FASHION INDUSTRY NEWS – WEDNESDAY

Good morning designers!  The Wednesday edition of the StylePortfolios.com Daily Fix is up and ready for your reading pleasure.  What are you waiting for?  Get a coffee, sit-down and get your day started-off right with the The Daily Fix…

H&M GOES OMNICHANNEL WITH COACHELLA COLLECTION – RetailingToday
Just in time for Coachella, H&M is teaming up once again with the world-famous California festival by creating a co-branded coed collection.The H&M Loves Coachella collection will launch in the U.S. in stores on March 24 with a sneak peek online on March 23. The Coachella festival is held yearly in Southern California in April. “Last year, H&M was the first brand to team up with Coachella to develop a clothing collection. The success was so rapid and so widespread, we decided to partner again to create an even richer offering this season. We love Coachella because we enjoy its democratic spirit and the bonding experience it creates. To us, Coachella is about using fashion and music to express energy and that is what is reflected in this collection,” says Ross Lydon, designer at H&M.

WHY ARE DESIGNERS BANNING SOCIAL MEDIA AT THEIR SHOWS? – Refinery29
“Though the first of four major global Fashion Weeks hasn’t even wrapped yet, this season has already involved quite a few departures from the traditional Fashion Week format. There’s the instant gratification of see-now-buy-now shows (or specific items within a collection), like at Rebecca Minkoff, Banana Republic, and Diane von Furstenberg. All signs are pointing toward a more consumer-friendly calendar on the not-too-distant horizon. Yet some designers are doing the opposite and straight up disconnecting by banning social media at their Fashion Week events. ”

PUMA CONFIRMS 7-FIRGURE BRAND AMBASSADOR DEAL WITH KYLIE JENNER – FashionMag
“Last week, the American press reported that footwear brand Puma signed a partnership deal with Kylie Jenner. Today, it is being reported that the brand confirmed the 7-figure deal at Agenda trade show in Las Vegas.”

GET READY FOR AMAZON’S OWN PRIVATE-LABEL CLOTHING LINE – Business Insider
“Amazon could be one step closer to launching its own private-label clothing brand, according to the fashion news site WWD. The report says that Amazon has been ramping up hiring for its Amazon Fashion Private Label team recently, including one position that’s described as, “an entrepreneurial, analytical, and highly motivated [senior] sourcing manager to join our team to launch new high-quality products for our global customers.” “They will be an expert at selecting factories across the globe that can reliably deliver products on spec at high quality levels and targeted costs,” the job description said.”

KATE HUDSON’S CONTROVERSIAL COMPANY JUST TOOK A MAJOR STEP TO COMPETE WITH LULULEMON – Business Insider
“Fabletics must be looking to get a competitive edge. Kate Hudson’s athleisure company plans on opening 75 to 100 stores over the next three to five years, Forbes reports. As of now, Forbes notes the company has only six brick and mortar stores, and 40% of in-store sales come from shoppers who are ‘members’ of its subscription program. However, the majority of the company’s sales come from its website.”

RODARTE MARKS 10 YEARS WITH AN ETHEREAL COMEBACK COLLECTION – Yahoo!
“Ten years ago the Rodarte sisters, Kate and Laura Mulleavy, flew from their native California to New York with a handful of dresses they’d made themselves (without any professional training), and showed them on the first Friday of Fashion Week, in the most unpopular time slot of 9 p.m. The dresses were delicate and subdued and impressed the small audience that got a glimpse of the pieces that fateful night. Season after season afterward, the gowns became more diaphanous and futuristic — clothes you imagined you would wear if you were a mythical warrior goddess from another time. Their shows became these perfect fashion fantasies. And then reality seemed to hit for a bit, with some of their most recent collections becoming a tug of war between their dreamlike inspirations and the need to make wearable — ugh, that word! — clothes that they could actually sell. And hey! no fault in that, girls gotta make money, but the collections were bittersweet memories of former greatness.”