This Week's Topics:

• Sustainability in Fashion

• Gap makes headlines

• Retail News Round-Up

• New launches, collabs & fundraising

• Fall Fashion Trends

• What else I ❤️️

Sustainability in Fashion

• The biggest news in fashion/retail worth talking about right now is Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard announcing that all profits from the brand will now be put into a trust for the environment. Compare that to funding personal rocket ships.

• Rothy’s launches a recycling program for future credit on new purchases.

• Puma is launching a new sustainable collection made with 20% - 100% recycled materials. Puma aims to use 75% recycled polyester for all of its clothing and accessories by 2025.

This Week's Topics:

• Serving Fashion 🎾

• Sweater of the Season

• Retail News Round-Up

• New launches & collabs

• What else I ❤️️

Serving Fashion 🎾

• Tennis and Pickleball fashion is all the rage. Brands and retailers are picking up on the fitness and leisure trends and going where the customers are.

• Arthur Ashe is Rowing Blazers new tennis line.

• Serena's looks at the US Open.

• And Senior Critic-at-large Robin Givhan talks of Serena's style and creating her space.

• Love Jess Grave's roundup of tennis styles. I took up tennis last fall. Partially for the styles.

• Thingtesting got in on the tennis style round-up game too.

• Vogue's rally of tennis style and history - and why there is a resurgence right now.

This Week's Topics:

• Fall-ing for Fashion

• Yeezy + Gap

• Luxury Fashion as an Investment

• New launches, collabs & investments

• What else I ❤️️

Fall-ing for Fashion

• Let's talk denim! My friend texted me asking if she was okay to still wear skinny jeans. YES! There will always be new denim trends (this is how retailers and brands get us to BUY NEW THINGS) but denim is such a staple you should wear what you are comfortable in. I'll share a ton of denim content here on what direction we are swinging this season.

  • Wide leg and barrel leg are the latest new silhouette. My thoughts here are that if we need to go back to hard pants from soft pants (leggings and sweats) now that we are social again, wide leg and barrel leg are looser and therefore more comfortable. An easy barrel pant to try would be Everlane's, but the true denim popular barrel leg right now is Toteme and B sides.

  • Denim Cargo styles from the Zoe Report

  • Nylon Magazine's denim trend report

  • Vogue's Fashion Editor trends Vogue also had a few articles centered around a denim week theme.

  • I also liked Blogger/Influencer Grace Atwood's accessible approach to fall fashion trends. All about how to make trends work for you

  • Shopbop went hard for denim this week. They launched a Staff Favorites on their Homepage and Trend Look Book/Landing Page and partnered with so many influencers.

    • Bradley Agather's picks

    • Julia Berolzheimer's picks

    • Another influencer & denim & shopbop and another here and another here

    • yeah, that was a big (aka $$) campaign.

• I enjoyed these podcasts about Fall Trends that came out this week - Who What Wear with Hillary Kerr and fall trends with a pop culture and beauty twist from the Breaking Beauty Podcast interviewing People Style & Beauty Director Andrea Lavinthal.

• 2022 statement necklaces look very different than the statement necklaces from 2008. But for jewelry I would personally suggest skipping the statement necklace and going for the luxury look statement necklace I talked about last week influenced by Dorsey (reminder that article from the WSJ here.)

• We need to also talk about the current late summer trend of the white tank top - a classic style that is having a moment again. What is interesting in this conversation is while it is super accessible price point wise, and anyone can find this style, it becomes a much more nuanced conversation around what body types are we highlighting with this style. The white tank top paired with loose fitting jeans is a very "cool girl" style aimed at a specific body type. Even looking at the linked article above, the WSJ didn't show it on an array of body types.

This Week's Topics:

• Hey Retailers, what's the latest news?

• Ironic Boat & Tote

• Preppy Bling

• New launches, collabs & acquisitions

• What else I ❤️️

Hey Retailers, what's the latest news?

• A few executive changes over the summer.

  • Gap's Sonia Syngal stepping down. She has had a long tenure at Gap and most recently as CEO. More from Business of Fashion here.

  • Nieman Marcus Appoints President

• J.Crew's PR machine has been drumming up lots of press and editorial for the brand and pitching their fresh start. This WSJ article has made the rounds. It points out that the brand does 70% of their sales online which makes me think the stores are more like return centers and warehouses.

• Glossier to launch in Sephora stores in 2023. This isn't so surprising after the new CEO was announced.

• Want to know what Ty Haney has been up to? Hear from a serial entrepreneur- she has two new start-ups post Outdoor Voices.

This Week's Topics:

• Abortion & Retail News

• Other Retail News

• New launches & collabs

• What else I ❤️️

Abortion & Retail News

• Tons of examples of retailers stepping up - but is it more than performative? Here are a few examples:

  • Dick's Sporting Goods quickly made this public statement.

  • Plenty of other brands followed, like Frame Denim, Patagonia and Tory Burch.

  • And a Retail Dive roundup here.

• Amy Odell's newsletter Back Row dug a little deeper into the donations and how much companies are really standing behind what they are publicly saying. I've started searching on Open Secret to see where companies and CEO/C Suite are donating their $$.

• We certainly need more brands speaking up - like Claire Vivier.

• And you can wear your feelings - shop with a cause:

  • 1973 merch here, here, here and here.

  • Donations to abortion funds here, here and here.

  • Why more supporters will be looking for green merchandise.

  • And I love these downloadable posters (free)

• Vogue published and held a conversation moderated by Jessica Yellin (a great follow for these trying times) with Gloria Steinem and Meghan Markle.

• There have been a lot of viral social media posts suggesting deleting your period tracking apps. I'm always reminded of this article, posted in 2012 (!! think about how much more we've developed data, analytics and algorithms since then.) Period trackers are not the only online data we should be concerned about.

• Companies are offering to cover travel related abortion expenses for employees and while it could be worth celebrating this, there is so much more to it. A few details - some employers won't cover for unionized workers, contractors, etc. And think about it, if you are seeking an abortion in a state that restricts it, how likely are you to want to share these details with your boss (do you know if your boss will support your personal choice or not) or employer. Also, think of this situation. You are newly pregnant with a history of complications. You live in CA so you are considered "safe" but now you have been asked to travel to Texas for a high profile work conference. Go and you risk having complications but not being able to seek the care you need. Don't go and you risk putting future promotions in jeopardy or being forced to explain to your employer. Jill Filipovic summed this up so well in her newsletter.

• Citigroup's battle with retailers that sell guns is one example of why we need everyone to step up. One corporation or retailer can't enact change on their own. As consumers we can also vote with our purchases.

This Week's Topics:

• Aviator Nation

• Securing the bag(s)

• Rhode not taken

• New launches, collabs & funding

• What else I ❤️️

Aviator Nation

• I knew the brand Aviator Nation (hard to miss their cozy sweatsuits and strong branding) but I guess I didn't know much about the business until I read this article about founder Paige Mycoskie from Forbes.

• What I learned:

  • Her brother is the founder of Toms Shoes, Blake Mycoskie.

  • Paige Mycoskie still owns 100% of the Aviator Nation brand. Instead of taking on investments and raising VC money she took lines of credit from banks and reinvested the revenues to grow the business with complete creative control.

  • All clothing is still made in California where they are based.

  • I love the part in the article where she discusses the pivot they took the day before the pandemic shut down the stores and warehouse. Taking a risk to do a sale (which they rarely do) to sell over $1 million worth of products in one day to generate enough revenue to pay her employees and get a runway of funds.

This Week's Topics:

• C Suite Moves & Corporate News

• Pinterest says YES

• Summer Sandals: Birks vs Crocs

• New launches, collabs & acquisitions

• What else I ❤️️

C Suite Moves & Corporate News

• Emily Weiss steps down as the CEO of Glossier, the beauty company she founded. She will stay on as the Executive Chairwoman. Kyle Leahy, the Chief Commercial Officer, will step into the CEO role. Articles to get the details:

  • Business of Fashion announcement and BoF advice for the new CEO.

  • Emily Weiss' instagram post

• Julie Wainwright, CEO, Board Chair and Co-Founder of The RealReal has stepped down. COO and Co-Founder, Rati Sahi Levesque and CFO Robert Julian will be stepping in as Co Interim CEOs. My initial thought, since the CFO is stepping up for this role, finances are the main reason for this shuffle.

• Stitch Fix lays off 15% of their salaried employees.

• Chanel made some announcements: 1) they will open a retail store solely to focus on VIP customers. Clearly consistent and frequent price increases haven't hurt the luxury handbag business. 2) Chanel beauty sales increased 32% last year and the company believes that DTC could be the majority of the beauty business in a few years.

• Target announced that they will be taking some hits to reduce and right-size their inventory on swings from earlier in the pandemic. It is never good when stores have to cancel inventory. Hit for the stores but a huge hit for the brands who are now faced with where to sell the canceled inventory. Especially orders likely as large as Target places.

This Week's Topics:

• The status of "Trends"

• Resale report

• For the ❤️️ of a White T-shirt

• Water Bottle Status

• New launches, collabs, acquisitions & funding

• What else I ❤️️

The Status of "Trends"

• This article from Vox dives into the drive to name trends and the subculture behind them.

• I also think the ability to create a catchy phrase or term (ex Cottagecore, Normcore) and then create more visibility for your article, content or drive sales with SEO and spin up a whole category or business around it is something too.

• We've seen huge businesses driven off of trends. Examples, New Balance sneakers have certainly seen a rise in sales and the status with terms like "dad sneakers" and "Normcore." Denim needs a new trend every season, and thus we are swinging from Bell Bottoms, to skinny jeans, to low-rise, back to "flares" etc.

• Even food! How about a favorite superfood, Kale. Now the centerpiece of salads and chips, Pizza Hut was once the largest purchaser of kale for a garnish at their salad bars!

This Week's Topics:

• Abercrombie & Fitch - why is it back in the news?

• ThirdLove fell in love with a "younger" brand

• Met Gala - what to look out for

• New launches, collabs, acquisitions & funding

• What else I ❤️️

Abercrombie & Fitch - why is it back in the news?

I'm literally typing this as I watch the new documentary on Netflix, "White Hot: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch."

• So far I'm enjoying the documentary - I mean, they interviewed Robin Givhan, Washington Post senior-critic-at-large. She knows her stuff and I appreciate learning from her.

• This article from InStyle dug into what has changed and why.

  • New CEO, Fran Horowitz (celebrated Fashion Exec including ex Bloomingdale's, my alma mater) took over as CEO in 2017 and has been focused on the brand being more inclusive (sizes now go up to size 16 vs size 10 previously) and trying to show more diversity in the models.

  • In 2020, they launched their own social and racial justice initiative called The Abercrombie Equity Project.

  • Horowitz posted this letter on Instagram as a response to the Netflix documentary.

  • Retail Dive asks the question if A&F has really changed.

• The latest Cut article about what it was like working there - which is heavily discussed and analyzed in the documentary.

• Everyone seems to be loving the denim right now. From flares to Hillary Kerr trying on almost 30 pairs of denim, and this being one of her top 5. The '90s Ultra High Rise Straight Jeans. They have 4.5 out of 5 stars with almost 1400 reviews.

• '90s fashion trends. Certainly having a moment. And the fact that people are returning to stores post pandemic, likely has some nostalgia for the mall crawling moments.

This Week's Topics:

• Sneaker Trends

• Met Gala predictions

• New launches, collabs, acquisitions & funding

• Fashion News

• What else I ❤️️

Sneaker Trends

I noticed a few new sneaker collabs this week, and then kept seeing more sneaker articles. As the category that has grown in % to total in my closet personally, seems I'm not the only one.

• Collabs Sneaking in:

  • Reebok x Maison Margiela

  • Ganni x New Balance (here and here) You can read about it more here from Footwear News along with the green leaf standard focus on sustainability.

  • Dover Street Market x New Balance celebrating 40 years of manufacturing in the UK

  • Veja x Mansur Gavriel (I am personally loving this collab!)

  • Superga x Emily Ratajkowski will pair well with all the Reformation summer dresses.

And a WSJ article that talks about the sneaker collabs and focus on combining polish and comfort.

This Week's Topics:

• Mall brands working on a revival

• Denim Data and Trends

• Shape Wear & Lingerie Stories

• New launches, collabs & acquisitions

• What else I ❤️️ (Oscar favorites edition)

Mall brands working on a revival

• Juicy Couture

  • Scandinavian Fashion "It Girl" brand Ganni is collaborating with Juicy Couture and Fashionista is already calling it the collab most likely to go viral.

  • 13 piece Y2K collection that is live on Ganni's ecomm site and in Juicy Couture stores in the UK.

  • Shop it here

• Banana Republic

  • Is Banana Republic enjoying a Glow Up? It is obvious to customers (and potential customers) that there is a Rebrand going on.

  • New launches! Baby, Athletics and cozy Home products.

• Abercrombie & Fitch

  • Influencers (and here) and fashion insiders are in love with the denim.

  • Refinery29 wondering when did A & F get so good?

  • Abercrombie launches YPB (which stands for Your Personal Best) an activewear line. Very much in line with the anti Just Do It marketing that Outdoor Voices (doing things and a just have fun mantra)

This Week's Topics:

• Spring Fashion Trends

• Athletic Brands News

• Skims and Kim K Pop Culture News Dissection

• New launches, collabs & acquisitions

• What else I ❤️️

Spring Fashion Trends

• To kick off Spring Trends, I loved this episode of WhoWhatWear with Hillary Kerr as the editors talked about all the fashion trends but dug a little deeper.

  • New Balance Sneaker trends (which I also talked about here)

  • The Mini Skirt trends (see more below)

  • Vibe/Trend Shift (also discussed recently here)

  • The luxe basics trend has a perfect example in the collab I listed below, Birkenstock x Manolo Blahnik

  • And falling in love with fashion items.

• Mini Skirts - short on fabric, long on trending articles and an instagram account.

  • Miu Miu is leading the pack and driving the trend with so many magazine covers. This Fashionista article shares the data behind the trend.

  • The Cut wrote about how this skirt ended up everywhere and the history of the mini skirt. Refinery29 also wrote on the viral sensation of this skirt.

  • What is also interesting, is that many people think the brand is embracing body diversity however the version made for model Paloma Elsesser for the cover of i-d Magazine was actually custom made and limited size runs (small sizes) were the only ones shown on the runway, produced and sold in stores.

• Along with Abercrombie and Fitch sized 90's micro minis coming back, none other than Paris Hilton is bringing back velour track suits.

• Half and half - seeing lots of split tops and split jeans trends.

  • Staud sweater

  • Donni here, here or tops and bottoms here

  • Banana Republic menswear inspired multi-stripe

  • Hannah Andersson for kiddos.

  • Try some jeans too.

  • Or fancy Jimmy Choo heels that mix it up.

  • I'd love to see some sustainability play here - when factories have extra fabric at the end of a run do a few "limited edition" two tones.

This Week's Topics:

• Fashion Month News

• Spring Fashion

• New launches, collabs & acquisitions

• What else I ❤️️

• Supporting Ukraine

Fashion Month News

• The Prada look of loose pencil skirts (a hybrid a line pencil skirt) and crew neck sweaters will likely be copied and replicated a ton for FW22.

• Virgil Abloh’s last Off_White collection takes the runway

• Matthieu Blazy and his new new Bottega runway show

• Chanel is set to raise prices again in many countries. Is this even news anymore?

• A new Fashion Fund (Fashion Trust US) has been created to support up and coming designers with mentors and funding. They announced their new board including former Editor in Chief from InStyle Laura Brown, Samira Nasr Editor in Chief of Bazaar, media personality Tan France and stylist Karla Welch.

This Week's Topics:

• NYFW News

• InStyle Magazine Print Send Off

• Canceled Fashion ??

• New launches, collabs & acquisitions

• What else I ❤️️

NYFW News

• What NY Street Style is currently looking like during NYFW

• Telfar, NYFW and his latest fashion bag (will it be the next it bag?). For more on Telfar, this was a fabulous interview from How I Built This with Telfar Clemens and business partner Babak Radboy.

• How Tory Burch plans to style us out of our homes and from a screen + in person hybrid (sequins and tracksuits seems to ease us gently into this new space.)

• The most recognized image of fashion week so far appears to be Julia Fox from LaQuan Smith

This Week's Topics:

• Rihanna's bling and fashion moment

• New launches, collabs & acquisitions

• Podcast Interviews with Retail Mentors

• Retail News

• What else I ❤️️

Rihanna's bling and fashion moment

• Rihanna (and A$AP Rocky) announced her pregnancy this week with a beautiful collection of photos. The photos were taken by Celebrity Photographer Diggyz, aka Miles Diggs.

• I love this fashion breakdown by NYTimes journalist Vanessa Friedman. I also immediately thought of Anna Wintour's first Vogue cover with the Chanel jewels mixed in with a high-low element.

• Vogue shared details and started capturing more of Rihanna's pregnancy style.

• I expect retailers and brands to highlight, curate and sell more around the big bling jewelry trends highlighted in this look. WSJ interviews a couple of jewelers already selling this look.

• See below for an image from photographer Miles Diggs from his Instagram page and Anna Wintour's first Vogue cover as Editor in Chief.

This Week's Topics:

1. Remembering André Leon Talley

2. New launches & collabs

3. Influenced to buy....

4. Retail Trends Round Up

5. What else I ❤️️

Remembering André Leon Talley

• André Leon Talley passed away this week at the age of 73 and is remembered across the fashion industry and larger art and pop culture audience as being a true force and leader.

• He was the former Editor-At-Large at Vogue and also worked at W and Women's Wear Daily.

• Washington Post Senior Critic at Large, Robin Givhan, wrote a beautiful piece about his background and his grandmother's influence who raised him in Durham, North Carolina.

• Here are a few other articles to read more about Talley.

  • Vogue's Obituary. I'm looking forward to reading what they put in print too. Hamish Bowles also shares for Vogue.

  • New York Times

  • The Hollywood Reporter

  • You can also check his own words, The Chiffon Trenches: A Memoir.

This Week's Topics:

1. Chanel has a new CEO (and more price increases)

2. New launches, collabs and acquisitions

3. Retail Trends Round Up

4. What else I ❤️️

Chanel has a new CEO (and more price increases)

• Chanel appoints ex Unilever Chief of Human Resources Leena Nair as the new CEO. You can read about that and another new Luxury Fashion appointments from Business of Fashion here and a deeper dive on the next steps from Chanel here.

• The latest on Chanel handbag price increases.

This Week's Topics:

1. Chanel Advent Calendar and TikTok

2. New launches, collabs and acquisitions

3. Sex and the City reboot premiere

4. What else I ❤️️

Chanel Advent Calendar and TikTok

• Chanel's over $825 Advent Calendar went viral on TikTok this week. While there was no surprise what customers would get in this beauty package, seeing it described on TikTok certainly got people talking. Here are the articles worth catching up on:

  • Business of Fashion's article on Chanel Advent Calendar

  • Vanessa Friedman's New York Times article on the Chanel Advent Calendar and TikTok

  • WWD coverage on Chanel's response

  • Thinking of purchasing one? Here is the Product Detail Page for the Chanel Advent Calendar.

• My hypothesis for what we will see next year from Chanel, a much much (much!) more expensive version but filled with more full size beauty products. Go for $5K but fill it with all the best goodies. There was a lot of interest in beauty advent calendars this year, and Chanel has shown that loyalist loved this idea. Now they will try to make some beauty bank off of it.

• Personal memory this made me think of, traveling to Paris for the first time when I was in 9th grade with my mother and grandmother. I was already very into fashion and retail and made them take me to every store (of course we saw the Louvre and plenty of museums too - my grandmother was a passionate Art History teacher.) We went into Chanel and while I would have normally been an embarrassed teenager I was too in awe of being in Chanel when my grandmother purposefully bought her favorite red lipstick just to speak to the boutique saleswoman about how I would be in fashion one day. The saleswoman gave me one of the recent fashion show look books to take as a souvenir. Thanks Grammy! Love you and miss you.

This Week's Topics:

1. Black Friday Thoughts - with a dash of Nostalgia

2. New launches & collabs

3. Remembering Virgil Abloh

4. All the news to catch up on

5. What else I ❤️️

Black Friday Thoughts - with a dash of Nostalgia

• I follow a few "shopping influencers" on Instagram and Black Friday thru Cyber Monday was totally their Super Bowl. Links and links of all the sales.

• One Influencer I follow, Caroline Moss of "Gee Thanks, Just Bought It!" interviewed Erica and Claire (founders of the former retailer Of A Kind) in this fabulous podcast. I love how they dove into how Black Friday became such a frenzy for retailers, and for some brands it is honestly better to just sit it out.

• Can we talk Door Busters for a moment? The whole momentum around this seems to be lost. A year in advance you would plan what would be the amazing deal and item to get customers to your (physical) store. You would buy up this merchandise as a buyer, and likely negotiate an amazing deal with the wholesalers. Perhaps it is the item they have excess inventory of from the year before. By marking it way down (and taking a loss of margin) customers would come in the door and then buy the other items.

• With online and DTC, the new version of a door buster seems to be discounting products so deep (DTC cashmere that is 60% off!) that they must be loosing money once they ship for free. But the assumption is that you will add more and more to your cart or you will fall in love and come back, thus the LTV (life time value) of the customer is worth it.

• With DTC, email messaging, SMS, Amazon, etc etc the game has totally changed. And while Black Friday was traditionally the biggest shopping day of the year, because everyone was off work (that didn't work retail ; ) and was able to go shopping. Now as you sit at your computer, working, you can continue to shop later and closer to the holiday (as long as shipping doesn't get too out of hand - but that is another story.) So now the bigger shopping days are more likely to be the two Mondays before xmas when many people are back at work, back at their computers, and shopping for the last minute deals.

• A few articles to check out:

  • Retail Dive: Is the Fun Ever Coming Back to Holiday Shopping?

  • WSJ: What's Open On Thanksgiving? Target, Walmart and more are set to close. Target announced that they would not open on Thanksgiving going forward either.

  • Many areas have had issues with looters - we've seen this hit hard in Northern California.

  • You Can Almost Taste the Hot Chocolate': Why catalogs are still winning holiday marketing (and for my former Williams-Sonoma coworkers, I'm waiting for the 2021 version of this blog post to come out.)

  • I'm listening to this The Daily Podcast episode on Amazon and labor shortages now.

This Week's Topics:

1. Rent the Runway and Allbirds IPO

2. New launches & collabs

3. Department Store Thoughts

4. Icons

5. What else I ❤️️

Rent the Runways and Allbirds IPO

• Business of Fashion sifts through the Rent the Runway IPO and Fortune quotes co-Founder and CEO Jennifer Hyman.

• Techcrunch covering the Allbirds IPO.

• And Retail Dive jumps into the DTC business model and how the exit is mapped out.

• For math and data insights I suggest reading this article penned by Professor Galloway where he shares insights from Warby Parker, Rent the Runway, Allbirds and On.

• Wondering who else is on the horizon? Glossier expands their exec team.