← The Business of Fashion Podcast
The Business of Fashion Podcast
The Great Fashion Reset: Can Designer Debuts Revive Luxury?
00:34:40
With luxury demand slowing and prices soaring, top houses are betting on fresh creative leadership to re-energise customers. The Debrief unpacks what runway debuts at brands like Gucci, Chanel and Dior can – and can’t – fix this season.
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- [00:00]
A
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- [01:01]
B
Hello and welcome to the Debrief from the business of Fash, where each week we delve into Our most popular BoF professional stories with the correspondents who created them. I'm senior correspondent Sheena Butler Young.
- [01:13]
C
And I'm executive editor Brian Baskin. I'm just going to dive right in. This year we have seen. I hope you're all ready for this. Designer debuts from Givenchy, Tom Ford, Dries Van Noten, Dior, Menz, Celine, Margiela, and coming up in the next few weeks, we have debuts from new creative directors at Chanel, Gucci, Dior, Women's, Balenciaga, Bottega, Jill Sander, Loewe, Versace, Mugler, and Jean Paul Gaultier. How did I do with all those pronunciations?
- [01:42]
B
Sheena, I am impressed.
- [01:44]
C
Thank you very much. Readers, please do not email in if I messed anything up.
- [01:48]
B
We've gotten used to designers at big luxury brands having shorter tenures, but there's clearly something more going on here. The luxury industry is in its worst creative and commercial funk in a decade or more. Brands see a new creative direction as a crucial step to re engaging with consumers.
- [02:04]
C
But will it work? What can a dazzling debut collection actually do for a brand? And what else needs to happen to ensure that even a successful Runway in September or early October translates into stronger sales next year? Here with us to discuss is luxury correspondent at large Robert Williams, who recently wrote a story about all of these debuts and what they mean for the future of luxury fashion? Robert, welcome back to the debrief.
- [02:31]
D
Hi, Brian. Hi, Sheena. Thanks for having me.
- [02:33]
B
Before we get into the debuts, Robert, can we ground the moment a little bit? Talk to us about what's broken in luxury and what are brands actually trying to fix Right now.
- [02:41]
D
Wow. Big questions. What's broken in luxury and what are brands trying to fix? Well, you know, we're at least two years into a pretty dramatic slowdown in luxury demand, which had been steadily climbing for, you know, about 20 so years with only occasional blips, and then had just boomed in the wake of the pandemic. So now as the demand is really seen as it went from slowing down, declining, and now brands are really seeing, wondering how can they turn around this trajectory? How can they get people excited about fashion again? So I think they've thought that changing up their creative operations is going to be a really key step there. That showing people the same products, the same aesthetic, the same design, the same creative universe, that it's not really the moment for that kind of continuity for a lot of these houses. There's some houses that are doing quite, quite well because they have a vision that is maybe less dependent on the designer or the designer is a living legend like Mucha Prada. But most of the houses out there that have a strong fashion component have been really struggling for a couple years and they're trying to turn things around.
- [03:51]
B
I think another way to ask that question, which I agree is very, very loaded, is to what extent is this a creativity fatigue versus the macroeconomic backdrop that we're in? Obviously some of these brands really cater to the 1% who might not be as stressed about inflation as the of us. But can you decouple that a little bit? Like, is it creativity fatigue or is it the macro? Is it some combination of all the above and also pricing? Of course.
- [04:15]
D
Yeah, I think that's something that people are really worried about in the industry right now. They're, they're really wondering, you know, how far can these creative resets go if there's not, you know, strategic and organizational resets to kind of go with it? Because as you hinted, it does seem that, you know, this isn't just about people being tired of the way fashion looks or the kind of designs a designer was showing us, but maybe more about the wider context in which those designs exist, which is that, you know, a lot of the key markets that have been driving growth for the fashion industry, especially the Chinese market, have been in a pretty depressed state. Their economic rebound from COVID has been either kind of lackluster or it's been quite, how to say, like volatile and a bit bifurcated. Like in the US where the very top end client that the wealthiest clients are still quite resilient and are still purchasing in the US but the Wider population, the younger and less wealthy clients that were really driving a lot of sales in the past and help that are a big part of brand's business. They have not come back to stores since maybe 2021. And so you mentioned prices, you know, and prices are certainly something that people are looking at as well, because the prices for luxury brands have been hiked up so dramatically over the past few years. And so, you know, this goes hand in hand with the creative reset. In a way. There's a sense that if the price is going to be so much higher, either the quality or the technical craftsmanship element of the product needs to, you know, be improved. Or also maybe the creative can be improved. You know, if it's newer, a fresher design, more exciting, that can help justify these higher prices, too.
- [06:06]
C
How much of this is actually going to be reflected in what we see on the Runway? Especially thinking about things like craftsmanship or luxury, trying to win back Gen Z or aspirational shoppers. I mean, how much of that can you actually tell from a designer's collection versus they're going to do what they always did? It all comes after in the marketing.
- [06:26]
D
Oh, that's a good question. I mean, I think these Runway shows that we're going into, most of these changes are in the Milan and Paris seasons. A lot of the designer changes have not been in New York and London, but in the Milan and Paris seasons. There's going to be a lot of these new designer reboots on the Runway. And how much is that going to tell us about how the brand is really shifting their strategy? I think you're only going to get some hints. I don't think we're going to get a fully realized vision for how any company plans to, you know, totally turn itself around. But there's certainly going to be some hints. You know, maybe we're going to see certain brands that could be credible playing for this top luxury customer. Maybe the people that were buying into the brand, we would call quiet luxury. Some brands that could be more credible. To play more to that or to keep leaning into that, we might see that direction emerge on the Runway. And then you, on the other hand, we might see how others are trying to totally differentiate themselves and, you know, who are saying quiet luxuries peaked, logo free luxury is peaked. We're going to do something really expressive, really different, you know, and then the whole company is going to have to shift in some way. And in respect to that, let's name names.
- [07:40]
C
I'm curious which brands you think are in that first bucket going all in on craftsmanship and where the new Hermes and which ones are going to say, you know, what quiet luxury is over, it's time to develop a distinct identity and do something a little louder and crazier.
- [07:56]
D
I mean, I think that, you know, Bottega Veneta has a really interesting positioning over the past few years where, you know, they had veered from this, you know, very conservative image to something very brash and of the moment. Daniel Lee and then with Metro Blasi, they were kind of really having a foot in both worlds. They had this Runway show that was the hottest ticket in Milan. People really wanted to see what kind of material innovations, what kind of celebrity marketing moments they would come up with that people really want to see what they would do on the fashion side. But they were really always still building up this, this reputation for craft and, you know, product credibility. So I think it's going to be interesting to see with Louise Trotter how much they choose to lean into one or the. Looking at what she was doing at Carven, which was really elegant, really restrained, makes me think that there's a good chance they might really want to lean into this craftsmanship narrative. But, you know, no one's looking for something to be. I think people are worried that if things are just about heritage and craft, that could be quite boring as a narrative. You know, you don't want to be over dependent on the fashion. If you're a big luxury group that isn't just a small fashion label. You know, you want to be making sure that people are reminded of your codes and of the values of, of your brand that are going to kind of transcend the designer. But at the same time you need something to make the brand relevant and of the moment. So I think they could be one that it's going to be really interesting to see how they navigate that. I think on the other end of the spectrum would be something like. I think it will be quite interesting to see what Gucci and Dior do. They are brands that really trade on their fashion authority. And as much as they do sell very expensive products, as much as they are really like they are luxury brands that have these illustrious heritages. I think celebrating heritage is not what anyone is looking for them to do in the current market.
- [09:56]
B
How do you say the industry's constraints today might change the job of a creative director? So let's say Jonathan Anderson went to Dior five years ago. How might his job look different today?
- [10:07]
D
I think you have a few factors. There's just how big some of these brands have gotten. So you have just a really big ship. And I think, you know, there was a previous era of where. Where designer changes would happen and the designer and the CEO, the team could choose to really like, radically change what the brand stood for and who the client was. You had a strong traffic in stores, you had a strong traffic of new customers that you could acquire coming into the industry every year. And so defending your position with old ones was less important. I think now these brands are so big, they're so well known and so exposed that, you know, they have to strike a really tricky balance between getting people excited about these brands again, getting people to look at these brands again, and maybe shifting perception of the brand, but not, you know, confusing people. Because I think if you. Nowadays, these brands are so well known, but far beyond the public of people who are, you know, watching the fashion shows and who are really plugged in to who's at the top of each house. And so you have to kind of respect that existing identity and be aware that if you try to. To shift it too radically, it could just be very confusing. I think also you have the current macroeconomic climate, which people are telling me is really playing into this, because if you're coming into the brand as a designer today, you can't necessarily count on the fact that, you know, if you lose an old client from the previous vision, you're going to be able to go get two more because you've got something so fresh and new that you're selling. I think brands that have tried to, you know, scrap their old business and just count on a new one coming in, they've been burned in recent years. And so it's a trickier balance that they're working with.
- [11:52]
B
Yeah, that does not sound like a job I would want. Like, you got to be creative, but not too creative. You gotta, like, make it economically reasonable but also interesting. It is quite the needle to thread.
- [12:04]
D
Yeah, this, I mean, the economically reasonable part is quite challenging too, because these higher prices, they plug into the kind of creativity people will actually buy. It feels like a bigger risk to take a chance on a trendy, seasonal hot piece now than it did five or 10 years ago because the price is much higher. So, you know, you might be tired of looking at timeless heritage marketing from these brands. You might be quite ready to, you know, engage with a shakeup. But whether or not you're really going to be ready to spend money on it, it's not a guarantee.
- [12:38]
C
Yeah, I do wonder who is going to buy. I mean, if they weren't buying this stuff because of the price and not necessarily because of how it looked or, you know, the sweatshop allegations or some of this other stuff swirling around you, who's going to buy it now, even if they love it? I can't afford a, you know, $10,000 handbag. Right.
- [12:54]
B
Were you buying it before the 10,000?
- [12:55]
C
No, I wasn't really buying a ton of handbags generally, but, you know, my daughter's 10. It's coming and, you know, I am starting to think about this stuff a little more. Why don't we drill into how this is playing out at a couple of the bigger brands that are having their debuts in Milan and Paris? I want to start with Gucci because it seems like there the stakes are really the highest and some of the names involved are quite interesting as well. Robert, why don't you walk us through sort of the, the lightning round version of what's been going on there the last couple years and, and what Demna needs to do on September 23rd?
- [13:29]
D
Yeah, I mean, Gucci was the hottest brand in fashion for, you know, five or so years during the peak of Alessandro Michele's tenure when he was working with CEO Marco Bizari. They really had, you know, one of the hottest brands in fashion, the fastest growing brand in fashion. And so that, you know, lit up fashion with this very maximalist vision, this very varied vision. And they kind of pushed on every button you could push on from the brand's archive, from different segments of pop culture, from Disney to Dolly Parton to, you know, really kitschy old Hollywood. They really kind of threw the kitchen sink at the customer in a way that everyone was just freaking out for everything that Gucci could be. They tried it and they did it. And they were able to do a lot of these things at once and kind of make a coherent narrative with it. It was a really, you know, big moment for fashion. Eventually, you know, people got a bit tired of that very full on maximalist vision that they were selling. They kind of were ready for Gucci to stand for something more, maybe more elegant, maybe more polished. You know, it could be hard to say, but it felt like it's hard to say what people wanted. And if we knew, then Gucci probably wouldn't be in the bind that they're in. But no, there were many signs that Gucci's customers were no longer really responding and the brand was having trouble going further with that vision. And so they opted for like a very sensual, paired back vision with A designer named Sabato di Sarno. And that was timed just as the market was really slowing down. He was a first time creative director with a lot of first time people on the team, a first time brand CEO. And that, that did not really work out. Sales continued to decline.
- [15:24]
C
That's putting it mildly. Right? I mean sales were down like 20%, you know, year on year, two years in a row.
- [15:29]
D
Right. Last year they were down around 20%. It was a pretty steep decline. And then now they're doing just about as bad now they then like, I think they were down 16% in 1H25. So we're looking at a brand that's radically shrunk in terms of its revenue while still having a very big store footprint, a very big corporate infrastructure. So I mean they quite urgently need to turn this around. So that's why it's a brand that's under quite a bit of pressure. The new designer is going to be under a lot of pressure there because there's a sense that the brand image and the product and the novelty that in this case there's a sense in the market that this is a big part of why people aren't shopping there anymore. That the real upside on Gucci is when the fashion component is working and that it's just as much as they would have liked to rebalance to become a more heritage driven brand, they still really need that zeitgeist spin. That's what makes that brand make sense ever since its renaissance with Tom Ford in the late 90s. That's what it stands for for people.
- [16:38]
C
And so what is Demna bringing that might pave the way for that to happen?
- [16:44]
D
Well, I think it's a track record that he's done that before. You know, he's at Balenciaga and at Vetemont just before and then, you know, around at the same time for a few years because he was running both houses for a while. You know, he really, in the late 2010s, he had his finger on the pulse. He was this brand of the moment. He really captured something in the zeitgeist. He seemed to really understand how the Internet changed fashion, how you could put an extremely modern spin on the notion of luxury. The idea of high end, low dressing, the importance of young consumers, the importance of menswear, men's consumers. I think they just all of this really crystallized in what he was doing. I think there was this sense of like the uncanny that felt that's, that's really powerful with him and is Always a really powerful idea in fashion when something's both very familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. He's great at working with that and really exploiting that and taking some of those ideas as far as they can go. You know, something can be so normal and at the same time so exaggerated. It's just very universal. People really get it. And then you have also very niche, very fashion focused activations that he does too. People, you know, certain parts of his Runway collections and his haute couture collections, people who are really into fashion, see the heritage and the craftsmanship and the design innovation that's being done in those. So, you know, it's just, it's was something that worked on many levels and they're just taking a big swing there that Demna can do that again, that he can capture the zeitgeist again at a totally different brand and maybe a totally different cultural moment.
- [18:26]
C
Although my question is, without denying any of that, it's not like Balenciaga's sales lately have been setting the world on fire. So I guess the question is, if he can do all that for Gucci, why wasn't he doing that at the job he had?
- [18:41]
D
Well, I mean, it was a specific moment. It's hard for a brand to stay consistent and keep iterating on a successful vision and also keep it evolving after a point with the same person. You know, there's not so many designers that can have a tenure longer than 10 years. And it makes sense. Demno really got, you know, they got burned with this misstep with their ad campaign that triggered a lot of outrage for the way it depicted children and some of the objects that the children were modeling. And so that was, that was quite hard for them to bounce back from as an organization, as a team. But also Balenciaga has not been doing. Doing terribly. It's been, you know, holding up okay in light of the current economic client climate and how much the brand was really dependent on entry level, younger customer. You know, they were selling a lot of sneakers, a lot of baseball caps, a lot of hoodies. And then they also steadily built up a really high end ready to wear business and kind of a demi couture business as well. And the haute couture, they built that up. But you know, the overall pie, which was driven a lot by this more accessible. And I think that's under pressure for everybody in the business right now.
- [20:00]
B
We'll be back with more of the debrief right after this.
- [20:05]
E
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A
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- [22:51]
B
I also want to talk about Chanel. I think there's no other brand that's not beating the allegations of having a mismatch between quality and price. Right now in the luxury space than Chanel. Can you talk about Blasi's mandate right now at Chanel?
- [23:05]
D
You know, they have only given some quite few hints about what the extent of his mandate really is. And I think that's the big question that everyone is watching is, you know, what are they looking for from him and what will he be allowed to do? Chanel has such a stable business since so long, even if they've gone through a small downturn over the past year and at last two years, actually. This is a battle ship of a brand that will take a really long time to steer. And I don't think anyone's expecting him to be able to transform it overnight. But you know how much he'll be allowed to do, how radical the vision was that he showed in order to get the brand. I think that is the big mystery that is making that to be maybe the hottest show that people are really excited to see during this big season of hot shows. I think they do want him to work deeply on the product. I think the way he approaches process and that he cares a lot about, you know, how things are made, the suppliers, the process, you know, that there's real design going into it, real innovation and real product development with materials and, you know, working really closely between with not just the design studio, but the atelier and then also the suppliers of the atelier. I think that is something that they thought made him this very appealing candidate that would have this long term potential there because Chanel has all these amazing suppliers and has all these amazing things they can do since so many years.
- [24:40]
B
Well, one of the things I'll say that I why I asked the question around the quality price conversation is that I think a lot of people don't mind Chanel as they've seen it. They want the quality to be justifiable like it used to be. Is that part of the mandate here?
- [24:55]
D
I think there that there's only so much a designer can do on that. But it is true that that's been a surprising twist in the fashion narrative. I think Chanel was previously CE seen as this unassailable brand. It's a brand that every girl dreams of. And the idea that the Internet would be populated with, you know, women complaining about their Chanel was, you know, not something I had on my bingo card going into last year. And I think that really has informed the way they're thinking about this. I think they want to make sure that it's a creativity that engages with craftsmanship. Creativity that, you know, brings the craft and the capacities of Chanel to light. I think that's how they think they can better justify the price. It's not through a new buzzy silhouette, through, you know, this being the hot item. That's hopefully something that they could have as well. That that's ideally will come to pass as well. But certainly that will. That. That was something really special about Mathieu's Bottega was that it was craftsmanship, but it wasn't craftsmanship. You just had to believe in, like Hermes with the Birkin where it looks so plain, but, you know, you've been told to believe the most high quality bag in the world. And so. And they have that credibility. You know, he was doing this craftsmanship that was very visible. You could touch it, you could feel it. There were all these, you know, twisted woven items, you know, doing things with the classic intricacia that you didn't see before. There were these like. Like out of his last fashion show, there was like this cocktail dress out of these pounded flattened feathers, which is really something that like Chanel very much could do. They own the best couture house for doing feather called Le Marier. And it's all about doing false flowers and feathers.
- [26:46]
C
And to round out the big three, we have Jonathan Anderson showing his first women's collection for Dior. And what I think I'd like to focus on here is that unlike these other two brands and designers that we just talked about, we've actually started to see a little bit of what his vision might look like here. He, of course, had his men's collection over the summer, and then we've seen these looks start to show up in vents at the Venice Film Festival. I'm curious. Well, you know, how do you interpret these clues? What do you think he's going to be sending down the Runway in a couple weeks?
- [27:18]
D
It's hard to say. I mean, I don't think you can really imagine what a fully realized vision would be based on, you know, these looks. But certainly I think we're going to see something less conservative, something more challenging to the customer. I think. I think something that Maria Grazia Chiuri had often been critiqued for was that it was just, it was quite obvious, pretty, and that that often really works because a very large portion, the very large portion of the female population liked the way they looked and the way they felt in those clothes. But when you're a brand that does huge marketing events, huge storytelling moments all the time, and you're really trying to drive forward, you know, the image, you know, you need Something that catches people's eye in a different way, maybe. And so going back to something a bit more dramatic, which has been the codes of the brand historically, I think that we see from these first few womenswear looks this really sensual draped very short on the thighs, and then like, kind of drooping, like, sort of almost loincloth shape that Greta Lee's gown had in Venice. And then Alba Rohrwacher had this gown that had this kind of like crispy matte tool pannier. Not panniers. That was. There were more, though technically those were panniers on the men's shorts, but it was. It was more of a bustle, like a real. And I mean, in fashion, you would call it like a fashion fake ass as a folk.
- [28:47]
C
Is that the official term.
- [28:50]
D
Historic French fashion? I do believe it is officially a faux cout, A fake ass dress.
- [28:59]
C
Learn something new every episode of the Debrief, folks.
- [29:02]
D
So, I mean, she had this jiggling around, which, I mean, in the age of TikTok, in the age of reels, where, like, the photo seems to have so much less power than, like, these short videos, you know, when you think about that current context, you know, Jonathan also has a real understanding of the Internet and the way Internet. The Internet can be used to project and amplify his message. And so, I mean, I think things like panniers and bustles, it's not what everyone dreams of wearing every day, but it is what's going to help people. Stop scrolling and pause for a second.
- [29:36]
C
It's interesting. There's two wildly different strategies between Chanel and Dior. Chanel is totally under wraps. Very secret. Secret and Dior. You know, like you said, they're trying to create these viral moments weeks before the Runway. Which one's the more typical? I mean, who's. Is one of them an outlier here? Do brands tend to go one way or the other every time they get a new designer?
- [29:56]
D
I think the teasers, this. This many teasers, it's maybe a bit more than usual and actually, I think pretty recent that you would have any teasers necessarily at all, like maybe a campaign image. But red carpet looks as a. As an appetizer to a Runway show. It's not something that every brand has done. I think it can be a good way to get people to look and kind of. It's a good way to tell the customers, you know, watch this space. But I think the more important thing that some brands manage to do better than others, and it kind of depends a lot on how the brand is structured is that follow up. It's more about the way they place the gowns and the editorial and the content, the red carpet, the way they pace all of that out. And, you know, how they manage to build a narrative after the Runway show and keep building excitement versus having, like a big flash and then the brand kind of disappears for a while.
- [30:50]
C
Speaking of campaign images, I understand Eddie Sliman had some thoughts about how Celine was handling everything you just described with their new designer.
- [31:02]
D
Oh, yeah. I mean, Eddie was posting over the weekend, and this kind of goes back to what we were talking about with Sheena, about the idea of, you know, needing to be creative but not too creative. You know, how this, the idea of a brand wants to do something new but not like, confuse customers or. Or, you know, seem like they've lost the plot. So Eddie left about one year ago, a little bit less, I think, than one year ago from Celine. And they've onboarded a new creative director, Michael Ryder, who had his first show in July. The show didn't get, like, knockout, all. All completely positive reviews, but it was pretty warmly received. It seemed like a good debut. It stirred up some con. People were really curious to see where this was going to keep going. He's going to have another show already in the beginning of October. So I think, you know, it's not like a designer revamp that's gone unnoticed or where they've tried to totally, you know, slipstream him. I would say in the fashion conversation, they have very adequately signaled and said, we have a new designer and he has showed up with a new silhouette on the Runway. But then the brand has put out its latest campaign, and there were just a lot of elements of what. A lot of continuity with what the brand's image under Eddie Slimane had been. The way the layout was done and the way kind of the way the photograph was, you know, a muted black and white photograph, kind of low contrast. And the way it was posed and framed, the proportions of it, it looked a lot like an Eddie Slimond photo. But that's also because it looked a lot like a Celine campaign, which is a very logical thing for a Celine campaign to look like. But Eddie was posting about it, you know, in this, like, very kind of sideways, shady way, saying he was. I was. I'm confident that Celine will learn to have its own original image that will evolve in my absence. I left a year ago, and I'm confident that they're going to figure it out. They're going to get there like it was A little bit fussy. I mean, he's always had issues like this when he leaves houses. You know, he had a, a long, pretty protracted legal battle with caring after he left Sandal both about the way they were using his photographic act output at the brand and other intellectual property that he had left behind there and about his non compete. And I think that's something that comes with the territory, with doing of what he does. He has this very essentialist vision for fashion. It really like it's so universally commercially potent for customers. It's become so recognizable when you have these grayscale images, you know, set in these little boxes with this bold face logo beneath it, you know, you see can you can't just throw that out from one day to the next because you have a new creative director or you could. I guess he would have wanted them to, but I think most smart business people would not do that. And in this case they have not.
- [33:58]
B
And certainly the company has to metabolize or the brand has to metabolize some of that. It doesn't just get ditched in the end. I wonder if we could shift now to our lightning round where you know, how much of this is sticky, how much of this we take forward and all of this, the above. How does that sound? Robert?
- [34:14]
D
Go for it.
- [34:15]
B
So what is, from where you sit, one strong early signal that you're going to watch for in the next 60 days of all of these debuts and new creative directions and everything else. What are you looking for? 60 days go?
- [34:27]
D
I think the early signal is going to be for me, that follow through. Are they able to keep the excitement alive in the days and weeks following the Runway show? I think we saw some brands that had one really hot day back in March and in July, and then people quite quickly were not thinking about that brand anymore. It was not necessarily top of mind. And then others like Dior Men's that managed to just milk the content cycle for days and days and really make a big arrival, build a lot of momentum and get a big halo on the brand based on their new creative director that could crash and burn. Maybe there's something to be said about building up more slowly. One reason can be that the products don't arrive in the store for, you know, four to six months after the Runway show. So some could say, like, why would we spend our money, resources, time on all these activations when there's nothing to buy yet? But you know, really you're building a halo on the brand and I'm going to be looking to See who are the people who are, you know, may at least managing to keep up. You know, not radical and immediate, but incremental growing progress on the brand that they're in charge of.
- [35:38]
B
What is one big mistake that you can make in a debut that can cause a crash and burn before you even get to the halo or the one buzz moment.
- [35:46]
D
I think an overly ambitious debut that goes beyond what you can really deliver would be the biggest way to have a debut you can't bounce back from. You know, a slightly boring or circumscribed debut, a debut that hints that you have more to come that a debut that you know, says like desirability building that shows that the direction is going the right direction but maybe isn't massively ambitious can be better than one that tries to do something huge and radical and then it just feels off, you know, or if the execution looks a bit cheap.
- [36:24]
C
And last question, what's a brand? Maybe one of the ones we haven't talked about a lot yet that that is likely to surprise. On the upside this season though, Robert.
- [36:32]
B
Has no favorite children on the luxury beat.
- [36:35]
D
I am going to say that I am really interested to see what's going to happen the ready to wear debut at Margiela and Margiela's evolution in the years to come. They seem like they are radically rethinking all of the orthodoxy about what this brand is, how this brand should communicate and whether or not the customers are going to get on board with a brand that's been so famously anonymous and understated as Margiela doing things like dressing Kim Kardashian in Venice. You know, whether or not the market's going to get on board with that is is a big question. But you know, I think that they are. I think people, some fans of the brand might be a bit turned off but I think that they, it seems like they've come in guns blazing but not in a half hazard way. I think Glenn Martins and the new team there, I think there's a lot of upside on that brand.
- [37:26]
B
I think we can end it there. That's a very hopeful, optimistic as I like to say, always prediction for what's sure to be an exciting fashion month and maybe a full on reset if you, if it goes well, a full on positive reset. Robert, thank you so much for joining us today.
- [37:41]
D
Thank you guys so much for having me.
- [37:44]
B
Please be sure to check out Robert's article. Can Designer Revamps save fashion? @businessofashion.com this and the rest of BoF's the Great Fashion Reset package are available to BoF Professional subscribers only, and you can find the links in the episode notes. You've been listening to the debrief, produced and edited by Olympic, Olivia Davies and Eric Brea. I'm Sheena Butler Young.
- [38:05]
C
And I'm Brian Baskin. We'll be back next week with a new episode. Thank you so much for joining us and be sure to follow us wherever you get your podcasts.