling forces, but I agree with anything they are doing, because they unveiling a new existence of Fashion in Miami.
