Luxury is relative, they say. A certain oligarch can buy a 3,999 metres long mega yacht, with chopper on the roof and African buffalos in the back yard, then stuff it with 1,287 guests, dancing to Rihanna – she was booked in extremis, and couldn’t refuse the offer, therefore left 75,000 kids high and dry in Canada, where she was supposed to “sing”, that night - for the ultimate end-of-the-word party. On the other side of the planet there is a man with a dream: to be the first non-jellyfish to see two giant squi... [More]

“Artists should always think of themselves as cosmic instruments for storytelling.”
 Ted Lange “I consider music to be storytelling, melody and rhythm. A lot of hip-hop has broken music down. There are no instruments and no songwriting. So you're left with just storytelling and rhythm. And the storytelling can be so braggadocious, you're just left with rhythm.”
 jack White It is possible to imagine a world without cherry-flavoured soda, the Kardashians and Frappuccino®: it would be different... [More]

It’s aperitivo time, somewhere in a bar in Cabo de Gata, Almería, Spain. Two men look at each other, they nod and raise their tercios to life, tipsiness and mutual respect. Then they start a foggy conversation. William S. Burroughs: “Sir, I must admit, I am a big fan of yours…The way you play that guitar is just unbelievable, almost like a Sumerian Baal renegade…” Eddie Van Halen: “Oh, thanks, buddy…Your stuff is cool, too. We should form a band, ya know, you come up with the lyrics an... [More]

Hard times for luxury brands. Seriously. They want to keep the aura of exclusivity and scarcity they have always been wrapped up in, at the same time they have to be on Facebook, talk to Average Joes, use abbreviations such as “Lol” and “OMG” and RT other people’s thoughts, often crippled by grammatical errors and syntax-related horrors. It sounds like dragging Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, to Upton Park to see West Ham vs Southampton, expecting the guy to sing “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles&rdqu... [More]

Whether you like it or not, fashion is something everybody has to deal with. And this is not a new thing. Even the most unexpected characters had a soft spot for la mode: Friedrich Engels (co-author of The Communist Manifesto with Karl Marx) was always impeccably dressed, with a hipster-like quiff and bushy beard combo, and even Albert Einstein, with his signature “out of bed” hair, bow tie and matted woolen jumper can be considered one of the fathers of the “Geek chic” style – although he didn’t use to carry... [More]

Here’s a  vintage postcard from Spain, when the climate was great, the food rich and cheap, and the people happy and carefree. Nowadays, the climate is still amazing, the food still beautiful and inexpensive; the people, though, are not in a very “fiesta fiesta!” mood anymore. BBC News wrote, a few days ago: ‘The country has the highest unemployment rate in the European Union and it is expected to rise further this year.’ ‘”The figures are terrible for everyone and terrible for the governm... [More]

Today’s big news is about video eCommerce, as SSENSE and Barneys New York are about to release two new fully shoppable videos. Several brands started to play with the medium since last year, but now things are getting more interesting and sophisticated. Look at SSENSE’s music video featuring Iggy Azalea et al. – read below – for instance, which pushes the boundaries of the storytelling-plus-shopping-experience: watch the singer dance in a Givenchy catsuit, feel the rhythm and buy the outfit by clicking directly on the ... [More]

China is a fascinating universe. Almost unknown to many, it is a place in which Prada is more popular then pandas, nowadays. Luxury brands are flying off the shelves, thanks to an amazingly booming economy and a monumental hunger for high living, hedonism and “da bling”. Cartier and Rolls Royce are still on the riches' wish list, but things are changing as the Chinese are now coming up with their own luxury brands. Black Friday Magazine’s Matt Gitlin wrote, a few days ago: ‘In China’s luxury retail scen... [More]

‘Talent borrows, genius steals.’ Oscar Wilde. The gentle art of copying. It all began seven years ago with Yupoo, the weird-named Flickr clone founded in China; since then, the idea of clone evolved, following the latest trends in the fields of social networks, platforms and technology. Now, after the huge success of Pinterest, the same guys behind Flickr’s evil twin created Huaban, and many other copycats appeared overnight. VentureBeat’s Jason Lim argues that ‘Cloning or copycatting ideas, companies... [More]

A few days ago I was talking to a friend about the potential of Pinterest. I was in a “Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 mood”, going from Allegro to Maestoso, glorifying the role of inspiration in this (often visionless) world, singing the praises of visual content and colours and mood boards like a young and inspired Pavarotti, thrilled by the future of “social”. My friend pulled a bored/ not impressed/ thinking-about-the-laundry kind of face, then said ‘Don’t know what you&... [More]

‘The Devil wears Prada, but the people wear plimsolls’, reads a sign outside Blackman’s, an old footwear store on Cheshire Street, East London. How can luxury brands meet the plimsolls aficionados? They go social, relax a bit and try to engage, embracing the philosophy of “Less is More”. At the beginning, the company gave the impression that they were not interested in the social arena, while everybody else was there. Then, suddenly, this week they declared guerre nucleaire. And, judging from the start, it... [More]

Social media is often a tricky matter for brands, especially when it comes to companies producing and/or promoting alcoholic beverages; rules and guidelines are getting way stricter, as we read just recently on Marketing Magazine, September 2011: ’The European Forum for Responsible Drinking has formed a partnership with the Distilled Spirits Council of the US to devise a set of self-regulatory guidelines for advertising on social-media sites. The guidelines include restricting Facebook users aged under 18 from accessing official alcohol b... [More]

Are you ready for the big celebration? Or will you stay in and eat pizza, wearing bear-shaped slippers? If you are planning to go out and lose the plot, you might find these apps very interesting. iToastU ‘Display a selection of 100 traditional, contemporary, fun and inspirational toasts whether you are toasting with beer, wine or champagne.’ Never quote German philosophers if you want to impress a lady, by the way. iYule Log ‘A Yule log is a large wooden log which is burned all over the world; whether... [More]

Kim Jong Il, the Dear Leader, is dead. Twitter, as usual, broke the news. Then, the rest of the web was flooded with memes, news, jokes, serious analysis of the situation and facetious points of view. Videos of a nation mourning in a way that reminded of over-the-top, oversaturated, over exaggerated Godzilla movies (the Dear Leader’s favourite flicks) went viral, as well as the ultimate masterpiece of the Tumblrsphere - Kim Jong Il Looking at Things, a collection of pictures of the Dear Leader, well, looking at things. The Internet a... [More]

The obvious – Give your website a look and feel the will never forget (at least in the next six months, when everything will change again). Users are now more aware of what’s hot and what’s not when it comes to web design. Perhaps, thanks to Apple, our conception of electronic/online/nerdy stuff aesthetics has changed forever, from a “must be functional, the rest is useless grooming” approach to the epiphany that appealing design, user-friendly websites, and smart branding can make a company’s fortune. ... [More]

The printed magazine and TV ads still work as the immaculate wall of the Prado, the images evoking the allure of a world painted by Cy Twombly, in which kids never scream and your life is like a Boboli garden where you walk in slow motion, hand in hand with Kate Moss. When a brand tries to tell you the same story online, it does not work that well; in fact, it looks rather bad. Search ads and display ads work, but they sound like the coughing exhaust of a Tata Nano, instead of the melody gently sung by a Maserati Merak. Things are about to cha... [More]

Lifestyle is a word that can be found everywhere, nowadays; the sound alone it is believed to make any soup sound tasty. Most of the times, though, it is abused: ‘No, that is not a kettle, it is a crucial piece of the Byzantine mosaic we call “lifestyle”’, and so on and so forth. Since Alfred Adler came up with the word “lifestyle”, back in 1929, things have changed; the term, initially used to describe a set of behaviours we embrace every day, is now much broader and complicated. In simple words, in ... [More]

eBay India’s manager Muralikrishnan B. recently told the BBC: ‘The huge proliferation of retail malls has increased awareness of the latest brands and products…As a result, the Indian e-commerce market is growing rapidly; in fact it's exploding.’ 
He foresees that the nation will become one of the top ten online retail markets in the world, by 2015.         Amazon is considering entering India, as well, and this “Clash of the Titans”, according to Muralikrishnan, w... [More]

Recently, everybody has been talking about this article (http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/digital-killing-luxury-brand-134773?page=3), published on ADWEEK, about luxury brands and the problems they experience in the social media jungle. 21,927,605 views on YouTube, 366,883 fans on Facebook – we are talking about a young rapper called Kreayshawn, who suddenly became a (YouTube) star with the catchy tune “Gucci, Gucci” whose chorus goes like this “Gucci, Gucci, Louis, Louis, Fendi, Fendi, Prada...the bas... [More]

  In principio erat bloggers, then brands followed. Now Tumblr seems to be ready to be ‘the next big thing’, a ‘must’ for every fashion victim/brand/lover/freak/anyothercategorythattakesfashionveryveryseriously. Recent data show that nearly 20% of the top 1,000 Tumblr blogs are fashion-related, their posts being the ones with the highest number of notes – ‘hearts’ and ‘reblogs’ – in the whole Tumblrsphere. Going against the rules of aesthetics and the principles of artistic t... [More]