The Business of Fashion Podcast

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 physical interactions in bricks-and-mortar stores and in-person events. But the impact of virtual and augmented reality on consumer behaviour preceded 2020: Forbes reported in 2019 that 40 percent of consumers were willing to spend more on a product they can experience through augmented reality technology first. From stores that guide you from the street to luxury items designed exclusively for the smart glasses that every major tech platform is working on, the future of luxury is already here — it’s just not evenly distributed. Follow the series to ensure you never miss an episode and discover actionable insights into the opportunities and challenges a redefined industry will bring and how luxury’s transformation will impact your business. Sign up for BoF’s Daily Digest newsletter. For comments, questions, or speaker ideas, please e-mail: podcast@businessoffashion.com. For all sponsorship enquiries, it’s: advertising@businessoffashion.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 included Jonathan Anderson’s Loewe collection, Extinction Rebellion’s talked-about moment during Louis Vuitton and the week’s finale, a tribute to the late Alber Elbaz. Still, Blanks said that he doesn’t believe fashion has seen the full effects of the pandemic just yet. “I think in a sense everything changed and we haven’t processed it yet,” he said. “It’s going to take a long time.” On the latest episode of The BoF Podcast, Amed and Blanks explore what fashion learned from its break. Jonathan Anderson’s Loewe show leaned on the surreal to expand upon the designer’s previous pandemic-era collections and experimented with new themes. It also marked a departure from previous runway show set ups; this year’s show was staged in a bare-bones space that highlighted Anderson’s sculptural silhouettes. “Of all the designers that we’ve followed so closely, his response to the pandemic was perhaps the most creative,” said Blanks. “I think it was maybe his best show for Loewe.” The Simpsons’ surprise appearance at Balenciaga also provided some levity to the week, with an abbreviated episode of the hit cartoon featuring characters walking in a Balenciaga show. Demna Gvasalia also explored themes of distance with a screening replacing a traditional runway show. Even without the Simpsons’ star power, Demna showed a collection that excited buyers and critics alike, particularly in bags and accessories. Climate activist group Extinction Rebellion brought about what was perhaps the most talked-about moment of fashion week. During Louis Vuitton’s runway show, an activist stormed the runway carrying a banner that read “Overconsumption = Extinction”, prompting a discussion on if the industry has changed at all during the pandemic. “Maybe the system hasn’t changed, but the people who work in the system have been changed, and that’s maybe going to change the way the industry interacts,” said Amed. Related Articles: In Paris, Back to Normal or Not? Demna Gvasalia: ‘Couture Is The Most Sustainable Way of Consuming’ Fashion’s Favourite-Ever Collaboration: Balenciaga and ‘The Simpsons’ 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.com/privacy for more information.

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 strategy for success. Due to mobile-commerce and social-commerce, when, how and why a consumer transacts with a brand has been reimagined entirely. The linear paths to purchase with which we are so familiar are being replaced by new conduits that combine digital content with customer-centric retail strategies to make transacting as engaging, enjoyable and instantaneous as possible. There is one region responsible for the lion’s share of retail innovation: China. The engine of the luxury industry’s growth for decades is now the epicentre of the most significant retail innovation in the market. From buy now, to swipe up, unboxing to bounce houses, KOLs, KOCs, shoppable video, live streaming, digital clienteling, resale sites, marketplaces, macro and micro influencers — luxury’s retail channels have been reimagined at scale. Now, that innovation is beginning to shape global retail strategy. Follow the series to ensure you never miss an episode and discover actionable insights into the opportunities and challenges a redefined industry will bring and how luxury’s transformation will impact your business. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 Show, now streaming on Bloomberg QuickTake. Here, we share the full interview with Gvasalia exclusively on The BoF Podcast. Watch the first episode of The BoF Show, “Disruption: Is Luxury Fashion ready to Change?” Related Articles: Disruption: Is Luxury Fashion Ready To Change? The Fate of the Physical Runway Show Chanel’s Last Virtual Fashion Show? Why Big Brands Are Skipping Fashion Week 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.com/privacy for more information.

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 looked to as a key driver of future competitive advantage. Indeed, the luxury service revolution is now rooted in creating a single customer view, enabling businesses to guide an individual consumer to the products and services it offers that match their specific needs. An opportunity that stems from significant shifts in generational attitudes towards data sharing and its use. Follow the series to ensure you never miss an episode and discover actionable insights into the opportunities and challenges a redefined industry will bring and how luxury’s transformation will impact your business. Sign up for BoF’s Daily Digest newsletter. For comments, questions, or speaker ideas, please e-mail: podcast@businessoffashion.com. For all sponsorship enquiries, it’s: advertising@businessoffashion.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 looked to as a key driver of future competitive advantage. Indeed, the luxury service revolution is now rooted in creating a single customer view, enabling businesses to guide an individual consumer to the products and services it offers that match their specific needs. An opportunity that stems from significant shifts in generational attitudes towards data sharing and its use. To discover what this means for the future of the luxury goods industry, BoF spoke with three global authorities to share their insights. Sebastian Siemiatkowski is the CEO and co-founder of Klarna. In 15 years, Siemiatkowski has grown Klarna into one of Europe’s largest financial institutions, which provides alternative payment services to over 90 million shoppers, partnering with over 250,000 retailers globally and its own direct-to-consumer shopping app. “The whole purpose of digitalisation is utilising data to create value. It’s the information that allows us to create richer experiences. If you sit down and have a [...] conversation with a consumer and you say, ‘yes, you are in control of what data is being shared and you have full transparency, and if you then would be willing to share some specific aspects of your data in order to get a better experience, a better price, a better whatever it might be,’ then the answer is always going to be yes.” Holli Rogers is chair of renowned concept store Browns and chief brand officer of its parent company, Farfetch. Rogers quadrupled Browns’ business while CEO between 2015 and 2021. Previously, Rogers held roles at Chanel and Neiman Marcus before joining Net-a-Porter as a founding member in 2002. “In the past as everything has been separate and disparate in terms of the different technologies. When you speak to different businesses everyone talks about, ‘yeah, I’ve got a client telling app. We use WhatsApp.’ But actually if you break it down, none of them are connected one to the other. So you don’t get a single customer view. It’s this idea of how do you pull all of these pieces together in one space, collecting all of these hundreds of data points that allow you to give the customer what they want when they want.” Melissa Morris is the founder and designer of Métier, an independent leather maison best known for its logo-free handbags, travel bags and accessories. Prior to launching Métier in 2017, Morris studied sculpture and business at Emory University before working for Armani, Helmut Lang and Belstaff. “The bespoke aspect of our business is such a great way for us to deepen our relationships with our clients and also get a really clear understanding of what’s missing in the assortment and gives me a clear direction on what to make next. What I’ve found is when I’ve gotten one bespoke request, what’s good for one is good for everyone. So a lot of our bespoke requests that I’ve been brought into the line have turned out to be big successes.” Follow the series to ensure you never miss an episode and discover actionable insights into the opportunities and challenges a redefined industry will bring and how luxury’s transformation will impact your business. Sign up for BoF’s Daily Digest newsletter. For comments, questions, or speaker ideas, please e-mail: podcast@businessoffashion.com. For all sponsorship enquiries, it’s: advertising@businessoffashion.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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-fashioned,” said Edelkoort. But she believes the system can evolve to fit today’s reality and regain the cultural value it has lost over the years. On the latest episode of The BoF Podcast, we revisit Edelkoort’s talk on the BoF VOICES stage in 2016. Her prescient ideas have only become more urgent and applicable in 2021 as the world emerges from a pandemic that forced the industry to further reevaluate its systems, values and place in society. Fashion’s tendency towards individualism, which sees the industry place near-exclusive focus on the creator, doesn’t fit with today’s society, which is “hungry for consensus and altruism,” said Edelkoort. The problem stems in part from fashion schools, which, for the most part, have not updated their curriculum to reflect the current issues plaguing the industry. The race to the bottom regarding prices is destroying fashion’s cultural value as well as harming garment workers. “How can a product that needs to be sewn, grown, harvested, combed, spun, knitted, cut and stitched, finished, printed, labeled, packaged and transported cost a couple of euros? It’s impossible,” said Edelkoort. As a starting point, she suggested implementing legislation on minimum prices. The retail experience also needs to be reinvented to be more focused and better presented to consumers. Edelkoort points to Dover Street Market, whose curated approach sets it apart from traditional department stores. “Everything we do is from the 20th century. Even concept stores and online commerce were from the last moments of the 20th century,” said Edelkoort. Related Articles: Chasing the Holy Grail of Circularity Brands Face New Pressure on Labour Rights The Green Global Age of the Information Revolution 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.com/privacy for more information.

Aaron Levant, CEO of NTWRK, talks about the evolution of luxury goods, discussing how streetwear and NFTs are reshaping consumer perceptions. Zerina Akers highlights the importance of diversity and representation in fashion, emphasizing the need for brands to authentically engage with communities. Bethany Williams advocates for sustainable practices tied to social change, while Fewocious explores the democratizing impact of NFTs on art and commerce. Together, they dive into the future of luxury, marked by social responsibility and digital innovation.

The world is in the middle of an information revolution, and it’s a situation, economist Carlota Perez says, we’ve been in before. Capitalism resets every few decades, and follows a familiar pattern: An investment frenzy boosts new technologies that change how people live and interact, but when that craze eventually collapses, it leaves behind social upheaval and resentment.To stop that cycle, this time, Perez says on the latest episode of The BoF Podcast, we need to deliberately disassemble society’s most harmful systems and ingrained beliefs so that every country and every person is included in the sustainable future of the earth.“We can shape the Information Revolution into a green golden age,” said Perez. She added that the fashion industry has a huge role to play, saying, “It’s up to you to reinvent what we understand by fashion… and it’s up to you to rethink, reinvent, redesign.”That reinvention and redesigning means interrogating what wealth, well-being, and pleasure are — and untethering those ideas from physical things. Perez joined Imran Amed last year at VOICES, BoF’s annual gathering for big thinkers, to discuss what needs to happen to harness the information revolution to become more sustainable and inclusive.Globalisation is happening, but it needs to be reworked to include all people and nations. Until now, globalisation has seen businesses chasing lower costs, and has been concentrated in Asia. “We need to discover what each area of the world, what each country can do, and re-invent, but with consensus — not just with government deciding but working together with business to re-conceptualise each bit of territory, each city,” says Perez.Both individual lifestyle changes as well as government action are required to create a greener, more sustainable future — which benefits businesses and the whole of society, not just the one percent. “We need to work together… Every golden age has been a win-win... with the government staging the game,” says Perez.The fashion industry needs to stop perpetuating a cycle of waste and instead focus on creating high-quality, long-lasting products that can be reused and redesigned. That requires completely rethinking the clothing industry — a daunting but feasible and necessary task. “If you put your brilliant heads to solving this problem and making money along the way, you will succeed,” concludes Perez. “But you’ve got to recognise the obstacles. If you deny it, you’re going to die, and you can’t die — we need you.”To learn more about BoF VOICES 2021, to be held from Dec 1-3, 2021, please click here.Related Articles: The Definitive Guide: How to Build a Sustainable Fashion Brand Fashion’s Greenwashing Problem Begins with Bad Data How to Avoid the Greenwashing TrapJoin BoF Professional for the analysis and advice you need. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Critic Robin Givhan, analyst Luca Solca, author Dana Thomas and Métier founder Melissa Morris discuss how luxury became a winners-take-all market and how growing consumer scrutiny is driving change. BoF is investigating how market disruption, new technology and increasing consumer scrutiny are driving transformative change in the $300 billion luxury goods market, in an exclusive new podcast series presented by Klarna. As the extraordinary events of 2020 — from the global pandemic, lockdowns and economic downturns to the accelerating climate crisis and social justice movements — impacted the luxury industry, scale-driven advantages widened the performance gap between the industry’s super winners and the rest of the market. In 2020, BoF reported that 75 percent of companies did not generate enough economic profit to cover the cost of their capital. Yet, the leading mega brands and conglomerates reported record sales. However, a growing dissonance is emerging between luxury’s traditional values of scarcity and exclusivity, and the emergence of a more inclusive, egalitarian and sustainable global consumer culture, making the luxury industry vulnerable to shifting consumer sentiment. Today, businesses must respond to growing consumer scrutiny around the sociological and ecological impact of how they operate and what they produce. Follow the series to ensure you never miss an episode and discover actionable insights into the opportunities and challenges a redefined industry will bring and how luxury’s transformation will impact your business. Sign up for BoF’s Daily Digest newsletter. For comments, questions, or speaker ideas, please e-mail: podcast@businessoffashion.com. For all sponsorship enquiries, it’s: advertising@businessoffashion.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.