The Business of Fashion Podcast

From a childhood in Sierra Leone to navigating London as a teenage immigrant, Ib Kamara traces the cultural shocks that shaped his creative identity. He recounts hiding his artistic ambitions while studying science, breaking through with a Beyoncé commission in his early 20s, redefining Dazed as a global publication and ultimately stepping into the role of art and image director at Off-White after the death of Virgil Abloh.BoF founder Imran Amed sat down with Ib Kamara in Abu Dhabi during  the launch of T Magazine MENA. The conversation spans authorship, responsibility, design versus styling and why young creatives today must reject Eurocentric hierarchies and build with their peers. Key Insights: Kamara describes his move from Sierra Leone to London at 15 as both destabilising and transformative. Raised in a culture where authority was not questioned, he suddenly had to become outspoken and self-defined. That rupture, he says, forged his identity. “London was definitely a culture shock, but also the best shock that could have ever happened to me,” he reflects. “I think I needed that shock and that tension to be Ibrahim right now.”Kamara’s entry into fashion wasn’t through formal design training but through images. Growing up in Sierra Leone, he consumed discarded European magazines, absorbing visual storytelling. “I loved images and I was fascinated by how people put things together,” he explains. “I understood images quicker than design because there was no sort of a design school or artistic design language. You take what you’re given.” That instinct for narrative over product shaped his early styling career and later informed his editorial leadership at Dazed.Kamara approached Dazed as an editor with an immigrant’s vantage point and a global-first mandate, pushing the title beyond its London bias to reflect the way culture now moves online. “I realised London is so diverse and we all come from the most incredible places in the world. It will make sense for us to reflect that,” he says. In practice, that meant building an editorial agenda shaped by the same cross-border conversation happening among young audiences. “We’re at an age where the kids are all talking online, everyone is sharing and collaborating,” he continues. “So I set out to make a magazine that was global, has a sense of culture, has empathy and is brave enough to do stories that could potentially get me fired a couple of times … It’s a reflection of where I come from.”Taking the creative helm at Off-White after Virgil Abloh’s passing was not a straightforward decision. Kamara speaks candidly about fear, self-doubt and the weight of legacy. “It was not the easiest decision for me to make because no one can really fulfil someone else’s shoes,” he says. “There’s only one Virgil.” Ultimately, he chose growth over comfort: “I don’t think you can live life like that. I think you have to take a chance.” In moving from stylist to designer, he also discovered a harder truth about authorship: “With design you can’t cheat. I think with styling you can cheat in a picture … but design is respect – it’s a craft.”For young creatives navigating today’s instability, Kamara offers a clear directive to decentralise Europe and build locally with conviction. “Europe is not the centre of everything,” he says. “Where you come from matters. And taste is not subjective to one part of the world. It's a global taste.” His guidance is rooted in consistency and community: “Create with your people, bring your people up … There’s nothing more beautiful when you’re at a table and you’ve known these people for 20 years.” And above all, kindness: “Be kind as well. Be nice a little bit, if you can, please. We don’t need more monsters in the industry.”Additional Resources:Ibrahim Kamara | BoF 500 | The People Shaping the Global Fashion Industry How I Became… Senior Fashion Editor-at-Large of i-D Magazine | BoF Ib Kamara: Fashion’s Favourite Renaissance Man | BoF  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

While the Olympics remain one of the world’s biggest sporting stages, they are also one of the most tightly controlled marketing environments. Rules limit how sponsors can interact with athletes and advertise during the Games. As a result, fashion and sportswear brands are finding alternative ways to capitalise on the moment, from outfitting national teams and launching capsule collections to sending squads of influencers to experience the Games.BoF correspondents Haley Crawford and Mike Sykes join Sheena Butler-Young and Brian Baskin on The Debrief to unpack how the winterwear boom is reshaping the Olympic marketing playbook. Key Insights:Musician Bad Bunny’s choice of Zara for his Super Bowl halftime show outfit crystallises a broader tension in fashion marketing: the balance between cultural relevance and commercial perception. Whilst Sykes acknowledged the pushback from critics who found the use of a fast-fashion Spanish brand on such a global platform surprising, he also notes the strategic logic. “This performance is supposed to be about inclusivity, and part of that is accessibility and affordable products. And plus, Zara is also a Spanish brand... It makes more sense considering the cultural magnitude of the performance,” Sykes says.Crawford argues the Games are no longer just about logo placement on performance gear, but a broader spotlight on winter fashion as a growing category. “We've seen that consumers are interested, not only from a performance perspective, but also from a fashion-forward perspective, in having gear that's equally stylish as it is performance driven on the slopes,” she says. But Olympic marketing comes with strict limitations. As Crawford explains, official sponsors can use Olympic branding, but others must tread carefully. For non-sponsors like Canadian label Roots, that means linguistic gymnastics: using phrases like “rooting for Canada” without explicitly referencing the Games.With broadcast advertising and official branding tightly controlled, being visibly present at the Games can be the most direct route to global reach. Sykes points to Adidas’ scale: “We’ve seen a bunch of brands like Adidas…that launched this 700-piece collection.” Even if it is not a traditional campaign, the visibility is enormous. “Just to have your logos on some of these athletes as they perform, while millions of people are watching across the globe, that is the sort of marquee way we’re seeing brands participate,” he says.As leagues and federations try to expand their audiences, fashion-forward fan wear has become a strategic priority. Crawford says Off Season’s approach to Team USA illustrates the shift: rather than just jerseys, brands are creating “wearable jackets and sweaters and things that fans can actually wear in their day-to-day.” Sykes sees the trend as part of a wider evolution across sport. Off Season’s product “reminds me of what the Starter jackets used to be in the 90s,” he says, predicting that more brands will build momentum by “taking team logos and putting them on unique products that aren't just a jersey.”While the Olympic window is tightly controlled, brands often see their biggest opportunities once the closing ceremony ends. Crawford points to the Paris Olympics breakout star Ilona Maher, who “popped off for creating all this viral behind-the-scenes content in the Olympic village,” then landed deals with Maybelline and Paula’s Choice. For fashion, Suni Lee is a recent template. After Paris, she started campaigns for LoveShackFancy and Victoria’s Secret Pink and attended the CFDA Awards with a designer partner. “She really built this whole other part of her public persona,” Crawford says – showing how medals and momentum can translate into longer-term brand equity.Additional Resources:How the Winterwear Boom Reshaped Fashion’s Olympic Playbook | BoF Which Winter Olympians Will Score Beauty Deals? | BoF  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this Ask Me Anything episode, Imran Amed answers questions submitted by listeners from around the world, spanning luxury’s current downturn, the collapse of major wholesale platforms, the realities facing emerging designers, and how global growth narratives in India and Africa are often misunderstood. The conversation later zooms out to hear Amed’s advice on education and training, fashion journalism, and the skills needed to build a lasting career in an industry undergoing structural change.Key Insights: Amed frames the current downturn in luxury as fundamentally different from previous crises, arguing that this moment is rooted in structural choices made by the industry itself. Years of overexpansion, inflated pricing and relentless product drops have weakened trust and eroded meaning, leaving consumers disengaged. “The moment we’re in now feels different to me, because what’s happening is coming from inside the industry,” he says, pointing to oversaturation and a breakdown in perceived value. Despite the democratisation promised by direct-to-consumer channels, Amed believes this is one of the most difficult environments in decades for independent brands to gain traction. The collapse of key multi-brand platforms, combined with slow payment terms and intense competition, has made growth and cashflow management increasingly precarious. Yet, he sees opportunity for designers offering clarity and restraint where big brands have overreached. Smaller brands can compete by offering real value — “beautifully designed, high-quality products…that come from a sense of quality,” he explains, positioning scarcity and sensible pricing as advantages rather than constraints.Amed cautions against simplistic narratives that frame India or Africa as the next, immediate growth engines for Western luxury. In India’s case, he argues that expectations often ignore deep-rooted cultural and economic realities. “India already has a luxury industry that goes back hundreds of years,” he says, pointing to longstanding traditions in jewellery, tailoring and textiles that continue to shape consumer behaviour today. Africa, meanwhile, represents enormous long-term potential, driven by demographics, creativity and cultural influence — but much of luxury’s engagement still happens outside the continent. “Africa has more than a billion people and the fastest-growing population in the world — there’s no doubt that’s a huge future opportunity,” he says.Amed rejects the idea that there is a single route into fashion, but he is clear that success today demands a broader skill set than creativity alone. For designers, technical understanding and business literacy are increasingly essential if you want to build something sustainable. For journalists, Amed argues that a “point of view is the single most important thing in fashion journalism today.” He summarises: “ The one thing that’s true, whether you go to journalism school or not, is you just need to practice. If you’re a writer, you need to write every day. If you're a creator, you need to create every day. The more you write, the more you create, the more you’ll develop your own voice and the more you’ll feel confident in what you’re doing.”Additional Resources:Why India Will Not Be The Next China for Luxury | The BoF Podcast The Emerging Designers Pushing Fashion Forward | BoFThe Great Fashion Reset: Can New Designers Still Build a Business? | The Debrief | BoF   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Influencer marketing in 2026 is a different beast. Once dominated by follower counts and splashy sponsored posts, the sector is now shaped by richer performance data, new monetisation models and growing consumer scepticism toward overt selling. As BoF publishes a new case study on the creator economy, Pearl joins hosts Sheena Butler-Young and Brian Baskin to unpack how creators and brands are adapting to a more disciplined, competitive and AI-saturated landscape.Key Insights:One of the most profound shifts in influencer marketing is how success is measured. Where follower size once acted as a blunt proxy for reach, brands now have access to granular data that shows who actually drives traffic and sales. Pointing to platforms like ShopMy and LTK that allow brands to see “exactly what creators were driving sales for them,” Pearl says that visibility has reshaped spending decisions. She explains: “Having more data has totally changed the game. It really is incredibly varied today and there is no one baseline KPI. It’s really just about what are your goals and who’s the best to help you achieve that.”As consumers grow wary of constant selling, trust has emerged as the defining asset creators bring to brands. “Trust is the most important thing,” Pearl says. “If you don’t have your audience’s trust, nothing else matters.” What brands are really buying is not visibility, but a relationship. “What a creator really brings to the table is not necessarily the size of their following; it’s that relationship they have with their audience,” Pearl explains.As the sector professionalises, creators are actively reducing their dependence on single revenue streams. Affiliate marketing, subscriptions and owned platforms are increasingly central to sustainable creator businesses. “Affiliate marketing really provides that base foundational income that you can rely upon,” Pearl says. Substack, meanwhile, offers something brands cannot. She explains: “It brings back some of that intimacy and community that they felt was missing in this TikTok/Instagram world.” This diversification also changes the power balance. “They don’t want to rely too much on one particular partnership,” Pearl says. The upshot is a creator economy that is less fragile – and less easily dictated by brand budgets.Pearl argues the relationship between brands and creators is moving from transactional campaigns to longer-term collaboration. As creators become central to marketing in fashion and beauty, brands are changing how they work with them – and what they ask them to do. Brands can no longer dictate terms “like they used to,” Pearl says, because creators are now “recognised as being a really important part of the marketing puzzle.” That recognition is also changing what brands value: “You’re not just hiring this person for their following… you hire them because they’re a creator. They create great content. They know how to engage an audience.”Additional Resources:From Hype to Discipline: The New World of Influencer Marketing | Case Study Why There Are So Many Influencer Collaborations Right Now | BoF How Creators Can Avoid Being Replaced by AI | BoF Examining 20 Years of Fashion’s Influencer Economy | The BoF Podcast  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Editor-at-large, Tim Blanks and editor-in-chief, Imran Amed are back from the Haute Couture Spring/Summer 2026 shows where the biggest moments of the week lived up to all the anticipation.Jonathan Anderson’s debut at Dior reframed couture as a six-month creative lab — a backbone that can feed the entire maison with technique, emotion and ideas. At Chanel, Matthieu Blazy stripped away the obvious codes to put construction, movement and the body first — the kind of couture you only fully understand up close. There was also Valentino’s “panorama” staging and Schiaparelli’s turbocharged push for spectacle — all playing out against a tougher luxury backdrop this year’“Something that struck me about this season is the energy that everybody was evoking,” Blanks says. “The words people used to describe their feelings — it was Jonathan talking about having a lot of anger he needed to get out, or Mathieu talking about nature, or Alessandro talking about fantasy and fashion, and then Daniel Roseberry talking about turbocharging Schiaparelli.”Key Insights: Departing from the codes of previous designers, Blanks was struck by how much of Anderson’s own sensibility made it onto the Dior runway, from Magdalene Odundo’s vase forms to historic textiles and witty, collectible accessories. “I felt like there was real synthesis … I think he showed some of the most beautiful things he’s ever shown, and some of the most joyful clothes.” Within 90 minutes of the show, the full collection was installed at Villa Dior for clients to handle and order, underscoring Anderson’s structured, end-to-end planning. As Amed notes, “He’s operational … he thinks about the way it all works together. That’s quite rare in a designer.”Mathieu Blazy pared Chanel back to construction and movement, dialling down overt couture signatures to foreground cut and daytime dressing. The result read as a wardrobe built on the body rather than surface effect, with exquisitely fine details – budgies perched on pocket anchors, bird-on-mushroom motifs, slingbacks with tiny avian heels – that reward close looking. The Grand Palais spectacle amplified the tension between intimacy and scale, but as Blanks notes, “it does underscore in a very graphic way that couture is the ultimate private pleasure.”Alessandro Michele’s Specula Mundi for Valentino revived the 19th-century Kaiserpanorama to slow the audience’s gaze and amplify detail. Reading from Alessandro’s letter, Blanks highlights: “We continue to work within this space not to fill an absence, but to preserve it. Only by accepting such a void, with no intention to fill it, can Valentino’s legacy remain what it has always been.” Another line reads: “There is no fantasy without beauty, and there is no freedom without beauty and fantasy.”A common thread this season is that designers are newly humbled by the expertise of the craft. “Everybody was talking about their ateliers, all these ready-to-wear designers being confronted with what a couture atelier is capable of,” Blanks says. After visiting Valentino, he notes: “There were five separate ateliers working on the clothes… I can’t thread a needle, but I got kind of palpitations walking through – it’s just so incredible, that kind of artistry.” Anderson himself calls Dior’s workrooms a “mini city” of ultra-specialists.Additional Resources:Couture Has Entered a New Era. What Does It Mean? | BoF Blazy’s Chanel Couture Was a Slam Dunk! | BoF Exclusive: How Jonathan Anderson Is ‘Rebooting’ Couture at Dior | BoF The Beating Heart of Haute Couture | BoF  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Across fashion, companies that once embraced remote or hybrid work are increasingly pushing employees back into the office, with some moving towards four or even five days a week. At the same time, competition for jobs, particularly at entry level, is intensifying amid layoffs, slower industry growth and the rise of AI. On this episode of The Debrief, senior correspondent Sheena Butler-Young and executive editor Brian Baskin are joined by BoF Careers’ Sophie Soar to unpack why the power balance has shifted back to employers, how different generations feel about being in the office, and what practical routes still exist for early-career talent trying to get a foot in the door. Key Insights:During COVID, companies found people could be “just as, and in some cases, more productive” at home – but that was when productivity meant output. Now, Butler-Young argues that employers are widening the definition: “Productivity should also include collaboration, morale, people being together… face time with leaders.” And with the labour market tightening following economic pressure, layoffs and AI taking some jobs, leaders have more leverage to enforce it. “In 2025 and now into 2026, it’s looking more like an employer’s market,” Butler-Young says.While some executives argue that in-person work improves collaboration and reduces errors, Butler-Young warns that motivations are not always benign. She points to a growing sense that mandates can act as a quiet form of workforce reduction. “One way you can get people to effectively fire themselves is to make them come to the office,” she says, noting that some companies may prefer attrition to public layoffs. She also cautions against copy-and-paste policies. “If you’re seeing productivity high and morale high at one to two days a week, you need to ask yourself, what am I hoping to accomplish if I move it to four or five?” Despite a difficult labour market, Soar stresses that fashion companies have not stopped hiring altogether. Instead, they are being more selective, particularly when it comes to junior roles that can be automated. "There definitely is a squeeze on the ones that are considered more rote work,” she says. “Those are the roles you could potentially automate or replace with AI.” However, some employers are still investing in early-career talent. “Those who are still hiring for entry-level roles recognise the benefit that that talent can bring,” Soar explains, pointing to diversity, long-term retention and fresh perspectives.Additional Resources:Fashion Is Done With Remote Work | BoF How to Get Ahead in Fashion’s Stagnant Job Market | BoFHow Fashion Brands Are Making Remote Work Permanent | BoF  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On Monday Jan. 26, Jonathan Anderson debuted his first couture collection for Christian Dior.In December, BoF founder Imran Amed travelled to Paris to meet with Anderson to get a first look, and to take stock of his journey thus far. Anderson is unveiling his first Dior couture collection while orchestrating a sprawling calendar across men’s, women’s and accessories. He explains how couture went from “irrelevant” in his mind to an emotional, craft-first engine for the house — and why he’s reshaping how Dior makes, shows and shares couture with clients and the public.“Couture is an endangered craft," he says. In this conversation, Anderson reflects on why couture exists, how endangered craft can be protected and the very human reality of leading a global fashion machine.Key Insights: Anderson admits that a year ago he never saw himself in couture. Now he describes fittings as an education within a living French institution. “I joke every time I’m in a fitting, I feel like I am doing a PhD in couture,” he says. Seeing the atelier at work reframed it entirely: “Couture is kind of like an endangered craft. What Dior is doing is protecting this as a national symbol of making,” says Anderson. “Once I got into that mind space, then I was able to work out, okay, well, what do I want from it? Or what is new for Dior in a landscape that’s had some of my heroes in it.”Anderson is reframing couture as an experience to be studied, not just scrolled — extending the 15-minute show into a three-part journey. Act I: the runway. Act II: intimate cabinet presentations at Villa Dior, where clients handle every component with the atelier team on hand, followed by days of selling. Act III: a free public exhibition that places the new collection in dialogue with Christian Dior and artist Magdalene Ndondue — an invitation to witness technique, context and provenance up close. As he puts it: “A photograph will never tell you that a dress took 4,000 hours. ... I’m inviting people to see something physical, because it may change your mind — it might change your opinion of it.”Before unveiling his first Dior women’s collection, Anderson invited John Galliano to privately view the work — a full-circle moment with a hero who helped define Dior in the public imagination. Galliano arrived with two bunches of wild cyclamen tied with black ribbon, a gesture that became talismanic for the Spring/Summer 2026 show’s pink-and-black mood and forest-floor set details. More than the symbolism, it was Galliano’s counsel that stuck: “The more that you love Dior, the brand, the more it will give you back,” recounts Anderson. Anderson argues for real transparency around the people off-camera who turn an idea into a product and a show into a business. He highlights merchandisers, window teams, logistics, finance and operations — all of whom translate creative vision into reality. “It may not be creative, but they work in a creative business; they have to try to work out how to make a designer’s dream come true. If we want to pull the veil down, we have to do it in all categories. A fashion show is not just me; I am the conductor,” he says. “I have a responsibility to the hundreds, thousands of people who work here to make sure it works. It’s a balancing act.”Anderson wants each show to have its own energy while still speaking a shared Dior language. “I will build a vibe or a kind of culture around a brand, but then… the energy of each show has to be a different energy.” He adds: “They all also have to be linked. There is a language that is built.” Working with Dior chief executive Delphine Arnault, Anderson is trying to “put down concrete blocks”. Some will “end up being sand and then you’ll have to rebuild it,” he says.Additional Resources:Jonathan Anderson | BoF 500Clothes for Life or Clothes as Costume?Louis Vuitton, Dior and What Luxury Means Today Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaking at the Institut Français de la Mode graduation ceremony in Paris, BoF founder and CEO Imran Amed reflected on his own personal  journey that led him to create The Business of Fashion, starting with a chance encounter with a stranger in the New Delhi airport.“That moment was the beginning of my search for purpose, to build a life and career with meaning in service of something greater than myself,” he says. “It was during that course that I realised I was living a life built to impress others, not to express myself or use my creative talents.”Fashion is currently in a moment of reckoning: technology is reshaping behaviour, old rules are persisting as the world accelerates, and trust is shifting away from gatekeepers. Amed’s message to graduates: clarity of purpose.Key Insights: “There will be disruptions and external forces completely outside your control. But if you are clear about your purpose, that can guide you every day as the world changes around you — it becomes your North Star, the compass that helps you to find your way in a world of turmoil and change,” says Amed.Graduating into a downturn once hindered Amed’s own fashion ambitions until the early days of the internet and social media opened an unexpected route.Amed used these new tools to join and shape the global fashion conversation. “By using a new technology, I was able to create something to read around the world, helping an entire industry navigate two decades of change,” Amed says. For today’s graduates, moments of flux are “the greatest moments of opportunity.”According to Amed, there are currently three big problems in the fashion industry that graduates can make the biggest impact. The first is growth without meaning: “Growth has become a proxy for relevance, but the result wasn’t abundance – it was dilution,” Amed says. His prescription: “the most radical thing you can do in fashion is to practise restraint… create less, but better.” The second is values without systems: “The era of storytelling without systems is ending,” Amed says — supply chains should be designed to reduce waste, AI should be used for efficiency and workers’ rights should be foundational. The third, is authority without trust: power is migrating from headquarters to creators and communities. “Legitimacy is earned through trust and hard work,” Amed says, as consistency and context now confer authority.“You just need to choose one problem and serve it really, really well,” he says. “The future of fashion won't be decided by those who speak the loudest, but by those who choose to act with care, and are guided by a sense of purpose. This isn't something you find once and keep forever. Purpose will evolve just as you evolve.”   Additional Resources:The State of Fashion 2026: When the Rules Change | BoFThe Emerging Designers Pushing Fashion Forward | BoF How Fashion’s Rising Stars Are Surviving the Luxury Slump | BoF Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sneakers have driven growth for the sportswear industry for decades, in recent years accelerated by the pandemic and work-from-home culture. However, a recent Bank of America report sparked debate by suggesting the sneaker boom may be nearing an end, including a rare double downgrade of Adidas. On The Debrief, sports correspondent Mike Sykes joins hosts Brian Baskin and Sheena Butler-Young to examine whether slowing growth marks a genuine reversal of casual dressing, or a return to more sustainable demand shaped by price sensitivity, comfort and experimentation rather than hype. Key Insights:The Bank of America report struck a nerve because it questioned a decades-long growth story about the sneaker industry. “This one was the first one in a while that seemed to spell a bit of doom and gloom for the industry,” Sykes says. “Everyone has been on pins and needles for the last couple of years as Nike has been in its downturn… and Bank of America is saying, yeah, it’s over.” The double downgrade of Adidas amplified that anxiety. “If Adidas is getting the double downgrade here, what does that mean for everyone else?” Sykes asks. The implication was not just brand-specific weakness, but the possibility that the sneaker cycle itself had run out of road.However, slower growth does not necessarily mean sneakers are ‘over’. Instead, the data may reflect a market adjusting after years of abnormal acceleration. “Everyone else seems to feel like things are going at least okay,” Sykes says. “Maybe not perfect, but nothing is perfect in this economy right now.” He notes that among the analysts and industry figures he spoke to, there was little appetite for declaring the trend finished. “People are still into sneakers,” says Sykes. Sneakers and sportswear have lasted because they are easy to understand, easy to buy and relatively affordable compared to many fashion categories. “Sneakers are generally just accessible for people. It’s an easy trend to follow,” Sykes says. “You can easily spot which ones are cool and it’s very easy to hop on the bandwagon.” That accessibility matters even more in a strained economy. As Sykes highlights, with consumers weighing “do I wanna buy this next outfit or do I want to buy groceries,” sportswear’s practicality continues to anchor demand.For the sneaker cycle to truly turn, something has to replace it – either a new hit product within the category or a different footwear trend entirely. Right now, what is emerging is not a shift toward formality, but a widening of what casual footwear looks like, as displayed by the popularity of Nike’s ReactX Rejuven8 recovery clog. “Speaking to people who have wanted this shoe, it’s mostly about the comfort,” Sykes explains. “As far as ending the casualisation trend, this is not a shoe that would do that. This is a shoe that would entrench it.”Additional Resources:Have Sneaker Sales Finally Peaked? | BoF The Sneakers That Mattered Most in 2025 | BoFSneaker Resale Isn’t the Business It Used To Be | BoF   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Willa Bennett is the editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan and Seventeen — two of the most influential legacy media brands now being reimagined for a social-first, creator-driven era.Bennett grew up in Los Angeles, trained as a ballerina and studied journalism at Sarah Lawrence before building a standout career at Bustle Digital Group, GQ and Highsnobiety. Along the way, she’s helped redefine how youth culture is covered — not by chasing everything, but by sharpening point of view, taste and authority.“This generation has access to everything,” says Bennett, “which is exactly why there’s a real hunger for curation, real taste and a voice you can trust.”This week on The BoF Podcast, Imran Amed, founder and CEO of The Business of Fashion, sat down with Bennett to talk about what young audiences actually want from media today, why curation matters more than ever and how she’s refocusing Cosmopolitan and Seventeen — creatively, culturally and commercially — for the next generation.Key Insights: Bennett cold emailed her way into Seventeen, two weeks after graduating in 2013. Spotting social’s potential before it was prized, she asked: “Can I post the cover on Instagram?” and was told, “Yeah, sure – no one’s going to see it.” Later stints at Bustle and GQ sharpened her point of view, with a breakthrough at Highsnobiety. Putting Billie Eilish on her first cover of Highsnobiety “was so intuitive,” she says, and it was a signal she could match youth culture with editorial authority.Bennett argues the job of legacy media is selection, not saturation. “This generation has access to so much online, but that also means that there is a real hunger for curation – and real curation, not performative curation,” she says, adding that Cosmopolitan’s remit is to be “a place that young people can trust when it comes to love and relationships.”After an era of chasing scale, Bennett sees a return to meaningful, well-made stories: “We’re seeing real editorials again,” she says, while also noting Cosmopolitan’s social focus: “We’re up 500 percent year over year just in views on Instagram … That prioritisation of social media has been really important.”Bennett’s advice to new journalists is to publish everywhere while honing a distinctive point of view. “Use all the platforms now … get your voice out and really cultivate it,” she says. “As we figure out what this new era is, I think it’ll be even more important to have a very distinct point of view.”Additional Resources:Willa Bennett | BoF 500 | The People Shaping the Global Fashion Industry Inside Willa Bennett’s First Issue of ‘Cosmopolitan’ | BoF  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Saks’ bankruptcy was widely expected, yet still felt like a shock to the fashion system. The department store giant’s Chapter 11 filing outlines $1.75 billion in restructuring finance and $3.4 billion owed to as many as 25,000 creditors – including $136 million to Chanel alone. Who will get paid, and what Saks looks like at the other end of the bankruptcy process, is an open question. Former Neiman Marcus chief Geoffroy van Raemdonck will lead the reset. As BoF’s retail editor Cat Chen puts it, Saks will need to “shrink in order to grow,” curb discounting, and rebuild trust through clienteling and service.Key Insights:Missed vendor payments undermined confidence in Saks Global soon after it acquired Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman. “Even after Saks created these new payment terms, they weren’t able to stick to their instalments,” Chen says. Labels “stopped shipping to Saks entirely,” creating “a death spiral where Saks wasn’t getting good inventory, and this hurt their ability to attract customers,” and sales slid further.When Saks Global acquired Neiman Marcus, both companies were extremely levered going in, with savings being swallowed by interest. The plan pitched $500 million in cost savings, but Saks Global took on more debt — $2.2 billion in bonds. As Chen explains, with margins in multi-brand retail already slim, “they were ill-fated because… a chunk of whatever sales or savings they were able to generate would be going toward interest payments.” As Saks has 10,000 to 25,000 creditors, owed $3.4 billion, bankruptcy court will approve a list of critical vendors that are essential to Saks’s business. While conglomerates will cope, “it's really the smaller independent brands that might be owed less money, but the amount that they're owed are just so much more critical to their business operations. These are the players that are the most vulnerable right now,” Chen warns — and it’s not just brands. A model shared she’s “owed $46,000...and can’t pay rent now.”Now, Saks must reset its business. Van Raemdonck “took Neiman Marcus in and out of bankruptcy,” yet Chen is blunt about the reality of the situation: “Saks Global will have to shrink in order to grow.” That means closing stores, stabilising cash flow and getting ruthless about discounting. From there, Chen says Saks has to compete on experience, delivering the best customer service and catering to their VICs. Additional Resources:Saks Global Files for Bankruptcy After Monthslong Hunt for Cash | BoF Chanel, Gucci and Capri Holdings: The Brands Topping Saks’ Creditor List | BoF Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

2026 opens with real movement in beauty deals. As first reported by The Business of Beauty, Estée Lauder is exploring a packaged sale of Too Faced, Smashbox and Dr. Jart to free up cash and refocus the portfolio. Who’s next? Colour fatigue is depressing makeup valuations, while fragrance, bodycare and haircare are drawing the most credible buyer interest, particularly from beauty conglomerates.  Executive editor of The Business of Beauty, Priya Rao joins Brian Baskin and Sheena Butler-Young to unpack what this year of beauty deals has to offer. Key Insights:With Estée Lauder exploring a bundled sale of Too Faced, Smashbox and Dr. Jart, this portfolio reset signals a valuation reality check. The goal is to free up cash and refocus on culturally relevant, digital-native brands like The Ordinary and Le Labo. As Rao notes, “Deciem sells more skincare products than all of Estée Lauder’s other skincare brands combined,” and “Le Labo is also continuing to be on fire, even though Santal 33 has been around for 15 years.” Colour fatigue is depressing valuations in makeup. Over the past few years, artistry and colour brands have gone to market to find a buyer, but quickly found a landscape already flooded with similar offerings. “There were so many colour brands on the market. People were waiting for the next great one, so they weren’t willing to make a bet on any of these brands until the full slate was out,” says Rao. The result was some colour brands being left in the market, on and off, for over a year. She explains: “It’s kind of like buying a house – why am I going to buy this house at a premium when I could be buying at a discount?”Fragrance, meanwhile, remains a booming, high-margin lane. “All these other beauty businesses – hair care, body and fragrance – are more incremental to a strategic,” says Rao. While private equity is trying across the board, Rao advises that “if you want L’Oréal, LVMH or Estée Lauder, you have to be in categories that add incremental value, rather than ones they’re still trying to figure out.”Haircare offers the clearest near-term upside for acquirers. “Amika has the number one or number two dry shampoo at Sephora,” and its move into Ulta taps “a huge haircare business because of their back bar program”, says Rao. In mass hair care, Not Your Mother’s, which has had its longevity questioned in the past, shows durability and runway. Focused on styling and texture, Rao notes that it “hasn’t even played with shampoo and conditioner yet – in mass hair care, that’s where you play to make the big bucks.”Additional Resources:Exclusive: Estée Lauder Companies Has Put Three Brands Up for Sale | BoF Prestige Hair Care’s Shampoo Problem | BoF Why Fragrance Is the Latest Red Carpet Accessory | BoF  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What began as scrappy self-publishing has become a finely tuned industry machine. Influencing is now big business. Four of the industry’s most influential creators came together at BoF VOICES 2025 to take a hard look at what influencing has become — and where it should go in the future. Susanna Lau opens the conversation by ditching the earnest tropes and asking a harder question: how can creators keep their integrity as agencies, briefs and budgets multiply?Bryan Yambao reflects on the pre-iPhone “wild west” — scanning magazines, posting affiliate links from his bedroom in Manila, and the shock of realising that the people he wrote about were suddenly reading him.Camille Charrière charts the shift from “do your thing” freedom to 30-page briefs and layered gatekeepers, arguing that creators must push back to preserve the audience trust that made them valuable in the first place.And through the lens of satire, Gstaad Guy challenges brands to confront what their communities are already saying — before they say it out loud.Together, they interrogate luxury’s malaise — and the need to recalibrate the industry around craft, community and credibility.Key Insights: Even with industry recognition, Yambao still feels like an outsider and uses that distance to stay candid. “I still feel like I’m an outsider,” he says, recalling the early days: “There was no roadmap. All I knew was that I had a voice.” The monetisation that followed, from early affiliate cheques to today’s industrialised commerce media, only reinforced his responsibility. “Since I kind of have a seat [at] the table, I want to say things with meaning and hold people to a higher standard,” he says.Charrière argues creators aren’t brand billboards — they’re people with convictions, and audience trust depends on that. After a year of speaking out, she recalls a major house “got me on a call with seven lawyers saying that now in my contract it was going to be written that I had to be neutral politically because I’d gone to a protest.” She continues, “I said, absolutely not.I’m not a brand. I’m an ambassador for you, but we are people, we are not brands … my online self is an extension of my offline self.”Gstaad Guy argues that credibility now depends on pre-empting audience scepticism. “Consumers are getting smarter, products are getting dumber,” he says. The remedy is to meet somewhere in between and let creators use their own language to test narratives honestly: “Have someone like [me] say something first so you can tell the story … the language of comedy and satire allows for that to be more digestible,” he says.Additional Resources:Susanna Lau, Bryan Yambao, Camille Charrière and Gstaad Guy: Twenty Years of the Influencer Economy in Fashion | BoF Gstaad Guy | BoF 500 | The People Shaping the Global Fashion Industry Camille Charrière | BoF 500 | The People Shaping the Global Fashion Industry Bryan Grey Yambao | BoF 500 | The People Shaping the Global Fashion Industry Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

BoF and McKinsey’s annual State of Fashion report finds the industry entering 2026 with caution: 46 percent of executives expect conditions to worsen, citing geopolitics, macro volatility and the risk of shoppers pulling back. Yet there is also a pulse of optimism around AI-driven efficiency, luxury’s creative recalibration and fresh consumer interest in categories from smart glasses to fine jewellery.Tariffs remain the dominant near-term swing factor. Brands mitigated pain in 2025 by pulling forward inventory, but as that cushion runs out, the full impact shows up in 2026 in costs and pricing. More broadly, luxury’s era of price-led growth has run its course; as BoF correspondent Marc Bain puts it, if you ask customers to pay more, you have to “actually offer the value for the price.”Key Insights:The mood has shifted from “uncertain” in 2025 to “challenging” in 2026. Companies feel better equipped but are bracing for a tougher year. “Uncertainty was ‘we don’t know what’s going to happen’. The challenge is, we know what is going to happen and it’s going to be tough,” says Bain.Tariffs will continue to bite in 2026, and price hikes will be part of the playbook. Brands used a mix of mitigation tactics in 2025, but many still expect to pass on costs. “The strategy that the highest number of executives said was their way of mitigating the tariff impact was raising prices,” Bain notes. “To some degree, there's just no way around that. You can do it strategically, but at some point you're probably going to have to raise prices.”Jewellery is the consumer bright spot for the year ahead, as the category has steadily outperformed thanks to steadier, more gradual price rises, exciting design and a strong perception of value retention. “It’s hard luxury… you can wear it a lot and it can still be in good shape,” Bain says, adding that more women self-purchasing are reinforcing demand, with maximal accessories over minimal wardrobes adding another tailwind. He adds, “It sounds almost silly in 2026, but a big shift has been that more women are actually buying jewellery for themselves.According to Bain, 2026 is the year AI gets embedded into the fashion ecosystem. Expect a ‘two steps forward, one step back’ year where efficiency wins drive adoption even as mishaps make headlines. “Companies don’t feel like they can sit out AI,” Bain says. “It’s not like everyone by the end of next year is going to be using ChatGPT instead of Google, but the expectation is it'll be a significantly higher number than [2025]. And at a certain point, even if it's 5 percent of shoppers … it's still enough that you as a business have to start accounting for it.   Additional Resources:The 10 Themes That Will Define the Fashion Agenda in the Year Ahead | BoF The Perfect Package: What It Takes to Be a Fashion Leader in 2026 | BoFThe Top Trends That Will Define Beauty in 2026 | BoF  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A DJ from South Africa who survived a life-altering accident on the night of Nelson Mandela’s release, Black Coffee has gone on to headline the world’s biggest stages. At BoF VOICES 2025, he reflected on building global credibility — and on reshaping how the African continent is seen. “If you Google a picture of Africa … it’s not going to be the most positive picture you see,” he says. “To be a DJ in South Africa, it’s one of the toughest things because almost every DJ is amazing. To be a DJ on the global level is way tougher because I come from a continent that was — or maybe still is — not seen as how it truly is.” In conversation with BoF founder and CEO Imran Amed, Black Coffee talk about rejecting pigeonholes, earning trust on a global level, and opening doors for the next generation. Key Insights: To compete beyond South Africa, Black Coffee says he had to work on the music and the optics of Africa on the global stage. The solution was rigorous self-presentation: “Whilst I was growing as a brand, fashion played a very big role for me. I was very conscious of how I presented myself,” he says. “The bigger the brand, the more intentional I was. It took a lot of work.” That mix of sound, style and discipline underpinned his transition from local star to international headliner.The night Nelson Mandela walked free changed his life forever. Struck in a crowd by a taxi and left with a nerve damage injury, he channelled his recovery into music and silence into resolve. “[Mandela’s] release from jail marked the beginning of a different journey for me, the first day of the beginning of Black Coffee,” he says. Speaking publicly about the accident only years later, he refused pity and insisted on being seen first as a musician with “passion and love for music.”Black Coffee is blunt about structural bias. “At the Grammys, instead of giving Tyla a number-one pop award, they will create a new genre or category where it’s best African,” he says. Reflecting on his own experience at the BET Awards, he recounts: “We were all given our awards on Friday and we were not invited on the main show on Saturday.”His advice to young creatives is simple and radical: “Just listen to your voice. That voice is the voice that will make you the greatest.” The mission is not only visibility but parity – moving African talent from a side-room to the main stage.Additional Resources: BoF VOICES 2025: Creativity as a Vehicle for Connection Black Coffee| BoF 500 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Born to South Sudanese parents and raised in Canada after arriving as refugees in 2002, Awar Odhiang grew up far from fashion’s orbit. She was studying health sciences and planning a career in medicine, when she was scouted at her first job. Her career began locally in Calgary, then accelerated fast after she launched internationally in 2019 — with early runway breaks, a packed show schedule and global campaigns. Then came the moment that stopped the industry when she closed the most-watched debut of the season at Matthieu Blazy’s Chanel show in October.“The moment that really allowed me to fill that space in that way was the freedom that I was given, truly,” she says. Backstage, Matthieu Blazy, Chanel’s new creative director encouraged her to own the moment. “I just felt so free, so confident, so beautiful. You can tell Matthieu loves women just by his designs.”In this conversation from BoF VOICES 2025, I speak with Awar about the gap between being celebrated publicly and understood privately, why inclusion has to extend to behind the camera and the boundaries she is setting to protect her sense of joy in an industry that rarely slows down.Key Insights:Odhiang recounts meeting agent Kelly Streit whilst working her first job in retail and her scouting story captures a pivotal shift in self-belief. “That was a moment that now I can look back at and realise that he believed in me before I even believed in myself,” she says. From folding sweaters at Old Navy to international runways by 2019, she frames the leap as an intentional decision to embrace an unexpected opportunity.As a high profile dark skinned model, her growing visibility hasn’t eliminated her feelings of isolation. “One of the darker sides of modelling I would say is really the [lack of] inclusion … the fact that we’re still talking about this today really shows how big of a problem that is.” She defines inclusivity as being allowed to be at ease rather than just token representation: “For me, inclusion is being able to be in a room and not have to translate yourself … where you’re not the only person who looks like you, where you’re not the only person who’s expected to speak on certain matters.”Moreover, whilst diverse campaigns can signal progress, backstage the culture still lags behind. “Being welcomed publicly and being understood privately —. I think they’re two very different things,” Odhiang says. “A lot of it [is] performative … behind the scenes there’s no diversity. There’s nobody who’s really understanding you, your story, how you’ve been treated. So that’s really dismissed a lot.” Her call is for decision-room diversity, consistency rather than trends, and respect for lived experiences.As attention intensifies, Odhiang is resolute about boundaries and community. “I would protect this joy, this joy in my heart, this joy of my soul, by continuing to set boundaries … by also keeping the company around me honest and close, and by also not allowing the pace of the industry to impact the pace of me as a human,” she says. For her, sustainability is emotional as much as professional — maintaining a human tempo amid fashion’s demands.Additional Resources:Awar Odhiag | BoF 500 Awar Odhiang: Choosing Joy Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Choosing “sneaker of the year” has rarely been this contentious. In 2025 the debate has splintered opinion between incumbent players like Nike and contenders from Vans, Converse and New Balance as consumers test the field.Whilst Nike’s shadow looms and expands with new silhouettes, real-world volume is being driven by ‘regular’ pairs like ASICS’ black-and-silver GEL-1130.In this episode of The Debrief, BoF’s Sheena Butler-Young and Brian Baskin sit down with Mike Sykes to unpack the data, the storytelling and what this year signals for 2026.Key Insights:In a widening market, this year’s debate has splintered opinions. Unlike typical years with “two to three shoes,” 2025 felt like “it’s five, it’s six, it’s seven, it’s eight,” says Sykes. He frames it as consumers testing “Nike versus the field,” with many deciding, “I’m actually gonna try the field for once,” which explains why we have seen credible contenders from Vans, Converse, New Balance and more.At the same time, reports of Nike’s demise are overdone. “Nike has always – and, in my opinion, probably will always – be the industry standard. The company is just too big at this point; it makes too much money. Even when it fails, it’s still a notch above its competition,” says Sykes. The real question now is which Nike silhouettes win attention. A few years ago it was largely Jordan 1s, 3s and Dunks, however now styles like Infinite Archives 17, Awake’s Jordan 5, and Nigel Sylvester’s Jordan 4 are all taking space.Hype is increasingly powered by storytelling that feels personal rather than driven by pure scarcity. Nigel Sylvester’s Jordan 4 showed how “over the top” yet authentic activations made fans attach to Nigel beyond the sneaker. “He’s riding his bike, kissing babies, shaking hands,” says Sykes. It’s “absolutely marketing” but designed to connect on emotion.On sneaker resale marketplace StockX, beneath the headline-grabbing premiums, Asics is moving serious volume with everyday pairs. As Mike notes, “the black and silver Asics Gel-1130 is just a common shoe that you could probably just go to your Foot Locker and buy,” yet he sees “people just buying the shoe up.” Set against hype, the GEL-1130 shows how “regular everyday shoes that look cool” can dominate real-world sales even when they’re absent from sneaker-of-the-year shortlists.Additional Resources:The Sneakers That Mattered Most in 2025The Kicks You Wear: The Collab of the Year With Bimma WilliamsThe Kicks You Wear: The Death of Sneakers Is Overstated Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

To close the first session of this year’s BoF VOICES on The Wider World, we wanted a voice that could cut through the noise and offer a clear, powerful call to action for human unity at a time when everything feels like it's breaking down. Few artists are better positioned to do that than Riz Ahmed.An Oscar and Emmy-winning actor, producer and musician, Riz has built a career at the intersection of culture, politics and humanity — from Sound of Metal to The Night Of, and through music and activism that challenge how stories are told, and who gets to tell them.Drawing on his upcoming adaptation of Hamlet, set in contemporary London, he argues that one of the most famous speeches in history — “to be or not to be” — has been misunderstood, de-radicalised and stripped of its original power. For Riz, Hamlet is not about despair or inaction. It’s about resistance, moral reckoning, and the fear that stops us from standing up when injustice feels overwhelming.This is a talk about grief, complicity and courage. About why stories endure. And about what it means to take responsibility — even when the cost feels high.Key Insights: Ahead of the theatrical release of the Ahmed-produced 2025 film “Hamlet” — its first cinematic adaptation starring a person of colour — the actor argues that the play’s famous soliloquy is not about suicide, but rather about summoning the courage to defy injustice. “‘To be or not to be’ is about resistance. The most famous lines ever written by a human being have been defanged, deradicalised. It’s about fighting back against oppression,” he says..The monologue, he argues, illustrates the importance of storytelling during a time when dominant cultural narratives attempt to divide people and to emphasise the illusion of in-groups and out-groups. “In the same way that we need to rediscover the radical truth of this speech, I believe we need to rediscover the radical purpose and truth at the heart of storytelling,” he says. “Storytelling has been lost to content and distraction and entertainment, but at its heart when it works best, it is reminding us of a very profound and very radical spiritual truth, which is that we are one.”Ahmed concludes that what people gain in achieving their purpose as storytellers — to believe in their shared humanity — is invaluable, despite the personal losses that may be incurred by doing so. “Honestly the things that we are afraid of, the things that we stand to lose were never really ours. We will lose them, but what we stand to gain when we step into our purpose is something so profound,” he says.“What does it mean to rediscover our radical purpose as storytellers, insisting on our oneness in a time when people might try and divide us?”Additional Resources:The BoF Podcast: Riz Ahmed on a Watershed Moment for the Fashion IndustryBoF VOICES 2025: Finding Connection in Turbulent Times Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Collectively, Clare Waight Keller and Maria Cornejo have over two decades of experience in the fashion industry. Waight Keller’s impressive career includes roles at Givenchy, Chloé and Gucci — and today, she serves as creative director at Uniqlo. Cornejo’s New York–based label, founded nearly three decades ago, counts Michelle Obama and Christy Turlington Burns among its most devoted fans.From deeply entrenched gender biases to the fear of returning to work after giving birth, women face a number of systemic barriers to reaching senior leadership positions in the fashion industry, insiders say. Today, some women designers have found success launching their own labels — and when they do land leadership roles at major houses, often make it a priority to create opportunities for other women, which remain few and far between.At the VOICES 10th anniversary, Waight Keller and Cornejo speak with senior correspondent Sheena Butler-Young about what it’s like to work in an industry where women are the muses and chief customers, but the top commercial and creative roles are dominated by men. Key Insights: Clare Waight Keller says that the inequalities between men and women in fashion are driven in part by the narrative that “men are often seen as the implementers of big change, and women of stability, and so with stability we’re often also cornered into a commercial sense of aesthetic.” Both Waight Keller and Cornejo push back against this notion, saying that women aren’t less creative but simply more considerate of how real women want to dress.Maria Cornejo feels that “there’s a big disconnect in fashion… from what's instagrammable and what is actual reality … all the women I know who have independent businesses… we’re making clothes that women wear.” Both designers say they have encountered inequities as women in fashion, prompting Waight Keller to intentionally assemble an all-women team at Uniqlo. “Women add so much richness into the conversation of clothing, we offer a completely different perspective which is equally powerful and equally relevant,” she says.Additional Resources:BoF VOICES 2025: Finding Connection in Turbulent TimesClare Waight Keller | BoF 500Maria Cornejo | BoF 500 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Instead of his usual place in the host’s seat, BoF founder and CEO Imran Amed appears this week as a guest in an interview with Jonathan Wingfield, editor-in-chief of System Magazine, alongside Luca Solca, senior analyst of global luxury goods at Bernstein — as featured in the second issue of System Collections.Recorded in late October, their discussion maps a luxury market defined by expectation swings, tighter cost control and headline creative resets, with pricing and value now at the centre of the consumer equation. Amed and Solca examine how luxury groups are refocusing, why design-led and more accessibly priced players are gaining ground, and the conditions required for a genuine comeback at the top end.“Everyone seems to be fascinated with the ultra-wealthy spending, exorbitant amounts of money, but they are not the majority of the market — they are a portion at most,” says Solca.Amed agrees. “Nobody out there really thinks any of these prices are justified,” he says. “One of the big conundrums facing the industry is, how do they restructure that pricing pyramid? They can’t just reduce prices on the existing products that are in their core collection because that’s almost an admission of having broken that ceiling down.”Key Insights:After years of price hikes, the industry hasn’t just met its price ceiling — it “broke through that ceiling, smashed it to bits,” argues Amed. The core dilemma now is rebuilding the pricing pyramid without publicly walking back on prices. “I just think some of the executives in the industry are just completely out of touch with how the average customer feels. That’s not just aspirational middle-class customers, that’s also the ultra wealthy customers. Nobody out there really thinks any of these prices are justified,” says Amed.Solca warns that chasing the top end customer cannot be the only approach for brands. “Everyone seems to be fascinated with the ultra-wealthy spending exorbitant amounts of money, but...they are not the majority of the market. They are a portion at the most,” says Solca.However, price inflation at the very top has created space just below what’s considered traditional luxury for design-led brands with sharper value. “It’s opened up a really interesting opportunity for smaller brands that are highly creative,” Amed says. He points to labels “just below luxury and just above US contemporary,” where distinct product and accessible pricing meet demand for uniqueness.For Amed and Solca, the formula for success is for brands to bridge their DNA with the cultural zeitgeist and deliver real value to customers. Chasing trends that deny what a house stands for won’t work, like “Gucci trying to look quiet is like a zebra camouflaging as a lion,” says Solca. Amed adds the customer value test in “the relationship between what a customer pays and the perceived value of what they get in return.” If brands fail that test, “they’ll be less and less a part of that overall mix of what customers spend their money on.”Additional Resources:Jonathan Wingfield | BoF 500The Debrief | 5 Big Questions About LuxuryPrada’s Versace Acquisition Closes, Now the Real Work Begins Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.