It’s interesting to see  a luxury cosmetic company finally break into a more tech-savvy audience and create a digital strategy behind the brand. This might be a reaction to the efforts of the self-made make-up artist, Lauren Luke, who has Youtube channel of online make-up tutorials with an average of 56 million viewers and 260,000 subscribers.

In early 2009–with the IP expertise of Anomaly–Sephora partnered with Luke to create By Lauren Luke, a proprietary signature line of cosmetics. Since the launch, she has become an online sensation with loyal fans and shoppers. Luke doesn’t offer marketed luxury cosmetics, but she does offer candid makeup advice from all the natural skill or imperfections of a real woman.

Coca-Cola asked fashion designers to redesign a limited-edition bottle in an effort to raise money following last year’s devastating earthquake in Abruzzo, Italy. Italian designers including Marni, Moschino, Ferreti, Versace, and Etro showcased their creations at a fashion show in Milan.

The colorful designs are all part of Coca Cola Light’s ‘Tribute to Fashion’ charity project in Italy.

Milan residents can buy Coke Light in these bottles now with profits funding scholarships for young women affected by the earthquake.

Here is a video of showing the new bottles in action:

Video by Francip81

Photos by Getty Images, Femme Thing, and Splash

[Via NYMag and Metro]

Thonet, the oldest furniture brand in the world and the German manufacturer of high-quality furnishings, is producing a simplified form of bentwood and tubular steel furniture for the Japanese retail chain Muji. The products are manufactured entirely at Thonet’s headquarters in Frankenberg, Germany to the company’s customary high quality standards.

The first models are reminiscent of those bentwood chairs that were the cornerstone on which the Thonet success story was established. The most famous bentwood chair, No. 14 is celebrating its 150th birthday and is probably the oldest industrial product still in production today. The chair is sold with range of tables that has a convincingly understated elegance, and it marries perfectly with the expressively styled chair. The English designer James Irvine, who is now working and living in Milan as creative director at Thonet, is responsible for the reinterpretation of the bentwood furniture.

In addition to the bentwood tradition, the “Muji manufactured by Thonet” collection also features the second revolutionary trend of the Thonet brand, the company’s tubular steel furniture tradition dating back to the 1920s. An iconographic tubular steel cantilever chair is sold alongside a desk and a range of side tables that have a convincingly effortless style and cool beauty like the original models. This collection was created by the German designer Konstantin Grcic.

Wallpaper featured an article on Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller, and it seems he like knows what will tantalize shoppers in London. In the past he has filled Tate Britain with bouquets and organized music concerts in the countryside. Would this work for a temporary in-store display? As I’m about to find out Deller doesn’t take his artistic mission lightly.

Clever indeed the creative strategy behind Louis Vuitton’s garden project is to coincide with their latest store opening in the retail island of Westfield in London’s Shepherds Bush.

Deller produced a temporary urban garden with full-body scarecrows to highlight the store’s opening ceremony. Carefully designed to symbolize sustainability and natural energy – the garden brings life to Louis’s latest luxury giant as well as to the usual synthetic mall environment.

Entrenched in the past year and a half with lawsuits in copyright infringement and fraudulent art, this is an interesting way to build up a luxury giant through a social cause. In parallel with economic responsibility, Deller’s botanical presentation will be donated to the Hammersmith Community Gardens Project. Do you think ‘London’s love for a good garden’ is a philanthropic act that is well suited for Louis Vuitton?

Last winter our heads turned with quizzical looks as we saw towering models in Louboutin’s patent leather studded, sky-scraper heels wobble down the runway at Rodarte. This time the Rodarte sisters have chosen the London cobbler to craft their Spring footwear. All the front-row ladies—Leigh Lezark, Daisy Lowe, Selma Blair—have been spotted in Kirkwood’s mighty high architectural stilettos and cantilevered platform heels. Is Nicholas Kirkwood ready to step into the French maestro’s shoes? Style.com’s All The New That’s Fit To Print thinks so! They put together a really neat preview of what’s new for Spring 2009 and more like, Susie Bubble’s The Next Blah Blah Blah.