Brillen gehören zu Karl Lagerfelds Image wie seine weißen Hemden und eng-sitzenden Anzüge. Es ist daher nur logisch, dass er in Lizenz eine Brillenkollektion auf den Markt bringt.
2008 kommen eine Damen- und eine Herren-Kollektion auf den Markt.
Ab Januar werden 24 Sonnenbrillen-Modelle und ab April 14 korrektive Brillen im Einzelhandel und in Kaufhäusern verfügbar sein.
Die Einzelhandelspreise sollen zwischen $175 und $250 liegen.
WWD reports here:
Glasses are as much a part of Karl Lagerfeld’s image as white shirts and slim-fitting suits. So it comes as no surprise he is launching his own eyewear collection; the only question is why it took him so long.
Lagerfeld’s firm will launch women’s and men’s eyewear collections under the Karl Lagerfeld label, beginning in 2008 through a licensing agreement.
In stores in January, Lagerfeld’s sun collection features 24 styles, each in four color options — from tones of blue to red, black and tortoise. The opthalmic group will be available by April and will include 14 styles, each with four color choices.
All Karl Lagerfeld eyewear will be sold worldwide in select department stores and specialty stores and will retail from $175 to $250.
Jacuzzi Brands Corp. announced that its subsidiary, Jacuzzi Inc. has granted an exclusive license to manufacture and market luxury sleep systems under its Jacuzzi trademark.
The suite of products, to be known as Jacuzzi Sleep Systems, encompasses mattresses and foundations featuring a proprietary gel visco-elastic memory foam that provides high comfort, superior orthopedic support and a cooler sleeping surface than earlier generations of memory foam mattresses.
Products will be marketed through interior designers, upscale specialty bedding retailers, full-line furniture stores and better department stores. A formal product launch is planned for this fall.
The ready-to-wear firm has formed a partnership to manufacture Elie Tahari and Tahari belt collections, set to launch for fall 2008
WWD reports here, with a great typo that as part of a strategy to expand his lifestyle products, Giorgio Armani has teamed up with consumer electronics giant Samsung Electronics to develop a portable phone and a luxury LCD television — the first items of a series of home electronic goods.
The phone will be unveiled at the Armani Teatro before the designer’s fashion show. It will be rolled out in the European market in November and in other countries next year. The phone is being developed for the designer’s signature and Emporio Armani lines. The TV is being developed as part of the Armani Casa home line and will be unveiled in January 2008.
“Today fashion has expanded to encompass our way of life, not just how we dress, but how we design our home, the hotels we stay in, the car we drive and the technology we buy,” said the designer in a statement issued on Sunday. “In fact, we make as much of a personal statement with the mobile phones that we carry or the televisions we have in our living rooms as we do with the shoes and bags we wear or the furnishings we choose to place in our homes,” Armani said.
Armani, who will provide the design aesthetic of the products, underscored how “these are all lifestyle decisions, where design and performance are the criteria.”
The designer pointed to Samsung as a company that has “successfully anticipated the growing role for consumer electronics in our lives, while recognizing the importance of self-expression in the development of its products.”
The phone can fit in a person’s palm, as it is the size of a credit card and a mere 9.9 mm in thickness. A large 2.6-inch QVGA TFT LCD screen maximizes the user’s visual experience and optimizes the full touch-screen user interface (UI). By adapting a haptical UI, users can feel an immediate mild vibration when they touch icons on the display.
Despite its compactness, the phone is equipped with a 3-megapixel camera, a music player supporting various types of formats and a full internet browser. Furthermore, the Giorgio Armani-Samsung Mobile offers a microSD type external memory slot and comes with a Bluetooth stereo headset. A specially designed Giorgio Armani leather carrying case is also included. The new products will be distributed in upscale consumer electronics stores and through Giorgio Armani’s direct controlled retail network. The price of the phone is 650 euros, or $915 at current exchange.
The home electronics products will be increasingly more relevant for the designer’s business, as he plans to open hotels and residences around the world and in light of his ever-expanding home collection. Today, Armani has 25 Casa stores in 46 countries.
(How is that possible, 25 stores in 46 countries?)
Other fashion brands have tapped into the consumer goods industry, in the belief that portable phones are increasingly objects of design and style — even status symbols. Last year, Prada signed an agreement with LG Electronics to launch a touch interface portable phone, Dolce & Gabbana collaborated with Motorola on a MotoRazr V3i and Versus launched a cell phone-MP3 player with Samsung.
