New Luxury is Bringing a Totally New Vision of Cities.

We urgently need to rethink the future of our cities to include sustainability, security and well-being and that thought process requires us to understand what our future day-to-day requirements will be.

It is vital to our future to rethink our changing personal needs for living, working and shopping that include sustainability, security and well-being with the needs of the planet.
For this process to succeed we have to consider rebuilding cities that are no longer sustainable. We are not giving enough respect to the environment, to the protection of the Earth, and to protecting our own health. We call this respect the New Luxury Code. Our environment is directly linked to our health. We need clean air, clean water, comfortable heating and energy. But increasingly, we also need more and more security.
Old buildings should be replaced by new ones allowing implementation of up-to-date regulations, new technologies, and sustainable, basic protection for the Earth. This will support the new economy while giving more jobs and allow the use of sustainable and natural materials as well as new technologies. 
Since the 1970’s many new regulations have been put in place by the cities or the regions but they have little effects on private buildings where you still can find lead and other contaminates in water that could seriously harm people. Buildings are getting old and even though they need to be redesigned owners are reluctant to do so because of the expense and so put people in danger. The New Luxury Code will provide new guidelines for these future cities. Nothing illustrates these points better than the recent Grenfell Tower fire in London, where old buildings were given a new outside appearance to look better, but without updating fire safety systems, resulting in a terrible loss of life. After the fire, inspections done on several other residences found widespread safety violations as well.
The New Luxury Code will provide new, more responsible guidelines for these future cities.

More info:  cc@creezy-theagency.com ​

If you miss elegance, if you miss fashion with texture, shapes and style, you will love this exhibition!
Rather than a retrospective, Balenciaga: Shaping Fashion is focusing in detail on the latter part of Balenciaga’s long career in the 1950s and 1960s, arguably one of his most creative periods as ‘the master’ of haute couture. It was during these years that he not only dressed some of the most iconic women of the time, but also introduced revolutionary shapes including the tunic, the sack, ‘baby doll’ and shift dress – all of which remain style staples today. Highlights will include ensembles made by Balenciaga for Hollywood actress Ava Gardner, dresses and hats belonging to socialite and 1960s fashion icon Gloria Guinness, and pieces worn by one of the world’s wealthiest women, Mona von Bismarck, who commissioned everything from ball-gowns to gardening shorts from the couturier. 
On display will be over 100 garments and 20 hats, many of which have never been on public display before. These will be accompanied by archive sketches, patterns, photographs, fabric samples and catwalk footage revealing Balenciaga’s uncompromising creativity. In addition x-rays, animated patterns and short films on couture-making processes will uncover the hidden details that made his work so exceptional. The exhibition will draw mostly on the V&A’s fashion holdings – the largest collection of Balenciaga in the UK. The collection was initiated for the Museum by Cecil Beaton in the 1970s.

Balenciaga: Shaping Fashion   
27 May 2017 – 18 February 2018 
V&A Museum London

Almost every day there are more and more articles on massive retail store closings (especially larger department stores) throughout the US. With thousands of stores closing, could this be the death of brick-and-mortar retailing? Hardly.
To get a better perspective of what is happening to department stores it is helpful to see how their current retail model originally developed and evolved. Beginning in the early 20th Century, department stores consolidated several independent specialty stores under one roof: hat shops, dress shops, accessories shops, jewelry stores, shoe stores and perfume shops. The department stores eventually followed consumers to suburban areas with shopping malls, the department stores being the “anchor” for other stores in the mall. This model worked well for over 100 years with the whole point being the idea that shoppers could buy a variety of clothing and accessories from one trip to the department store, but this century-old model is breaking down for the following reasons:

1. Online sales. This reason is the one everyone reads about, but it is not the biggest reason for brick-and-mortar retailer problems. After all, online sales still only represent less than 10% of total retail sales.
2. Destination consumer purchasing behaviors. Destination retailing is driving most consumer purchasing today. If consumers want to buy something at the lowest price possible they will specifically go to Wal-Mart or to Amazon. If they want to buy perfume, 99% of them will go to a department store. But they are not sticking around the store to buy other products.
3. Consumers need for engagement. This factor is huge. Today’s consumers want to shop with retailers who engage them. Entertain them. Educate them.

The Paradigm Shift that is occurring involves the swing back to specialty stores that department stores replaced a century ago.

Any retailer who wants to survive this shift in retailing needs to do the following:

1. Become a destination for consumers.
2. Engage, entertain, and educate consumers using emotions and the five senses as a guideline (i.e. Starbucks/Taste; Flower shops/Sight; Perfume stores/Smell; Gardening stores/Touch)

My prediction: Within 10 years there will be more than 10,000 brick-and-mortar retail stores selling natural perfumes from only a handful of retailers now.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/walterloeb/2017/03/20/these-21-retailers-are-closing-3591-stores-who-is-next/#2a91a79c4854

Imagine for a moment that you walk in to a typical supermarket produce department and discover that all of the fresh fruits and vegetables have been replaced by very realistic plastic fruits and vegetables. Everything looks beautiful and they even smell like fresh produce. How much would you buy?  
Now imagine a similar situation walking into a typical department store’s perfume department and again discovering that all the natural perfumes have been replaced by very realistic but synthetic perfumes. Again, everything looks beautiful and they may even smell like natural perfumes. How much would you buy?
In the supermarket produce department example, no one would buy plastic fruits and vegetables regardless of how they looked and smelled.
In the perfume department, however, this is not imagination at all. Department stores sell billions and billions of dollars of perfumes made from chemicals created in laboratories that may smell great and look beautiful but are not natural. This situation has become so serious that thousands of offices (doctors, dentists, businesses), schools and universities have signs similar to these I've seen recently

Canada started this movement 15 years ago in the Regional Municipality of Halifax. Many businesses, transportation systems, many performances spaces, hospitals and educational institutions have adopted a scent-awareness policy. Elsewhere in Canada, universities with scent-awareness policies include the University of Calgary, University of Toronto and McMaster University... Today this movement is developing worldwide.
It’s time to Reconnect with Nature, buy Natural Perfumes and support Natural Perfumers before it’s too late as more and more people consider banning PERFUME.
This is one of the reasons the International Perfume Foundation has made 2017 the Year to Reconnect with Nature.

Young Brands Have a Huge Advantage In the Race for Success

We spoke with many new brands last year explaining how to develop different ways to advertise, tell stories, add real content, and promote it afterwards to their group of followers.
Young brands have a huge advantage today in the race for success because they understand what is content while “mature” brands are continuing to advertise the old way.
While promoting their products, spending millions in advertising, showing pictures of products instead of content, while turning up the volume when TV commercials come on, old brands risk exasperating consumers, and their actions are providing exactly the contrary of what they want to achieve. It is difficult to change, even for well- known advertising agencies that are still thinking the old way.

Today, brands need followers and a lot of content to communicate with them, but not always the same content. Most TV commercials only repeat the same stories and images.
The advantages of younger brands is that even if they don’t have money for expensive commercials, they are emerging in a new advertising paradigm, they are involved in their own social media circles, and most of the time they are producing their own content or working with smaller, new agencies.
They have stories to tell and share; they are thinkers; they have enough creativity to please their followers; they know their followers; they express themselves with their soul and their passion.

What Kind of Content are Your Followers Expecting?

1. Any content besides a picture of your product. The product can be featured on the header of your Twitter and Facebook account or the header of your blog but the communication should be different to allow customers to think you are really taking time to talk to them, to communicate personally with them.

2. Your content can be a reaction to the news of the day.

3. It can be personal, sharing what you are doing at a certain moment of the day, or your thoughts on something you want to share.

4. You can also share trends and history in your own sector of activity.

Better to be Friends! Consumers Need to Feel They can Trust You. 

Consumer need to feel that the person behind the brand is sincere and can be friends with them and that you are not just trying to sell them products. They need to find someone, a soul, behind the product. They will buy your products when they will receive something else than the usual advertising.
Buying products today is linked more and more to friendship, social media, and networking.
More and more, consumers will need to feel they can trust you, that you are not only a brand, that you are also a human and that you understand consumer's concerns:
Are your products made the right way?  With your heart?
Are you respecting the environment?
Are you protecting workers in the chain of production?  
Are you are transparent in your content?
Are your products healthy and sustainable? 
Do you practice integrity and trustworthiness?

If Coco Chanel or Christian Dior were still alive today they could probably do this, but today, the advantages are in the hands of young brands.

I don’t want to alert brands or to make their sky greyer but just want to wake them on the need to change to fit consumer’s expectations.
Brands and advertisers should stop treating consumers like 5-year-old children. Babies grow up and consumers do as well… and when they do they demand much more to be convinced. Brands need to grow up and evolve as well.
 
Brands need to communicate differently, totally change their method of communication, and consider the evolution of consumer’s minds. Finally, advertising should become an integrated process of adding value in delivering consumers something else rather than just a repetitive, revenue-generating concept.
​
Product placement integration in storytelling will replace advertising.
Brands will need to have a voice, share a situation, share an attitude and engage the audience to follow it, and to like it. Brands need to acquire a soul, a voice and become alive if they want to survive and be part of the New Economy. Only then the audience will become followers, friends and their best consumers. And if you really want to make a difference, give consumers the history behind the making of your products.
 
Games are changing but change is an interesting process as it is also a learning process. To enter the New Economy we need innovation, creativity and the courage to give up old models for new ones.  This is the path of a successful future.

#AdBlock,#NewEconomy,#Change

​Anyone paying attention to what has been happening for the past several years with consumers, retail stores and technology will recognize that there is a revolution going on in today’s economy. The emergence of rapidly changing technology and the pervasive use of social media has produced two distinct courses of action for retailers. They either decide that brick-and-mortar stores are too expensive, ineffective, or just a symbolic flagship used for branding with intermitten sales and move to an online presence, or they improve their brink-and-mortar retail model to appeal to those consumers looking for “experiences” when they shop. Retailers are in better position to apply “Experiential Retailing” than any other retail model but only if they adopt up-to-date practices that will appeal to a growing number of consumers looking for more than just products at the lowest prices.
Here are a list of suggestions for retailers who want to truly engage their customers.