PVH ON THE HUNT/2 VON FURSTENBERG TAKES FLORENCE/4Women’s Wear Daily • The Retailers’ Daily Newspaper • June 20, 2008 • $2.00

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Frida’s New ManGucci creative director Frida Giannini will make her mark on the fragrance

arena with the September launch of Gucci by Gucci Pour Homme, her

fi rst men’s scent developed from scratch. The Italian design house

aims to establish the new men’s scent, coupled with last fall’s feminine

counterpart, as the foundation upon which to build Gucci’s entire

fragrance business. For more, see page 7.

WWDFRIDAYBeauty

See Shoot-out, Page 6

Scent of a Showdown:Slew of Launches SetFor Milan Men’s Shows

The only thing not launching a

fragrance during the upcoming Milan men’s fashion week appears to be the mosquitoes.

Starting Sunday, some of the biggest fashion names around will begin to roll out megaprojects that will only heighten the crescendo of what already has been a packed launch season. As the economy bites, retail sales sour and consumers become more cautious, beauty companies all seem to ▲ Emporio Armani

Diamonds for Men.

WWD.COMWWD, FRIDAY, JUNE 20, 20082

WWDFRIDAYBeauty

GENERALSome of the biggest fashion names will begin to roll out fragrance projects that will only heighten the crescendo of what has been a packed launch season.

Emanuel Chirico, chairman and ceo of Phillips-Van Heusen Corp., told shareholders Thursday the company is aggressively pursuing acquisitions.

Invited by Pitti Immagine, Diane von Furstenberg staged her fi rst European show Wednesday night in Florence.

Celebrating Lacoste’s 75th anniversary, Michel and François Lacoste reminisced about their father René’s love of excellence and innovation.

1245

● L’OREAL BUYBACK BOOST: The board of L’Oréal authorized a stock repurchase program of 1.25 billion euros, or $1.94 bil-lion at current exchange, over the next 12 months. A previous buyback plan for an identical amount resulted in the purchase of more than 14.6 million shares, or 2.3 percent of the total. The previously purchased shares have been canceled.

● TALBOTS’ EXECUTIVE MOVES: The Talbots Inc. announced three senior-level promotions, completing a restructuring of the executive team leading a three-year strategic plan to turn around the business. John Fiske was named executive vice president of human resources and administration, adding responsibilities for business development, corporate services and loss prevention in addition to his existing h.r. duties. Fiske was senior vice presi-dent, human resources for the Talbots and J. Jill brands. Julie Lorigan has been promoted to senior vice president of investor and media relations, from vice president of investor relations. Carol Stone has been named senior vice president of fi nance. Stone was vice president, corporate controller.

In Brief

Classifi ed Advertisements.............................................................15

WWD IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF ADVANCE MAGAZINE PUBLISHERS INC. COPYRIGHT ©2008 FAIRCHILD FASHION GROUP. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

VOLUME 195, NO. 131. WWD (ISSN 0149–5380) is published daily (except Saturdays, Sundays and holidays, with one additional issue in January, October and December, two additional issues in March, April, May, June, August and November, and three additional issues in February and September) by Fairchild Fashion Group, which is a division of

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“Wal-Mart is one of the few companies that’s very open to criticism. [The retailer] looks at criticism as a way of improving its business.”

— Allen Questrom, board member, Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

Quote of the Week

The dress shown here is from Galliano, a dif-fusion line designed by John Galliano. It was misidentified on page 7, Thursday.

● ● ●Hairstylist Chaz Dean’s WEN Styling Crème is $24 for 6 oz., and the WEN Re-Moist Hydrating Mask is $72 for 4 oz. This was incorrect in a story on page 12, June 13.

Corrections

PVH Sees Acquisition Opportunities

Karen Murray Promoted at VF

By Marc Karimzadeh

NEW YORK — For Emanuel Chirico, chairman and chief executive offi cer of Phillips-Van Heusen Corp., a tough retail environment means opportunity.

Chirico said at the PVH annual shareholders meeting here Thursday the conglomerate is ag-gressively pursuing acquisitions. He said PVH has the brand strength, logistics, infrastructure and necessary cash in place to strike it big in the near future and cited the company’s 2003 purchase of Calvin Klein Inc. as a strategic move at a time that was not consumer- or fi nance-friendly.

“Great companies make daring moves in times of struggle, and that is the situation we’re in now,” Chirico said. “We are being very aggressive on the acquisition front, and we continue to look for brands that we can layer onto our platform.

“We continue to generate a signifi cant amount of cash in all of our operations,” he said. “Last year, we entered the year with over $250 million in cash on our books. We will generate close to $100 million this year. Given $350 million in cash, and a borrowing base that is in excess of $400 million, we can very easily make acquisitions between $500 million and $1 billion by just writing a check.”

However, Chirico downplayed speculation that PVH is in active talks with a potential ac-quisition target.

After the meeting, Chirico said a brand of in-terest to PVH must resonate with consumers.

“We don’t have a concern if the operations are damaged, or the back offi ce doesn’t work, because, for the most part, we would eliminate them and put them on our platform,” he said. “We want to take brands that we think have strong consumer recog-nition, target them for a specifi c channel of distri-bution, and then maximize their growth. The one thing I’d say is that we continue to look internation-ally to balance our portfolio, not only from a brand point of view, but from an operating platform.”

Beyond acquisitions, Chirico cited the inter-national reach of PVH’s brand portfolio several times during the meeting.

“As much as we consider ourselves a U.S.-based company, we have a very [far] reach with our brands,” he said. “Twenty-fi ve percent of our operating profi t is generated outside the U.S., so it’s a clear indication of the diversity of our portfolio and brands.”

Much of the overseas brand recognition comes from full-price stores. By the end of this year, Calvin Klein will have more than 500 full-priced units throughout Europe, Asia and South America. Izod, just at the beginning of its global rollout, will have close to 30 stores.

In the U.S., CKI is pushing ahead with its roll-out of Calvin Klein white label stores. The com-pany opened fi ve such mega-stores in the fourth quarter of 2007, and four stores this year. It also plans to open a unit at the Americana at Brand in Glendale, Calif., before yearend.

Chirico said the Calvin Klein licensing busi-ness represents about 12 percent of PVH’s reve-nues, and an estimated 40 percent of its profi tabil-ity. Since 2007, CKI stepped up its international store count to 538 from 419.

The brand, including apparel, accessories, underwear, jeans, home and fragrances, gener-

ates total global sales of more than $5.4 billion. At yearend 2007, the top-tier Calvin Klein Collection apparel and accessories had $200 million in sales; the bridge ck Calvin Klein brand apparel, acces-sories, beauty and fragrances generated $1 billion, and the better-priced Calvin Klein white label (in-cluding underwear, jeans, home and fragrances) had sales of $4.2 billion.

Warnaco is the largest CKI licensee, respon-sible for the Calvin Klein Jeans and Underwear brands, which take in about $1.1 billion and $750 million in sales worldwide, respectively. CKI’s largest licensed category is fragrance, with sales worldwide in excess of $1.5 billion.

“We believe over the next fi ve years, we can layer on additional $2 billion to $3 billion of glob-al retail sales,” Chirico said. “By 2010, we believe global retail sales will be in excess of $7 billion.”

As for its other women’s sportswear brands, Chirico said PVH plans to launch the licensed women’s Timberland collection for spring 2010, and continues to grow the women’s Izod brand. PVH reacquired the Izod women’s license from Kellwood in 2006.

“We had some very strong success with the [Izod] brand in a diffi cult environment,” he said. “Our best performance has been in the last month at retail, and I believe over time, this is a $200 mil-lion sales opportunity. We will do about $50 mil-lion to $60 million in sales this year.”

As for the growth at CKI, the ceo said interna-tional expansion will play an important role, and the company will closely study the white label retail rollout in the next 24 months to see how to grow the division.

“If we can demonstrate that they can be profi table and growth vehicles for us, we can be much more ag-gressive and open 10 to 20 stores a year,” Chirico said.

VF CORP. HAS TAPPED ONEof its own, Karen Murray, to serve as president of its sports-wear coalition.

With this promotion, Murray, who joined VF last September as president of the Nautica Men’s Sportswear and Nautica Jeans Co. business, will oversee both the Nautica and Kipling businesses in the U.S.

VF has yet to name a replace-ment for Murray in her former post and has not pinpointed when that might happen, accord-ing to a company spokeswoman.

Murray was not available for comment Thursday. She assumes a post vacated by Denise Seegal, who left the fi rm in May. Seegal exited less than a month after VF revealed plans to close Nautica’s women’s sportswear business. At that time, sources speculated Murray would

be Seegal’s likely successor.VF’s sportswear coalition also

includes the John Varvatos busi-ness, which is led by Varvatos, who reports to Eric Wiseman, president and chief executive offi cer, the spokeswoman said.

Murray and Seegal worked together at Liz Claiborne. Prior to joining VF, Murray logged 15 years at Liz Claiborne, most recently as group president for men’s wear, midtier, internation-al alliances and licensing.

At VF, Murray reports to Wiseman. On Thursday, Wiseman touched upon her rapid ascen-sion: “A proven leader with a track record of success in men’s sports-wear, Karen has demonstrated ex-ceptional leadership since joining VF and has brought fresh perspec-tives and energy to the business. I have great confi dence in the im-

provements Karen’s team is mak-ing in Nautica sportswear, and in her ability to execute our long-term vision for the coalition.”

While there will be the typi-cal exchange of ideas between Murray’s department and VF’s newly formed contemporary brand coalition, she will not be responsible for the latter. Earlier this month, the Greensboro, N.C.-based manufacturing giant ac-quired one-third of the capital stock of Mo Industries Holdings Inc., owner of the Splendid and Ella Moss women’s labels. VF’s contemporary brand coalition was founded last July when the company acquired premium denim brand Seven For All Mankind and women’s active life-style company Lucy Activewear for an estimated $885 million.

— Rosemary Feitelberg

“We are being very aggressive on the acquisition front, and we continue to look for brands that we can layer onto our platform.”— Emanuel Chirico, Phillips-Van Heusen Corp.

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WWD.COM4 WWD, FRIDAY, JUNE 20, 2008

By Alessandra Ilari

FLORENCE — “Oh, it’s perfect and the length is still just right,” said Diane von Furstenberg, checking out Natalia Vodianova as she twirled in one of the designer’s signature jersey wrap dresses from 1977.

The printed archival number was made in a Florentine factory and Vodianova appro-priately wore it as she escorted von Furstenberg down the runway at the end of her fi rst European show here Wednesday night. The designer was invited to show here by Pitti Immagine, the organizers of the international men’s wear showcase.

As designer and model discussed the dress a few hours before the show, Vodianova’s six-year-old son, Lucas Portman, and Talita, von Furstenberg’s nine-year-old granddaughter, scooted around the makeshift backstage and out into the Giardino Torrigiani, the city’s larg-est private gardens. The 14-acre estate includes an English garden, Baroque sculptures, cit-rus groves and portions of the original Medici walls built by Cosimo il Vecchio.

Later that evening, 600 guests fi lled the now-candlelit gardens to sip cocktails, see the show and dine. Eva Longoria Parker, clad in a yellow von Furstenberg resort number with white eyelet detailing, and husband Tony Parker, came to town for the event. It was actu-ally Longoria Parker’s fi rst visit to Italy. “We jumped at the opportunity,” the “Desperate Housewives” star said. “Everything is so gorgeous and this garden is very special. We’re head-ing out to the vineyards tomorrow, which will be exciting, since we’re both big wine people.”

The Elkann clan, including Fiat heir John with wife Lavinia Borromeo and his siblings, Lapo and Ginevra, stuck close together. “It’s all so cozy and beautiful,” noted Lapo Elkann, who wore an azure fedora hat with his satin lapelled suit. “Diane for me is part aunt and part mum, and the evening re-fl ected her energy and positive attitude.”

Ferruccio Ferragamo and his wife, Ilaria, applauded the site and the atmo-sphere. “It’s funny how sometimes, even us Florentines rediscover amazing plac-es that we never have time to enjoy,” he noted before dashing off to say hello to “mamma” Wanda.

Delfi na Venturini Fendi also admit-ted she should spend more time dis-covering the Italian peninsula. “This is only my second time to Florence and I should get to know it better rather than go abroad as often,” she mused.

The Marchesa Marozia Torrigiani, owner of the grounds, was excited to see her fi rst fashion show, though she had become accustomed to the fashion fl ock, thanks to von Furstenberg and her retinue. “Actually, I’m going to watch it from the villa’s terrace so I can get an aerial view,” the marchesa informed her friends.

As for the show, which was on four raised fake-grass catwalks that fanned out from a giant central statue, the collection kept to the night’s pretty garden-party atmosphere. Von Furstenberg focused on suitcase-friendly pieces that hailed back to the fashionably wealthy American on vacation with a whiff of “The Talented Mr. Ripley” tossed in the middle.

Aptly called “La petite valise,” the show’s summer itinerary spanned locales from London’s Claridge’s hotel to the laguna life at Venice’s Gritti Palace. “When you fi gure out your suitcase, you fi gure out your life,” said von Furstenberg. “Since I pack every fi ve days, I wanted to focus on seasonless and stand-alone pieces.”

To wit, passport pages, hotel key rooms and gondolier hats were printed on jersey and crisp cotton dresses, while camisoles over shorts channeled an easy Riviera atmosphere. The lineup also included dresses made from scarves in festive colors and trenchcoat styles cinched at the waist. The fi nale’s white, red and blue shift with “Bon Voyage” splattered across the front summed up the mood.

For the occasion, von Furstenberg convinced her former top seamstress, Bruna Sequalino, who crafted her famous wrap dresses in the late Seventies, to come see the show.

The show marks another step in von Furstenberg’s big push in Europe following the opening of a string of stores on the Continent over the last year. To further boost her European presence, von Furstenberg said she would like to open stores in Rome and Milan in the near future.

Event aside, there was one other major highlight to von Furstenberg’s Florentine stint — spending a week with her granddaughter. “This event was all very homey for me, but having Talita to myself was such a treat and she was so active in everything,” she said. “I’m sure she’ll never forget this experience.”

DVF’s Garden Party, Italian-Style

Von Furstenberg’s runway in the Giardino Torrigiani gardens.

Lapo Elkann, Eva Longoria Parker and husband Tony Parker.

Looks from von Furstenberg’s show in Florence.

Lucas Portman and Talita von Furstenberg

Natalia Vodianova closes the show.

Diane von Furstenberg

and her nephew,

John Elkann.

A style from the runway.

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WWD.COMWWD, FRIDAY, JUNE 20, 2008 5

By Robert Murphy

PARIS — With Michel and François Lacoste, two of René Lacoste’s sons, reminiscing about their fa-ther’s love of excellence and innovation, the French brand known for its crocodile insignia on Thursday celebrated a volley in its 75th anniversary year.

The fete, a warm-up for another party here on July 1 when Lacoste will unveil a series of its fa-mous polo shirts customized by the likes of Nick Knight and Karl Lagerfeld that are part of a spe-cial-edition book by Visionaire, bore testament to Lacoste’s insouciant, chic sporty attitude.

Guests — mostly Lacoste employees in Paris for the company’s annual convention — congre-gated on the main court at Roland Garros, the site of many of the historic exploits of René Lacoste and the other French “musketeers” who domi-nated tennis in the Twenties. Sports fi gures, in-cluding French tennis stars Guy Forget and Henri Leconte, mingled with guests over the course of the evening’s festivities.

Lacoste didn’t need to prove that it was in fi ne fet-tle. Sales last year grew 7 percent to 1.6 billion euros, or $2.48 billion at current exchange, wholesale as the company opened its 1,000th shop in the world.

Michel Lacoste proudly said the United States, where Lacoste experienced troubles in the

Nineties, is back on track and has catapulted to become the brand’s number-one market.

Earlier this year, Lacoste hired a new chief executive, Christophe Chenut, 45, who joined the fi rm amid rumors the Lacoste family was bicker-ing. Their disagreements were said to be linked to management issues after the death two years ago of Bernard Lacoste, who had engineered Lacoste’s global expansion.

The company has denied the family was butt-ing heads and Chenut said everything has been “smooth sailing” since he joined. Chenut said one of his main tasks was to revisit the management structure to prepare for the retirement later this year of several key Lacoste managers. The fi rm is owned by members of the Lacoste family and France’s Devanlay, the manufacturer that owns the license for Lacoste products. Devanlay is a subsidiary of Swiss retailer Maus Frères, which recently won a struggle for control of Gant.

Other events to celebrate Lacoste’s birthday include a book on René Lacoste’s style and an exhibit at the tennis museum at Roland Garros charting the career of the brand’s founder. The party to launch the Visionaire book with the cus-tomized polo shirts is planned to take place later this year on a boat that will be moored near the Eiffel Tower.

By Nina Jones

LONDON — Mulberry, the British accessories and ready-to-wear brand, said Thursday that net profits fell 13 percent to 3.4 million pounds, or $6.9 million, on a 13.5 percent increase in sales to 51.1 million pounds, or $102.7 million, in the year ended March 31.

In the previous year, profi ts were 3.9 million pounds, or $7.9 million, on sales of 45 million pounds, or $90.4 million. All dollar fi gures have been converted from the pound at average ex-change rates for the period.

The company said the drop in net profi ts was a result of the costs associated with new store open-ings and increased marketing spending. Pretax profi ts for the year dropped 16 percent to 5.2 mil-lion pounds, or $10.3 million.

“These results refl ect the continued invest-ment in the brand,” said Godfrey Davis, chairman and chief executive of Mulberry. “We continue to invest in the business both in the U.K. and inter-nationally, using the retained profi ts and cash fl ow to invest in the opening of new shops and to signifi cantly increase the expenditure on mar-keting. This strategy reduces profi ts in the short term…but is the key to developing future share-holder value.”

During the past fi nancial year, the brand in-creased its marketing spending by 2.1 million pounds, or $4.2 million, to 4.8 million pounds, or $9.4 million. Its retail space also increased, with eight Mulberry stores and six shop-in-shop units opening during the year.

Davis said accessories accounted for 90 percent of the brand’s sales, with the label’s Bayswater, Roxanne and Mabel leather handbags selling strongly, while a line of women’s shoes will launch at Mulberry stores this fall. The brand also saw sales growth in its 42 stores and shops-in-shops in

the U.K., with revenues rising 29 percent in those stores, and up 10 percent on a like-for-like basis.

The brand’s sales growth continues — in the fi rst 10 weeks of the current fi nancial year, Mulberry said U.K. retail sales had risen 36 per-cent compared with the previous year. However, Davis sounded a cautious note on the outlook, in light of the tough economic climate. “Economic conditions are concerning and we remain cau-tious, particularly in light of cost infl ation in the supply chain, which will put pressure on our margins,” he said.

In terms of future stores, the brand said it would open doors in Athens; Dubai; Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; Kuwait, and Copenhagen airport this year, along with stores in London and Leeds in the U.K.

Mulberry said the fi ve U.S. stores it has opened with its associate company Mulberry USA LLC had incurred start-up losses, but described the brand’s venture in the U.S. as a “long-term proj-ect.” “We plan to build on the individual existing shops and profi tability, and there is potential to open further shops, which will enable the U.S. business to reach critical mass,” Davis said. To wit, the brand has plans to launch an e-commerce site in the U.S., which will trade in dollars, though no date has been set for the launch.

Davis said the stores the company has opened with its partner in Asia, Club 21, are develop-ing “satisfactorily.” In contrast, the company has terminated its arrangement with its partner in Japan to wholesale the collection in the region, saying that business there “has not met our re-quirements for growth and market penetration.” Davis said the brand plans to “develop a new ap-proach to this market in due course.” Following the news, shares in Mulberry rose 9.09 percent to 162 pence, or $3.19 a share, on London’s AIM mar-ket Thursday afternoon.

Lacoste Continues 75th Year Celebrations

Mulberry Yearly Profi ts Dip as Sales Gain

VIEW FROM THE TOP: For those tourists who could stand the hot, crowded, seemingly endless line to the Empire State Building’s Observation Deck on Thursday, there was a treat beyond the legendary view. At the top was singer Rihanna, bedecked in a Cartier tiara and a short printed PPQ dress. There to help Cartier North America president and chief executive offi cer Frédéric de Narp switch on the building’s lights to red in honor of Love Day, Rihanna (who is said to be dating Chris Brown) said that while she is “not in love” at the moment, she is in love with the tiara she was loaned by the company for the event. “My tiara is a little street,” she said of the pricey gemstone studded headpiece, which was worn to the side. “Well, the tiara isn’t really street...I moved it to the side, it’s a little rock ‘n’ roll.” De Narp and his team fl ew in from Los Angeles late Wednesday night, where the company threw its third annual Love event, which was attended by the likes of Janet Jackson and Fergie.

WEDDING BELLE: A little bit of Hollywood is coming to the Hamptons next weekend, when actress Joy Bryant weds her beau of over a year, movie stuntman David Pope, in a beachside ceremony at a private house

in Amagansett. The 31-year-old Bryant will wear a dress made for her by designer Angela Missoni and change into a fl oral print Missoni number to celebrate with her 100-plus guests, while her 37-year-old groom will don a pale gray Calvin Klein Collection suit. The last well-known bride to wear Missoni was Charlotte Rampling at her South of France wedding to her then-agent, Bryan Southcombe, over 35 years ago.

This wedding might come as a surprise to many. Bryant managed to keep her engagement out of the tabloids, unlike most starlets.

And there won’t be a long honeymoon: Bryant is heading straight to work on her new TV show, “Virtuality.”

HOT STUFF: Actor Emile Hirsch, who recently made ripples with Sean Penn’s “Into the

Wild,” has posed for larger-than-life images wearing Valentino’s new spring 2009 looks. The black-and-white photos were just shot in Milan by photographer Gian Paolo Ferrari, and will serve as the backdrop for the collection designed by Ferruccio Pozzoni at the June 27 presentation in Paris. Hirsch will be on hand at both the Milan and Paris presentations.

GREEK TO ME: Amy Sacco, Andrew Saffi r and New York Ranger-cum-Vogue intern Sean Avery trekked to the IAC Building on the West Side to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Bulgari’s Diagono watch collection. The company bowed new styles for the collection — which is based on the Greek word agon, which means competition — in Switzerland in April but the party was the fi rst time the watches were shown to clients. “The watches were very well received at Basel,” enthused François Kress, President of Bulgari USA.

A PERFECT TEN: Didier Grumbach had double reason to celebrate being reelected as president of the French Fashion Federation at its recent general assembly, marking a decade in the post. Also at the event, Grumbach was awarded the National Order of Merit by France’s Minister of Economy, Christine Lagarde. The award was created in the Sixties by then President Charles de Gaulle to honor distinguished civil and military achievements. CARTOON NETWORK: Sin City celebrated fashion, art and fi lm on Monday night as Louis Vuitton hosted a champagne-fueled cocktail party at the Wynn Las Vegas in honor of Takashi Murakami’s fi rst fi lm “Kaikai & Kiki, Episode I: Planting the Seeds.” The animated short was premiering as part of the CineVegas fi lm festival, and follows the outer space adventures of Kaikai and Kiki, two recurrent characters in Murakami’s two-dimensional work. “Some people like baseball or football; I’m a big fan of animation,” explained the pony-tailed artist, as he was greeted by well-wishers including mega-art collectors Elaine and Steve Wynn, Dennis Hopper and CineVegas president Robin Greenspun before the screening at the Wynn’s Lake of Dreams, where the fi lm was projected directly onto a waterfall. But there was another reason for Louis Vuitton to celebrate: the unveiling of the latest Murakami-created collection, Monogramoufl age. Inspired by the artist’s work, Magic Ball, as well as his own penchant for wearing camoufl age-patterned clothing, the complete collection will be on sale to big winners at the Wynn starting July 1.

Fashion Scoops

François and Michel Lacoste

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Rihanna at the Empire State

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WWD.COM6 WWD, FRIDAY, JUNE 20, 2008

The Beauty Report

FORD EXPANDING FRAGRANCE, RETAIL

Tom Ford doesn’t believe in wasting time, and right now the focus is on his new women’s fragrance

White Patchouli, due in September, and the men’s wear shop he will open in Milan on Monday.

The designer said the 10,000-square-foot, six-fl oor Milan space is “cleaner, sharper, more angular and maybe a little more contemporary” than its New York counterpart. “I want each store to refl ect the context of the city in which it is,” said Ford by telephone from Milan. “The New York store is very intimate, but the Milan space gives us space to display everything. In Milan, we have a fl oor for suitings, a fl oor for sportswear, a fl oor for leather goods, a ground-fl oor perfumery.”

So is he saving room for women’s wear in the Milan location? “Not yet,” said Ford. “Logistically, I don’t think I could take that on right now. I have to fi nd a niche to give women what they don’t already have. Once I fi gure that out and get the men’s distribution exactly where I want it, I will return to it. That’s probably at least two or three years from now.”

Distribution plans for White Patchouli, from the Tom Ford Fragrances division of the Estée Lauder Cos., in-clude additional Tom Ford stores slated to open this year, including doors in Moscow and Kuwait this fall. By yearend, there will be 18 freestanding Tom Ford stores. The designer — who has also recently opened shops-in-shops in Bergdorf Goodman in New York, Zurich’s Trois Pommes, São Paulo, Brazil’s Daslu and Lane Crawford in Hong Kong — eventually aims to have 100 freestand-ing Tom Ford stores.

Beginning with the Milan store opening, Ford will create a Private Blend fragrance in honor of each new freestanding store opening. Each scent will be formu-lated with the city in question in mind, and will be ex-clusive to the designated store for six months before permanently joining Ford’s Private Blend fragrance lineup, which currently consists of 12 unisex scents.

The Milan fragrance is called Italian Cypress — “It’s a very Seventies’ gentlemen’s fragrance, the kind that you don’t encounter very much anymore,” Ford

said. The Kuwait fragrance, due out with the store in September, is called Arabian Wood.

The success of the Private Blend collection has been “a happy surprise,” said John Demsey, group president of the Estée Lauder Cos., who oversees Ford’s fragrance brand. “Originally Private Blend was a positioning tool, but it has turned out to be a modern-day fragrance house.

“Private Blend is today in about 40 points of distri-bution and is probably the most successful hyperluxury scent brand out there,” continued Demsey, noting that top doors include Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, France’s Galeries Lafayette, Italy’s Rinascente, Britain’s Selfridges and Harrods and Germany’s KaDeWe. Over the next 12 months, the fra-grance will enter an additional 30 points of sale, said Demsey. Industry sources estimated that the Private Blend collection would do upward of $25 million at retail globally in the next 12 months.

White Patchouli was formulated by the designer in cooperation with Givaudan, and is seen as a counter-part to his other women’s scent, Black Orchid. “For this project, I wanted to reinvent patchouli,” said Ford. “I loved the idea of mixing patchouli with white fl orals. We used patchouli orpur, which takes out some of the darker, smoky notes of patchouli. We mixed that with peony, bergamot and jasmine.” Additional notes include rose, coriander and ambrette seed.

The white glass bottle refl ects the fragrance name — “Black Orchid, black bottle; White Patchouli, white bot-tle,” he said. “This is a different bottle and a different mold, but it has the same ribbed glass as Black Orchid.” Eaux de parfum in three sizes will be sold: 1 oz. for $60, 1.7 oz. for $92 and 3.4 oz. for $138. A scented body lotion

will also be offered and will sell for $45 for 5 oz. In the U.S., White Patchouli will have a one-month ex-

clusive in Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue’s New York fl agship before rolling out to wider distribution in October. At full rollout in the U.S., White Patchouli will be available in some 400 specialty stores and an additional 2,300 doors globally. While Ford and Demsey declined to discuss sales projections, industry sources estimated that White Patchouli could do upward of $20 million at retail

globally in its fi rst year on counter. The black-and-white ad, shot by

Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, fea-tures singer Erykah Badu and will break in September in U.S. fashion, beauty and lifestyle magazines. “I wanted to continue with that styl-ized, glossy image [which the de-signer started with his Black Orchid fragrance ads in 2006],” said Ford. “And not too many people are doing black-and-white ads right now, which was also a consideration.”

Industry sources estimated White Patchouli’s advertising and promo-tional budget would top $8 million.

Ford is continuing to work on men’s grooming and women’s color cosmetics, as well as a new fra-grance called Champaca Absolute, which is expected to join the Private Blend lineup.

Any personal appearances in the near future? That earns an immedi-ate “no” from the designer. “I need to settle down and design,” he said

with a laugh. “I’ll be working all summer — but I’ll be in L.A. most of the time, and it will be nice to be in one city in July and August. I’ll also try to get away to Santa Fe to the ranch. But after this, I’m not talking to the press until September.”

— Julie Naughton

Shoot-out in Milan: Mega Fragrabe shouting the same anthem: new, new, new.

The scale of ambition, particularly for Emporio Armani Diamonds for Men and Gucci by Gucci Pour Homme fragrances, has inspired global sales expectations that can only be described as cosmic. Retail volume targets, as estimated by industry sources, are fl irting with a previously unimaginable $200 million. Here are the main players in next week’s fragrance takedown in Milan and New York.

● Emporio Armani is certain that Diamonds for Men will dramatically heighten the designer’s already dominant position in the global men’s fragrance market. The target for the U.S. alone is number one.

● Hyperactive trailblazer Tom Ford will open his new 10,000-square-foot men’s wear store in Milan while thinking of the fall launch of White Patchouli, as a counterpart to his other women’s scent, Black Orchid. “I wanted to reinvent patchouli,” said Ford. “I loved the idea of

mixing patchouli with white fl orals.” ● Gucci is betting that Gucci by Gucci Pour Homme will emulate

fall’s women’s version, which is on track to do $200 million in its fi rst year, according to industry sources.

● Up-and-coming designer Victoria Beckham and husband David are coming up in the world. Their fragrance licensee Coty Inc. is so impressed by their rising profi le that the company will distribute the Beckhams’ new Signature masterbrand in prestige outlets for the fi rst time, instead of the mass market, as in the past.

● Prada will unveil its latest men’s scent, Infusion d’Homme, at its men’s fashion show in Milan on Sunday. “This scent is an important next step in our quest to build our fragrance business,” said Jose Manuel Albesa, general manager of Fragrance and Skincare SL, a venture between Prada and Puig.

Here and on the following page, the launches in detail.

PRADA’S INFUSION FOR MENPrada plans to show off its new man in Milan next week.

That’s when the house will launch its latest men’s scent, Infusion d’Homme, at its men’s ready-to-wear show on Sunday.

“This scent is an important next step in our quest to build our fragrance busi-ness,” said Jose Manuel Albesa, general manager of Fragrance and Skincare SL. The business unit is a 50-50 joint venture of Prada and Puig. “We’ve been growing at a solid pace over the last fi ve years and are happy in the doors where we are, and we will continue to grow. Our strategy with this scent is to be in the top fi ve in every single door we will be in.”

While Albesa declined to give a sales target in dollars, industry sourc-es noted that a top-fi ve men’s ranking in the U.S. would mean doing sales of at least $25 million at

retail in 12 months.“Infusion d’Homme was inspired by

Infusion d’Iris, Prada’s 2007 women’s scent, and was constructed similarly,” said Didier Maine de Biran, general manager of Puig North America. That fragrance was launched last fall in more than 40 countries. “Like Infusion d’Iris, it works closely with the body to create a subtle yet

distinctive scent, which is inspired by the fi nest ar-tisan traditions of classic perfumery.” As well, he added, “It has a very fresh, crisp smell — like a man just out of the shower.”

The juice, concocted by Daniela Andrier of Givaudan, mixes Tunisian neroli, iris pallida, vetiv-er, cedarwood, incense and benzoin. “Daniela has been working with us for years and has got the balance between innova-tion and signature — a very Prada way of doing fragrances,” said Albesa.

The collection will include eaux de toilette

in fi ve sizes — 1.7 oz. for $54, 3.4 oz. for $74, 6.75 oz. for $100, 13.5 oz. for $160 and 25.5 oz. for $275 — as well as a 3.4-oz. af-tershave balm, $49.50; aftershave lotion, $49.50 for 3.4 oz.; bath and shower gel, $35 for 8.5 oz., and soaps, packaged two for $38. The larger eaux de toilette sizes come with portable 1-oz. fl asks and fun-nels for consumers to use for portability. All prices are for the U.S. only.

Like its sister scent, Infusion d’Homme is bottled in a weighty glass fl acon intended to be a modern interpre-tation of a vintage fragrance decanter. The glass is adorned with a metal ver-sion of the Prada crest, created in 1919 by Miuccia Prada’s grandfather. Outer boxes are of pale gray heavy paper with an off-center logo intended to offer a modern effect.

The fragrance will launch fi rst in the U.S. and Europe, and then move quickly to Russia, Asia and the Middle East in the fall. Next year, it will be released in Latin America and elsewhere, said Albesa. “The U.S., the U.K. and Italy are our immediate priorities,” he said. “We have great strength in these markets and this will reinforce our position in these markets. Our second priority is to contin-

ue to build business in Spain and France — we have seen a nice growth there over the last fi ve years.”

In the U.S., Infusion d’Homme will be available in less than 100 specialty store doors, including Neiman Marcus, Prada stores and Saks Fifth Avenue’s Manhattan flagship, in September. In October, U.S. distribution will expand to include Nordstrom, Bloomingdale’s and Barneys New York, for a total of about 850 specialty store doors in the U.S. “Infusion d’Iris had incredible mo-mentum and we are looking forward to expanding that strength with Infusion d’Homme,” said Maine de Biran.

The prestige division of Coty Inc. dis-tributes the fragrances marketed by the Puig Beauty & Fashion Group, including Prada, in the U.S. prestige market.

The national ad image, shot by Steven Meisel, features an extreme close-up of model Rogier Bosschaart. In the U.S., it will begin running in September fashion and lifestyle maga-zines, said Camila Tomas, marketing director of fragrance and skin care for Prada. “It will be heavily supported with print advertising and sampling.”

— J.N.

Infusion d’Homme by Prada.

A visual for Tom Ford’s White Patchouli.

Continued from page one

WWD.COM7WWD, FRIDAY, JUNE 20, 2008

WWD.COM

EMPORIO ARMANI GOES FOR DAZZLEPARIS — Giorgio Armani and his beauty licensee L’Oréal are out to dazzle consumers starting this fall with the new Emporio Armani Diamonds for Men fra-grance, targeting the 20- to 30-year-old urban set.

Armani already commands a dominant position in the men’s fragrance market worldwide, according to the fi rm’s executives, thanks to bestsellers such as Aqua di Gio, Code for men and Attitude. Diamonds for Men, whose core consumers are expected to be the youngest yet for products in that portfolio, is meant to further bolster that standing.

Although Armani executives would not dis-cuss sales projections, industry sources estimate Diamonds for Men will generate $185 million at re-tail, of which the U.S. should ring up one quarter, in the fi rst 12 months worldwide.

“This will be the biggest men’s launch for us in this country,” said Stéphane de la Faverie, general manag-er of L’Oréal U.S.A.’s Giorgio Armani Beauty division, who explained the goal is for Diamonds for Men to be the top launch in the U.S. this fall, then settle into third place behind Aqua and Code. The countrywide introduction will be backed by 100 million scented im-pressions. These include more than 20 million scented strips attached to advertisement insertions.

Diamonds for Men’s launch, including an August introduction in the U.K. and Germany, followed by a September roll-out to the rest of the world — in-cluding 2,200 U.S. department-store doors — comes one year following the debut of Emporio Armani Diamonds for women.

It might be atypical for men to wear diamonds, but L’Oréal viewed it as an opportunity.

“Usually, when you think about diamonds, you refer to women,” said Renaud de Lesquen, interna-tional brand president of Giorgio Armani Parfums and Cosmetics. “On the contrary, when we discussed that with Mr. Armani, we immediately saw this was an opportunity to push boundaries. From the very start of this project there was a wish to be a bit more audacious.”

De Lesquen said the fi rm focused on a lifestyle positioning and “the masculine aspect of a diamond, its solidity, its sharpness.”

Emporio Armani Diamonds for Men’s bottle, created by Armani himself, is sup-

posed to recall a square-cut diamond.A snatch of “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,”

the song sung by Beyoncé Knowles in the ad for the women’s Diamonds fragrance, weaves into the spot for the men’s scent featuring Josh Hartnett. In that ad, lensed by David Slade, that’s destined for TV, the actor (who has starred in fi lms such as “The Black Dahlia” and “Black Hawk Down”) is shown pre-paring for an event. He dresses then drives along while listening to the radio. Hartnett fl ips stations and hears a smidgen of “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” and moves on to another tune. On arriving at the event, throngs await him. A swell of admirers and paparazzi surround Hartnett as he makes his way to an entryway.

The print ad, by Mario Testino, which is to appear as single and double pages, was taken on location as a true paparazzi shot.

“Mr. Armani didn’t want at all an arrogant por-trait or a pose,” said de Lesquen. “We wanted some-thing fun. Josh was quite involved in all the creative process [including the choice of Slade]. What Mr. Armani wanted was something that is very true. He’s interested in the genuineness of a diamond. Josh is genuine, authentic, not arrogant. That’s why Mr. Armani selected him.”

De Lesquen added that the ad — and the project in general — is about daring to enjoy life, being one-self, taking a share of fame while remaining human.

As an olfactive interpretation, Firmenich’s Jacques Cavallier concocted a woody gourmand aromatic juice, which includes notes of bergamot, gaïac and cedarwoods, vetiver, Szechuan pepper, cocoa and ambroxan.

“The juice has a classic construction that has an interesting twist at the top, a gourmand twist,” said de Lesquen, referring to the mix of cocoa and gaïac wood notes. “It’s quite unusual and in my opinion quite new in the men’s category.”

In the U.S., the Diamonds for Men line will include a 30-ml. eau de toilette spray for $37.50, a 50-ml. edt spray for $52.50 and a 75-ml. edt spray for $62.50. Ancillaries include a 75-ml. aftershave lotion for $42.50, a 200-ml. show-er gel for $29 and a 2.6-oz. deodorant stick for $17.

— Jennifer Weil, with contributions from Pete Born

ances Take Aim at Fashion Week

GUCCI LAYS A FOUNDATIONGENEVA — Flush from the success of her fi rst women’s scent, Gucci creative director Frida Giannini has tried her hand with a men’s fragrance, Gucci by Gucci Pour Homme, which is slated to hit shelves in the fall.

Gucci by Gucci Pour Homme is the fi rst men’s scent that Giannini has cre-ated from scratch. In an exclusive in-terview with WWD, Giannini said the fragrance project captures her overall design concept.

“It completes my vision of the Gucci man I have worked on for the past two years…and now we are giving this Gucci man an iconic, contemporary fragrance,” said Giannini.

Gucci will fete the launch of the fra-grance with a private dinner and party after its men’s fashion show on Monday.

The fragrance will be launched with high expectations. Although company executives would not discuss fi gures, in-dustry sources estimate that its fi rst-year retail sales could total $180 million to $200 million, based on Gucci by Gucci’s success. The women’s scent, which was launched last fall, reportedly is on track to generate $200 million in retail sales in its fi rst 12 months.

“Gucci by Gucci Pour Homme will bring the whole Gucci men’s fragrance category to another level,” said Markus Strobel, global president, Procter & Gamble Prestige Products, Gucci’s licensee.

Strobel added the launch together with last year’s Gucci by Gucci women’s fragrance would be an anchor to the brand’s fragrance category.

“These are the two signature scents of the portfolio… everything else we will launch beyond that is going to build on the Gucci by Gucci franchise,” said Strobel.

Gucci by Gucci Pour Homme’s launch

is slated for September, where in the U.S. the fragrance will be exclusive to Neiman Marcus. By mid-September distribution will extend to Saks Fifth Avenue, Nordstrom and Bloomingdale’s. A rollout plan from mid-October will en-large distribution to 1,000 U.S. depart-ment stores. Globally the fragrance will arrive at 18,000 doors.

Though neither Gucci nor Procter & Gamble would give fi nancial indications on Gucci’s fragrance category, both com-panies acknowledged the brand still had untapped potential.

“We are defi nitely satisfi ed with the results we have achieved in the last months,” said Mark Lee, Gucci’s chief ex-ecutive offi cer, adding Gucci by Gucci had performed well in the U.K. and the U.S. “But this is a strategic category where we still have room to grow,” added Lee.

When asked if Gucci fragrances could double their sales in the next fi ve years, Strobel said: “I don’t think this is impossible.”

To achieve that, Strobel said P&G Prestige Products had a two-pronged ap-proach. After it took over the Gucci fra-grance license in April 2006, it cleaned up the distribution by closing up to 8,000 doors. “Step two is use the Gucci by Gucci fragrances to reestablish the full luxury image and positioning,” said Strobel.

To that end, the Gucci by Gucci Pour Homme fragrance “reeks luxury” said Strobel.

Its fl acon, designed by Frida Giannini, boasts a thick smoked glass silhouette, and is topped with a weighty silver cap crowned with Gucci’s iconic horse-bit — which proved a challenge for P&G’s in-dustrial team to create, taking 15 months to fi nesse.

Giannini, who admitted she has become obsessed with the fragrance-

making process since she took the reins on the category, said while perfecting the scent’s juice, she tested it on male friends and colleagues.

Giannini stipulated the juice “abso-lutely had to be something quite fresh, modern with a touch of cypress and citrus — to link it back to the women’s scent.”

The end result, blended by P&G’s fra-grance team and Givaudan, is dubbed a “modernized woody chypre.” Gucci by Gucci Pour Homme opens with berga-mot, cypress and violet top notes, fol-lowed by heart notes of tobacco leaves and jasmine and base notes of patchouli, amber and elemi — an incense-like note taken from a tree. “The elemi note in-trigued me because together with the tobacco it turns up the intensity of the perfume,” said Giannini.

After the buzz of Gucci by Gucci’s TV advertising campaign — a trio of dancing models directed by David Lynch — Gucci tapped actor James Franco to front its Gucci by Gucci Pour Homme launch.

Shot in black and white, the TV spot depicts Franco — who bears a resem-blance to James Dean — walking through an apartment, speaking lines to a faceless girlfriend from Bryan Ferry’s song “Slave to Love.” His dialogue is spliced with the song’s soundtrack, covered by Welsh sing-er Roison Murphy. Director Jan Wentz shot the commercial in London, while photographers Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin captured Franco for the print advertising campaign.

“I was interested in an emerging name, I like working with a new face to fully express my vision of the Gucci man,” said Giannini, adding, “James has an intriguing air, he’s very contemporary, natural and at the same time has an in-triguing, seductive side.”

Franco will take a front-row seat at

Gucci’s men’s show on Monday and is also expected to attend the festivities later in the evening.

Gucci by Gucci Pour Homme’s line in-cludes eau de toilette spray, 1.7 oz. for $55 and a 3.0 oz. size for $70, after shave lotion 3.0 oz. for $55, after shave balm, 2.5 oz. for $38, shampoo, 6.7 oz. for $30 and deodor-ant stick, 2.5 oz. for $24.

— Stephanie Epiro

Frida Giannini

The ad image.

By Julie Naughton

With an upscale dress collection and a new fragrance masterbrand project that will take her scents into U.S. prestige beauty doors for the first time, Victoria

Beckham is determined to prove there’s more to her than the tabloids would like us to believe.

“I am very aware of people’s preconceptions coming from a pop group and being married to a soccer player,” said Beckham, clad in a Marc Jacobs dress, sky-high Christian Louboutins and a red leather Hermès Birkin bag during an interview at The Ritz-Carlton on New York’s Central Park. “But I am not just a famous person who is putting my name on different things and doing licensing deals all over the place. Everything I do is true to myself. With the fragrances, I designed the bottles, I got to the factory, I worked on the fragrances. I’m really the creator behind the proj-ect. You’re getting a piece of David and me with this.”

The new Beckham masterbrand project, Signature for Her and Signature for Him, will launch in September in about 1,000 U.S. prestige department and specialty store doors. This strategy represents a dramatic departure and gamble for the brand, since all previous Beckham launches were in the mass market. “Given the previous and current success of Intimately Beckham for Him and Her, it was a natural next step to expand and further the growth of the Beckham portfolio,” said Steve Mormoris, senior vice president of global marketing for Coty Beauty.

Mormoris said he sees the project as a new chapter for the brand, refl ecting the fresh

start the couple made when moving to California last year. “We decided to launch Beckham Signature for Him and Her in the prestige market due to the high style and aspirational nature of David and Victoria,” he said. “In order to capture their iconic, sophisticated sense of style, it seemed appropri-ate to take the Beckham franchise to the next level. This is the most selective and exclusive fragrance launch yet.”

Signature for Her, a fruity fl oriental, was developed by Beckham with Sylvie Fischer from Takasago. It opens with anise fl ower and candy apple; has a heart of orchid, he-liotrope and vanilla, and a drydown of patchouli, amber and musk. “I love white orchids, and I wanted something light,” said Beckham. “I can’t bear it when you can smell someone before you see them.”

Signature for Him, a fresh woody oriental concocted by Beckham and Beatrice Piquet of International Flavors & Fragrances, opens with mandarin, watermelon and ma-rine notes; has a heart of fresh living lantana, cypress and spicy juniper berry, and a drydown of moss, sensual white amber and patchouli.

Signature for Her will include eaux de toilette sprays in two sizes: 1.7 oz. for $52 and 2.5 oz. for $62, as well as a 6.7-oz. body lotion, $32, and a 6.7-oz. shower cream, $28. Signature for Him’s range will include eaux de toilette sprays in two sizes, 1.7 oz. for $50 and 2.5 oz. for $60, as well as a 1.7-oz. aftershave, $40, and a 2.6-oz. deodorant stick, $16. Both bottles were inspired by big-city architec-ture and involve shades of purple. Beckham worked with Lutz Herrmann on both.

National advertising will break in November fashion, beauty and lifestyle magazines, while the TV campaign, featuring both Beckhams, will break for holiday. Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott shot the print ad, while John Mathieson served as the TV campaign’s advertising direc-

tor. The creative director was Klitos Teklos from Air Agency.“The commercial was shot in London with a strong architectural infl uence,” said

Beckham. “It’s a simple video, quite choppy. The truth is that it was meant to be one way, and I didn’t like it, so we reedited it. There isn’t much of a story [to it] now, but there’s good music.”

And the success of her dVb (for David and Victoria Beckham, naturally) denim and sunglasses collections and her previous fragrances (which include Intimately Beckham Women) have her thinking even bigger. “I’m working on a collection of dresses at the moment, which I plan to show in September,” she said, adding that the show will likely be held during New York Fashion Week, which runs Sept. 5 through 12. “It will be something completely different from what I’ve ever done. I’m just putting it together at the moment, but they will be very upscale dresses and likely will start at around $1,200 retail. I’m going to be using very expensive fabrics and fi nishes, lots of embroideries.”

But don’t look for Victoria Beckham tracksuits any time soon. “I won’t do sports-wear — I only like to do things that are true to myself, and things I would wear myself,” said Beckham. “I started the denim collection because I couldn’t fi nd the perfect pair of jeans. I did the glasses because I am quite known for wearing glasses and little dresses. It is a dream come true for me to work on a dress collection. But sportswear, sports and me don’t really go hand in hand — other than with my hus-band,” she said with a laugh.

Handbags — Beckham is famous for her large collection of Birkin bags — could fol-low fashion and fragrances at some point, al-though not in the near future, she says. “I am a control freak,” she said. “I am growing at a steady pace. I think if it were to get too big too quickly, I would lose that creative control, and that is something I don’t want to do. So at the moment, no plans to do bags and shoes, but I would love to at some point in the future.”

But not everyone’s got the model-slim physique that allows them to pull of Beckham’s slinky designs — which is why she’s excited to be showing off her new fra-grance. “The good thing about fragrance is that it can reach out to many people,” she said. “My mom might not wear one of my dresses, but she still likes fashion, so she can be a part of that by buying the fragrance. I think fragrances can reach out to more people [than fashion can].”

8

BECK

HAM

PHO

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LAYA

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; PRO

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BY

JOHN

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“I am not just a famous person who is putting my name on different things….Everything I do is true to myself….I’m really the creator behind the project. ”

— Victoria Beckham

WWD, FRIDAY, JUNE 20, 2008

The Beauty Report

Beckhams Trade Up With New Prestige Scents

Victoria Beckham in

front of an ad for her latest

fragrance.

Signature for Him and Signature for Her.

9WWD, FRIDAY, JUNE 20, 2008

WWD.COM

SECAUCUS, N.J. — Two women are being made over by a professional makeup art-ist. It’s a scene most likely to be found at Bloomingdale’s or Sephora.

In this case it is at Wal-Mart.Similar makeovers have been performed at stores ranging from Longs Drug

Stores to Rite Aid as part of Maybelline New York and Garnier Nutritioniste’s The Great Beauty Tour. On this day, the mobile educational experience is parked near a bustling Wal-Mart after making stops in the South and Southwest.

“We all assume consumers know how to do their own makeup,” said Stephanie A. Rinaldi, vice president, multiethnic marketing and promotions, Maybelline New York. “But when we are out meeting with consumers, we fi nd they have questions, such as how to use four-pan eye shadows or how to take care of their skin. We thought it might be fun to have a tour where we take the experts out to the shoppers.”

The Great Beauty Tour, the fi rst of its kind for Maybelline and Garnier, stops at major retailers, events and local festivals across the country. The “tour” consists of a tractor trailer loaded with products and makeup stations. Three experts — headed by Charles Hezekia, best known for working with Oprah, “Movie and a Makeover” and “The Martha Stewart Show” — perform a demonstration on a stage for attendees and then conduct mini one-on-ones. On this day, Hezekia liberally uses Maybelline New York Mineral Power makeup, Volume XL Seduction Lip and a new mascara called the Colossal Volum’ Express Mascara. Inside the truck, experts Isaac Beal and Angie Waldner teach two women about taking care of their skin, especially how to remove makeup. Participants appear very pleased with the experience and the chance to have makeovers that would cost a fortune at department stores.

Hezekia said most people want ad-vice on how to make beauty easy and many focus on three areas — eyes, lips and skin. “What is in now is hav-ing healthy skin show through your makeup,” he said. Many of the women want to know more about skin care, he noticed. As for eyes and lips, he dem-onstrated how to make lashes longer while making lips plumper. “Pretty lips are coming in for fall and we show

how to achieve that,” he said.Those in attendance received samples and coupons.

Rinaldi said it is too early to see results of the couponing ac-tivity, but stores have seen shoppers come in to look for what the experts used. Also, this bustling Wal-Mart just outside of Manhattan featured several Maybelline items on endcap displays. This location also made it easy for New York-based Maybelline and Garnier executives to come view the power of the tour.

“Mass market retailers, mostly, don’t have beauty advis-ers,” explained Rinaldi. Those retailers with consultants added that often the staff has to accomplish other tasks that reduce their one-on-one time. The tour helps bring experts to the retail environment as well as outdoor gatherings.

Shoppers were alerted to the tour via local publicity and the maybelline.com Web site. In total, the tour hit 10 major community events and 50 retail locales. Rinaldi said she hopes to keep the tour rolling next year. “It has been such a great experience we want to do it again. It was welcomed by our retailers and consumers.”

Avon’s Mark brand is launching it’s first philanthropic effort dubbed the Girls m.powerment Campaign.

The teen-targeted brand partnered with “The Hills” star and brand spokeswoman Lauren Conrad to launch the cam-paign, which is designed to help prevent dating abuse and partner violence.

“We’d like to empower women through our Mark brand by creating a plat-form of initiatives that are centered around things that are important to women,” said Claudia Poccia, global president of Mark and stra-tegic alliances. “We wanted to give a voice to women and build awareness to ed-ucate women so over time we can work toward putting shelters out of business.”

In addition to her role as campaign spokeswoman, Conrad will serve as fi rst honorary co-chair of the m.powerment Expert Advisory Board together with Poccia. As part of the program, in October the committee will award up to fi ve organizations dedicated to ending relationship abuse with a grant of at least $50,000.

For the cause, Conrad has designed the “Have a Heart” necklace available in gold and silver. All proceeds from sales will go toward raising funds and awareness for the cause. Retailing for $22, the necklace will be available from September through April via Mark representatives and online through meetmark.com. Also in September, Conrad plans to in-troduce a fall and winter accessories collection for Mark, which includes jewelry, hair accessories, scarves, hats and gloves.

Conrad said, “It’s a great collaboration since it empow-ers women to do what they want and encouraging them to go out there and be their own person.”

— Michelle Edgar

Empowering Women Goal Of Avon’s Mark CampaignWalgreen Co.’s globe-trotting

has unearthed another ex-clusive brand.

The drugstore chain will make room in its 6,500 stores for The Face Shop, a South Korean-born beauty brand and retailer.

Beginning in August, Walgreens will offer 10 different facial mask treatments from The Face Shop.

In doing so, Walgreens gives the fi ve-year-old retailer a foothold in nearly every market across the U.S.

The exclusive deal grew out of a six-month test in which Walgreens sold an assortment of The Face Shop’s product in 65 doors across Washington and Oregon, where Walgreens’ stores are heavily traf-fi cked by Asian shoppers.

Referring to the test, Michelle Hobson, manager of strategic business development for beauty, said, “It validated it was worth it to roll out The Face Shop in both Asian markets and general market stores.”

The Face Shop broadens Walgreens’ international offering, a merchandising initiative it began in ear-nest with the unveiling of its European Beauty Collection — an assortment of seven premium-priced skin care lines — in fall 2006. Soon after, it added Yes To Carrots, a natural skin and hair care line from Tel Aviv.

Hobson said Walgreens began searching for an Asian beauty line at the request of a district manag-er in the Northwest, who wanted to meet the needs of the region’s Asian consumers.

Walgreens turned to Nick

Hudson, co-founder of Excelsior Beauty, the beauty marketing fi rm that sourced the brands for Walgreens’ European Beauty Collection. Hudson suggested the retailer consider The Face Shop, and arranged a meeting with the two companies at the sprawling

Comsoprof trade show in Bologna, Italy, in April 2007.

To introduce U.S. consumers to facial masks, which are widely used in Asia, Walgreens’ beauty departments will feature samples and a video loop of The Face Shop treatment, explaining how the se-rum-soaked sheets work and their benefi ts.

Outside the stores, The Face Shop plans to distribute one mil-

lion free face masks in shopping malls and at beaches, parks, uni-versities and festivals, said Tommy Kim, executive vice president and chief operating offi cer at The Face Shop. He noted that The Face Shop sells more than one million masks each month in South Korea alone. The retailer has more than 900 stores in 19 countries in Asia, and generates $500 million in annual revenues, said Kim.

Hobson said longer-term, Walgreens may decide to expand its 65 “pocket departments” of The Face Shop products in the Washington and Oregon stores, which are stocked with about 60 skin care items, including cleans-ers and toners, to strong beauty markets like New York, Las Vegas and San Francisco.

She noted Walgreens plans to make some minor updates of its European Beauty Collection dis-play, which includes weeding out some underperforming items to make room for colorful graphics.

For its part, The Face Shop entered the U.S. market in 2005,

opening a branded boutique in Manhattan, which it has since shuttered. To date, the retailer has a total of four stand-alone boutiques in the U.S. located in Queens, N.Y.;

Palisades Park, N.J.; Chicago, and Santa Clara, Calif. The company is scouting out real estate for ad-ditional stores, and plans to open two more California doors this year, and about four additional units next year.

The Face Shop has also taken to the airwaves. The company’s premium skin care range, White Tree, recently appeared on HSN.

— Molly Prior

The Face Shop Lands at Walgreens

Maybelline’s Cross-Country Adventure

ADDING UP BEAUTY

Makeup artist Charles Hezekia applying mineral powder.

A scene from Maybelline’s The

Great Beauty Tour.

Facial masks by The Face Shop.

Lauren Conrad

and Claudia Poccia

10 WWD, FRIDAY, JUNE 20, 2008

By Rachel Brown

Vidal Sassoon is not turning his back on Hurricane Katrina victims.

The 80-year-old salon industry icon is returning to Louisiana this weekend with Hairdressers Unlocking Hope, a charitable campaign benefi ting Habitat for Humanity, which he formed last year with Mary Rector-Gable, creator of the hairstylist Web site behind thechair.com. The charity raises funds to build homes for those left homeless by the devastating 2005 hurricane. Together with 100-plus hairdressers, Sassoon on Saturday will help with the building — yes, building — of nine houses for families who lost their homes as a result of the hurricane three years ago. Each house costs ap-proximately $80,000 to build.

In total, the charity has raised more than $2 million since its inception with the help from individual stylists and major salon players, including Paul Mitchell Schools and Tigi, to construct some 20 homes. “The hairdressers — [even] apprentices, kids — send $10, $20, whatever they can afford. I think it’s mag-

nifi cent,” said Sassoon. “It means there is a social conscience.”

Sassoon’s dedication to reviving the hurricane-stricken region stems from his own experience after World War II, when the government offered new homes to his family and fellow battle-scarred London residents to replace those damaged dur-ing bombings. He saw no such swell of public assistance in the wake of Katrina, which destroyed 275,000 homes, and was compelled to fi ll the void.

“We as a country do not have the so-cial awareness to look after our infra-structure,” he said. “If the government can’t lead the people, the people have to lead the government.”

So that a broader public can learn of Sassoon’s past and present activities, he’s working on a documentary with Bumble and bumble founder and former presi-dent Michael Gordon. Filming has al-ready taken place in New York, London and Los Angeles, where Sassoon current-ly lives, and the documentary should be released in roughly nine months. Sassoon is also in the early stages of a publishing deal for a book about his life and work.

“I am pretty busy,” he sighed.

Sassoon Continues Aid to Katrina Victims

Who’s on First: Tela Claims Organic Prize The HBA Report WWD.COM

LOS ANGELES — Journeying through Cambodia in 2006, Robert Main and Michael Davis-Smith found heavy doses of hand sanitizer a must, but they didn’t like the way products on the market smelled and dried out their skin.

Upon returning home to Sydney, the pair conceived of a business that would create products to fi ll what they perceived as a gap in the hand sanitizer market for a prestige player. Two years later, they launched the brand Frais and its hand sanitizer, called Les Huit, in West Coast beauty haven Studio at Fred Segal.

Frais’ formula uses 66 percent pure sugarcane alcohol to kill 99.9 percent of germs on contact, and a blend of eight essential oils, including ginger, tangerine, orange, grapefruit and car-damom. Frais, which comes

in fl utelike bottles, retails at $7 for 1.7 oz., $29 for 15 oz. and $33 for a pack of 14 0.2-oz. minis.

“We tried to keep a very unisex appeal and chose in-gredients that would change over time like a wine,” said Davis-Smith. “We would hope it would stay at the prestige retail channel. We do not want to go to the phar-macy level at all. We want to differentiate.”

This year, Frais is expect-ing to enter about 25 doors and anticipates retail sales of $200,000, according to Laura Chisholm, who is han-dling distribution. Luxury hotels, airplanes and cruise ships are another channel of distribution that Frais is targeting. The brand did its initial testing on about 200 travelers, of whom Main re-ported 95 percent had posi-tive reactions.

— R.B.

Frais Hand Sanitizer Goes Upmarket

Frais’ hand sanitizer.

First place is a good place to be, but unfortunately it’s getting crowded

at the top. Just ask the founders of Tela Beauty

Organics, a 12-item hair care line com-prising eight shampoos and conditioners and four treatment and styling products, which in April launched the hair care industry’s first items with the USDA Organic Seal. Indeed, the line — which has two items bearing the seal — entered seven Barneys New York locations in the spring, technically beating Intelligent Nutrients, a soon-to-be-launched line currently touting itself as fi rst-to-market with the seal on 11 different products.

“These statements are inaccurate and misleading as Tela Haircare bears the seal and remains the fi rst to market these products, and the unprecedent-ed SPF 18 styling hair care product, Guardian, via Barney’s New York and QVC,” said the company in a statement.

Tela’s fury was aimed at quotes made by Horst Rechelbacher, founder of Intelligent Nutrients, in an article that ap-

peared in these pages last week. Reached for comment Thursday, Rechelbacher said that he had just learned of the Tela line several days ago, and that after see-ing the line he deemed the two products with the seal, one a hair smoother and the other a styling/treatment item to pro-tect hair from heat and UV rays, a good start, but “cleansers, conditioners and hair sprays is what is diffi cult to do. That is what I consider hair care.”

Two stockkeeping units or not, hair-stylist Philip Pelusi’s labor of love took more than 30 years to create. No stranger to the hair care aisle, Pelusi launched P2, a professional product line, to salons in January 2005, and now also currently op-erates 14 Philip Pelusi salons in the U.S., not including a unit in the Meatpacking District, called Tela Design Studio. Tela, he said, began at the backbar of the de-sign studio, and had been a concept he wanted to create over the course of three decades wherein he was simply looking to make products that used organic chemis-try but more importantly, performed well. Tela Beauty Organics operates under Tela Haircare; the 14 salons in the western Pennsylvania area operate under Philip Pelusi salons; Tela Design Studio operates under a separate New York corporation.

To get Tela off the ground, fi nancially speaking, three years ago Pelusi part-

nered with New York-based Masters of Branding Inc., a business fi rm that specializes in beauty marketing and de-sign. Clients include Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy, Procter & Gamble and L’Oréal, said Rich Blanch, founder and chief ex-ecutive offi cer, who was instantly taken with Tela, especially its natural position-ing and the functionality of the products.

“Philip had been working on these products for the past several decades, with an herbalist and a chemist in the Pittsburgh region [where Pelusi is from.] The line addresses hair problems with a prescriptive approach,” said Blanch.

Blanch was told he needed to meet Pelusi but was “highly skeptical and cynical” until he went to Pelusi’s New York salon and saw the products. In exchange for part ownership of Tela, Blanch has volunteered his branding and marketing experience to help make Tela viable for prestige retail.

The products bearing the seal are Healer, a leave-in treatment for light styl-ing to protect against and repair damaged hair ends, as well as a heat protectant. Some of Healer’s active ingredients in-clude argon oil and shea butter, which are used as humectants, while a combi-nation of tomato and pomegranate act as antioxidants and a sun protectant. It sells for $48. Then there is Encore, which

also bears the seal, a smoother and tamer to help users achieve

frizz-free, sleek hair. Encore sells for $45.

The other items in the line, which don’t bear the seal, include Composer, a paraben-free and

color safe cream designed for “separat-ing, twisting looks, creating waves and defi ning curls” with organic apricot and water celery. It sells for $45. Guardian SPF 18 looks to provide sun protection and uses organic antioxidants, carrot and forsythia to also help protect the scalp and hair against free radical damage. It sells for $48. A shampoo and conditioner are available under the Harmony, Color Atura, Measure and Melody subbrands, which target restoration for aging hair, chemically treated hair, long hair or hair that is growing out and dry and curly hair, respectively. All items in the Tela line are paraben free and safe for color treated hair and contain Pelusi’s Tela Organic Core Blend, which is composed of 35 USDA and Oregon Tilth Certifi ed organic ingredients. All shampoos and conditioners sell for $50 each.

Pelusi decided not to put his name on the Tela line so as not to confuse consum-ers of P2, and since the lines are so differ-ent from one another, from formulation to positioning to points of distribution.

“I wanted to keep the two separate. Tela is for upscale retail and that’s pretty much the market for people who would really appreciate” Tela’s formu-las and positioning.

In addition to Barneys New York, the Guardian SPF sku has been sold on QVC as well as on QVC.com. What Blanch and Pelusi have learned in the nearly three months at retail is that consumers “are buying multiple Guardian items and are using it also as a skin protection prod-uct. That sparked the idea that we need to support Guardian in a sun stick in the fall. We also plan for a USDA Certifi ed

Lip Balm in Barneys this fall,” said Blanch. Tela is also working on sev-

eral additional sku’s in the USDA Organic space, as well as a du-

al-chamber conditioner, which will not have the seal. “When it comes to the seal we run into the issue of surfactants. It was not possible to produce something [that could bear the USDA Organic seal] that was high performing.”

By end of year there will be roughly 18 Tela sku’s, six of which will be 100 percent certifi ed organic, said Blanch. First-year sales are estimated to be $1 million to $2 million.

— Andrea NagelItems from the Tela Beauty Organics line.

WWD.COMWWD, FRIDAY, JUNE 20, 2008 11

By Kathleen E. McLaughlin

HUIZHOU, China — As the flood waters subside, life and work have started to resume in the factory towns of the Pearl River Delta — but the damage remains.

“I’ve been living in the area for many years, but I’ve never seen anything like this fl ood,” said Yang Dingkuan, a construction worker in one of the dozens of manufacturing towns outside of Shenzhen. “It’s going to take a long time for this place to get back to normal.”

Yang, who was helping to build a house, pointed to landslides and fl ood pools dotting the coun-tryside, pausing on a newly built concrete factory workers’ dormitory that had cracked vertically in half during the torrential rains that pounded the region during the past week. The dorm, he said, will have to be demolished and built anew.

The recent fl oods, the worst to hit this part of China in half a century, killed at least 63 people in the region and left more than $2 billion in direct economic losses in their wake. Though most factories in the region were cranking back into operation this week after electricity was restored, factory fl oors mopped up and machinery dried out, some 2.5 million acres of farmland were sub-merged, according to Chinese government fi gures. The government also said an estimated 7.5 mil-lion people have been directly affected by fl ooding so far this year.

That vast damage to farms is already adding to China’s infl ation troubles. Shopkeeper He Binlan said vegetable prices have been multiplied by three or four times since the rains hit, add-ing immense fi nancial burdens to local residents already struggling to replace lost homes and property. China’s national infl ation rate has grown at record levels in recent months, rising 7.7 percent in May.

“I don’t think the prices will go down soon, because the farmers can’t grow new crops that quick-ly,” said He.

The damage to factories seems more limited. While many workshops in the area have been closed for lack of orders due to the rise in the value of the Chinese yuan and other eco-nomic pressures, other plants report-ed only temporary impact on their production from the flooding. But a few major producers — including Honda, which operates large plants in southern China — have reported serious disruptions.

The larger economic impact may come from the sheer human scale of the fl ooding. More than one million people across southern China were initially evacuated because of the fl oods and hundreds of thousands of homes were damaged. Home and fl ood insurance are virtually nonexistent in rural China, so the rebuilding is apt to consume vast government resources.

For now, fl ood victims aren’t sure how they’ll rebuild. The family of Zhang Ruiliang fled to the second fl oor of their shop/home as the waters rose to about 7 feet inside their house on the night of June 13. The rain was pouring in so hard and fast they could do little but watch as the torrents car-ried their furniture away.

“We don’t even have chairs to sit on now,” said Zhang’s wife, Ling Lou.

As for what’s next, Zhang said the family is waiting to hear from the gov-ernment whether they will get any as-sistance with restoring their home. The inside is pungent with mildew and half of their possessions are simply gone.

“It’s all up to us now,” said Zhang. “There’s not anyone to help us and we

haven’t heard of any government compensation.”The severe fl ooding comes at a bad time for China, which is accustomed to heavy spring and

summer fl ooding. But the storms that struck the Pearl River Delta were particularly devastating and followed on the heels of what now seems to be an unstoppably bad year for the country.

The New Year opened with freak snowstorms in January that halted production, logistics and passenger travel across a wide swath of the south during the most important holiday of the year. In March, turmoil in Tibet cast a harsh new spotlight on the government’s human rights record. Then on May 12 China suffered its worst natural disaster in decades with a 7.9-magnitude earthquake in Sichuan Province that killed at least 70,000 people.

With the fl oods, many across China are sighing in agreement that 2008 — the year of the coun-try’s fi rst Olympics — is indeed a very bad year.

“It’s a diffi cult year for China,” said Yang.

Bob Dakin, senior vice president of store operations in the J. Jill unit of The Talbots

Inc., has joined the Warnaco Group Inc. as se-nior vice president of retail, a new position.

Among his duties will be the identifi cation of global retail strategies, as well as new retail op-portunities in the U.S.

Dakin’s “retail experience will be invalu-able to us as we continue to expand our direct-to-consumer presence globally,” said president and chief executive offi cer Joe Gromek. Dakin will report to Gromek.

Gromek said Warnaco previously stated that it expects retail to account for about 30 percent of revenues by the end of 2012 and has estab-lished a sales target for its stores of about $1,000

a square foot.In fi scal 2007, Warnaco’s retail revenues rose

36.7 percent and were responsible for $337.4 million of the company’s $1.86 billion in over-all volume, or 18.1 percent. Retail operating in-come rose 42.4 percent and accounted for $51.2 million, or 37.4 percent, of the corporate total of $137 million.

As of April 5, Warnaco operated 129 free-standing Calvin Klein stores and 632 Calvin Klein shop-in-shop or concession stores.

Before working at J. Jill, Dakin was execu-tive vice president of Brooks Brothers and se-nior vice president of AnnTaylor Stores Corp. He began his career at Lord & Taylor.

— Arnold J. Karr

By Julee Kaplan

NEW YORK — In an effort to educate and inspire 150 members of its design and merchandising staff, Liz Claiborne Inc. held its annual “White Space” seminar at the Museum of Natural History here on Thursday.

As part of the event, the company offered a panel discussion titled “Retail’s Moment of Redefi nition” and called upon indus-try experts such as Linda Fargo, senior vice president, women’s fashion offi ce and store presentation at Bergdorf Goodman; Stefani Greenfi eld, co-found-er of Scoop stores; Richard Hodos, retail real estate expert with clients including Michael Kors and Jonathan Adler; John Bartlett, creative director of his name-sake men’s wear brand and of the upcoming Claiborne by John Bartlett men’s collection; Candace Corlett, president of WSL Strategic Retail, and Glenda Bailey, editor in chief of Harper’s Bazaar. The panel was moderated by Tom Julian, brand and trend consultant.

“It’s so important to have something irre-sistible, to have something that people feel like they have to have,” Corlett said about enticing the consumer to buy in tough eco-nomic times. “We also need to fi nd ways to make shopping trips more effi cient as con-sumers are bunching their trips together.”

Corlett pointed to the rise in gas prices, which is leading consumers to hit the Home Depot and the department store in one day’s outing, rather than in multiple trips. She also noted the danger in this behavior becoming a habit, which consumers may not break when the economy recovers.

Greenfi eld said she doesn’t feel like she has changed the way she does busi-ness, even in this tough economic time.

“We are always out to edit for our cus-tomer, to give them quality and value,” she said. “Everyone who walks into my stores is looking for objects of desire. No one needs our stuff, they want our stuff. In a recession, that is no different. Even when you are feeling down, you want to look good to make yourself feel better.”

Fargo agreed, “People look for pieces with longevity and they look for pieces with passion,” she said. “They buy into the trends when the trends are exciting and especially in times like these there is room for that.”

Fargo also pointed to good service as key in retail. “It’s about simple friendliness, like saying ‘Hello’ when a customer walks in, but you really shouldn’t say ‘Can I help you?’ since that adds pressure and often gives them the opportunity to turn away,” she said. “It’s those simple friendly gestures that tell the customer ‘This is a nice place,’ and she will return.”

Bartlett said he opened his 500-square-foot store in the West Village here in order to get closer to his customer and to learn about what he is looking for from him as a designer.

When the conversation turned to the growing trend in partnerships such as the Rogan/Target line, panelists all agreed they won’t hurt the higher-end segment of their businesses if it’s done with integrity.

“This is the modern way, it’s how we live, we all shop high-low these days,” Fargo said. “We buy our plates at Crate & Barrel, but we may also have an Hermès blanket. There’s nothing wrong with that, so I think these partnerships create name recognition for a brand and that is not harmful.”

Panelists all agreed about the growing importance of bringing the Internet and technology to retail — Corlett used the Los Angeles-based Fashionology store as an example, calling it the “Build-A-Bear for Fashion,” as a “brilliant tween retail experience.”

Panelists pointed to brands like Virgin Atlantic, JetBlue, Tory Burch, Apple, J. Crew and Lanvin as a select group of brands that will surely thrive in a recession.

“Fashion should be seen as entertainment, and the brands we see as leaders all provide a sort of entertainment to their customers,” Bailey said. “Always remember you are in the entertainment industry.”

China Manufacturers Cope With Floods Claiborne Seminar Probes A Changing Retail Scene

Bob Dakin Joins Up With Warnaco

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Tory Burch was cited for its irresistible appeal.

Panelists agreed that Apple is a leader when it comes to retail.

Boats navigate fl ooded areas.

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By Jacob Bernstein

Peggy Noonan is apparently freaking out. Somewhere (probably in her Upper East Side apartment, prob-

ably chewing a piece of Nicorette) she is sitting in front of a computer screen, staring into cyberspace, thinking she has done something catastrophic. And really it’s unfortunate, this dilemma she fi nds herself in, because she’d been on an uninterrupted tear of late.

This spring, her Wall Street Journal column, “Declarations,” has generated more Internet traffi c for Rupert Murdoch than any other regularly scheduled fea-ture in the paper. At the end of April, NBC anchor Brian Williams wrote on his blog that Noonan de-served to win the Pulitzer Prize for her mus-ings on Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The staff of The New York Times has been buzzing with speculation that she’s about to get a column there.

And the attention is nice, even if the rumor might not be true, even if a recent lunch with Times’ editorial page editor Andy Rosenthal was just that (lunch), and even if the job might not actually be in the offi ng. Certainly no one was talking about a Times column as a possibility for Noonan two years ago. Then, she was midheap in a pile of con-servative pundits when patience with the breed was running thin among readers.

But now, right when things are looking up for her, Noonan claims to have made a mistake: She has given an interview. And for four weeks since the meeting, she has replayed each and every “silly” thing she said that day and wished she had declined the offer to be profi led.

But maybe it’s not too late. Maybe she can get the reporter to kill the piece.

And so she types a plaintive e-mail, at-tempting to extricate herself from this self-generated drama.

“Please don’t be mad at me. I don’t mean to show disrespect for your time, or for you. You are a doll. I have to admit to second thoughts, none of which are connected to you. What I have been thinking each day is this: I really want the column to speak for me. Because it’s better at speaking for me than I am. The thing about writing is that, as you of course know, it requires — and allows — refl ection and consideration and fi guring out what you really think, what you really want to say. And each week I try to get to that, sometimes getting there and some-times not. But when I talk I fi nd myself more inclined to pop off, or go for a joke, or at-tempt to entertain, or fi ll silence lest silence be misunderstood….In the weeks after we spoke I sort of winced at things I’d said. (That would be just about everything.) I feel I was babbly, nervous, and in gener-al…wanting. And I felt, Oh, don’t be a noisy person, be quiet and write. (I was hoping you found me suffi ciently boring not to go forward.) This is not in any way your fault as I’m sure you know or have a sense of, but mine. Could you allow this to just pass, and not do the piece? I would be so grateful.”

Finally, she clicks send and apparently hopes that’s it. Which it isn’t. Which she should have known, having been a member of the media for more than 30 years.

●Ordinarily, Noonan loves giving interviews. She

particularly loves boys with political roundtables, and boys with political roundtables love her back. George Stephanopoulos, Chris Matthews and the late Tim Russert have all invited Noonan on air repeatedly, partly because she is a good counterpoint to people on the left and partly because she is reliably theatrical and can be counted on to fl atter her host. Nearly any time a question is directed at her, she will turn her head slightly, look off into the distance and do what might be described as a long-studied blink, followed by the signature Noonan double-nod of agreement. It’s a dramatic gesture that says that her host is so unbelievably smart he’s caused Noonan to consider, for the fi rst time ever, something that is, in fact, her job to consider all day long. Then comes her response, which more often than not begins with a sigh and is then followed by a Dale Carnegie-esque incantation of the host’s name. Such as, “Here’s the thing, Chris” or “I’ll tell you the truth, George.” As if Noonan and he are best, best friends and she is going to tell him (and the whole audience) a big secret. “It’s full-

body communicating,” says Stephanopoulos.A few weeks back, Noonan and her TV-perfect au-

burn mane appeared on Stephanopoulos’ Sunday morn-ing show, “This Week,” where she had lots to say about the impending demise of Clinton’s presidential cam-paign. “Look,” she said, before giving a signature pause, and another glance beyond the horizon. “She’s got a new ad up now in — where the heck is it?”

“Oregon,” offered Democratic strategist Donna Brazile.

“Oregon,” Noonan, continued. “Where Mrs. Clinton doesn’t even pretend that she’s fi ghting Obama. She’s fi ghting the press in the ad. She’s saying they weren’t

nice to me. To my mind that is not talking to voters. What she’s doing is spinning why it’s over.”

It would be hard to underestimate the enjoyment Noonan has taken in Clinton’s downfall. Eight years ago, the former speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan penned “The Case Against Hillary,” a 181-page polemic against Clinton’s bid for the Senate and at-tacking her character, as well. As Noonan saw it, the former fi rst lady and her husband were responsible for the coarsening of American culture, the quintes-sential example of a generation who’d put ambition ahead of principles. “Together they stand for one thing: maximum and uninterrupted power for the Clintons….America is the platform for the Clintons’ ambitions, not the focus of them,” she wrote.

Though “The Case Against Hillary” made The New York Times Best-Seller List, it was largely received as a sermon to the Republican base, delivered by the woman who’d written George Bush the elder’s “thousand points of light” speech. Of course she would oppose Hillary’s candidacy. Nothing much new there.

But in 2005, Noonan broke with President George W. Bush’s administration over the Iraq war, among other things, and it gave her an air of cross-partisan credibil-ity going into the current presidential season. Then, as Clinton stumbled in the Democratic primaries, Noonan found herself being embraced by an unlikely coalition of Obama supporters and disaffected Republicans to whom she was no longer a boilerplate conservative, but an iconoclast who’d turned on President Bush and been vindicated by anti-Clinton sentiment that was growing among Democrats. What’s more, being a woman gave Noonan a freedom to write critically about Clinton with little risk of being labeled sexist by

the senator’s supporters.“With Peggy Noonan, not only did I share many of

her views about the election, I felt she was coming at it in a fair-minded way,” says New York Magazine col-umnist and Obama supporter Kurt Andersen. “It wasn’t like Bill Kristol, who you know what he’s going to say before he says it.”

“This moment was made for her,” Stephanopoulos says by phone. “She has a special feel for Hillary, though I’m sure it’s not one Clinton supporters always appre-ciate. And she’s had tremendous insight into what has been a troubled period for the Republican party. It gave her an opportunity to show some independence.”

Or, as William Greider of the left-wing sta-ple The Nation puts it: “She’s come face-to-face with what happened to the Republican party and acknowledged it rather than pre-tending it’s not so or blaming the Democrats. I think she’s terrifi c.”

●Perhaps it isn’t surprising that a sizeable

chunk of the left eventually fell in love with (or at least got a crush on) Noonan. As she notes, no one ever expected her to become a conservative Republican.

It’s earlier this spring and Noonan is sit-ting in Sfoglia, a trendy restaurant on the Upper East Side, near the apartment she shares with her Obama-supporting, 20-year-old son, Will, when he’s not off at college. (In another piece of the puzzle that makes up the former speechwriter’s life, she is a devout Catholic with traditional views on “family values” who is in fact divorced.) Noonan is 57, and her natural good looks remain. She is wearing a simple long-sleeve T-shirt and a prairie skirt, her feet inside a pair of bright red cowboy boots she bought in Texas in 1985, just after she’d gone to work as a speechwrit-er in the Reagan White House.

“My parents were ancestral Democrats,” she says, chewing a piece of Nicorette gum as she waits for her salad to arrive. “They were working-class folk. It would never have oc-curred to my grandmother to vote for a thing called a Republican. I’m not sure she ever met a Republican.”

Born in Brooklyn in 1950, Noonan was the third of seven children. Her father was a mer-chant seaman and then a furniture salesman. Her mother was a housewife. When Noonan was fi ve, the family moved to Massapequa, N.Y. As a child, Noonan and her siblings rode around the neighborhood on cheap bikes and spent their summers frolicking in a neighbor’s 3-foot pool. Everyone worshipped the Kennedys.

Finally, the family wound up in Rutherford, N.J., where Noonan graduated from high school. She took a job waitressing and enrolled in night school at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck, N.J., where she studied for two years before being admitted full-time. Occasionally, Noonan attended anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, one of which featured a speaker who asserted disdainfully that the United States’ greatest accomplishment was exporting Coca-Cola. “I couldn’t get into the spirit,” Noonan later wrote. “There was con-tempt for the 19-year-old boys who were carrying guns in the war or in the [National] Guard….There was con-tempt for America.” The experience was transformative for Noonan. These were not her people.

In 1972, she graduated with a degree in English litera-ture and a minor in journalism. Without any connections to speak of, she took a job at CBS’ all-news radio sta-tion in Boston, where she shared an apartment with Lisa Schwarzbaum, the future fi lm critic of Entertainment Weekly. Though they’d met before Noonan “switched teams,” as Schwarzbaum puts it in an e-mail, they never stopped being friends. “The thing about Peggy is, she’s got a lot of friends who aren’t on her team. (Because, re-ally, oy, what a team.) And still we love her, because she can be so warm, so silly, so charming, so compassionate. (Well, except about Hillary, her ‘Moby Dick.’)”

At CBS Radio, Noonan did well and was transferred to New York in 1977, where she became a producer for Dan Rather. He says her politics were never an issue to him. “I didn’t think of her as a conservative. I didn’t think of her as anything but a fi ercely independent re-porter. She’s a very good writer and thinker.”

Rather at times would ask Noonan to moonlight as his speechwriter and she was good at that, too.

By 1984, she was itching to work for Reagan. So she

12

“This moment was made for her. ” — George Stephanopoulos

WWD, FRIDAY, JUNE 20, 2008

Media/Advertising

How Peggy Noonan Won

WWD.COM13WWD, FRIDAY, JUNE 20, 2008

did two things. First, she prayed. Then, she sought advice from Joe Sobran of the National Review. He didn’t have a way into the White House, but a fellow editor at his publication did. As it turned out, Ben Elliott, head of the president’s speechwriters, had an open slot.

When Noonan made it onto the mother ship, she was 33, a young woman in a de-partment of older men. Perhaps predictably, the job had its pitfalls. She was pres-sured to write speeches for Nancy Reagan, which she did not want to do. The presi-dent himself turned out to be aloof. Inside the White House, there was a cold war being waged by Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford loyalists who opposed Reagan’s eco-nomic policies and wanted détente with the Soviet Union.

“The White House I lived through was an abattoir,” Noonan says, taking a sip of water. “There was blood on the fl oors. Everybody fought. They undercut each other, they tried to remove each other from the meeting. But the argument was held every day, and it went to the president every day, and things got adjudicated. That’s the way it ought to be if you’re serious. One of the things I have not liked in the past two administrations is this extraordinary inner-house awe for their president. You know, I loved Reagan, but he was a man and he was fl awed and I wrote about that in my fi rst book. I am astonished that the Bush people are so robotic. I am astonished that if you ever criticize your guy, he will banish you from the kingdom.”

Of course, it’s worth pointing out that most of Noonan’s “fights” at the White House were not with her “guy,” but with the holdovers from the previous two adminis-trations. Noonan not only agreed with the president on the economy and the Soviet Union, she shared in his predilection for rhetoric that connected the administration’s policies to the will of God. And she, like Reagan, believed in strange, mystical things.

When Noonan was in high school, she had a dream the night before Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. As she wrote in her 1990 memoir, “Things I Saw at the Revolution”: “I saw Abraham Lincoln in Ford’s Theatre. He was sitting in a box and suddenly a shadow came from behind and Lincoln turned to look and there was a sharp retort and he slumped in his chair. But the moment before he was shot, I saw his face and he was black.”

Shortly thereafter came another foreboding premonition about the murder of Bobby Kennedy.

“Whether those stories are real or not, she and Reagan both had an affi nity for right-wing new age-ry,” says Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker, a former speech-writer for President Jimmy Carter. “Even though she didn’t know Reagan that well, her fantasy of herself tracked with his fantasy of himself. The most famous passages of the speeches she did were pure Hollywood.”

On June 6, 1984, the 40th anniversary of D-Day, Reagan delivered Noonan’s fi rst speech, in which the only thing missing was a John Williams score. “These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc,” he said. “These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent.”

It was a smash hit, as was an admiring tribute to John F. Kennedy that Reagan de-livered at a fund-raiser for the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum.

By 1986, however, the writing was on the wall. Noonan’s boss, Elliott, had been re-moved from his post as the head of speech-writing, and it was seen around the offi ce as the triumph of the pragmatists over the idealists. She’d recently married Richard Rahn, who was then the chief economist at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (they divorced in 1990). She had quit smoking and it left her exhausted. She also wanted to have a baby. “Time to go,” she thought.

So Noonan resigned in a letter to Reagan, and signed it with x’s for kisses. “My sec-retary said, ‘No, they won’t like it,’ so I sent a plain one, got mad, and sent the kisses,” Noonan later recalled.

In 1988, George H.W. Bush drafted her to work on his presidential campaign, where she was responsible for thinking up his famous “Read my lips: No new taxes” pro-nouncement. “It was a reminder to beware of sound bites that come back to bite you,” says Aram Bakshian, the fi rst head of Reagan’s speech-writing department. “It was clever, but foolish.”

Happily, politics is one of the few businesses in which leaving (or losing) the best jobs is often the best that can happen: book deals, op-ed columns, consultancies at think tanks and lucrative speaking engagements on the lecture circuit. All of which Noonan has enjoyed since returning to New York nearly two decades ago.

First up was her memoir, “What I Saw at the Revolution.” It was a bestseller, though reviews were mixed and former White House colleagues such as Pat

Buchanan claimed not to recall having had conversations that appeared in it. Similarly, Rather felt Noonan’s characterization of CBS as overly liberal served her outsider-ish narrative, but not necessarily the truth. “She described CBS in a way that didn’t match my memory,” he says. “There were many people there who were Republicans and wanted Reagan to win.”

Six more books followed, including a treatise on how to be a more eloquent you, encomiums to Pope John Paul II and Reagan and the anti-Hillary book that came out in 2000, the same year she was given her weekly column in the Journal.

In 2005, after taking a leave from the Journal to campaign for Bush’s reelection, Noonan’s views began to shift. Increasingly, she came to believe the war in Iraq was a mistake. She also felt Bush’s spending was out of control, a common complaint from economic conservatives. Then came the President’s inaugural speech. “This was an American president saying, essentially, it is now the policy of the United States to eradicate evil from the world, and to be friends with those countries that are de-mocracies and not friends with those that are not,” she says. “To me that’s so mad, it stopped me in my tracks and made me reconsider everything. It’s both utopian and

aggressive. You cannot decide to tell the world how it will govern itself.”

And so that’s what she began to write, to the delight of people like Russert, who said just days before his death: “Peggy is someone who has been a tradi-tional conservative writer and thinker, but if she fi nds shortcomings in a con-servative or a liberal, she points them out. The only predictable thing about her column is its unpredictability.”Adds Marie Brenner, one of Noonan’s clos-est friends and a self-described liberal: “She’s constantly thinking and refl ecting.

She’s not interested in living in an echo chamber.” ●

Noonan is cooperating with the profi le again, but on her terms, which means e-mail only and thus little talk of herself.

At the moment, she is discussing the perception that Bill Clinton destroyed his wife’s campaign: “The scarlet-faced, fi nger-waving, reporter-lecturing manner and tone; the sly race-baiting; the insistent ego; the me, me, me. It made her look like she wasn’t in charge of her surrogates. It also left her looking like her spouse was a crazy person. He reminded people of what they didn’t like in the Clinton years, which was deadly. He didn’t make her lose, but he was part of the loss….This guy’s not a docu-mentary, he’s an opera. Somebody should write it.”

Also earning her ire is the evangelical wing of the Republican party. “In 2008, we had Mike Huckabee going before voters in Iowa and saying, in essence, vote for me because I’m Christian. Catholics thought, huh? That’s not how we do it. Religion is part of the package in terms of leadership — it’s not the entire pack-age. We had evangelicals rejecting Mitt Romney because he’s Mormon. Catholics are very sensitive to that kind of thing — we can remember, ‘I can’t vote for that guy because he’s a papist.’”

Some Democrats — noting the affectionate feelings she has expressed for Obama — have begun to wonder if Noonan might do a complete ideological fl ip, becoming this year’s Arianna Huffi ngton.

This seems unlikely, however. Huffi ngton is the woman who came to oppose the entire conservative agenda. She jumped ship and suggested that others do the same. Noonan’s the woman who stayed on the ship, organized a rebellion and suggested tossing the captain overboard. And on the most signifi cant issues, she is still very much a conservative. She’s still pro-life, she still opposes gay marriage, she still be-lieves in lower taxes and smaller government.

And, perhaps predictably, some of Noonan’s critics already are predicting the end of her comeback. Last week, the political blog Wonkette ran a post about her fi rst post-primary election column, saying: “Our girlfriend Peggy Noonan has been more enjoyable than usual this year, as a tragically drawn-out Democratic primary battle provided her with endless opportunities to touch herself while Barack Obama spoke pretty things….Now, that tortured eloquence has vanished.”

Not so fast — though the Obama folks may have less in common with Noonan in the general election than they did in the primary.

“Jacob,” she says, incanting my name for what must be the dozenth time, “the past few years have left me understanding more than ever that I am a conservative, and a particular kind of one. The Republican party has been, in my lifetime, the conveyor of conservative ideas. That has ended the past eight years. We’ll see if it comes back. But conservatism is what engages my mind, and the U.S. is what engages my heart.”

JUST SUPER: Those models everyone knows on a fi rst-name basis are back with a vengeance — and will be seen very soon in fashion magazines galore. Miuccia Prada released to

WWD a preview of her fall Prada campaign featuring Linda Evangelista dressed in a collection strong on lace and sly gender plays. “We imagined her so beautiful in this collection,” the Italian designer said. Steven Meisel photographed Evangelista in a New York studio last April, with Guido Palau in charge of hair and Pat McGrath the makeup. The campaign will fi rst appear in the August issue of Vogue Italia, on newsstands July 4.

Meanwhile, Naomi — as in Naomi Campbell — is the face of Yves Saint Laurent’s campaign, shot by Ines van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin under the direction of YSL designer Stefano Pilati. Images of Campbell, photographed at the fashion house’s headquarters on the Avenue George V in Paris, break in August issues of fashion titles. — Miles Socha

MEMO PAD …and Linda Evangelista in Prada’s.

Naomi Campbell in YSL’s fall campaign…

the Democratic Primary

“One of the things I have not liked in the past

two administrations is this extraordinary inner-

house awe for their president….I am astonished

that the Bush people are so robotic. ” — Peggy Noonan

Continued on page 14

WWD.COMWWD, FRIDAY, JUNE 20, 200814

By Elizabeth Thurman

ATLANTA — Hennes & Mauritz drew a crowd for the opening of its first store here.

About 850 shoppers waited in a line that wrapped around the block last Friday as the Swedish fast-fash-ion behemoth launched its only full-concept store in the Southeast. The two-level, 24,000-square-foot space offers women’s, men’s, children’s, accessories, lingerie and swimwear, priced from $5.90 to $69.90.

The location will be the only Atlanta unit to offer one-off designer collections, which have included co-brandings with Stella McCartney, Viktor & Rolf and Karl Lagerfeld, among others.

The store, which is the second of four locations slat-ed to launch in the Atlanta region by the end of the year, is in Atlantic Station, a 138-acre, mixed-use develop-ment in the city’s Midtown section that is anchored by Dillard’s and Ikea. The setting “is the perfect fi t,” said H&M spokeswoman Jennifer Uglialoro.

Key summer offerings include bikinis that start at $9.90; bright, fl oral dresses from $19.90; African-inspired jewelry and handbags from $5.90 to $7.90, and scarves from $12.90.

More than 500 people attended for a preopening, pri-vate shopping event last week that offered customers a 25 percent discount on all merchandise. A navy week-ender bag for $59.90 was the bestseller, Uglialoro said.

The promotions continued on opening day, with the fi rst 300 customers receiving an H&M T-shirt and gift cards ranging from $10 to $500.

Next up are the fall openings of two more Atlanta-area units at Town Center Cobb, a suburban mall 15 miles northwest of downtown and in the Mall of Georgia, in Buford, Ga., 30 miles northeast of the city. In May, the re-tailer opened at the North Point mall in Alpharetta, Ga., 20 miles north of downtown, where it offers only women’s and young women’s separates, dresses and accessories.

H&M’s next one-off collection will be designed by Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons and is set to launch in mid-November, coinciding with the opening of two H&M stores in Tokyo.

H&M has opened about 1,500 doors in 29 countries and 250 stores in the U.S. since its New York debut in 2000.

PHOT

O BY

PSH

ONE.

COM

H&M Brings Full Line to Atlanta

Tory Burch Bolsters Exec Ranks

By Beth Wilson

An affable Dennis Basso couldn’t

help but poke fun at himself.

“How good was that retouching?” Basso laughed, re-ferring to a flat-tering photo pro-jected behind him as he accepted his award at Fashion Group International Chicago’s “Night of Stars” event at the city’s Peninsula hotel last week.

Basso’s luxury fur and ready-to-wear business was one of five companies, including fine jew-eler Judith Ripka and local women’s and men’s retailer Jake, recognized by the fashion group as leaders in the areas of fashion, accesso-ries, retail and home furnishings.

The night was a good-natured affair, highlighted by Basso, who noted that after starting his business in 1983, he remembered reading about various design-ers winning awards in WWD and thought “could that ever be me?”

“It’s an unbelievable compliment,” said Basso, who opened a Chicago store on Michigan Avenue in 2005.

Meanwhile, Bob Berk, who owns Chicago’s more than 10-year-old Judith Ripka store on Oak Street and is also the designer’s brother-in-law, accepted the award for Ripka.

The brand boasts 15 stores and 300 international distribution points, and Berk told the audience how his attorney brother Ron met Ripka, how she paid his brother in jewelry and how his mother said, “Go back and marry that girl!”

Partners in business and in life, Jake owners Lance Lawson and Jim Wetzel noted that when they started their business, which highlights American designers such as Doo-Ri Chung, Lutz & Patmos and Phillip Lim, in 2004, “no one was recognizing the savvy here,” they said.

Some of those designers had little or no representa-tion in Chicago, they said, and that fact helped Jake grow to two locations in Chicago, one in suburban Winnetka and possibly a fourth location in New York, where the pair is scouting sites.

Also honored were Baker Furniture, which opened its fi rst Chicago store in October 2007, and the 900 Shops, the shopping center at 900 North Michigan Avenue, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary and houses some 70 retailers, including Bloomingdale’s, Coach, MaxMara and Mark Shale.

“FGI seeks to recognize those who infl uence and di-rect our industry,” said Susan McCullough, president of the Fashion Group Foundation of Chicago. “They [the winners] have each made a mark in the industry and in Chicago.”

Proceeds from the event, in which tickets were $350 apiece, went toward the foundation’s scholarship fund. The fi nal tally wasn’t available at press time.

Dennis Basso Highlights Chicago’s Night of Stars

Inside H&M in Atlanta.

Jake’s co-owners, Lance Lawson and Jim Wetzel.

Dennis Basso accepting his

award.

Looks from Dennis Basso.

PHOT

OS B

Y KA

REN

HOYT

By Julee Kaplan

Tory Burch is beefing up her team with the hiring of six new

executives.Vicki Cantrell has joined the con-

temporary sportswear fi rm as chief operating and chief information of-fi cer. Most recently, Cantrell spent fi ve years at Giorgio Armani, where she was senior vice president and cio. In her new post, Cantrell is re-sponsible for Burch’s international and domestic operations as well as information technology.

Elisa del Pos has been named general manager and vice president of sales for Europe. She had been at Donna Karan for 12 years, where she most recently was vice president of sales, international.

Scott Herckis has been named vice

president of fi nance. Previously, he was at Charles Nolan Apparel LLC as chief fi nancial offi cer. Prior to that, he worked at fi rms such as Elie Tahari and London Fog. In his new role, he will be responsible for fi nancial re-porting, budgeting and forecasting.

JoAnn Slattery has been appoint-ed vice president of sales, ready-to-wear. She joins from Burberry, where she worked for eight years, most recently as vice president, women’s rtw and children’s. At Tory Burch, she will oversee wholesale sales for the brand’s apparel.

Lydia Forstmann has joined as vice president of sales for Japan and Asia. Previously, she was at Coach, where she worked as director of sales for Asia.

Kate Macaluso has been named director of marketing. She joins from the Gucci Group, where she worked

for nine years in various roles. Most recently, she was the director of mar-keting and creative services. She will oversee marketing initiatives as well as events.

All the new hires are based in the company’s New York headquarters. Eventually, del Pos will move into the new Tory Burch Milan showroom, which is set to open in September.

Cantrell, del Pos, Slattery and Forstmann report to Brigitte Kleine, president of Tory Burch. Herckis re-ports to Reepal Shah, cfo. Macaluso reports to Samantha Gregory, vice president of global communications.

“We are growing so quickly, so we need to build out the organization,” said Kleine, adding that she’s on the hunt for additional executives to work in buying and planning for retail and design, as well as internationally.

Continued from page 13

OLDER — BUT SLOWER: Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia still hopes

to launch a magazine aimed at older women, but it’s waiting out a tough advertising climate, said MSLO chief creative offi cer Gael Towey, just after a seminar she gave Liz Claiborne staff Thursday. She confi rmed the magazine’s working title is M and that a prototype has been produced — the fi rst time anyone at the company has openly admitted to the magazine’s existence — but said the time line was unclear given the economic downturn.

Towey’s presentation also revealed the company is working on a site called Whole Living in conjunction with its magazine Body + Soul. (The magazine’s Web component is already branded as Whole Living, but there is a spun-off beta version in internal use, Towey said afterward.) Meanwhile, her talk to Claiborne staff focused on the visual elements of the Martha Stewart brand, from photographer selection to use of color. When it comes to expanding the reach of that brand, Towey conceded, “We’re working against the idea that Martha is a basket and frills person.”

She had earlier shown slides of editorial spreads that showed Stewart’s magazines could include messy shots of drips and spills. But that relaxation clearly has its limits: Recalling a photo shoot where Stewart posed with chickens, Towey said, “Martha wanted to wash and blow-dry the chickens before the photo shoot.” She didn’t say whether the domestic diva got her way, but Towey was compelled to clean and cook one of the older chickens later that day. — Irin Carmon

CH-CH-CH-CHANGES: As Rupert Murdoch’s retooling of The Wall Street Journal continues, a major reorganization shook up the newsroom once again on Thursday. Just over a month after Robert Thomson took over as the paper’s managing editor, he realigned his management team and outlined a slew of changes to the newsroom: Thomson promoted several staffers

to deputy managing editors and created a central news desk comprising a threesome of national, international and enterprise editors. The changes may have sounded dramatic, but according to sources close to the paper, the creation of the “trioka” and the promotion of money and investing editor Nikhil Deogun to international editor seem to be the most signifi cant moves. Otherwise, the shuffl ing seems to be more signifi cant in title change than in change of responsibility.

The fallout sends another deputy managing editor packing: Laurie Hays, who departs after 23 years to join Bloomberg News (another deputy managing editor, Bill Grueskin, revealed his departure earlier this month to become dean of academic affairs at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism).

Thomson promoted general news editor Matt Murray to national editor. Page One will still be overseen by Mike Williams, who will now also oversee investigative journalism, which used to be overseen by Hays. Along with Deogun, who will preside over the paper’s global bureaus and correspondents, the two were named deputy managing editors and essentially will run the newsroom.

Deputy managing editor Mike Miller, who is responsible for WSJ’s feature sections, was promoted to senior deputy managing editor and given responsibility for “editing the paper if I am otherwise engaged,” Thomson wrote in a memo to staffers. In the past, Barney Calame and deputy managing editor Dan Hertzberg fi lled that role.

Thomson also promoted assistant managing editor Cathy Panagoulias, who was in charge of hiring for the paper, and vice president, special projects, Jim Pensiero to deputy managing editors. Alix Freedman remains a deputy managing editor. Finally, deputy managing editor Dan Hertzberg will still oversee the paper’s European and Asian editions and will report to Thomson. Reginald Chua, assistant managing editor, will become senior assistant managing editor, and will oversee design.

Need a fl ow chart? — Stephanie D. Smith

MEMO PAD

15WWD, FRIDAY, JUNE 20, 2008

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Regional Sales ExecutivesKara Ross, a New York Based LuxuryHand Bag and Bridge Jewelry Designand Mfg. Company is seeking regional,commissioned sales executives with 3yrs. exp. Nation wide. Must have es-tablished High-End boutiques andchain stores client base. Send resumeto: dalia@kararossny.com

SALES EXECUTIVESeeking salesperson for established

textile agency. Min 3-4 yrs exp.Salary & benefits.Please fax res to:

(212) 398-1340 orE-mail: fabric_job@hotmail.com

SALES - HandbagsEstablished importer of popular priced

handbags seeking experiencedsalesperson. Must be highly motivated,

strong organizational and detail skills,active accounts available.

Please email resume ckd360@aol.comor fax (212) 629-3123

Sales Rep- Junior LineA highly successful manufacturingcompany is seeking a Junior Line SalesRep in our NY Sales Office. Candidatesmust have a min of 10 yrs experience.Exp. in Chain & Dept. Stores a plus.Please Fax resume to: 323-263-0772 orE-mail to: no1apparel@hotmail.com

Sales Associate - Watches & Fine JewelryChanel, Inc. is seeking an experienced candidate for our Watch and FineJewelry Madison Avenue boutique. Candidates are to be knowledgeable inwatches & fine jewelry to service clients and guide them in their selections.The ideal candidate will ensure the highest standards of client service andpossess a minimum of 3-5 yrs experience in W&FJ sales; with a proventrack record of closing large sales. Must have strong organizational skillsrequired to follow-up with various clients, and offer exceptional interpersonal,accuracy and attention to detail skills. Must have proficient computer skills.We offer an attractive salary & competitive benefits package. For immediateconsideration please send a resume, cover letter and salary requirementsto: madisonwfj@chanelusa.com.

We will respond only to resumes that meet position criteria and includesalary requirement information. Chanel, Inc. is an EOE M/F/D/V.

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