DOHA, Qatar — Just before the madness of fashion week season began, I couldn’t resist accepting an invitation from Lama El Moatessem to visit Doha, the capital city of the tiny nation of Qatar, to attend the opening of the Peter Marino-designed flagship for Toujouri, Ms El Moatessem’s three year old fashion brand. How did a [...]
The Business of Fashion

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil – Arriving in Rio de Janeiro in the middle of the Brazilian summer, in a country experiencing an ongoing economic boom, certainly puts the bleak, uncertain economic outlook of wintry Europe and North America into sharp relief. I was invited to Brazil on the generous invitation of ABIT, the Brazilian Textile and Apparel Industry Association, [...]
The Business of Fashion

TEL AVIV, Israel — For people who live smack dab in the middle of the world’s most politically charged region, Israelis are a very warm and welcoming bunch, keen to show a side of the country that doesn’t make it into most international news reports. As is true for most places in the world, in order [...]
The Business of Fashion

NEW YORK, United States — From Jean-Paul Gaultier at Montreal’s Musée des Beaux Arts to Hussein Chalayan at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, this has been a year of high-profile fashion exhibitions. The grand daddy of all these shows is the Alexander McQueen Savage Beauty exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New [...]
The Business of Fashion

MUMBAI, India – From the minute I landed in Bombay—as everyone here still calls it—the rapidly shifting nature of contemporary India was apparent. Instead of waiting in agonisingly long queues at the airport, I breezed through immigration, customs and bag collection in only 45 minutes. That’s faster than one can make it through most terminals [...]
The Business of Fashion

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — While Sao Paulo Fashion Week kicked off on Friday, the industry’s eyes have been on Brazil and its booming fashion sector for a few weeks already, specifically on Rio de Janeiro and its own designer showcase, Fashion Rio. The weeklong run of shows in the country’s second city traditionally precedes [...]
The Business of Fashion