Let's be honest, as much as the younger generation loves Louis Vuitton, as a company they have never directly marketed their product to us.
Under the direction of Kim Jones, we think Louis V may be turning a new leaf.

PHOTOS: Louis Vuitton Goes On African Safari For Men's Spring/Summer 2012 Collection
To prove how hip they are, Vuitton has enlisted the help of many up and coming musicians, models, editors and artist to take part in their latest campaign for the Spring/Summer 2012 collection of sunglasses.

Some of the models include: French artist Andre, blogger Emily Weiss, Langley Hemingway, Venus X, Xan Aird of The Virgins and Maluca Mala.
VIDEO: Louis Vuitton Animates This Season's Belts With A Saul Bass Inspired Short
Take a look at everyone who appeared in the campaign as well as their background stories in the gallery above, but the real stars are the sunglasses.
More on: Louis Vuitton, Spring 2012

Brand owners are howling for new laws to help them crush “rogue” websites. But why? New powers don’t seem necessary when courts are already forcing Internet companies to delete websites from the Internet.

The latest example involves Louis Vuitton. This week the luxury handbag maker asked a Florida court to take action against hundreds of websites with names like “louiszvuitton.com” and “knockofflouisvuittonhandbags.com.”
The case is significant because Louis Vuitton did not simply ask for an order restraining the websites from using its trademark. It also wants to zap them from the Internet altogether by forcing registrars like Go Daddy to unplug them and for search engines to deny their existence.
In this case, Louis Vuitton appears to be borrowing from a playback that Chanel has been successfully executing in Nevada since last fall. In that state, a federal judge has repeatedly granted injunctions that force Go Daddy and Google to participate in the enforcement actions. Here’s an example from an order handed down earlier this month (the language is technical but it’s easy enough to make out the general drift) :
The Registrars and the top-level domain (TLD) Registries for the Group VIII Subject Domain Names, upon receipt of this Preliminary Injunction shall … change or assist in changing, the Registrar of record … GoDaddy.com, Inc. shall hold and/or continue to hold access to the Group VIII Subject Domain Names in trust for the Court during .. this action. Godaddy.com shall.. modify the Domain Name System ..

Plaintiff may enter .. the Group VIII Domain Names into Google’s Webmaster Tools and cancel any redirection to the domains.
In its Florida complaint, Louis Vuitton is asking the court for similar orders.
The significance of this is that the luxury brands are taking actions similar to those proposed in the Stop Online Piracy Act, a piece of legislatin that went down in flames earlier this year. SOPA was so unpopular because it would have required tech companies to meddle with the technical integrity of the Internet.
With their injunction requests, Chanel and Louis Vuitton have discovered an end run that will let them do the same thing.
The issue here is not that these websites should be allowed to sell fake merchandise — the issue is that courts are giving brand owners private powers that may not be

sanctioned by law. Meanwhile, the federal government is also using questionable tactics.
The FBI, for instance, has been seizing websites on the basis of anti-drug laws and then playing Hollywood propaganda messages on them. None of this is appears to be authorized under federal criminal law.

To learn more about the Chanel seizures, see trademark lawyer Venkat Balasubramani’s explanation on TechDirt. You can also see the hundreds of domain names in question below:
Louis Vuittion Complaint

NBC's couture competition show Fashion Star is down to the wire, so what better time for John Varvatos to show off some of his new threads? Menswear designer, show judge and rock enthusiast Varvatos opened the show with his new line. Per usual, Varvatos wore the rock influence on his sleeve, with a few jackets that looked like less electric approaches to the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Bandalbum art. In keeping with the aesthetics, his models walked out to Queen's "Now I'm Here."

Following Varvatos' exhibition came the contestants. Nzimiro Oputa was able to land a $100,000 offer from Macy's for a collection built around his versatile, classic cardigans. After a brief and tense bidding war, Kara Laricks' distinctive tuxedo shirts were sold to Saks Fifth Avenue for $80,000, with H&M saying they'd "save up some money" for her.

In the next pairing, Luciana Scarabello and Nikki Poulos didn't fare quite as well. Nikki ended sans bid with her prom dress-style maxi frocks; Luciana's retro-evoking dresses earned a $50,000 bid from Saks. Ronnie Escalante got a $50,000 bid from H&M thanks in part to an innovative ad campaign involving a few red balloons, but Ross Bennett, who rocked the classic look but couldn't get his more modern designs just right, and Orly Shani, who the buyers saw as having taken "a step backwards," found themselves on the chopping block as well. Ross ended up with the elimination, and now only six remain, with next week yielding a triple elimination.
But anyway, back to Varvatos.

For some more of Varvatos' hits for 2012, here's his rock-edged showing from Men's Fashion Week in Milan back in January:

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 Video, 2012 Webby Award Winners, Webby Awards, Webby Awards 2012, Slideexpand, Webby Anna Wintour, Webby Asos, Webby Award Winners, Webby Fashion, Webby Fashion Award,  Style News

The votes are in for the 2012 Webby Awards and quite a few fashion faves nabbed first place honors for both categories: the Webby Award, chosen by the International Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Webby "People’s Voice" Award, voted on by, well, the people.
Unsurprisingly, Anna Wintour came out swinging. The Vogue editor-in-chief will take the stage for the second time to accept the "People's Voice" award for fashion. In typical Webby tradition, Wintour summed up her acceptance speech in the ceremony's mandatory five words: "Sometimes geeks can be chic."

Classic.
We can't wait to hear what she has to say at this year's ceremony on May 21. Until then, check out who else in the fashion world will take home a 2012 Webby

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Australia’s Fashion Week is in its 17th year, but it’s still got some growing up to do.
One of its most pressing issues is timing – its May scheduling means designers are too late for local spring-summer collections and too early for resortwear lineups, which typically arrive in the middle of the year.

This is something IMG, which organizes Australia Fashion Week, is trying to fix, said Jarrad Clark, IMG’s global production director and a guest judge on the country’s reality show “Project Runway.”
“The reason the event is when it is now is because of decisions that were made 17 years ago,” said Mr. Clark, “but the world has changed. The buying side has changed, the retailing has changed and the consumer interaction has changed, so we definitely need to make a change to our timing.”
That’s not to say Sydney’s fashion industry hasn’t evolved. Buyers used to wait months to get their hands on catwalk items, but this year Sydney-based label Toi et Moi is distributing nearly a third of its “Frenchie chic” collection within hours.

Compare that to Burberry, regarded by many as the global leader in the runway-to-reality trend, which sold key pieces from its spring-summer collections online last year so that they arrived in customers’ homes within weeks of being shown. Australian brands An Ode to No One and Bless’ed Are the Meek have similar plans to speed up their distribution, selling shoes directly from the catwalk within three hours through Australian footwear website StyleTread.

But fashion week isn’t limiting its sights to the domestic market. Mr. Clark said IMG is working with some of Australia’s designers – including Dion Lee, who pulled out of the event at the last minute to focus on London Fashion Week in September – to help them expand overseas.
“We want to be working with them across the 12 months, so if they want to go to other markets, we’ve got a footprint there,” he said. “This event should be a springboard for designers looking to grow their businesses internationally.”

Still-booming growth in China’s luxury market, which has it on track to surpass Japan as the world’s top spender on high-end goods by 2015, has seen major brands continue to invest in nationwide expansion, but issues such as a shortage of suitable retail space have made some question whether the market is seeing early signs of saturation. Despite these concerns, on-the-ground statistics indicate that, while the market is evolving and the consumer is becoming gradually more sophisticated, demand remains high. According to CNN, LVMH’s first-quarter sales jumped 25 percent this year, “thanks to China,” adding, “While Chinese buyers are Louis Vuitton’s biggest customers already, the market is far from saturated.” As Wendy Trevisani, a portfolio manager at Thornburg Investment Management, put it, “China’s consumer is still in its infancy,” and consumer spending is growing “pretty much without hesitation.”

This week, IW Magazine speaks to Swiss watch veteran Marc Bernhardt, who now works for the Chinese luxury group VASTO, who, like Trevisani, feels that the vastness of China’s interior — and the potential of consumers in third- and fourth-tier cities far from Beijing or Shanghai — means the market remains one of the most enticing in the world. VASTO, which currently operates around 300 points of sale throughout China, as well as shops in Switzerland and the Middle East and plans to expand to France and the US, positions itself as the “Brooks Brothers of China,” sells apparel, Swiss-made watches, French-made pens and Italian leather goods. From Bernhardt’s interview:

IW: Tell us about the Chinese luxury market.
Marc Bernhardt (MB): China is a huge country with a population of 1.4 billion, but is made up of made very different markets of which differences may be as large as exist between Scandinavia and Italy. However, the “standardization” as evidenced by similar looking malls with uniform global brand marketing campaigns is leveling the playing fields. Based on the development and penetration (of international) brands, the market is largely divided into first, second, third and even fourth tier areas. First tier markets include Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou, which have modern infrastructure and a Westernized consumer. Other tier cities will include cities with a population of around 1 million each. Western brands usually enter China through tier one and two and then work their way down.
It is amazing to already see particularly the presence of some of the Swatch brands (Tissot, Rado, Longines) in fourth tier areas. So the notion that there is still virgin territory with ignorant consumers can slowly be dismissed.

IW: So are you saying that China is reaching saturation for luxury products?
MB: No, on the contrary! There is still plenty of potential and it is forecasted that two-thirds of future wealth creation will particularly take place in tier three and four areas. What I mean to say is that consumers are becoming much more knowledgeable and you have to have a credible brand and story to tell. To a large extent this is the problem that many Chinese “luxury” brands are facing—and there are many of them, from garments to luxury furniture. Many have been free-riding with adopted European sounding names or blatant copies of existing international brands—some of the examples with derivatives of Gucci, Dior or Boss are almost funny and should keep trademark lawyers very busy.

IW: But what is the quality like of these Chinese luxury brands?
MB: Well, some of it is really quite good reaching similar levels as international brands. Actually, you would be surprised to see the high prices, but we can touch on this subject when we talk about the consumers. Again, many international brands already produce many of their items in China, so a certain know-how and savoir faire is present in the Chinese manufacturing base. What Chinese brands lack is instilling a story, a meaning and raison d’être in their products. In the past it was sufficient to pretend to be European, preferably with a blond and blue-eyed model advertising the product. Today, this marketing strategy is passé. Consumers are asking questions and are generally more critical than in the past. Recently, there was a widely publicized scandal involving a luxury furniture maker that was selling high priced “Italian Made Furniture” that turned out to be low-end Chinese-made—the company needed police protection to fend off angry consumers.

IW: Tell us about the Chinese Consumer. What distinguishes them from American or European consumers?
MB: For many years, China has been the origin of mass-produced goods often at the lower quality end. So perhaps, the impression may be that Chinese consumers having grown up in this environment will not be as demanding as their Western counterparts. This is totally false! I have rarely seen more demanding and finicky consumers. Visitors to Hong Kong may have already observed expensive watches in the shop window wrapped in protective cling film. A Chinese buyer will literally take out a magnifying glass to ascertain that there are no marks of use. Due to the propensity of fakes (from products to bank notes) Chinese are particularly careful. Anecdotally, this is also the reason why in restaurants a chicken (or any other meat dish) will often be served with the head to prove the genuine product.
On one hand, Chinese consumers will try to achieve a maximum discount, which is the reason why prices are often marked double the suggested price. On the other hand, things cannot be marked too cheap, as this would again raise suspicion that the quality was inferior or that the product may be fake. So setting the right price is a big challenge.
In general, Chinese are much more “suspicious” about the quality and serviceability of a product. For this reason, it is important to have a visible after-sales-service, an area where for instance Tissot leads with a technician work bench at each Tissot point of sale.

Though the importance of second-, third- and now fourth-tier cities to the continued development of China’s luxury market, and the increasing connoisseurship of first-tier consumers and luxury “veterans,” isn’t exactly new, major takeaways from this interview for luxury brands include more of an emphasis on legitimate story and making it personal to the Chinese consumer (rather than just pushing a clichéd “European” identity), a greater and more visible after-sales service infrastructure, and high-tech anti-counterfeiting efforts to reassure shoppers.