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 series presented by Klarna, we confront the distinct uncertainty and disruption facing the luxury industry and us all, as a result of the climate crisis. In 2020, BoF reported that the fashion industry’s greenhouse gas emissions range from an estimated 4 percent to 10 percent of the global total. Without significant intervention, the industry will not align with global goals to limit global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius. Failure to do so is predicted to have catastrophic consequences for civilisation, outlined in the UN’s IPCC report 2021. However, if bold enough leadership is willing to reimagine how the industry operates, equipped with the deep pockets of market leaders and further enforcing the existing, rigorous quality controls already in place, luxury would be " uniquely positioned to transform itself,” as stated by SVP of supply chain innovation at the Savory Institute, Megan Meiklejohn. To hear more about the role sustainability must play throughout the luxury goods industry, BoF gathered four global authorities to discuss how luxury can become more responsible with host Robin Mellery-Pratt. 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.

The Business of Fashion Podcast

Could Luxury Become Responsible? | Transforming Luxury

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 Décoratifs in Paris, where Thierry Mugler: Couturissime is on display until April next year. It’s been on a world tour since it first opened in Montreal in 2019, but its homecoming was significant enough that Mugler sat down to talk about it, and everything else, for The BoF Podcast. And, being one of those fashion aficionados of a certain age, I was slightly awestruck. Mugler turned his back on fashion at the millennium, reclaiming his first name Manfred and devoting himself to costume design for the likes of Cirque du Soleil. He dressed Beyoncé's 2009 world tour. But the only fashion outfit he has designed in the past two decades was the “wet look” dress Kim Kardashian wore to the Met Gala in 2019. It apparently took eight months to make. Mugler had never seen her TV show, but when she walked into the room — not a word to anyone else, never a smile or a handshake — he said, “It was love at first sight.” He saw her body as that of “the original female, an antique goddess.” It’s clear what kind of woman has always attracted and inspired Mugler. In his fashion heyday, it was Iman and Jerry Hall who embodied his very particular aesthetic. “Fashion needs a great animal to wear it,” he told me. He photographed his clothes on those women, draped over the Art Deco eagles on the Chrysler Building in New York, posed against massive Saharan sand dunes and Arctic icebergs. They were dressed like superheroines but Mugler made them small against the monumental backdrops. “It looks like they’ve been dropped from another planet,” he says now. “That was the idea.” He claimed he wanted to help people find something strong in themselves that they could bring into their real lives. That’s why he loved photographing the acrobats and circus people he worked with after his fashion life. And, talking to Mugler, I sensed that struck a chord for him too. Metamorphosis was always a theme. The natural world was an obsession. “When you look up close, the gorgeous creatures on our planet are so out of this world.” In his couture, he never used fur, or rare feathers, or exotic skins. “I don’t want to torture animals for that,” Mugler said.   That sensibility made him an outlier in fashion at the time. He was often criticised. Now, it simply looks like his radicalism was ahead of its time. Mugler embraced queer culture, showed men and women in exactly the same clothes, was open to experiment of all kinds. His queer peer Jean Paul Gaultier offered a similarly idiosyncratic humanist vision, couched in the most extreme style fashion could offer. Look back at their work now and I defy you to deny their status as totems of a golden age in fashion. Obviously, Manfred and I had a very busy podcast. Reeling out of the exhibition, head spinning with extreme visions of accomplishment (memorably celebrated in a bizarre, funny Iman-Bowie video), I had questions. Hopefully, you’ll find the answers when you listen. But one thing that stood out was Mugler’s obsession with technique. He tracked it back to his early days, when his ambition was to be a ballet dancer. “I learned at the barre how you can do nothing without technique,” he said. And his greatest points of pride related to that: personally, the body he has built for himself; professionally, his perfume Angel, a battle he waged for years with fragrance industry orthodoxy. It’s still a global top-five seller. There is supreme vindication in that, as there is in Couturissimeand clothes which will boggle minds for centuries to come. Related Articles: Tim Blanks’ Top Fashion Shows of All-Time: Thierry Mugler A/W 1995 Can Mugler Make Inclusive Luxury A Business Success? Join BoF Professional for the analysis and advice you need. Get 30 days for just $1 or explore group subscriptions for your business.

Manfred Thierry Mugler: Fashion’s Original Radical

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.To discover what impact the metaverse will have on the future of the luxury goods industry, BoF spoke with four global experts to share their insights with host Robin Mellery-Pratt. Expert Commentators: Ommy Akhe is one of the breakout stars of this first generation of AR. The creative technologist specialises in augmented reality, making experiential software and AR prototypes through tools such as Facebook’s Spark AR software.. Previously working as an ethical hacker in information security, the London-based developer has now created dozens of filters for platforms such as Instagram Stories and Facebook. “In the digital space, there’s obviously a high profit margin because digital products are infinitely scalable. You write one programme or you have one object, and obviously this can be duplicated, whether it be a million times or one time.” Sergey Arkhangelskiy is the founder and CEO of Wanna AR solutions, having previously worked as a lead engineer in Google’s search ranking team. Wanna has collaborated with the likes of Gucci, providing the technology behind their virtual try-ons and the creation of the brand’s first virtual sneakers. “Digital fashion is for younger people, for Gen-Z, for millennials, for the people who are mobile, native or digital age [...] These people are critically important for those brands — this is the new generation of consumers, they’re becoming the purchasing power.” Alissa Aulbekova and Paula Sello are co-founders and creative directors behind Auroboros, the first digital collection shown in London Fashion Week’s DiscoveryLAB. Auroboros is also part of the Sarabande Foundation. Aulbekovas previously worked at Dazed magazine as a fashion stylist, while Sello held previous roles as an archive assistant at Chanel and at Vogue as a fashion stylist. “Since coming from this gaming generation, we’re really understood drop culture and how these games are becoming so hyperreal. It’s more a gamified experience [...] it’s all blurring lines between digital fashion and what you wear on your social media.” 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.

Can Luxury Maintain Its Relevance in the Metaverse? | Transforming Luxury

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.

Tim Blanks and Imran Amed on The Season That Was

In Episode 1 of The BoF Show, now streaming on Bloomberg Quicktake, BoF’s founder and CEO, Imran Amed, meets rising star of Paris fashion, Marine Serre, at her studio on the outskirts of the city.  They discuss how the pandemic is changing fashion — including the rise of the face mask, which Serre had the foresight to feature in her apocalypse-themed runway shows pre-Covid-19 — and whether that change is happening fast enough.  Serre — who repurposes old garments to create her highly acclaimed collections — has always explored themes of sustainability in her work. She explains why she is cautiously optimistic that her peers will join her in embracing sustainable solutions as they look to balance profit with purpose.  Here, we share the full interview with Serre exclusively on The BoF Podcast. Watch Episode 1 of The BoF Show, “Disruption: Is Luxury Fashion ready to Change?” 

Marine Serre: "We Have to Think About the Planet That We Are Destroying Everyday."

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. To discover what this means for the future of the luxury goods industry BoF assembled four global authorities to share their insights with host Robin Mellery-Pratt. Timothy Armoo is the CEO of Fanbytes, which supports social media creators to navigate success, while also guiding brands to reach younger audiences on emerging and existing platforms. Selected for Forbes 30 under 30 in 2021, Armoo was named by The Evening Standard as one of the most influential people in marketing and advertising. “When we advise our brands, the best way to go is, you say that you want to reach Gen-Z, but let’s go a layer down. Let’s go to a sub layer, and what niches — what core niches — are we actually trying to engage within that particular demographic? [...] Who exactly are we trying to engage?” Iris Chan is a partner at Digital Luxury Group, which assists global clients with their digital presence and activities in the Mainland China market. Chan has over 12 years of marketing experience in agencies and consultancies in North America and Asia Pacific markets, specialising in luxury consumer behaviour and working closely with brands including Richemont and Ralph Lauren. “Whether it be Weibo, Douyin, WeChat, TMall, Bilibili, any of these — and there’s still so many more beyond that — a lot of it is interconnected: cross-platform inter connections and redirections, so consumers can have a very unique experience and brands can take them on different types of journeys.” Jerry Clode is the founder of The Solution Consultancy, which assists brands in navigating the Chinese market. The former head of digital and social insight at Shanghai’s Resonance, Clode launched The Solution Consultancy to help brands understand the consumer mindset and markets of Asian and emerging markets, specifically in China and rapidly expanding digital culture. “Luxury consumption in China is inherently social. So, to have a relationship with a brand means knowing it to a level where I could confidently introduce it to my friends and to my wider group of contacts.” Patrice Nordey is managing partner of Fabernovel Asia — an agency that helps businesses expand into Asia and partner with the largest digital players in China, such as Alibaba. Nordey is an economist who specialises in disruptive innovation, new technologies and digital transformation, with 14 years’ experience within the Chinese market. “A normal brand should deliver hundreds of videos per month to be able to sustain its presence and visibility. In this equation, content creators and KOLs, video streamers, become the key strategic partners for brands to convert users into customers.” 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.

What Is Driving the Transformation of Luxury Retail Channels? | Transforming Luxury

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.  

Demna Gvasalia: “Couture Is The Most Sustainable Way of Consuming”

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.

How Is Luxury Customer Service Evolving? | Transforming Luxury

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.

Li Edelkoort’s ‘Anti-Fashion’ Manifesto

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 produced products capturing attention in the luxury market. Evolving consumer sentiment is also increasingly influencing luxury’s manufacturing process. Today, customers demand brands and businesses authentically represent global cultures in a way that serves the communities themselves and not the industry’s shareholders. They also hold brands accountable for the impact of their supply chains and production processes. Yet, workers’ rights was among the worst-performing categories in BoF’s Sustainability Index. To discover what this means for the future of the luxury goods industry, BoF assembled four global authorities to share their insight. Aaron Levant is an entrepreneur working at the intersection of fashion, culture, events and media. Levant co-founded streetwear and music festival ComplexCon, and streetwear trade show Agenda Today, Levant is CEO of NTWRK, a mobile-first video shopping platform — backed by Drake and LeBron James — that hosts events and exclusive, limited-edition product drops available to purchase immediately within its app. “For the last hundred years, luxury was easily defined as European couture — fashion houses who own the luxury space — and now, seemingly newer brands not only create luxury in their own right, but then collaborate with true luxury brands. I think the definition around luxury is ever evolving as for who fits in that category.” Zerina Akers is an American fashion stylist and costume designer. She is the founder of the self-funded e-commerce site Black Owned Everything and has worked as Beyoncé Knowles Carter‘s stylist, as well as costume designing the 2020 visual album, Black Is King, for which she won an Emmy in 2021. “Generally, many of these companies have benefitted from rap culture and imagery that we’ve created for them. We’ve created so much marketing for these companies and I’m just hoping that there continues to be real, sustainable change for them in the way that they shine light on our community.” Bethany Williams is a UK-based menswear designer with a focus on affecting social change. She founded her namesake label in 2017, won the Queen Elizabeth II Award in 2019 and the British Fashion Council and British Vogue Designer Fashion Fund in 2021. “For me, luxury is about having a product that you don’t feel guilty owning. Luxury is about beautiful craftsmanship and the slowing down of the manufacturing process, working with artisans and supporting local community projects.” Fewocious is the youngest artist ever to be featured by Christie’s — and the first to crash its site. He is one of the most successful and visible members of a growing community of crypto artists finding success in the NFT market, launching a shoe collaboration with design studio RTFKT earlier this year, with more than 600 pairs selling out in seven minutes and netting around $3.1 million. “With the NFT space, art can move. You can interact with art. There’s programmable art, you can programme layers so that someone can change how your art looks [...]. There’s so much I probably don’t even know about yet, just because you can kind of do anything and figure out a way to attach an NFT to it, which I think is so rad and the future.” 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.

What Defines a Luxury Product Today? | Transforming Luxury

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 Trap Join BoF Professional for the analysis and advice you need. Get 30 days for just $1 or explore group subscriptions for your business.

The Green Global Age of the Information Revolution

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. To discover what this means for the future of the luxury goods industry, BoF assembled four global authorities to share their insights. Robin Givhan is senior critic-at-large at The Washington Post, writing on race, politics and the arts. She was the first fashion writer to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2006. Givhan’s work has also appeared in New York Magazine and the New Yorker, among other publications. “So much of luxury is about being perceived as part of the ‘in’ crowd, which underscores this idea that it’s not for everyone. When that’s the way that you run a business and the culture starts shifting around you — saying that everything should be open to everyone — then it runs contrary to your business practice.” Luca Solca is an investment research analyst and managing director of luxury goods at Sanford C. Bernstein. Formerly a partner of the Boston Consulting Group, Solca has more than 25 years’ experience in luxury goods and is a regular BoF contributor. “The number of fronts that luxury goods brands need to manage has continued to explode. The digital revolution has brought so many new things that brands need to invest in. You have brands that make more than €10 billion of revenue per year and invest mid-to-high single digits in communication. That creates a huge amount of fire power. Bigger brands clearly have a scale advantage.” 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 pace of the industry is getting faster and faster, it’s impossible to keep up. And it’s impossible to create products that are as perfect as they need to be in the luxury world. From my experience working in luxury brands, you’re constantly chasing from a development and production perspective, but also from a design perspective. You can’t have the time to properly think things through. That then erodes quality, which is vital.” Dana Thomas is the author of “Fashionopolis: The Price of Fast Fashion and the Future of Clothes” and the New York Times bestseller “Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Lustre.” Thomas is an award-winning journalist covering fashion and culture, she is a regular contributor to The New York Times’ Style section and Vogue. “I don’t think it’s greenwashing. They actually believe what they say, but to do it is another thing. It’s a long-term investment and these companies, because they’re so wedded to their quarterly returns and their stock market prices, they’re afraid to make those long-term investments. It takes a lot of courage and you have to take it on the chin initially in order to make it pay off in the long term.” 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.

How Did 2020 Impact Luxury? | Transforming Luxury

The modern, fast-paced fashion industry feeds a culture of waste that results in millions of tonnes of textiles burned or sent to landfill every year. Brands are acknowledging the problem, increasingly labelling products with buzzwords like “circular” and marketing bags made from recycled fishing nets or shoes crafted from plastic bottles. But the industry still needs to find scalable solutions to its waste problem. This week on The BoF Podcast, chief correspondent Lauren Sherman speaks with chief executive of the Hong Kong Research Institute of Textiles and Apparel (HKRITA), Edwin Keh, about ways fashion can tackle the waste challenge. Recycling innovations that could turn old clothes back into new materials are on the horizon. But alongside investments to scale up new technologies, fashion must rethink its approach to design, Keh said. “We make stuff, we use it and we want it to go away, and we take new material and we repeat that process,” says Keh. “But not built into that process is circularity and the design intent for it to be recycled.” New recycling technologies must also have a compelling business case to be able to compete with established ways of doing business, says Keh. “If you solve the science problem and you don’t make the business case for it or you don’t create the logistics for it, then you have sort of like a half-baked solution that makes you feel good, works well in the lab, but doesn’t have a real-world application.” The fashion industry also needs to get smarter about data analytics to understand consumer trends and manage production accordingly, Keh says. “There’s a lot of opportunity to work on more intelligent ways to do analytics and… not to make [overproduction mistakes] in the first place,” he adds. Related Articles: The Waste Opportunity: How Fashion Could Turn Trash to Treasure Chasing The Holy Grail of Circular Fashion A More Circular Fashion Industry Will Require a Collective Effort

Chasing the Holy Grail of Circularity

In a new series from The Business of Fashion, BoF speaks to 22 experts from the worlds of business, technology and science, creative leaders and renowned ecologists, to investigate the forces driving transformative change in the luxury goods market. The six-part series, created in partnership with Klarna, explores the future of the $300 billion industry, from new consumer behaviour to the next-gen technology and the urgent need to create a more sustainable industry. Subscribe now to never miss an episode. The Transforming Luxury Podcast launches on 13th September. Subscribe now to never miss an episode. 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.

Welcome to Transforming Luxury

American stylist and fashion designer Misa Hylton rose to prominence in the ‘90s for her work with hip-hop and R&B legends such as Lil’ Kim and Mary J. Blige. She played a major role in bridging fashion and hip-hop. But in the past, Hylton didn’t received due credit for her lasting impact on fashion trends — and even contributing to the financial success of select fashion companies — according to BoF columnist Jason Campbell. This week on The BoF Podcast, Campbell is joined by Hylton and Nick Nelson, an adjunct professor at The New School who teaches a course on fashion styling, to discuss Hylton’s life and work, as well as the enduring significance of hip-hop culture in fashion. Hylton’s family emphasised traditional academic subjects, like science and math, during her childhood. Style was a way for her to channel her more creative side; she changed up to five times a day based on her mood at the moment. “That was the first place that I got to work with image … the energy would change, and I’m like, ‘OK, time to change my clothes — wardrobe change,’” says Hylton. In styling, Hylton ditched the ball gowns to dress her clients in looks that were true to who they were, increasing representation for a group that had been left out of pop-culture conversations. “So many young girls related to it in the inner city and in the hoods. And it was really powerful because of that, because we were now able to see ourselves and see our style in the forefront on TV,” says Hylton. When the looks Hylton styled for the likes of Blige and Lil’ Kim gained popularity, brands quickly followed, replicating them for the mainstream and leaving Hylton, and the other originators out. “I was not ever asked until recently to come into any luxury fashion house and create, or any photo shoot that was in a high end fashion magazine,” she says. “I wasn’t invited to style it, but our style was being emulated.” Nelson adds that “to know the history was behind that ... is incredibly important for this new generation of creators.” Join BoF Professional for the analysis and advice you need. Get 30 days for just $1 or explore group subscriptions for your business.

Misa Hylton’s Enduring Impact On Fashion

The Business of Fashion has gained a global following as an essential daily resource for fashion creatives, executives and entrepreneurs in over 200 countries. It is frequently described as “indispensable,” “required reading” and “an addiction.”

hubhopper

The Business of Fashion Podcast

hubhopper