Is this the best website ever?



YES.

http://www.dukeofuke.co.uk/

Luxury brands learn to chillax

Doing trends for a luxury brand at work right now and, consequently, been getting heavily into luxury's place in the digital world. Given the rules luxury brands break, and the barriers they overcome in the fashion world it is surprising how slow they have been to find their place in the new world of online. Naturally, the democratic, free-for-all that is the Internet is the very culture fashion houses abhor. They no doubt fear the dilution of brand and total lack of control.

Unfortunately for luxury, however, this need to "own" the spaces they exist in is outdated. Up-and-coming wealthy people are no different to up-and-coming regular people - they are on Facebook and read their paper online and send emails and expect their brands to be just as instant and available. Add this to the fact that recession-time spending is best done behind closed doors, away from the judgmental poor, and you have a compelling argument for creating an amazing luxury presence online.



Through the research, I'm seeing some (if surprisingly minimal) luxury successes online. DKNY have an in-house PR who tweets on behalf of the brand. Rather than pretending to be Donna herself, the PR is a well placed voice to make announcements about the company. Gucci has gone all out with an extensive and regularly updated Facebook page. The page now boasts over 500,000 friends and includes product and show news, photos and films. Proving that a luxury brand can "let go" and make thousands of new friends around the world. Best in show is Start, the Shoreditch boutique owned by TV personality Brix, who promotes herself and the store across platforms on Twitter, YouTube, blogs and the transactional website.

As high-end brands wake up to the fact they will gain, rather than lose customers, by claiming their www's, I'm excited to see luxury brands shape the future of online in the same way they approach their clothing lines. If Alexander McQueen can reach an audience of 77 million by allowing Lady Gaga to wear his shoes in her latest video, there's got to be something right about signing up.

Blog love

Kind of obsessed with this photographic blog from Purple Magazine right now. Each photo summons up that wonderful Parisian knack for effortless style, sexiness and decadence. How do they manage it?

Incredible where you can get sartorial advice these days!



Send your queries to the Innocent Rabbit by clicking here.

Snow day

Well, it turns out that splurging in Jack Wills will only see you good for the first two days of a big chill and several inches of snow. Day Three and I'm pining for a selection of Brora longjohns and pretty much anything from the Chanel ski range. Love love love it.

Firstly, Happy New Year Camilla's Store readers!

And what better way to launch into 2010 with a slow stroll around the new Jack Wills store in Islington? Maybe I've been in the bosom of my North London "Intelligentsia" family for too long, but I fell upon the JW sale as if my Sloanie little life depended on it. Antiques lovers will no doubt be mourning the loss of the emporium at the end of Camden Passage, but the space does wonderful justice to the Fabulously British brand. JW is expert at working with a location, rather than against it. Like their townhouse in Marlow, which retains the original layout of the house to create a unique retail experience, the new digs in Islington highlight the high ceilings and ornate finishings. Downstairs, beside the roomy changing rooms, a small stage, no doubt for their "Unsigned" to play, has also been created. It's a fun store, perfect for the Yuppie Islington clientele.

Glee: The phenomenon cometh.

Paid for or otherwise, today's Guardian ran a full page spread on upcoming new show to E4, Glee. The teaser, pilot episode, which aired a few weeks ago, was a heady cocktail of High School Musical 1,2, and 3 combined with Mean Girls, American Idol and 30 Rock. Feeling sick yet? Think what you will, but this show has already been a massive hit in the US due, in no small part, to its escapist appeal across all the generations. There's singing and dancing for the kids, hot teenagers for the teenagers, and biting wit for the grown-ups. It really is one for all the family.



Furthermore, there are two trends into which it has brilliantly, if obviously, tapped. Firstly, everyone feels like hell - they've no money, no jobs and they've just had a pretty slim Christmas. The family appeal of Glee allows everyone an hour of Betty Draper-style family time in front of the flat screen. And by Betty Draper I mean perfect, charming and happy not Manhatten-slinging, gun-toting blonde bombshell. That comes later. Watching Glee, Americans can escape to the Disney fantasy they grew up with. But will Brits do the same?

Secondly, Glee follows in the footsteps of shows like X Factor and American Idol in sending old songs straight back into the charts. And the charts mean money. As more and more people watch TV on their computers, the distance between watching and purchasing is narrowing. Like that song? Buy it in seconds on iTunes. Love what they're wearing? It can be delivered the next day. Gossip Girl goes part of the way there, in terms of making the products the characters use integral, if not downright critical, to the plot. But Glee seems to be the first drama which actively ties entertainment to purchasing.

Glee airs over here from 11th January. Watch this space.

Holidays are coming.

So nearly there now, just another few days and we can collectively collapse onto our respective sofas and start drunkenly demanding Ferrero Rocher for breakfast and being thoroughly unreasonable about practically everything. And so, it may be that this little find has come too late for us to send on to our misguided loved ones, but perhaps bookmark it ready for next year, thus avoiding the inevitable Christmas morning tantrums.

Vital Stats Cheat Sheets from Cookie (who, I think, I may have just fallen into deep, graphic design related, love with).

Happy Holidays!

So freakin' Christmas

I've seen the Holidays are Coming coca cola ad, I've started a Spotify xmas playlist, I've punched a tourist on Oxford Street, and I've made mincemeat part of my 5 a day. One could say Christmas '09 has arrived. But it wasn't made properly official until my friend unveiled his Ralph Lauren Xmas Jumper in an unsuspecting pub in Highgate. You could have heard a bauble drop off the tree when he threw open his Aquascutum trench to reveal the wonder that is a £200 xmas sweater. The heavy knit, the square cut, the obligatory reindeer... it ticked all the boxes. Christmas has begun. Now, when does the pre-lunch mulled wine drinking begin?

Loving verbally abusive cotton bags right now. Just because we're being eco-friendly doesn't mean we need to be cheerful about it.





Top: Modern Toss. Bottom: Goodone

*For those reading this today in the Shoreditch area, Goodone are having sample sale til 10pm tonight.

Trend addict, moi?

On a blissful day off work, I nipped down to the Royal Academy to see what all the fuss is about the Anish Kapoor exhibition. A Renaissancist at, I struggled to understand exactly what made it 'art', but the show is certainly entertaining and engaging. Best of all was a egg-timer shaped mirror which reduces your reflection to a single stripe of colour. When surrounded by people, the mirror acts as a perfect chart for "trending" colours. It seems black, dusky blue, dark grey and highlights of teal are all hot amongst art lovers right now. Who knew?

The dark future of social networking

Check out my latest blog post on the Eye Magazine blog
http://bit.ly/Camilla3

And for those of you who just cannot get enough of me, I suggest you also swing by the Moving Brands blog too.

Amazing



Who is this child? Where does he live? And might he sell me his t-shirt?

Mad about Mad Men

Season 3 of cult series Mad Men had its finale on US tv last night, causing my friend, The Austin Blonde, to exclaim "OMG OMG OMG... I cried and was shocked and I felt like my heart was being squeezed the WHOLE episode. I can't bear the thought of having to wait a year to see what happens next!!!! Torture". So, as you can imagine, us Brits are climbing the walls for the latest season to make an appearance in the schedules. Not least in the hope that it will be accompanied by the commercial tie ins our cousins across the pond enjoyed. Banana Republic (below) and Brooks Brothers both payed homage to the show in the States, allowing both Mad Men and Mad Women to get that 50's, Martini-for-breakfast, "Not on my watch", look.



So what can us Brits look forward to in terms of Mad-Menning our wardrobes? TopShop does Mad Men?? Maybe we need to ask ourselves... What would Don Draper do?

WAH Nails pops up at Selfridges



Dammit, now EVERYONE will have leopard print nail do's!

Textures from Anthropologie

The tricky science of Anthropologie

Anthropologie has opened! Three glorious floors finally filled with all the covetable, strokeable, must-have things we've been drooling over online for years. As we are coming to expect from Regent Street's new retail additions (check out the National Geographic store), the space at Anthropologie is beautifully executed, drawing the eye up and down via a vast living wall and ornate chandeliers. On-brand sales assistants say 'hi', while carrying wicker baskets of merchandise and a pretty floral scent infuses the store's "multi-sensorial" offering with a warm, welcoming feeling.



Here's the 'but' bit and it's the same issue Whole Foods, Banana Republic and Abercrombie forgot about... The English. You can have thousands of stunningly curated floor space, vast changing rooms and eye-popping merchandising but as soon as you let the English public roam all over it, the fantasy is broken. It's difficult to explain. Maybe, because they invented consumerism, Americans are just better at playing the part of awe-struck shoppers, striving to become the target audience the brand is looking to attract. Like a character in a play, Americans seem to meld into their retail environments as if they're been there the whole time. Not so much with us Brits. In our lilac macs and awkward M&S handbags, we stomp around the shops with a permanently aggrieved look on our wind-chapped faces, snatching clothes off rails like dishrags off a washing line. And so, like TopShop and Abercrombie before it, Anthro is assigned to the list of shops "Only worth visiting outside of normal shopping hours so as to avoid the riff raff". For other retail snobs out there, these times include 11.30am on a Sunday, 6-7pm on a Monday and 2.30 - 4pm on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Sad but true.



Photos by HG.

I had been intending to post on why Shoreditch is a dead area in terms of trends but then two things happened which totally put a smile on my face and made me love the crazy, modern world we all toddle around in today. Firstly, I received this spammy email from Argos.

"Thank you for your recent enquiry on argos.co.uk

You recently enquired about a Go Go Pets Hamster Deluxe Funhouse Gift Set., Cat No. 384/1534, on the Argos web site, which was out of stock.

We have just received further stock of this item."



Strange, because I've only been to Argos once and that was when I was 16 and also enjoyed Hooch in a bus shelter. And, perhaps more importantly, I don't even own a hamster.

Secondly, my friend The Designer told me that he often gets text message alerts from a school in Inverness reminding him to attend various parents evenings, story times and nativity plays. The Designer is 24 and lives in London.

In a time when we can so easily curate the digital information we receive, the moments when a piece of rogue data slips into our hands can often be pure, human, and hilarious gold.

Shoreditch post to come!

(As if we don't know) How to spend it.

When is luxury not luxury? Apparently when it's online. A recent Guardian article discussed the recent move online by the FT's How to Spend It Magazine. The article queried whether the launch of a luxury site was in-keeping with the current global mood, while the FT insisted that watches, yachts and "below the radar florists" were all part of the "flight to quality" by discerning consumers. Timely or not, the one thing no-one pointed out was the quality of the new site. Like so many other luxury sites, at first glance HTSI is another Flash-based disappointment. Discussing the topic with my friend, the Social Media Guru, we both agreed that Net-a-Porter was the only user-friendly place on the net to conjure true aspiration. Vogue's online presence, Style.com, is a muddled mess, whilest Burberry completely missed the whole idea of 'exclusivity' by allowing the general public (!) to live stream and comment on a recent Fashion Week show.



This only leads me to conclude that luxury brands have approached the Internet as an after-thought. At a time when people are embarrassed to be seen in-store splurging on high-end goods, these brands should be 100% focused on creating an online presence which replicate the in-store environment. Luxury brands are at the forefront in curating inspiring, memorable and decadent retail experiences and there is no reason why the brand's extension online should not feel just as personal and unique.

Back from The Future

Yesterday was pretty special. Spent most of the day at the Future Laboratory's trend briefing on the New Normal having my mind blown by trends, insights and their super-slick presentation style. Then I went for dinner with my good friend The Social Media Guru and talked shop and plans to attend SXSW Interactive over a bowl of hummus.

In the briefing, founder Chris Sanderson talked about 'triangulation' - the combination of intuition, observation and interrogation - in forecasting trends. It highlighted the very element which has always made trends so fascinating to me, and which makes it an integral part of branding. That nothing stands in isolation. Everything that happens comes from somewhere and has direct and indirect effects on the things around it.



They packed a huge amount into 4 short hours, looking at how "Generation Jones" - the second largest demographic at 34 - 45 years old - are reconciling their desire to consume with making the "right" ethical, financial, and behavioral choices. They asserted that it's no longer cool to be cool, that we're more interested in a "participatory" culture which is collaborative, warm and friendly. They showed us the house of the future where screens become architectural and ovens teach us lessons in reducing our carbon emissions. I left with my head spinning but looking forward to slowly digesting and applying their insights.

Image via http://ffffound.com. If it's no longer cool to be cool, maybe Snow White no longer wants a bite of the apple.