GenDigital

Back To School Fashion Watch: Must Have Item

We asked some of our fashion forward thinking panelists (you can recognize them easily on campus by their $300 handbags and $150 customized sneakers) what are some of the "must have" apparel and accessory items for back to school. So far, their responses gives the "wear your brand with pride" expression a whole new meaning. One of the hot items for back to school is the near $100 Big Pony Polo from Ralph Lauren. The polo shirt, available for both men and women in a variety of styles, first showed up on the radar last year, but this year it seems to have really caught on. Perhaps, given the fact that a number of celebs have been photographed with one on lately doesn't hurt either.

K Fed Endorses Clothing Line

Yesterday it was Adidas and Scarlett Johannson making fashion news, today it is Mrs. Britney Spears, aka Kevin Federline grabbing some headlines. Perhaps not as big a deal as the Reebok/Johannson deal, but K-Fed is set to appear in a new advertising campaign from Five Star Vintage, a higher end apparel line. The campaign targets fashion conscious 16 to 28 year old men who take their fashion cues from Hollywood celebs. The line is available at Macy's, Lord & Taylor, Kitsons and even the Virgin Megastores.

Reebok and Super Hot Celeb Johannson Team Up For Love

Scarlett Johannson, currently ranked number 5 on the Youth Trends Top Ten Celebrity List, has lined up a new deal with Reebok, now an operating unit of Adidas, to create a combination retro style and fashion forward style line of sportswear and footwear dubbed "Scarlett [Hearts] Rbk." Reebok is quoted in yesterday's edition of WWD saying the deal "hits the sweet spot" of a major women's initiative the company announced back in April. The line will be targeted to young women who go to yoga or pilates class in the morning and then catch up with friends afterwords for coffee at Starbucks. Scarlett is latest Hollywood celeb to join Reebok's growing list of A listers which also include Jay Z, Lucy Liu and 50 Cent, among others. Reebok and Johansson say the target customer for the new line is an active female between the ages of 16 and 35.

Back To School Ads Already?

The July 4th holiday weekend isn't even over yet and back to school ads are already being released. What's next, holiday shopping in August? The first company to release back to school ads is jeans maker Mudd who will play on the current theme of youth empowerment to promote their brand. The Mudd series of creative executions will use actual teen girls who are all involved in some sort of charitable cause. The Mudd campaign will be exclusive to the print world with the ads appearing in Teen People and Seventeen in their thick August back-to-school issues, the most important month for the teen mag category.

American Apparel's Virtual Foray

American Apparel, the Los Angeles-based retailer who outfits teens and young adults with the latest trendy t-shirts has entered the virtual online world of Second Life. You might remember Business Week doing a cover feature on Second Life back in May talking about the finer points of the vibrant virtual community where users stake a claim on land and build their own communities. American Apparel's virtual store on Second Life opened last week and so far the company said it has sold about 2,000 items for $1 or less. The items consist mostly of avatars "worn" by Second Life's member base. The online merchandise is modeled after real-life merchandise found at brick and mortar American Apparel stores, which is kind of cool. The question for American Apparel and other retailers testing the virtual community waters comes down to this: is this a separate profitable business line or is this a buzz creating mechanism to drive in-store traffic? Selling virtual AA items for $1 or less would mean the company would have to sell thousands daily to make it work one would think. We'll be keeping an eye on this one.

Looking To "Keep It Simple," Gap Returns To TV Advertising

Among teens and college students, Gap is a brand that has been losing steam for the past two years as younger shoppers preferred the styles offered at other specialty clothing retailers like American Eagle and Abercrombie & Fitch. Beginning in July, Gap will hit the television airwaves again promoting its new "Keep It Simple" initiative which emphasizes staples like denim, t-shirts and hooded sweatshirts. The original specialty clothing retailer hopes this new back to basics approach will re-energize its brand and capture a greater share of younger shoppers. In addition to the new television commercials which will feature celebrities like Jeremy Piven who plays Ari Gold on HBO's Entourage, the retailer said it will change store window displays once a month rather than once a season.

Ralph Lauren Shuts Polo Jeans Line

In a surprise move Ralph Lauren plans to shut down its Polo Jeans line citing "over promotion and over distribution." In the fiercely competitive denim category among teens and college students, Polo Jeans has been in a mainstay as one of the top 10 denim brands purchased by teens and college students over the past five years, although it was not considererd a premium brand. As one door closes another one opens for Polo. The apparel maker plans to introduce a new premium denim line as part of a longer term strategy to complement its already popular Rugby label and its other premium labels like Purple. Polo is a brand that resonates well with young people and I am pretty confident that the introduction of a new premium denim line should fare pretty well with the older portion of the Gen Y audience, the same audience that is already shelling out $100 to $200 on jeans made by brands like Seven and Lucky.

MIT Researchers Envision The Internet Changing The Fashion Industry

Researchers at the famed MIT Media Lab has a bold vision for the future of fashion. We all know fashion styles go in and out faster than you can say blueberry pancakes, but what if customers had instant access to new designs before they were even produced let alone distributed? MIT researcher Judith Donath recently unveiled a project called "urbanhermes" that backs up her theory of super fast information exchange online against the fashion industry. Researchers like Ms. Donath view the fashion category as just another medium for communicating information, or as she says, "a way to show your place in the social hierarchy." I don't know about hierarchy, but if there was an application available to Gen Y that leveraged this theory of rapid change, a level of customization and personalization for something as simple as a custom t-shirt or sneakers (think Nike ID on steroids) with distribution on a platform like Facebook or Yahoo, I would say get the bank deposit slips ready. I probably sound like a broken record, but this is what Gen Y is all about: instant gratification that is personalized to their specific needs and interests.

Summer Style: The Shorter The Shorts The Better

You might not be so worried about your teen hanging out on Myspace or Facebook after hearing this. The latest fashion trend for young women this summer appears to be very short, shorts. Celebs like Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton and Mischa Barton may have started the trend last summer, but this year, expect the masses to be following their lead. Parents can blame Kristen Johnson and her clothing company called Johnson on the latest fashion trend. The company's shorts are now carried in over 500 stores and are pretty pricey, ranging from $120 all they way up to $500.