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- [00:06]
Dani Parisi
Hello, and welcome back to the Glossy Week in Review podcast. I'm your host, senior fashion reporter Dani Parisi, and I'm here with our international reporter, Zofia Zyglinska. Hello, Zofia. How's it going?
- [00:16]
Zofia Zyglinska
Yeah, good, thank you. Lovely to be on again.
- [00:18]
Dani Parisi
Thank you for being here. We are doing our final Fashion Month episode. Kind of we're going to talk about Paris Fashion Week. We won't only talk about Paris Fashion Week, but we'll dedicate the beginning of this episode to that. If you haven't listened to our New York, London, and Milan episodes, you just go back through your feed. The last couple weeks, we've been talking a little bit about each week. As it happens, we're in the middle of the week right now, so we'll talk about some of the shows we have seen so far and some of the trends and topics coming out of it. Later, though, we will talk about Adidas earnings report, which I think was better than even Adidas was expecting. We'll talk about the landscape of the sneaker market at the moment, which is in a pretty interesting spot. And then finally, we have to talk about it. We've talked about it before, but we got to talk about the tariffs because everyone that I'm talking to is, like, a little bit freaking out about it. It's gonna be. I mean, it is already massively disruptive to our industry and many other industries and basically the whole world. So we will talk about that last. Let's start with Paris Fashion Week, though. As we have said on previous episodes, Paris has drawn in so much talent, so many other designers, so many big brands over the years. I was like, just looking at the calendar, and there's obviously a lot of French brands in attendance. There's Dior and others, but. But there's also. There's British designers like Stella McCartney, American designers like Veronica Beard, and Vaquera is another one, Dutch designers from Zomer. There's just like a very strong international presence. And I think part of that is because so many designers who normally show at the other weeks have all kind of been slowly absorbed by Paris.
- [01:50]
Zofia Zyglinska
Yeah, definitely. I think that at the moment, fashion brands and kind of professionals are looking at it from a cost efficiency perspective. And if everyone is in Paris, then it makes the most sense to show in Paris and to present your collections there. So obviously, apart from the official kind of on schedule designers who are showing up in runways, there's also been quite a few more openings in terms of showrooms and kind of additional things that are happening on the side alongside to get, I guess, a little bit of this halo effect from the main kind of Paris Fashion Week schedule.
- [02:24]
Dani Parisi
Yeah, I mean, it makes sense. If I was a designer, I would probably pick the week that had the most people and kind of the most attention. Although there's also, I think, the risk of being drowned out by Dior and these giant brands as well. So maybe a little bit of a double edged sword. I always really like the very conceptual shows, and I always love a fashion show where they take some seemingly kind of random or obscure bit of inspiration and kind of try to work that into a fashion show. The Dior show was inspired by Orlando, which is a Virginia Woolf novel that I read way back in college. But it's really good, and it's about this immortal, gender fluid character over the centuries. And so the collection had lots of. Of like 19th century frilly shirts and frock coats and stuff. I thought that was very fun. Did you get a chance to look at the Dior looks or were there any other shows that has stood out to you so far?
- [03:16]
Zofia Zyglinska
Yeah, I mean, I think that Dior1 was also very well received, probably because everything was quite wearable and a little bit of like a move away from the Dior collections of the past. I thought that the actual inspirations and the Runway format was a little bit crowded because everyone was coming out in like little crowds and pairs. But the clothes themselves were really good. And if you got a chance, you could see the pterodactyl zooming overhead, which I thought was also a nice touch.
- [03:45]
Dani Parisi
Yeah, there's a lot of cool stuff from that show. And we've talked in previous seasons about Paris often having very spectacular shows in the literal sense, like a spectacle. Who did the spray on dress? I'm forgetting who that. Coperni.
- [03:58]
Zofia Zyglinska
Coperni.
- [03:59]
Dani Parisi
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I feel like Paris often has kind of big, like, cool sets and that kind of extravagant stuff. My experience mostly with New York Fashion Week is that a lot of times the sets are a little bare bones or they're just. They're kind of leaning on the environment that they're in, that it's like in a warehouse in Brooklyn or something and just kind of like using that. Whereas my impression, not having been to Paris Fashion Week, but from afar, is that there's a lot more kind of theatrical builds.
- [04:27]
Zofia Zyglinska
Yeah, definitely. And especially with the bigger brands. So, you know, Dior, Chanel, all of those before have kind of built up these almost fantasy sets. But there's also a lot of Kind of more, I guess, like, wearable or regular Runway formats as well. You know, if you look at something like acne, for example, was mostly in a very kind of simple Runway format, even, to be honest, with brands like Stella McCartney, who kind of go, I would say, in between, you know, huge production and something more regular this season, you know, her focus was on this office culture, probably slightly inspired by severance and various other designers who have also done this in the last couple of years, taking back this, I guess, like, feminist angle on office wear and office culture. So there was a whole lot of suiting as well as, you know, some strippers on the side, which I thought was very interesting, considering the. I guess, the audience there. I don't know if it quite worked out, but I think people thought it was fun.
- [05:27]
Dani Parisi
Yeah, I didn't make the severance connection. I wonder if that was an explicit inspiration, but definitely something strange and inappropriate happening in a very sterile corporate office environment is very much severance vibe.
- [05:41]
Zofia Zyglinska
Exactly.
- [05:42]
Dani Parisi
One other thing I wanted to talk about with Paris is there was a great New York Times article kind of making this point, so I'm a little bit parroting that, But I did notice this myself. In general, I think there was a shift in political tone in Paris, for sure, but just in generally, like, generally across Fashion Month in the last decade or so, there's been some efforts, I would say, to be or at least appear progressive from the fashion industry. In this New York Times article, they mention a kind of funny 2014 Chanel show when Karl Lagerfeld was still around, where the models were kind of, like, doing a fake, like, protest, and they were holding, like, signs. But the signs were just, like, very vague, anodyne statements like, be different. And it's like, why you wouldn't bring that to a real protest, because that doesn't mean anything. But there was, like, at least some effort to kind of align with more progressive sort of values. And I definitely have sensed a shift away from that. I mean, in Milan, there was straight up, just fur everywhere. There was a lot of, obviously at Fendi, but, like, at plenty of other shows as well. Some of the designers were like, it's not fur, it's shearling, but shearling is like the skin of a lamb. So that's, like, not necessarily better in terms of ethics, but it just feels like a lot of that stuff is kind of just like, eh, that's just like, forget about that. We're just gonna, like, be not woke anymore. Not always in an explicit way, but just in, like, a lack of any sort of, you know, any of those gestures toward political ideas that we've seen in previous years. I mean, did you notice anything like that?
- [07:12]
Zofia Zyglinska
Yeah, I think so as well. Like, there's been a bit of a shift in terms of how those brands are presenting those sustainable kind of parts of their collection. Obviously, this will be in the show notes, but a lot of the times, you know, before, it would have been emphasized or kind of highlighted on the Runway as well. This time, it kind of feels like it's more taking a backseat. Like it's something that is in the collection, but you wouldn't really notice it unless you're looking for it specifically. So companies like Ganny, for example, still had some shoes that were made from a sustainable material. And obviously, Stella McCartney had the same thing where, you know, a lot of her bags that came out last year were featured in the. The collection. As you wouldn't necessarily know that they're sustainability focused if you weren't looking for that. I think that in general, in terms of the aesthetic shift, most of the shows have gone one of two ways, I would say either going into something which is kind of more wearable, more office wear. I think you see less party looks in Paris. It was kind of more focused on workwear and things that could be mixed with other brands, or else the tone was kind of more baroque. So, you know, thinking about medieval dress, but also kind of the ornate kind of Germanic style as well. And I think that's really interesting because that, again, kind of links back to more, I guess, conservative values as well. Because when you're thinking about it, you know, the medieval times were pretty bleak, dark times.
- [08:39]
Dani Parisi
Yeah. Maybe appropriate to look back to that era, but, yeah, the one kind of political issue that I'm most surprised that there was not any gesture toward that I saw. I could be wrong. Maybe this was talked about in some show notes. Notes or something. I could see moving away from more kind of like general social issues. But there's one huge issue that affects all of Europe, which is like the war in Ukraine and the pretty explosive developments in American politics recently of the US Just completely pulling out of all support. There's also, like a pretty noticeable just break happening between the US And Europe. And a lot of the brands in Paris Fashion Week, obviously, are based in Europe. And. And I think the European Union countries in general are much more concerned about the war in Ukraine than the US Is because it's obviously much closer and has much broader and more serious implications immediately for various European countries. So I don't know, I didn't see any statements or show note gestures, anything like that that I'm aware of. And it feels like if there was anything to kind of make a statement about in Paris or Milan, I guess that would have been something to talk about. I don't know. Did you see anything like that?
- [09:51]
Zofia Zyglinska
Yeah, I mean, I didn't see anything. I know that obviously Ukrainian designers are still showing in Paris and there's also kind of focus in terms of giving them the attention that they would need if they were presenting elsewhere by opening up the showrooms. So I think there's a number of Ukraine kind of specific brand showrooms that are helping support Ukrainian designers. But I think in terms of the general shift on Europe, nothing has been made. A specific kind of statement hasn't been made that would, I guess, put Europe in danger. I know that obviously the kind of financial support has been pulled from the war from Americas, but obviously a lot of European countries have already indicated that they will be supporting Zelenskyy and his efforts. So I think that there's movement happening there to kind of account for the American input. But obviously it will still be felt. I think most people are looking at the fact that Trump is still trying to get Russia to the table in terms of a peace deal. So possibly that will end up kind of quietening down any kind of tensions in that region, most likely with a significant loss for Ukraine.
- [11:01]
Dani Parisi
This is not a politics podcast, but it is relevant. And yeah, I can't imagine a peace deal, even a really favorable one, not including some territory loss for Ukraine at this point, which is not ideal for them anyway. It does affect the fashion industry just because the EU, I think, is a little concerned about their safety in general, with the US Signaling a lack of interest in contributing. That is definitely something we will be keeping an eye on and how it affects the fashion industry. Let's move on and talk about Adidas, which reported their fourth quarter earnings and their full year earnings this week overall. I mentioned this at the top, but I think even Adidas was surprised by how well they did. Their revenue for 2024 was up 12% from the previous year and their own guidance had been around 10% and they raised it last minute. So up until like a month or two ago, they were projecting something even lower, maybe more than a month or two. I think it was late 2024 where they raised their guidance to 10% and it's beyond even that. So they did pretty well. Their profits in the fourth quarter were 57 million euros. And in the Same period the year before. They had a loss of 30, like 377 million euros, I think, in the same period. So they did pretty well last year, actually. And the sneaker landscape is kind of in this interesting spot right now. Nike has been losing some sales, not a ton, and they're still like huge and dominant. But a pretty significant decline for Nike, which I think leaves a big opening for traditional rivals like Adidas, but also kind of newer upcoming brands like on and Hoka, which we've talked about on this podcast before. So it's kind of an interesting time for Sneakers. And I always like seeing Nike's earnings and Adidas earnings because they're two giants in that world. And whatever's happening there, I think is a good indicator of kind of just the general landscape. What did you think of their results?
- [12:55]
Zofia Zyglinska
Yeah, I mean, I think it's quite interesting that Adidas seems to be having such a good quarter when I feel like Nike isn't. That's something that those brands have dominated the space for so long that I always felt that any kind of market moves would affect them both equally. However, I think that Adidas has had much more luck kind of going into the lifestyle market maybe also because their, I guess, like brand identity isn't tied to performance quite as much as Nike. And I think that, you know, as a result, like especially on the footwear side and sneaker side, like the, the amount of popular sneakers that are Adidas, that are lifestyle wear has maybe kind of shifted, I guess, the attitudes there. But, you know, I spoke with someone from McKinsey. This, you know, in terms of the sportswear market, I think a lot of consumers are now shifting away from maybe looking at it as like regular wear. And then there's sportswear or like things I wear for fitness and more looking at it as like a lifestyle shift or like a wellness shift, where some of these newer brands like Hoka and On are kind of doing really well because they're looking at their consumer products and also the kind of content they're putting out is more like wellness orientated, not just, you know, performance athlete orientated. I think Adidas has been doing some of that marketing as well, where it's kind of looking at regular people and how they approach athletics or fitness, as well as how they incorporate fitness adjacent products or sneakers into their regular lifestyle.
- [14:28]
Dani Parisi
Yeah, and Adidas has also had some hits with the Samba and the Gazelle, I think, is another one that have done really well. They've gotten picked up by Grace Wales Bonner, I think Did a version of the Samba. So I think it's permeated into a little bit higher fashion. And then they still have obviously huge amount of sports deals with like every sport and team you can think of, just like Nike. So, yeah, it's, they're, they're in a good position, it seems. I also wanted to talk a little bit about Yeezy because they announced along with these earnings that they sold off the last of their Yeezy stock. And I was thinking about how good it was for them that they fully divested from him like a while ago after it just like got worse since. So like, I think if there was any doubt in their mind that that was the right move. I'm sure it hurt to say goodbye to, you know, a billion dollar business over something like your partner just like saying insane stuff in the media. I'm sure they did not want to do that and they were hoping it would blow over. But it seems like it was the right move because he was like, you know, a year later saying more crazy stuff and honestly, even worse stuff. So it's like maybe good for them that they got out of that and they were able to sell off the stock and recoup some of those losses. And it doesn't seem to have. Well, it was a huge issue at the time, but it seems like they've slowly recovered from it.
- [15:52]
Zofia Zyglinska
Yeah, definitely. I think it's again, kind of, I guess like a warning note to other brands. You know, I guess I'm thinking about the Nike and Skims partnership now, but like looking at those kind of celebrity adjacent or, you know, non, I guess, non traditional business kind of related things where those people don't come from. Maybe a retail background. Is there going to be a kind of issue with those liabilities? Could there be possible things in the future that affect the business that are so far out of your control? I mean, everything that Kanye did was kind of definitely not related to business operations of Yeezy. It was all kind of very, very personal. So I'm wondering if that's, that's something that is going to happen with future partnerships or whether now brands are going to be like, we're going to have to be even more careful with who we're partnering with, if we're partnering with anyone at all.
- [16:49]
Dani Parisi
Yeah, and there actually was, I feel like a series of articles that came out in the last year or two about how Yeezy was operated and kind of the awful culture of the office and the work environment there. Lots of harassment, lots of erratic behavior. From Kanye. Again, probably a good thing that Adidas was separated at that point. I think there was some splash zone effect on Adidas because they were to some degree responsible for this. It's like a section of their business and if people are being harassed and treated badly, it does reflect on them. But I feel like they were able to sort of pivot a little bit. And it was after the separation. So it's like, looks maybe more bad on him than on Adidas as a whole. But I think you're right, like if you're working with a partner and especially if you've set up a whole like division, which is honestly the Nike Skims brand is a really good point of comparison. And it's funny that those two were like married and they're like the two biggest athletic sneaker brands. Both have like a brand set up with one of these two people. Kind of a funny, I don't know, counterpoint there, but it is set up very similarly and like they have some degree of control. It's part of the Nike business. Yeezy was part of the Adidas business, but it's also autonomous. And like the autonomy was kind of a selling point. But then the downside of that is like, who knows what kind of awful stuff is happening over there. So obviously no indication that Nike Skims is like that at all. But just a thought that, you know, if you're bringing in somebody else and setting up this whole kind of separate wing of the company, when you're letting somebody else be in charge of it, you're also kind of. You'll take whatever negatives come with that as well.
- [18:30]
Zofia Zyglinska
Yeah, definitely. And Skims is interesting for that reason because I feel like it hasn't operated that way. It does feel like it's operating more as a kind of typical business venture. I think that's probably also tied to the fact that Kim is not the only one controlling the way that the company is run and isn't maybe quite as involved in terms of the, I guess, logistics of everyday kind of running the company. Know she features in all the shoots, but she seems slightly more like as a face of the brand and maybe looking at product development rather than the kind of day to day operations. So I'm hoping that Nike has more success with Skims, but obviously every little brand like that is going to have, you know, a different idea of how they want those things to play out. And you know, the fact that this has taken such a long time to come to the table is probably an indication of how seriously you know they're looking at all of these elements and whether it will play out for them. So interested to see what's going to happen there and definitely hoping that there's not going to be another Kanye situation.
- [19:30]
Dani Parisi
Yeah. Do you remember the Yeezy Gap collaboration? And when they saw that they just had the clothes just in piles on the floor? That was very funny. Let's move on to our last topic. I don't have anything else to say about Adidas or Kanye tariffs. It is insane. I think everyone listening to this podcast is greatly affected. Probably if you're not already, you will be. It is a very wild situation. And reading the news and talking to people in the industry over the last few weeks, I think a lot of people are still trying to decide how to handle it. Prices are rising for sure. Supply chains are getting tangled up. And then I think there's also a genuine kind of concern about the implication of damaging a lot of geopolitical relationships, especially with closely allied countries like Canada. It's wild. So, like, costs, I think, are rising for many companies. Even if you don't do your production in China or Mexico or whatever, you probably are still going to see some increased costs. And then it's like, do I pass that on to the consumer? Do I move my production to some other country and then that country gets hit with tariffs? I mean, I feel like it's causing a lot of chaos. I don't know. What do you think of what's been going on this week?
- [20:39]
Zofia Zyglinska
Yeah, I mean, I think that it's fair to say now that the tariffs have escalated everything to what is essentially a trade war with American trying to, I guess, fight back, control over many different kind of areas of the supply chain. And you have to look at the Panama Canal situation, how they're kind of, I guess, handling that to see how far this is going and how much this is going to affect supply chains. Because obviously a lot of clothing companies even do use the Panama Canal to bring in stock if they're not going to switch to air, which might be another thing that they're considering. But I think the main impact is going to be on brands that have not managed to, I guess, figure out their supply chain earlier. Because for a lot of brands, they're already seeing the writing on the wall, I guess, in December. I think that now it's probably a little bit too late to figure things out. I think a lot of the brands I've spoken to have talked about wait and see policy, where they need to see what exactly is going to be in place and how it's going to be affected. But I think the big danger comes from this, I guess, a global change in how these tariffs are going to be applied. Not just American ones, but also international ones, too. With fashion supply chain already being quite tight and with money, I guess, drying up, the idea of having added costs is really going to elevate a lot of businesses into the red, I guess, or escalate them into the red. So I think that there's going to be some definite blowback. And I think after the year that fashion has had, this might actually make things even worse.
- [22:24]
Dani Parisi
Yeah. And margins are already very tight for a lot of fashion brands, too. So even just a little bit of extra cost, I think can be pretty disruptive. I also think that moving production to another country is maybe not the easy solution that people were hoping it would be a couple months ago. I mean, I talked to a few people who said it's basically like you need a crystal ball to. It's expensive. It's really hard to predict. Like I said, if you move all your production of Vietnam, what's to stop? 25% tariff on all Vietnamese imports the next day, and then you've moved all your stuff over and spent all that money for nothing. Obviously, we can predict some countries will probably be more directly targeted, like China, just because it's like an economic rival to the US But Canada seems completely random. That's just like a friendly neighboring nation that was, like, just sitting there not doing anything, and now we're, like, suddenly in a trade war with them. For some reason, Justin Trudeau was like, like, very angry this week. They gave a speech where he was like, straight up, that was a very stupid thing to do. Basically accused the Trump administration of trying to intentionally tank the Canadian economy so they can absorb Canada, which he has literally said he wants to do. So that could very well be true, but it's the. Canada obviously immediately responded with a. There's a 25% tariff on $30 billion worth of American goods that can escalate to 150 billion. And immediately, like, pulled some American goods off the shelves, like a lot of American liquors and whiskeys in Ontario, at least I know the state, like, sells all the wholesale liquor. So they just, like, took all those American brands off the shelves. And I saw, I think it was the CEO of Jack Daniels was like, that's worse than a tariff. That's just straight up, like, lost sales. So I'm sort of like, I don't really get the. The logic of Just randomly starting an aggressive trade war with Canada, who we've had like really good relationship with for like a very long time. There's a pretty significant, not huge, but there's a strong fashion market in between both countries. There's Lululemon, Aritzia, arc'teryx are all Canadian brands and they produce their clothes there, or some of them do. I know arc'teryx does. So it's kind of just like we're going around with a hammer and like smashing all these relationships that I'm not really sure that that's the best idea. But for fashion brands, I think that is an additional concern is just like friendly relations between nations. A lot of fashion companies are international and they're banking on the fact that they can easily move from one country to another, that they can run businesses that cross borders, and that the environment is kind of set up for that to be okay. And I feel like that's becoming a little bit more hazardous.
- [25:08]
Zofia Zyglinska
Yeah, definitely. And I'm thinking about all of these European brands as well that have expanded recently into the US And I guess how they're going to be affected in terms of their production, but also I guess bringing stock in, if they are based over here or if they're bringing it in from elsewhere, is that something that's going to be affecting them? Especially considering their American businesses are probably still quite young, maybe in that early year to six month phase. And I guess how they're going to be dealing with that too.
- [25:41]
Dani Parisi
Yeah. Oh yeah. Another thing I wanted to mention. So we've talked about this before on this podcast, but the rules about the tariffs are also constantly changing, which I know makes it very hard to predict. And literally just this week I wrote a story about it. And the very next day the Trump administration was like, actually we're pausing tariffs on automobiles. That was one of the tariffs. So very unpredictable. I almost get the sense that maybe it's less about punishing the countries that the tariffs are being put on and more about extracting kind of obedience from American companies. Like, do what I want and I will make a carve out for you in the tariff implementation. Like your industry will be exempt or whatever. Not to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but that does seem like what's happening. So it's a weird situation. And again, the point is that it's very unpredictable and something that will work today. The whole rules might be rewritten tomorrow and so who knows?
- [26:38]
Zofia Zyglinska
Yeah, definitely. It seems like a bit of a mob system, kind of do what we want or else. But yeah, not to be expecting anything better from this. And I think the next couple of months, as these tariffs play out, it's going to be a very tough environment for brands.
- [26:54]
Dani Parisi
Yeah. And we will do a lot more coverage. We were just talking with our editor yesterday about we are going to write a lot more stories about tariffs. We will definitely talk about it on the podcast, too. So you and I will both be talking to brands and seeing how people are handling it and we will report what we hear. I think that's all the time we have this week, though. Thank you, Zofia, for being here.
- [27:12]
Zofia Zyglinska
Thank you so much. It was so fun.
- [27:13]
Dani Parisi
For those of you listening, don't forget to give us a rating and a review, whether that's on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, wherever you listen to this podcast because that helps us out so much. And don't forget to subscribe to the glossy podcast because you'll hear interviews with industry insiders every Wednesday and weekend review episodes every Friday. Until next time, thanks for listening.