Week in Review | Nicolas Ghesquière, Vuitton's Selfridges Townhouse, Bouchra Jarrar, Ariel Foxman

LOS ANGELES, United States — The fashion world's worst kept secret was finally confirmed this week when Nicolas Ghesquière was named artistic director of women's collections at Louis Vuitton, following the departure of Marc Jacobs at the end of Paris Fashion Week. But even though the news had already been circulating for almost one year — ever since Mr Ghesquière left Balenciaga — it didn't stop fashion followers from celebrating. A tweet to Louis Vuitton's more than 1.8 million Twitter followers confirming the news was retweeted over 4,000 times.

Also this week, Vuitton unveiled its new mega-sized concession — dubbed the Louis Vuitton Townhouse — inside the department store Selfridges, located on London's Oxford Street, one of the busiest retail corridors in the world. This new store sits in stark contrast to the more rarefied setting of brand's maison on nearby Bond Street. Vuitton's challenge in the coming years will be to draw on Ghesquière's deep well of creativity to achieve the brand's desire to re-assert it's high luxury positioning, while also remaining accessible to the legions of fans and followers who will also want to participate in Ghesquière's new vision for Vuitton. Exciting times ahead.

From mega-brand to upstart, Nicolas Ghesquière's former studio director at Balenciaga has taken a completely different career path: building her own business. Bouchra Jarrar has been working away under the radar in Paris, where she has slowly built a following for her razor-sharp cuts and uncompromising approach. She told Suleman Anaya that she was now ready to break out from the background and was not shy about stating she is looking for a financial partner to help her grow the business.

I first heard about the remarkable talent of Ariel Foxman from one of his former colleagues at InStyle, a publication he has helped to build into the world's top selling fashion magazine. As always with our Creative Class pieces, it was fascinating to learn about his professional trajectory. For Foxman, it was about focusing on doing his job as well as possible, not on becoming a star. As he said, "You can't be an editor because you want to be a star. This idea that you can be an editor to be famous is not going to serve you or your brand well. That happens only because you've done amazing work." He is certainly a star in our minds.

In our latest Market GPS briefing, which, this time, took us to the Maghreb, we learned about the rising prominence of Morocco's luxury market and the relatively slow development of surrounding countries like Libya and Tunisia, which have been ravaged by instability in recent years. Tunisia, of course, gave rise to the Arab Spring movement which spread quickly throughout the region. That said, there are green shoots even here, demonstrating how pervasive the development of fashion has become, even in contexts of political upheaval.

This week, we also got to know the Finnish upstart made-to-measure shoemaker The Left Shoe Company, which employs digital scanning technology to deliver customised shoes to its clientele. It was particularly interesting to see the kind of new technology being used in tandem with old fashioned craftsmanship, while the company's negative working capital model also means risk is minimised.

Finally, for all you budding fashion entrepreneurs out there, don't miss the latest article in our popular series The Basics, which is all about setting up a fashion business from scratch. This time we touched on e-commerce, an essential element for any new fashion business looking to capture the many benefits of selling directly to end consumers, not least of which is being able to reach customers all around the world.

That's all for this week. Have a great weekend.