CAFFEINE HIT: Chaumet is offering holiday shoppers a warming solution to combat the cold wind as they cross Place Vendôme this winter. The jewelry house has teamed with start-up Noir Coffee Shop to open a pop-up kiosk serving hot drinks and pastries opposite its historic flagship.
Open starting Thursday through the end of December, the counter is dressed in the brand’s signature blue with glittering light installations. Available for takeout only, the selection includes a specially created honey drink in reference to Chaumet’s Bee My Love collection.
Launched last year, Noir Coffee Shop, based in one of the flea markets in Saint-Ouen just north of Paris, roasts its coffee in house and sources it from small-scale, independent and ethical producers. The coffee shop will dedicate 10 percent of the pop-up’s takings to Women in Coffee, an NGO supporting female coffee plantation workers. Chaumet has said it will also pledge double the sum raised to the organization. Between 20 and 30 percent of plantations are run by women, it stated. — ALEX WYNNE
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AWARDS HOST: British and Jamaican activist and actress Jodie Turner-Smith will host this year’s Fashion Awards, which are due to take place Monday evening at The Royal Albert Hall in London.
Caroline Rush, chief executive officer of the British Fashion Council, organizer of the annual fundraising spectacle and London Fashion Week, said: “Having taken the film industry by storm, her poise, grace and exceptional style has propelled her into the fashion industry, where her ability to evoke joy and communicate her authentic self through her red carpet looks has secured her authority on fashion’s global stage.”
The major prize of the night, the designer of the year award, will be given to a British or international designer whose collections have made “a notable impact on the industry, defining the shape of global fashion,” the British Fashion Council said in a statement.
Its nominees include Demna for Balenciaga, Johnathan Anderson for JW Anderson and Loewe, Matthieu Blazy for Bottega Veneta, Miuccia Prada, and Pierpaolo Piccioli for Valentino.
Designers competing for the independent British brand awards are Bianca Saunders, Erdem, JW Anderson, Molly Goddard and Wales Bonner.
The contestants for the BFC foundation award — which goes to a recipient or shortlist of the BFC’s support schemes, such as Newgen, the BFC/Vogue Designer Fashion Fund, the BFC/GQ Designer Fashion Fund and the BFC Fashion Trust — include Ahluwalia, Chopova Lowena, Nensi Dojaka, S.S. Daley and Wales Bonner.
Nominees for the model of the year award include Adut Akech, Bella Hadid, Lila Moss, Paloma Elsesser and Quannah Chasinghorse.
Stylist and founder of Perfect magazine Katie Grand will be given the Isabella Blow award for fashion creator and outstanding achievement award, while Dazed Group’s Jefferson Hack will receive a special recognition award for cultural curation for empowering youth through creativity that night.
This year’s multicolored glass speers trophy is designed by artist Yinka Illori, jewelry company SkyDiamond, and glass design studio The Glass Foundry.
Diet Coke was named the principal partner of this year’s event earlier this month. — TIANWEI ZHANG
MORE CHARITY: OTB’s Only the Brave Foundation is launching the third round of its “Brave Actions for a Better World” charity initiative, which debuted in 2019 to mark the association’s 10th anniversary.
Open to any Italian nonprofit organization, the initiative pledges to donate 300,000 euros to fund projects aimed at fighting poverty, supporting employment and access to health care and education. The OTB Foundation asks applicants to submit projects that fall within the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goal for a future without poverty.
“In light of the difficult historical moment punctuated by national and international emergencies, we decided to up our economic effort to increase our support to people and areas experiencing difficulties, inside and outside our national borders,” said Arianna Alessi, vice president of the OTB Foundation, which since 2008 has developed a range of social responsibility projects worldwide.
The two previous rounds pledged 200,000 euros and were centered on a single objective. This time the OTB Foundation is introducing two projects.
The first one is geared toward the development of “Empori Soldiali,” or “Supportive Emporiums,” in Italy to support underprivileged families. Citing data from Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, Alessi highlighted that 5.6 million people in Italy live below the poverty line, whom the foundation aims to help.
The second project is dedicated to female and youth empowerment and has an international scope, aiming to help discriminated and fragile women and marginalized teenagers living in conditions of poverty via education and employment programs.
Associations can apply for both programs from Tuesday to Jan. 26 through a dedicated website hosted by Italia Non Profit, an organization that regroups local nonprofits and supports them with operations and administrative duties with digital tools and assets.
Since its establishment in 2008, the charity arm of the OTB Group, the parent company of brands including Diesel, Maison Margiela, Marni, Jil Sander and Viktor & Rolf, has supported about 300 international projects focused on social development with an impact on the lives of 300,000 people. — MARTINO CARRERA
GAME PLAY: Fashion is a game that British fashion designer Saul Nash is pacing through.
The winner of the 2022 International Woolmark Prize and recipient of this year’s Queen Elizabeth II Award for British Design is teaming up with Mercedes-Benz and SK Gaming on a limited capsule collection that will be presented at the 25th anniversary event of SK Gaming taking place on Wednesday in Cologne, Germany.
Nash has designed two pieces: a black long-sleeved compression shirt dubbed The Digital Gradient Top with thumb loops and a half-zip on the high-closing collar, and a reversible sport-style jacket with a lilac-blue mesh pattern made from recycled polyester on the inside called The Dashboard Jacket, featuring brand logos of both partners on the back.
The garments are priced starting at 89 euros and will be available for preorder with customers receiving them in 2023.
“This project was an exciting space to explore three worlds that at first instance may not fit together. But the beauty of gaming is that anything is possible as there are infinite possibilities. It was inspiring to create garments through the lens of Esports, marrying this with the sleek design and exquisite heritage of Mercedes-Benz, whilst envisioning this in the world of movement that I’m grounded in,” Nash said.
“With performancewear grounded so much in movement, the question was how we could bring gaming, which is often a static sport, to life through movement,” he added.
Nash worked on a special choreography for the social media campaign featuring dancers and content creators Georgia “Troubleinc” Paraskevopoulou, Lukas “Mango” Schändel and Niklas “NiklasNeo” Noerenberg.
Mercedes-Benz became the first car manufacturer to invest in an Esports team in 2019. — HIKMAT MOHAMMED
L.A. WINTER: Revolve is introducing “Winterland,” its newest pop-up.
A holiday-themed event, held in partnership with AT&T, it’s open to the public — all ages — from Dec. 9 to 11, noon to 9 p.m. But festivities will kick off on Dec. 8 with a private, invite-only party ready to welcome 1,000 guests inside the 20,000 square-foot space, located at 55 North La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles.
Similar to the retailer’s previous events, which range from in-store activations to its big-budget Revolve Festival during Coachella, live experiences allow the company “to form even more meaningful connections with our community of customers, influencers and brands we offer, in person,” Raissa Gerona, Revolve’s chief brand officer, told WWD.
“It’s also important for us to activate during the holiday season to remind the consumer of the vast offering we have on the site including holiday dresses, outerwear, cozy wear, beauty, holiday gifts and so much more,” she continued.
A shopable event for its Gen Z and Millennial consumers, visitors can expect “holiday cottages full of the season’s best cozy wear, wreath making, cookie decorating and holiday caroling,” with AT&T hosting “a Hot (Cocoa) Spot,” cotton candy station and ferris wheel. Revolve stockings will be available with beauty goods benefiting Baby2Baby — the L.A. nonprofit providing essential needs to children living in poverty across the U.S.
“Whether they are sharing photos or videos of their favorite brands and styles, managing their dynamic e-commerce platforms, or giving expert advice in real time, one thing is key — having a secure, reliable connection is table stakes for these creative entrepreneurs,” Erin Scarborough, AT&T’s senior vice president of fiber broadband and marketing, said in a statement.
Past Revolve events have brought out the Kardashian-Jenner clan, Megan Fox, Lori Harvey, Angus Cloud and performers Post Malone, Cardi B and Offset, among others.
The company was founded in 2003 by chief executive officers Michael Mente and Mike Karanikolas. — RYMA CHIKHOUNE
START WITH ‘A’: Mathias Augustyniak and Michael Amzalag have spent the past three decades translating the world into a diversity of graphic alphabets for contemporary artists, musicians, fashion designers, brands and magazines.
With their latest tome, the design duo behind M/M Paris has created the dictionary to help people read it.
“It’s quite strange, we’ve always created worlds we invite people into, but it’s the first time we’ve given people the keys to how they were built,” said Augustyniak during an interview.
“Letters From M/M (Paris)” is their third book from Thames & Hudson.
Augustyniak and Amzalag perceive their work as the construction of a visual language. While they describe their previous two-volume monography, “M to M of M/M (Paris),” as an “atlas” of their work, this publication explores the meaning — and creative process — behind it.
Out now in Europe and to be published Stateside in January, priced at $75, it catalogs 90 of their fonts in chronological order. A first section explores the history of each, a second features typographical plates and a third highlights the realizations for which they were used.
A separate collector edition of three individual books — allowing them to be observed in parallel, for example — is set for next spring in a limited print run of 300 copies.
Augustyniak and Amzalag had been thinking about the project for a number of years. “It’s something we have sensed for a long time, but we never had the time to realize it, and we hadn’t found the right person for the job, which is that of a historian or archeologist,” Amzalag explained.
That person came by way of Paul McNeil, a graphic designer, writer, educator and a specialist on the history of printing, author of “The Visual History of Type.”
“Exceeding the conventional limits of the field of graphic design, M/M’s studio practice might be more accurately described as a semiotic laboratory,” McNeil wrote in his introduction to the work. “Since the beginning of their partnership, Amzalag and Augustyniak have been ardent explorers of the universe of signs.”
The process of putting the book together has taken five years, the design duo said, and has been a little like therapy.
“He forced us to do a lot of inner work that was very intense, it was almost like psychoanalysis, with weekly sessions,” said Amzalag.
That involved confronting their memories of each of the typefaces and characters, and how and why they were created.
“It’s a relief in a way, because before, all of that information was in our heads. It allows us to exteriorize it all,” Augustyniak commented.
The typefaces featured include one-off artistic commissions and visual identities for luxury brands including Byredo, Loewe and Louis Vuitton. They range from Monotrash, created in 1992 for eDEN, a fanzine celebrating electronica, house music and the French rave scene of the time, to the geometric alphabet designed as the visual language for Galeries Lafayette Champs-Élysées when it opened in 2019, informing both its interior design and its communication materials.
Björk, who has collaborated with the design duo regularly over two decades, wrote the foreward.
“They are kinda like font-psychics, they tune into each project and become that, they are the method actors of letters and transform seamlessly from one award-worthy role to another reading clairvoyantly what shape of A, B and Cs are needed in each play,” she said. — A.W.
META FOREVER: Count Forever 21 as the latest retailer to offer physical products tied into the metaverse.
One year ago, the Los Angeles-based company, owned by SPARC, a joint venture between Authentic Brands Group and Simon Property Group, launched a virtual product collection on Roblox. The retailer partnered with Virtual Brand Group, a metaverse creation company, to build a Forever 21 Shop City, a “fashion retail experience” on Roblox, which is also working with brands as varied as Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger and PacSun to offer experiences in the metaverse.
Now in celebration of that anniversary, Forever 21 will offer physical product for the first time. The F21 Metaverse Collection will include an assortment of hoodies and T-shirts as well as the Forever Beanie, the top-selling item in Forever 21 Shop City.
In addition, during the month of December, Forever 21 Shop City will offer a limited-edition virtual accessories collection, launching one item each day that will be available for only 24 hours.
“Since its launch on Roblox last year, Forever 21 has pushed boundaries, becoming the first and largest retailer to make on-trend virtual fashion accessible,” said Justin W. Hochberg, Virtual Brand Group’s chief executive officer. “Today’s launch showcases how Forever 21, in partnership with VBG, has created an entirely new way to innovate, design and retail fashion globally. Roblox is a phenomenal platform, and I can’t wait to reveal the next exciting thing consumers can expect from Shop City.”
Winnie Park, CEO of Forever 21, added, “Our goal with Forever 21 Shop City was to expand how we engage with our customers and make our products accessible to all. With the success of the Forever Beanie in our Roblox store, we are thrilled to bring this beloved product and the entire F21 Metaverse Collection to life.”
Prices will start at $14.99 and the collection will be available in stores and online beginning Thursday.
According to a 2022 Metaverse Fashion Trend Report from Roblox, 70 percent of Gen Z users say they borrow ideas from their physical selves for their avatars. — JEAN E. PALMIERI