The best thing on a sunday is to go to Mauerpark, and have a Tannenwälder Bratwurst in the sun. This might be the best Bratwurst in town: crisp on the outside and soft on the inside, well seasoned and served with a choice of homemade mustard. (I prefer the Thüringischer Küchensenf)
This is a pretty bad picture of a pretty good dessert. "Pretty good" is actually even understated, since it was incredibly delicious, with a rich and broad variety of spices in uttermost perfect soft-creme-texture.
Pumpkin pot de creme with chocolate speculaas served at Palisaden Supper Club last week.
I recently published a magazine with Supermarkt Studio and Don't Panic. That was fun.
Read this if you want to get it, or come by our ceremony on Saturday at KIM.
(There will be no digital version, this is a classic print product.)
I recommend visiting Omer Fast's Nostalgia I, II & III (at Hamburger Bahnhof until 3. January 2010), a three screen video installation on memory, its construction and its permeability.
Picture: Omer Fast, Nostalgia III, 2009, Courtesy Omer Fast & gb Agency, Paris / Postmasters, New York / Galerie Arratia, Beer, Berlin
Oh my, what a day. It started quite early with Suzy Menkes opening the conference at 9am noting that luxury is like a silent movie star at the arriving of the talking movie. Technology is the all-dominating topic these days, and since we do not want and can not slow down the innovative process, Suzy Menkes suggested looking at the positive sides. What was once a monologue is becoming a conversation, companies will have to embrace the customer's wishes and ideas in order to survive.
And in the end, look how good this is for the world's trees, she remarked before giving the microphone to the speakers.
Christopher Bailey, who, with his likeable and easy manner, inspired the whole room and plausibly stated his own love and interest in everything techie. Burberry's approach to the new media was recently marked with one of the (already) most successful projects of a fashion brand in the web, Art of the Trench. This innovative, yet accessible site is not about following the crowd, but sets a trend and expresses a unique method to response to the newly risen demands of the audience. It took Burberry about three years with constant budgeting to evolve as a truly techno-innovative brand, with using skype and livestreams for fittings and learning from the feedback on facebook and other channels.
Bailey is really open and optimistic when it comes to future developments of fashion - though he sees the challenge for fabrics and trim makers to keep up the pace of fast fashion, he embraces this process, pointing out the neccessity of balancing out and connecting the production of the brand and the needs of the customers.
Following was e-commerce big player net-a-porter.com's founder Natalie Massenet who's statement that "fashion bloggers are responsible of 5% of the revenue" reached Twitter-heights today. What she exactly said was that affiliate is responsible for 5%, which does not need to be used by bloggers alone. Still I am not sure - is this 5% a lot, satisfactory or even few?
After the presentation on the Prada Transformer, smart fabrics and a striking analysis of the current status of the luxury online by Uché Okonkwo the long awaited (at least by me) Jefferson Hack entered the stage to tell us something about the future of magazines. I do, honestly, not know by now how to summarize his information packed speech without consulting the sources he used and shared (send an email to technolux@dazedgroup.com to get them).
He quoted Charles Leadbeater, William Gibson, suggested looking to Japan's mooks and bookazines, emphasized the importance of sharing and collaborating, the not yet to be foreseen enhancement of new technologies like digital paper and smart surfaces, and closed with a future prospect on a new project: AnOther Magazine will come up with a new site combining personalisation and recommendations soon to be reachable at anothermag.com/love.
(For a report on Claudia Schiffer's views on technology I kindly refer you to Julia.)
And this is just for day one! Tomorrow follows Frida Giannini, creative director for Gucci on the direct engagement with the costumers through the web, as well as speeches on the social media in fashion and the answer to the question whether Berlin luxury is the future luxury.
While Hugo Boss' Claus-Dietrich Lahrs uses his speech time to present a boring marketing-brand-blah, I would like to point out, that you will find my thoughts on the IHT Techno Luxury Conference on my Twitter today and tomorrow - for all tweets on the conference check wednesday-london.com.
Suzy Menkes is in town for the International Herald Tribune Techno Luxury Conference - I had the honor to meet her for an interview and asked her about the "editorialista" phenomenon, fashion editors all dressed up looking model-like:
Suzy Menkes: I don't think the business of showing yourself at a fashion show just started with the internet, not at all. When I first went to the Paris shows, which was at the end of the 70s, the british students used to manage getting themselves cross the barriers. They didn't have any invitations for any shows, but they would parade around where the shows were held, wearing the most fantastic outfits. And it wasn't quite the same as now, because, you know, a lot of showing yourself right now is more showing that you got a certain style that's been developed by somebody, whether it's the Balenciaga or Balmain look or whatever. But this was purely individual style, more of what you get in Berlin, than what you get in London today. So I mean, I would argue that dressing up for fashion shows is going on for a long time.
Though today it gained a bigger presence through streetstyle blogs.
Yes, absolutely. I think everything that has to do with fashion being original is what the industry needs. Otherwise it gets very tired. It's good to have new things. It's like what the Sartorialist did - the journalist in me always longs to arrange the Sartorialist's pictures in order to make some fashion statements or explanations, though I know this is not the purpose of the site. But as a journalist you can't stop being a journalist. Same way as I not look at fashion shows, asking whether that would look good at me. I take myself out of the occasion.
The so promoted styles seem so according to a certain ideal of being tall, skinny and beautiful, and the style is standardized by wearing all labels..
I don't think it's about that. I very much appreciate people who got a passion for fashion, because I have a passion for fashion. I think it's great if people just do their own thing and get it together. And this is what I actually think about the whole business of blogging, you know some blogs are rubbish, but some are really good and really interesting. And the fact that various people bubbled up to the surface because of the internet has brought a great value to fashion.
And what do you think about 13 year old blogger-star Tavi?
Well, you know, what I really think about her is that I hope, when she gets dumped so cruely, as she will be, no doubt, by all the fashion people who've written her up, she can sort of cope with that. I met her in New York, and she seems quite level-headed, quite sensitive to not get carried away. I think it's very tough for her, she's been made by the Rodarte sisters... But I like what she says, I think it's interesting.
So do you think blogging as it is now performed is a hype, or does it have the potential to establish a critical method to write about fashion?
I think all people are looking for somebody with a critical judgement they can trust and they are interested in. But critical don't has to mean, that you don't like it. Sometimes there is a lot of rudeness and ignorance on the blogs. I find it quite depressing, especially when they are attacking a designer, who has given a tremendous value to the world and is maybe slightly fading. But you still have to take in the equation, what she or he has done in the past. Other people are too gushy, everything is fantastic and wonderfull. And my question is: why? If it is so wonderful, why is it so wonderful?
I'd like to think that there will always be sources of intelligent criticism, to put it the best way. There is a certain freshness about the best of the bloggers, that I find very fun and satisfying and often interesting. Certainly when you come to Twitter, the questions that where send to me via Twitter to ask Nathalie Massanet and the others are very good and I sit there thinking, well, why didn't I think of that question? It's really smart. Twitter is a great example for a sort of give and take. Of course there are annoying things. I am so not interested to know when somebody sits in the front row and their shoes hurt, but someone in the frontrow might also make a really good tweet, where the 140 characters can say something really funny and punchy. It just depends on the person.
Im Prinzip die Fortsetzung von diesem Artikel.
Das BryanBoy Portrait ist von mir.
De:Bug 137. Bild klicken zum Lesen.
Ich würde ja mehr posten - aber es geht nicht, die Zeit fehlt. Zur IHT Luxury Conference bin ich aber wieder da. Bis dahin irremachende Klänge und das Versprechen, dass alles, was mir jetzt die Zeit zum Bloggen stiehlt, ganz großartig ist. (Und hier gezeigt wird)
All pictures, except stated otherwise, are made by me and are licensed under a Creative Commons-License
