People Are Still Shopping

Summary

Podcast Summary: Fashion People – "People Are Still Shopping"

Date: May 8, 2026
Host: Lauren Sherman (Puck correspondent, Line Sheet)
Guest: Frances Belen (CEO, Mytheresa)
Theme: The state of luxury retail in 2026, focusing on how multi-brand retail can thrive in the age of direct-to-consumer (DTC) dominance and changing consumer dynamics.

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Episode Overview

This episode of Fashion People dives deep into the realities and challenges of luxury retail in 2026, with a focus on how Mytheresa—a standout multi-brand retailer—remains successful. Lauren Sherman hosts Frances Belen, Mytheresa’s CEO, who shares perspectives on customer focus, the U.S. luxury market’s resilience, investing in new and established brands, and the essential formula for multi-brand retail success in a challenging and evolving landscape.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Current State of Luxury and NYC Vibes (04:05–06:14)

• Lauren Sherman’s Take on NYC: After returning from Europe, Lauren expresses the “end times” feeling circulating in New York post-Met Gala—a mix of opulence and anxiety:
  “It did feel a little like end times… Is it New York? Is it America? Is it everything?... The Met Gala is a reflection of the times and the bezos of et al, the sort of over the top element. It was all there.” (03:02)
• Personal Observations: She notes bizarre price inflation (e.g., "$200 flower bouquets") and widespread influence of AI.
• Fashion Show Anticipation: Lauren looks forward to big luxury shows (Dior, Gucci, Louis Vuitton) happening in the U.S.:
  “Excited to see how Dior and Gucci and Louis Vuitton and all those other resort shows are in the U.S. Please send your reports.” (06:10)

2. Introduction to Frances Belen & Mytheresa’s Fresh Perspective (06:14–08:27)

• Meet Frances Belen: New to Mytheresa (CEO for four months), with a background in management consulting, retail (Richemont), and the luxury auction world (Christie’s).
• Bringing a Different Angle: Frances highlights the importance of a fresh, external perspective on fashion and e-commerce:
  “It’s been a few weeks of discovery and continuing to feel that it’s a very strong business in a relatively complicated landscape.” (07:49)

3. Asia as a Powerhouse for Luxury (11:36–14:38)

• Frances’ 21 Years in Asia: Shares deep insights on how Japan (early 2000s) and then China became luxury growth engines.
  “I started when Japan was still the absolute powerhouse... and China was just starting to emerge because really things started to change after 2002 in China.” (12:20)
• Rapid Retail Expansion: Frances recounts opening 30–40 Swarovski stores per year in China during the 2010s.
• Asia Shaping Global Tastes: Observes that Asian consumers have been fundamental in shaping luxury market trends and brand successes globally.

4. The Psychology of Collecting: Art vs. Fashion (16:32–19:05)

• Difference in Mindset: Frances distinguishes the emotional journey and sense of legacy involved in art collecting from the more practical, though still emotional, exercise of engaging with fashion.
• Fashion as Expression:
  “Fashion is a different category...It’s a way to express what individuals feel through the way they dress and what they wear… but I don’t think it’s the same objective ultimately as what you would find from art collectors.” (18:51)

5. The Mytheresa Customer & Razor-Sharp Curation (19:05–22:31)

• Mytheresa’s Core Strategy: Ultra-focused on helping sophisticated customers build wardrobes, rather than offering everything to everyone.
• Edit Over Excess:
  “If we say we have the best edit, it means that if you’re looking for a black dress, we give you 20 black dresses. We don’t need 500 because we don’t want you to scroll through pages and pages and pages.” (21:20)
• Simplicity as Value: Mytheresa avoids prescriptive editorial advice, focusing instead on exclusive launches and product-driven communications.

6. Working with Heritage and New Brands (22:31–25:41)

• Selective Approach to New Brands: They take time (multiple seasons) to onboard new designers, seeking consistency and customer fit:
  “We have very few brands and when we add, we add very seriously. It’s because we have a strong belief that actually it fits the needs and the expectation of our customer.” (23:20)
• Exclusivity & Secrecy: Pre-launches, “secret” brands (like Phoebe Philo), and maintaining desirability through limited access.

7. U.S. Market Resilience (27:32–29:56)

• Why Is the U.S. Still Shopping? Despite global uncertainty, U.S. luxury spends remains robust, driven by strong GDP and consumer confidence—a market Mytheresa sees as only scratching the surface of its potential.
  “If you look at the total size of the luxury market in the U.S. we’re still relatively small. So I think we have a long way to go to capture even more market share.” (29:41)

8. The Essential Formula for Multi-Brand Retail Success (29:56–32:14)

• Focus Is Everything:
  “The belief that multi brand can be anything for anybody is probably wrong. …even if you’re online, there’s technically no real estate, there is a real estate because that real estate is the attention of your customer.” (30:57)
• Disciplined Curation: Avoid chasing every possible trend or brand. Stay true to a defined customer and their needs—resist distractions, both in assortment and marketing spend.

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Memorable Quotes

• Lauren Sherman (on New York in 2026):
  “New York is very weird right now and anyone who says differently is lying. Cabs are very expensive. Flower bouquets at Meadow Lane are $200. Please don’t buy one.” (05:14)

• Frances Belen (on Asia’s Influence):
  “The Asian consumer has been shaping actually what happens in some of these industries and has been so important to a lot of the successful brands in the luxury world. That’s something I don’t think we should forget.” (14:27)

• Frances Belen (on discipline in retail):
  “Being focused on the assortments, being focused on the customer and being sure that the two actually match, I think is the absolute golden rule.” (31:13)

• Frances Belen (on Mytheresa's approach):
  “We want to keep things very simple… If we say we have the best edit… we have a point of view and we think these are the best ones.” (21:14)

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Important Timestamps

• 04:05: Lauren’s reflections on NYC’s mood post-Met Gala
• 06:14: Transition to main interview—Introduction of Frances Belen
• 07:38: Frances describes joining Mytheresa and early impressions
• 11:36: Deep dive into Frances's 21-year career in Asia & impact on luxury
• 16:32: Discussion of art vs. fashion consumer psychology
• 19:05: Analysis of the Mytheresa customer and the brand’s unique value proposition
• 22:31: Curation strategy—balancing heritage and new brands
• 27:32: Lauren and Frances discuss the resilience of the U.S. luxury market
• 29:56: Frances explains the “essential formula” for multi-brand retail
• 32:14: Episode wrap-up

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Tone & Style

• Inquisitive, candid, analytical: Lauren brings a personal, insider’s tone, blending sharp industry observations with a dash of dry humor.
• Frances: Analytical, measured, but passionate about discipline, focus, and the customer-centric culture at Mytheresa.

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For New Listeners

This episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to understand why luxury shoppers are still spending in 2026, how multi-brand retail can remain relevant, and what separates enduring retailers from failed experiments. Through the real-life experiences of Frances Belen and Lauren Sherman’s pointed questions, listeners get a behind-the-scenes peek at the machinery of modern luxury—from market psychology to tight curation and disciplined brand growth.

Transcript

[Lauren Sherman]

Yes, yes, we know that fashion people

[Frances Belen]

love to spend money, but we also

[Lauren Sherman]

know that fashion people love a deal.

[Frances Belen]

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[Lauren Sherman]

Hello and welcome to Fashion People. I'm Lauren Sherman, writer of Cuts Fashion and Beauty Memo Line Sheet and today with me on the show is Frances Belin, the CEO of My Teresa, talking about the state of luxury in 2026, how multi brand retail can work in the age of DTC, and so much more. Before we get going, I wanted to remind you that if you like this podcast, you'll definitely love Puck, where I send an email called Line Sheet. If you're a fashion person, you get that reference. It's an original look at what's really going on inside the fashion and beauty industries line. She is scoopy, analytical and above all, fun. Along with me, a subscription to Puck gains you access to an unmatched roster of experts reporting on powerful people and companies in entertainment, media, sports, politics, finance, the art world and much more. If you're interested listeners of Fashion People get a discount. Just go to Puck News slash Fashion People to join Puck or start a free trial. Happy Friday everyone. Hope you had a great week. Unless there is some big catastrophe. Let's hope not. I will be in Paris the next time you listen to this. I took the red eye back from New York yesterday. Hmm. What, what can I say about New York these days? It did feel a little like end times. That was the word the phrase people used. End times. Is it New York? Is it America? Is it everything? Is it just like the state of our culture? The Met Gala is a reflection of the times and the bezos of et al, the sort of over the top element. It was all there.

[Frances Belen]

Look, they raised $42 million.

[Lauren Sherman]

Can they top that next year? Probably.

[Frances Belen]

Do they want to?

[Lauren Sherman]

I don't know. I think it's going to require them to ask many more people to pay a million a ticket. Anyway, on Wednesday night I had an amazing Puck private dinner with the team from Belmont Park Village. This shopping destination near the stadium out there. I've talked about it on here before. If you haven't been, you should go. If you've been to the legendary Bicester Village in the uk, which I know many of you have, you're familiar with this group. But we had a great time. It was a mix of C Suite executives, some who have shops there, some who don't, and then a lot of media people.

[Frances Belen]

And it was fun.

[Lauren Sherman]

It was a very lively off the record debate.

[Frances Belen]

I also just wanted to thank the

[Lauren Sherman]

King and Dean's Team Lei wine bar. They also own that Annie and Jess and Jupiter, they made an incredible meal. It was very king coated. The chocolate cake, which flourless chocolate cake's my favorite dessert of all time. If I only could have one dessert. That's what it would be so I enjoyed it. I also ate at Dean's with my

[Frances Belen]

friend Marissa Meltzer and frequent fashion People

[Lauren Sherman]

guest on Tuesday night. And it was delicious. We had a great time, great fish and chips. But look, New York is very weird right now and anyone who says differently is lying. Cabs are very expensive. Flower bouquets at Meadow Lane are $200. Please don't buy one. I did get the almond milk there, though. It was pretty good. And I did get that Luna water and it's delicious. But I don't know, it feels like everything everybody's talking about AI. It felt like everything is AI generated and I'm not a person. I don't think about my finances enough. But, like, I really saw the cost of things on this trip. The world is just weird right now. But I did go to a lot of great art shows and saw friends and, you know, the sun will keep rising and setting whether you want it to or not. That's from Anne of Green Gables. Anyway, excited to see how Dior and Gucci and Louis Vuitton and all those other resort shows are in the U.S.

[Frances Belen]

please send your reports and let's get going.

[Lauren Sherman]

With Frances. It was a pleasure to chat with with him.

[Frances Belen]

My Teresa is one of the only retailers who didn't mess up yet.

[Lauren Sherman]

And so it's fun to hear what he has planned. Frances Belen, welcome to Fashion People.

[Frances Belen]

Hi, Lauren. Good to see you.

[Lauren Sherman]

Good to see you too. What did you have for breakfast this morning?

[Frances Belen]

I had for breakfast. I skip breakfast. I believe in fasting.

[Lauren Sherman]

As do I. So what did you. Did you eat lunch? Are you in Europe right now or are you in the us?

[Frances Belen]

I mean, I'm in Munich, so I had a light lunch from the canteen. We have a really nice canteen and it's just nice to be there and to see the rest of the team during management.

[Lauren Sherman]

You know, it's interesting. It feels like to me, I've been in New York for five days now and I'm coming from Europe and it feels like in some ways Europe, and I don't mean this negatively, is 10 years behind the US in terms of adaptation, of trends, of self improvement and the use of AI and the cost of things. But it's interesting that you're into the fasting. It feels like a very American thing to me.

[Frances Belen]

Is it? Look, I've been doing it for many years and I think it works pretty well.

[Susie Welch]

Wow.

[Lauren Sherman]

Good advice for everyone. So tell me, how long have you been at Mytheresa for?

[Frances Belen]

So it's been just a Few days over four months. So it's four months and a few days now because I joined beginning of January.

And how's it been so far?

It's been amazing. It's been really been a great journey. I didn't know so much the space because my background is actually not in fashion, it's not in E commerce. And so it's been a few weeks of discovery and continuing to feel that it's a very strong business in a relatively complicated landscape. And I think there's many more things we can do and we will do. So I'm very excited to come from with a very different perspective and be able to build on all the great things that have been achieved by the firm.

[Lauren Sherman]

So tell me a little bit about your background and how you ended up at Mytheresa. You worked at Christie's for a long time, right?

[Frances Belen]

So how I ended up Luke, I still don't know exactly. It's just a headhunter who kind of picked up the phone and called me. But I have a background which is I had three main periods in my career before joining Mitresal. The first one was a management consultant. I started my career at McKinsey in Paris. I worked quite a bit in Asia and very quickly into consumer goods, retail consumer goods. Then I had a retail. More like a retail moment. So I moved to Japan in 2005 I joined Richemont to lead one of the watch brand. It was interesting because Japan at that time was still compared to the rest of the world was still an absolute powerhouse when it comes to luxury. And while I was in Japan at John Zorofsky, the Austrian Christie jury and I worked for them in Japan. Then I worked in Hong Kong in different capacities. And then I left about 10 years ago to join Christie's where I did a number of things. I was global managing director for Asian art, so managing all the specialist team across the world but based in Hong Kong. Then I took over the portfolio. In addition to the Asian art of Asia Pacific and then luxury from 2022 I looked after wine, watch this, handbags, jewelry and a year before I left cars, we acquired a vintage car company in California called Gooding that became and company that was one of my big project when I was there.

[Lauren Sherman]

Must be really interesting going into first line retail after getting such a. A strong understanding of the. The secondary luxury luxury market which many, I feel like many of the luxury brands have been sort of reticent to engage with. But you saw it all firsthand how it was working.

[Frances Belen]

I think it's it's interesting to hop. I mean, you can tell from my retail experience to the auction house experience and then through fashion and E commerce. I mean, they don't seem to overlap so much if you look at it from far away. But if you dig a bit deeper, there's actually a lot of the prerequisite for these businesses to operate in a successful weather actually overlap. And I think what is an obsession at my Jerusalem is the customer. And the way we've built, everything we've done is always around who's our customer. We've defined very clearly who the customer is and then how do we serve them the best we can from the assortment, the service, building relationship and emotional connections with the event that we host. So if I go back to my Christie's time in the ocean world, of course it was a different business model, it was a different type of object that we were selling. But at the end of the day it's the same recipe. It's just have to be very sharp about who you want to serve and how you can be the best at serving them.

[Lauren Sherman]

What was it like being in Asia during the period you were there? So were you there for 20 years?

[Frances Belen]

I was in Asia for 21 years, yes.

[Lauren Sherman]

So you were there as the luxury industry was consolidating, as China was kind of becoming a huge driver of growth. As you mentioned Japan in the 90s, you've seen, you saw the sort of ups and downs of that, that maturing market and then living in Hong Kong during a period of transformation there as well. What did you observe about the sort of power of that part of the world for companies that are, you know, selling stuff to people?

[Frances Belen]

Yeah, look, I think it's been, I mean, it definitely doesn't feel like a linear life that I had for the 21 years that I spent in Asia When I joined Japan, I started when Japan was still the absolute powerhouse, I think in Asia, and China was just starting to emerge because really things started to change after 2002 in China. And Japan was a country very sophisticated, really at the, at the forefront of everything you can do in luxury. And Japan has shaped actually a number of players that are powerhouses today. But they started first and foremost by being successful in Japan 30 years ago and then moving on to Hong Kong a few years later into a different field. Because it was not hard luxury, it was affordable. We said premium. With Wrawski, it was fascinating to see the speed at which that business was developing. I started to look after China in 2011 for Zrowski and we were literally opening 30 stores, 40 stores per year, and we started with slightly over 100. And when I left in 2016, five years later, we had almost 400. But it's been also a moment where things were changing. When China was maturing at a speed which is phenomenal, it was becoming an exceedingly sophisticated market. And that that has not changed. Moving into Christie's, I continue to see also how collectors were moving from categories very close to their heart and their cultural heritage with Chinese ceramics or Chinese painting, and then gradually over the nine years when I was there, just becoming some of the most sophisticated collectors of Western art, whether it's contemporary or modern, and moving the market literally in these categories and being exceedingly active. So what I think is always interesting when looking back at these 20 some years in Asia is to observe how the Asian consumer has been shaping actually what happens in some of these industries and has been so important to a lot of the successful brands in the luxury world. I think that's something I don't think we should forget.

[Lauren Sherman]

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[Lauren Sherman]

You're talking about the Christie's consumer as a collector. When you look at how people buy art or buy secondhand fashion, luxury cars, that sort of thing, versus how they shop for contemporary fashion or new fashion I guess is a better word, what do you think the difference in this? Is there a difference in the psychological mindset when they're looking to buy a painting versus looking to buy a skirt?

[Frances Belen]

I think it's very different. I don't think I would surprise anyone by saying so, but I think the journey of an art collector is a very personal journey to start with. I mean, you're talking about sums at stake that are very significant. Even collectors who are serious with a smaller budget, it's still a very serious part of their finances. And it's a journey of discovering art, but also self discovery. What is your own taste? What type of art actually speaks to you as a person? And it's an emotional journey, which is extremely, I think for a lot of the collectors and the top collectors that I met when I was at Christie's is very deep and there's additional motifs to it. There is a legacy part to it, there is a philanthropic side of it. I've met so many collectors who really see themselves as, and rightly so, as a custodian of art. When you collect Qing dynasty ceramics, you're not the first one to have it. You're not even the second one. I mean, I don't know how many generations I've actually seen that object. And the responsibility that these collectors feel they have in protecting art for future generation is actually very heavy. Fashion is a different category in a way that it's a way. This is an emotional journey as well. There's a way to express what individuals feel through the way they dress and what they wear. And the secondary market I think is just part of this. It's just a wish to maybe have a more environmental, friendly approach to it, or there's an economical aspect to it, a financial aspect to it. But I don't think I do see. I do see clients collecting fashion in a way that they are very active, but I don't think it's the same objective ultimately as what you would find from out collectors.

[Lauren Sherman]

The Mytheresa customer from all the communication that the group does regarding the performance of the business. But then also I've been to a lot of I've been to customer events that you all have done and I've sort of watched since it spun out of Neiman Marcus Group, the development of Mytheresa in the last five, six years. What observation have you made about the MyTheresa customer in particular and what sort of distinguishes it from the customer of other competitors or other retailers or single brand? It is one of the few retailers left that I sort of can picture the customer in my mind, which is pretty remarkable.

[Frances Belen]

Well, thanks for saying this. I think what we have always been laser focused on at Mytheresa is customer who needs a great partner to be their wardrobe builder. So this is fundamentally what we do for women for a large portion of our business, increasingly for men. We basically want to be the best and the preferred port of call for whatever these top customers should be looking for in terms of fashion. And I think this defines everything we do, whether it's the assortment that we have, the brands that we select within these brands, the assortment that we actually carry. It defines the experience that we have across the different platforms, whether it's our website or the app or WeChat for channel. But it also defines the way we engage with customers, whether it's our social media or with much more proximity for some of them, the events that we host. And I think it's a customer who is exceedingly active in terms of buying fashion. And it's a customer who is very, of course, very sophisticated and very specific about the brands that she or he is looking for. And this explains also why we want to keep everything at my Teresa being laser focused, very simple. We want to keep things very simple as we have 250 brands for across our assortment. We don't want 300 and we don't have 300 because our clients don't want 300. If we say we have the best edit, it means that if you're looking for a black dress, we give you 20 black dresses. We don't need 500 because we don't want you to scroll through pages and pages and pages. We say like we do our job, we have a point of view and we think these are the best ones. And this is, I believe, also this simplicity is something that has found an incredible amount of value for our clients. The simplicity of the design of our website, our app, the simplicity of our communication, our newsletter. You don't see editorial content at my result. It goes that's not something that our customer feel they need or they want. We don't send you a newsletter saying this is the five best dress for your first job interview. So like this is not the My Teresa customer. And the My Teresa customer is like, we're launching this brand's exclusive capsule. We're launching this brand's newness and this is what speaks to them.

[Lauren Sherman]

So many of the big luxury brands. One of the things that's been interesting about Mytheresse in the last couple years of year is, you know, having Phoebe Philo really early as a multi brand and also having it online. It recently publicly launched Phoebe Filo and it was, it was a big deal. And also having, you know, a lot of the bigger luxury brands that have pulled back from wholesale quite a bit. Some of them will never be in wholesale or will only, you know, Chanel may only ever be in Hirschleifers and the Webster or what have you. But when you look at the landscape, how much of what Mytheresa does is Tiffany going out and finding new designers versus making sure you have the mix of this established brands that people sort of go to no matter what?

[Frances Belen]

Yeah, I mean, as an introduction to your question, you talk about Phoebe Fido. I don't think we can put her into the new designer category. So I think we, we have customers who have a very established test and they know what they're looking for. So we get intrigued and interested by new designers and new brands and we do introduce some of them, but we very carefully look 1 season, 2 season, 3 season, 4 season to see is that really a brand that shows consistency and that we are confident to add because we don't add lightly. We have very few brands and when we add, we add very seriously. It's because we have a strong belief that actually it fits the needs and the expectation of our customer. Now, of course what we love to do is what we've done with the brand that you were just referring to because we pre launched in a section of our website and app which is called Prive, which is only accessible for a limited number of our clients and it worked really well and I think we managed to convince the brand to actually launch into public and it did exceedingly well. But it's not the only brand that we have that we keep a little bit secret in terms of we have it, but not everybody would know because that's also what Matterella does. We might not be. Some of these brands are actually very high in demand. They are difficult to find. The quantity that they produce is limited and I think we like to keep it quite, quite secretive if we think that's the right thing and also if the brands we talk with want it that way. So we do. I wouldn't say we don't experiment, but we don't see ourselves as, we don't see this as something fundamental in our offering. But once we've built a good understanding of where a small brand is going and a strong confidence that what the brand is offering fits into what our customer looking for, then we will add. But then we add for the long, longer term. We don't add for a season and then we move on. We, we add brands and we do add every season a few brands and take out a few just to keep the, the assortment really tight, which I said earlier was important.

[Lauren Sherman]

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[Frances Belen]

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[Frances Belen]

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[Lauren Sherman]

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[Frances Belen]

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[Lauren Sherman]

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[Frances Belen]

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[Lauren Sherman]

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[Frances Belen]

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[Lauren Sherman]

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[Frances Belen]

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[Lauren Sherman]

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[Frances Belen]

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[Lauren Sherman]

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[Frances Belen]

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[Lauren Sherman]

the US market in thinking about Phoebe and what I can see what my truce has done for that brand in the US market in particular the US Market, every, every company I talked to is like and we can see it in the public results. It's the market that is still really working. It seems like China is picking up again. But why do you think it has been so resilient? Do you think it is because of this whole anxiety theory where everybody's just like worried all the time so they're just spending their money because they figure why not? Do you think it's because the consumer in the US has been protected from a lot of the kind of global strife rife because it's not in their backyard? Why do you think the US market has been so resilient?

[Frances Belen]

I think there's a first, the top line. The GDP growth in the US if I'm not wrong, is pretty resilient compared to other geographies around the world. I think there is at the very top end of the market we see a lot of velocity and dynamism. And I mean I can't speak for brands who sell in the US but I can speak about as I speak for my Teresa and what we've seen in a multi brand environment. And there's a lot of we started in the US four and a half years ago. We've done incredible things to set up a team, put in place personal shoppers, get everything working, build a brand with a very specific brand equity that my Teresa has and we've built a great business in the US and since the beginning of the year when there's obviously an even bigger window of opportunity for us because not everyone has products and clients still want to shop. And if they don't find their brand, you just wonder where am I going to find the brand that I'm used to And I've been buying for so many seasons and I think we've become a preferred destination for a lot of them. So the US for us is an important market and it's a growing market as we explained in our earnings last time. And we continue to invest quite heavily because we believe that this is just the beginning for us. And we are still, I think if you look at the total size of the luxury market in the US we're still relatively small. So I think we have a long way to go to capture even more market share. So we're very excited about this.

[Lauren Sherman]

Here's a question for you. You're coming into this business, the multi brand retail landscape. Forget about what happened in the past year. The last 10 years have been totally crazy. There have been all these multi brand retailers that had all this private equity backing that have imploded. Many companies have failed. When you look at the business model of multi brand retail, it's hard to understand sometimes how it can work. I feel like if you're a certain size and you manage it really, really responsibly, it's possible. But as someone coming in who wasn't in this direct business and you evaluate your P and L and you look at your top line and your bottom line and all that stuff, if you were going to like explain how multi brand retail can work in 2026, what is like the essential formula if there is one?

[Frances Belen]

I think the belief that multi brand can be anything for anybody is probably wrong. And the first thing to look at is even if you're online and there's technically no real estate, there is a real estate because that real estate is the attention of your customer and how much time they're willing to spend to actually get what they're looking for. So being focused on the assortments, being focused on the customer and being sure that the two actually match, I think is the absolute golden rule. Because if you start to think, yeah, but we could add this and this and that, but there's no difference. Discipline is thinking. But is that really for the target customer that we have? Then you probably start to get out of the core of what's going to make you build a good business and a profitable one. And on the other hand, it's the same in the money you deploy to actually build traffic and serve and attract customer. Even if you focus on your thought plan, you start to get distracted on who actually is the core customer you need to reach out. Then you probably don't spend the money where you need to spend it to attract customers. Sell that and build the traffic. So I think that focus on multi brand for me is very important. What do you sell to whom I think defines a lot.

[Lauren Sherman]

Francis, thank you so much. You are awesome and it was great to great to chat and I hope we could do more soon.

[Frances Belen]

Thank you very much, Lauren.

[Lauren Sherman]

Thank you. Fashion People is a presentation of Odyssey in partnership with Puck. The show is produced and edited by Molly Newton. Special thanks to Puck co founder John Kelly, Executive editor Ben Landy, producer Maya Tribbett and director of Editorial operations Gabby Grossman. An additional thanks to the team at Odyssey, Kelly Turner and Bob Tabador.

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