News Bites | Tommy Hilfiger Heads to London, Coveteur Names A-List Advisors

Welcome to News Bites, BoF's regular feature of the stories that get the industry talking.

Tommy Hilfiger is headed to London Fashion Week.

"I think evolving it into a global tour is an exciting thought," said Tommy Hilfiger to BoF in February, considering the potential of Tommyland, the entertainment-cum-fashion runway show extravaganzas that the brand has produced since adopting an in-season format in Autumn 2016. "Not being disruptive is not an option for us," he said.

The designer is following through on his international goals. His namesake brand announced on Thursday that September’s Autumn 2017 show will take place in London on the last day of the city’s fashion week. Tommy Hilfiger will also present the men’s collections on the runway at the same time, a first for the brand since 2010.

Building on the music festival theme furthered last season in Los Angeles — where models arrived by branded private jet, Fergie performed after the show and merch booths and amusement rides abounded — the London show will take place at the Roundhouse concert venue in Camden.

“We look forward to celebrating the rebellious spirit and star-studded glamour of rock-and-roll in London for Fall 2017,” said Tommy Hilfiger in a statement. “My vision for TommyNow was to create a global platform that could bring our shows to audiences around the globe like a rock-and-roll world tour. It’s about celebrating the connection between fashion and pop culture with experiences, performances and inspiring interactions that are designed around our consumers.”

All men's and women's runway looks will be available to buy immediately, as in prior seasons, in 70 countries at Tommy Hilfiger stores, Tommy.com, select wholesalers and through social media — including the TMY.GIRL conversational commerce bot introduced during the first in-season runway show last Autumn. — Chantal Fernandez

Coveteur enlists Cindy Crawford, Bobbi Brown and Prabal Gurung as advisors for next stage of growth.

Coveteur, a fashion and lifestyle site known for revealing the closets of fashion insiders in perfectly arranged editorials, announced Friday that it has signed three A-list names as advisors in its next stage of growth. Supermodel Cindy Crawford, beauty entrepreneur Bobbi Brown and designer Prabal Gurung will support the media brand by acting as sounding boards and opening doors for Coveteur as it expands into more content verticals, platforms and branded content.

“We felt it was critical to have voices of experience in the areas that we touch, like fashion, style, beauty, entertainment, entrepreneurship and business,” said chief executive Warren Webster, who joined the site in 2015 after serving as the interim chief executive at Goop. “We looked for a small group of people who support our brand, believe in it and who really are at the top of their game in their respective fields.”

Crawford, Brown and Gurung have no official holding in the company, unlike Drake, an investor who contributed an undisclosed amount to a funding round totaling $500,000. That round, which closed in 2012, is still the only funding Coveteur has raised since it was founded in Toronto in 2011 by photographer Jake Rosenberg, stylist Stephanie Mark and Erin Kleinberg, the latter of whom departed in January 2014.

While an office in Toronto remains, Webster oversaw the transition of most of the staff to a new Manhattan office in the summer of 2015 shortly after he arrived at the company. Since then, the staff has quadrupled in size to about 30, including editorial and fashion director Laurel Pantin and managing editor Caryn Prime, who is joining in June from Marie Claire. Sales are led by Jennifer Siegert and Jill Novara.

Coveteur is currently focused on expanding editorial coverage to include more beauty, health and wellness while maintaining its signature voice and visual aesthetic. The website audience has doubled in the last two years — it registered 426,000 monthly unique visitors in April, according to ComScore — and the Instagram audience has crossed 1 million. (Webster declined to share traffic or revenue numbers.) Video is another priority as revenue from the medium has doubled in the last year, as are events and experiences.

Coveteur also plans to expand its ability to create custom content for brands, either for its own site or theirs. "Broadly speaking, we want to be able to offer our clients a full-service option," said Webster. "The best luxury brands in the world love the way that we create content, whether it's photo or video or written content…. We are doing that now and we are going to formalise that in a bigger way going forward. That's definitely part of our growth strategy." — Chantal Fernandez

Editor's note: A previous version of this article said Drake is a Coveteur advisory board member. He is an investor only. 

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