Uniqlo
On Georgia Trip, Loden Dager Designers Find Models, Steinbeck's Ghost
The fashionistas behind men’s wear collective Loden Dager are this week’s guest bloggers on T Magazine’s Web site. Today, the New York-based designers—Melissa Vail, Matthew Sandager, Oliver Helden, Paul Marlow and Alex Galan—wrote in during their road trip to Georgia, where they’re hoping to find some good ol’ inspiration.
The idea for the trip, they explain, was born when their pals in a band called The Great Lakes—an indie rock group now based in Brooklyn—invited them down for New Year’s. The designers soon realized that Athens, Ga. might be the perfect place to see physical manifestations of the inspirational concepts Loden Dager’s been exploring lately—specifically “images from the American 1940’s—W.P.A. artists, and texts like The Grapes of Wrath.” Flexing a little literary muscle, they write: “The sleepy college town abandoned by all but the locals also seemed like the perfect backdrop against which to do a shoot our spring collection.”
From there, the fearsome fivesome detail their exploits, charioted southward in an S.U.V. rented in New York. From Cabela’s sporting goods store in Philly, they made their way across the Mason-Dixon line, where “two compact rainbows resembling flying saucers greeted us.” Trippy times two!
Aside from waxing poetic on the sights and sounds of the American South, the design team has also been casting a few models here and there. They write: “[I]t’s interesting how nobody says no when you offer to make someone a fashion model, even if it’s just for the day.”
In two weeks, Loden Dager, which launched in late 2006, will be previewing their Fall 2008 collection in Paris. That show falls shortly before they must prepare a full presentation for New York Fashion Week in February, when their Spring 2008 line will be hitting stores. This coming May, Loden Dager’s capsule collection for Uniqlo debuts.
Dubai Firm Wins Barneys Bidding War
In the early hours of this morning, the Japanese retailer Fast Retailing declined to match a competing bid to buy Barneys New York, paving the way for the Dubai firm of Istithmar to proceed with its purchase of the chain of fancy stores from Jones Apparel Group. read more »
Barneys Suitor Losing Money On UNIQLO Store
Fast Retailing Inc., the Japanese retail giant that owns the UNIQLO chain of cheap-chic clothing stores and which put together a $900 million bid to buy Barneys New York from the Jones Apparel Group, downgraded its forecast for the third time this business year.
According to Reuters:
Having built up an empire of more than 700 stores in Japan, Fast Retailing has pledged to invest up to 400 billion yen over the next three years on acquisitions in a bid to boost its global presence and double annual sales to 1 trillion yen by 2010. read more »
