The Business of Fashion Podcast

For many shoppers, fashion is now experienced primarily through a screen — discovered on social media, watched on runway livestreams and purchased from a product photo. Fashion critic Eugene Rabkin argues in his new book that this shift has left the industry prioritising a garment's image over the garment itself, hollowing out creativity and quality along the way. At the same time, as AI generated imagery floods the feed, a counter-movement is emerging: luxury brands are commissioning painters and illustrators, hosting phone-free dinners and building hands-on experiences designed to pull customers back into the physical world.

In this episode, senior correspondent Sheena Butler-Young is joined by Diana Pearl, BoF's US Editor, and Marc Bain, BoF's UK Editor and technology correspondent, to discuss whether this renewed emphasis on human creativity and craft is a meaningful response to fashion's image-first culture — or just the next trend cycle.

Key Insights:
As consumers increasingly interact with clothing through small screens rather than in person, Bain explains that subtler markers of quality have lost their power to communicate value. "As we interact more with clothing through imagery rather than the physical garments themselves, the logo becomes more important... Now the logo is just the easiest thing to identify. And that has become the most important thing on a garment."
Drawing on a concept borrowed from French theory, Bain says the gap between a product's online image and its physical reality has left some shoppers disillusioned — a dynamic he says extends well beyond fast fashion. "It doesn't just apply to Shein..Eugene Rabkin's argument is that it's come to apply to a whole lot of fashion, including luxury fashion... There's been this decline in quality over the years."
Bain says and Rabkin are careful not to cast technology as the villain, noting that AI's impact depends entirely on how brands choose to use it. " Technology is amoral. It's a tool..And it's really how it's used that is more important."
Pearl points to a wave of luxury brands hiring painters, illustrators and sculptors as a direct response to overly polished, perfected imagery that technology has made ubiquitous — a trend only accelerated by AI. e. "Being perfect and having just this picture-perfect imagery is no longer seen as aspirational. It's actually seen as, ‘slop’ … having that human-made art... is what feels now aspirational and special."
As brands pull back from influencer-driven content blitzes in favour of intimate, phone-free events, Pearl says the playbook for measuring success has changed. . "It's all representative of this bigger shift that we're seeing away from volume and just get as much content as possible... towards the depth of connection."

Additional Resources:
Is Fashion Stuck in Its Simulation Era? | BoF
As AI Floods the Feed, Fashion Marketers Tap Artists | BoF
Logging Off Is the New Luxury. How Can Brands Adapt? | BoF

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In the summer of 2007, BoF founder Imran Amed landed in Tokyo for the first time. A young American writer named W. David Marx took him on a menswear tour of the city's back streets of Shibuya and Harajuku. That trip would eventually lead Marx to become BoF's first contributor — apart from Amed himself.

Nearly 20 years on, Marx is still in Tokyo, watching a city that experienced three of fashion's biggest shifts before anywhere else: luxury as a middle-class product, the rise — and now retreat — of streetwear and menswear as a global obsession. Marx is the author of three books on Japanese and global culture. The first, “Ametora,” is about how Japan absorbed, and then improved, American style. The most recent, “Blank Space,” is a cultural history of the 21st century, arguing that something has gone missing from the way we make culture today.

Amed sat down with Marx in Tokyo to discuss all of this and more in what is a fascinating conversation about the state of global culture and global fashion today, and how Japan’s place in it has changed.

Key Insights:
Japan taught the luxury industry that luxury could be a mass-market business. Marx traces Japan's luxury boom back to the 1970s, when newly wealthy Japanese travellers began bringing home souvenirs from Paris. He argues Japan is where brands like Louis Vuitton first learned that "luxury could become a middle class market," building duty-free stores in airports rather than relying solely on flagship boutiques for old-money customers — a model since exported across the world.

Tokyo Was the Origin Point of the Global Streetwear Boom: Marx lays out how Bathing Ape's underground Tokyo stores became a phenomenon so outsized it reshaped how the rest of the world thought about streetwear. He recalls a Stüssy veteran saying, "Bathing Ape blew streetwear out of the water."

Luxury's growth problem is structural, not cyclical. Marx argues luxury goods are fundamentally different from something like an iPhone, because "for every additional handbag you sell to a new consumer, you do decrease the value of the handbag that you sold originally." That tension between scarcity and growth, he says, “is at the root of the industry's current slump”.

Culture Has a ‘Blank Space’ Where Invention Used to Be: Marx’s central argument is that value shifts, not a lack of talent, have pushed culture away from art for art's sake. He points to hip-hop and graffiti as movements built by outsiders pursuing invention for its own sake, contrasting that with today's incentives: "If you are making things to get attention, if you're making things to make money, it's just very unlikely that your strategy's going to be to be the most inventive as it could possibly be."

Three Books W. David Marx Recommends
Fashion is Spinach, by Elizabeth Hawes
On Human Finery, by Quentin Bell
For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign, by Jean Baudrillard

Additional Resources:
Streetwear’s First IPO, Explained | BoF
How Big Luxury Is Rewiring for the Future | BoF
How BAPE Kept Its Cool for Decades | BoF

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Beauty has long been one of the industry’s most reliable growth engines — fragrance boomed post-pandemic, prestige beauty held up better than other categories, and value-driven brands like e.l.f. proved that sharp pricing and marketing could keep consumers spending. But a slowdown that began last year and has only become more pronounced since has challenged that thinking.

In this episode, senior correspondent Sheena Butler-Young is joined by BoF senior beauty correspondent Daniela Morosini to unpack the first half's earnings across the beauty conglomerates — from Estée Lauder and Shiseido to L'Oréal, Beiersdorf and E.l.f. — and identify what’s still driving growth and what’s stalling, as well as what investors will be watching for next.

Key Insights:

Selective Spending, Not Shrinking Wallets: Consumers haven't stopped buying beauty — they've become pickier about where they spend and what they’re purchasing. "People are just getting a little bit more selective," said Morosini. Shopping itself is shifting, too: "Maybe it's not always Sephora and Ulta. Maybe it's TikTok Shop."

Skincare Results, Injectables and the Price-Value Equation: Affordable, results-driven skincare brands are outperforming, while medical aesthetics are surging in parallel. Morosini points specifically to "the derm-backed skincare brands or the dermatological brands, the more affordable ones like CeraVe and La Roche-Posay, alongside the growing pull of the lasers and the injectables."
Hair's Unexpected Boom: Hair has emerged as one of the biggest bright spots this earnings season, driven equally by innovation and a cultural shift around hair loss. Morosini notes, "hair loss has just become so much more of a hot topic and I think a lot of stigma has been removed," while also crediting brands like K18 and Olaplex that “have increased what we expect hair products to do for us."

Estée Lauder's Momentum Question: Lauder posted a 17 percent stock jump on its first results under new leadership, but Morosini cautions the win may be borrowed. "The question is how much has Estée Lauder improved its brand's desirability and how much has it benefited from a rising tide," she says, adding that stripped of Amazon Prime Day effects, US growth was closer to "about two percent."

The Danger of the One-Hero Brand: From E.l.f.'s reliance on Rhode to Beiersdorf's dependence on Nivea, this earnings season exposed how a single hero product can mask underlying weakness. "When that's basically all concentrated around one brand, that makes investors a little bit nervous," Morosini says, noting the read-through for M&A: “At a certain point you have to buy the growth."

Additional Resources:
Beauty Is Growing. Not Everyone’s Benefitting. | BoF
Can Estée Lauder Turn a Moment Into Momentum? | BoF
Beauty Is Betting on Fragrance. Why Isn’t Shiseido? | BoF

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Earlier this month, A Ma Maniére — one part of James Whitner's The Whitaker Group — was named one of BoF's Best Fashion Stores in the World, our definitive global list of retailers with the most distinctive edits and experiences.

Whitner has spent twenty years building an independent retail business that operates more than 20 stores across 16 US cities — many of them in Black neighbourhoods that mainstream retail had overlooked — based on the feeling he got hanging out in barbershops and sneaker spots growing up in Pittsburgh.

“The best things happen in the barbershop — the most interesting conversations on the block are in the barbershop,” Whitner says. “And once I got some money, going shopping … [was about] how you were serviced, the relationships you had with those people and how good you felt entering and exiting the space. The social currency tied to looking good was about feeling good.”

Back in February 2025, James spoke to me about the discipline behind the business, how he's built brand partnerships that actually last, and why he believes community development, not just retail, is where he needs to head next.

Key Insights:

Learning to Operate Before Chasing Scale: Whitner is candid about the unglamorous groundwork behind Whitaker Group's growth — five years learning to operate, and then another five building brand partnerships. "You have got to understand how to keep costs down, how to build an infrastructure while keeping costs down," he says.

Brand Partners Who Play the Long Game: Whitner is blunt about who he'll work with. "If you want to work with brands who want to be for everybody, that means you're for nobody," he says. On scaling a business built on cultural credibility: "This is an industry that you can scale, but it's not built for scale."

Nike and the Trust in Storytelling: Whitner credits an authentic relationship with Nike for the Whitaker Group's most successful drops. "Nike loves us because we're uniquely us for them... nothing scales better than a great story," he says, previewing a tighter, more intentional distribution strategy.

From Retail to Real Community Development: Community development has become central to Whitner's business, with completed projects including Social Status Detroit — a $5.5 million redevelopment on the city's east side — and The Collective on Tuckaseegee, a ten-space retail compound in Charlotte. "At some point, realising that we needed to be the developer that helped shape the community," he says. “It's more important for us to drive connections and just try to help people who want to help people."

Additional Resources:
The Best Fashion Stores in the World | BoF
The Independent Retailer Built on Prioritising Black Buying Power | BoF
The Whitaker Group Expands With New Women-Centric Retailer Jaide | BoF

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For a long time, upcycling sat on the fringes of the fashion industry, a tactic used primarily by small independent designers, niche sustainability labels and in one-off capsule collections. That's changing. At Paris Couture Week this spring, Swiss designer Kevin Germanier closed the season with a collection made entirely from excess inventory across seven LVMH-owned brands. Coach is turning used denim into new bags, and Uniqlo is remaking unsellable and used garments under its RE label.

In this episode, senior correspondent Sheena Butler-Young speaks to senior editorial associate Shayeza Walid to explore why upcycling brands are increasingly marketing upcycling through creativity and individuality rather than sustainability alone, and what's really driving the shift from new EU regulations to a changing consumer mindset.

Key Insights:
Selling Creativity, Not Just Conscience: Walid points to a fundamental shift in how upcycling is marketed. It's no longer framed primarily as an environmental fix, but as a source of design distinction and story. "It felt like the term was becoming ubiquitous across marketing," she says, noting that upcycling has moved from something "relegated to a certain type of consumer or a certain type of brand" to being claimed by some of the industry's biggest names.
Regulation Is Quietly Doing the Heavy Lifting: Walid connects the timing of the boom to the EU's ban on the destruction of unsold goods, which came into force in July. She notes that Kevin Germanier's LVMH-backed couture collection was deliberately built from unsold stock, not deadstock fabric — a distinction he emphasised on stage. "It also means that they'll have to figure out sustainable and approved ways for using their excess stock, and upcycling is one of the methods for that."
Deadstock vs. Textile Waste — Not the Same Debate: Walid unpacks a live tension among practitioners: using deadstock fabric is being challenged by some critics as not addressing overproduction, since it still puts commercial value on excess production. "With deadstock, it's the same as using new fabric in the sense that they're rolls of fabric... that's not necessarily what upcycling is about," while brands like E.L.V. Denim work directly with used, discarded garments instead.
The Infrastructure Is Finally Catching Up: Sorting, collecting and sourcing — the industry's biggest upcycling bottleneck — is improving. Walid cites organisations like Fashion for Good working on AI-assisted sorting, and platforms such as Nona Source and The Materialist connecting brands to deadstock fabric. "There's a greater design interest in it now more than there's ever been," she says of the shift she's tracked through conversations with suppliers.
The Consumer Wants Range, Not a Label: Walid argues the audience for upcycled product has broadened well beyond the sustainability shopper. "You could have an upcycled Miu Miu product today, and maybe that says that you like high fashion... but also you think it's cool that your product is from an upcycled material," she says, describing a consumer who wants variety in their closet rather than to be defined by one aesthetic or ethic.
Scale Remains the Unsolved Problem: Despite the momentum, there are limits. Sizing and colour inconsistency frustrate wholesale buyers, the process is inherently slower than working with virgin material, and export bans on used textiles in countries like Bangladesh complicate sourcing. She also flags that upcyclers in the Global South — in markets like Kantamanto in Ghana — have done this sort of work for generations but remain largely excluded from the value chain brands are now building.

Additional Resources:
Why So Many Fashion Brands Are Upcycling | BoF
Why Fashion’s Economics Work Against Sustainable Brands | BoF
Can the EU Ban on Destroying Unsold Goods Actually Work? | BoF

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