Payless ShoeSource, Inc., and H.H. Brown Shoe Company, Inc. announced today that they have signed a multi-year agreement making Payless ShoeSource the exclusive retailer for the Dexter brand of footwear and accessories in the United States and the rest of the Western Hemisphere. H.H. Brown will continue to design, develop and sell Dexter performance bowling and golf shoes, as well as the exclusive hand-sewn Dexter 1957 Collection hand-crafted in Maine.
Payless will align the Dexter brand with its new fashion direction and House of Brands strategy, while working with H.H. Brown to leverage the rich 50-year heritage and strong equity of the brand. Payless said it will launch the new Dexter line first with a men's collection in select Payless stores for the 2007 holiday season followed by full men's and women's collections launched in all stores in spring 2008.
"We are thrilled to add Dexter to our expanding portfolio of well-known brands including Airwalk®, American Eagle(TM), Tailwind®, Champion®, Spalding® and Dunkman(TM) now offered at Payless stores," said Matt Rubel, chief executive officer and president, Payless ShoeSource. "We're on a mission to democratize fashion and design in the footwear and accessory categories to bring shoppers great brands and the latest styles at a great price. Dexter, with its long-standing image of quality, innovation and style, will give Payless a brand platform that speaks to a new generation with the energy, spirit and optimism of American life, style and design."
Payless will utilize its footwear design team in New York City to design and develop the new Dexter collections featuring original designs inspired by the latest trends. The company said it expects the new Dexter collections to include casual, dress, boots, and fashion athletic footwear styles, as well as accessories.
"We are excited to team up with Payless to expand the reach and appeal of the Dexter lifestyle brand through Payless' significant store chain," said Jim Issler, President, CEO, H.H. Brown. "We see a strong fit between Dexter and Payless -- each has tremendous brand awareness and a strong reputation. We are proud that Dexter is a key brand in the fashion democracy led by Payless, and that Payless will become a keystone in Dexter's global branding initiative."
About Payless ShoeSource
Payless ShoeSource, Inc., the largest specialty family footwear retailer in the Western Hemisphere, is dedicated to democratizing fashion and design in footwear and accessories and inspiring fun, fashion possibilities for the family at a great value. As of the end of the first quarter 2007, the company operated a total of 4,564 stores. In addition, customers can buy shoes over the Internet through Payless.com® at http://www.payless.com.
About H.H. Brown
H.H. Brown is a major supplier of women's and men's comfort casual shoes, rugged outdoor footwear and premier work shoes and boots. Founded in 1883, H.H. Brown was acquired in 1991 by Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK-A), and is now a wholly owned subsidiary of the holding company which is engaged in a number of diverse business activities. After more than a century of growth and diversification H.H. Brown continues to innovate, patent, manufacture and distribute footwear and accessories worldwide. http://www.hhbrown.com
Source: Payless ShoeSource, Inc.
It was announced today that leading marketing firm Cornerstone has been secured by NexCen Brands, Inc. to conduct a nationwide trend study for Athlete's Foot. Cornerstone's Executive Vice President and General Manager Steven Justman made the announcement.
Cornerstone was hired for its innate ability to tap into consumer's behavior and its deep understanding of current and, more importantly, future trends. For the assignment, Cornerstone will conduct a nationwide analysis of trends integral to the Athlete's Foot business and brand. This initiative will be comprised of topics key to the company's core consumers, including fashion, music and sports. Cornerstone's FARM team, a 200 plus team of college-aged representatives, will conduct the trend analysis on a local and national level. The FARM team is a select group that is tapped into their local markets, providing Cornerstone with information and the capacity for outreach instrumental to understanding the marketplace and to executing successful branding campaigns.
"We're looking to truly understand our market and empower our franchisees with relevant and actionable information," says Robert D'Loren, President and CEO. "Cornerstone is the perfect partner for this -- they fully understand our target audience and what they're looking for."
"At Cornerstone we've always had the unique capacity to truly understand what motivates consumer behavior," said Justman. "We are not outsiders trying to understand this audience. Our employees are the people that brands are trying to reach -- those who are influencers in their communities. This allows us to provide our partners with the tools and information essential for success in today's cluttered marketplace."
About Cornerstone
Based in New York City and helmed by Rob Stone and Jon Cohen, Cornerstone is a full-service marketing firm that builds emerging brands and reenergizes established ones. Representing Fortune 500 clients across multiple disciplines -- with an emphasis on consumer products and services and entertainment industries -- Cornerstone designs and executes customized and innovative brand strategies that target and effectively reach the elusive market of 15-34 year olds.
About NexCen Brands, Inc. (www.nexcenbrands.com):
NexCen Brands, Inc. (NASDAQ: NEXC) is the premier 21st century brand acquisition and management company focused on assembling a diversified portfolio of intellectual property (IP) centric companies operating in the consumer branded products and franchise industries. The Company owns, licenses, franchises and markets a growing portfolio of consumer and franchise brands including The Athlete's Foot®, Bill Blass®, MaggieMoo's®, Marble Slab Creamery® and Waverly®. The Company licenses and franchises its brands to a network of leading retailers, manufacturers and franchisees that touch every major segment of retail distribution from the luxury market to the mass market in the U.S. and in over 45 countries around the world and consists of in excess of 1,150 of its own franchised stores. NexCen, through its information technology (IT) and franchisee support systems and advertising, marketing and public relations team, markets its brands to continually drive greater consumer awareness and brand equity for each of its brands. NexCen touches nearly every aspect of a consumer's lifestyle from the food they eat to the furnishings in their homes and the clothes and footwear they purchase.
Press Contact:
Ed James
Cornerstone [Public Relations]
212-652-9295
Email Contact
Published Jun. 26, 2007
Copyright © 2007 SYS-CON Media. All Rights Reserved.
In a moment of perfect fashion synergy, the artist Julian Schnabel showed up in purple pajamas at a l'Uomo Vogue dinner honoring his Milan exhibition, just after Miuccia Prada held a pajama party on her runway.
So those new Prada uniforms, dense with dusky floral patterns, weren't so baffling after all. ! They were the latest look for the humid summer nights that global warming seems already to have thrust on this city.
In general, the summer 2008 season, with its focus on dark suits, leather, nylon and the new hot (not to say "sweaty") favorite, Neoprene, suggest that clothes are no longer related to a specific season.
Since Miuccia Prada has always had a penchant for uniforms and declared after the show, "I have always loved pajamas," the new look was easy, without being floppy. The line was geometric, the tops tunic- or coat-length, or with the shirt tucked into pants for a more familiar Prada silhouette. Zip-up overalls were the fashion victim's version.
Patterns were sinuous irises and ivy leaves of the Belle Époque or a mixture of graphic checks and prints, mostly in silken materials. They went with shoes that were luminously modern in their glow of color-striped shiny leather. And there was another key accessory: the large watch on a wrist band.
"Very European — I don't know what the word is. Romantic? Elegant?" Prada said, struggling to define her aesthetic. The set boxed the audience into a maze with a labyrinth of hedged paths projected on the walls. And that is how it seemed on the runway: strong ideas, fine pieces, but a collection that had not quite found its way.
Men's fashion as a canvas for accessories has been a concept since shoe and handbag companies took over fashion in the 1990s. At Bottega Veneta, the designer Tomas Maier does that with particular ease, making his crumpled linen tailoring and faded Madras checks an artistic backdrop for leather sneakers or sandals with lattice inserts or tactile leather bags. Count on the art Biennale crowd to get this unflashy luxury look from cotton jackets to glazed linen three-piece suits. The ritzier resort wear seemed more forced: tailored shorts, zipper-off jacket sleeves and a sea-blue palette with melon and pearl pink. But With its monochrome, easy looks, this collection made rare sense of summer wear.
If you chopped off the Salvatore Ferragamo collection above the ankles, ignoring oxblood patent shoes and other classy footwear, would you immediately place the clotted cream three-piece suit with satin pocket handkerchief and gloves, or the crunchy silver raincoat, as quintessentially of this Florentine brand? Sure the fabrics are lush, touched with the sporty modernity of a metallic sweater or a nylon blouson. cq But were defining details so subtle that they did not show up on the catwalk, with its light box cylinder simulating splashing water?
In its hotels and home furnishings, Ferragamo is rich in leather handles and dark, grainy wood. It needs a similar image to define the clothes.
Alexander McQueen, an architect of runway drama, fell victim this week to his own invention. His show, held around the blue waters of a municipal swimming pool, encased fine cotton shirts, tailored coats and sportswear inspired by a 1960s photograph of surfers. If you could mentally strip away the post-Elvis hairdos dusted with silver sparkles and the giant surfboard backpacks, there was a collection of fine pieces, often beautifully worked, like the shirt with a snaking chain of patchwork. The water theme brought waving blue patterns and shiny, sexy, sporty wet suits — as well as water- soaked black suits for the finale.
But the profound and often disturbing edge of McQueen McQueen's profound and often disturbing edge seemed lost — especially with the slogan patterns and cartoon images that might be cute for Tokyo's Harajuku bands, brands?//no, bands. mjs. but seemed gimmicky as a fashion statement.
Since Valentino's heart is with his 45th anniversary celebrations in Rome next month — and the award he was scheduled to receive there this week — he wisely eschewed a menswear show for an installation of juicy guys in the tailored suits once worn at sundown in vacation resorts. They propped up a bar where dancers from the Paris Lido shook their breasts and their feathers. For those who took their eyes off the performance, there were elegant blazers, striped suits and polka dots, which are a mild trend of the season.
Energetic sportswear is a mood of the moment. The rhythm and blues soul singer John Legend and the "Spider- Man" actor James Franco joined the stellar front row at Emporio Armani, but it was the Italian sports heroes who reinforced the patriotic spirit of a collection that was, in the designer's own words, "crazy for Italy." A backdrop of Renaissance statues introduced clothes more body conscious than the floppy freedom more familiar from Armani. It was based on pants with a curve articulating the thighs and narrowing at the ankles, where there were jodhpur buttons or straps left loose.
Italian designer Valentino scarcely bothered to dress the women in his menswear show, putting five topless dancers behind a mock-up cocktail bar in his presentation for spring and summer 2008.
The dancers ¨C who wore red sparkling thongs and black and red feathered wings ¨C took some attention from the line-up of designs which 75-year-old Valentino Garavani suggested for next spring.
Valentino is better known for his trademark red evening dresses and sweeping gowns, worn by stars like Sophia Loren.
The only unexpected glimpse of male flesh was a bit of ankle on the models who were all smartly turned out without socks.
Valentino, celebrating 45 years as a designer this year, stuck to a classic, colonial look for his boys for the next hot season, decking them out in creams, beiges and petrol blues.
The presentation kept models posed and chatting while the audience moved past them, the reverse of a catwalk event when models strut past seated reviewers.
The mood of a previous era was evoked in pocket handkerchiefs and neckerchiefs ¨C in patterns of beiges, creams and a dark vintage racing green.
Suits were pinstriped or Prince of Wales check.
The designer gave his evening wear a spin with black polka dot shirts or geometric design jackets, while he used ice cream-colours to band cashmere jumpers that peeped from under pinstripe suits.
Valentino, whose brand is being bought by private equity fund Permira in a deal valuing it at 2.6 billion euros ($3.50 billion), took a bow after the show in a conservative beige suit with classic blue and white broad striped shirt.
GUCCI GAMES
Gucci designer Frida Giannini also stepped back in time for her spring sartorial thoughts, with a playful collection which drew on films of some 50 years ago.
"The inspiration was more a mood than a place," the designer told Reuters after the show. "The ... film stars of the 1950s ... the tailoring was '50s and '60s Cinecitta," she added.
Models walked out in strides sporting a variety of checks from gingham to Prince of Wales, using a black and white base with splashes of red, orange and vivid yellow.
There were flat, peaked caps ¨C also in checks ¨C and monochrome spot ties to contrast.
Giannini, in her third menswear collection for the brand, ran the check mood into beach shorts, teamed with gauzy floral tops in the same colours, or with a bright red canvas jacket that looked fit for a lifeguard.
Red ran into evening wear in slim, low-slung cummerbunds shocking against white evening suits and black silk shirts.
But even in her formal wear, Giannini eschewed waistcoats which have featured in many other shows during Milan's spring and summer 2008 menswear season, which runs to June 27.
Only three days into the menswear shows in Milan and already two rather improbable trends are emerging: gold and see-through clothes. The International Herald Tribune tried to justify this yesterday by claiming that they reflect the rise of hedge fund managers, whose byword, apparently, is transparency, and only those with six-figure bonuses could possibly afford all the gilded garments.
Valentino has always taken a far more literal approach to referencing wealth, preferring to embody it in his famous yacht-and-villa lifestyle than making oblique references to it through transparent clothes. This is a man who has a house in most big capitals because he doesn't like to stay in a hotel, who insists that his napkins are ironed on his yachts and who makes Gwyneth Paltrow feel nervous about her physical appearance. Only if she has had her hair professionally blow-dried beforehand, she claims in an interview in US Harpers Bazaar this month, is she permitted to wear jeans in front of him.
While some designers hypocritically claim they are aiming for the trendy youth market, yet still knock out clothes with price tags that suggest the only youths able to afford their wares are ones with Hilton as a surname, Valentino's clothes look exactly as they are: expensive. Yesterday's menswear show included slim suits, neckerchiefs, cashmere polo necks and a colour scheme the press release described as "colonial" - perfect for any minor European royalty out there.
One thing that was different was that instead of a traditional show Valentino staged a presentation, a surprisingly democratic format for the designer. Instead of being seated in tiered rows, which operates as a quasi caste system in the fashion world, the audience milled around in an aimless group. Unfortunately, this didn't quite work, with no one really able to see the clothes and the crowd becoming downright indignant when they realised they could not sit down, after having been kept waiting for 45 minutes in the 35C (95F) heat. Democracy, it seems, just doesn't work in the Valentino world.
A model displays a creation as part of Roberto Cavalli's Spring/Summer 2008 men's collection during Milan Fashion Week June 25, 2007. REUTERS/Alessandro Garofalo (ITALY)
A model displays a creation as part of Roberto Cavalli's Spring/Summer 2008 men's collection during Milan Fashion Week June 25, 2007. REUTERS/Alessandro Garofalo (ITALY)