Branding the man: why men are the next frontier in fashion retail

(SAN FRANCISCO) – If you’re old enough to remember wearing matching corduroy jackets and pants then the following may be a road to nostalgia you won’t want to follow.

Then again plenty were happy to last Friday night, when roughly 500 people showed up at the Levi’s flagship store in San Francisco to celebrate the collaboration between the world’s preeminent jeans brand and the cultish retailer and design group, Opening Ceremony.

Opening Ceremony, with stores in New York, Los Angeles, and Tokyo has been consistently collaborating with the likes of Chloe Sevigny and Spike Jones and creating limited-edition collections of downtown streetwear that begs the question: are you cool enough?

Plenty were on hand to cop a feel of their collaboration with Levi’s with a collection of 1980’s 505 corduroys in colors described as  teal, fuchsia, lavender, olive, curry, navy, and optical white. I haven’t heard the word “teal” since, oh, about 1987. A bicycle covered in teal corduroy marked the way, guerilla marketing style, in front of the Levi’s store (and supposedly others were placed throughout the downtown area.)

The party hubbub began on the ground floor of the Levi’s store where a special Opening Ceremony boutique/ pop-up installation was created just for the occasion, along with a stunning collection of visuals by photographer Ryan McGinley.

The very Shiny-Happy-People vibe seems just right for these dark days of retail. McGinley’s visuals includes shots of tender young things wearing the vivid corduroys while floating against an endless sky.

Opening Ceremony’s Humberto Leon and Carol Lim were on hand (with what appeared to be their entire families in tow) and were warmly greeted by fans and a retinue of hipsters one usually only sees  at 6AM when H&M is rolling out a limited-edition collection from Comme Des Garçons.

And while we didn’t see anyone wearing cords at this event, we’re pretty sure we’ll be hearing that nostalgic sound of two corduroy-encased thighs walking down the street Zirrh-Zurrh! Zirrh-Zurrh!… ahhh, it’s 1987 all over again.

The entire collection of cords are available at select Opening Ceremony and Levi’s stores as well as globally at specialty retailers such as Barneys, Fred Segal, Joan Shepp in the United States, and at Colette (Paris), Liberty (London), Lane Crawford (Hong Kong), Incu (Australia), Henrik Vibskov (Copenhagen and Oslo) and c2k (Istanbul).

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By now you’ve heard about fifteen people tell you they loved the Oprah/Letterman/Leno ad on the Superbowl, and heard the morning-after commentators tell you the winner was Snickers with the lovable Betty White and I-didn’t-know-he-was-still-alive Abe Vigoda.

Any guesses on how many ads ran? Sixty-eight, to be precise. So how many did you remember, and more importantly, did any of them really make you feel any differently about the advertised brand?

If you kept track during the three-plus hour event, you noticed the ads went from memorable (Snicker’s, the ETrade babies) to forgettable to just plain awful (Charles Barkley for Taco Bell).

Interestingly, fashion retailers steered clear of the Superbowl — not that they ever had a strong presence — with only Sketchers and Dockers contributing advertising. The latter went big with an ad that encouraged viewers to log onto their website to win a free pair of pants.

Unfortunately, someone forgot to plan for this and the website crashed within seconds of the ad airing. Good job, boys!

It’s clear that the Superbowl continues to be a kind of flexing of the muscles for advertisers with perhaps little to no expectation in translating that two million or more they spent into building the brand or converting customers.

But then you already knew that, and like me, you just sat back and watched the show: the equivalent to a small country’s gross national product being spent on thirty seconds of hot air.

See the full list of all sixty-eight ads here.

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(SAN FRANCISCO) -  Opening tomorrow, the Legion of Honor’s stunning world exclusive, “Cartier and America,” offers a unique opportunity to see some of the luxury jeweler’s most impressive pieces, many seen here for the first time.

While many will flock to see the personal diamond suite worn by Princess Grace of Monaco — certainly nothing to sniff at, with her 10.47 carat, emerald-cut diamond ring with two baguettes set in platinum — others will want to imagine what it would be like to be Elizabeth Taylor, laying in the sun on Cap-Ferrat in 1957 and “surprised” by then-husband Mike Todd with an intoxicating suite of diamonds and rubies in a necklace and matching earrings. In the accompanying home movie from that time, Taylor is so escstatic she puts them on then and there, despite the fact she is on the beach in a one-piece white bathing suit. Why not?

The show tells a compelling tale not just of wealth and lavish lifestyles but of the craft of creating jewelry that spoke as much of the period as it did of those who wore them. These are jewels that were loved for their stunning beauty and magic, and now, with most who owned these long gone, their fire still burn. These are gems that are sure to mesmerize a perhaps more sober audience of museum visitors, who might wonder, in such economic times: why did they spend money on these things? Honey, if you have to ask you’ll never know.

Read my San Francisco Chronicle interview with exhibition curator Martin Chapman and Pierre Rainero, Cartier’s image, style, and heritage director. Click here.

Cartier and America opens tomorrow and runs through April 18, 2010. Hours are Tuesday – Sunday, 9:30AM – 5:15PM. Closed Monday. Admission is $10 adults, $7 seniors, $6 youths 13-17 and students with college ID. General admission is free the first Tuesday of every month. For more information, legionofhonor.org.

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