Author: VOG

Fashion’s constant creative director turnover is giving us all whiplash. It seems like there’s a new creative director being hired every week, with four appointments and six exits announced in the past three months alone.This constant changing of the guard is exciting, but also exhausting. And the elephant in the room is still the lack of diversity among new appointments. Across the nine debuts lined up so far for 2025, three are from female designers (Veronica Leoni at Calvin Klein, Sarah Burton at Givenchy and Louise Trotter at Bottega Veneta), and one from a person of colour (Haider Ackermann, who…

As China ushers in the Year of the Snake, the country’s consumer landscape is evolving.During the eight-day Chinese New Year Golden Week (10 to 17 February), domestic tourism spending hit RMB 677 billion ($95 billion), up 7 per cent from last year, according to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. But beyond these figures lies a notable shift — travellers are increasingly favouring historical museums and small towns with rich cultural heritage, reflecting a growing consumer interest in traditional cultural experiences.

One problem with filling the vacuum by breaking stories ahead of time — maybe when you’re assured by a trusted source that a designer is interviewing for a position, or in contract talks but hasn’t yet signed — is that plans go awry. Houses change their minds at the last minute, and so do designers. I still feel grimy after last year hassling the office of a house I was absolutely sure had signed a big-name designer, but which turned out to have shut down negotiations close to the point of agreement over a non-negotiable sticking point. Shamefully, I had…

Over the last few months, we’ve seen Loewe’s creative director Jonathan Anderson choosing between his favourite viral moments, and its artisan Idoia Cuesta constructing a classic Puzzle bag; Fenty Beauty’s IT team getting quizzed on their makeup knowledge; Marc Jacobs showcasing his The Wizard of Oz collab, while clacking his signature XL nails; and Ganni’s marketing team fighting on office chairs over its New Balance collaboration. Every level of a company is now part of the content machine — and audiences can’t seem to get enough.UK-based editorial platform and marketplace SheerLuxe was an early proponent. Launched in 2007, the publication…

Maybe it was the snowstorm, maybe it was the American political situation, or maybe it was the absence of some of the city’s most popular names, but New York Fashion Week came in for some sharp critiques this season. It “limped” along. It was plagued by “sameyness.” It was “mostly ho-hum.” But was it, really? Michael Kors, for his part, has had enough of the city’s inferiority complex. “This is New York,” he said. “Why would you chase Europe? I don’t even mean the runways. I mean the streets. Everywhere you go in the world, people want a sense of…

In this sense, flares may give way for a slimmer silhouette in general. “Just as wide-leg shapes caused straight fit to overtake slim as the top invested denim shape, this season, flares could cause a switch back to slimmer-fitting jeans in 2025,” says Karis Munday, menswear analyst at retail intelligence firm EDITED.According to EDITED research, baggy jeans are still on the up (rising 27 per cent year-on-year) — but growth is slowing considerably. The previous year, baggy jeans were up 150 per cent in menswear. Munday says she has noticed “an uptick in slimmer shapes on the AW25 runway”. This…

Lafayette 148 was founded three decades ago in a factory at 148 Lafayette Street in New York, making women’s wear aimed at what was then called “bridge” — making gently minimalist clothes aimed at working women, priced for those who couldn’t afford true designer labels. One thing that made Lafayette stand out was — and is — its inclusive US sizing from 00 to size 18, with petite and plus sizes as well. Another was that Quinn’s co-founder owned the factory, which also turned out items for Anne Klein, Donna Karan and Ellie Tahari. Lafayette 148 is the rare survivor.…

When Eva Serrano arrived at PVH Corporation in 2023, she was given a mission: bring Calvin Klein back to the runway. She chose to accept.“This is the place Calvin Klein belongs. We have a long history,” says Serrano, the global brand president for Calvin Klein, who spent more than a decade working across Zara and parent company Inditex in Asia prior to joining PVH, where she was recruited by CEO Stefan Larsson. “It was something everyone was waiting for — but we needed to come back at the right moment and give it the right image.”

The dream scenario is for customers to dabble in and across Bode’s ranges, if they’re able. “I love dressing the whole family,” Adams Bode Auijla says. “You see mums and kids coming in, and spouses and boyfriends and husbands and whatever, but that’s the goal: to really flesh out this entire universe and to dress the entire family.”This ties into Adams Bode Auijla’s priority as she approaches a decade of business: to flesh out not only what she believes the brand to be, but also how it’s perceived in the wider fashion landscape.“I love dressing the whole family.”Bode is known…

Fashion’s current cacophony of creative correction has reached this fever pitch as a strategy to galvanise sales during a period of wider economic malaise and global uncertainty. But is “newness” per se really such a hot metric during a slowdown? Luxury is an industry predicated on decadence, a core value, which, however rationalised, already sits uneasily in a moment of broader insecurity.The luxury companies that have negotiated 2024 best are among the most stable in terms of brand identity, ethos and offer: these include Hermès, Brunello Cucinelli and Prada Group. As the founder of one independent fashion house told me…