Op-Ed: What the FarFetch and the Matches Deals Really Mean

Fashion, Features/Op-Ed

Last week marked not but two major fashion e-commerce deals, in which FarFetch and Matches found new owners. FarFetch was bought by Coupang, aka the Amazon of South Korea, and Matches was bought by Frasers, a large British mass market retailer. Both deals were an embarrassment for the luxury e-tailers, valuing them at a fraction of what they were worth not so long ago. In essence, they were rescue operations. This prompted a slew of reflections from the fashion commentariat about the death of luxury e-commerce. This is wishful thinking, of course, but the two deals mark a good time to reflect on what’s going on in the retail segment of the fashion industry.

Massimo Osti Studio Aims to Keep the Designer’s Spirit of Innovation

Fashion

In certain circles the late Italian designer Massimo Osti is a demiurge, a semi-mythical figure who in the ‘80s created a new language of design by combining his love of innovation with his love of functional clothing. He applied his graphic-design-trained mind, devoid of usual fashion preconceptions, to reimagining military gear and workwear in the context of modern city life, creating a new type of casual wear that gave equal weight to form and function. With C.P. Company and Stone Island Osti launched new chapters in menswear, one that was rooted neither in traditional tailoring of the old generation nor in the fanciful extremes of the new one. He combined form and function into a new aesthetic that spread like wildfire, first in Italy, then all over Europe and then the rest of the world.

Op-Ed: Why You Feel Alienated from Luxury Fashion (It’s Not Just the Prices)

Fashion, Features/Op-Ed

Recently I had dinner with a fashion and culture commentator who is based in Asia. He was describing the scene at a party celebrating the newly opened Prada flagship in Shanghai; how the impeccably tasteful shop was filled with young kids with too much money and too little taste, dancing to bad music in celebration of conspicuous consumption. “That’s who buys this stuff,” he concluded. And with this one phrase he got to the crux of why many of you cannot relate to luxury fashion. Simply put, if you are a person of taste, intelligence, in possession of a certain attenuated sensibility, a degree of elegance and sophistication, today you are not luxury fashion’s target audience.