Hasta La Ideas

If you have a few extra millions of dollars burning a hole in your pocket, but you don’t want to shell out that $1 billion Pierre Cardin is asking for in an outright sale of his label, perhaps your money would be better put to use in the hands of Michael Kors. The NY Post is reporting that it has discovered that the fashion mogul and television judge is attempting to raise $500 million for “aggressive global-expansion plans” for his eponymous brand. The paper reports that Kors has been keeping his fundraising efforts quiet, hitting up potential investors who are eager to chip in to help grow an empire, but won’t blow his cover. In exchange for the $500 million, Kors is apparently “looking to sell an equity stake of about 25 percent in the coming months.” Should he raise the money, it would bring the brand’s value up to “a staggering $2 billion.” Still, if you are thinking about investing your millions with Kors, we advise caution, because $500 million can also buy a very nice death ray. Given that Kors seems to always be wearing all black, the wardrobe of choice of nearly all evil masterminds, we can’t guarantee that his intentions are pure and that he hasn’t already secured an army of mole people to help him rule, post-death ray.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Save for a brief respite of good news about some awards won, the bad seems to be piling up again for RMJM, one of the largest architecture firms in the world. You might recall that all this negative press seemed to start toward the end of last year, when it was reported that Stirling Prize-winning architect Will Alsop, who joined the firm back in 2009 after pulling a fast one on the industry by claiming he was quitting architecture for good, hadn’t yet landed any of the big commissions he was brought in to win. This week, Architects Journal reported that they’d received word that Alsop was preparing to make his exit from RMJM, jumping ship after less than two years and starting a new firm with a fellow RMJM architect. Building Design, on the other hand, spoke to Alsop, who said these were all mere rumors. “I don’t have any plans to leave at all,” he told BD. “I am aware of these rumours – it is like rumours on rumours.” However, if we’ve learned anything from politics or the entertainment industry, isn’t it that first you deny until you have your story in place and then a week later, you come out and fess up? And since we’ve been duped by Alsop before, should we believe his explanation? Whatever the case with this sole architect in a company who employs quite a few of them, the firm itself has continued to suffer rocky terrain. Elsewhere in Building Design, they report that RMJM has now found itself in another courtroom battle, this time in a suit filed against them by the German firm Muller BBM, who are claiming they are owed roughly $140,000 in unpaid fees for their contributions to RMJM’s Gazprom Tower in St. Petersburg, which still hasn’t begun construction.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

So much for whatever was left of the cautious optimism many were feeling in the architecture and construction industries following a string of positive signs coming from the American Institute of Architects‘ monthly Architecture Billings Index. The last few months had seen a series of tumbles in the Index, after it peaked back in January with pre-2008, industry meltdown levels. Now it’s dipped even further, down to 47.2 from 47.6 the month before (anything below 50 indicates fewer billings and, in general, less demand). What’s more, it’s made the AIA’s always somber keeper of the numbers downright gloomy:

“Whatever positive momentum that there had been seen in late 2010 and earlier this year has disappeared,” said AIA Chief Economist, Kermit Baker, PhD, Hon. AIA. “The broader economy looks to be entering another soft spot, and certainly state budget constraints are adversely affecting the profession’s ability to work on institutional projects. But there is no denying that the prolonged credit freeze from lenders for financing commercial projects is the number one challenge to a recovery for the design and construction industry.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

How’s the old saying go? At first you succeed in lipstick, sell sell again? Such is the case with designer and occasional award-winning film director Tom Ford. Women’s Wear Daily reports that, following the success of a range of lipsticks baring the designer’s name, a larger line, featuring a full range of cosmetics and skincare products, will be released this September and will all, apparently, be as colorful as his lipsticks. Ford told WWD, “My intention was to do color cosmetics out of the gate, but not everyone else was convinced that I had a voice in color until the lipsticks started selling out again and again.” When asked why he himself appears in the print campaign for the new products, alongside model Lara Stone, he responded, “I’m not in the ads because I’m vain. A lot of people still don’t know who I am, and the product sells better with me in the ads.” By that logic, this writer fully expects to be called in for the next campaign, since no one knows who he is either. Granted, this writer is not anywhere capable of looking as handsome as Mr. Ford on even his worst days, and instead looks something akin to a boiled, pale fish, even when wearing something of the designer’s creation, but we can’t see how that in any way relates. We’ll be waiting patiently by the phone.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

A big win for the fashion industry last Friday, when it was announced that a New York federal court had
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/tory-burch-awarded-164-million-judgment-against-internet-counterfeiters-123645094.html”>found in favor of designer/brand Tory Burch and awarded the company $164 million in damages, to be paid out by the owners of hundreds of websites who had been selling knock-offs of their products, chiefly Burch’s Reva ballet flats. The suit was filed at the end of last year, alleging that a group believed to be located in China had set up 232 individual sites which were “designed to appear to unsuspecting consumers to be an official Tory Burch site or an authorized retailer of Tory Burch products.” The suit also detailed how the group swiped images and product descriptions from the company’s official site and used them for their own knock-off pages. The courtroom win not only nets Burch the $164 million, but the court also ordered that all 232 sites and domain names be immediately shut down and handed over to the company. That shut down and hand over action has also been put into place for potential future copyright infringing sites. The ruling is “believed to be the largest ever issued in the fashion industry” against this sort of online, knock-off swindling, and has likely been received as another move toward the positive within an industry that has fought to clamp down on counterfeiters.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.