The Business of Fashion Podcast

On the heels of selling a 24 percent stake in his namesake label, valuing it at $2.7 billion, Louboutin spoke with Rozan Ahmed at BoF VOICES 2021 about how his identity and upbringing have shaped his approach to business and life. Join  BoF Professional  for the analysis and advice you need.  Get 30 days for just $1  or  explore group subscriptions  for your business. Hosted on Acast. See acast.co...

The best-selling author and podcaster shares a powerful equation for defining your purpose and a guided meditation to help you discover it.  At BoF VOICES 2021, Jay Shetty spoke about how his experiences as a monk taught him not only how to find purpose, but how to live with it. Join  BoF Professional  for the analysis and advice you need.  Get 30 days for just $1  or  explore group subscriptions...

Up until a week ago, Jonathan Anderson was set to show his J.W. Anderson show in Milan, but Omicron has put paid to that, and Jonathan had to quickly change his plans and instead film a presentation at the Scala in Kings Cross London. BoF's editor at large, Tim Blanks, sat down with Jonathan to discuss his responses to the challenges presented by the pandemic. Jonathan has done everything from a s...

The pandemic has upped pressure on brands and corporations to take action on issues from climate change to social justice. More and more investors are asking for it and more customers are demanding it.  So what role do businesses need to play in creating the kind of society we want to live in?  Dame Vivian Hunt is  one of the most important voices in British business. During her talk at VOICES 202...

At this year's edition of VOICES, performance artist Alok Vaid-Menon sat down with Harris Reed, a recent Central Saint Martins graduate who has emerged as one of the industry’s brightest rising stars and is vocal about pushing gender-fluid fashion to the mainstream.  Reed and Alok spoke about concrete opportunities for industry stakeholders to de-gender fashion. While many fashion companies want t...

We often think of hype as the antithesis of timelessness, especially in fashion. Chunky dad sneakers and sweatshirts emblazoned with logos, versus little black dresses and classic tailoring. But how can one brand straddle both? At BoF VOICES 2021, CEO of Balenciaga Cédric Charbit, discusses the brand's business vision, and how a soon-to-be 103 year old luxury house continues to shape the discourse...

"Everybody is born into a script they didn’t write for themselves. But activists defy that script to rewrite the narrative, non-binary activist, storyteller and former international ambassador for Black Lives Matter, Janaya Future Khan, said in a powerful talk that wove together theory with raw personal experiences, including a racist encounter on a plane. Khan was careful to differentiate real ac...

The last time Kim Jones showed in his hometown was 2003, the year after he graduated from Central Saint Martins. London didn’t really host many menswear presentations in those days. Besides, Kim already had his eye on the bigger picture, so he hightailed to Paris. His homecoming on Thursday, with the launch of his Pre-Fall 2022 collection for Dior Men at the Olympia Exhibition Centre, was, in one...

Vestiaire Collective is one of the leaders in the fast-growing fashion resale segment. Earlier this year, in its latest round of funding, the luxury resale platform achieved a valuation of $1.7 billion. Max Bittner, Vestiaire Collective’s CEO, attributes this success to a number of factors, including ease of transactions, pandemic-driven closet clean-outs and shifting consumer values. But he also...

The CEO of the online peer-to-peer marketplace believes the platform’s ability to connect people sets it apart from typical fashion e-commerce.  In June 2021, online marketplace Etsy announced plans to acquire Depop for $1.6 billion. The move was yet another sign of growing interest in the burgeoning fashion resale market, which according to BoF Insights, is now worth $130 billion globally. CEO Ma...

Marjorie Hernandez and Karinna Nobbs are the co-founders of The Dematerialised — a Web 3.0 marketplace for authenticated virtual goods, which they describe as “the digital department store of your dreams.” They’re part of a new wave of pioneering entrepreneurs challenging the luxury status quo and creating a new reality for fashion.  In the fourth episode of The BoF Show, now streaming on Bloomber...

Ledger’s Chief Experience Officer explains how — and when — fashion should tap into the NFT gold rush, as featured in the fourth episode of The BoF Show, now streaming on Bloomberg Quicktake.  Ian Rogers moved to Paris from Silicon Valley in 2015 when he was appointed Chief Digital Officer of LVMH, acting as a digital whisperer to C-suite luxury executives.  Today, as Chief Experience Officer of L...

Sinéad Burke refuses to be excluded, despite fashion’s poor record on welcoming people  with disabilities.  In a wide-ranging interview, featured in the third episode of The BoF Show, Sinéad reminisces on her fashion journey — from calling out the industry for entrenched behaviours, at BoF VOICES in 2017; to advising luxury brands as Founder & CEO of consultancy “Tilt the Lens”. Here, we share the...

In 2020, Samira Nasr became Editor-in-Chief of Harper’s Bazaar, the first-ever woman of colour to hold the position in the magazine’s 154 year history. The appointment, whilst joyful, also prompted tough reflection about racism and responsibility. How can a business based on exclusivity throw its doors open to all?  Nasr’s insights on what real inclusion looks like in fashion — and her hopes for t...

“We’ve been expecting you…” In Paris, everything is prepared for the return of big-spending tourists. Stores are open, mirrors shined, brand leaders bullish that the global capital city of luxury remains irresistible. But when BoF founder and CEO, Imran Amed connects to Angelica Cheung in Beijing, she sounds a caution. For 16 years, Angelica was  Vogue  China’s Editor-in-Chief. Today, she’s a vent...

Over the Transforming Luxury podcast series, as we discussed market dynamics, product strategies, customer experiences, emerging technologies, new retail channels and our imminent entry into the metaverse, the pressing need and increasing demand for systemic change to create a more sustainable industry was a consistent theme. In this final episode of Transforming Luxury, a special six-episode seri...

For fashion aficionados of a certain age, the name “Thierry Mugler” throbs with memories of showgirl spectacles cast with extraordinary beauties and weirdos, garbed in looks of an other-worldly glamour. Such was their alien dazzle that there are times in this more prosaic era when I wonder if they ever really happened. Fortunately, there is now ample proof of their existence at the Musée des Arts...

The metaverse — a term originally coined by the author Neal Stephenson in his sci-fi novel ‘Snow Crash’ — is now widely used to describe how our physical realities will be augmented and overlaid by ambient and accessible digital experiences and services. Luxury’s entrance into the metaverse was expedited by many brands’ leverage of new technologies to speak to consumers when lockdowns removed phys...

After the conclusion of Paris Fashion Week — the first in-person version of the event since the pandemic took hold in early 2020 — BoF’s editor at large Tim Blanks sat down with BoF founder and CEO Imran Amed to discuss his reflections on fashion’s return to the runway. Designers appeared to come out of lockdown with renewed energy, breathing new life and ideas into their collections. Highlights i...

Today, the channels that consumers can now use to connect with brands to elicit a range of interactions have multiplied, dramatically. With major new platforms emerging all over the world, the retail networks utilised by luxury brands are evolving at an unprecedented pace to include a huge number of customer touch points — each a distinct opportunity for growth but requiring an idiosyncratic strat...

The revival of Balenciaga’s long-dormant couture collection was the most anticipated event of the July 2021 haute couture season, and the first since the house’s namesake, Cristóbal Balenciaga, shuttered his salon in 1968. BoF’s founder and CEO Imran Amed was granted exclusive pre-show access and sat down with Gvasalia for a wide-ranging interview which is featured in the first episode of The BoF...

In recent decades, the race to attract and retain customers saw dizzying amounts of money spent on clienteling — the industry term for building a 1 on 1 relationship with customers. Today, for major players of scale with the resources to invest in it, successfully digitising personalised in store service, which generates much high conversion rates through recommendations and experience, is being l...

In recent decades, the race to attract and retain customers saw dizzying amounts of money spent on clienteling — the industry term for building a 1 on 1 relationship with customers. Today, for major players of scale with the resources to invest in it, successfully digitising personalised in store service, which generates much high conversion rates through recommendations and experience, is being l...

The fashion system has been broken for some time, said trend forecaster Li Edelkoort at VOICES 2016. But, it can still regain its cultural cachet, and fix its exploitative practices. When trend forecaster Li Edelkoort first published a manifesto called “Anti-Fashion” in 2015, people across the fashion industry told her that her critique had finally put how they felt into words. “Fashion is old-fas...

In Episode 2 of Transforming Luxury, BoF’s new podcast presented by Klarna, we investigate what will inform the luxury product mix of the future. Indeed, the definition of a luxury good has expanded dramatically in recent years to now include a host of disruptive new categories, from the luxury sneakerhead culture that dominated the past decade, to collectibles, curios, NFTs and even some mass pro...