While in Europe we tend to think that Celebrity fragrances are not really a good business, you can ask the american industry. They have made millions of dollars with this new segment. Here some figures.
The first ever celebrity fragrance to be a big hit was White Diamonds by Elisabeth Taylor with Elisabeth Arden group since 1991. Lately we got Glow by Jennifer Lopez in 2002. Only the first year it generated 60 million dollars of sales and still today it is on the top 10 most sold celebrity fragrances. And since then, many others tried some of them being a success for a long time.
So here is the 2011 ranking of celebrity fragrances made by Forbes magazine:
#1 White Diamonds by Elisabeth Taylor – 1991
54 million $
#2 Driven by Derek Jeter – 2010
27 million $
#3 Heat by Beyonce – 2010
21 million $
#4 Unforgivable by P.Diddy – 2006
18 million $
#4 NYC by Sarah Jessica Parker – 2009
18 million dollar
#4 Fancy by Jessica Simpson – 2008
18 million $
#4 Harajuku Lovers by Gwen Stefani – 2008
18 million $
#5 Usher by Usher – 2010
16 million $
#6 Glow by Jennifer Lopez – 2002
12 million $
#6 In Bloom by Reese Witherspoon – 2009
12 million $
And soon we will have the next big hit, Fame by Lady Gaga. For sure it will represent millions. They started a huge advertising campaign that will be followed by a massive distribution program. Here is the advertising:
Who are we missing? Here my top list to come (my bet):
– Kim Kardashian
– Kayne West
– Justin Bieber
– Robert Pattinson
I am not really used to talk about Vogue as I am not sure it is really necessary but this year the Parisian September issue attract my attention. In deed Vogue got a new look and it is something that does not happen often. Check it out.
Vogue Paris is flaunting a redesign for its September edition to offer a new look-and-feel that the brand hopes will confirm its position as the leading women’s fashion magazine.
As Vogue will always be over the top, they decided to launch nor one but 3 different covers for their new rebooking magazine. All photos were taken by Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott and they feature Kate Moss, Lara Stone and Daria Werbow.
With Kate Mosswith Lara Stonewith Daria Werbow
The new design was created by Artistic Director Germain Chauveau and it is supposed to be more minimalistic, more essential. As we say, sometimes “less is more”.
According to Luxury Daily, here are the main changes in the magazine:
“Key physical changes include remodeled typography, new section names and a fashion opinion column called “Le point de vue de Vogue.”
There are 214 ad pages in this issue of Vogue Paris.
There will not be any additional marketing opportunities for luxury marketers at this time, but hopefully the new look of the magazine will reaffirm Vogue Paris’ position as the leading luxury fashion magazine.
“This September issue is as strong as the last,” Ms. Royant said.
“The redesign has not been used in negotiations to attract advertising for the September issue, but as an innovative, creative new magazine it is bound to appeal to advertisers and confirms our position as the leading women’s fashion magazine on the market,” she said.
Interestingly, other luxury-focused publications have used their September issues as a launching pad for redesigns.
For example, Condé Nast Traveller used its September issue to launch a redesign under new editor Melinda Stevens with advertisers including Chanel, Omega, Christian Dior and Louis Vuitton to help kick it off.
The new look is defined as “wittier and edgier” and is likely being done to correlate with its new editor Melinda Stevens, who came on board this month.
What do you think?
LA
Info sourced at Luxury Daily and Vogue press release. All images are copyrighted with no reproduction rights available.
Eleven years since the tragic terrorist attacks in New York city, the new World Trade Center is getting into shape. Lower Manhattan is getting a new skyline and it looks not bad at all. Here the pictures:
Info sourced atArchitecture Digest, WTC and Silverstein Properties respective websites. All images are copyrighted with no reproduction rights available.
In Fashion, there are big brands doing good or bad quality and there are small brands doing what they can. And there are promising brands that have the aim to propose a qualitative and essential work. And that is Monsieur Charli.
When Virginie Lépron had the idea to create Monsieur Charli, she basically realized, by just observing the men who surrounded her, that they all had a urgent need for a Brand, proposing good qualitative accessories for them.
As men, we do not have much accessories to play with (compared to women) so the few ones that we have are simply key to our look. So that was her motivation and that is why she created a line of men accessories as practical as elegant.
Monsieur Charli collection is segmented in 3 lines: The Elegant men, the Globe-trotter and the trendy urban men.
So the philosophy of creation is quite away from the fashion clichés and more into the path of timeless key accessories for the men’s daily life.
In order to create the perfect collection, Monsieur Charli built up a true network of competent partners from all over the world bringing their incredible talents to the service of the modern man elegance.
Each one was chosen for their specific talents: Leather craftsmanship, exotic skins, metal sharpener, hand broderies or even textile printing.
At LuxuryActivist we built up our wish list, so check it out:
ARISTOTE BAG
Cabin size 55 x 35 x 25 cm
The perfect week-ender bag in Bufalo leather and double zipper closure.
2 large pockets inside
Recommended Retail Price: 190 euros
ALDO
35 x 45 x 15 cm
Buffalo leather bag
Zip on top + leather flap with pressure
2 handles
Flat zipper in the back
Various interior storage (wallet pocket, cell phone and key hook)
Also exists in black.
Recommended Retail Price: 150 euros
The famous “Cabas” for men that you can wear as handbag but also in the shoulder. thanks to its specific height, you can easily swipe a laptop or your tablet.
ALLURE
65 x 13 cm
Silk
Recommended Retail Price: 45 euros
A beautiful and elegant silk scarf to be wore crossed over the chest. A nice basic reminding a tie.
ALABAMA
65 x 65 cm
Wool gauze with metal eyelets
Recommended Retail Price: 30 euros
This scarf is easy to tie thanks to the metal eyelets, elegance with a touch of rock n roll.
So for the moment the brand is developping essentially in France but they might expand in the future. In the meantime you can discover their website (in french) and the rest of their interesting collection.
Spotify becomes one of the biggest social music sharing in the planet. It took them 2 years since its launch in 2008 to reach 10 million users (2,5 million in pay subscription). Today we are over 15 million and growing. It is a great way to share and listen to the music we like. With the subscription we can even listen to all the music we want on mobile and without internet connection… why should we buy music still?
The web 2.0 and the internet economy brought a second social and industrial revolution since the one at the end of the 19th century. Never so many changes happened so fast in terms of human behavior in society. The music went digital, the films, the art, the relationships, the news, the radios, the television, books… well basically everything that can be on a binary base, we have it!
Nevertheless, there is something quite interesting with the digitalization of content, it is the un-materiality of it. In deed before all of this, we had at home books, cds, DVD and video cassettes. Real true 3D objects getting dusty and taking your space. We paid for one copy of the artistic work and we had it at home. We could enjoy it alone, in groups or even friends could borrow it from you for an evening, a week or more.
Today, things are a little different. With the VOD for online rental movies, and Spotify for Music, you do not “own” anymore a copy of the artistic work. You just have bought the limited rights to listen or watch it.
In terms of Films, basically you get the same thing as in the traditional rental shop. You pay a few dollars for the evening and you can watch your preferred movie during those 4 to 8 hours rental.
With music, things were much more complex. You do not wish to “rent” music. Either you listen to the Radio or you own a copy of the music you are listening to. When the digital revolution came into the Radio topic, we got the birth of services like Deezer in which you could listen to music, create your own playlists, basically generate your own personal radio station. Soundcloud brought a more “connoisseur” approach and added interesting features for Social Sharing. I will not speak about Myspace as it has no interest anymore.
Spotify founders Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon
Spotify takes you a little further. Of course you can listen online to music, you can also create your own playlists and listen to other’s people playlists. But since Spotify came up with their paid offer on mobile, you can basically take all the music you want everywhere with you and even listen to it off-line. You download the music streamings inside the app and keep it as long as you wish for off-line listening.
So the question is: Why should we still buy music? With a monthly subscription of around 10$US/month, you can basically have access to all the music you wish no matter if you are online or offline. So for the price of one music album per month, you already paid your Spotify subscription. Today out of 15 million users, 7 million have a paid account.
This looks tempting and Spotify makes everything so that you get the subscription after a while. You start with a free account and during 30 days you get a premium account in which you can listen to all the music you wish, benefit from all the mobile features. After one month, you can keep a free account and get to the basic free subscription. During 6 month you can listen to music online with a Desktop. After 6 month you are limited to 6 hours per month. Nothing is for free on this world. Finally you realize that you pay for a radio station that broadcast only the music you want. Not bad, especially if you listen to music on mobile a lot.
The confidential Swiss Watch Manufacture Vacheron Constantin revealed this month an interesting art partnership with Raghu Rai. His new exhibition is called Divine moments and it is a beautiful enigmatic vision of India daily life.
RAGHU RAI, born in 1942, originally trained as a civil engineer, before taking up photography at the age of 23, in 1965. A year later, he joined the New Delhi-based national weekly magazine ‘The Statesman’ as their chief photographer, moving on after 10 years to become the picture editor with the prestigious Kolkata based weekly, ‘Sunday’. In 1977 he returned to New Delhi to become the picture editor, as well as its active photographer, for the leading national weekly, ‘India Today’. Henri Cartier Bresson saw an exhibition of Rai’s in Paris at the Galerie Delpire in 1971, and was sufficiently impressed to nominate him to the world-famous Magnum Photo Agency. In the same year he was honoured by the Indian Government with the Padmashree Award-approximately India’s equivalent to a knighthood.
Watch here a mood video about this amazing exhibition:
Unlike many Magnum photographers who have chosen to explore the world on their photography assignments, Raghu Rai has deliberately remained focussed on the universality of Indian life and its many cultures. His work has become known world wide both through exhibitions, book publications and through major international magazine photo-essays. This exhibition has been selected from his wide-ranging photographic oeuvre, to focus on his work in the photography of the street and other public spaces. He has written ‘I like being amongst my own people; I merge with them; I don’t wear stylish clothes; I have one camera with zoom lens so I do not alarm people; no-one says ‘Here comes the photographer’’. Immersing himself in the life of ordinary, anonymous people to record the minutiae of their lived experience, he pays homage to the ever-changing diversity of life in the subcontinent.
Here the website for more details:
http://www.tasveerarts.com/exhibitions/raghu-rai-divine-moments
Exhibition schedule:
Seagull Arts and Media Resource Centre, 36C S.P. Mukherjee Road, Kolkata – 13 July – 24 July 2012
The Stainless Gallery, Ground Floor , The Mira Corporate Suites 1 & 2 Old Ishwar Nagar Okhla Crossing , Mathura Road, New Delhi – 15 September – 25 September 2012
ICIA, Mumbai – 17 October – 23 October 2012
The Gallery at Sua House, 26/1 Kasturba Cross Road, Bangalore – 07 December – 28 December 2012
Design Gallery, NID, Ahmedabad – 01 February – 10 February 2013
Info sourced at official Press release from Vacheron Constantin and from mattersofart.net. All images are copyrighted with no reproduction rights available.
Getty photographer Ed Giles decided to highlight and reveal what he called the “New Burma”. It is a serie of amazing photographs that captures the essence of this exotic place… the way it is really today.
Photograph: Ed Giles/Getty Images
Ed Giles is an award-winning Australian photojournalist based in Cairo, Egypt. Ed works with photography, video and multimedia production methods to explore in depth, human stories.
Photograph: Ed Giles/Getty Images
Ed’s photographic and multimedia work has been widely recognised as aesthetically compelling and groundbreaking in format. In 2011, Ed was awarded a Walkley Award for Online Journalism, Australian’s highest honour in the trade, for work with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Online Investigations Unit. Ed has also received the Australian Council of Deans of Education Award for Emerging Journalists in 2011, and a United Nations Media Peace Prize for Online Reporting in 2010.
Photograph: Ed Giles/Getty Images
Ed has worked in Iran, Israel/Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Greenland, Burma, Nepal, the Caribbean Islands and French Polynesia, among other corners of the world. His work has been published and distributed widely, including The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, The Telegraph (UK), The Sydney Morning Herald, The Independent (UK), Getty Images, Reuters Editor’s Choice, ABC 7.30 Report, ABC Lateline, ABC News 24 and ABC News Online, The Age, The Herald Sun and The Jakarta Post.
This fall, one of the most awaited biographies is called “Waging Heavy Peace”. It is the memoirs of Rock star Neil Young. Born in 1945 in Canada, Neil Young is considered as one of the most influential musicians of his generation.
In his biography, Neil Young describes a beautiful kaleidoscope of his life, from private, towards his status of rock star. We can read also many details from his start with groups like Buffalo Springfield, Crosby, Stills & Nash and recently the Crazy Horse.
Moving from the snows of Ontario through the LSD-laden boulevards of 1966 Los Angeles to the contemplative paradise of Hawaii today. Candid, witty and revealing, this book takes its place beside the classic memoirs of Bob Dylan and Keith Richards.
The picture was taken from the january 26th 2006 photo shooting for Rolling Stone magazine.
Waging Heavy Peace will be available in October 2nd 2012 in all good libraries with a hint of rebellion 🙂 LA
Info sourced from Amazon library trends and Rolling Stone magazine archives. All images are copyrighted with no reproduction rights available.
Claire Milner is what we could call a virtuose of light and color. After an amazing Marylin Monroe’s portrait made of 65,000 Swarovski crystals, now she will reveal beginning of September a brilliant portrait of Queen Elisabeth.
The “Swarovski Queen” will be exhibited in Ripon Cathedral, North Yorkshire, UK, as a feature of the Great North Art Show from 1st – 23rd September. It is a prestigious annual exhibition in a magnificent venue – the cathedral has a history dating back over 1300 years. The exhibition will feature artwork by some of the UK’s finest contemporary painters and photographers. The exhibition shows “tomorrow’s art today”. Basically they try to capture the “Air du temps” in a precise and qualitative snapshot of the best artists of today and tomorrow. For more information, please check the official website: http://www.greatnorthartshow.co.uk
Here is what the artist says about this outstanding portrait:
“I created the Swarovski crystal portrait of Queen Elizabeth ll in celebration of the Diamond Jubilee. The portrait incorporates 14,000 Swarovski crystals, including special effects Aurore Boreale crystals, which reflect more than one colour depending on the light and viewing angle. The stone colours I chose to use in this portrait of the British Queen dynamically change from red to white to blue and refract in a rainbow spectrum, each one individually applied by hand. The technique I use of optically mixing colours is influenced by the artists of the pointillist movement and is critical to my work with Swarovski Crystals” – Claire Milner.
Inspired by the great painters of pointillism, Claire Milner pushes the boundaries of this technique by adding the lighting effect and depth of Swarovski crystals. During this new exhibition, the artist will also display a portrait of David Beckham and a surprising paper dot Elvis.
Zürich is the biggest city in Switzerland with 370,000 inhabitants. Probably the smallest big city in the world. For the past 10 years, the entire city landscape is changing a lot. The city administration is pushing urbanism projects in order to re-establish certain areas into offices and homes. We can see it especially on the industrial areas in which old warehouses and factories get now a new life and look. Hotels, cinemas, theaters, a technopole with many creative companies and restaurants. And talking about food, here a great address in Zürich of a very modern and elegant restaurant called Rüsterei. It is placed in the heart of the biggest up-class shopping mall of Zürich: Sihlcity.
Sihlcity is the pioneering implementation of an original idea of urbanity: the associations of various uses in a manageable place.
The diverse range of approximately 100 000 m² of floor space includes several restaurants, bars, cafes, cinemas, community center, office space, a health and wellness center, a hotel, a shopping mall, service areas and city apartments.
The idea of the Rüsterei is to welcome you in a contemporary ambiance made from the contrast of a ancient place with a history and the latest trends of fooding. The Swiss artist Heinz Julen transformed this old paper factory into a great place, between lounge ambiance and modern bistrot.
They invested approximately 4,3 million swiss francs to rebuild the entire place and the result is outstanding.
The perfect combination of lights, furniture and friendly people makes the place very cosy and perfect to chill-out after a hard day work. The place can also be rent for special occasions, just ask them!
In terms of food, the Rüsterei is completely in the trend of Bistronomy.
You can have access to high-cuisine for a descent price. All the ingredients are very fresh and from the best origins.If you wish to learn more about this place just connect to their website (in german): http://www.ruesterei.ch
