Author: VOG

Welcome to the Scoop: a weekly email series in which I quiz fashion insiders on the stories of the week. This will be a way for the Vogue Business community to synthesize and reflect on the latest headlines and get a little inside scoop every Friday.This week’s guest is Paul Smith’s Foundation director, Martha Mosse. The foundation was set up in 2020 to help build business resilience for emerging creatives, including but not limited to fashion designers. As part of that, in 2024, they launched a four-and-a-half-year initiative specifically for fashion designers called the Fashion Residency, which offers studio spaces…

The multi-brand stores are airy and filled with natural light, often with tall windows that look onto greenery outside and decorated with small bonsai trees or large rocks. There are art installations, too: currently, an electrokinetic sculpture of tiny metal rods by Venezuelan artist Elias Crespin hangs from the ceiling of its Hannam outpost. “It’s about exploring the beauty that surrounds us in many different areas, not just fashion,” says Lee.Last year, Amomento opened its first brand store outside South Korea, in Omotesando, a fashionable, tree-lined shopping district in Tokyo. It’s “going very well”, according to Lee; the brand had…

The brand avoided falling into the trap of burning cash on Facebook ads for cheap, only to get cornered as prices rose. “Over the last few years, we’ve pivoted to say, well, we can’t just be somewhat profitable. We need to be more profitable to continue investing in growth. I don’t want to raise more money right now,” Zuccarini says. “It’s tempting when everyone else is ‘growth at all costs’. We’re very thoughtful about what we need to do to achieve the level of expansion that we want on our terms.”Ad spend is tightly managed, and as performance marketing becomes…

When Fashion Trust launched in the United States in 2022, ahead of 2023’s inaugural ceremony, the environment for independent designers was tough. An economic crisis was driving costs through the roof, hitting small brands especially hard. The first crop of Fashion Trust US (FTUS) finalists expressed their need for more tangible means of support.Four years on, building — and maintaining — a brand is tougher still. Since 2023, multibrand online retailers Matches, Farfetch and Ssense have all filed for bankruptcy. Just one year after Saks acquired Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman at the end of 2024, forming Saks Global, the group…

All three creators voice consciousness against overconsumption, and not wanting to promote bad habits or unrealistic ideals; however, there are times when, for one reason or another, items do get returned after filming. Returns are a seemingly unavoidable byproduct of the very format that could be tempting, or easy, for others to take advantage of. On the other hand, luxury retailers like Net-a-Porter and TheRealReal often have excessive return policies as a safeguard against “staging” scams and “serial” return behavior.TheRealReal, which is a popular subject of try-on fashion hauls, describes excessive returns on its website as returning 30 or more…

It’s a rare occurrence to be interviewing your former boss, but this is what I found myself doing back in February, a few days ahead of London Fashion Week and in the offices of the British Fashion Council (BFC). Before taking the helm as BFC chief executive in April 2025, Laura Weir served as the executive creative director of Selfridges, where I also worked. And before that, Weir was a journalist and editor — most notably having led the London Evening Standard’s weekly supplement, ES Magazine, between 2015 and 2020.Weir brings that editorial lens to everything she does. At Selfridges, she…

Sciuto felt this full-tilt foray into China was an absolute priority. Margiela only entered the country in earnest in 2019, he says. Though, the brand has since opened 26 stores there, with its market penetration, in the most part, defined by its perfume business. And it is this relative lack of development in China that has driven the decision to focus on the region.Last year, Margiela’s total revenues grew 9%, of which only an (undisclosed) small proportion stemmed from the Chinese market. “This is why, for us, it is still an opportunity. Even if right now, the US, Europe, and…

Industrie Africa, the continent’s leading online multi-brand fashion retailer, is closing down just five years after launch, highlighting the volatility of the current e-commerce model on a regional and global scale.On April 30, the e-commerce platform founded by Tanzanian fashion entrepreneur Nisha Kanabar will transition into Industrie Africa Plus (IA+), an advisory firm that will collaborate with luxury hotels, cultural institutions, and premium retail hubs to showcase fashion from the continent in new physical locations, such as concept stores, retail activations, and pop-ups. For the advisory’s first project, it launched a concept boutique on Bawe Island in Zanzibar, Tanzania, in…

Welcome to the Scoop: a weekly email series in which I quiz fashion insiders on the stories of the week. This will be a way for the Vogue Business community to synthesize and reflect on the latest headlines and get a little inside scoop every Friday.This week’s Scoop is a bit of an Easter special, in that my guest is less of a business person and more of an artist — though one can’t really exist without the other nowadays. Matt Starr is a filmmaker, poet and the co-founder of Dream Baby Press, which you might originally know from the Love/Hate…

Shanghai Fashion Week FW26 closed on a symbolic high note with Glenn Martens’ runway show for Maison Margiela, which was a moment that underscored both the designer’s growing resonance in China and the broader transformation underway across the market.This season unfolded against a still-fragile macroeconomic backdrop, yet the mood on the ground felt notably more constructive. Rather than a reactive rebound, Shanghai is entering a phase of consolidation — defined by sharper creative direction, more disciplined buying behavior, and a clearer articulation of local design identity.That shift is also visible in the ecosystem surrounding the shows. A larger cohort of…