Before Ford, the once-powerful brand was facing bankruptcy and was worth a meagre (by international fashion standards) $250,000 (some £170,000 at today's rates).By the end of the 1990s, with the designer installed at the helm, Gucci boasted a worldwide retail volume of $2.2bn (£1.5bn). Ford presided not only over the clothes but the advertising campaigns, all fragrance and accessory lines, and Gucci homeware. If Tom Ford sent out a Seventies-inspired collection, hey presto, the Seventies were back again.If, only six months later, he announced he was bored of that and an Eighties revival was imminent, almost the entire fashion establishment followed suit – in the manner of very well-groomed sheep.Ford's great talent, apparently, was to give buyers, press and public what they wanted – a good half year before they had even realised they wanted it for themselves. Unsurprisingly, those working in the industry alongside him were all too happy to capitalise on that particularly well-honed instinct, even after the event.In November 1999, Gucci, by that time an enormously cash-rich company, invested some of its vast profits into acquiring Sanofi Beaute, which owned, among other things, the prestigious Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche menswear and womenswear lines.Not content with designing for Gucci, Ford, amid speculation that no one could possibly oversee both labels, announced that he would do just that.
And, despite doubling his workload and enduring mixed reviews, for the most part, nothing much has changed.True, Ford has perhaps transferred some of his particular talent to Yves Saint Laurent, leaving Gucci slightly in the shade but when, in March, he showed a YSL autumn/ winter 2001 collection inspired by Saint Laurent's own famous gypsies, all of Milan dutifully came up with label-clad peasants six months later.For his spring/summer 2002 collection, shown two weeks after the Milan shows, Ford had moved on, turning this time to YSL's African collection for inspiration. Suffice to say that an awful lot of safari jackets and leopard print material are already in production and will be coming to a high street near you before long.. Two Cambridge students have designed a computer programme that can hack into banks' security codes, potentially giving access to hundreds of thousands of PIN numbers. Two Cambridge students have designed a computer programme that can hack into banks' security codes, potentially giving access to hundreds of thousands of PIN numbers. The two PhD students showed it is theoretically possible to download confidential financial information, allowing a potential thief access to vast amounts of cash.The students say they plan to put the details on the Internet – hoping it will ensure security is improved.The security breach was revealed in BBC's Newsnight programme last night, showing it was possible to translate the 16-digit number for cash cards.Michael Bond, 22, said: "Banks' approach to security is too closed, they are relying on outdated concepts such as security through obscurity." He said the breach could only be performed by bank staff with access to bank computers.The system involved is based on IBM's 4758 computer used by banks, the military and governments to protect networks – previously thought to be impregnable.Mr Bond and fellow student Richard Clayton used equipment costing less than £750 to download the data.IBM said: "This academic study is based on specific laboratory conditions. In the real world, there are too many physical safeguards and authority protections for such an attack to be successful.". It was the CBI wot did it, claimed Digby Jones, the organisation's director-general, after yesterday's bigger than expected half-point cut in interest rates.
No it wasn't, says the Bank of England; it was nine independent monetary experts after carefully weighing all the available evidence, and they are not influenced one way or the other by business lobbyists or any other kind of pressure group. It was the CBI wot did it, claimed Digby Jones, the organisation's director-general, after yesterday's bigger than expected half-point cut in interest rates. No it wasn't, says the Bank of England; it was nine independent monetary experts after carefully weighing all the available evidence, and they are not influenced one way or the other by business lobbyists or any other kind of pressure group. We'll have to await the minutes of yesterday's Monetary Policy Committee meeting, not due to be published until 21 November, to know the truth, but to the extent that collapsing business confidence in Britain and the rest of the developed world was almost certainly the biggest influence on yesterday's decision, Mr Jones is half right.Business confidence, always a fragile commodity and already in a parlous state even before the events of 11 September, has since become shot to bits, and without some sort boost, it would eventually have dragged Britain into recession.Government ministers, supported admittedly by some respectable forecasters, continue publicly to express confidence in the strength of the British economy, boasting of its resilience and comparative immunity, a happy state of affairs which they predictably attribute entirely to their own policies. But the reality is that most gainful business activity, outside cost cutting and debt restructuring, has ceased, and business leaders are collectively more worried about the near-term outlook than they've been in years.
