New-age Britian - Jaguar XJ.

After endless of increasingly dismissive teaser videos and photos, Jaguar finally took the wraps of their latest cat, the new XJ. Taken place at the underappreciated Saatchi Gallery in Chelsea last week, Jay Leno unveiled the car along with Ellen Mcpherson who stole some lime light with gorgeous legs in a seductive shade of bronze. Moving on to the more important topic of the car, Jaguar taken a giant leap from the pact of other British car manufacturers by going down the path of voluptuous and muscular shapes, as opposed to sticking to the more upright wedge shape Jaguar africandos are used to. Like the slogan states, “The Icon re-imaginated”, Jaguar are reinventing themselves – this under the leadership of Ian Calum, head of design

This year the UK manufacturing industry will face the lowest electricity bills in decades – but all for wrong reasons. Machines in factories across the country are in standby mode, lights have been turned off and staff on a 4 day work week all because customer orders are not coming in fast enough. The unfortunate businesses which have swirled deep into the financial world of red numbers and failed to secure fiscal relief from the government, have had to file for bankruptcy. Even highly successful business that flourished in the highs of the credit bubble, haven’t managed to escape wrath of the deepening recession. If both viable and non-viable business are failing then what is the key to survival?

A common denominator shared by the crème of British luxury companies is their long history. Many have been in business since cavemen first discovered that wood can float on water. Having been operating for 50-300 years companies such as Purdey, Bentley, Harrods and Jaguar are have earned their stripes for surviving through recessions, great depressions and world wars. Against all odds, these companies have retained their business formula, image and appeal, with little or few changes made to business model. Either their management have been on the lazy side on running a business or they got the alchemy for success right from the start. Tradition and heritage has been close to the hearts and has been one of the key ingredients to success including worldwide recognition. When financial constraints are narrow, consumers see value and security in buying their favourite long term tradition brands. It’s back to basics. Caramel flavoured popcorn recommended by a spouse is ignored in favour of tradition salt pop corn while spam and nonsense product face neglect. Life is stripped to its essence and we get a clear picture of the products that define and matter most to us.

One of the biggest benefit in buying a product from a family owned business is that they are less prone to change in product offerings. How many times haven’t you managed to lose or involuntarily damaged personal belonging only to feel gutted knowing that it’s irreplaceable because it’s no longer in production? Only a few luxury companies offer an identical product over a several years long period – the only exception being fragrance companies. However, a great majority of leading luxury British craft companies repetitively supply the same or near identical versions of a product for years. But standing by tradition doesn’t come without risks. Iconic, small niche companies such as Bentley, Purdey and even watch manufacturer are under financial umbilical support from foreign conglomerates or investment firms which have rescued these venerable companies from bankruptcy.

Contrary to the association with high quality and exemplary craftsmanship, Jaguars and British cars have over decades gained an unfavourable reputation for poor reliability and quality of build. Japanese and German auto makers have on the other hand, been at the forefront of industry leading technology. Despite the hearsay about engine breakdowns, gearbox failures and oil leaks, luxury consumers have not been deterred from dreams of speeding in a drop-top racing green E-Type on the Isle of Man. Rationale and Jaguars have never stood side by side. Jaguars have never been bought on the basis of acceleration numbers, torque or built-in seat vibrators. Likewise with Aston Martins, Bentley’s and Rolls-Royces, a Jaguar is an extension of your style and perception of yourself – it’s something you wear and passionately get attached to. That is why no effort or attention to detail have been spared for the development of the new XJ which is a highly sculptured car. Emphasized by the flush relationship between the roof, rear windshield and boot lid which together form a smooth-lined rear-end that resembles the tail of a high speed train, deep thoughts are behind this undoubtedly revolutionary design.

On the opposite end of the car is a recognisable nose design with an empowering grill and sinister head lights easily recognisable as Jaguar traits. Very little else on the car is shared with the outgoing XJ model, as Ian Calum is leading Jaguar away from its past-oriented philosophy to a more new-age identity – Sort of like a change from Gordon Brown to David Cameron. The new direction has the potential to attract a clientele of new customers formerly uninterested in Jaguars, while traditionalist sober over the glamorous interior lit by new age blue-coloured light also deflected by the abundance of glossy surface finishes in the cabin. The highlight of the science fiction theme is the convoluted all digital dashboard. It is a TFT screen displaying visually captivating interface which resembles something one would expect to see in the Starship Enterprise. Unchartered territory has not been entered as the dual aerospace-influenced vents above the center console are nowadays a common decoration in even low-end cars, leaving the Jag cockpit echoing a generic design flaw.

However, the same cannot be said about the magnificent wood work that wraps around the interior in a style only seen in an auditorium like the Royal Prince Albert Hall or on small luxury yacht – a highly inventive design touch that could only have been conceived by a marvellous designer like Ian Calum, BMW’s former Chris Bangle and the Aston Martin DB9 and Vantage designer Henrik Frisker.

The XJ is a defining car of Jaguar’s efforts to turn the page and start a new chapter having been acquired by Indian Tata Motors from Ford’s poor and financially devastating parenting effort. Reviews and opinions on Jaguar’s mid-sized sedan, the XF, have nothing but short of praise and amazement for Jag that is surprisingly both seductively good looking and also offer a competitive driving experience that’s on a par with its German’s rival. Whether or not the new XJ’s shockingly radical appearance is the high road to success will be determined at the end of its life span, 6-7 years from now. It will either be visually outdated or have beautified over the years like its much admired predecessors or a walnut chest drawer.

Everything has a begining and an end.

I’m forever grateful for your patience in taking your time in visiting the blog despite the abnormally infrequent posting. And it pains me much knowing about the disappointment and frustration that arise from not being greeted with new reading material every time you access I Luw Fashion.

During the first 6 months of 2009 I endured the busiest period of my life. There have been adventures, rewards, challenges and epiphanies. It has come to my discovery that time is a scares and very precious resource with no substitute. Today I wake up wishing there were twenty five and half hours in one day instead of just 24. Previously I have divulged you of my primary occupation which is undergraduate marketing student. In May I successfully completed my second year and good lord has it been intense. In addition to the challenges at the classroom bench, my polygamist approaches to life lead me to take a giant leap into the world of music. Fascinated by production and having grumbled on it for a few months, I headed out against gusty winds in late January and bought a keyboard. My childish logic was that if I can press buttons on my piano, playing keys on a piano cannot be any different. The hypothesis was indeed right, playing the piano is child’s play. Composing the soundtrack for the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ movie together with Hans Zimmer, is not one of my long term goals but I to purposefully want to make use of my newly acquired skills in the future.
Having read theoretical material and watched instructional videos in the vicinity of my home, I have in 7 months managed to go from finger fatigue and mental frustration, to smiles and harmonising syncing keys with one another, creating what we refer to as music. The path to learning how to play the piano has not been without turbulence. From April-May, my keyboard as well as the blog had to take a backseat in my life as the academic career of mine needed increasingly needed more attention. Contrary to the knowledge of the public, blogging can be very time consuming. From researching and photo editing to writing and publishing, one post can take 6-12 hours to complete depending on the degree of depth and quality of the post. I love media production and enjoy every minute I spend conceiving a post but time has lately not been on my side. Currently I’m enjoying the summer break and spend most of my time working a full time job that leaves me with little time and energy for blogging. On the positive side I have devoted a great deal of time and energy to a vision or more precisely an enterprise I’m trying to bring to life, namely, the successor of I Luw Fashion. Wanting to pursue media production as an occupation I’m striving for progression and aim to endeavour a greater challenge with more resources than this very blog. A compelling and inventive concept has been drafted and even though we are currently in a recession, the prospects are good. This blog is destined to remain active in the foreseeable future but will eventually have to parish or fade away as it reincarnates into another form. Alternatively I have to settle for doing editorial work for someone else.
In the mean time, stay putt. I’ll work my hardest to dampen my summer crush for playing the piano which has been one daily nocturnal activity of mine during the recent weeks. Maybe I’m taking an unconscious break from writing as I’m trying to get over a two and a half year’s blogging hangover of posting 2-3 times every single week? What I can assure you is that media production is my future and that the spirit has not darkening.

Thank you very much.

SpringSummer 2010: Lavin men's.

Alber Elbaz is in a time bubble of runway fashion extraordinaire. As a designer, his benevolence reaches new heights with each years. It seems as though he cannot fail judging by the recent 4-5 Lanvin collection that graces the catwalk during Paris fashion week – they have all been expressions of high fashion in its purest and most compelling form.

Unlike many prestigious design houses like Louis Vuitton, Giorgio Armani and Prada, Lanvin has little mainstream appeal. The average consumer on the street enjoys status and has a healthy appetite for clothes easily recognised by others. Symbolism is therefore an apparent and important appeal of designer clothes. Well renowned monograms and logos are powerful in triggering spending happiness in consumers who would otherwise not considered parting ways with a few hundred sterling pounds for a Gucci monogram weekend bag if it didn’t have a double G monogram across the canvas. Lanvin stores are houses of no recognisable symbols or labels that would imprint themselves into the heads of consumers wishing for signs that over and over remind them of what designer label they are getting involved with. Discretion is a paramount element of Lanvin’s identity and this is further enforced by the location of Lanvin boutiques. Away from vicinity of comparable brands lined up on famous shopping boulevard destinations like Champ Elysee, Rhodeo Drive, Bond Street and Madison Avenue, London´s Lanvin boutique is cloaked in a residential Mayfair district on Mount street which is incoincidentally where Marc Jacobs set up his London Store, next to a restaurant where Michelle Obama unexpectedly stopped by for meal last month.

New Yorkers similarly face an adventurous quest in finding Marc Jacobs store in London positioned down town in West Village where tourists and non-faithful MJ fans would not bother to explore or find by simply paying a visit to the MJ website. On the other side of the double edged sword MJ has specialty stores selling accessories and memorabilia at prices that would lead to a powerful surge in sales if the whereabouts of the locations got out to the wider population – a valiant concept that would get no support by most premium corporations. Ideally, top designers want to pursue Lanvin’s on-way-street of limited availability and high exclusivity and luxury.

And sure is the Spring Summer 2010 collection luxurious. Soft and silky materials ensure a comforting and tender summer fit. The emphasis on the waistline evokes timorous for those who are embracement over their physical state, but spring 2010 is 8 months away leaving ample time to shave body mass down to a 30-31 size in waist line. Universally accepted designs are regimental ties and double breasted blazers in shiny blue, red and white stripes, which are more masculine than the proposed Marie Antoinette waistlines.

Due to the low presence of logos, eyes are left to focus their attention on the clothes – rather than blindly falling in love with logo embroided using a silk thread. The source of Elbaz’s well deserved respect and admiration is his casual non-pompous approach to designing clothes for men. All his runway presentations have a colourful character with an inviting appeal. Lacking in intimidation to ones financial self-confidence, he’s a non-stereotypical designer with a marvellous vision for what can be described as one of the top three most assuring labels for men. This raises question surrounding the purpose of the fake moustache. Not that it’s taints the splendour of the collection but it is a draft and distracting element which the collection could have done without. Warmly welcomed is the return of the visors which are not only come in alluringly handsome prints but also appearing to be hand-tied. A clever solution compared with a elastic band that has the potential or ruining your hair when putting on and taking off the visor. Much else of what’s seen eke of ease and the collection is bridled with loose fitting pieces made out of soft materials that flow masterfully with wind.

Burberry Prorsum Men's SS2010.

Welcome to men’s SS10 fashion weeks showcasing next year’s spring and summer wear from Paris and Milan. The former city’s fashion week began on Saturday with some exciting collections which need a few days digestion to come to terms with.

For 2010, Burberry Prorsum has an uncharacteristic and object of attention. Trench straps suspended across the chest is what an individual with a hostile attitude towards fashion would say look right only on a psychiatric arsonist residing a mental health clinic – or what candid designer wear shoppers anticipate to see in a collection of a more inventive design habits like Ann Demeulemeester and Dior Homme. They are the kind of detail that highly distract and impairs the mind ability to funnel a collection into a unified meaning – like a blue band aid floating on the surface of a steaming hot tomato soup. Burberry traditionalist will loathe the straps while the high fashion crowd sitting on the front row with a note pad in hand eagerly awaiting an unexpected phenomenon to comment on.

Splitting crowds and brewing heated debates is a recent experience of Prince Charles of Wales. His latest debacle with the public has lead to bewilderedness and anguish over his involvement in influence on the design that was destined for the property development on the former land of the Chelsea barracks. Owned by the Royal family of Quatar, the land is planned to be harvested by a grand development of residential tower blocks. Prince Charles did not object to the plans as much as he strongly expressed his disapproval of the highly contrasting steel and glass architecture that would be eye piercing in an area of historical and cultural value. Pensioners living in the Royal Hospital nearby, as well as local residents would have their current serene skyline architecturally contaminated with tall modern buildings.

The design for the development have now returned to square one after the Royal family of Qatar avoided an unpleasant diplomatic feud by considerately granting Prince Charles’s request to scrap the design for a more `suitable` theme that would better unify with surrounding buildings of Victorian and Georgian architecture. Not only has his act of exercising his authority infuriated people but so has “old fashioned” view on architecture. But is the heir to the British throne a wise man standing up against corporate scavenging of London soil, or is he a old bloke resistant to change who’s unrighteously invaded another family’s right to fully exploit their precious £1 billion plot of land? The opposition of the proposed architecture have certainly been most grateful in obtaining royal artillery against the Goliath of the Qatar investment firm managing the development. A win-win compromise should make way for mutual satisfaction as there are several architect firms that can commission a design of stronger character than generic 21st century residential blocks of geometrical and sterile characters that has been rejected. Burberry Prorsum’s head of design, Christopher Bailey has set an exemplary balance between tradition and progression in designing the SS10 collection.

Browsing through the multitude of runway shots, the collection is very much a continuation of the previous youthfully spirited collections – especially with the attractive Emma Watson chosen as the main star of the fall/winter 2009 collection shot by Mario Testino. Across the men’s SS10 collection we find the usual forte of puffy tall-waisted trousers with narrow legs dominating the lower bodies of the slim but healthy looking male models. Perplexing materials to look forward to are shower-proof cotton which hints at the theme of the collection which is weather. The primary coloured parkas jackets are not summer clothing that cross people’s minds during the first week of the Wimbledon tennis tournament, but can come in handy for adventurous ocean voyages to the Isle of Man – or for protection at the ever so muddy Galstronbury festival.

Other weather friendly material is the washed cotton which greatly differs from the more pompous ostrich skin materials favoured for designer bags. Heavy use of cotton is unexpected since it’s an non-luxurious common man’s material. But leather bags haven’t totally excluded as slate brown coloured leather with a washed-look had been the preferred choice for projecting weather durability and use – a very subtle colour used for vast accessories in the collection. The prominent palette is pastel colours with a subdued tone trigging memories of melon, strawberry and vanilla favoured ice cream. And the after taste left by the entire range of clothes is contemporary but yet familiar and traditional which should be able to get thumbs up from Prince Charles.

Father's Day 2009 gift advice.

Confusingly, many countries around the globe celebrate Father’s Day but do so on different dates of the year. This Sunday fathers worldwide will be celebrated in a several nations including Canada, the United States and UK.

Gift giving is a central part of Mother’s and Father´s day culture, and in newspapers this week, ads are running in high gear recommending suitable gifts for your old man. This year, gifts should be simple and touch on the core of male interests. Spare your energy from driving your brain to exhaustion by trying too hard in finding an unusual gift – use your intuition and personal taste. Science has long been a male dominated field of research and even non-technically inclined men get upbeat over technology and curious about consumer electronics. Curtsey of the complexity of modern technology, gadgets gets people talking about their products. An advanced product given to your father will be followed by near endless discussions over newly discovered features or in some instances, unexpected late night phone calls for a question and answer time about why the product doesn’t connect to the computer or the internet.
This week Olympus unveiled their latest camera, the impressively well crafted Olympus PEN EP1. At first sight it might come across as an ordinary point-and-shot camera graced with design panache from the past, but the EP1 is more than what’s met the eyes – it is matrimonial marriage of performance and style. Hobby photographers have in recent years have had to own a compact camera in addition to semi-professional DSLR camera for uncompromised satisfaction of photographing needs. As a camera of the cutting edge and newly developed Micro Four Third standard, the EP1 is just a few fractions in size and weight of a DSLR while enclosed in an art-deco metal casing just slightly larger than a compact point-and-shoot camera. Olympus has spared no effort in making the EP1 an eye pleasing piece of technology. Accessories include stylish 1960s inspired leather straps with visible stitching in addition to a modular viewfinder and flash which both add to the personal character of the camera. Kept simple, the EP-1 is devoid of intimidating number of buttons as seen in an airplane cockpit or on DSLR cameras. Therefore the Olympus EP-1 is an exceptional appealing to demanding fathers who want to take stunning photographs using a well engineered camera that’s pocket friendly and comes in a visually stunning package which performs.