The Business of Fashion Podcast

• What Happens When Women Lead

  Collectively, Clare Waight Keller and Maria Cornejo have over two decades of experience in the fashion industry. Waight Keller’s impressive career includes roles at Givenchy, Chloé and Gucci — and today, she serves as creative director at Uniqlo. Cornejo’s New York–based label, founded nearly three decades ago, counts Michelle Obama and Christy Turlington Burns among its most devoted fans.From deeply entrenched gender biases to the fear of returning to work after giving birth, women face a number of systemic barriers to reaching senior leadership positions in the fashion industry, insiders say. Today, some women designers have found success launching their own labels — and when they do land leadership roles at major houses, often make it a priority to create opportunities for other women, which remain few and far between.At the VOICES 10th anniversary, Waight Keller and Cornejo speak with senior correspondent Sheena Butler-Young about what it’s like to work in an industry where women are the muses and chief customers, but the top commercial and creative roles are dominated by men. Key Insights: Clare Waight Keller says that the inequalities between men and women in fashion are driven in part by the narrative that “men are often seen as the implementers of big change, and women of stability, and so with stability we’re often also cornered into a commercial sense of aesthetic.” Both Waight Keller and Cornejo push back against this notion, saying that women aren’t less creative but simply more considerate of how real women want to dress.Maria Cornejo feels that “there’s a big disconnect in fashion… from what's instagrammable and what is actual reality … all the women I know who have independent businesses… we’re making clothes that women wear.” Both designers say they have encountered inequities as women in fashion, prompting Waight Keller to intentionally assemble an all-women team at Uniqlo. “Women add so much richness into the conversation of clothing, we offer a completely different perspective which is equally powerful and equally relevant,” she says.Additional Resources:BoF VOICES 2025: Finding Connection in Turbulent TimesClare Waight Keller | BoF 500Maria Cornejo | BoF 500 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Can Luxury Brands Rebuild Trust With Customers?

  Instead of his usual place in the host’s seat, BoF founder and CEO Imran Amed appears this week as a guest in an interview with Jonathan Wingfield, editor-in-chief of System Magazine, alongside Luca Solca, senior analyst of global luxury goods at Bernstein — as featured in the second issue of System Collections.Recorded in late October, their discussion maps a luxury market defined by expectation swings, tighter cost control and headline creative resets, with pricing and value now at the centre of the consumer equation. Amed and Solca examine how luxury groups are refocusing, why design-led and more accessibly priced players are gaining ground, and the conditions required for a genuine comeback at the top end.“Everyone seems to be fascinated with the ultra-wealthy spending, exorbitant amounts of money, but they are not the majority of the market — they are a portion at most,” says Solca.Amed agrees. “Nobody out there really thinks any of these prices are justified,” he says. “One of the big conundrums facing the industry is, how do they restructure that pricing pyramid? They can’t just reduce prices on the existing products that are in their core collection because that’s almost an admission of having broken that ceiling down.”Key Insights:After years of price hikes, the industry hasn’t just met its price ceiling — it “broke through that ceiling, smashed it to bits,” argues Amed. The core dilemma now is rebuilding the pricing pyramid without publicly walking back on prices. “I just think some of the executives in the industry are just completely out of touch with how the average customer feels. That’s not just aspirational middle-class customers, that’s also the ultra wealthy customers. Nobody out there really thinks any of these prices are justified,” says Amed.Solca warns that chasing the top end customer cannot be the only approach for brands. “Everyone seems to be fascinated with the ultra-wealthy spending exorbitant amounts of money, but...they are not the majority of the market. They are a portion at the most,” says Solca.However, price inflation at the very top has created space just below what’s considered traditional luxury for design-led brands with sharper value. “It’s opened up a really interesting opportunity for smaller brands that are highly creative,” Amed says. He points to labels “just below luxury and just above US contemporary,” where distinct product and accessible pricing meet demand for uniqueness.For Amed and Solca, the formula for success is for brands to bridge their DNA with the cultural zeitgeist and deliver real value to customers. Chasing trends that deny what a house stands for won’t work, like “Gucci trying to look quiet is like a zebra camouflaging as a lion,” says Solca. Amed adds the customer value test in “the relationship between what a customer pays and the perceived value of what they get in return.” If brands fail that test, “they’ll be less and less a part of that overall mix of what customers spend their money on.”Additional Resources:Jonathan Wingfield | BoF 500The Debrief | 5 Big Questions About LuxuryPrada’s Versace Acquisition Closes, Now the Real Work Begins Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• 5 Big Questions About Luxury

  Luxury’s most eventful year in some time is closing with a bang. From Prada’s Versace acquisition to Matthieu Blazy’s debut Chanel Métiers d’Art collection, seismic industry developments are landing on an almost daily basis.In this episode of The Debrief, senior correspondent Sheena Butler-Young and executive editor Brian Baskin are joined by BoF’s Luxury editor Robert Williams, who unpacks all of the industry’s most pertinent news, including the strategic implications of A$AP Rocky’s partnership with Chanel, the rise of the beaten up handbag, and the future of luxury in 2026.Key Insights: The luxury market’s forecast is cautiously optimistic, relying heavily on Chinese consumers and designer-led resets to revive the industry. Brands also need to grapple with justifying value after aggressive price increases in recent years. “Pricing’s certainly going to be an issue and it’s going to be a big issue in the US, which is a really key market for maintaining the brand’s top line,” Williams said.With Prada’s acquisition of Versace closing this week, it remains unclear as to whether the brand will continue with Dario Vitale’s new approach to Versace, or steer towards a more classic, glossy aesthetic. “[Versace] has gone through a pretty radical shift over the past couple of months and whether or not [Prada’s] going to want to continue with that is the biggest most urgent decision, and for them to clarify that for the market,” Williams said.Luxury dining is becoming increasingly popular across the world, but can luxury chains like Langosteria remain cool as they expand? “Fashion once upon a time was all made by your local tailor, your local couturier, and once they decided they could scale taste, that was more desirable than just having something that was more small-scale … In food it seems like it’s kind of the opposite,” Williams said.Originally inspired by Jane Birkin and Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, beaten up bags are everywhere in luxury fashion today. “There’s something about the fact that, no matter how much you wear out that bag and trash it, it’s still not going to break and fall apart. I think it just makes it a really cool style gesture. It shows you’re not someone who just bought into it yesterday,” Williams said.Additional Resources:Prada’s Versace Acquisition Closes, Now the Real Work BeginsHow Beat-Up Bags Became a Luxury Status SymbolBreaking Down Chanel’s A$AP Rocky Partnership Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• An Act of Love: Securing Franca Sozzani’s Legacy

  Francesco Carrozzini grew up inside the rarefied world of Vogue Italia — not just observing it, but living it. As the son of Franca Sozzani, the magazine’s legendary editor-in-chief, fashion wasn’t just part of his surroundings, it was a language he was exposed to everyday.He became a photographer and filmmaker, but it was only later that he turned the camera towards the most personal and complicated subject in his life: his relationship with his mother. The documentary Franca: Chaos and Creation premiered in Venice just before her passing in 2016 following a battle with lung cancer. “When I asked her to take a look at the first cut of the film, she said, ‘This is the most mediocre thing I've ever seen. Do yourself a favor and find a point of view.’ That opened my eyes on the importance of always trying to find a point of view,” Carrozzini recalls. “In a regular relationship between mother and son, that might have been excruciating. In ours, it wasn't, because we treated each other like friends.”Since Franca’s passing, Carrozzini has been working to transform memory into meaning. He co-founded the Franca Fund for Preventive Genomics — an initiative advancing genomic screening to prevent the disease that took his mother’s life. BoF founder and CEO Imran Amed met Carrozzini in Doha, Qatar, where last weekend he hosted the fund’s first-ever gala and they spoke about what it means to honour someone not by preserving their legacy, but by evolving it.Key Insights: Growing up inside Vogue Italia shaped Carrozzini's eye and his expectations of 'normal'. He recalls going to the offices, and making his own magazines. "This was a time before computers so they were cutting up pictures and there was spray glue. [...] That's how magazines were made. I would go and do the same,” he says. "That was my special big extended family, because my mother's job was her life." Beyond the film itself, Carrozzini shared that it was the end-of-life collaboration that mattered the most. “The actual big stories were those last months of our relationship, finishing the film and then screening it in Venice,” he says. “All of a sudden the lights turn on and everyone's crying because some people know, some people don't, but we look at each other and we're like, ‘This is sort of like our last big moment together.’”Carrozzini clearly distinguishes tribute from true legacy. “Memory and legacy often get confused. Just remembering someone feels like you're carrying their legacy, but it's not. I really wanted something meaningful, as an act of love, taking something personal and making it collective.” That impulse led Carrozzini to genomics research with Harvard geneticist Dr Robert Green, backing pioneering newborn-genome studies and accelerating grants. Additional Resources:Fashion Trust Arabia Names Prize Winners in Qatar | BoF Franca Sozzani, 1950 - 2016 | BoF Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Is This the Year Discount Mania Finally Ends?

  As the holiday shopping season approaches, consumer sentiment is slumping, yet spending is bifurcated – the top end keeps buying while the bottom 80 percent is more cautious. With Black Friday looming, brands are recalibrating promotions around value, desirability and hero products rather than blanket discounts. In luxury, upheaval at several department stores has created white space for rivals to woo high-spending clients through aggressive clienteling and tighter, faster vendor partnerships. In this episode of The Debrief, hosts Brian Baskin and Sheena Butler-Young speak with BoF reporters Cat Chen and Malique Morris about how brands are planning the season.Key Insights: Consumer spending hasn’t vanished, but it’s shifted toward shoppers who still feel flush. As Chen notes, “people are not really feeling rosy about the state of the economy, but the irony is that they’re still spending money.” Since Covid, “spending has been driven by the wealthier segment,” and it’s clear that “what consumers want is value… they want to get a good deal, but they don’t want to buy a cheap product.” For retailers, that means “more sophistication around price architecture” and using AI “to price products perfectly.”“Black Friday–Cyber Monday is not a fix for a mediocre year,” says Morris. Instead, winners are “prioritising desirability over discounts,” introducing “new products specifically for this time” and pushing “hero best-selling product.” The old playbook is out, and “slapping a 50% off everything discount on Instagram is not gonna cut it,” says Morris. In the “age of curation,” even deal-hunters expect editing, storytelling and reasons to stop scrolling.Morris argues that even in a discount-driven moment like Black Friday, shoppers still want offers to feel edited and intentional, and brands are responding with more curated tactics rather than blanket markdowns. “We’re in the age of curation and so even when people are expecting deals, they don’t want to feel like they’re just getting slopped,” says Morris. Tariffs and margin pressure mean many brands cannot afford a race to the bottom, pushing them to plan inventory more carefully, introduce new products specifically for this period and reserve discounts for hero items.Chen explains that this holiday season is especially high stakes for luxury multi-brand retailers because a few big players are stumbling – and everyone else is trying to capitalise. “Saks and SSENSE and Luisa Via Roma are three players that have faced pretty bad challenges this year,” she says. “They have opened up white space for their competitors on healthier financial footing to come in and basically eat their lunch and acquire their customers, acquire their sales.” The response is an aggressive push on clienteling and talent: retailers are not just targeting wealthy individuals, but also the salespeople and stylists who already manage those relationships.Additional Resources:Brands Try to Get the Tone Right for Holiday 2025 | BoF Inside Luxury Retailers’ Bare-Knuckle Fight to Win the Holidays | BoF Black Friday Beauty Goes Beyond the Discount | BoF Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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