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The Business of Fashion Podcast
Special Episode: The Great Fashion Reset
00:42:41
BoF founder and CEO Imran Amed is joined by executive editor Brian Baskin to examine why this fashion month could mark the beginning of a major turning point for the luxury industry.
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- [00:00]
A
Foreign.
- [00:04]
B
Hi, this is Imran Ahmed, founder and CEO of the Business of Fashion. Welcome to the BoF Podcast. It's Friday, September 5th, and welcome back. It's like back to school for fashion as the good and great of the industry return from their summer holidays for a fashion month season unlike any we have seen before. After a post pandemic high, the fashion industry is facing a major crisis. Growth has cooled, prices have surged, quality is under scrutiny, and aspirational shoppers feel shut out of the industry, all while macroeconomic uncertainty dents consumer confidence. The industry is focused on a slew of shows where new designers are set to debut their visions. But this will not be enough to break fashion out of its malaise. Over the summer, the BoF editorial team has been working hard on a series of articles breaking down various challenges that are facing fashion, something we are calling the Great Fashion Reset. So for this week's episode of the BoF podcast, we are changing things up a little. I invited our executive editor, Brian Baskin to ask the questions this week so I can share some of my thoughts on this most consequential of fashion seasons as the luxury finds itself in a period of deep reflection and potential transformation. So let's get started with this week's episode of the BoF podcast. Well, Brian, we've never done this before. We're turning the tables, and I've been trying to find some time to get on the debrief. But for this week, thank you for accepting my invitation to come onto the BoF podcast so we can go through this really significant package that our team's been working on over the summer. The Great Fashion Reset. It's something that we've been thinking about for a while, that I've been thinking about for a while. So I'm happy to kind of have you take the lead in this conversation and share some of your thoughts and perspectives and your questions for me so that we can kind of try to make our way through a variety of different topics that the fashion industry is contending with as September begins. So thanks for taking the time, Brian, and turning it over to you.
- [02:28]
A
My pleasure. I've been waiting seven long years at BoF to grill you like this. So let's get to it. So I was listening actually to your discussion on this podcast with Luca Solka back in May, where I think you may have first floated this idea that the luxury category needed a total reset. These. These band aids they were trying wasn't really working. There was bigger fundamental problems. And at the time you said you were Excited about the coming months in fashion. You were excited about this inflection point that was coming in September, and now here we are, and I was just curious how you were feeling.
- [03:04]
B
I remain excited. Obviously. We've started to see little hints about what's to come. You know, for me, September Fashion Week is kind of like the beginning of the year in fashion. It's a bit like the back to school moment. So there's that layer of slight dread about, you know, all that's to happen over the next few weeks. But there's always that sense of anticipation and excitement about the season that's to come, and that's even more so the case now. And I think what we are just about to begin here is a really consequential period. And, you know, for 17 or 18 years now, I have dedicated my professional life towards understanding how the business of fashion works and what more interesting time than now in terms of kind of trying to understand how the business of fashion is or is not working, as it were. And at the moment, you know, as I'm sure we'll get to shortly, there's a lot of different challenges and opportunities, by the way, that the industry has in front of it. So I'm excited. Kind of been resting over the past few weeks to try to take a bit of a break, because it is a lot that's to come. But, yeah, happy to finally have that moment arrive.
- [04:25]
A
I want to get into some of those teases that you mentioned in a minute, but I think you're right. We should probably step back here and define the problem, what all these designers are up against when they release their first collections. To me, there's a clear divide. There's the value. You question consumers just not feeling like luxury brands are worth what they're charging anymore, and they're charging quite a lot more. And then there's the macro problem of consumers are just generally uncertain about their financial future, so they're not going to go and splurge on a bunch of luxury products when they feel that way. And I'm curious which of these many issues facing the industry are most pressing right now and can actually be addressed with the shows in September?
- [05:08]
B
Okay, so there's a number of different questions in that. In terms of, like, which of the. The kind of issues can be addressed right now with what's had to happen in September? I would say, you know, none of the issues is going to be specifically addressed. This is like, this is a, you know, a series of challenges, both internal and external, that have been building up for quite a bit, a bit of time. And you know, like you in preparation for this conversation, I've been trying to think back to like when did this all first start to crystallize for me? And I think there is this feeling that I started to get in the China maybe the summer after Covid, the summer of 2023, when it just felt like something was shifting. And it's hard to explain exactly what was happening, but it was a number of different things. You know, I was walk down Bond street one day and there's a bunch of queues outside the luxury stores. And you know, we call them queues in London, but you know, back, back in Canada where I grew up, we used to call them lineups. But the whole idea that people would be lining up outside a luxury store and it was literally every store had this like velvet rope or you know, like divider thing to, for people to. And I remember, you know, just walking down going, this is really strange. You know, I'd not really witnessed this kind of appetite for people to want something so bad they're willing to stand in line for 20 or 30 minutes more. So because oftentimes you could peek inside the stores and see the stores weren't full of people. The brands that trying to started to treat customers in a way that they were. It was almost like they were underestimating the intelligence and overestimating the patience of customers. What's that customer experience like you wait 20 minutes outside a big luxury store on Bond street to go inside and then find that prices had been increased by 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 or sometimes even 100% compared to where those prices were before the pandemic. And something just didn't feel right. I'm like, this whole experience does not feel like a luxury experience to me. So that was kind of one layer that was going on. The second layer was, you know, quarter after quarter of double digit increases in growth. You know, we were seeing, you know, LVMH and kering, mostly lvmh, but also Hermes and some of the other big luxury brands reporting 20 or 30% in, you know, annual year over year growth. And it did not feel sustainable because, you know, this is an industry that's historically grown at, you know, 5% per year on a historical basis. So it made you wonder like, you know, how long can this last? Right. Likewise, you know, like most people, as the pandemic lifted and we were kind of being let out into the wild again, you know, people were having to really recalibrate their spend you know, everyone's bank accounts had been flushed with money that they'd saved because they couldn't spend it on anything else or stimulus checks that had come through because, you know, they were lucky to get some extra money in the bank account. But then when the post pandemic inflation surge began to happen, and, you know, energy prices started going up and rent and, you know, everything started increasing, this massive recalibration had to happen. And so you had a bunch of external and internal factors in the industry that kind of conspired to create what is now a perfect storm where customers feel like they've been completely duped. The industry is operating in a way that seems stuck in a different era. The economy continues to struggle under the weight of inflation and a kind of a post pandemic lull. Donald Trump's new geopolitical and trade policies are throwing everything out of whack. And you just have a sense of complete destabilization and uncertainty, both for customers that have historically engaged with this industry and for the companies and leaders that are running this industry. And so all of that is happening. And so I don't think any one thing is going to be able to unpack all of this because it is a very highly complex situation. If you add on top of all of that, some of the trust issues that the luxury industry has been grappling with. As we've seen, Italian investigators and regulators really questioning some of the practices in the supply chain, the feeling that, you know, the emerging designers in our industry, the creative lifeblood of our industry, are being disproportionately impacted by all of this chaos. I mean, I don't think I've ever observed a time in fashion that feels as complex and hairy a situation as we're in now. And it's all been building up for the last two years. And so we've arrived at this moment now, which feels like a really, really significant point. But I would not like to position this Fashion Week season as the season that's going to solve and change everything, because it's not. There's a lot more at work here.
- [10:42]
A
So Jonathan Anderson can't fix China's busted property market is what you're saying.
- [10:47]
B
No, and interestingly, I think HSBC recently upgraded some of the big luxury stocks because they're starting to see a return, you know, potential return to spending in China for some of the customers that have been weighed down by this big real estate crisis. But, like, a lot of these problems are going to require different kinds of solutions. And some of the problems are completely out of control. Both the business and creative leaders in the industry.
- [11:14]
A
A common thread in a lot of what you just said seems to be that the people running these brands either didn't see this coming or very deliberately ignored the warning signs as they were piling up until it was too late. And I'm curious, you talk to a lot of these people on a regular basis. Do they get it now?
- [11:35]
B
I mean, of course they get it because the results are speaking very loudly and very clearly that customers are pulling back from spending on kind of mass, what I call kind of mass produced luxury. There are pockets of strength. You know, Hermes continues to impress Brunello, Cucinelli continues to impress. Miu Miu continues to grow far beyond the industry. And all those brands are succeeding in a way for different reasons. But you know, I don't think it's unusual, Brian, that when you're in a situation where everything is going swimmingly that people lose sight of the kind of signals. I mean, that's for me, why BOF exists. Right? So, like, what we're trying to do here with the journalism that we do is to provide some of those signals in all of the noise. And having gone back through the reporting and analysis we've done over the last two years, you know, I would say that, you know, we were pointing to signals about this for the last couple of years. This is not a surprise whether people chose to willfully ignore those signals or were, you know, too busy kind of enjoying the spoils of what wasn't a very unusual post pandemic surge in luxury demand. You know, that's besides the point. The point is, is we're here now. We'll be right back with more on the BoF podcast.
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A
Let's talk about what you said about getting away from mass produced luxury. And that does seem like something a designer could address in a debut fashion show this September. What could we look for on the Runway that would indicate some of these brands that lean too heavily into that kind of product are trying something new?
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B
I wouldn't say that we're going to move away completely from mass produced luxury. And I don't think it's the designer's job to change that underlying strategy. When you have multi billion dollar mega luxury brands like Louis Vuitton, like Dior, like Chanel, you know, by definition, those companies, given the scale that they're at now, Vuitton is something like 22 billion euros at the moment. That requires producing things in very large volumes. What I think the best companies have done in that regard, even though they have scaled is they have not sacrificed quality. And the one thing with Louis Vuitton as a brand is it is the, you know, the world's largest luxury brand. I was just at a Vuitton store here in Seoul, South Korea yesterday, doing some store visits and examining their new beauty collection, which I hadn't seen in person, which I'd only seen images of on our website and on our Instagram. And I have to say, the one thing with Vuitton is they execute to a level of quality. Even though they're producing in huge volumes, the quality of what they execute is still impeccable. You know, and I think for luxury brands operating at that scale, like that's table stakes, that is a requirement for any brand operating at that scale at those price points, they need to be able to deliver something that the customer feels like the quality of what they're getting lives up to what the brand is selling. And that's not been true for all luxury brands. And there have been wide reports of declining quality at brands like Chanel and others. And so, you know, I think that's one thing, thing that sure, the designer can play a role in, but that's also a part of like the business leader and the operations and the manufacturing and the supply chain and all of that stuff that's really, really critical to get right. What the designer can offer is the creativity. And you know, if you look at a brand like Miu Miu, why has that brand succeeded? I mean, I do find the price points at Miu Miu astronomical. When I was in Tokyo a few last month, you know, again doing store visits, looking around and, you know, the price kind of mind boggling when you think about them. But what Miu Miu is offering and the reason why I think it's working is because creatively it's so strong. It's offering something really differentiated. And you know, I was at a fancy dinner here in Korea the other night and one of the guests at the table I was sitting at was wearing this really cool Miu Miu white denim jacket. Looked great. I mean, you know, she was clearly the kind of woman that could afford to buy that and wear that, you know, casually to this, to this dinner. Not everyone can do that. But for the customers there, when they are shopping, they're looking for something like that, something that's really unique and special and that's not available everywhere. And so I don't think it's the designer's responsibility alone. This is definitely one of those situations. Where the designer is working in close concert with the merchandising team and with the manufacturing and supply chain teams to deliver a proposition that's exciting. The one other thing that I think brands need to seriously think about is, in a way, we should think about this as two big groups of customers or important groups of customers that drive the success of luxury brands. The first is that now kind of mythical 1 or 2% that drive 30 to 40% of revenue. And those customers are kind of price insensitive, but very, very discerning, looking for the best, only the best, only the best quality, only the best design, only the best experience. They don't want to stand outside a store. They don't want to be. They want to waste their time. You know, they want a very efficient, specialized, you know, customized and tailored shopping experience. Those customers are some of the smartest customers. And just because they have a lot of money doesn't mean that they're ready or happy to be taken for granted or be taken for a ride. And the last thing they want is to be made to feel like they're foolish. You know, they're not going to be duped by brands that are, you know, hoodwinking them into buying things that are not up to the caliber that they expect. The other is a much larger group of customers that drive a significant portion of revenue, which is these aspirational customers. And those aspirational customers have really been priced out of luxury. So I think what we have to see the brands do is to drive some accessible, more accessible price points. You know, there was a time when all of us used to carry around wallets and small leather goods where, you know, you could go into, like, Bottega Veneta, or you could go into Chanel, or you could go into Vito, and you could buy a small leather wallet or card holder or something with the brand's kind of signature leather or whatever it was at a price point that was high, but not like out of control high. And so even if you just wanted to buy into something, if you walk into most of the luxury stores now, you just don't have that price point anymore. So I think it's a mixture of, like, trying to cater to both that very, very sophisticated, discerning customer and the aspirational customer that wants to buy into the brand.
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A
So what does it say that Louis vuitton just released $150 lipstick in this moment?
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B
You know, I've been thinking about that because I, you know, I went to see that beauty collection yesterday, and I'm not a beauty customer. So like, for me, that was like a very theoretical, you know, customer experience in this conversation. Yeah, you know, it's, it's not a product category that I engage with. So, like, for me, you know, alongside the lipstick, the $125 lipstick or whatever it was, they had little leather goods pouches and blotting papers in little Vuitton branded carrier cases and whatnot. And I could see the whole world that they were trying to create there. Whether people will buy into that price point. I'm really not the best person to answer. We need to talk to Priya about that one because I just don't engage with this category and I'm not enough of an expert to comment on it.
- [19:50]
A
Let's set beauty aside and look at leather goods, like you said, or some of these other categories where it kind of feels like the ladder was pulled up and left the aspirational customer behind. And I can think of one brand, Burberry, that recently basically said, you know what, aspirational customers, they're not so bad. We like you too. Let's go back to serving you. Do you think anyone else, any other brands, are going to make that retreat and maybe walk back some of the moves they've been making to go after the Hermes crowd?
- [20:21]
B
It's a really interesting question in a way. I think some of the brands have kind of poo pooed the idea of that middle market customer. I think Joshua Schulman's strategy to move away from this elevation approach, that had become the kind of plan for Burberry ever since Marco Gobetti took over, you know, probably more than five years ago. I think it's been really smart. I walked into a Burberry store on Bond street recently, the main kind of flagship on, you know, London's most important luxury boulevard. You know, not, not even two or three weeks ago. Just to compare what it was like in there versus say two or three years ago when that, that store had been refurbished. And you know, on one side of the store, it was all the kind of signature Burberry scarves, trench coats, you know, the really clearly branded Burberry stuff. That is not what the brand was pushing in recent years. Like, there was a real focus on outerwear, there's a real focus on the Burberry check. And the price points were not outrageous. I mean, the night bag, which is, I think, a really great bag that's been introduced by Daniel Lee, the price point on that bag is not astronomical. And so I think finding the right balance for each brand is going to be different. Can I imagine Chanel is going to do that? No. You know, Chanel's not going to do that. But Chanel needs to find a way of figuring out what is that entry price point experience and what is the right entry price point. I just think 10 or $11,000 for a 255 flat bag, which used to be kind of the first. I know because my sister, when my sister bought her first Chanel bag, I forget how many years ago, it was like a really, really significant expense for her. But she, she invested and bought into that bag. That was the first Chanel bag she ever bought. That used to be that bag. For someone like my sister, who, you know, is a professional, she's a pediatric endocrinologist. She's not one of the 2%, let me put it that way. She is definitely more that on the kind of aspirational luxury side. And she thought very carefully about that purchase. Now, would someone like her go in and spend, you know, drop $11,000 on a Chanel bag? I think that's really hard. So, like, what is that customer going to buy when they go to Chanel? I don't know what the answer is.
- [22:41]
A
And I think I was going to talk about this later in the conversation, but there's an entry here now of what does this mean for the next generation of customers. We've talked a lot internally at BoF about luxury losing its hold on Gen Z. They just don't aspire to shop these brands even anymore. They just think I'm never going to be able to afford them, so why bother? I mean, how does a Chanel or, or an Hermes capture that next generation if there's no way for them to engage with the brand right now?
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B
Well, it's interesting because I disagree with the idea that those customers are not interested in those brands. I think they still are interested in those brands. I think the difference is they've found different ways of engaging with those brands. And so some of them are going into vintage or resale environments, either online or physically, and they're engaging with, you know, luxury brands. You know, I was with a luxury CEO who told me that his daughter, she could buy into any luxury brand she wanted just because of her, you know, by virtue of who her father is. And she's like, he's not, she's not interested. She wants to buy some cool vintage luxury stuff from like the 1980s or 1990s. She wants something different from what her friends have. She doesn't want the off the shelf Identiquette, luxury bag. She wants something that kind of projects who she is. She still likes the brand, but she wants the brand from the 1980s or the 1990s. And then there's other young customers that are saying, you know what? I don't need the real thing. I'm just gonna buy a dupe. And, you know, I can get a really, really good. You know, dupes are what we used to call fake goods or counterfeit goods. That generation has somehow validated the fake counterfeit good by calling them dupes. And they're like, they're still interested in the association with that brand, but they're just not willing to spend that kind or able to spend that kind of money on those brands. They still want the association, so they find a way of getting it through a fake product. And so I don't think it's the. Those customers are necessarily all completely uninterested in luxury brands. I just think that they don't. They don't have a pathway to do so through the traditional route, which is to walk into a luxury store and buy it from the brand itself.
- [24:59]
A
Yeah, I would be worried if I was at a luxury brand, at the success that Coach and this. This whole wave of accessible luxury handbag brands in particular have been having. I mean, we're about to run a story about just the sheer number of launches that are planned in that cat in that space in the coming weeks. And I think if people are satisfied with those brands and excited about those brands, it does become that much harder then if they're excited about a vintage version of the real thing that they can't afford. Necessarily.
- [25:32]
B
I mean, it all feels like deja vu to me, Brian, because, like, in the early stages of, you know, when I first started doing BoF, around 2007, 2008, coach was having a moment, and a lot of the big luxury executives in Paris and Milan, they were seeing this brand, Coach, and there were others like Tory Burch and Michael Kors, and they were on a tear. And, you know, they were thinking about what that meant for their own positioning as a brand. And then we went through this period not so long ago when everyone was like, the middle price point, the accessible luxury, the middle is dead. Everything's gone. Either luxury or it's gone, you know, mass market. But I think what we're seeing is that because the luxury brands increase their prices so much, it's opened up an opportunity for brands like Poland, brands like Coach and others to say, okay, your entry point into luxury, quote, unquote, is going to be through these kind of more, I'd say, reasonably priced, fairly priced brands. We all know that people graduate though, right? So they graduate from that first purchase to something else. So I guess the question is, what do they graduate to? That woman who's currently buying a Coach bag today and loves the association with the summer I turned pretty and loves the, you know, the kind of engagement that Coach has been doing, the really smart digital engagement that Coach has been doing. At some point, that woman grows up and wants something else. What's she going to grow up and want to buy next? And I think it's really important for these big luxury houses to think about building that relationship with that customer now so that when she wants to move into that luxury sphere or is able to move into that luxury sphere, there's something for her to buy. And what my biggest concern is is right now everybody is completely priced out, even after that kind of graduated price point. So, yeah, that's the kind of way I don't see this as a new phenomenon. Coach is having another moment, which is, you know, really interesting. But this has been something that's, that's something I've seen before and it's happening again. And, you know, I think what we'll see is a recalibration of how the market works.
- [27:52]
A
And I think a lot of that will come through marketing, which is another one of these pillars that we haven't talked much about here today, but has been a big factor in luxury's decline, which is people just aren't excited by campaigns, by the imagery, by the worlds that these brands are putting out anymore. Curious why you think that is. Did they change? Did the consumer change?
- [28:17]
B
I would look at the phenomenon of how brands now engage with customers as my starting point for trying to understand what's happened. So there was a time in the not too distant past, Brian, where brands had to rely on a glossy magazine or some other intermediary to tell their brand story to reach customers. That time has, you know, long ended. Right. So, like, with the rise of social media, like, you know, brands now have like tens of millions of followers on their social media channels and they can engage with customers directly. And there was a time where that magic for the brand was like payola for them because they, they were, they were able to engage customers directly. I think what's happened in those Instagram TikTok feeds is that fashion is now competing with other verticals for people's attention and sometimes it's not even having anything to do with buying anything. So in the same feed where I see a, you know, a Dior or Gucci or Saint Laurent post, I see a post about the influencers. I'm following, you know, the sports teams, I'm following the news sites, I'm following, you know, my cousin Bettina who lives in, you know, Frankfurt and what she's doing, you know, everything is in a feed, in a single feed of content. And so like before I had this kind of isolated experience where I could open a Vogue or Harper's Bazaar and that was my fashion moment. Now everything is colliding together and I think this is why the brands that have been really successful at world building across and outside of fashion have been so successful. And probably the most successful of any of these people has been Jonathan Anderson at Loewe. Do you know, over the last 10 years, the way he has been able to take that multifaceted feed of stuff that's coming from all different corners and find meaningful, authentic and organic ways for Loewe to exist in the sports world, to exist in the film world, to exist in the world of craft, to exist in all of these worlds and make it all feel like uniquely. Loewe has been very, very smart. And I think the brands that have not found a way to do that, the ones that have stuck to kind of old fashioned, it's not even that old fashioned. We're talking about 10 years here since, you know, since social media existed. The ones that haven't been able to really think more expansively of how to exist in this chaotic feat that dominates most customers engagement these days. The ones that have stuck to kind of more formulaic ad campaigns still imagery, high fashion imagery that only exists in this kind of like very, very rarefied world. Like that's not enough anymore, you know. And I think what I think we're starting to see is more and more brands are learning that they need to exist in multiple different places to be present, visible and kind of meaningful to customers regardless of what they're looking at.
- [31:37]
A
It's been interesting to watch the US Open, which feels almost like a worst case version of that where every brand has decided sports is our identity, tennis is our identity, we're going to just plaster logos on every single player and every single surface and have activations and custom cocktails. And to me it just ends up becoming noise, even when I thought the first couple announcements were kind of cool. And it seems like a real challenge for brands to rise above that white noise that this kind of marketing is becoming.
- [32:06]
B
Well, because it requires real innovation, creativity and Ingenuity. And, you know, fashion has long been an industry of followers. So people see certain strategies working and they're like, I need one of those. I need to do something like that. Instead of thinking, what should my brand do that's authentically unique for my brand, my customer, my aesthetic, my approach to the industry, like, what can I do? That's different. People can try to copy what Jonathan Anderson did at Loewe, but they won't be able to copy the soul of what he does. It doesn't work. People are smarter than that. And so when you see people take a very formulaic approach to doing things where they just see someone or another brand do something and try to copy paste it, everyone's seen it already. It doesn't feel impactful. So, like, the goal should not be I need to copy paste what other brands are doing. The goal should be I should find the right way for my brand to exist in this kind of multiculture, you know, multi platform, multifarious world that we live in and say, like, what am I going to do? That's going to be my voice amid all of these different voices. That's why it feels like that. When you see the US Open being taken over by brands just trying to kind of get some air time, this is more about air time. You know, fashion marketing should not be about getting airtime. Fashion marketing should be about connection, engagement, and kind of real, genuine, authentic storytelling. That's what's really missing. And, you know, there's very, very few people have found a way of mastering that. We'll be right back with more on the Box podcast.
- [34:07]
A
Do you think that Jonathan Anderson strategy that worked at Loewe can work at a brand like Dior, which has an identity, but it's a little more fixed and it's a little bigger and slow moving than maybe where he was before?
- [34:19]
B
I mean, I think that's one of the things that our team has been trying to analyze in the lead up. When someone like Jonathan, who is definitely one of the most, you know, creative and talented designers in our industry, goes from a brand like Loewe, which while it had these kind of loosely defined codes, is like a very, very respected Spanish leather goods house. When he took over, he kind of had a carte blanche to kind of imbue into that brand whatever he found interesting, you know, and it's been really, really interesting for me to watch since his Runway debut with the men's show back in June to see, like, well, how is he going to take his version of things and Bring that to Dior while also being true to Dior, which is a brand that has really, really clearly defined codes. I think the menswear has less clearly defined codes than the women's wear. So it's going to be really interesting to see what happens with the women's wear in. In October, because he's going to have to strike that balance. You know, there's some very, very clearly defined codes there. You know, I guess one sign would be, like, the Lady Dior bag. You know, I was at a event here in Korea the other night, and the number of people who had that bag was kind of, you know, astounding. It's like, really a classic bag that's been embedded into kind of that rarefied category of, like, the must have for any luxury customer. They have to have a Lady Dior bag. What he did with the Lady Dior at that men's show, with the collaboration with this designer, Sheila Hicks, which was that tasseled bag with all the. I think he can bring that layer of originality and craft and ingenuity to something that's kind of a very tightly defined code. And in my interview that I did with Delphine Arnault, when Jonathan's appointment was announced, I asked her, what do you see? You know, do you. Do you give him kind of the opportunity to take something that's so clearly defined that was such a, like, package? Will you give him the opportunity to kind of play with that? And she said, yeah, absolutely, yes. You know, we'll do that. And you could see that with that Sheila Hicks bag. So let's see. You know. You know, I don't know what it's going to be like until we see what his. His Runway debut is.
- [36:42]
A
Yeah, I'm really curious to see how that plays out, because, I mean, that. That's another one of the criticisms lobbed at the biggest luxury brands is that you can't scale that kind of taste and worldview to the size that these brands have become in the last decade. And I think that's still an open question. I think we're about to find out with this next round of creative directors at these brands whether. Whether you can do that.
- [37:06]
B
Well, I think what you can scale is a point of view, and it's the point of view at the very top that these designers are really responsible for is, like, you're creating an overall spirit and direction and energy, and if you have that energy, that creative energy, not everyone's going to want to buy the Sheila Hicks Lady Dior bag, but maybe they're just going to want the classic Lady Dior because they feel that energy from the brand. And I think that's what's been missing in a lot of these brands in the last few years, is that we just miss the creative energy. That energy alone at the very kind of top of the fashion pyramid in all of these houses, that's what people get excited about. And not everyone can buy the directional stuff you see on a catwalk, but without that stuff, if everything looks like merchandised luxury products on a Runway designed to get people to sell and you don't have the energy, then I'm afraid it doesn't work. And that's, I think, the direction the industry's been going in, you know, over the last few years. So what I'm looking for is the energy. That's why I'm excited about September, because I think, you know, we have this very unique situation, you know, and putting aside the fact that it's not the most diverse group of candidates that are going to be taking the helm of Chanel, Dior and Gucci, you have three of the most creative designers in our industry, Mathieu, Blasey, Demna, and Jonathan Anderson, taking over three of the biggest, most important luxury houses in the world. The energy that those three creatives have brought to our industry over the last 10 years has been remarkable. And to have this very unique moment where they're all going to be injecting new energy into these historic houses, that's something I'm really, really genuinely very excited about. And if that energy reflects the same kind of commitment, thoughtfulness, creativity, and taste that we've seen in those designers at their previous roles, then I think there is going to be a really meaningful inflection point this autumn.
- [39:25]
A
Well, Imran, I really hope you're right.
- [39:27]
B
Well, I hope so, too. And regardless what happens over the next few weeks, the one thing we know for sure is it's going to be super interesting moment for the industry to experience. Just the sheer number of designer debuts that we're about to see. I guess I would also say that I think we also need to be really sensitive to the fact that despite all the excitement that people like me, fashion people might have about this season, it all doesn't rest on a single show. The amount of pressure and expectation that comments like the ones I just made are putting and placing on some of these designers, you know, it's a lot. And so, like, I hope the industry also finds a way of giving people time to let a vision come through. You know, I Remember Jonathan's debut at Loewe, you know, more than 10 years ago now, and Demna's debut at Balenciaga and Mathieu Blaisey's debut at Bottega. Like, for each of those cases, the vision wasn't crystallized from the get go. The vision was set in place and was adapted and morphed and optimized and evolved over time. And so while I am excited about what these designers have to offer, I also think that everyone needs some time to let it all sink in and let's give them the space and the time to really, really take their creativity and put it to work. Because this is not an overnight solution. Like I said at the very beginning, there's no one thing that's going to solve the kind of crisis that the luxury industry is facing right now. It's going to take some time. And so I also would like to encourage us all to have a little bit of patience and be respectful of the designers and give them the time to, like, I'm excited about as creative directors, but I'm also really conscious of them as human beings that need to be kind of encouraged and supported. And so that's what I'd like to see in the coming weeks.
- [41:35]
A
Thanks so much for having me on, Imran. This was really fun to ask you all these questions that I've always wanted to ask. If you want to hear more about this topic, I encourage you to listen to the Debrief, which is the podcast that I host with senior correspondent Sheena Butler Young. We're going to be diving deep into this package of stories that we're putting out about fashion's great reset and talking to the reporters who wrote those pieces and going deep on each of these topics that we discussed today. So stay tuned for that in the next few weeks.
- [42:05]
B
And since you're doing a plug, Brian, I should also say, you know, our team's been working very, very hard to prepare for this fashion month. If you want to have the must read analysis on everything that's happening, then this great Fashion Reset package is where you should start. It's available, of course, to all of our BoF professional members. And thank you as always, for supporting our journalism and we'll see you soon. The BoF podcast is edited and produced by Olivia Davies and Eric Brea.