CAUTION: Reading this book will forever change the way you peruse the racks at Bergdorf's or flip through the pages of Vogue. Taking the reader through six months in a designer's life, Fashion Babylon follows an anonymous A-list British fashion designer looking to break out across the pond. Structured around three of the annual "must" industry events, this irresistible work of reportage goes inside the well-cut seams of the fashion world, where women are paid tens of thousands of dollars for simply getting dressed and where a wrong skirt length can cost you your career. You'll find out how a collection is put together -- from the objects of inspiration to the catwalk, into the shops and, hopefully, onto the cover of a magazine -- and learn who goes to the shows and where they sit...and whose backside they have to kiss to get there. Witty, naughty and jam-packed with celebrity gossip, Fashion Babylon decodes the markups and the comedowns, the fabulous extremes and the shoddy shortcuts behind one of the most lucrative and secretive businesses in the world.
'Something strange occurs to guests as soon as they check in. Even if in real life they are perfectly well-mannered, decent people with proper balanced relationships, as soon as they spin through the revolving hotel doors the normal rules of behaviour no longer seem to apply.' All of the following is true.Only the names have been changed to protect the guilty. All the anecdotes, the stories, the characters, the situations, the highs, the lows, the scams, the drugs, the misery, the love, the death and the insanity are exactly as was told by Anonymous - someone who has spent his whole career working in hotels at the heart of London's luxury hotel industry. However, for legal reasons, the stories now take place in a fictitious hotel known as Hotel Babylon. More than a decade is compressed into a day. Everything else is as it should be. The rich spend money, the hotel makes money and the chambermaids still fight the bellboys over a two-pound coin.It's just another twenty-four hours in an expensive London hotel.
The 2.5% (small group – big influence) introduces a ground-breaking model for cool’s cyclical reinvention, which explains how idiosyncratic ideas become the norm. A fresh interpretation of Everett Rogers’ widely applied 'innovations diffusion', the novelty is its focus on the Innovator (the first type on the innovations diffusion curve, preceding the Early Adopter). Innovators only constitute 2.5% of the population but this globally scattered minority of rule breakers is influential. They are the creators of new trends and new consumption patterns that will shape the mainstream. Based on insider knowledge of cutting-edge cultures, academic rigour and marketing agility, this robust model is designed to inspire future-proof ideas for market research, innovation and communications professionals but also anyone interested in where trends come from and how and why people adopt them. Very insightful, sure to be a success - Marcelo Amstalden Möller (formerly Global Director, International Brands & Craft Portfolio, HEINEKEN Group B. V; Vice President, Global Brand & Corporate Marketing Communications · Wolters Kluwer) Extraordinarily engaging - Peter Nash (Chair of Programme Committee, inaugural ESOMAR FUSION Conference) A fantastic new analytical narrative […] fun, thought-provoking [and] well worth a read Dr Nick Baker, Chief Research Officer, SAVANTA; Non-exec Chair of the MARKET RESEARCH SOCIETY (MRS) Very inspiring [and] groundbreaking - Akiko Hoshi (Head of Qualitative Research Advancement, INTAGE QUALIS, Japan) Fully illustrated with original images (not stock photography!), the story features truly inspiring characters and connects the dots between the seemingly unconnected. Readers will be globe trotting: from Detroit, where fascinating communities of makers have taken matters into their own hands (following the city’s bankruptcy), to London’s uber gentrified neighbourhood of Shoreditch where generations of artists and creative types have acted as its advance troops, from underground market gardeners using left over coffee beans to grow mushrooms in Paris to roof top urban farmers in Hong Kong, from raves in St Petersburg to citizenship protests in New York City, from fashion parties to fashionable clubs and many more. What all the protagonists have in common is their vision to generate (economic) value whilst also creating value for society and their ability to influence brands and corporate businesses to follow suit. This generation of Innovators drove the climate and social inclusivity that started to dominate the corporate and societal agenda in the years following the COVID pandemic. The ideas for the model were developed over three decades, which we call 'cool cycles of reinvention'. The first two decades (1987 – 2007) were presented in The First to Know (how hipsters and mavericks shape the zeitgeist - see here: www.thefirsttoknow.info). Ideas were then put to test in real time over a third (2007 – 2017). The cultural framework proved reliable and The 2.5% was born, introducing the-first-to-know innovation diffusion model. Like the visionary characters it celebrates, The 2.5% is breaking new grounds. It doesn’t fit categories. It doesn’t lend itself to ticking boxes. The story goes on...It doesn't stop with the book! #the2point5percent https://www.tftk.info/the-2-5
Rampant global counterfeiting has led the fashion industry to seek ever greater enforcement of its intellectual property (IP) rights. Yet, as this hugely informative book shows, this is not new. Fashion designers and entrepreneurs, as well as manufacturers and tradespeople in the broader textiles industry from which fashion springs, have always struggled to convert existing IP rules to an industry that was—and is—configured by the pressure of intrinsically fleeting consumer tastes and trends. The distinguished author, adding to the series of major works that have made him a leading authority on IP law, triumphantly reveals in great detail how society has constructed IP in association with textiles so as to accommodate it to the particular characteristics of fashion that emerged in the last century. More than two hundred sources, many of them for the first time available in English, illustrated with fifty figures, allow the reader to directly encounter those who have made and continue to make the IP of textiles and fashion. The underlying raisons d’être of such aspects as the following become brilliantly clear: how fashion designers protect their creations against the spread of knock-offs; how fashion entrepreneurs appropriate prestige and reputation; how an iconic design becomes a brand or acquires secondary meaning; and how such inventions as the sewing machine and the cotton gin affected IP rights in textiles and fashion. Each source is preceded by a note placing it in its social, economic, and legal context. The sources are structured in two chapters (business identifiers—trade and certification marks, geographical indications—and appropriation of knowledge and creativity—patents, designs, copyright, and trade secrets) so as to permit an easy understanding of the enchainment of important moments that have contributed to give IP for textiles and fashion its special configuration, in particular the transition from textile law to fashion law. With this book, listening directly to the voices of those who have made and make IP, academics, students, magistrates, professionals, and the legal community as a whole will have a clear and realistic sense of how the combination of the entrepreneurial spirit with the imperatives of human consumption has designed and continues designing the special scope and limits of IP as applied to textiles and fashion.
We all wear clothes. But are you concerned that your fashion choices are mere vanity or wasteful or environmentally harmful? The question is how to look our best in a responsible and wise way that avoids guilt, vanity, and immodesty. Jules and Graham Cole bring their expertise to bear on this question in this unique collaboration: Jules as a fashion designer and Graham as a theologian. This book pays attention to differences in body type and the challenge of best fit and does so in an environmentally sustainable way. In this work, you will find hints on how to dress and how to coordinate a wardrobe that is economically responsible and minimizes landfill. The book seeks to honor the God of the Bible who values beauty. The discussion culminates in considering the ultimate wardrobe change. Fashions come and go, but to be clothed with Christ is never out of date.
