the ultraman is so much stronger than kanye you know.

we have been compiling a helpful designer list of who’s-in and who’s-out of all the major fashion houses with their ceos and their parent companies for the past 6 months. it is in .html format for your cut-and-paste convenience.

alternatively, you can open the ‘information’ tab on the right sidebar and click on designers’ musical chairs.

please email us for any misses, hints, and ‘rumors’ of the fashion game.

the right: never stop learning and employing new technology

jean paul gaultier might not be the hottest name around at the moment, but it will be your mistake to ignore him. take his marketing campaign for the first anniversary (1st birthday if you will) of his ‘madame’ fragrance, it is the most creative online promotion to date. over the next few weeks, he will slowly reveal the secret identity of a mystery guest though his website and a network of blogs, thus ensuring the word-of-mouth internet phenomenon (no, we are not part of that network. and yes, we realize we are being ‘used’).

we speculate that the secret guest is the artist brian donnelly, better known as kaws.

lesson learned: technology is a tool like a typewriter, but you still have to come up with a story.

on the left, we have the classic birkin bag by hermes.
on the right, we have the brand new peekapoo bag by fendi for spring 09.

the birkin is an iconic bag with a history. but, it’s not the most user friendly bag to carry around – you can barely put it though your shoulder, and that closure is not form-follow-function to say the least. (how many times have you seen the bag wide open with 1 strap on the shoulder with the other falling off?) well, one thing for sure – the waiting list is more than 2 years.

now, why would fendi referencing such a thing? they don’t need to be on the coattails of hermes long history, heritage, nor their projection of quality (leave that to the chinese, like me). and it’s not even a great functioning bag. is that any truth to the karl lagerfeld retiring rumor then?

on the left, we have a hermes bag dated before 2003.
on the right we have a comme des garçons louis vuitton crossover bag from 2008.

of course, we don’t dare to say our beloved rei kawakubo was copying (oh my god!). but for someone who is widely and blindedly admired for her originality, this simply shouldn’t have happened. it was a lazy design in her high standard. the collaboration was disappointing in not realizing its earth-shaking potential. it was a business-as-usual project, and that is just unusual for comme des garçons.