The Business of Fashion Podcast

The multitasking entrepreneur joins BoF founder and chief executive Imran Amed to discuss the personal and professional journey that led him to co-create the category-disrupting brand Skims with Kim Kardashian.    Background:    Jens Grede has built some of the most successful direct-to-consumer brands in American fashion. Alongside his wife Emma, he launched Brady with Tom Brady, Good American with Khloe Kardashian, and, of course, Kim Kardashian’s category-disrupting Skims. This week on the BoF Podcast, the Swedish-born former ad man joins BoF founder and editor-in-chief Imran Amed to discuss his journey through the fashion industry — from realising one of his early dreams of creating an ad for Calvin Klein to to elevating Skims into a once-in-a generation brand in the vein of Lululemon or Nike’s Jordan brand.    “I've waited my whole career to be part of a moment like this, and I'm very scared of messing it up,” says Grede. “At the same time, I know that if we stop experimenting, if we stop innovating, that is the fastest way to mess it up.”   Key Insights:    Cultivating a sense of community is one of the only ways to scale a brand now, according to Grede. Great community starts with creating for yourself: products you like, want to buy and can afford.  Grede describes one of his biggest mistakes — attempting to trademark the brand name “Kimono” with Kardashian — as one of the most important moments of his career because of what he learned about community and partnership. He said the Skims team listened, owned the mistake and pivoted.  Fashion is at the cusp of a huge change in distribution due to pivots in culture, algorithms and the outsized role of social media. Grede thinks every major fashion brand that has scaled successfully was born in the cracks of a major distribution change.       Additional Resources:  Skims Plots Its Next Moves: ‘We Don’t Have the Luxury of Failing.’ Skims recently raised funding at a $3.2 billion valuation. Kim Kardashian and Jens Grede, in an exclusive interview with BoF, explain how the ‘solution wear’ empire plans to prove it’s more than a pandemic fad. First up: swimwear. The BoF Podcast: Building Disruptive Direct-to-Consumer Brands. The entrepreneurs behind Allbirds, Hims and Hers and Good American outline the keys to their brands’ success. Building a DTC Challenger Brand | Download the Case Study. Fashion entrepreneurs need a new playbook to launch, scale and differentiate their companies, as regulations and rising costs mean performance marketing can no longer serve the critical role it once did for DTC brands.       Join BoF Professional today using the link here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

After years of analyst anticipation that the leg-squeezing silhouette would soon go out of style, market research firm NPD Group found sales for the skinny jeans fell behind straight leg jeans in 2021. Skinny jeans are far from dead though — still accounting for 30 percent of sales. Retailers have already felt the effects of the shift: Pacsun pulled the style from its stores because no one was buying it.  “It really just speaks to the changing of the times and how styles are evolving within fashion,” said BoF correspondent Chavie Leiber.     Key Insights:  Skinny jeans are no longer the most popular denim silhouette, according to data from NPD Group. But, that doesn’t mean no one is buying them.  As consumers come out of the pandemic, they don’t just want comfort. Shoppers are either skewing toward raw denim with no stretch or athleisure and leggings — but jegging and stretch denim styles occupying the in-between have started to fall to the wayside.  The world is in the midst of a “denim Renaissance,” says Marie Pearson, senior vice president of denim at Madewell, who added she’s never seen so many different types of fits and shapes selling.     Additional Resources:  The Style That Finally Dethroned Skinny Jeans Why Skinny Jeans Will Never Die Fashion Drives New Denim Momentum     Join BoF Professional today with our exclusive podcast listener discount of 25% off an annual membership, follow the link here and enter the coupon code ‘debrief’ at checkout.  Want more from The Business of Fashion? Subscribe to our daily newsletter here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On the heels of releasing the second, expanded edition of The BoF Sustainability Index — which assesses companies’ progress toward ambitious 2030 goals across categories such as emissions and worker’s rights — Kent and Diana Lee, director of research and analysis at BoF Insights, join Imran Amed, BoF’s founder and editor-in-chief to unpack their findings, answer questions and lay out what needs to happen next.  Key Insights: Progress on sustainability has been slow. But, a few shifts are coming that may push fashion forward — including EU regulation aimed at the textile industry, and emergence of new models like resale and rental.  Plenty of companies have set ambitious sustainability goals. What is important now is that they move beyond target setting to real action.  Given that most brands don’t own their own factories, to make real progress, companies have to take charge of their whole value chains, not just their own supply chains.  While growing revenue and sales are often at odds with promoting less waste and consumption, there are ways to generate financial gain through reuse, especially as new technologies emerge and fashion moves to be more about community and less about peddling things.  Though it can’t wait for full transparency to act, fashion needs better data to understand where opportunities for improvement are. Additional Resources: For more BoF sustainability coverage, sign up now for our new Weekly Sustainability Briefing by Sarah Kent. Widespread Inaction on Sustainability Eclipses Progress at Fashion’s Biggest Companies: Efforts to transform the fashion industry in line with global ambitions to curb climate change and establish more responsible business practices by 2030 have yet to gain sufficient momentum, The BoF Sustainability Index 2022 finds To subscribe to the BoF Podcast, please follow this link. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

At the BoF Professional Summit, viral TikTok creators Nic Kaufmann and Wisdom Kaye explained what drives success on the platform, while communications executive Christopher Bugg and talent agent Pranav Mandavia discussed the critical elements of a compelling TikTok strategy for brands.Background: TikTok has become one of the world’s largest and buzziest social media platforms, with over a billion active monthly users. But while fashion brands are eager to experiment with the platform, they’re still figuring out what strategies work best to effectively engage creators like Nic Kaufmann and Wisdom Kaye, who took the stage at last month’s BoF Professional Summit alongside Christopher Bugg, communication director of Prada Group and Pranav Mandavia, a talent agent from United Talent Agency and BoF senior editorial associate Alexandra Mondalek.  Successful campaigns on TikTok tend to cast a wide net, allowing creators to do what they want with a hashtag or product. Both Kaye and Kaufmann underscored the need for brands to relinquish creative control to creators to yield the best results. For creators, “the key to sustained viral success as a creator is “differentiation [of your content], as well as being a multifaceted creative,” according to Kaye. “What defines success on TikTok is the requirement for authenticity,” Kaufmann said, explaining how his best videos — that is, those that have attracted the most viewers — are the result of brand collaborations in which he was given a wide berth to style, produce and direct his content, free of interference.  Meanwhile, for brands, “understanding that TikTok creators are multi-hyphenates” is the key to getting the best out of partnerships,” according to Mandavia. “When a brand partners with a TikTok creator, they need to remember that they’re essentially hiring a cameraman, a stylist, a model, all in one — we cover every single aspect of that,” said Kaye, a content creator with over eight million followers, who has partnered with brands such as Dior, Zegna and Fendi.  Key Insights:Between them, viral content creators Nic Kaufmann and Wisdom Kaye have a collective 26 million followers on TikTok and have partnered with brands such as Dior, Prada, Ralph Lauren and Hugo Boss. For brands, relinquishing creative control to creators will yield authentic content and drive organic engagement, as seen with Prada’s bucket hat challenge.Brands looking to partner with talent on the platform must understand that TikTok creators are multi-hyphenates — their roles encompass styling, modelling and production. Additional Resources:Catch up on the BoF Professional Summit: New Frontiers in Fashion and Technology. All sessions are now available to watch on demand, exclusively for BoF Professional All-Access members. The Complete Guide to Influencer Marketing — Download the Case Study: As the creator space has matured, brands must be thoughtful about crafting a strategy that leverages influencer marketing’s full power, considering everything from talent scouting to the effectiveness of metrics. To subscribe to the BoF Podcast, please follow this link. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Imaginary Ventures’ Natalie Massenet, and Natasha Franck, founder of digital ID-maker Eon join BoF technology correspondent Marc Bain to discuss Eon, how the technology works and highlight the opportunities digital IDs could create for fashion. Each interaction a brand has with a consumer typically ends when a product is sold. Digital IDs have the potential to extend that exchange, integrating digital initiatives with products’ physical lives. A a flock of start-ups and fashion power brokers want every item of clothing, watch or handbag to have a digital twin, meaning, QR code-enabled garments that lead to a website packed with information such as an item’s material breakdown or suggestions on how to style it. It's a concept that is well-established in the automobile industry and a few other sectors, but has yet to gain traction in fashion. Proponents believe it could unlock enormous potential for consumers and brands.  “It's moving from this very transactional relationship that brands have with customers into this service-based continuous relationship between brands and customers,” said Natasha Franck, founder and chief executive of Imaginary Ventures-backed digital ID-maker Eon at BoF’s Technology Summit. Key Insights: Eon makes digital twins of physical products in the cloud based on information embedded in items using a NFC chip, RFID tag or QR code for partners including H&M, Gabriela Hearst and Zalando.  Massenet compares Eon’s work to building railroads at the beginning of the industrial revolution. The tracks are still being laid, but she says digital IDs have the potential to drive more connections and commerce.  Digital IDs represent a first step toward connecting consumers with web3 initiatives like the metaverse, could enable more seamless reselling and re-ordering as well as allow brands and influencers to collect royalties on sales. Additional Resources: The Year Ahead: What Product Passports Will Do for Brands: Brands are adopting new technologies that store and share product information to improve authentication, provide transparency and boost consumer trust. However, for “product passports” to truly gain traction, businesses must coalesce around common standards and engage with pilot projects at scale. What Digital IDs Can Do for Fashion: Proponents of the effort to give every item its own digital identity say they’ll unlock numerous benefits for brands and shoppers alike. But for these IDs to work it will require overcoming some big obstacles first. Is Fashion Ready to Put Its Supply Chain on the Blockchain?: H&M and Kering are among the fashion players that have recently launched pilot programmes to trace their supply chains using blockchain technology. Join BoF Professional today using the link here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

BoF’s Tamison O’Connor explains how the fashion industry is betting on resortwear as consumers return to their pre-pandemic lifestyles and travel rebounds.  Background:  Every spring, top fashion clients, influencers and insiders are whisked away to lush destinations like Monte Carlo and Capri to indulge in fabulous dinners and cocktail parties — and sneak a peek at brands’ resort collections. Resortwear, which began as a way for luxury houses to cater to wealthy, travelling clients halfway through the main season, now represents so much more as a meaningful driver of sales for retailers.    “It's really attractive for the true luxury customer who sees these items as a fun way to accessorise a holiday, but it's also an entry point for more aspirational and younger consumers,” said luxury correspondent Tamison O’Connor.   Key Insights:  As consumers start travelling and treating themselves again, luxury is betting big on vacation dressing.  Resortwear stands apart with more casual designs, lighter fabrics and lower prices. Brands aren’t just using these collections to attract travellers and true luxury consumers, but also to snag wealthy domestic clients and appeal to aspirational buyers. Retailers are picking up on opportunities to engage wealthy consumers by building buzz with events and activations surrounding resortwear online and in stores. Big brands are opening more stores and pop-up markets in vacation towns.  Luxury doesn’t expect growth in the segment to slow, even amid global economic turbulence, travel restrictions in China and skyrocketing inflation.   Additional Resources:  Luxury Seizes the Vacation Dressing Boom  Loewe's Brand Within a Brand: Is This the New Way to Do Diffusion?  How Fashion Is Targeting the Travel Rebound      Join BoF Professional today with our exclusive podcast listener discount of 25% off an annual membership, follow the link here and enter the coupon code ‘debrief’ at checkout.  Want more from The Business of Fashion? Subscribe to our daily newsletter here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

To mark Mental Health Awareness Month, Intimacy expert and podcast host Lila lays out a formula for creating intimacy to combat loneliness.   “We are simultaneously the most connected and the loneliest we have ever been,” said intimacy expert Lila at BoF VOICES 2021, just before the Omicron wave extended further restrictions and social distancing amid the pandemic.    Indeed, social distancing caused a complete breakdown in contact among family, friends, and entire communities. But the epidemic of loneliness predates the Covid-19 crisis, and has only worsened since the pandemic began   On this week’s episode of The BoF Podcast Lila explains why intimacy is the cure for loneliness, and lays out a formula for creating authentic connections. To subscribe to the BoF Podcast, please follow this link. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

BoF’s Imran Amed quizzes Amy Odell on how she went about biographing the fashion media icon, and the surprising things she learned on the way.    Background:  Anna Wintour is arguably the most recognisable name in fashion media. In her new biography of Wintour author Amy Odell sets out to paint a nuanced and meticulously researched picture of Wintour’s life based on hundreds of interviews and sweeping archival research.  This week on The BoF Podcast, Odell joins BoF’s Imran Amed to talk about the process of biographing the complicated fashion titan, and provides some insight as to what she learned about Wintour’s life and career, as well as what the future holds for Vogue in a post-Anna Wintour era.    Key Insights:  Even amid a number of industry shifts, including the decline of print media, Wintour has maintained her power in part because of the strong network of people — in fashion and beyond — who value her advice and her ability to bridge the  business and creative sides of fashion. Former colleagues and friends  have described Wintour as future-focused and hungry; she hasn’t stopped working because she enjoys the work.  Whoever succeeds Wintour as editor-in-chief will inherit lots of sway that comes with the role. Odell theorises that a Vogue veteran will be tapped next as has always been the case in the past.    Additional Resources:  What Anna Wintour’s Big Promotion Means for Condé Nast: As the publisher focuses on returning to profitability, a new unified content strategy under Anna Wintour, more powerful at the publisher than ever, aims to make its strategy more efficient and intertwined. Org Chart: Vogue’s New Global Editorial Structure: The heavyweight international Vogue editors who once filled the front rows at Paris Fashion Week were gone this season, a stark sign of the restructuring that has consolidated power in the hands of global editor Anna Wintour and her regional deputies.   Join BoF Professional today using the link here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Benoit Pagotto from RTFKT Studios discusses how fashion brands should focus on community, incentivize engagement with NFTs, and embrace web3 technologies. He shares insights on Nike's acquisition of RTFKT and the launch of virtual Nike Dunk sneakers. Pagotto emphasizes the shift from 'consumer' to empowered community members defining a brand's value in the web3 era.

Richard Christiansen pursued a career in fashion as an escape from his upbringing in rural Australia, where his parents worked as beekeepers and sugar cane farmers. In 2005, he founded global creative agency Chandelier Creative, which worked  with clients like Hermès, Cartier and Calvin Klein. But when the pandemic hit, everything spun out: work evaporated, he lost his New York office and was forced to let some employees go.    Even amid those challenges, new opportunities emerged. Christiansen ended up revamping a dilapidated Los Angeles garden and found himself embedded in the local farming community. Soon, these new connections, with everyone from wine makers to olive growers, led to the creation of Flamingo Estate, a brand which generated about $6 million in sales in 2021 and has developed over 150 products, such as olive oils, vinegars, candles and soaps.   This week on the BoF Podcast, Christiansen talks about creativity and resilience and how the two helped him build Flamingo Estate.    “Spending my whole career trying to get excited about make believe and luxury goods, It’s funny that the thing I love the most was right under my nose the whole time,” Christiansen said last year at BoF VOICES. His dream is to support more farms and businesses to move to regenerative agricultural practices.    “To me, that would be a fantasy that it’s really worth fighting for,” he said. To subscribe to the BoF Podcast, please follow this link.   Follow The Debrief wherever you listen to podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.