It's no secret I am head over heels about fashion and a total nerd about it. One night while channel surfing, I stumbled upon an interview with my beloved Tom Tom Ford on PBS. The show was Charlie Rose. I shook my head in disbelief and wondered how it happened... when did I start watching Charlie Rose?! When I realized he had some fantastic fashion interviews- that's when! At this point, my status as a fashion dork was solidified. Unfortunately I caught only the tail end of the interview but definitely made a mental note to check the rest later. Fast forward to the night I saw Mr. Ford's A Single Man. After riding the high from the movie, I continued the evening of Tom Ford and watched the interview onCharlie Rose in its entirety. After eating up every word out of Tom Tom's mouth, I stumbled upon Charlie's interview with Valentino Garavani, Giancarlo Giammetti and director of Valentino: The Last Emperor, Matt Tyrnauer. I had never known the origin of the famed Valentino Red but thanks to good ol' Charlie now I do.
Well... Mr. Rose has done it once again. At the end of New York Fashion Week, he gathered a diverse panel from creative to editorial and facilitated a dialogue about the current state of fashion. Superstylin* fave Cathy Horyn touched upon her tweeting and the new norm of live streaming fashion shows. J. Crew's CEO Mickey Drexler reminded viewers that fashion is a business and the bottom line is still the almighty dollar. A special point of interest was his talk of offpricers. He stressed controlling distribution of product since people can comparison shop efficiently online. I recalled a recent article entitled What's A Dress Worth and flash sales currently reign supreme for the devout fashion consumer. As someone who has worked with these sort of companies off-pricing merchandise and creating exclusive clothing for timed sales, it really is an entirely different way of doing business. Superstylin* deity Narciso Rodriguez mentioned his 8-piece collection for eBay (who are set to launch their own exclusive designer sale site Fashion Vault).
At the end of the episode, the panel was asked to comment about the late Lee Alexander McQueen. A portion of an interview Charlie Rose did with him back in 1997 was shown. Once again, I was led to another gem I need to watch: An Appreciation of Alexander McQueen.
{Images via the Charlie Rose website}