Online Shopping

I have been an online shopper for quite a while now - although I miss the pleasure of the physical experience the convenience is often key in my attitude towards acquisition. Granted, online shopping in the USA is hugely rich and easy to access. The story below from Forbes  offers snapshots of the women behind some of the most successful sites.. These are all success stories, to be sure, but they did not appear out of thin air nor did they pull themselves up by the bootstraps.

I suppose I am jealous. Especially of Rent the Runway.

Anyways,  read below. And thank you to KL for bringing it to my attention!

The Power Women Who Are Reinventing The Way You Shop Fashion Online

They don’t code. They’re not designers. And they definitely don’t walk around in hoodies. But these six tech founders are changing the face of the $54 billionapparel e-commerce market. Their multi-million dollar companies are reinventing retail with new brands and platforms that are altering our appetite for shopping — and where and how we buy.

E-tailers creating businesses for other women have arrived, tapping into their 71% of online spending in apparel and accessories. The entrepreneurs featured below are not alone: Sophia Amoruso’s Nasty Gal has almost a million global customers and a reported $100 million in annual sales. Susan Feldman and Ali Pincus’ One Kings Lane, purveyor of home decor (not fashion but sharing the same customer base), was valued at just under $1 billion in its recent Series E round. Birchbox, Hayley Barna and Katia Beauchamp’s beauty subscription service, has raised nearly $72 million.

Katrina Lake’s two-year-old personal shopping service, Stitch Fix, has raised close to $17 million, and Aslaug Magnusdottir, formerly of Moda Operandi, just launched Tinker Tailor, a marketplace for customized designer clothes. Taken together, these entrepreneurs represent a stylish retort to the oft heard lament: “Where are the women in tech?”

Moda Operandi: Lauren Santo Domingo

Quick Pitch: Couture before it hits retail. Founded: 2010. Funding: $71 million. Average order: $1,600-plus ($5,000 for elite customers). Top designers: Isabel Marant, Valentino, Prabal Gurung. Pedigree: Voguecontributing editor. Other half: Andres Santo Domingo, heir to Colombia’s richest beer family. Tech or not: “I am constantly feeling pressure to act as if we are a tech company. And I don’t feel that. We’re a luxury fashion company powered by a tech side.”

“Just having a clever idea and technological savvy isn’t enough for the fashion business. It’s not an industry where someone can come in lacking the intimate knowledge because so much is based on relationships, taste, vision and ultimately trust. This is not about disrupting a system. I love this industry. I love these designers. And I love this customer.”

Net-a-Porter: Natalie Massenet

Quick Pitch: Online magazine that sells the spreads. Founded: 2000. ­Employees: Over 2,500. Monthly ­visitors: 5 million. Acquired: Luxury groupRichemont bought a majority stake in 2010. Estimated valuation: $3.4 billion.Average order: $900-plus. Pedigree: Former fashion editor at Tatler; mother was a Chanel model. Brand extension: Print magazine Porter, social shopping platform Netbook. Ambitions: “We’re trying to own a category. And unlike Amazon, which is a fantastic place to get everything, we want to be the destination for fashion.”

“Technology is at the heart of what we do. If you come to our offices, we look like Google. We have hackathons. It’s what we talk about. But we’re also obsessed with fashion, service logistics, operations, automation and content.”

Wanelo: Deena Varshavskaya

Quick Pitch: Social shopping. Founded: 2011. Funding: $14 million. Valuation: $100 million-plus. Employees: 33. Registered users: 11 million. Traffic from mobile: 85%. Fangirls: Fashion Squad’s Carolina Engman, The Cut’s Veronica Gledhill and Man Repeller’s Leandra Medine. Signature look: Bold print dress, leather jacket. Path to Success: Moved from Siberia to New Jersey at 16. “Malls were a really frustrating experience.”

“In April 2011 I shut my design agency, ended a ten-year relationship and moved from L.A. to S.F. to get funding. But I was a solo nontech female founder without a team. I didn’t fit the pattern. Forty rejections later I closed my first round. I still get regret notes from VCs who said no.”

Joyus: Sukhinder Singh Cassidy

Quick Pitch: Watch a video, find the perfect anything. Founded: 2011.Employees: 35. Funding: $20 million. Monthly customers: 6,000. Power play: Four acquisitions in three years totaling $2 million. Path to success: Born in Tanzania, grew up in St. Catherine’s, Canada, and an original Silicon Valley girl. Women in tech: “It’s a much more crowded field today — in a good way. There is a rise of founders from non-engineering fields who have consumer vision and insight in categories like e-commerce.” Her résumé includes Amazon, Google, Accel Partners and Polyvore.

“My best lesson [from former boss Jeff Bezos] was that e-commerce begins in the search box. The best customer experience isn’t about exclusive rights to every product on your platform. It’s about satisfying every customer query.”

Rent the Runway: Jenny Fleiss (left), Jenn Hyman

Quick Pitch: Borrow, don’t buy. Founded: 2009. Funding: $54 million.Employees: 250. Members: 4 million. Rentals in 2014: $250 million in retail value. Customer faves: Marchesa, Narciso Rodriguez, Vera Wang. Brand extension: New York and Las Vegas retail stores. Daily question for CTO: “Did we hire any engineers yesterday?”

“The idea that I had gone to Harvard twice and my cofounder had gone to Yale and then Harvard Business School credentialed us in a way that created a bond with the male VCs who had also gone to Harvard Business School or had gone to Stanford Business School. At least in that capacity, we were similar.” — Jenn Hyman.

Tim Gunn

Those of you who don't watch reality TV might not know who Tim Gunn is - but to some he is a celeb of the best kind - never trashy, never over-exposed. A dean at NYC's Parsons School of Design Gunn became a household name when he first appeared on Project Runway 10 years ago. Since then the recurrent reality competition show has made him rather famous - he is easily recognized for his grave and serious voice and deamanor, his solid advice, and formally crisp personal style.

Anyways, Gunn did a small cameo on my favorite weekend comedy radio show, NPR's Wait Wait.. where he told a hilarious story. I don't want to spoil it for you, so follow the link and listen to the whole thing or read the transcript. It isn't long and is guaranteed to make you laugh:

http://www.wbur.org/npr/319423432/not-my-job-project-runways-tim-gunn-gets-quizzed-on-terrible-fashion

Public Sevice Announcement

By and large book lists are crap, but every now and then you may discover in them something of true value. With that in mind, those interested in summer reading LATimes has a handy taxonomy:

http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-summer-books-2014-20140528-story.html

Enjoy your summer reading, ladies!

Pants to that!

Sister-in-law returned (about a decade ago, but what is time between friends?) from her doctoral studies in the UK armed with a few fantastically unique expressions that are unknown in the larger English-speaking world. My favorite is 'pants to that' - which,  I believe, means something akin to 'screw it'. Because the innocuous 'pants' apparently has a very negative connotation over on the island. Not that I am certain or anything.. - them Brits have the darnedest slang.

Anyways, they might take offense at the following title, but the story is kinda cool:

First pants worn by horse riders 3,000 years ago

Oldest known trousers originated in Central Asia

BY BRUCE BOWER 

9:05AM, MAY 30, 2014

Two men whose remains were recently excavated from tombs in western China put their pants on one leg at a time, just like the rest of us. But these nomadic herders did so between 3,300 and 3,000 years ago, making their trousers the oldest known examples of this innovative apparel, a new study finds.

With straight-fitting legs and a wide crotch, the ancient wool trousers resemble modern riding pants, says a team led by archaeologists Ulrike Beck and Mayke Wagner of the German Archaeological Institute in Berlin. The discoveries, uncovered in the Yanghai graveyard in China’s Tarim Basin, support previous work suggesting that nomadic herders in Central Asia invented pants to provide bodily protection and freedom of movement for horseback journeys and mounted warfare, the scientists report May 22 in Quaternary International.

“This new paper definitely supports the idea that trousers were invented for horse riding by mobile pastoralists, and that trousers were brought to the Tarim Basin by horse-riding peoples,” remarks linguist and China authority Victor Mair of the University of Pennsylvania.

Previously, Europeans and Asians wore gowns, robes, tunics, togas or — as observed on the 5,300-year-old body of Ötzi the Iceman — a three-piece combination of loincloth and individual leggings.

A dry climate and hot summers helped preserve human corpses, clothing and other organic material in the Tarim Basin. More than 500 tombs have been excavated in a graveyard there since the early 1970s.

Earlier research on mummies from several Tarim Basin sites, led by Mair, identified a 2,600-year-old individual known as Cherchen Man who wore burgundy trousers probably made of wool. Trousers of Scythian nomads from West Asia date to roughly 2,500 years ago.

Mair suspects that horse riding began about 3,400 years ago and trouser-making came shortly thereafter in wetter regions to the north and west of the Tarim Basin. Ancient trousers from those areas are not likely to have been preserved, Mair says.

Horse riding’s origins are uncertain and could date to at least 4,000 years ago, comments archaeologist Margarita Gleba of University College London. If so, she says, “I would not be surprised if trousers appeared at least that far back.”

The two trouser-wearing men entombed at Yanghai were roughly 40 years old and had probably been warriors as well as herders, the investigators say. One man was buried with a decorated leather bridle, a wooden horse bit, a battle-ax and a leather bracer for arm protection. Among objects placed with the other body were a whip, a decorated horse tail, a bow sheath and a bow.

Beck and Wagner’s group obtained radiocarbon ages of fibers from both men’s trousers, and of three other items in one of the tombs.

Each pair of trousers was sewn together from three pieces of brown-colored wool cloth, one piece for each leg and an insert for the crotch. The tailoring involved no cutting: Pant sections were shaped on a loom in the final size. Finished pants included side slits, strings for fastening at the waist and woven designs on the legs.

Beck and Wagner’s team calls the ancient invention of trousers “a ground-breaking achievement in the history of cloth making.” That’s not too shabby for herders who probably thought the Gap was just a place to ride their horses through. 

Surfing the Cruise Collections: Stella McCartney

I have a confession to make, ladies - for once this is a minor issue that few of you, if any, will take offense at. So here goes: I hate Stella McCartney's eponymous design line. I dislike her aesthetic (awkward - but without Prada's breakthrough spirit); her vegan maxims; her penchant for making the body look unattractive. This distaste has been brewing for quite some time.

 I suppose my dislike could be seen as an insight into the 'what is fashion? art or craft" debate, in the sense that I do believe that fashion should have beauty as its guiding light (what constitutes beauty is a different, and not at all neutral issue).  But I don't think that the deliberate awkwardness of McCartney's designs has much to do with that debate. Unlike the fantastically innovative work of the late Alexander McQueen, or the deposed John Galliano  - her point of view offers no radical newness or insight, has nothing in it to transcend craft into art. Parenthetically, yes, ladies, despite the post-modernist attempts to erase said distinction I do think it exists. We all know it when we see it.

So why this exegesis on Stella? Well, she presented her Resort Collection. Here is the write up setting the scene:

In case the balloon arch at the entrance didn't tip guests off, last night's Stella McCartney resort presentation was her usual carnival-style affair, with diversions like a human statue, live chamber music, and models blowing bubbles, drinking champagne, and dancing. (A much better gig than presentations where models have to stand still on a podium for two hours with the occasional water break.) And as is typical with McCartney's events, a wide swath of friends and admirers joined her, from models Cara Delevingne and Jourdan Dunn to artists Jeff Koons and Marilyn Minter. (SNL honcho Lorne Michaels was there too, deep in conversation with a corporate-looking crowd.) As the model Liya Kebede put it, "People like her alot."

Many of the friendships go way back — we're talking Paleozoic era. As Liv Tyler told the Cut, "We have been friends for 300 million years. We’re dinosaurs." Helena Christensen said that the two have been pals since McCartney's early days. "[We met] like 20 years ago. When she started, we did the shows together. Back then we were just a bunch of girls hanging out, having fun. I didn’t even feel like I was working. It was just like hanging out with your friends." Christensen added that this was a rare appearance for her: "I don't really go to a bunch of shows. I feel like I checked that box," she said, adding that she did attend Dior's resort show at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. "I got a little seasick."

[....] When attendees weren't partaking in outdoor activities (the human chessboard was a popular photo op), they were talking about the throwback yin-yang prints on many of the pieces. It got several attendees thinking about the '90s. Said Hanneli Mustaparta of her attempt to revive the decade, “I’ve been wearing a mom jean — well, it’s kind of a mix between a mom jean and a boyfriend jean, so it still looks kinda hot. It’s a weird fit but in a nice way. A nice weird fit.”

Tyler said, "That’s my era, so I love it, I love it. There was something so much more relaxed about it, a little bit more playful. A little bit more of an edge. I think it wasn’t as thought-out, people were just creating looks from what they had in their closet or what came to them. I’m very nostalgic for anything '90s — music, fashion, films, all of it. I have a lot of things that I still never got rid of. ."

What do I think about the clothes, not the scene, ye may ask?

Well,  I hated it all yet again - the boxy shape, the oh-so-old-news cutouts; the prints OR the solids; and even the very look and weight of the fabric (the shoes seem ok - but any major shoe chain has a variation on them at the moment):

Heck, I don't even like these stripes!

This is Stella herself surrounded by her model friends.. and yes, I do think something about HER annoys me as well, to be perfectly honest. But mostly it is about her designs. So there.

Surfing the Cruise Collections; and this time, in a department store

Well, no, not really. But the increased limelight on mid-season collections has pushed a slew of ready-to-wear, department store labels into the fold. What once was the domain of haute couture has now been democratized, if you will (democracy and capitalism go hand in hand, after all).

I won't inundate you with a rigorous analysis of collection after collection. And you can find the full lineup here: Style.com. This post is dedicated to the pricier among department store lines - but not all of them, just the ones I liked the best. I will do another post for high-end pret-a-porter and yet another one for the indie lables. Enjoy!

Dishonorable Mention Award:

Rag&Bone -- unseasonal, confused,  and without a single item I coveted. 

Most Coveted Award:
Proenza Schouler - strong, directional collection with a very clear point of view.

 Overall impressions from collections surfing:
- a predictably summery palette of white and blue with a lot of unseasonable gray and black in the mix.
- stripes are here to stay (yay!)
- lots of cut-outs, mostly midriff area.
- bulkier silhouette, not as slim cut.
- 70s was the era most referenced, but obliquely

Here are some standouts:
Stripes and solids from Proenza Schouler:

Tennis whites & Stripes - from See By Chloe:

Structural stripes from Yigal Azrouel (a label that pivoted from slinky and overly sexy):

Seventies chic from Costume National:

Likewise boxy take on the 70s from Derek Lam:

A kind of 70s vibe at Adam Lippes:

Fantastic dresses with terrible styling from 3.1 Phillip Lim:

Tibi had a whole lot of pleating (something the label repeats every season) in a little too literally nautical collection:

Navy with a boho twist from Thakoon Addition:

Nostalgia Friday: Zara Moves in Mysterious Ways

My first trip to the USA occurred  sometime in the early 90s. RM, my oldest friend in this world, was the one to introduce me to America. RM's lovely and preternaturally elegant Antwerp-born grandmother lived in an old and art-filled house in one of NYC's boroughs and her Israeli-born granddaughter would fly to visit her ever so often. Sometime after we got out of the army RM invited me to tag along (I worked on that invitation relentlessly).

I've been to Europe a few times before, but nothing prepared me for the overwhelming bigness of NYC, its heady rush, its oddly beckoning yet repelling odor, its vertical push. I don't remember much from that trip, except for feeling small (ok, fine, even smaller than I am) and very, very provincial.  It made me want to conquer it, to 'make it there'. Instead when I did come to the US I settled in Boston, NY's smaller, quieter, so much easier cousin and if I proved anything it wasn't the kind of stuff one proves in the Big Apple. That dream will have to remain unfulfilled.

From the haze of that first visit  I do remember, however, another first - a shopping spree at Zara. If I'm not mistaken we went to the store in midtown, not far from MOMA. It was a revelation, almost as much as the city that housed the store (sure, the museums weren't that bad either) and I blew whatever savings I had on it. But by the time I moved Stateside Zara dropped off my radar - nothing about it seemed as chic as it needed to be. But now it is back again, big time.

Apparently I'm not the only one tooting Zara's horn - below is a story out of the NYTimes. And while you are reading about the glories of affordable fashion listen to U2, RM's favorite band in high-school (and yet another big thing she introduced me to. I should have put up something from Joshua Tree, but hec, this is a 90s post):

Zara, Where Insiders Look for an Edge

By RUTH LA FERLAJUNE 4, 2014

When they’re not tending clients or updating inventory at the Albright Fashion Library, a supplier of fresh-from-the-runway looks to stylists, socialites and film companies, Lindsay Carr and Yael Quint like to poke around the Internet for credible approximations of their favorite high-end labels. Their jobs afford them plenty of chances to beg, borrow or buy at a discount any number of lust-worthy items from the likes of Balenciaga, Givenchy or Céline. But on a recent spring morning, Ms. Carr was turned out top to toe in Zara.

Ms. Quint sat alongside her wearing a filmy top, Céline sandals and a pair of billowing trousers. Their provenance: Zara. “Stylists who visit here are constantly asking, ‘Are you wearing Céline, are you wearing Givenchy?’ “ Ms. Quint said, adding with a hoot, “We like to tell them, ‘No, we’re wearing Zalenciaga, or we’re wearing Zéline.’ ”

If that sounds smug, it may be because Ms. Carr and Ms. Quint are pleased to claim membership in an expanding coterie of fashion insiders — magazine editors, stylists, bloggers and street-style divas — to tap Zara routinely, and repeatedly, for timely, decently priced approximations of the runways’ greatest hits.

 Among tastemakers, the zeal is infectious. “We all aspire, regardless of age, height, weight and color, to be the girls on the runway,” said Kristen Henderson, a fashion blogger in Atlanta. “I feel like Zara puts you there.”

 It wasn’t always so. Only a couple of years ago, Zara, with its midprice interpretations of runway trends, was a leading purveyor of cheap chic to the budget-conscious crowd, offering well-constructed, moderately stylish wares that, for the most part, steered clear of the cutting edge. A retail division of the Spanish global giant Inditex, with some 1,900 stores in 87 countries, the company does not advertise. Unlike its competition, fast-fashion chains including Topshop and H&M, it has eschewed collaborations with upscale designer labels; nor has it flooded the Internet with a barrage of tweets and social media shout-outs.

 Apparently it saw no need. The company, which had close to $15 billion in sales for 2013, does not grant interviews or discuss retail and marketing strategies. Yet in the last 18 to 20 months, it has clearly sought to reposition itself as a fashion front-runner with a definable point of view.

At a time when there are few sweeping upmarket fashion trends, Zara is championing minimalism, noted Jeff Van Sinderen, a senior retail analyst for apparel with B. Riley & Company, a research and investment firm. “Their look is very aspirational, in terms of the brands they are emulating,” he said. “Focusing on clean, spare lines, like those of Jil Sander or Céline, has set them apart.” And, he might have added, turned the chain into an unlikely magnet for fashion progressives. 

Not by any stretch a design innovator, Zara has nonetheless passed muster with the style-obsessed. “These days, Zara feels like a fashion brand,” said Hannah Weil, a blogger with the Pop Sugar website, who turns to the store and its website for wardrobe refreshers — “a little crop top,” she said, “or a piece that will give your look a little edge.”

 She is part of a wider audience the company has courted, according to Dana Telsey of the Telsey Advisory Group, a stock research firm. “In the past year, they’ve been expanding their customer base toward more influential consumers,” she said. “That they can go up and down the ladder helps them to gain awareness and build market share.

 The company relies largely on word of mouth and a high-luster website, introduced in the United States in 2011, to create a hunger for its wares. The site, which vies these days in slick production values and of-the-moment looks with those of many fashion magazines, arrived at a time when any lingering stigma attached to buying copies has all but evaporated, even among the most stubborn designer-label purists.

 Segmented into men’s, women’s and children’s offerings, the site includes a separate Studio classification aimed at the vanguard and a Zara Lookbook, a magazine-like feature showcasing the company’s more advanced items, among them a short-sleeve jumpsuit with flared lapels and a double-breasted, gold-button navy blazer (each $139). Offerings with a slightly broader appeal include a stretch-cotton leaf print blazer ($99.90), a floral print calf-length skirt ($79), a fringed imitation-suede top ($69.90) and a modish selection of platform sandals and bucket bags.

 The fashion devout are impressed. “Why Can’t Our Closet Be Just Like the Zara Lookbook?” Ms. Weil posted last fall on Pop Sugar. The site is clean and well curated, she elaborated in an interview. “You get a sense that everything goes with everything else.”

 Her peers around the country fairly boast of their Zara dependency. “I’m addicted,” Ms. Henderson wrote on her blog, Style with Kirsten Kai. She confided that she scours local Zara outposts once a month, dropping $150 to $300 during each visit. She counts on the store for the leather pieces she covets: shorts, skirts and jackets in particular. “Everything leather that I own that’s not vintage is Zara,” she said.

 Zara shares with some magazines and online fashion sites a strategy of enlisting style-world luminaries to boost its hipness quotient. Fashion media stars including Taylor Tomasi Hill, a contributor to the Gwyneth Paltrow blog, Goop, and Amanda Brooks, a former fashion director of Barneys New York, have modeled in its web pages. As pertinent, though Zara declines to confirm it, the company has engaged a handful of influential fashion stylists as “consultants,” to rework or adapt — in a word, copy — the most heat-generating runway looks for its increasingly savvy audience.

 To hear from shoppers, its strategy has paid off. “In my office, Zara has become the center of so many conversations,” Ms. Weil said. “Probably because they have stepped up what they’re doing.” 

 Ms. Henderson voiced a growing consensus. “Whatever is out there in the marketplace, whatever is going on, Zara is right there on point,” she said. “It’s a place where women of all age ranges can shop.”

So ardent is she, one might suspect that Zara had offered incentives to feature the label on her blog. Not so, Ms. Henderson said. Zara would be one of the last brands to reach out to bloggers, she said. The fashion set’s devotion is, she maintained, spontaneous and unsolicited.

 Indeed, industry professionals count themselves as among the brand’s chief boosters. “Zara has completely opened up the world to fashion people,” Ms. Quint said. “Stylists who never shopped there before are shopping there now.”

 Some unabashedly show off their “gets” at fashion gatherings. “Especially at Fashion Week, there’s that wow factor,” Ms. Weil said. “People are always asking each other, ‘Oh, maybe you’re wearing Céline?’ Zara does that look really well.”

 Well enough, in fact, that Céline this year took a radical step, pre-empting retailers’ efforts to “adapt” or “interpret” its much-copied collection by showing images not six months in advance of the season, but just as it is reaching stores. They could have taken lessons from Zara itself, which does not offer previews, captivating even style-sated pros with an element of surprise.

 “For me, as a fashion editor, Zara is the only brand I don’t see ahead of time,” said Jade Frampton, the senior market editor at Elle magazine. “It’s the store I shop in. Every time I look around, I’m like, ‘I haven’t seen any of this before.’ ”

 The label’s cool factor is catnip to Ms. Frampton, who chose to be photographed in a Zara demi-sheer pleated skirt, a style clearly inspired by the spring runways. “The silhouettes and color selection have gone up, and so has the overall quality of the merchandise.”

 Trendiness is appealing to her, but quality is as decisive in determining what she will buy. “At the end of the day, you’re still spending money,” she said. “You don’t want things to fall apart when you get home.”