Yves Saint Laurent, 71, died Sunday at his Paris home after a yearlong battle with brain cancer. From the first YSL tuxedo and his trim pantsuits to see-through blouses, safari jackets and glamorous gowns, Saint Laurent created instant classics that remain stylish decades later. "[Coco] Chanel gave women freedom" and Saint Laurent "gave them power," according to Pierre Berge, Saint Laurent's business partner for four decades. "In this sense he was a libertarian, an anarchist and he threw bombs at the legs of society." Saint Laurent's simple navy blue pea coat over white pants, which the designer first …

In the eyes of many, Warren Buffet looks like a brand investor --money managers who buy companies with well-known or well-regarded names. The Oracle of Omaha's Berkshire Hathaway holding company owns or has major stakes in many iconic brands, including Coca-Cola, Fruit of the Loom, Kraft Foods and Johnson & Johnson. After announcing that he would finance part of Mars' buyout of Wrigley, Buffett said: "Really, nothing can go wrong with the Wrigley and Mars brands. They have faced the test of time." The belief is that even though a brand company may produce many unlike products, their qualities …

From Bloomingdale's 59th Street to Saks Fifth Avenue and Macy's Herald Square in Manhattan, retailers are pumping millions into their core stores to upgrade product presentations, reinvent key departments and capitalize on strong selling categories like accessories and shoes. Bloomingdale's, for example, has initiated the beginnings of a sweeping renovation of its 75,000-square-foot main floor, the chain's biggest renovation at least since Michael Gould became chairman and CEO 17 years ago. "This is a total branding exercise," says Gould, who is known for his marketing acumen, having recast Bloomingdale's into an upscale, contemporary national brand, at a price niche …

Some entrepreneurs are equipping billboards with tiny cameras that gather details about passers-by -- their gender, approximate age and how long they looked at a billboard. These details are then transmitted to a central database. The small start-ups behind the technology say they are not storing actual images of the passers-by, so privacy should not be a concern. The cameras, they say, use software to determine that a person is standing in front of a billboard, then analyze facial features to judge the person's gender and age. So far the companies are not using race as a parameter, but …

Want to get your brand on Oprah? The fabled hawker-donor of Pontiacs and patron saint of everything from soft-rock sensation Josh Groban to Boudreaux's Butt Paste doesn't do structured brand-integration deals or, technically at least, live commercials. And her company, Harpo Productions, tightly controls advance and post-publicity about the praise that gets parceled out. It helps a whole lot if Oprah likes your brand or its ads. It helps more still if Oprah's producers like you. And it possibly helps even more if Oprah likes you or the person endorsing your brand. Both Oprah's Harpo Productions and marketers deny quid …