The Debrief

BoF’s retail correspondent Cathaleen Chen joins The Debrief to discuss how the mall brand plotted a turnaround that’s starting to pay off. Background: Gap Inc. has had a hard year, accented last week by a dramatic Ye break-up following an anticlimactic retail roll-out of Yeezy Gap, which it staked its comeback on a year ago. Old Navy sales sank, and its once fast-growing sportswear label Athleta h...

Louis Vuitton is expected to name its Virgil Abloh successor within weeks. BoF’s Imran Amed joins Lauren Sherman to discuss what luxury labels think about when recruiting top designers. Background: Louis Vuitton has spent almost a year searching for a Virgil Abloh successor after the designer died in November 2021. According to sources, Martine Rose, Grace Wales Bonner and Telfar Clemens are among...

BoF’s workplace and talent correspondent Sheena Butler-Young unpacks how fashion’s labour market has evolved in the past year, and what positions brands are hiring for now.    Background:    As companies confront a potential recession, they’re making changes to the way they hire, and who they hire. During the pandemic, the number of fashion jobs requiring expertise in web3 or t...

BoF technology correspondent Marc Bain and contributor Chantal Fernandez join Lauren Sherman to discuss how TikTok took over fashion conversation — and what brands need to know to get the most out of the platform.     Background:      It seems Instagram’s autonomous rule over fashion is finished. While the Meta-owned app still has more users, a growing number of brands and creators are turning to...

BoF’s Sheena Butler-Young and Tamison O’Connor join Lauren Sherman to discuss how a new generation of entrepreneurs are driving growth in this underdeveloped category.   Background:    Monique Rodriguez turned a series of Instagram tutorials — where she made hair care concoctions out of ingredients found in her kitchen — into one of the most recognisable multicultural hair care bran...

Mounting customer acquisition costs and a pressure to grow fast have made it hard to build a profitable DTC business. BoF deputy editor Brian Baskin and retail correspondent Cathaleen Chen join Lauren Sherman to analyse the past, present and future of the market.      Background:    About a decade ago, a number of flashy direct-to-consumer brands peddling premium products...

BoF’s Cathaleen Chen and Marc Bain join Lauren Sherman to talk about retailers’ big hires, hopes and plans for bringing their brands back to life.   Background:    J.Crew and Gap defined how Americans dressed for much of the ’90s and 2000s, until their clothes grew stale, malls emptied out and fast fashion took retail’s reins. Then, during the pandemic, J.Crew filed for bankruptcy a...

In an effort to reignite consumer fire, the Italian megabrand has done some restructuring. Bernstein luxury analyst Luca Solca breaks down what it all means.    Background:    In the late 2010s, Gucci pulled off a successful turnaround by aligning creative director Alessandro Michele’s unique, baroque aesthetic and Jacopo Venturini’s expert merchandising under the leadership of...

Kim Kardashian’s ‘solution wear’ line was recently valued at $3.2 billion. BoF correspondent Alexandra Mondalek charts the rise of the brand, and details what challenges lie ahead.   Background:    Founded in 2019 by Kim Kardashian and retail veteran Jens Grede, ‘solution wear’ line Skims has taken the fashion industry by storm, disrupting the sleepy shapewear category and fetching...

BoF’s Daniel-Yaw Miller unpacks why — and how — sports stars including Russell Westbrook and Megan Rapinoe are running their own labels, with full financial and creative control.  Background:   Athletes have long been part of the fashion conversation. In the past, they’ve capitalised on their influence by inking brand endorsements with the likes of Nike and Adidas. Now, stars like the NB...

After a pandemic pivot to e-commerce, many brands are back to working with third-party retailers, this time, with better terms.   Background:   The wholesale model, while offering exposure and some upfront revenue, did not always have the best terms for vendors. Department store bankruptcies, pandemic-induced store closures and the boom in online shopping pushed brands further towards th...

BoF correspondents Chavie Lieber and Daniel-Yaw Miller discuss why fashion brands are making products for sports like pickleball, padel, rugby, boxing and skiing.    Background:    Two decades ago, Lululemon built its brand around yoga — then considered counter culture. Today, it’s a $6 billion behemoth that makes products for everything from running to swimming and tennis...

The vice president of fashion and shopping partnerships at Meta and BoF technology correspondent Marc Bain join Lauren Sherman to discuss the company’s new marketplace — which sells digital items from Thom Browne, Balenciaga and Prada — and the future of fashion on the platform.      Background:    Social-media company Meta has launched a virtual clothing store , and...

BoF’s workplace and talent correspondent Sheena Butler-Young explains why managers in the fashion and beauty industries are struggling to balance their youngest employees’ expectations against the needs of their businesses.   Background: The youth-obsessed fashion and beauty industries can’t get enough of Gen-Z talent: they believe they need to recruit more entry-level employees in order to m...

BoF’s luxury editor Robert Williams offers insight into the surprising news that the mega-label plans to open stores dedicated to serving top customers.   Background:    As traffic to stores soars, Chanel’s chief financial officer Philippe Blondiaux said the brand plans to open dedicated boutiques for top-spending clients starting in key Asian cities. It's a strategy that emphasises...

Brands including Stella McCartney, Balenciaga and Hermès are making products from mushroom-based material. BoF’s chief sustainability correspondent Sarah Kent details the forces pushing next-gen fabrics like mycelium leather forward — and whether the much-hyped sustainability solution has a future in fashion. Background:  After years of experimentation and development, handbags, shoes and coa...

After years of analyst anticipation that the leg-squeezing silhouette would soon go out of style, market research firm NPD Group found sales for the skinny jeans fell behind straight leg jeans in 2021. Skinny jeans are far from dead though — still accounting for 30 percent of sales. Retailers have already felt the effects of the shift: Pacsun pulled the style from its stores because no one was buy...

BoF’s Chavie Lieber dives into the elaborate and secretive way luxury brands court their high-spending clients with trips to exotic locales and entry to exclusive events.    Background:    In the midst of a post-Covid luxury boom, brands are going the extra mile to lavish top spenders — known as very important clients, or VICs. To court and keep VICs, who often account for the...

In a sea of unsubstantiated claims about sustainability, BoF’s Sarah Kent explains why it's so hard to measure impact, and what sort of regulation could be coming for fashion.     Background:    Concern about the environmental impact of clothing has swelled in the past few years. So too, has the practice of greenwashing. Right now, fashion marketing is flooded with eco-con...

BoF’s Tamison O’Connor explains how the fashion industry is betting on resortwear as consumers return to their pre-pandemic lifestyles and travel rebounds.    Background:  Every spring, top fashion clients, influencers and insiders are whisked away to lush destinations like Monte Carlo and Capri to indulge in fabulous dinners and cocktail parties — and sneak a peek at brands’ resort collections. R...

BoF’s Marc Bain chats with Lauren Sherman about the 3D creators, game designers and NFT experts bringing fashion into the virtual world.  Background:    A new generation of digital creatives are leading fashion brands into virtual worlds by using their technical expertise and creative prowess to craft experiences for games like Fortnite or Roblox, and launch Web3 products like...

BoF’s Lauren Sherman and Matthew Schneier, senior writer at New York Magazine and The Cut, discuss the former star designer’s attempted industry re-entry following a slew of sexual assault allegations.    Background:    Following a flurry of sexual assault allegations — which some thought would wipe him from fashion forever — Alexander Wang is attempting a return to fashio...

Fast fashion upstart Shein set the industry ablaze this month after reports it was seeking to raise $1 billion in funding at a $100 billion valuation, according to Bloomberg . Shein has upended fast fashion by making apparel at jaw-droppingly low price points and gaining market share, attracting major investors. But is it profitable? “Even if Shein isn’t profitable now, the thesis is that if enoug...

In this weekly series,  BoF’s chief correspondent will go behind the scenes of the $2.5 trillion global fashion industry.  Fashion has the ability to move markets, shake up cultural norms and even transform society. But who — and what — are the forces driving major change? We’re answering that question on The Debrief, a new weekly podcast series from The Business of Fashion, where we go beyond the...