A life in tatoos… and Birkin bag holidays.

A scarf tale…

“Ancient Rome is one of the first origins of the scarf, not used to keep warm, but to keep clean. Called the “sudarium” which translates from latin to english as sweat cloth was use to wipe the sweat from neck and faces in the heat of the desert. Originally worn by men around their neck or tied to their belt. Soon women started using the scarves, which were made of cloth and not made of wool, pashimina or silk and ever since the scarf has been fashionable among women.”

If you don’t know what to do with your beautiful scarfs  here we go with some Hermes suggestions.

A scarf can be a outif focus and has the power to add color and style.

Be careful!  Like everything in fashion this can be a major success or a complete disaster….

Alligators happy with recession.

As Sales Vanish, Skins Stay on Alligators

 

 

 

After five years, Tommy Fletcher and his alligator farming business are facing irreconcilable differences.

“It’s like a marriage,” he said. “It was a bumpy road, and then all of a sudden it was over.”

The alligator industry makes for an odd mix of hardy men on the bayou who smoke Camels and drive crumbling pickup trucks, and Paris and New York fashion setters who consider it reasonable to spend $12,000 on an alligator-strap watch.

This peculiar relationship worked well enough for decades, but it has soured as of late. Last year Louisiana farmers, who produce most of the world’s alligator skins, collected over 500,000 eggs from the wild. This year, for the first time, most farmers did not pick up any.

The economy is the lead culprit. Since the fall of 2008, even wealthy customers have begun balking at the price of alligator skin products, which can range from the expensive to the wildly expensive. Bumper crops in previous years, people in the industry say, left an oversupply just as the luxury market began to falter.

But some farmers insist that the newfound frugality of the Gucci set cannot by itself explain the absolute washout of the alligator business. More than a few are beginning to blame the practices of executives in the European fashion business.

“How can this industry fall out so quickly?” Stephen Bonnecarrere asked while tossing live alligators into bins at his father-in-law’s farm outside Houma. “It happened too fast.”

Since the 1980s, the State Department of Wildlife and Fisheries has worked with farmers to maintain the state’s alligator population, estimated at one million to two million.

Alligator farming is hard, messy, costly work, and the lifestyle could not be further from that of the eventual Bergdorf Goodman shopper browsing for a pair of alligator skin loafers. Farmers, often in father-son teams, mark alligator nesting sites from helicopters, then go into the swamps by boat to gather the eggs, fending off mama gators with a pole. (By law, 12 percent of the grown alligators are returned to the wild.)

The landowners are paid for the eggs, and it is expensive to raise an alligator once hatched. The big ones — those that could end up as lavender handbags — tend to bite one another, making the skins worthless. So roughly 9 of 10 alligators reach their demise when they are only about four feet long.

Stolid men wade into shallow tanks and pull the alligators out by hand. Biting happens. After the gators are killed with a stab to the brain, they are skinned and sorted: heads and claws for the French Quarter souvenir shops, meat for the Cajun restaurants, guts for turtles, dogs or anything else whose tastes run that way.

full article:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/30/us/30gator.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss

Bread and butter

 

 

In their first issue titled ‘Hate,’ the online magazine Flamboyant presents a collection of designer bread—their rendition of ‘Daily Bread.’Although, a far cry from the Biblical meaning, the ‘Bread Spread’ they’ve put together is amusing nonetheless. The bakery delights are created by famous designers like Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Burberry, Valentino, Comme des Garçons, Hermes, Vivienne Westwood and Maison Martin Margiela. Each designer bread is complete with price hang tags, and as you’ll see, these baked goods are made with some pretty expensive dough.

If you haven’t guessed by now, one click on the Louis Vuitton roll and you will realize that this designer bread feature is all a spoof.

 

http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/designer-bread

http://www.flamboyantmagazine.net/

Hermes addiction

The Ultimate Hermès Sale

Auction prices for the luxury maker’s signature Kelly and Birkin bags soar despite the downturn

By CHRISTINA PASSARIELLO

Paris

At the Artcurial auction house’s sale of vintage Hermès this week, an assistant balanced a chocolate-brown crocodile Birkin bag on his white-gloved fingertips as he paraded it around the room.

Bidding opened at €15,000 (about $22,500), and two clients calling in by phone furiously one-upped each other. Within less than a minute the price of the few-years-old bag had jumped to €25,000, shooting €5,000 past the high estimate and far more than the bag’s retail price.

The appetite for Hermès, vintage or new, has strongly resisted the slump in luxury spending during the economic crisis. Tuesday’s sale of 631 items—from bags and scarves to garden pruners and bridge sets—raked in €824,206, surpassing the €725,101 sold at auction in May, a record.

Hermès is the only luxury fashion label to have entire auctions dedicated to it. While the company doesn’t authorize any of the auctions, the two per year held by Artcurial, one of Paris’s best-known auctioneers, are considered the most prestigious. Fetishists, socialites, collectors, students and tourists all flock to Artcurial’s two day-long events.
The house of Hermès expects its sales to rise slightly this year, it said at the beginning of the month, amid an estimated 8% fall in global sales of luxury goods this year, according to consultancy Bain & Co. Sales in its core categories of bags, silks (scarves and ties) and apparel are still strong. That’s particularly true for the company’s signature leather bags—its Kelly and Birkin bags have provided a steady stream of revenue even in the midst of the crisis.

Handmade in France, the two bags are longtime classics—the Kelly was baptized in the 1950s after Grace Kelly clutched it on the cover of Life magazine; the Birkin was created for singer Jane Birkin. Awareness of the bags exploded in the 1990s, the era of the “it” bag, but Hermès was only able to boost production as quickly as it could recruit and train craftsmen to make them. Bags disappeared moments after appearing on store shelves, and years-long waiting lists popped up for handbags that generally list for thousands of euros. Since the downturn, it has been easier to find some Birkins and Kellys at stores, but waiting lists remain for particular colors or skins.

“These are objects with a soul, with a past. They’re unique,” said Artcurial’s resident Hermès expert Cyril Pigot, ducking beneath a row of silk scarves hanging from the walls of the gallery. He theorizes that women want their Kelly bags looking broken-in during a down economy so they don’t seem as ostentatious. “It’s much more chic to have a crocodile bag with a 20-year patina.” Mr. Pigot, who sources items from wealthy families and estate sales, prices his items at about 50% to 60% off the original list price and hasn’t lowered his estimates because of the economic crisis. Tax and commission add another 40% to the hammer price.

Vintage items from other houses such as Louis Vuitton, Goyard and Yves Saint Laurent are sold in themed auctions. Yves Saint Laurent’s estate went on the block in February in what critics called “the sale of the century,” but it was the deceased designer’s art collection, not fashion items, that drew crowds.

Michael Tonello, the author of “Bringing Home the Birkin,” who bought more than $1.6 million in Hermès merchandise in one year to resell, says Hermès “is not really seen as fashion—it’s seen as an investment in your place in society.”

At Luxury, a high-end second-hand shop in Zurich, Paris and online, Peter Nitz sells Hermès bags and scarves dating back to before World War II. While he can be picky as to which Chanel or Yves Saint Laurent he’ll take, “for Hermès, we take everything,” says Mr. Nitz. “Just the name Hermès on it means we can sell it.” He sells rare-colored Birkin bags for up to 40% more than list price.

Hermès keeps its distance from the sale of its second-hand goods. But some employees attend to add to their personal collections. Hermès declined to comment for the story.

In the days before an auction, the Artcurial exhibition rooms overlooking Paris’s luxury shopping boulevard Avenue Montaigne turn into an Hermès curiosity shop. Mr. Pigot arranges the hundreds of items in displays—bags hanging from antlers, watches in glass cases, and a leather-trimmed bike propped up casually against the wall.

Bags make up nearly two-thirds of the collection. When he meets with a seller looking to create a little space in her closet, Mr. Pigot seeks unusual colors or skins. A potential buyer called in for a precise description of the colors on a crocodile Kelly bag, which sold for €15,300, a premium to its €9,000 to €10,000 estimate.

Another one-of-a-kind item was a tote bag made of horizontal strips of silk scarves in commemoration of a 2005 exhibition. Maelle Caravaca won the bidding at €510, around the middle of its estimate range. “I sometimes buy from the boutique, but the auction products are exceptional,” said the student.

Many of the auction items are notable for their history. One of the plainer-looking scarves—burgundy spurs and other equestrian icons on a cream-colored background—is made from cotton, not silk. The scarf dates from World War II when silk was requisitioned for combat parachutes and Hermès briefly made its scarves in cotton, Mr. Pigot said. It found a buyer at €280, near the upper end of the €200 to €300 estimate.

The old obscure items and custom trinkets particularly appeal to Hermès fanatics. A pair of garden pruners was inlaid with ivory horn. There was a leather toiletries kit monogrammed “FF,” a silverware picnic set in a red-leather case and a tennis racket-shaped silver clip to hold mail.

“Look at the beauty of this,” Mr. Pigot said, lifting an unused bridge kit in dark-green crocodile from the 1970s out of a glass case. “These objects were part of an art of living that has disappeared.”

Full article at WSJ: http://online.wsj.com/article/

SB10001424052748704576204574531653189375312.html

Signature Hermes Leica

 

Leica and Hermès have joined forces to create a limited edition camera due to be released just in time for the Christmas holidays.

The limited edition “Leica M7 Edition Hermès” traditional film camera comes bound in luxurious Hermès calf leather and sports silver chrome detailing.

Users can choose from one of two distinct colors – “Ètoupe” brown or Hermès’ signature orange.

Full article: http://www.luxuo.com/gadgets/leica-m7-hermes-edition.html#more-15261

Once upon a time there was a Iconic Bag.

Hermès aims to keep luxury of exclusivity in the bag….. but you can see  all over the place.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f6f6c92a-b295-11de-b7d2-00144feab49a.html?nclick_check=1

Mr. Thomas  underestimate his customers.

Madame Birkin declare few months ago that’s she give up from her Birkin due  back problems

decurrent from the bag weight.

The Birkin born to fill the desire of Madame Birkin for a bag big enough to carry her books when travel.

For sure this is not the major concern  for the girls above.