The Business of Fashion Podcast

• Kenya’s Katungulu Mwendwa on Building a Made-in-Africa Brand

  Born and raised in Nairobi, Katungulu Mwendwa grew up cradled in the warmth and unpredictability of the bustling Kenyan capital and the hands-on craft traditions learned from her family — basketry, pottery, leather and beadwork. A childhood fascination with cherished garments led her to pursue fashion studies in the UK, giving her both a technical grounding and a view of the global system.Back home, she gave herself a double challenge: build a contemporary brand with deep cultural roots and make as much as possible on the African continent, working with local artisans and resource“The global fashion world doesn't operate in isolation. You have Paris Fashion Week, you have New York — why can't Nairobi be one of those places?” asks Mwendwa. “I'm not trying to run for president, but I'm now a fashion designer. So how can I have an impact on my environment? How can I be the change I want to see?” This week on the BoF Podcast, Imran Amed sits down with new BoF 500 member Katungulu Mwendwa to understand why making locally matters, how to design “everyday armour” people will keep for years, and what global buyers must change to unlock the potential of African fashion.Key Insights: For Mwendwa, producing locally isn’t a marketing line, it’s the whole point: to grow skills and value chains at home. That means insisting on using local resources, bringing artisans into contemporary products and accepting the grind of building capacity. “It was the most important thing … How can I be the change I want to see? I’m so adamant about working with local resources, because if we don’t, why would anything change?” she says. The answer is to work with local resources and revive knowledge that’s slipping from view: “A lot of our history is not easy to access … Some practices are forgotten or not celebrated as much, and I use my work to reimagine or re-establish those traditional practices.”Mwendwa designs garments meant to outlast trends. “I want to meet people [who] five years later, even ten years later, and hear they still have it in their closet and they’re hoping to pass it on because it’s so valuable, it’s well looked after,” she says. The goal is emotional durability: “This is a piece I’m going to treasure … I’ll wear [it] for special occasions, or because I just feel special today.” Building a fashion brand from Nairobi and starting in an ecosystem with little ready-made support means learning by doing. “You literally do everything — I was the tailor, pattern cutter, sales and comms,” Mwendwa explains. She also tapped into incubators and grants, selling through Nairobi retailers, lodges and select international stockists, but her message to global buyers is pragmatic and pointed: “Change the way you work … There’s a consumer who wants what’s on the continent — they just don’t know it yet. We’re not talking big batches — stop with, ‘We need 250 pieces.’ Offer a unique capsule batch for a period of time and see what that does.” Additional Resources: Katungulu Mwendwa | BoF 500 | The People Shaping the Global Fashion Industry The Emerging Designers Pushing Fashion Forward | BoF Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Can a Shop Truly Be a “Third Place”?

  Retailers are racing to repackage shops as “third places” — low-pressure spaces to linger between home and work — as post-pandemic footfall softens and social isolation rises. Sociologist Ray Oldenburg’s original idea centres on civic, low-barrier hubs like cafés and libraries rather than commercial destinations, yet brands are now adding seating, listening bars and in-store cafés to nudge dwell time, loyalty and favourable word of mouth. The best versions use subtle amenities that keep people comfortably in the space, but the sales impact is yet to be proven.In this episode, BoF retail editor Cat Chen joins The Debrief to unpack why scale matters, how to measure success beyond sales, and where third-place experiments risk sliding from community into pure branding.Key Insights: In their efforts to create third places, retailers are utilising food and beverage as subtle amenities that keep people lingering: it’s ‘not about creating food and beverage as a destination, but about simply getting people to spend more time in the store,’” says Chen. Done well, that “authentically [creates] a community,” and “when you have this really positive experience in their ecosystem, you will feel very positively about the brand.” Still, she cautions: “The idea of a third place as a way to drive sales for retailers is an unproven theory.”“Community building is authentic and not a branding exercise,” Chen says. The worst versions of third places feel “branded to death” and designed for photos more than social connection. “At the end of the day, it's not about the social experience of being there, it's about taking a photo of it and being able to consume this luxury brand. That's akin to the first step of being able to afford their $3,000 handbag.” It all goes back to commerce and “is very much the opposite of what Oldenburg meant.” Practical amenities in stores build goodwill. Western outfitter Tecovas’ “radical hospitality” includes a lounge and a free bar inside its store, Sephora succeeds with a hands-off approach when customers are trying samples, and Apple allows patrons to charge their phone or use the bathroom — a small service that leaves a positive halo. As Chen puts it, food and beverage in a third place should be low commitment, cheap and have a low barrier to entry. “There have been a lot of thinkpieces about private members’ clubs popping up in New York and how this is tied to this desire for third places. Private member clubs are not third places, they are the antithesis of third places." Additional Resources:Can a Store Ever Be a ‘Third Place?’ | BoF How Brands Make Community More Than a Buzzword | BoF Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Tim Blanks and Imran Amed Reflect on the Biggest Fashion Month Ever

  We’ve just returned from what was undoubtedly the biggest fashion month ever, a high-stakes season that saw new creative directors debut their visions for fresh creative leadership under the spotlight at Chanel, Dior, Jil Sander, Loewe, Jean Paul Gaultier — and many more.So what to make of it all? Much of it was about expectations. For some designers like Jonathan Anderson at Dior and Pierpoalo Piccioli at Balenciaga, expectations were running high making it almost impossible to please the industry and online critics. Others like Dario Vitale at Versace and Jack McCullough and Lazaro Hernandez at Loewe had been written off by some observers even before they showed — leaving them the opportunity to surprise, delight and overdeliver. Only one show seems to have unanimously impressed all around: Matthieu Blazy’s big debut at Chanel, the last big show at Paris Fashion Week.“It was the one show that incontrovertibly did what it had to do. Not just for the brand, but for the business, for the industry,” says Blanks. “And I think people could leave Paris on the second to last day on an upbeat note. Earlier in the week, some of the most anticipated shows, like Jonathan at Dior or Pierpaolo at Balenciaga had been incredibly polarizing, and I think there seems to be relatively universal agreement on Chanel.” This week on the BoF podcast, Imran Amed sits down with Tim Blanks to unpack the highlights of Fashion Month, the designer versus house debate, and why time and empathy matter this season. Key Insights: According to Blanks, Blazy “managed to do a Chanel that reflected [Coco Chanel], but also reflected his feelings about what she had done with his vocabulary, which is very craft-oriented, very experimental.” Crucially, Blazy struck a balance “between what Chanel was and what Chanel needs to be,” he adds. At Dior, Anderson opened with an audacious collaboration with filmmaker journalist Adam Curtis on a short film that blended fashion with slasher horror. “It was sort of an act of contextualisation for what he intends for the house,” says Blanks. Amed also welcomes Anderson’s measured exploration of the luxury house. “The Loewe that he built was built over time. It took 10 years. And so I think we should expect the same with him at Dior,” he says. “While maybe not everything in my view worked in that Dior show, I think that is the point because you learn from that.”For Duran Lantink, compatibility at Jean Paul Gaultier was never the issue. “His attitude to everything is so similar to Gaultier’s attitude. The sort of provocation, the sex games,” says Blanks. Yet he was left wanting more. “I wanted so much more from that show. And in the end, I did not feel that there was enough Gaultier or enough Duran.” Amid a debut-heavy season dominated by men, Sarah Burton’s second outing at Givenchy reads as a quiet counterpoint and a reminder of female authorship at the highest level. “She’s really got the imp of the perverse in her,” says Blanks, before praising a show that was “extremely elegant … I thought I could see women wanting those clothes. The way she elongated things was so flattering and simple.” He adds, “I really would love to see that collection take off.”Additional Resources:The Top 10 Shows of the SeasonDid Fashion’s Season of Change Actually Change Anything? Yes and No Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Sports x Fashion: Who’s Really Winning?

  From team-branded fashion shows to tunnel-walk capsules and luxury watch deals, sport and fashion are converging at speed. The NFL has rolled smaller licensing tie-ups into marquee partnerships, while the WNBA is emerging as a fertile ground for inventive brand-player collaborations. But alongside the growth is bloat: logo-slap collections, clearance-rack remnants and fuzzy KPIs.Senior correspondent Sheena Butler-Young and executive editor Brian Baskin are joined by BoF sports correspondent Mike Sykes to map the deals that resonate and the ones that miss — and how success of these partnerships are being measured beyond the momentary halo.Key Insights: The WNBA is a collaboration engine because players are the drivers, not passengers. “I think the WNBA right now is a breeding ground for some of these deals in part because the players are eager to find these other opportunities to spread their portfolio,” Sykes says. That unlocks new formats: partnerships “not just between teams and brands or the league and brands, but players themselves and the brands [that] manifest in really cool and unique ways.”Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) has supercharged women’s sports, and fashion is part of the bargaining. Sheena points out the 2021 shift when “college athletes could not monetise their name, image, or likeness” and then stars like “Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark were becoming brands in their own right.” That changes how teams and leagues engage players: “fashion deals can be a bargaining chip on both sides of that equation.”As sports and fashion collaborations become more ubiquitous, authentic propositions are needed to cut through the noise. As Butler-Young puts it, the best examples “take the collections seriously. They treat it like a real fashion product. ‘Anything will do’ – people see through that.” Sykes agrees: “To work with players, you have to work with teams that really want to do things the right way.” It has to make sense for the consumer, and when it doesn’t, the audience calls it out. “The Chelsea and OVO collection was kind of a logo-slap. Even the fans were like, ‘This isn’t it.’” For some brands and athletes involved in these collaborations, partnerships are judged on reach and relevance rather than immediate revenue as the key marker of success. Sykes points to the NFL x Veronica Beard blazers: “There’s still some of that product left and it’s 75 to 80 per cent discounted … you have to look at that as a failure.” Yet the league “takes a holistic view,” he says: even if one capsule doesn’t sell through, lessons on “what you produce, how much, where you produce it, who your core audiences are” feed the next partnership.Additional Resources:Sports and Fashion Are Tighter Than Ever. But Who’s Really Winning? Has Fashion’s Convergence With Sports Gone Too Far? How WNBA Players Are Using Merch to Underscore Their Value Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Kiki McDonough on Changing How Women Buy and Wear Jewellery

  Raised in a family of antique jewellery specialists, Kiki McDonough launched her namesake jewellery brand in 1985 with accessible pricing and pieces women could wear anywhere. Her early crystal-and-bow designs ended up in the V&A, while her growing client list came to include members of the royal family, and her brand has helped normalise women buying jewellery for themselves. At first, “a man would come in and buy a piece of jewellery for his wife,” she says. Soon the couple arrived together and she would choose. Today, the behaviour is normalised. “Now it’s just, ‘I need a pair of earrings for my daughter’s wedding’… I think it’s all changed.” This week on The BoF Podcast, McDonough joins BoF’s founder and CEO Imran Amed, to reflect on her resilience through recessions and a pandemic, the enduring appeal of coloured gemstones, and why jewellery’s longevity and the everyday joy it can inspire.Key Insights: When McDonough launched in 1985 she set out a clear price ladder that brought fine jewellery into everyday life. “I thought the prices should be under £1,000 … £95 to £950 and that’s where I started.” Her first pencil sketch became a heart crystal design that a Birmingham maker took “a punt” on and they’re now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The moment matched a broader cultural shift. As she puts it, the 1980s had “an atmosphere … full of can-do” and women were “open to wearing something else.”She helped move jewellery from being gifted to being self purchased, a shift accelerated by social change and London’s Big Bang. At first, “a man would come in and buy a piece of jewellery for his wife,” she says. Soon the couple arrived together and she would choose. Today, the behaviour is normalised. “Now it’s just, ‘I need a pair of earrings for my daughter’s wedding’… I think it’s all changed.” McDonough says jewellery outperforms fashion because it carries both longevity and daily joy. Pieces become heirlooms that keep working across generations. “I’ve got lots of women now whose children are wearing the jewellery they bought from me 15 years ago,” she says. Four decades in, resilience and pacing have been McDonough’s strengths. “I’ve [been through] two recessions, a pandemic and 10 prime ministers,” she says, crediting “resilience, a sense of humour and common sense.” She built slowly and on her own terms. “People used to say to me how many shops have you got and I’d say, ‘I’ve got one shop and two children.’” The financial discipline needed for success, McDonough learned early. “Look after the pennies because the pounds look after themselves,” she says. Her advice to founders is to start carefully, test products, preserve cash and keep going. “It’s terribly important not to spend the money immediately … pace yourself,” because momentum that lasts beats scale for scale’s sake, she adds. Her last piece of wisdom? A good brand can outlive its founder. “I don’t believe that anyone is indispensable,” she says. Additional Resources:How Statement Earrings Became Generation Selfie’s Favourite Trend Queen Elizabeth II’s Style Legacy Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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