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How Mercedes Benz is Changing the Rules for Fashion Engagement. - Forbes

AmberiePiriends Kasım 11, 2021

How Mercedes Benz is Changing the Rules for Fashion Engagement. - Forbes

How Mercedes Benz is Changing the Rules for Fashion Engagement. - Forbes

Posted: 09 Nov 2019 11:19 PM PST

Rina Sawayama, the Japanese British musician, actor, and model held court at Casa Gilardi, a UNESCO World Heritage site and an architectural masterpiece in Mexico City built by famed architect Luis Barragan. Along with her collaborators of avant-garde industry pioneers in make up and hair sculpturing, she hosted her conceptual activation of the latest "Mercedes Benz's How To" concept for 2019.

As one of Mercedes Benz's chosen protagonist, Sawayama's activation plays into the narrative of the Mercedes Benz Fashion Story concept, an evolution of how Mercedes Benz is producing branded content, creating more interactive stories with immersive and inclusive story-telling initiatives.

" The Fashion Story provides numerous different opportunities throughout the year to champion emerging fashion creative, and bring people from different creative spheres together to generate pioneering ideas," explained Bettina Fetzer, Head of Mercedes Benz Marketing.

In 2020, Mercedes Benz will celebrate its 25th anniversary of their fashion engagement initiatives, signaling a quarter century of international event sponsorships, new talent engagements, and bringing the full force of their global brand name into emerging fashion markets.

Mercedes Benz's interest in the fashion category, known for constant evolutions, innovation, and excellence in presentation, speaks to the core ethos of the luxury auto brand. Its engagement follows three strategic pillars of activations: global fashion weeks sponsorship, highlighting emerging creative talent, and cultivating conversations about pushing boundaries and innovations through fashion stories.

In 24 years of participation, Mercedes Benz has become an influential voice within the fashion industry having sponsored and activated fashion weeks in such cities as Sydney, Mexico City, London, Madrid, Tbilisi, and Berlin. Currently, they are active in 80 fashion events in over 40 countries.

Sponsoring fashion weeks in emerging fashion markets highlights the creativity and local talent and offers international exposure to designers and artists. While each launch offers a global outreach, engagements in the individual markets are activated on the local level as an opportunity for local organizations to engage local and international press, editors and designers. The past two months have seen fashion week activations in Mexico City and Tbilisi featuring sponsored designers.

Evolving from the fashion week engagements, Mercedes Benz began the sponsorship of individual designers, giving them a platform and exposure beyond their home markets and a launching pad into new markets. Operating under the new moniker "Mercedes Benz Fashion Talents", the rising star designers receive the ability to present their collection on a global stage as Mercedes Benz assumes the costs for the designs, production, and implementation of their collections with additional access to industry experts in marketing and public relations as part of an immersive 360 mentorship program.

To date, Mercedes Benz has sponsored over 90 aspiring designers in over 30 global platforms including Prague, Istanbul, Berlin, Mexico City, and Milan.

For over a decade, Mercedes Benz had partnered with some of fashion's most preeminent photographers to tell a more "traditional" story of engagement with a female protagonist and the latest vehicle. In 2017, they decided to revolutionize the concept into engaging multiple protagonists from all creative disciplines, and apply the annual theme that would reflect one of their core beliefs.

Previous campaigns have seen Susan Sarandon and Amber Valetta introduce a next generation of talent, and in 2018 saw designers of Opening Ceremony, a New York based fashion brand, ad Solange Knowles, sister of Beyonce, develop a vision of the future, as shared by their EQ vehicles, Mercedes Benz's electric car.

This year latest iteration of the "Mercedes Benz Fashion Story" selected four protagonists to employ the latest them of " How To," a concept inspired by the ambition of constant self betterment and to try new things, a disruption of oneself, which reflects Mercedes Benz's passion for constant innovation and pushing beyond the best products and services for their customers.

" We recognize that it is not always easy to step outside of your comfort zone and learn a new skill, so we built a collective that would inspire and motivate learning," says Fetzer.

Selected by jury panel and recommendations from industry experts, the four creative from fashion, film, music, and fashion were engaged to be this years' protagonists to partner with artists in different creative spheres to collaborate and push their limits of creativity. One of the protagonists, Lena Waithe, Emmy award winning writer, director, and actor customized garments using upcyled material as her engagement project in London, while singer Rina Sawayama, created live mannequins to display the artistry of make up, facial collages, and hair sculptures, which she hopes will inspire body positivity and self expression.

"For me, it's about the creative process and its collaboration. It's not about me. There's a quote that says when people are watching a performance on stage, they're not there to see the performer, but rather to see themselves in performer. I have to respect that," says Sawayama of her experience as a protagonist.

The fashion stories also motivate to grow their digital community into providing an aggregated hub, @mercedesbenzfashion, for global followers to engage in the journey.

Moving forward to next year celebrating their 25th anniversary, Fetzer identifies social and environmental stability as serious issues and will be placing that conversation at the forefront.

"As a brand, we are passionate about aspirational and sustainable innovation; be it in design or on a social level. It's important that Mercedes Benz is aligned with partners that embody these values and will encourage collaboration, creativity, and innovation on a global scale," says Fetzer.

#mbcollective

@mercedesbenzfashion

The revolutionary contest that reformed women's fashion in the early 1900s - The Week Magazine

Posted: 10 Nov 2019 02:45 AM PST

In early 1915, a young woman in New York City began to plot a modest revolution. Not the kind that involved bomb-throwing, riots, or assassinations, like the one that had sparked a world war the previous summer — hers was to be a social revolution, a stone heaved in a lake that would ripple out and change the world for women. Mildred Johnston Landone, described by a Boston Evening Globe reporter as "a slender, pink-cheeked young woman with a thick pile of ash-blonde hair and a dreamy smile," was preoccupied with the problem of what women wore — and by extension, how they were able to move through the world. She was not alone in her concerns. Five years ahead of the national suffrage victory, the question of where women belonged, in public and professional life, and how they should be treated there, was an urgent one.

Landone's scheme to draw attention to the problem and find a solution was to hold a nationwide design contest for a universal women's garment. According to a booklet she wrote in 1914 to publicize her scheme, the garment should be "built on feministic lines made to conform with our best esthetic standards of beauty," and it should work for women the way a suit worked for a man — allowing her to go anywhere and be anyone. Landone christened the hypothetical dress "the Polymuriel," and it would, she believed, spell freedom for women. To encourage the creativity of revolution-minded designers across the country, she formed a committee that offered a prize of $150 to the winning pattern — the equivalent of nearly $4,000 today.

Landone's explanation for the Polymuriel's odd name was that it applied the prefix "poly-," meaning "many," to the name of her little sister Muriel, although one newspaper suggested, inaccurately, that it was a combination of the names of her two daughters, Polly and Muriel. Whatever the exact provenance, throughout 1915 Landone promoted the Polymuriel like a dedicated stage mother. In her booklet, she outlined all of the benefits of the yet-to-be-created dress, calling it both "a stable commodity" and "a friend in need" — something to rely on that wouldn't go out of fashion after a season. Men's clothing had evolved, she wrote, from "baby blue, lace, flounces, ruffles" to the simplicity and uniformity of the Enlightenment era, which valued intellect over appearance, and now women's fashion needed to do the same. Uniformity was convenient, and it could be charming too — she cited European national costumes and Chinese and Japanese styles of dress, which were all the rage at the time. Those benefits, she believed, would radiate outward, helping to end the exploitation of immigrant women and children in the garment industry, while liberating women and men alike to forge a freer, more egalitarian society. In terms used widely by feminists at the time, she declared that, "As long as we are slaves to clothes, we are slaves."

In 1915, this kind of hyperbole was not unusual. Debates over women's clothing had been fierce for years: Corsets, in particular, were a daily physical reminder of the restrictiveness of life as a woman. Refusing to wear one was still a shocking choice, shorthand for rebellious feminist beliefs, the way "bra-burning" would become in the 1970s. Pants, meanwhile, had been controversial at least since suffragist Amelia Bloomer lent her name to a style of loose trousers in the 1850s. But women's lives, and their wardrobes, were starting to evolve, out of necessity as well as political conviction. Since the 1890s, recognition of the health benefits of physical exercise helped fuel crazes for cycling, gymnastics, dance, golf, and other active pursuits, which required shorter skirts and lighter undergarments. Women designed and sewed their own clothes for these activities, and the appeal of this active wear spread rapidly, like modern "athleisure" styles, from the world of sports to everyday fashion.

The concerns expressed in Landone's booklet about the production conditions of the garment industry were widely shared. Just four years before the Polymuriel contest, New York and the nation had been horrified by the spectacle of the deadly fire at the Triangle Waist Company in Washington Square, which killed 146 people, mostly young immigrant women. The fire drew attention to the brutal, overcrowded working conditions in garment factories, but also to the deadliness of fashion: The "shirtwaist" style that was being manufactured by Triangle in 1911 was falling out of vogue, so the company responded by slashing prices, ramping up production, and cutting corners on worker safety. The fire helped make labor reform an urgent cause among women across the social spectrum, and it was a further catalyst for the suffrage movement. Before women won the vote, the ability to exert boycott pressure on manufacturers who did not treat their workers well was one of the few forms of political agency open to middle-class women. Landone believed that the Polymuriel was political statement against the rapacious fashion industry that was helping to fuel the abysmal factory conditions. In her idealistic vision, the Polymuriel's existence would free women from having to keep up with changing dress styles, allowing its production to be slower and less exploitative, which she hoped might eventually become the model across the industry.

Nevertheless, when Landone first proposed the Polymuriel contest, she found it hard to get interest. According to a report in Leslie's Weekly, she wrote to "hundreds" of women of the plentiful charitable-reformer class, asking them to serve on a committee to evaluate the Polymuriel designs, but all of them "declined the invitation." Perhaps it was because she was otherwise unknown within these socially elite circles, which put heavy stock in pedigree and status. Perhaps, the report suggested, these women believed that the scheme was doomed to fail because women enjoyed fashion too much. But eventually Landone managed to enlist a group of supporters with a pedigree no one could challenge.

Read the rest of this story at Narratively.

Narratively is a digital publication and creative studio focused on ordinary people with extraordinary stories.

From combat boots to pumps, how one veteran is capitalizing on fashion - Fox Business

Posted: 09 Nov 2019 06:57 AM PST

Veteran Recruiting's Kevin O'Brien discusses veteran unemployment and matching veterans with positions that fit their qualifications.

Natasha Norie Standard took a leap of faith in 2017, going from paratrooper to fashion phenom. She started the NORIE Shoe Company, a luxury footwear brand that combines comfort and style for women who want to have it all. After spending 20 years in the military and dedicating her life to protect and serve, many would think launching an apparel line would be a piece of cake. However, being an entrepreneur comes with its own set of challenges.

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Natasha Norie Standard is a veteran turned business owner who launched her own footwear brand, the NORIE Shoe Company.

"The reason it's difficult is because you're the new kid on the block and you still have to prove yourself, and people are like: 'You want to do what?'" Standard told FOX Business.

"This is the hardest thing I've ever done. I was an airborne paratrooper – I used to jump out of planes."

- Natasha Norie Standard/Veteran turned Entrepreneur​​​​​​

GET FOX BUSINESS ON THE GO BY CLICKING HERE

Standard was determined to forge her own path. She fell in love with fashion as a 12-year-old in Indiana, admiring classic pieces in her grandmother's closet. That's also when she got her first "Vogue" magazine.

"You know, living in the Midwest, you have certain sets of clothing. You have winter clothing and you have summer clothing," she said with a laugh. "And then you have spring clothing with purpose, because of the drastic change in weather."'

Armed with her life experience and persistent personality, Standard set off to create a namesake shoe business that provides quality and elegance without the typical pain of pumps.

Luxury footwear business NORIE Shoe Company features classic styles with a modern twist.  (NORIE Shoe Company)

"I will never have a four- or five-inch heel. I will never have a shoe that is designed to be uncomfortable," Standard explained. "My focus is to have beautiful shoes that are wearable and walkable."

Standard earned her master's degree in arts at the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2016. A year later, she studied footwear pattern-making and design at the renowned Arsutoria School in Milan, Italy – where she gained insight from luxury shoe manufacturers who have perfected their craft for more than three generations.

HERE'S HOW BIG TECH HELPS SMALL BUSINESS LED BY VETERANS

When asked what it means to be a veteran and what Veterans Day means to her personally, Standard says America is the best country in the world.

"Being a woman, being a black woman, America gives you opportunities you don't get in other countries. And I can say that because I've been to a lot of other countries."

- Natasha Norie Standard/Veteran turned Entrepreneur​​​​​​

"I believe we have the greatest military in the world to protect our civil liberties and our constitutional rights," Standard continued.

VETERAN USES COMBAT EXPERIENCE FOR SMALL BUSINESS INSPIRATION

Standard will be joining FOX Nation host Abby Hornacek Monday in FOX Square on Veterans Day.

Join Fox News and Fox Business for our special #ProudAmerican Veterans Day coverage beginning at 6 a.m. ET Monday.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ON FOX BUSINESS

Former Zac Posen CFO files lawsuit against shuttered fashion house - Page Six

Posted: 09 Nov 2019 01:36 PM PST

While celebrity-beloved fashion designer Zac Posen's brand was abruptly shuttered last week, it isn't the end of the firm's financial woes.

Former chief financial officer Dominic Miachon-Hobson has filed a lawsuit claiming he's owed nearly $200,000 by House of Z and Posen, famed for his couture gowns. And now he's preparing to widen the suit against billionaire Ron Burkle and his company ­Yucaipa, Posen's major investor.

Miachon-Hobson filed his suit Oct. 11 in New York Supreme Court, claiming he is owed $167,177.51 in unreimbursed expenses.
He states in the suit that he paid for business expenses — including taxes, utility bills and shipping fees — with his personal credit card, and the company failed to pay him back. He ­alleges his wages have not been paid since Aug. 30, and he is seeking damages, attorneys' fees, punitive damages and interest.

He claimed to Page Six, "Even after Ron Burkle and Yucaipa acquired a large portion of the business, it has been wildly underfunded . . . I was told to clear everything up with no money coming in . . . Everybody was so committed to Zac and the company, many of us put our own money in. I allowed them to use my credit card to help the company get credit. I even paid the payroll taxes from my own account."

But a source close to the company tells us, "The business was failing and that's why the funds weren't there." Personal payments made by Miachon-Hobson were "against company policy," adding, "He wasn't authorized to put expenses on his card . . . He signed a clause saying he wasn't going to put in his personal money."

The source added that "no one wanted him to be owed money, but he shouldn't have done what he did. [But] no one will fault him for being loyal to Zac. Everyone was trying to make it work." Posen's board said it was "determined to cease business operations and carry out an orderly disposition of its assets."

Yucaipa had been trying to sell its stake since April. Its reps had no comment.
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