The Business of Fashion Podcast

Editor-at-large, Tim Blanks and editor-in-chief, Imran Amed are back from the Haute Couture Spring/Summer 2026 shows where the biggest moments of the week lived up to all the anticipation.Jonathan Anderson’s debut at Dior reframed couture as a six-month creative lab — a backbone that can feed the entire maison with technique, emotion and ideas. At Chanel, Matthieu Blazy stripped away the obvious codes to put construction, movement and the body first — the kind of couture you only fully understand up close. There was also Valentino’s “panorama” staging and Schiaparelli’s turbocharged push for spectacle — all playing out against a tougher luxury backdrop this year’“Something that struck me about this season is the energy that everybody was evoking,” Blanks says. “The words people used to describe their feelings — it was Jonathan talking about having a lot of anger he needed to get out, or Mathieu talking about nature, or Alessandro talking about fantasy and fashion, and then Daniel Roseberry talking about turbocharging Schiaparelli.”Key Insights: Departing from the codes of previous designers, Blanks was struck by how much of Anderson’s own sensibility made it onto the Dior runway, from Magdalene Odundo’s vase forms to historic textiles and witty, collectible accessories. “I felt like there was real synthesis … I think he showed some of the most beautiful things he’s ever shown, and some of the most joyful clothes.” Within 90 minutes of the show, the full collection was installed at Villa Dior for clients to handle and order, underscoring Anderson’s structured, end-to-end planning. As Amed notes, “He’s operational … he thinks about the way it all works together. That’s quite rare in a designer.”Mathieu Blazy pared Chanel back to construction and movement, dialling down overt couture signatures to foreground cut and daytime dressing. The result read as a wardrobe built on the body rather than surface effect, with exquisitely fine details – budgies perched on pocket anchors, bird-on-mushroom motifs, slingbacks with tiny avian heels – that reward close looking. The Grand Palais spectacle amplified the tension between intimacy and scale, but as Blanks notes, “it does underscore in a very graphic way that couture is the ultimate private pleasure.”Alessandro Michele’s Specula Mundi for Valentino revived the 19th-century Kaiserpanorama to slow the audience’s gaze and amplify detail. Reading from Alessandro’s letter, Blanks highlights: “We continue to work within this space not to fill an absence, but to preserve it. Only by accepting such a void, with no intention to fill it, can Valentino’s legacy remain what it has always been.” Another line reads: “There is no fantasy without beauty, and there is no freedom without beauty and fantasy.”A common thread this season is that designers are newly humbled by the expertise of the craft. “Everybody was talking about their ateliers, all these ready-to-wear designers being confronted with what a couture atelier is capable of,” Blanks says. After visiting Valentino, he notes: “There were five separate ateliers working on the clothes… I can’t thread a needle, but I got kind of palpitations walking through – it’s just so incredible, that kind of artistry.” Anderson himself calls Dior’s workrooms a “mini city” of ultra-specialists.Additional Resources:Couture Has Entered a New Era. What Does It Mean? | BoF Blazy’s Chanel Couture Was a Slam Dunk! | BoF Exclusive: How Jonathan Anderson Is ‘Rebooting’ Couture at Dior | BoF The Beating Heart of Haute Couture | BoF 

Across fashion, companies that once embraced remote or hybrid work are increasingly pushing employees back into the office, with some moving towards four or even five days a week. At the same time, competition for jobs, particularly at entry level, is intensifying amid layoffs, slower industry growth and the rise of AI. On this episode of The Debrief, senior correspondent Sheena Butler-Young and executive editor Brian Baskin are joined by BoF Careers’ Sophie Soar to unpack why the power balance has shifted back to employers, how different generations feel about being in the office, and what practical routes still exist for early-career talent trying to get a foot in the door. Key Insights:During COVID, companies found people could be “just as, and in some cases, more productive” at home – but that was when productivity meant output. Now, Butler-Young argues that employers are widening the definition: “Productivity should also include collaboration, morale, people being together… face time with leaders.” And with the labour market tightening following economic pressure, layoffs and AI taking some jobs, leaders have more leverage to enforce it. “In 2025 and now into 2026, it’s looking more like an employer’s market,” Butler-Young says.While some executives argue that in-person work improves collaboration and reduces errors, Butler-Young warns that motivations are not always benign. She points to a growing sense that mandates can act as a quiet form of workforce reduction. “One way you can get people to effectively fire themselves is to make them come to the office,” she says, noting that some companies may prefer attrition to public layoffs. She also cautions against copy-and-paste policies. “If you’re seeing productivity high and morale high at one to two days a week, you need to ask yourself, what am I hoping to accomplish if I move it to four or five?” Despite a difficult labour market, Soar stresses that fashion companies have not stopped hiring altogether. Instead, they are being more selective, particularly when it comes to junior roles that can be automated. "There definitely is a squeeze on the ones that are considered more rote work,” she says. “Those are the roles you could potentially automate or replace with AI.” However, some employers are still investing in early-career talent. “Those who are still hiring for entry-level roles recognise the benefit that that talent can bring,” Soar explains, pointing to diversity, long-term retention and fresh perspectives.Additional Resources:Fashion Is Done With Remote Work | BoF How to Get Ahead in Fashion’s Stagnant Job Market | BoFHow Fashion Brands Are Making Remote Work Permanent | BoF 

On Monday Jan. 26, Jonathan Anderson debuted his first couture collection for Christian Dior.In December, BoF founder Imran Amed travelled to Paris to meet with Anderson to get a first look, and to take stock of his journey thus far. Anderson is unveiling his first Dior couture collection while orchestrating a sprawling calendar across men’s, women’s and accessories. He explains how couture went from “irrelevant” in his mind to an emotional, craft-first engine for the house — and why he’s reshaping how Dior makes, shows and shares couture with clients and the public.“Couture is an endangered craft," he says. In this conversation, Anderson reflects on why couture exists, how endangered craft can be protected and the very human reality of leading a global fashion machine.Key Insights: Anderson admits that a year ago he never saw himself in couture. Now he describes fittings as an education within a living French institution. “I joke every time I’m in a fitting, I feel like I am doing a PhD in couture,” he says. Seeing the atelier at work reframed it entirely: “Couture is kind of like an endangered craft. What Dior is doing is protecting this as a national symbol of making,” says Anderson. “Once I got into that mind space, then I was able to work out, okay, well, what do I want from it? Or what is new for Dior in a landscape that’s had some of my heroes in it.”Anderson is reframing couture as an experience to be studied, not just scrolled — extending the 15-minute show into a three-part journey. Act I: the runway. Act II: intimate cabinet presentations at Villa Dior, where clients handle every component with the atelier team on hand, followed by days of selling. Act III: a free public exhibition that places the new collection in dialogue with Christian Dior and artist Magdalene Ndondue — an invitation to witness technique, context and provenance up close. As he puts it: “A photograph will never tell you that a dress took 4,000 hours. ... I’m inviting people to see something physical, because it may change your mind — it might change your opinion of it.”Before unveiling his first Dior women’s collection, Anderson invited John Galliano to privately view the work — a full-circle moment with a hero who helped define Dior in the public imagination. Galliano arrived with two bunches of wild cyclamen tied with black ribbon, a gesture that became talismanic for the Spring/Summer 2026 show’s pink-and-black mood and forest-floor set details. More than the symbolism, it was Galliano’s counsel that stuck: “The more that you love Dior, the brand, the more it will give you back,” recounts Anderson. Anderson argues for real transparency around the people off-camera who turn an idea into a product and a show into a business. He highlights merchandisers, window teams, logistics, finance and operations — all of whom translate creative vision into reality. “It may not be creative, but they work in a creative business; they have to try to work out how to make a designer’s dream come true. If we want to pull the veil down, we have to do it in all categories. A fashion show is not just me; I am the conductor,” he says. “I have a responsibility to the hundreds, thousands of people who work here to make sure it works. It’s a balancing act.”Anderson wants each show to have its own energy while still speaking a shared Dior language. “I will build a vibe or a kind of culture around a brand, but then… the energy of each show has to be a different energy.” He adds: “They all also have to be linked. There is a language that is built.” Working with Dior chief executive Delphine Arnault, Anderson is trying to “put down concrete blocks”. Some will “end up being sand and then you’ll have to rebuild it,” he says.Additional Resources:Jonathan Anderson | BoF 500Clothes for Life or Clothes as Costume?Louis Vuitton, Dior and What Luxury Means Today

Sneakers have driven growth for the sportswear industry for decades, in recent years accelerated by the pandemic and work-from-home culture. However, a recent Bank of America report sparked debate by suggesting the sneaker boom may be nearing an end, including a rare double downgrade of Adidas. On The Debrief, sports correspondent Mike Sykes joins hosts Brian Baskin and Sheena Butler-Young to examine whether slowing growth marks a genuine reversal of casual dressing, or a return to more sustainable demand shaped by price sensitivity, comfort and experimentation rather than hype. Key Insights:The Bank of America report struck a nerve because it questioned a decades-long growth story about the sneaker industry. “This one was the first one in a while that seemed to spell a bit of doom and gloom for the industry,” Sykes says. “Everyone has been on pins and needles for the last couple of years as Nike has been in its downturn… and Bank of America is saying, yeah, it’s over.” The double downgrade of Adidas amplified that anxiety. “If Adidas is getting the double downgrade here, what does that mean for everyone else?” Sykes asks. The implication was not just brand-specific weakness, but the possibility that the sneaker cycle itself had run out of road.However, slower growth does not necessarily mean sneakers are ‘over’. Instead, the data may reflect a market adjusting after years of abnormal acceleration. “Everyone else seems to feel like things are going at least okay,” Sykes says. “Maybe not perfect, but nothing is perfect in this economy right now.” He notes that among the analysts and industry figures he spoke to, there was little appetite for declaring the trend finished. “People are still into sneakers,” says Sykes. Sneakers and sportswear have lasted because they are easy to understand, easy to buy and relatively affordable compared to many fashion categories. “Sneakers are generally just accessible for people. It’s an easy trend to follow,” Sykes says. “You can easily spot which ones are cool and it’s very easy to hop on the bandwagon.” That accessibility matters even more in a strained economy. As Sykes highlights, with consumers weighing “do I wanna buy this next outfit or do I want to buy groceries,” sportswear’s practicality continues to anchor demand.For the sneaker cycle to truly turn, something has to replace it – either a new hit product within the category or a different footwear trend entirely. Right now, what is emerging is not a shift toward formality, but a widening of what casual footwear looks like, as displayed by the popularity of Nike’s ReactX Rejuven8 recovery clog. “Speaking to people who have wanted this shoe, it’s mostly about the comfort,” Sykes explains. “As far as ending the casualisation trend, this is not a shoe that would do that. This is a shoe that would entrench it.”Additional Resources:Have Sneaker Sales Finally Peaked? | BoF The Sneakers That Mattered Most in 2025 | BoFSneaker Resale Isn’t the Business It Used To Be | BoF  

Willa Bennett is the editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan and Seventeen — two of the most influential legacy media brands now being reimagined for a social-first, creator-driven era.Bennett grew up in Los Angeles, trained as a ballerina and studied journalism at Sarah Lawrence before building a standout career at Bustle Digital Group, GQ and Highsnobiety. Along the way, she’s helped redefine how youth culture is covered — not by chasing everything, but by sharpening point of view, taste and authority.“This generation has access to everything,” says Bennett, “which is exactly why there’s a real hunger for curation, real taste and a voice you can trust.”This week on The BoF Podcast, Imran Amed, founder and CEO of The Business of Fashion, sat down with Bennett to talk about what young audiences actually want from media today, why curation matters more than ever and how she’s refocusing Cosmopolitan and Seventeen — creatively, culturally and commercially — for the next generation.Key Insights: Bennett cold emailed her way into Seventeen, two weeks after graduating in 2013. Spotting social’s potential before it was prized, she asked: “Can I post the cover on Instagram?” and was told, “Yeah, sure – no one’s going to see it.” Later stints at Bustle and GQ sharpened her point of view, with a breakthrough at Highsnobiety. Putting Billie Eilish on her first cover of Highsnobiety “was so intuitive,” she says, and it was a signal she could match youth culture with editorial authority.Bennett argues the job of legacy media is selection, not saturation. “This generation has access to so much online, but that also means that there is a real hunger for curation – and real curation, not performative curation,” she says, adding that Cosmopolitan’s remit is to be “a place that young people can trust when it comes to love and relationships.”After an era of chasing scale, Bennett sees a return to meaningful, well-made stories: “We’re seeing real editorials again,” she says, while also noting Cosmopolitan’s social focus: “We’re up 500 percent year over year just in views on Instagram … That prioritisation of social media has been really important.”Bennett’s advice to new journalists is to publish everywhere while honing a distinctive point of view. “Use all the platforms now … get your voice out and really cultivate it,” she says. “As we figure out what this new era is, I think it’ll be even more important to have a very distinct point of view.”Additional Resources:Willa Bennett | BoF 500 | The People Shaping the Global Fashion Industry Inside Willa Bennett’s First Issue of ‘Cosmopolitan’ | BoF 

Saks’ bankruptcy was widely expected, yet still felt like a shock to the fashion system. The department store giant’s Chapter 11 filing outlines $1.75 billion in restructuring finance and $3.4 billion owed to as many as 25,000 creditors – including $136 million to Chanel alone. Who will get paid, and what Saks looks like at the other end of the bankruptcy process, is an open question. Former Neiman Marcus chief Geoffroy van Raemdonck will lead the reset. As BoF’s retail editor Cat Chen puts it, Saks will need to “shrink in order to grow,” curb discounting, and rebuild trust through clienteling and service.Key Insights:Missed vendor payments undermined confidence in Saks Global soon after it acquired Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman. “Even after Saks created these new payment terms, they weren’t able to stick to their instalments,” Chen says. Labels “stopped shipping to Saks entirely,” creating “a death spiral where Saks wasn’t getting good inventory, and this hurt their ability to attract customers,” and sales slid further.When Saks Global acquired Neiman Marcus, both companies were extremely levered going in, with savings being swallowed by interest. The plan pitched $500 million in cost savings, but Saks Global took on more debt — $2.2 billion in bonds. As Chen explains, with margins in multi-brand retail already slim, “they were ill-fated because… a chunk of whatever sales or savings they were able to generate would be going toward interest payments.” As Saks has 10,000 to 25,000 creditors, owed $3.4 billion, bankruptcy court will approve a list of critical vendors that are essential to Saks’s business. While conglomerates will cope, “it's really the smaller independent brands that might be owed less money, but the amount that they're owed are just so much more critical to their business operations. These are the players that are the most vulnerable right now,” Chen warns — and it’s not just brands. A model shared she’s “owed $46,000...and can’t pay rent now.”Now, Saks must reset its business. Van Raemdonck “took Neiman Marcus in and out of bankruptcy,” yet Chen is blunt about the reality of the situation: “Saks Global will have to shrink in order to grow.” That means closing stores, stabilising cash flow and getting ruthless about discounting. From there, Chen says Saks has to compete on experience, delivering the best customer service and catering to their VICs. Additional Resources:Saks Global Files for Bankruptcy After Monthslong Hunt for Cash | BoF Chanel, Gucci and Capri Holdings: The Brands Topping Saks’ Creditor List | BoF

2026 opens with real movement in beauty deals. As first reported by The Business of Beauty, Estée Lauder is exploring a packaged sale of Too Faced, Smashbox and Dr. Jart to free up cash and refocus the portfolio. Who’s next? Colour fatigue is depressing makeup valuations, while fragrance, bodycare and haircare are drawing the most credible buyer interest, particularly from beauty conglomerates.  Executive editor of The Business of Beauty, Priya Rao joins Brian Baskin and Sheena Butler-Young to unpack what this year of beauty deals has to offer. Key Insights:With Estée Lauder exploring a bundled sale of Too Faced, Smashbox and Dr. Jart, this portfolio reset signals a valuation reality check. The goal is to free up cash and refocus on culturally relevant, digital-native brands like The Ordinary and Le Labo. As Rao notes, “Deciem sells more skincare products than all of Estée Lauder’s other skincare brands combined,” and “Le Labo is also continuing to be on fire, even though Santal 33 has been around for 15 years.” Colour fatigue is depressing valuations in makeup. Over the past few years, artistry and colour brands have gone to market to find a buyer, but quickly found a landscape already flooded with similar offerings. “There were so many colour brands on the market. People were waiting for the next great one, so they weren’t willing to make a bet on any of these brands until the full slate was out,” says Rao. The result was some colour brands being left in the market, on and off, for over a year. She explains: “It’s kind of like buying a house – why am I going to buy this house at a premium when I could be buying at a discount?”Fragrance, meanwhile, remains a booming, high-margin lane. “All these other beauty businesses – hair care, body and fragrance – are more incremental to a strategic,” says Rao. While private equity is trying across the board, Rao advises that “if you want L’Oréal, LVMH or Estée Lauder, you have to be in categories that add incremental value, rather than ones they’re still trying to figure out.”Haircare offers the clearest near-term upside for acquirers. “Amika has the number one or number two dry shampoo at Sephora,” and its move into Ulta taps “a huge haircare business because of their back bar program”, says Rao. In mass hair care, Not Your Mother’s, which has had its longevity questioned in the past, shows durability and runway. Focused on styling and texture, Rao notes that it “hasn’t even played with shampoo and conditioner yet – in mass hair care, that’s where you play to make the big bucks.”Additional Resources:Exclusive: Estée Lauder Companies Has Put Three Brands Up for Sale | BoF Prestige Hair Care’s Shampoo Problem | BoF Why Fragrance Is the Latest Red Carpet Accessory | BoF 

What began as scrappy self-publishing has become a finely tuned industry machine. Influencing is now big business. Four of the industry’s most influential creators came together at BoF VOICES 2025 to take a hard look at what influencing has become — and where it should go in the future. Susanna Lau opens the conversation by ditching the earnest tropes and asking a harder question: how can creators keep their integrity as agencies, briefs and budgets multiply?Bryan Yambao reflects on the pre-iPhone “wild west” — scanning magazines, posting affiliate links from his bedroom in Manila, and the shock of realising that the people he wrote about were suddenly reading him.Camille Charrière charts the shift from “do your thing” freedom to 30-page briefs and layered gatekeepers, arguing that creators must push back to preserve the audience trust that made them valuable in the first place.And through the lens of satire, Gstaad Guy challenges brands to confront what their communities are already saying — before they say it out loud.Together, they interrogate luxury’s malaise — and the need to recalibrate the industry around craft, community and credibility.Key Insights: Even with industry recognition, Yambao still feels like an outsider and uses that distance to stay candid. “I still feel like I’m an outsider,” he says, recalling the early days: “There was no roadmap. All I knew was that I had a voice.” The monetisation that followed, from early affiliate cheques to today’s industrialised commerce media, only reinforced his responsibility. “Since I kind of have a seat [at] the table, I want to say things with meaning and hold people to a higher standard,” he says.Charrière argues creators aren’t brand billboards — they’re people with convictions, and audience trust depends on that. After a year of speaking out, she recalls a major house “got me on a call with seven lawyers saying that now in my contract it was going to be written that I had to be neutral politically because I’d gone to a protest.” She continues, “I said, absolutely not.I’m not a brand. I’m an ambassador for you, but we are people, we are not brands … my online self is an extension of my offline self.”Gstaad Guy argues that credibility now depends on pre-empting audience scepticism. “Consumers are getting smarter, products are getting dumber,” he says. The remedy is to meet somewhere in between and let creators use their own language to test narratives honestly: “Have someone like [me] say something first so you can tell the story … the language of comedy and satire allows for that to be more digestible,” he says.Additional Resources:Susanna Lau, Bryan Yambao, Camille Charrière and Gstaad Guy: Twenty Years of the Influencer Economy in Fashion | BoF Gstaad Guy | BoF 500 | The People Shaping the Global Fashion Industry Camille Charrière | BoF 500 | The People Shaping the Global Fashion Industry Bryan Grey Yambao | BoF 500 | The People Shaping the Global Fashion Industry