The Business of Fashion Podcast

I missed couture season for the first time in years, but that made it even more valuable for me to catch up with Tim Blanks on everything that happened this week in Paris amidst a record breaking heatwave.  At Chanel, Mathieu Blazy built his sophomore couture collection around a fairy tale he found in Gabrielle Chanel's own library.. Dior's Jonathan Anderson tore down the walls of the usual t...

As luxury shoppers push back against relentless price hikes and uninspiring boutique environments, BoF's Mimosa Spencer and Robert Williams break down why emotional connection has overtaken heritage as the primary driver of high-end shopping. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mona Kattan has been collecting fragrances for most of her life. That obsession eventually became Kayali — a fragrance brand she built inside Huda Beauty, the global cosmetics company she co-founded with her sister Huda Kattan.  In 2020, something shifted. Mona entered therapy and uncovered a pattern that ran through her entire entrepreneurial journey: she had never built anything entirely on...

The 2026 World Cup marked an unprecedented milestone for global football, expanding to 48 teams playing over 100 matches across the US, Canada and Mexico. In this special episode of The Debrief, Nike’s vice president of global brand management Helena Thornton joins BoFsenior correspondent Sheena Butler-Young and sports and fashion correspondent Mike Syke to discuss the strategy behind the brand's...

The boundaries between technology, wellness and luxury are blurring. Wearable technology is no longer just about tracking steps; it has become a sophisticated tool for lifestyle optimisation, personal health intelligence and a subtle statement of identity. Now, there are more devices than ever to help us in this pursuit, and at the cutting edge is Oura. Under the leadership of CEO Tom Hale, who jo...

For more than  a decade,  activewear shoppers largely looked to Lululemon  and Nike.  But as the post-pandemic boom cools and growth becomes harder to find, a new crop of brands is gaining traction. Smaller labels like SetActive, 437 and Oner Active aren’t reinventing activewear. They’re winning customers through social media, creator-led marketing and a deep understanding of t...

Fashion’s book obsession is no longer subtle. What started as the occasional literary reference has become a broader wave of book clubs, salon-style events, campaign imagery and products designed to signal that a brand — and its customer — has cultural depth. It’s all happening as reading rates are declining, but the image of the reader has never looked more fashionable.   This week on The De...

Anoushka Shankar has spent three decades building one of the most distinctive bodies of work in contemporary music. She has taken the sitar — an instrument rooted in centuries of North Indian classical tradition — into completely new territory, blending the ancient Hindustani raga system with electronic, flamenco and Western orchestral influences. At a time when we're bombarded — wars, looming AI...

The rise of GLP–1 drugs, such as Ozempic and Wegovy, is forcing fashion and beauty companies to rethink everything from sizing and fit to product development. With one in eight Americans having tried a GLP–1 medication, brands are grappling with how to serve consumers whose bodies may be changing more rapidly than traditional product cycles were designed to accommodate. In this episode of The Debr...

Born in the leafy enclave of Bedford, New York, designer Conner Ives, a self-professed “country mouse,” grew up in a household that taught him two things early: that quality is worth protecting, and ambition is worth following. At 16, a connection through his mother's dental practice landed him an internship with Wes Gordon, and soon after he moved to London and set about becoming a designer. In h...

Carlos Nazario  has helped redefine how fashion media expresses subculture in a luxury context, making history along the way as the first Black editor to style a cover for American Vogue. But he grew up in Queens, New York, in a big Puerto Rican family with no connections to fashion. His grandmother Efna was his earliest influence — a woman who understood, intuitively, the power of how you pr...

This week, Chanel reported its annual results for 2025. Revenue rose 2 percent to $19.3 billion, defying a luxury downturn.  But the number that caught the industry's attention wasn't the top line — it was the acceleration. In the second half, Chanel's sales grew by high single digits across every category and region, before designs by new artistic director Matthieu Blazy had arrived in store...

In May, sleeping bags lined pavements and police barriers went up outside Swatch stores from Times Square to Dubai. The object of this global hysteria was not a piece of high-end mechanical art, but the "Royal Pop" – a $400 pocket watch collaboration between mass-market giant Swatch and watchmaker Audemars Piguet. Based on AP’s iconic Royal Oak, which typically starts at $20,000, the launch divide...

For the global luxury industry, the last two years have been defined by a prolonged period of meagre growth, macro-uncertainty, and a slow recovery in the critical Chinese market. But as we move further into 2026, the strategic imperative has shifted. It is no longer enough to simply wait for the cycle to turn; leadership now requires navigating a rapidly-changing environment where geopolitical vo...

The beauty industry is currently contending with marketing saturation, compounded by an overcrowded content ecosystem in which traditional metrics like follower counts and comments are often distorted by bots. To combat this, brands are turning to "rage bait"— content designed to trigger shock, anger or confusion and meant to drive shares and saves, which are now seen as more authentic indicators...

Earlier today, BoF published an exclusive in-depth interview with Saks Global CEO Geoffroy Van Raemdonck, examining the company’s strategy as it expects to emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy next month.  For over a century, Saks Fifth Avenue represented a manifestation of American aspiration—a luxury icon whose flagship on New York’s Fifth Avenue served as a vital crossroads for...

In fashion, the word "legend" is often used as a convenient shorthand for longevity. But Joan Burstein — affectionately known in the fashion world as Mrs. B — was a legend in the truest sense of the word. When she opened Browns on South Molton Street in 1970, she didn't just open a boutique; she established a portal for the radical avant-garde fashion designers that would fundamentally shift our&n...

Since the earliest days of tools like ChatGPT and Claude, industry conversations have been marked by a tension between excitement around speed and efficiency alongside deep-seated fears of job loss, creative dilution and concerns about its environmental footprint. What once played out in theory is now unfolding in practice – as a broader rejection of what AI represents — particularly as more consu...

For four decades, Dries Van Noten defined a singular path in global fashion with a universe rooted in intellectual rigour, exquisite craftsmanship and independence. When he stepped back  from his eponymous brand last year, it wasn't a retreat into a quiet retirement. Instead, Van Noten has embarked on a profound transition—moving from the relentless, dictated rhythm of fashion to a new life a...

For years, the fashion industry operated under the assumption that digital scale was the right path. However, the "growth-at-all-costs" model is currently fracturing as luxury giants grapple with soaring customer acquisition costs and a logistical crisis fueled by high return rates. In response, a quiet counter-culture is emerging, with stores like Ven. Space and Dot Reeder thriving by intentional...

For the global luxury industry, Salone del Mobile in Milan has become a moment where brands look beyond the runway to expand into the broader "lifestyle" economy. At the centre of this intersection is Dimore Studio, co-founded by Britt Moran and Emiliano Salci — a studio that has defined the aesthetic language for luxury hospitality, retail and private residential projects worldwide. Moran is orig...

Luxury entered 2026 with hopes that new creative directors and signs of stabilisation would finally help the sector turn a corner. Instead, the latest round of earnings has raised bigger questions about what growth now looks like for the industry. While brands including Dior, Gucci and Chanel are generating renewed interest, that excitement has not yet translated into a meaningful sales rebound.&n...

The global fashion industry is a $2.5 trillion economic engine, and yet in the corridors of Washington and high finance, it's often treated as a sideshow. This week I was in DC at Semafor World Economy, listening to conversations about AI and genomics and energy — and arguing that fashion is actually one of the best barometers we have for where the global consumer is heading. Because the luxury la...

When Elliot Hill returned to Nike as chief executive in October 2024, he was tasked with reversing one of the most significant slumps in the company’s history.  The business had lost momentum with both investors and consumers and his strategy has focused on restoring wholesale relationships, rebuilding key categories like running and trying to stabilise the brand’s broader narrative.  Bu...

In this second Ask Me Anything episode, Imran Amed responds to questions submitted by listeners around the world, offering a wide-ranging reflection on where fashion stands now — creatively, commercially and culturally.  The conversation moves from personal encounters with figures such as designer Yohji Yamamoto and Gentle Monster founder Hankook Kim to broader questions about whether the ind...