Dualité

I just wanted to wish my readers and passerbys a Happy Holiday!

I am currently in Houston with my family for the next couple of weeks. Reporting on fashion here will be a little difficult considering that this city is the Disney World of chain stores.

Here’s one peculiar thing I noticed here: there is only ONE American Apparel store in Houston. In Montreal there is at least 4 American Apparel stores in the near downtown vicinity. But I can understand why this chain may not be very successful…Houston is considered one of the fattest cities in America. From my understanding, AA is a chain that caters to a certain demographic, and that seems to exclude the overweight.

My recent experience at Banana Republic had the store assistant literally dismantle a mannequin sporting this really nice slate gray cardigan because it was an XS – the only one left in the store.

BCBG is also carrying slightly tamer versions of their Hervé Léger bandage dresses oddly enough. Making real Hervé Léger dresses less special. Why would you want to pay $1000 on an Herve Leger dress when you can get something similar, owned by the SAME company, for a fraction of the price?  A look at the online website doesn’t reveal this, you would have to shop at Dillard’s to see the knock off collection. Max Azria is shooting himself in the foot with this move.

Bakers, a Montreal equivalent to Aldo shoe stores, carried a trendy line of shoes, but made of the worst quality. The leather looked cheap and tattered on the edges and the soles stiffer than cardboard.

Speaking of Aldo, they’re also turning more and more like Nine West and Steve Madden by copying a pair of Michael Kors’ Berkley T-strap sandals, with their Tavira shoes. What’s funny is that the MK version is only $129, and the Aldo shoes are $90.00. Knock offs are getting more and more expensive!

More updates to come soon hopefully.

Enjoy your holidays!

Are store websites a little too boring to browse to your liking? Do you miss that editorial fashion fantasy that magazines thrive upon and yet website miss upon? Fear no more, there seems to be a new trend emerging on fashion websites.

I’ve been store surfing online looking at the latest holiday collections and came upon Barneys‘ site. Although I seldomly have browsed there, I did noticed that they’ve added a new shoppable editorial magazine. Most websites will have commercial photo shoots of a model wearing the item on sale, however the relationship between viewer and photo is sort of cold and generic in my opinion. Fashion editorials, on the other hand, are highly stylized with different accessories and contain more elaborate backgrounds. They weave a fantasy of eye candy that makes potential shoppers go “oooh…now that’s pretty, and I want it.”

This format of catalogue shopping through editorials is relatively new from what I’ve seen of store websites. Barneys has picked up on the idea and launched their version of it called “Designer Mailer“. This holiday season, Canadian model Coco Rocha is splashed across the catalogue on every page. Whether in Flash or HTML  version, users can mouseover certain items that can be directly purchased online. The slightly disadvantaging point is that most of the items sold are accessories like shoes, bracelets, necklaces and bags. Some of the big ticket items like an L’Wren Scott dress are not available online, and can only be found in certain stores. A shame because for me in an editorial, I’d want to have the chance to purchase everything that I see. Call it online boutique hotel-style shopping.

I’m not sure if many shoppers are like me, but my desire to purchase depends greatly on how great the mannequins or models are dressed. I like being in a store where there are styled mannequins. It’s enough to send me finding the exact thing I see. Montreal, alongside Tokyo, in general has very attractive mannequin displays, especially at Simons. I can be sold on a look in seconds, it really doesn’t take much.

Online beauty stores can also apply this method of shopping by allowing users to mouse over a model’s face and imagine buying the very products that they’re looking at. They usually give credits in magazines as to what exactly a model is wearing, but you’d have to dig through the end of the magazine for that. An online beauty store could ideally benefit from this ease of purchase.

Certainly this is an interesting approach from Barneys, but they would need to work on refining the editorial shop just to make it a little more user-friendly. One advantage over Net-a-porter is having real physical stores in several locations (unfortunately only across America). I think The Gap & co. could use this kind of online business model as they have several brands and they could need the boost. I expect to see similar editorial shops to pop up in the near future.

Image credit: Barneys’ website

Everyone knows the bad economy is driving shoppers away from store retailers and into the arms of the internet to seek the best deals on clothes. As such, wealthy shoppers, who used to have lots of liquid money to play with, are now more guarded than ever and will only choose to splurge on the pieces that are worth the price.

However, every time I grace the pages of Net-a-porter, perhaps the most successful eluxury commerce site today, high end shoes like Christian Louboutin‘s $1500 bootie or a cute Oscar De La Renta sweater, sell out immediately (at least in my size). They’ve also broken ground on pushing the online experience by collaborating with designers to be the first to exclusively sell pieces from runway shows before any other retailer can get their grubby little hands on. Last season it was Halston. This season it’s Alexander McQueen, with a sneak peak look at his collection, behind-the-scenes videos, and yes, be the first to shop 8 exclusive looks from his Pre-Spring 2009 collection right there on the site.

It would seem that designers these days are willing to take a risks in collaborating with non-typical retailers. H&M set the example by having a well-known designer (or at least bleeping on our fashion radars) create a collection exclusively for H&M for November. It’s been a smashing success and the crowds can’t get enough. Target and Gap did the same with Izaac Mizrahi and Roland Mouret. And now, Net-a-porter is boosting its profile as a premiere eluxury commerce site by featuring exclusive pieces from runway collections. Like H&M, I get the impression that perhaps brands like Alexander McQueen and Halston needed some of the publicity to boost up sales, especially with such a current economical meltdown Americans are having. The unique take on this is that neither brand had to resort to designing an affordable collection for the public, they are selling high end collections right off the bat – and they’re flying off the virtual shelves.

Net-a-porter has crafted a great presentation of videos, with an informative and attractive narrative describing the clothes (albeit sometimes a lil too promo for my taste). But it’s great to see the clothes in movement without the “noise” of media people crowding on the benches. There are also bits of slow motion, which is great to really analyze and see how the clothes shift (an option you’ll never get by being at a live show or by watching tv).

Were it not for the fact that money would be an issue, I would’ve definitely snatched up the Column Dress (with removabe shoulder pads!) and the white tuxedo jumpsuit. Hats off to Net-a-porter!

Image credits: Net-a-porter

While there was much fanfare of another high end store establishing itself in Montreal, Toronto-based TNT was sort of lackluster in presentation when I finally made my way to their store last weekend.

I was anticipating a stylized interior with blue lit frosted walls, gray slated tables, and open spacing like the pictures I saw of Toronto’s stores. Unfortunately, even at 5000 sq.ft, the presentation was little more than bland and cozy. Montreal’s TNT had low ceilings and dark wooden walls with a white floor tiling. Clothes were hung up on one single rack that lined the walls in no particular order, finding brands mixed together. There were a few tables containing accessories, and on the main floor there were shelves displaying the shoe collection.

Looks cool right? Montreal’s TNT isn’t as snazzy.

Brand-wise there’s a lot to choose from, and for those who enjoy the hunt of finding something particular and special will perhaps enjoy the non-orderly mix. All of them are of pretty high quality and you can find some gems in here, so I have no complaints of the choices offered.

I myself settled on a Mackage woven wool coat with some leather details. I had to have the sleeves taken in even as an XS, but fortunately TNT offers free tailoring service (and the seamstress did a good job btw).

The problem with TNT is the shopping experience, had it not been for the good choice of clothing, I wouldn’t really return to this store. A store of this size should maximize the spacing and probably would’ve benefitted from multiple frontal (vertical?) racks rather than horizontal since the clothes aren’t properly presented. I like stores who make you want to fend for those looks on a mannequin, or arranges coats so that I can clearly see them when I pass by. These high end clothes deserve to be given some emphasis, they are too beautiful to be buried amongst others. Lackluster presentation can drive shoppers away especially in these difficult economic times, retail stores will really have to step it up if they want to survive here.

Image credit: TNTBlu

It’s The Itchy Season

Bedo is a Canadian-based brand since 1975, offering 6 trend induced collections a year. Style-wise, I don’t have much to say about the brand, other than that it does well for itself as far a trends go, but I thought I should have a look and check out the quality of their clothing.

It’s Fall, so the entire collection has a lot of wool blends. Unfortunately, being that they’re all about “affordable” prices, they don’t use good wool blends. They use the super itchy kind, as I’ve learned at my time at Pellegrino, itchy wool are threads of yarn made of the shortest wool hair (from the back of the neck of the sheep), thus when twisted together, the short end hairs stick out, giving you that itchy feeling. Over time, your itchy wool yarns will tear because the short hairs can’t hold together. High quality wool are made of long hair taken from the back of the sheep, thus feel silky and smooth to the touch. They’re also the most expensive, especially the worsted (tightly twisted) kind.

That being said, I touched nearly the entire Fall collection by hand. All of it felt surprisingly itchy. If I touched anything smooth it was probably of cotton blend and or didn’t use wool at all. So their website and lookbooks may look really nice on paper, but go and touch for yourself, you’ll be sorely disappointed.

Andy The-Anh – Made in Poland

I must admit that this is a disappointment coming from a man who has such a great sense of design and style. I have much respect for Andy The-Anh, but unfortunately, he’s lost some brownie points on quality.

I recently bought a white pencil skirt from his store from his Spring 2008 collection, and it was delightfully on sale for $170, originally priced at $300. I checked it (or thought I did), tried it on, loved it, bought it, end of story right?

I showed the skirt to my boyfriend, proud that I bought something so nice at a discount. He immediately checked the bottom hems and already found a hanging thread that threatened to unravel the hemline. Apparently, the stitching of the lining and the skirt has been shoddily done. Supposedly this hemline should be solid, but because of the stitching method (which leaves faint stitching traces on the surface), it barely kept both the main fabric and lining together. My boyfriend suspects it was a way to cut cost by choosing to use this cheap stitching method (who knew?). He suggested that I should cut the thread before it unraveled any further, and there’s really no method of repairing this at home and would have to seek professional help to get it fixed.

Further investigation has also led me to discover some crooked stitching of the lining and a few end threads sticking out.

Granted, I know I didn’t pay $1000 for this skirt and could probably forgive the crooked stitching, but the loose bottom thread is a real disappointment. This comes from a store that sells $1000 cashmere knit coats, so I was expecting better. So lesson learned: when buying skirts try to get past how gorgeous it looks and check the insides more thoroughly.

I stumbled upon a site while researching crease properties in fabrics and came across a brilliant article on how to spot quality clothing.

What determines quality clothing anyway? Mass consumers have never been taught this. Ever. We don’t learn this in school, you can’t learn from your parents unless they’re in the garment industry, and we don’t really trust sales associates in clothing stores for these important facts. Consumers have a general consensus that luxury goods are better in quality, but I would bet you the majority of them wouldn’t know what defines “better quality.”

You Don’t Always Get What You Pay For….Evaluating Quality in Apparel by Fabrics.net

As per my experience while shopping with my boyfriend who used to work in the garment industry, my crash course has led me to appreciate and look for high quality garments. Fabrics.net is a plethora of articles that helps consumers by unraveling the truth of what to look for in quality clothing.

Some important tips to remember excerpt from the website:

• Before you even go into the dressing room, read the fiber content label, tug at the seams, make sure the garment is free of puckering and hangs straight.
• The yarns per inch in a fabric are a direct indication of quality. Higher yarn count translates into a higher quality fabric. Higher twist yarns in a fabric are stronger, indicating higher quality fabrics.
• Supportive fabrics should be fastened securely, finished appropriately, and should not wrinkle or distort the fabric. Linings should be caught at shoulder seams to prevent slippage and pulling. Linings should have at least a ¾” deep center back pleat to release extra fullness for movement.
• Plaids must match both vertically and horizontally. Matching is costly and may be difficult to find in low cost garments.
• Thread color should match the fashion fabric. Transparent thread, which easily unravels, is often used to cut costs.
• Puckering is a result of poor sewing techniques
• Check buttons to make sure they are fastened securely. (My personal pet peeve)

The list goes on. So the next time you’re out there shopping and wondering what’s quality, just refer back to this list and you should be on the right path.

Image credit: Net-a-porter, Alberta Ferreti Tweed Jacket

With all this buzz of fast fashion stores, I might as well touch upon two retail giants who have yet to make a landmark in Canada that could give H&M and American Apparel a run for their money.

TopShop (UK)

No, not the crappy little store in Montreal Trust that bears the same name, I’ve been to that place twice and their clothes and shopping experience wouldn’t be quite as near as I would expect for a Kate Moss famed store. This UK retailer is owned by Arcadia Group, TopShop along with TopMan are a British sensation with nearly 3000 stores, of which 420 of them are found in 30 countries. So why is it taking them so long to come to Canada?

Last year they’ve announced that their first American flagship store will be located none other than in New York City. A 40,000 sq.ft. behemoth on Broadway will open Fall 2008, making our new H&M flagship look impossibly small at 15,000 sq.ft. The birth of a TopShop flagship store in Montreal might mean the end of Le Chateau as they seem to operate in the same fast fashion styles. While Le Chateau is doing relatively well for itself earning over $240 millions in sales in 2006, its revenue is minute compared to Arcadia’s overall $3.7 billion revenue (even split into 9 brands, one brand would still dwarf our Canadian counterpart).

TopShop would probably be the last of the European giants rounding out St-Catherine, it wouldn’t be surprising that they would have to displace other businesses in order to make room for a TopShop like H&M did with their flagship.

Uniqlo (Japan)

Though H&M may be drawing some attention to Japanese fashion designer Rei Kawakubo this fall, I ultimately believe the public will go for a more sensible Japanese fashion brand such as Uniqlo to make competition with American Apparel. Good quality office wear of chinos, button down shirts, long sleeve tees, and plain collared polos, Uniqlo is affordable comfort.

Though Uniqlo had 3 New Jersey stores a few years ago, the stores performed well below expectations and staggered in sales. Issuing a redirection, Uniqlo opened its flagship store in New York and closed the 3 New Jersey locations as to better reposition themselves on the market.

Uniqlo may not be as trendy as H&M or Top Shop, however they do tap into the market of shoppers who want to look put together without being over the top with casual wear that’s not Wal-Mart. It’s also a bonus that the New York flagship also carries Japanese yukata (summer kimono) for a cheap $40 during Spring, something that some consumers find fun and endearing. As Montrealers appreciate Japanese culture more and more, a yukata corner at Uniqlo would probably perform very well in Montreal as per my observations at this year’s Matsuri Japan festival at the Old Port. Long line ups snaked along the yukata rental booth, and many came owning their very own. At $40, it’s an affordable and fun investment.

Since a good friend of mine has been physically and mentally preparing herself for the big opening of the H&M flagship store downtown, I thought I’d pass by to give her a moral boost. Obviously, I wasn’t in for the hot cheap deals, mainly because the store was packed like a hot club on a Saturday night.

A DJ booth was set up near the escalators on the entrance floor. A sea of shoppers bubbled left and right, not an inch was spared of retail space. Surprisingly, the clothes are still holding togethers as H&M sales associates continually return clothes other shoppers didn’t want and refolding any misplaced tshirt. It was a cacophony of endless chatter and music.

I scanned the first floor for my friend. This collection is the most fashion forward and most suitable for office wear. I made my way onto the second floor where you can tell the more trendy (and disposable) fashions were grouped together. 20-30 girls lined up to try on their goods, some trying to return some items to sales clerks as they passed by with armloads of clothes to restock.

I see my friend pass by and poke her. She appeared more calm than I had anticipated (H&M has a knack of picking very special people to work their sales floor), and had a brief chat with her.

“It’s been insane since early this morning. I think there were like 500 people waiting outside to get in,” she said. When asked about how the staff was handling the onslaught of customers she replied that they were “on edge” as it appears many customers are ill-mannered, leaving food, drinks, trash all over the store (who does that?? Ill-mannered indeed!), trying everyone’s patience. Usually H&M staffers are bold with their opinions and don’t put up with client shinanigans. Still, from my observations, staffers had it together. We’re momentarily interrupted when a female customer holds up a blue long sleeved tee asking if there are any more in size 6. “If you don’t see anything back there where you got it, we’re sold out,” my friend answered politely. Sold out? On opening day? H&M must love that.

Respecting The Swedes

You would think a retail clerk doesn’t know much about that specific style of sweater and color, or the section it came from and would probably want to shoo away pesky customers on a busy day like this…but you’re wrong. After hearing about the kind of training H&M staffers receive, these little helpers are bonafide fashion gurus. I can safely say that my friend knows more about fashion style and trends than I do. Of course, I can’t say much on exactly how H&M functions within their business, but after hearing hours of what my friend has done over her training, I can safely say that working at H&M is nothing like working in regular fashion retail. And it is because of this fantastic business method that they’ve convinced me that they have set the bar in retail organization and service (among other things).

Other retailers should quake in their booties

St-Catherine looked more crowded than usual, and the beautiful day encouraged loads of shoppers to take to the street to shop. H&M bags are everywhere. I took a glance at Guess, located across the street from H&M and I could see in one of the sales associates’ eyes that she was longing to be on the other side, wanting a piece of that Swedish dream. The store was comparatively empty next to their neighbors. I mean, nobody would line up to shop at Guess.

In essence, H&M is magic. They cooked up the perfect storm, and it has Montreal fans raging. Recession? H&M. Plenty of money? H&M. It’s a win-win situation.

Image credit: The Gazette

Having heard news that there were chances of thunderstorm in Las Vegas, I was prepared to spend my stay in dreary rainy weather. But no. What kind of meteorologist says that it’ll rain…in the desert. Take no heed to anyone who says it’ll rain in Las Vegas. Today I baked and toasted under the hot desert heat like an omelette on a grill.

I arrived yesterday to our modest but rather very large hotel 15 mins off the strip at South Point Hotel Casino & Spa. The rooms are large and comfortable, very clean, huge plasma screen and a great view over the hotel’s pool.

But enough about hotel and comfort talk, let’s talk fashion and shopping in Las Vegas.

As I mentioned in my previous post, Las Vegas is building CityCenter on the Vegas Strip right next to the Bellagio Hotel. It’s slated to open in 2009 and construction has already been underway and had progressed much faster than I had anticipated. This patch of land already has the infrastructure to a near completion, a few of the buildings are already halfway through putting on the glistening silvery windows. CityCenter will definitely stand out in the Strip as I noticed many other buildings may be flashy with lights, but many are covered in gold mirror like windows. CityCenter will be all silver mirrored.

Read the rest of this entry »

H&M can now be dubbed as Hu-Mongous, according to The Gazette, it will be 15,000 sq.ft of space. The Grand Opening starts at noon and the first 250 shoppers will get a gift card worth $10 to $200, and each customer who purchases on opening day will get a special gift.

I gotta hand it to them, corporately, they know how to make business. Attracting fashionable clothes at cheap prices, smack in the middle of downtown (will Simons feel the heat of competition?), and enticing shoppers by giving them armloads of freebies. It’s a lethal combo, how can any mass consumer resist?

H&M workers f33r the crowd.

Come November my lovelies, nobody will be safe.

For some reason I get the feeling the 2nd H&M store on St-Catherine West is gonna suffer. But then again, I could be wrong.

P.S. I’ll probably hang out on the street to take pictures, but I stand by my choice, I refuse to buy.