The Business of Fashion Podcast

• Does Fashion Still Know What Women Want?

  This fashion month, models walked the tightrope between fantasy and function. On the runway, spectacle was dialled up to 100: Alaïa’s armless “straitjacket” dress, Margiela’s metal mouthpieces, and Jean Paul Gaultier’s naked male body prints were among the pieces to spark a wider debate. Some critics have asked what feels like an obvious question: do designers actually understand — or even care — how women dress in their real lives?BoF’s Diana Pearl and Cat Chen join senior editor Sheena Butler-Young to examine why criticism is intensifying now, the role of authorship and how brands can balance showmanship with wearability.Key Insights: Designers face backlash when spectacle eclipses women’s realities. As Pearl observes, “designers weren’t really designing for actual women — or at worst, designing clothes that felt almost disrespectful.” To Pearl, many runway moments “felt either like it was erasing the woman or immobilising them… like fashion is a form of torture.” Even if looks are “dramatized for the runway,” she says, “there’s still a message being sent” that can be interpreted as designers not respecting women. Chen doesn’t see this season as uniquely outrageous in a vacuum, but says context matters. She adds that criticism hits harder now amid other external circumstances, one of which is that many brands are struggling financially. “The fact that these designers had a commercial incentive to be more resonant with consumers and then created these collections that didn't hit at that level, I think that made these collections so much more perceptible to be criticised in this way,” says Chen. Body diversity is the more urgent gap to fix. Pearl says the ultra-thin casting “adds insult to injury… a parade of models that are all extremely thin and… unattainable,” compounding the sense that runways aren’t made with real women in mind. Chen goes further: “the lack of body diversity on the runway is a huge problem,” noting data that shows representation “falling straight down from 2023 to 2025.”Pearl notes perception shifts with who’s in charge: “Women aren’t represented at the top, so it makes us more primed to look at a mouthpiece and feel it’s sexist because it’s coming from a male designer.” Still, she points to shows that balance both: Chanel’s debut “felt very wearable” while staging delivered “otherworldly” theatre, and Khaite’s runways pair mood with pieces that, also, “feel very wearable.” Chen adds that smaller, women-led brands win by staying close to their customer: “It’s really not about spectacle, it’s about being in the same room as their customers.”Additional Resources:Does Fashion Know What Women Want? | BoF Fashion’s Musical Chairs Ends — With Men in Almost Every Seat. | BoF The Emerging Designers Pushing Fashion Forward | BoF Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• 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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