The Business of Fashion (BoF) is a next generation fashion media company that provides authoritative, agenda-setting insights on the global fashion industry. It is an indispensable resource for fashion executives, creatives, students, and entrepreneurs in over 200 countries. BoF offers various platforms and services including news, blogging, insights, luxury, fashion business, and opinion. They also publish the annual BoF 500 list of the people shaping the global fashion industry.

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The Business of Fashion (BoF) is a next generation fashion media company conceived for today's global and hyper-connected world. Founded in 2007 by Imran Amed, BoF is known for its authoritative, agenda-setting point of view on the global fashion industry and is an indispensable resource for fashion executives, creatives, students and entrepreneurs in over 200 countries.

Today, the BoF team numbers more than 100 people in London, New York, and Shanghai. Overseeing; the BoF 500 - an annual list of the people shaping the global fashion industry, BoF Careers - the global marketplace for fashion talent, VOICES - an annual invitation only event for fashion’s leading thinkers and innovators, BoF Professional - a members only community, BoF China - a Chinese language edition, and BoF Education - fashion’s platform for online learning.

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The Business of Fashion

In the world of set design, es devlin is a trailblazing, unstoppable force. Her remarkable career has seen her craft stages for global superstars like Beyoncé, U2 and Adele as well as immersive experiences for Louis Vuitton, Saint Laurent and most recently, Gucci which recently brought its Cosmos exhibition to London’s 180 The Strand.

But to describe Es as a set designer only feels somewhat reductive. She is a deep thinker who approaches her work like a creative philosopher, examining critical questions about the world.

This week on The BoF Podcast, Devlin joins BoF founder and editor-in-chief Imran Amed to discuss her career and her impressions of fashion — as well as her advice for young creatives.

🎙️ Listen to the full episode, or download wherever you get your podcasts.

#BoFPodcast

To get a snapshot of fashion’s sports-marketing playbook in 2023, start with the tie-up between Louis Vuitton and LeBron James.

The National Basketball Association (NBA) star recently became a new face of the brand, appearing in a campaign that popped up on billboards in New York on Oct. 24. But it was James’ entry into Denver’s Ball Arena that night for his team’s season opener that caused the bigger stir. For the walk from the parking lot to the locker room he wore a reported $28,000 of Louis Vuitton designed by its new menswear chief, Pharrell.

In a collaborative post, James and Pharrell shared an image of the moment on Instagram. Louis Vuitton, on its official account, instead of using the glossy campaign image also posted a shot of James’ arrival.

As detailed in BoF’s latest case study, fashion has fully woken up to sport’s massive marketing potential. By 2030, the global sport-sponsorship market is expected to reach $109.1 billion, up from $63.1 billion in 2021, according to PwC. Driving it is not just the record viewership of sporting events but also the unprecedented star power of athletes.

Fashion has become a vital piece of an athlete’s image and branding, enabled by moments like the tunnel walk, pictures of which frequently circulate online. Former NBA player JJ Reddick once griped that some athletes even seem more concerned with getting a pregame fit on Instagram than winning.

Read the full article by BoF’s Technology Correspondent Marc Bain and download BoF’s latest case study Fashion’s New Rules For Sports Marketing.

This week, Burberry became the latest luxury company to report lacklustre quarterly results, saying sales in the 12 weeks through September had risen just 1 percent from a year earlier compared to an 18 percent jump the previous quarter. Sales in Mainland China and the US fell 9 and 10 percent, respectively.

“There’s a challenging macro environment coming across from all regions,” CEO Jonathan Akeroyd told reporters. “I think this is something that has been quite unique, because historically if you get softness in one region you’re able to pick it up in another.”

Burberry’s numbers added to mounting signs that the post-pandemic boom in luxury spending may be reaching its end: LVMH and Richemont both reported quarterly growth that slowed sharply from the first half of the year, while sales at Gucci-owner Kering fell 9 percent.

Growth is on track to slow further next year, according to consultancy Bain & Company. After rising 8 percent at constant exchange rates to €362 billion ($387 billion) this year, luxury sales will likely rise 1 to 4 percent next year.

Amid the darkening outlook, where can brands turn next for growth?

Read the full story by BoF's Luxury Editor Robert Williams below:

We are delighted to announce the latest speakers from across the worlds of film, music, philanthropy, activism, contemporary art, architecture and design who will be joining us at BoF VOICES 2023, along with Diane von Furstenberg, creative director of Loewe and JW Anderson, Jonathan Anderson, creative director of Bottega Veneta, Matthieu Blazy and many more.

• Thomas Heatherwick CBE is the founder and design director of the award-winning Heatherwick Studio

• Hélène Huby is a French space scientist and is chief executive of The Exploration Company

• Ali Sethi is a Pakistani-American musician whose song Pasoori has been streamed more than 1 billion times

• Waad Al-Kateab is a Syrian journalist and filmmaker who was awarded a BAFTA for her documentary “For Sama”

• Deepak Chopra MD (official) is the founder of the Chopra Foundation, a non-profit entity for research on well-being and humanitarianism

• Joe G. is a designer and the co-founder of the disruptive online marketplace Airbnb

• Sumayya Vally is principal of Counterspace, the architecture and research firm based between Johannesburg and London

• Rachel Higham is chief information officer of WPP, the global creative transformation company headquartered in London

• Andres Reisinger is an Argentinian digital artist based in Barcelona, Spain

• Keith Yamashita is a creative force who has guided countless teams and organisations through positive transformations

BoF VOICES 2023 will be livestreamed for BoF Professional All-Access members. Register now to join us for the sessions of your choice.

#BoFVOICES

LVMH-owned Berluti announced it will design Team France’s uniforms for the opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris, the brand announced Thursday.

In July LVMH announced a landmark “premium partnership” with the Olympics that will also see brands including Louis Vuitton and Dior design uniforms for Team France, while high jewellery label CHAUMET will produce the tournament’s winners’ medals.

The luxury group has increasingly looked to benefit from associations with elite sports teams, competitions and athletes. On the opening night of the NBA season in October, Louis Vuitton dressed LeBron James of the LA Lakers — who also featured in a billboard campaign for the brand — in the “Damoflage” jacket and “Speedy” bag from Pharrell Williams’ debut collection.

Read more on this announcement below.

Gap Inc. reported third-quarter profit that exceeded forecasts and a smaller-than-expected drop in comparable sales, showing that chief executive officer Richard Dickson is having early success in improving the company’s performance.

Adjusted earnings of 59 cents a share were triple the average analyst estimate, thanks in part to fewer promotions and better managed inventories. While same-store sales fell for a fourth consecutive quarter, the decline was less than expected as stronger results at Old Navy, which is Gap’s biggest brand, offset weakness at Athleta and Banana Republic.

The shares rose 16 percent at 4:52 p.m. in late New York trading.

“Overall, I feel good about our performance, but there’s continued work to do on the brands,” Dickson said in an interview. He laid out ideas including better marketing and product mix at Banana Republic and a more focused marketing effort toward women at Old Navy.

Read the full report below.

KEY INSIGHTS
▪ In a challenging investment landscape, start-ups are re-evaluating their relationship with venture capital.
▪ Businesses that likely could raise funding rounds are opting to raise debt to eschew rapid growth pressures.
▪ Start-ups say that raising debt improves their spending habits and ensures a faster path to profitability.

After nearly a year in business, skin care start-up Nakery Beauty was in need of more capital.

Up until that point, the brand, which sells body washes, creams and more, was self-funded. But to ramp up sales, it needed a short-term cash infusion to funnel into inventory.

Not long ago, a brand in Nakery’s position would almost certainly have sought out venture capital to fuel these ambitions. Instead, in January, the company took out a loan with fintech start-up Ampla, worth around 20 percent of its sales up to that point. The money went toward purchasing enough product to stock its own site and its retail partners, Amazon and the Home Shopping Network.

Ten months later, Nakery is on pace to multiply sales fourfold this year, to around $15 million, along with generating profits on the basis of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation, said Robert DeBaker, Nakery Beauty’s chief operating officer.

Read more on this DTC story by BoF's Malique Morris.

From a sporting perspective, Formula 1′s marquee race in Las Vegas this weekend will have little effect on the outcome of the overall competition. Red Bull Racing’s star Dutch driver Max Verstappen was already crowned as the winner of the 2023 championship back in early October, with six races of the season still to go.

In many ways, the stakes are higher for the dozens of fashion brands on the sidelines, from Tommy Hilfiger and sacai to PUMA Group and Palace, competing in a race of their own to get a slice of the action amidst a dizzying slew of partnerships, star-studded events and product drops.

The race will be the most anticipated event in the F1 competition since it was announced last year.

Formula 1 is projecting the spectacle will generate an overall economic impact of $1.3 billion, on par with Super Bowl LVII, which took place in February. Through partnerships with teams and drivers, organised influencer trips and other costly special projects, the fashion industry has played an outsize role in contributing to that figure.

Read the full F1 Vegas fashion breakdown from BoF’s Daniel-Yaw Miller.

#F1

Google is ushering in the holiday shopping season with a spate of new features powered by generative artificial intelligence.

The search and advertising giant announced today three different tools aimed at helping online shoppers with purchases: 
▪ One uses AI to suggest gift ideas tailored to the user’s query, in case they’re stumped on what to get a child who wants to be a scientist or an adult who is obsessed with knitting. 
▪ Another lets users generate photorealistic variations of items they’d like to see — say a metallic puffer jacket or leopard-print hoodie — and then finds the real products in Google’s shopping ecosystem that offer the closest match. 
▪ Lastly, the company is extending its virtual try-on feature, which uses AI to depict how an item will appear on a range of different models, to men’s tops after introducing the technology on women’s tops in June.

The first two features won’t go live to all users. They’ll only be available to US users through Google’s Search Labs, where it tests new capabilities, as part of the “search generative experience,” or SGE, it unveiled earlier this year, though any US shoppers interested can sign up to get access. Google’s tool for gift ideas will be available to anyone logged into SGE starting today, while the capability to dream up products and search for real versions will debut to US mobile users of SGE in December.

The new expansion of virtual try-on, however, will be accessible to all US mobile users as of today, with desktop soon to follow. Customers will see a “try on” icon next to products from hundreds of brands including J.Crew, Abercrombie & Fitch Co., Banana Republic and Under Armour. As with its women’s try-on, Google will let users see the product on 40 different models of varying sizes, body shapes and skin tones.

Read the full story on Google's new features by BoF's Marc Bain.

#Google #AI

In partnership with Paul & Shark

Today, Paul & Shark is undergoing international expansion, opening their first UK flagship on London’s Regent Street in September, with further brick-and-mortar stores planned for 2024 in markets such as China and India. Despite their growing global presence, the brand will continue to leverage its heritage as an Italian family-run organisation.

Indeed, their recent campaign shot in the Tuscan countryside, featuring father-and-son duo Pierce and Paris Brosnan (pictured below), reflects these core attributes. But with the brand’s impending growth, CEO Andrea Dini is working to build on the heritage and tradition associated with such epithets to find a newfound relevance.

Meanwhile, their sustainable innovation efforts extend to the brand’s choice and creation of fabrics. Their patented fabric, Typhoon 20,000, is designed to combat extreme weather conditions with its inbuilt water and windproofing, alongside breathability and moveability. Each square centimetre of the fabric can withstand a 20-minute column of water and is used across Paul & Shark collections.

As the brand looks to build upon its global representation following the opening of its Regent Street store, BoF sits down with CEO Andrea Dini to learn more about how the brand is working on a renewed strategy for innovative growth. 

Read more below:

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