CAFE SOCIETY

{A weekly section of headlines worth reading. The name originates from the 1930s term “café society,” coined to describe the glamorous writers and artists who lived in Paris cafés. These are the stories I imagine they’d debate over champagne and cigarettes.}

1. Let’s start with Creative Director shakeups; there have been a few this week, all notable:

   1. Mulberry just hired Christopher Kane as creative director of women's ready-to-wear, and this one feels genuinely exciting. Kane shut his namesake label in 2023 after Kering bought in, then exited, and no buyer materialised. Meanwhile, Mulberry has been in turnaround mode - it dropped RTW entirely in 2020 to focus on bags, and this is them saying they're back.

   2. Oakley just named Matthew M. Williams as creative director of apparel, footwear, and accessories, and he'll be working alongside Travis Scott, who's been the brand's Chief Visionary Officer since last year.

   3. Courrèges just named Drew Henry as its new artistic director, graduating from the Phoebe Philo alma mater. Henry started at Celine under Philo, then moved to JW Anderson, then helped launch Philo's own label, making him the latest in a very specific lineage that also includes Michael Rider at Celine and Daniel Lee at Burberry.

   4. Merci Pieter. Alaïa posted a goodbye video for Pieter Mulier as he officially closes his chapter at the house before heading to Versace. And what a chapter!! He walked into a sleeping beauty brand in 2021 - Azzedine had been gone four years, so the house had been living off archival reissues, no creative director in sight - and in five years turned it into one of the most talked-about labels in fashion. He grew the retail footprint from 5 stores to 20, created a hero product - a bag so successful it sent every other house scrambling for an east-west silhouette (Le Teckel, obviously), and gave us the mesh ballerina flat before ballet flats were EVERYWHERE. And now he takes all of that to Versace.

   5. Speaking of reviving iconic brands… Satya Paul finally has a creative director again, and the pick is Aseem Kapoor. Founded in 1985, Satya Paul basically invented the idea of a contemporary Indian designer brand. The founder passed away in 2021, and the brand has been searching for its footing since. Kapoor was apparently reluctant - his own label is only five years old - but he said yes. Smart call, both ways. His namesake label is deeply bohemian. Satya Paul is the classic, modern counterpart. The archives are deep; it just needs someone who actually loves it

2. On the exhibition circuit right now, and it’s a lot.

   1. The Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art exhibition just opened at the V&A in London and it’s already selling out weekends. Over 400 objects, the original 1938 Skeleton dress, the Lobster dress next to Dalí’s Lobster Telephone.

   2. Also just opened this past weekend: the first-ever major retrospective on the Antwerp Six at MoMu in Antwerp, marking 40 years since Dries Van Noten, Ann Demeulemeester, Walter Van Beirendonck, Dirk Bikkembergs, Dirk Van Saene, and Marina Yee piled into a van and drove to London to show their collections.

   3. Also on: Helmut Lang at MAK in Vienna. Azzedine Alaïa and Christian Dior: Two Masters of Haute Couture at the Alaïa Foundation in Paris. In Rome, Fondazione Valentino Garavani and Giancarlo Giammetti are presenting VENUS - a new show by Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos at PM23, their cultural space in Piazza Mignanelli. And coming soon: the Fondazione Dries Van Noten opens in Venice. It’s a genuinely great moment to be paying attention.

3. Artistry and creative direction are back. Ayo Edebiri on the cover of Paper Magazine is glorious… glorious print.

   

4. The Face is shutting down. Again. Just seven years after they brought it back, the magazine is folding - money issues, struggling to stay afloat. But this isn't just a print problem. It's a media problem. The centre of gravity has shifted - we follow people now, not publications. A specific writer's POV, a specific voice, a specific point of view. The outlets that figured that out quickly can sustain. The ones that aren’t… well.

5. Lauren Sherman on The Cutting Room Floor podcast is my favourite thing I listened to this week. She's carved out a genuinely specific space - fashion business from a real insider's POV, the kind of coverage that wasn't considered interesting or accessible until she made it so. If you know me, you know I'm a Puck devotee. Lauren is a big reason why.

6. wrote a founder essay on her Substack about why she's restructuring Sporty & Rich and moving operations to LA. Context: her ex, David Obadia, who'd been running operations out of Paris since 2018, stepped down after seven years.

7. Vogue hosted its second annual vintage market in downtown New York - a one-day event featuring pieces sourced from eBay and designer closets, and hosted by April cover star Doja Cat. Celine trenches, Chloé horse-print dresses, rare shoes, and bags. Sounds amazing on paper. In reality? People were disappointed - they waited over an hour in line to find barely anything left.

8. Wearable tech rings have gone mainstream; the Oura is basically everywhere now, but let's be honest, they're not exactly aesthetic. The newest micro-trend to emerge from this: ring jackets. A jewelry sleeve that slips over your tracker and turns it into something you'd actually want to wear. Logan Hollowell, Octavia Elizabeth, and Henri Noell are all doing versions now.

   

9. Schiaparelli is on track to hit €100M in revenue this year, making it the fastest luxury couture brand ever to reach that milestone. Six years. Ten points of sale. No e-commerce. Their Paris store is appointment-only. That's it. That's the whole distribution strategy. And it's WORKING. Reviving a sleeping beauty brand is notoriously brutal - Carven, Poiret, Moynat all burned through years of losses and multiple creative directors just trying to find their footing. Schiaparelli, with the creative direction of Daniel Roseberry, skipped all of that. The $100M club is rare. (I wrote a full breakdown of the $100M club earlier this year - which brands made it, how long it took, and what the blueprint looks like. Read here if you missed it.)

10. Shopify has activated agentic storefronts for every eligible merchant, which means products are now discoverable and purchasable directly inside ChatGPT, Copilot, and Google’s AI channels. AI-driven traffic to Shopify stores is already up 7x since early 2025, and AI-attributed orders up 11x.

11. I've been watching where public sentiment is landing on consumer buying behaviour lately, and two things stood out:

    1. Reformation is in trouble with its core customer. Since the PE buyout, the quality has noticeably shifted - more polyester, less of what made it the go-to for wedding guests dressing. And the girls on the internet are not being quiet about it. When your most loyal customer is actively steering people away… it’s a brand trust issue.

    2. And ShopMy could get even bigger, but not for the reason you'd think. It's not about influencer count. It's about group chats. Word of mouth recommendations convert at a higher rate than even micro-influencers, and if ShopMy can figure out how to commoditise that use case… it's game over. The most powerful retailer in the room might just be your friend texting you a link.

12. Art on my radar: Takuro Kuwata

    

13. Architecture on my radar: Victor Hugo’s home in Paris

    

14. Designer on my radar: Shankar

    

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“I Don’t Pack for Trips. I Just Use Pickle When I Get There.”

An interview with Julia O’Mara, co-founder of Pickle.

Imagine never packing for a trip. You land, and you rent something from a local. That’s how Julia O’Mara travels. And it’s also her best pitch for the company she built.

This month alone, she’s hitting LA, Dallas, Austin, Miami, New York, and Chicago for Pickle’s Women’s Month tour - six cities for what she calls “market research on the ground.” So before she heads out, she sits down with me at Pickle’s downtown FiDi office to walk me through how she actually does it and what it’s taught her about building a marketplace from scratch.

Walking in, I notice a large screen displaying live orders - rentals being booked and shipped across the country, in real time. A pair of brown shorts by influencer Lauren Wolfe is currently being dispatched to a user in Brooklyn. Julia’s excited about it, and honestly, I get it. I’ve been there …that little rush of seeing real people use the thing you built. For anyone who’s ever made something from scratch, that screen is everything.

Julia O’Mara is the co-founder and COO of Pickle, a peer-to-peer fashion rental marketplace where women rent out their own closets to other women, think Airbnb for your wardrobe. The platform has grown to nearly 400,000 items and hit rental transactions in all 50 states last year. It’s raised $20 million in total, both rounds co-led by Craft Ventures and FirstMark Capital, after years of Julia and her co-founder, Brian McMahon, delivering orders themselves.

We’re here to talk about what it actually takes to build a fashion tech company from scratch with no fashion background and no tech background. It’s one of the more interesting marketplace stories I’ve come across - mostly because of how close it came to never happening at all.

Here’s our conversation.

The job nobody tells you about

Shannon: Let’s start easy. What does a day in the life actually look like for you?

Julia: I wish I had this perfect answer - I do this workout, I eat this breakfast. The honest truth is every day is super different, and that’s probably the most common thing all founders have.

Where I’m spending most of my time usually depends on what our biggest problem areas are at any given moment. Right now, I’m our COO, and I sit across a ton of different things - everything on the go-to-market and marketing side, our retail vertical, product, ops. The connector across all of that is the customer experience. That’s something I’ve always excelled at and am really passionate about. I’ve been a customer since day one.

A lot of my job is being the glue. Like, here’s what we’re hearing live in the market in Dallas, which is new and growing - and here is an ops process that was built with the New York use case in mind, and here is a feature in our app that probably needs to be retooled based on that feedback.

And then this month, I’m literally on the road for the next four weeks doing a Women’s Month tour - six cities, hosting panels with female founders in each one, doing market research, meeting our influencer community. Those days look very different from office days. A lot of coffee chats. A lot of observing.

Shannon: What does market research look like for you in those cities?

Julia: A few things. One, I use Pickle everywhere I go. I’m not really packing for this trip - I’m going to rent when I get there. That’s me putting myself in the shoes of a local Chicago girl trying to rent something nearby.

And then there have been times - I remember in Miami, probably November or December - where I sat at a coffee shop for five hours and had back-to-back user interviews. I sent an email to girls in the area: hey, I’m here, I’d love to buy you coffee and get your feedback on the app. Some came in with very specific notes. Some wanted to talk about the community. Some wanted to talk about partnerships. That raw feedback is irreplaceable.

The third thing is more observational. Where are the Pickle girls? What pilates classes are they going to? What’s the coolest spot in Austin right now? Sometimes it’s as simple as just walking around and paying attention.

Who is the Pickle girl

Shannon: Is there a specific archetype that’s really concentrated on the app? Like, is there a “Pickle girl”?

Julia: There are definitely overlapping themes across all the personas. We started building Pickle very locally - New York first, then LA, then Miami. We were focused on building those three cities. Then we hit this milestone of almost 400,000 items on the platform, which meant we could finally start thinking more nationally, because there’s enough supply that we can solve a use case for someone in Nebraska or Hawaii.

We actually hit rentals in all 50 states last year - double digits in every single one. Alaska, what are you doing out here? But it was cool to see.

The overlapping theme across all personas is that these women are very excited to participate in fashion trends and be fashion-forward without turning to fast fashion. They care about quality. And the affordability is a huge value prop - most rentals are priced at 10 to 20 percent of retail value.

Within that, you have different behaviors by age. College-age girls have so many use cases - date nights, formals, graduation - they’re incredible renters. But they’re more like the future generation of lenders, because they don’t always have the purchasing power yet to have invested in pieces other people want to borrow. Then you get young professionals in New York who go out all the time and are just starting to acquire those investment pieces, so they have a ton of overlap on both sides of the marketplace.

City also changes the persona. In New York, people are getting dressed up last-minute constantly. There’s always something going on. In LA, it’s more planned, more occasion-driven. You’re going somewhere specific, and you planned it in advance. Very different behavior.

Shannon: Do you have a strategy specifically around getting influencer closets onto the platform?

Julia: Influencers make up a really small portion of the actual supply on the marketplace. The majority of lenders are everyday people. I’m not a content creator. I don’t have thousands of followers. Most of our top lenders are people like that.

That said, influencers have been a great strategy from early on - not because of their supply, but because of the impressions. The thing I always tell people is we don’t pay our influencers. They make money from their Pickle closets. That’s the value proposition. From the earliest days when we had zero dollars, paying for posts just wasn’t possible. Even today, our marketing budget is really lean, so most of what we’ve raised goes toward our team and technology.

What we found early on is that the micro creators, the girls doing Soho outfit checks, girls going to a million events, and needing content, were a perfect fit. They have great closets. They need outfits constantly. They’re already hustling. Pickle works for them on both sides.

The pivot nobody planned

Shannon: You and Brian, your cofounder, both came from Blackstone. What made you bet so hard on fashion rental?

Julia: The very first version of Pickle wasn’t what we are today. We started as a social polling app. The underlying idea was that people are bad at making purchase decisions - sending outfit options to five different group chats, getting confused. We wanted to use social polls to inject some social proof into that process.

We worked on that for about a year. Saw some things going okay. Saw some things clearly not working. And when we really dug into what was happening, we noticed something in the comments - people were recommending items from their own closets. Someone saying, “you should absolutely invest in a Zimmermann dress for this wedding.” And then, here and there: “you could just borrow this from me instead.”

That wasn’t the purpose of the platform at all. But it was interesting.

That led us to start looking at the circular economy. This was 2022. Uber and Airbnb were doing incredibly well. People sharing their cars and homes had gone from weird to totally normalized. But nobody was doing that for what you owned in your closet.

We had a lot of conviction in the marketplace model. And we loved the idea of being asset-light - which is pretty different from some others in the rental space. We are not in the business of predicting fashion trends six to twelve months out and buying inventory. Our users define the trends. They’re the ones who see something going viral on TikTok and invest in it, and then profit from it three rental turns later because everyone wants to wear it and it doesn’t exist anywhere else.

So somebody will go viral on social media, and all of a sudden, that item is trending on Pickle because a celebrity wore it. We all saw the Pucci moment last summer - Hailey Bieber wears it, everyone wants it, and then somehow people are renting Pucci ski suits in the fall. That has nothing to do with us. It’s all the community.

Getting the first closets open

Shannon: Marketplaces are incredibly hard to build. The supply has to be there first, otherwise there’s nothing for anyone to rent. How did you get those first lenders on the app?

Julia: Some of the first closets on the app were me going to my friends’ apartments and uploading their items into their closets for them. I was like, “hey, I’m building this thing, we’re going to try this.” They were kind enough to go along with it. That only goes so far. But it gave us a few closets to start.

Then we thought about the nano and micro influencer persona - people with excess supply, already fashion-forward. We did a lot of things that were really scrappy, things that did not scale at all. One of them was inspired by something Airbnb did early on - they noticed that listings with dim, low-quality photos weren’t getting rented, so they went and helped photograph them. We thought: we need great photos and great items on the platform. So we hosted a free photo shoot.

I sent probably 100-plus DMs to get three responses. But those girls came in, got beautiful content for their Instagram, and then those same photos went onto their Pickle closets. I even sat on FaceTime with people, manually helping them upload pieces, walking them through the onboarding one step at a time.

None of that scales. But one person would tell their friend, their friend would tell their friend, and eventually there was enough of that happening across different communities that the supply side started to grow. And in our very small budget, we were giving out rental credits to get the demand side moving at the same time.

Finding the moment it clicked

Shannon: How long did it take before you felt like you had product-market fit?

Julia: A long time. And I know people say “you just know,” which I find annoying because there are actually tangible indicators.

With the polling app, we never had true product-market fit. The clearest signal was retention - people weren’t coming back. I did research on what day-one, day-seven, and day-30 retention looks like for a social platform. Benchmarks for “good,” benchmarks for “poor.” Our numbers were not looking good. That was a clear indicator: people aren’t finding enough value to return. Maybe we need to pivot.

With Pickle, the comparison was stark, immediately. Brian and I were the delivery people - we were literally the couriers, fulfilling orders, talking to customers at their door. And I’d know every single username on the platform because there weren’t that many. And you’d start to see it anecdotally: Yeah, I’m going back to this Avenue B location for the third time this month. People were coming back. Even in those early days with our first 50 or 100 customers, it was sticky in a way the polling app never was.

There’s a question I kept asking during some of the harder days - when we were running low on money, spending 7am to 9pm doing deliveries, wondering how we’d ever raise capital and it was: would anyone care if this didn’t exist tomorrow? And I, without a doubt, felt yes. If we don’t build this successfully, someone else is going to figure it out, because the demand and the retention are real. It’s just very hard to execute on.

Shannon: You mentioned a specific TikTok moment was a gamechanger.

Julia: Before we could get institutional dollars in, we had that really steady growth and strong retention. It was a Monday morning in April 2023. I was looking at our weekly metrics report and I thought our charts were broken because they were making this massive spike. There had been a TikTok posted the Sunday before by this girl named Jade [Beguelin]- she’s actually a founder herself [cofounder of 4am Skin], I didn’t know her at the time and the video was something like, “here’s what the hot girls in New York City are doing.” The first thing she talked about was Pickle.

I was like, oh my God. People flooded in to download the app. And the retention stuck. This big new influx of users - they came back. That was a different level of growth and more importantly, retention. We honed in on those numbers and went from trying to raise a pre-seed round - couldn’t raise it for the life of us - to pitching and closing an $8 million seed round.

Raising $8 million without a fashion or tech background

Shannon: What was the hardest thing investors pushed back on during the fundraising process?

Julia: During the pre-seed attempts, we heard every version of “no” there is - not interested in this space, marketplaces are too hard, and mostly just: we need traction. Everyone had slightly different metrics they cared about, whether it was run rate or monthly active users, but at the end of the day, it came down to traction. And the hard thing about marketplaces is you have to get to real traction numbers with very little money. A lot of teams can’t get there. We barely did.

What actually moved investors when we finally raised the seed was our net dollar retention and our retention curves. They were doing more diligence than we even presented, and they kept coming back to those numbers. That, combined with the growth we’d had after the TikTok moment - sustained, not a one-week spike - was the thing that made them excited to invest.

Where it goes from here

Shannon: What’s your advice to fashion tech founders?

Julia: Get out there and build in the market with your customers. Launch way earlier than you think you should. If you’re waiting until it’s perfect, you’re never going to launch or you’ll launch way too late and have to rebuild everything anyway, because customers will show you things you never would have predicted on your own.

Get to 80 percent and ship it. Get the real feedback. Use that to get the last 20 percent right. Because that last 20 percent - you actually can’t get it right without your customers anyway.

You can download Pickle here.

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🥀Thanks for reading! Let’s get to know each other. Find me on Instagram, TikTok, or connect with me on LinkedIn!

The title sponsorship isn’t incidental - these cities run on corporate money because they don’t have the institutional backing the BIG FOUR take for granted. Paris is governed by the Fédération de la Mode, Milan by the Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana, London by the British Fashion Council, and New York by the Council of Fashion Designers of America. These are proper trade bodies with member dues, government support, and, in Paris and Milan’s case, the financial weight of LVMH and Kering. Conglomerates that have every incentive to keep their home turf sponsor-free, because a corporate name on Paris Fashion Week would devalue the very event their brands show at.

Anyway - Lakmé Fashion Week delivered. And the world is paying attention… Divya Mathur, Chief Merchandising Officer at Revolve, was in Bombay for the week, sourcing designers and looks for the platform. There's been a huge demand in the US for one-of-a-kind, handcrafted pieces from India. And I’ll be diving into it in the next few weeks. So let's get into it.

Pero was 100% the highlight of fashion week. If you don't know the brand yet, Aneeth Arora founded it in 2009. She designs textiles first, and then makes clothes for people. The garments pass through the hands of weavers across Gujarat, Rajasthan, West Bengal, Karnataka… but the end result never screams ethnic. Pero has a cult following from Tokyo to Delhi to New York, and honestly, it deserves so much more attention than it gets. This season's collection was called Out of Office, and it was everything. Check out some of the looks.

AK|OK by Anamika Khanna was a full moment. Quick backstory if you need it - Anamika is OG Indian fashion royalty. The first Indian designer to show at Paris Fashion Week, back in 2007. AK|OK is her ready-to-wear line, launched in 2021 - think of it as the Miu Miu to her Prada. It just made its London Fashion Week debut last year, so the brand is very much in its global era. This collection embodied sprezzatura - hand-painted surfaces, asymmetric cuts, unfinished edges… There were some Dries-inspired shoes and tops; this set was SO chic.

Taarini Anand had a strong menswear collection - very Bode-esque minus the price tag. Quick context: she's a GenNext designer, which means this was literally her FIRST runway show at Lakmé. The GenNext slot is where India's biggest names started - Rahul Mishra, Pero, etc. If you check out their website - this jacket is beautiful. Also, I can totally see Harry Styles wearing this sweater and pants. While, this hand-knit polo is perfect for spring.

Chola by Sohaya is a brand for the cool girls. Founded in 2015, the whole ethos is: strip away the noise, clean lines, precise detailing, unwavering commitment to comfort. Less is more, but make it interesting. I love their structured jackets.

These were the standouts to me. Now that we’re done with this introduction to Indian designers, moving on to…

Mentioned in this issue: CR Fashion Book, Nick Knight, Nicolas Di Felice, Courrèges, Chanel, Margot Robbie, Will Welch, GQ, Jay-Z, Zara, Bad Bunny, John Galliano, Willy Chavarria, Vogue, Chloé Malle, Puig, Estée Lauder, Charlotte Tilbury, Rabanne, Carolina Herrera, Dries Van Noten, La Mer, Jo Malone, MAC, Forest Essentials, Kama Ayurveda, Mathieu Blazy, Chanel, Charvet, Aimé Leon Dore, Coperni, Martine Rose, Progetto 11, The Level Group, NVIDIA, LVMH, Antoine Arnault, Amiri, Doji, Li-Ning, Way of Wade, Revolve, Anta, Icicle, Urban Revivo, Kim Jones, Bosideng, Areal, Demna, Gucci, Nicole Phelps, Vanessa Friedman, Rian Phin, Rachel Tashjian, Thom Browne, Loewe, Bottega Veneta, Saks Global, Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman, Geoffroy van Raemdonck, LTK, Meta and more…

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CAFE SOCIETY

{A weekly section of headlines worth reading. The name originates from the 1930s term “café society,” coined to describe the glamorous writers and artists who lived in Paris cafés. These are the stories I imagine they’d debate over champagne and cigarettes.}

1. CR Fashion Book’s Reinvention editorial by Nick Knight … stunning.

@crfashionbook

CR Fashion Book on Instagram: "A harmony of forms. @nick_knight…

2. Nicolas Di Felice exits Courreges. He had a brilliant 5 year run there and is credited for bringing the house back in to conversation and for the revival of the vinyl courege jacket. Can’t wait to see what he does next.

3. Is walking the streets the next big content format? First, Diya Joukani built an entire following out of it. And now Chanel's latest campaign with Margot Robbie is doing exactly that, recreating Kylie Minogue's iconic Come Into My World music video.

4. Will Welch’s final GQ cover with Jay Z… going out with a bang.

   @willwelch

   

   Will Welch on Instagram: "Presenting my final cover for @gq: @j…

5. Zara is on an expensive run to signal upmarket ambitions without actually becoming an upmarket brand. And it doesn’t sit right with me. First, the Bad Bunny Super Bowl outfit. Then Galliano announces a two-year partnership to work on their archives… which is absurd, to say the least. He might just want the paycheck, which is fair enough. Will it commercially do well? Absofuckinglutely. That’s never been the question. And now Willy Chavarria drops his Zara collab on tomorrow and from what’s circulating online, the quality looks poor. Price range is $25 to $529. For polyester and a designer name.

6. Last week, I mentioned Vogue shared an Instagram post on what the models were reading backstage and how it performed well (sans Oscar content). Yesterday, they dropped a full editorial: ballet dancers (!!), models, actors, all over NYC, photographed with what they’re actually reading, titled Fashion’s New Book Club. And this is what we all wanted!!! Chloe Malle, thank you for listening to us.

7. Puig and Estée Lauder are in merger talks, and if this actually happens, it’s a seismic one. Between them: Charlotte Tilbury, Rabanne, Carolina Herrera, Dries Van Noten, La Mer, Jo Malone, MAC. The combined portfolio would be staggering. What makes it even more interesting is the India angle: ELC just acquired Forest Essentials, the luxury Ayurvedic label, while Puig picked up Kama Ayurveda, its closest competitor, back in 2022. They’ve both placed bets on the same market, which makes a merger very logical. The timing is telling, though. ELC has had a rough couple of years - slumping sales, layoffs, a brand that’s been losing ground to a beauty landscape being eaten alive by indie labels and social-first brands. Puig went public in 2024 and has its own pressures. This feels more like two giants trying to find footing.

8. Mathieu Blazy's Chanel is already flipping on resale ...and the markups are not subtle. A blazer from Look 1 is listed at $12,900, nearly double the $6,700 retail price. The same seller has a Charvet shirt up for $7,900, an 80% markup on retail. It's been one collection and the secondary market has already decided: this era has value.

9. Aime Leon Dore just announced they’re going to make womenswear which is about time. With a bottom line still in the eight digits, this is a very logical way to double it.

10. Tomorrow, the brand incubator will be sold to Progetto 11, the parent company of Italian e-commerce firm The Level Group. The context around the sale is messy: falling revenues, unpaid designers, and strained relationships with portfolio brands, including Coperni and Martine Rose. For an incubator whose ethos was built on nurturing creative talent, leaving designers unpaid is a particularly damaging note to go out on.

11. NVIDIA has partnered with AI startup Catches on a virtual try-on platform called RealFit, which is backed by LVMH's Antoine Arnault, and the technology is already live on Amiri's website. What makes it different is that it actually simulates how fabric moves and fits on a body, rather than the flat digital overlays we've all learned to distrust. The target is fashion's returns problem, which is enormous and expensive and has never really been solved. Doji is the name to know in the same space, but with Nvidia's infrastructure, RealFit is going to be hard to ignore.

12. The next cool sneaker on your feed might be from Beijing. Chinese sportswear giant Li-Ning made its Milan menswear runway debut this season, then partnered with Revolve as its first US retail entry point, bringing its Way of Wade basketball shoes stateside. Anta opened a flagship in Beverly Hills and is already dressing Olympic athletes. Shanghai-founded Icicle turned heads at Paris Fashion Week. And Urban Revivo (China’s Zara), now has flagships in both New York and London. The stigma is fading fast. As Revolve CEO Michael Mente put it, “If you rewind 10 or 20 years, there was this stigma that Chinese brands would be of lesser quality. Now, the consumer knows that a lot of the best manufactured products come from China.” The big names are paying attention too: Kim Jones, former Dior creative director, has signed on to lead design for Areal, Bosideng’s elevated urban wear line, bringing fashion credibility to a brand better known for its iconic puffer coats. China has spent decades as the world’s manufacturing hub. Now it wants to own the brands too.

13. The verdict on Demna’s Gucci debut is trickling in and it’s optimistic. Web traffic to Gucci.com spiked to over 316,000 visits the day of his Primavera show, the most talked-about runway at MFW, and foot traffic to US boutiques has been climbing ever since. Whether that curiosity is actually converting into shopping bags remains the great open question of the season. What’s clear though is that the creative shake-up comes with a push upmarket. New handbag styles are landing roughly $550 higher than the existing, sneakers have made way for leather loafers and pumps, and the share of footwear priced below $1,000 has shrunk from over half the mix to just a quarter.

14. Enjoyed reading this interview between Nicole Phelps, Vanessa Friedman, Rian Phin, and Rachel Tashjian on the state of fashion criticism. So rare to get a perspective from fashion critics who are actually knowledgeable about the space…

15. Australia keeps producing world-class fashion talent …and then losing it. Designer roles make up just 1% of the local workforce, manufacturing has nearly vanished, and so the graduates leave. New York, Paris, London. Most don't come back. There's even a scholarship program placing young Australians inside the luxury houses like Thom Browne, Loewe, Bottega Veneta which is well-intentioned, but has in many ways only accelerated the drain. The ones who do return find smaller budgets, less ambition, a market that answers to conservative mid-range retail over craft or creativity. A few stay and fight for it anyway. But right now, Australia is far better at producing fashion talent than it is at keeping it.

16. Saks Global secured $300 million in fresh funding, part of a larger $1.75B financing package, as it navigates its Chapter 11 filing from Jan. New CEO Geoffroy van Raemdonck is three months into a five-year transformation plan covering all three banners: Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, and Bergdorf Goodman. The early numbers are actually compelling: nearly 600 brands have resumed shipping, and merchandise receipts are up 60% versus the same period last year. For a company that looked like it was in freefall not long ago, this is good progress. They're expecting to exit bankruptcy later this year and honestly, if the momentum holds, it might be worth believing them.

17. LTK slipped a non-disparagement clause into a terms-of-service update last Thursday and by Sunday, they were already in retreat. The clause had creators spiraling over the legal exposure of posting a negative review or even mild criticism of the platform. Not a great moment to test creator loyalty, considering Meta had just quietly launched its own affiliate test program and everyone was already one bad email away from a full exodus. LTK folded in record time, swapping the clause for a softer “non-interference” provision and sending out a mea culpa email to clarify what changed and what didn’t.

18. Architecture on my radar: Jean Cocteau’s Saint Pierre Chapel

19. Artist on my radar: Yukiko Nuritake

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🥀Thanks for reading! Let’s get to know each other. Find me on Instagram, TikTok, or connect with me on LinkedIn!

I also visited a few stores for "market research"… that's what I call shopping nowadays. A couple stood out:

I stopped by the Extreme Cashmere store in SoHo. The concept of the store is an apartment. The front of the store is dripped entirely in chartreuse, minimalistic bookshelves, coffee table books, no product in sight - this space acts as the living room. It takes up more than half the store. The clothes live in the back, in what feels like a closet you've been allowed into.

The logo is just stitches stacked and looped in different color combinations, different on every sweater. And they don’t have sizes, you buy what fits you best. It’s a very specific idea of what a luxury brand should feel like.

I also made it to Fronk, a vintage store in Brooklyn, where I spent way too much. Left with a shearling opera coat, vintage Prada heels, and an embroidered velvet blazer. The one that got away: an oversized black leather jacket with zebra-printed fur on the lapels (adding the pic below…run if you still want it).

Frank, the owner, has done a great job with the curation, and he also pops champagne for anyone browsing, which is either very charming or very dangerous, depending on your self-control. Highly recommend.

Now on to the main deep dive: It’s on affiliate platforms that have replaced wholesale as fashion's primary discovery and distribution channel. ShopMy, LTK, and why a girl with 15,000 followers is now the most powerful retailer in the room.

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Mentioned in this issue: Vogue, Chloé Malle, Anna Wintour, Christophe Lemaire, Blackbird Spyplane, Gabriella Karefa-Johnson, Depop, Diya Joukani, Nike, Marco De Vincenzo, Etro, Quince, Harris Reed, Nina Ricci, The Cutting Room Floor, Shein, The RealReal, Bob Mackie, Lovebirds, Florine Stettheimer, Dries Van Noten, Michael B. Jordan, Louis Vuitton, Gracie Abrams, Chanel, Valentino, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Barneys, Farfetch, Matches, Saks Global, Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman, Nordstrom, Ralph Lauren, Thom Browne, LTK, ShopMy, Khaite, LVMH, Kering.

CAFE SOCIETY

{A weekly section of headlines worth reading. The name originates from the 1930s term “café society,” coined to describe the glamorous writers and artists who lived in Paris cafés. These are the stories I imagine they’d debate over champagne and cigarettes.}

1. The Oscars!! Tbh I loved seeing a lot of Indian-inspired outfits - mainly from man of the moment Michael B. Jordan, who wore a suit by LV, which is technically called a bandhgala (pic below) or Gracie Abrams' Chanel look, which is a popular 1990s Bollywood lehenga look.

   

2. The Devil Wears Prada 2 press machine is in full swing - they copped AW to play herself alongside Anne Hathaway at the Oscars, and delivered a social media worthy viral moment.

3. One of the reasons I love fashion is that it’s a convergence of everything - architecture, art, history, design, politics. They’re all so deeply intertwined. And creative directors are constantly pulling references from across these worlds, and that depth of knowledge is what makes it so fucking amazing. And Valentino just did that!!! The show invite was just a single white marble button - but the context behind it is extraordinary. Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s bust of Cardinal Pietro Valier (1627) is one of the most technically remarkable sculptures of the Baroque period. If you look closely at the Cardinal’s mozzetta, there is one button missing. This season’s Valentino invitation is a single button, 1.5cm in diameter, brass coated with enamel, imitating the white Apuan marble Bernini used for Roman sculptures in the early 17th century. The missing button is a conversation on “spares no image, not even that of power.” Brilliant.

4. There's been a change in Vogue's Instagram content strategy, which can only be attributed to Chloe Malle. They posted "what the models are reading backstage," and it's exactly what we want to see!!! It even performed better than any of their other posts, sans Oscar content.. so Vogue should definitely be leaning into this more. It also says a lot that fashion girls want substance, not just tabloid fluff.

5. A (RARE) Christophe Lemaire interview by Blackbird Spyplane, and it's not paywalled!!! The questions are genuinely smart, like drawing parallels between Lemaire's design process and composing an album: “So you’re starting with the concept for the album, and then you come up with songs and melodies and tones, rather than humming a melody and building outwards…” Just wow.

6. Gabriella Karefa-Johnson gave us all a peek at what it actually costs to attend fashion week - $28k. Stunned, yes. But not surprised. Fashion week is not for the faint hearted… or should I say budget-hearted. But speaking of, she also just became Depop's Trends Spokesperson - 10/10 casting.

7. For those not yet tapped in - Diya Joukani, a fashion designer from Bombay, has been going viral for the past few months. Culted, Dazed, Teen Vogue, Nylon have all featured her. And she just secured a partnership with Nike. BOOM.

8. Marco De Vincenzo, creative director of Etro is leaving after 4 year… and this one stings. I love his version of Etro…so delectable. If I had an unlimited budget it would just be Etro Fall 2026.

9. Quince raises $500M in a Series E at a $10.1B valuation… almost unheard of these days but this article I wrote earlier explains exactly why.

10. Harris Reed exits Nina Ricci ... excited to see where and what he does next

11. Really enjoyed The Cutting Room floor episode with brendahashtag - long but worth it!!

12. An oil shock is very much a fashion problem, everything from the polyester in your leggings to the ships moving your orders. prices haven't spiked at checkout yet, but we’ll soon find out the repercussions.

13. So Shein is now renting out its supply chain to other brands - think on-demand production, global shipping, the whole machine via their programme called Xcelerator. Basically, it's doing an Amazon Web Services move, but for fast fashion.

14. Estate sales are having a moment. The it-girls have traded Depop for driveways in the San Fernando Valley, showing up at sunrise and a working knowledge of what a Bob Mackie costume is actually worth. But this is where the worth your money vintage lies, and not on surcharge pricing on therealreal

15. Designer on my radar: Lovebirds. The Indian label just showed at the Geoffrey Bawa Foundation in Sri Lanka and the setting alone was sublime (do check it out when you can). Creative directors Amrita Khanna and Gursi Singh delivered. Everyone should be looking at this collection. And those fringe heels - Lovebirds hasn't done shoes before, but if they're selling them, I need to know.

16. Artist on my radar: Florine Stettheimer

    

17. Architecture on my radar: Fondazione Dries Van Noten

PSA: Can you let me know if you like the curation in Cafe Society? Anything that you want more or less of?

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The most powerful retailer in fashion has 15,000 followers

Not Nordstrom. Not Net-a-Porter. But a girl with a ShopMy storefront and an audience that trusts her is moving more product for emerging brands than a wholesale account that took two years to land.

To understand how we got here, you have to understand what wholesale was actually selling. Back in the day, a Barneys account meant something. Getting stocked there told everyone the brand had arrived.

The collapse

That world is gone. Farfetch filed for bankruptcy. Matches folded. The combined Saks/Neiman Marcus/Bergdorf Goodman group entered Chapter 11 - a business that once gave countless brands their first moment of legitimacy. Nordstrom is the outlier, posting $15B in revenue in fiscal 2024, but modest growth in a collapsing category is kinda a low bar.

The problem was always scale. To survive as a multi-brand retailer, you grow large enough to absorb inventory risk and margin compression but the bigger you get, the more the curation erodes. Rent and overhead scale faster than margin so the unit economics were never going to work forever.

And brands started to follow. Ralph Lauren exited 60 wholesale doors in one fiscal year with plans to cut 90 to 100 more. Nike restructured its entire channel mix around DTC. Thom Browne’s wholesale revenue dropped nearly 50% in early 2025 while DTC grew.

After wholesale

Wholesale was never really the brand’s to control. Department store distribution meant markdowns they didn’t authorize or margin leaving on someone else’s terms. The push toward DTC was about control as much as economics - owning the customer relationship, the price, the story.

But DTC is expensive. Customer acquisition costs for fashion and accessories average around $129. You can’t build discovery on paid acquisition alone, and most brands aren’t resourced to do it, especially when they’re starting out.

So brands are routing dollars elsewhere.

Affiliate marketing spend hit $10.3 billion in 2023 and is projected to reach $22.7 billion by 2032. While the creator economy is approaching $500 billion.

Nordstrom was founded in 1901 and crossed $1B in revenue in the mid-1980s, roughly eight decades of building.

LTK crossed $5B in GMV in 14 years.

ShopMy crossed $1B in GMV in 5 years.

Affluent consumers still want beautiful, expensive things. The question was always who makes the introduction…

The new retailers

A creator with a tightly focused audience of 8,000 people who actually use the product converts better than a 200k following built on giveaways.

ShopMy and LTK gave that someone a storefront. Discovery and conversion in the same place, and the economics are structurally better than wholesale. Brands pay a commission only when a product sells AND keep the customer data. Wholesale hasn’t disappeared, but brands are being far more selective - smaller initial buys, deposits upfront, faster payment terms. It’s gone from a default growth channel to a calculated placement decision.

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ShopMy vs. LTK

Amber Venz Box built LTK in 2011 because she was driving sales through her fashion recommendations and not getting paid for them. It took nearly a decade to reach $2 billion in GMV because she was building the category from scratch, educating brands, training creators, and normalizing affiliate shopping alongside the rise of Instagram. Today LTK facilitates $5 to 6 billion in GMV annually across 400,000 creators and 8,000 retail partners. Scale is its real advantage.

ShopMy entered a more mature ecosystem in 2020 and reached $1 billion in GMV in roughly four years by improving the model rather than inventing it. 185,000 hand-picked creators, 1,200 brand partners, $200 million in GMV a month. The curation is deliberate - ShopMy has been selective about who gets on the platform in a way LTK never was.

The difference between them is really a question of era. LTK is built for Instagram. ShopMy is built for Substack. Creators can embed affiliate links in newsletters without friction, and the experience feels native to how the better creators are actually building audiences now. As one creator put it: “It was all Instagram and LTK; now it’s all ShopMy and Substack.” When a platform changes its algorithm, an Instagram audience can evaporate. An email list doesn’t.

The math

The easiest way to understand why brands are rethinking distribution is to follow the money on a single transaction. Take a $1,000 jacket from Khaite. The same jacket, but two different paths to the customer.

Scenario A: Sold through Bergdorf Goodman (wholesale account)

The customer pays $1,000. Bergdorf bought the jacket from Khaite at wholesale - $500, half of retail - and keeps the difference when it sells. That $500 has to cover staff, floor space, visual merchandising, and markdown risk. If the jacket is still on the floor in week six, Bergdorf discounts it without asking. Khaite takes the brand equity hit regardless.

Khaite received $500 when Bergdorf placed the order, not when the jacket sold. After cost of goods, shipping, sales team costs, and co-op marketing fees, they net around $300 to $350. They have no idea who bought it or whether that person will ever come back.

Scenario B: Sold through ShopMy (affiliate account)

The customer still pays $1,000. Khaite sets a 20% commission rate - $200 goes to the creator, $36 goes to ShopMy as a platform fee, and Khaite keeps $800. They fulfill the order directly, own the customer data, and control full-price integrity. The creator nets $164 after ShopMy’s cut. Khaite pays a separate brand subscription - between $399 and $2,799 a month - but carries no inventory risk and no markdown exposure.

Why the math breaks at scale

Bergdorf’s problem

Bergdorf’s $500 margin has to cover 150,000 square feet of Fifth Avenue real estate, hundreds of employees, visual merchandising, and inventory across thousands of SKUs. To grow, they either sell more per square foot (physically limited) or open more stores, which is capital intensive, and no second location carries the cultural weight of the first. Every bad season triggers markdowns simultaneously across the floor. The model gets heavier the bigger it gets.

ShopMy’s advantage

ShopMy has no stores, no inventory, no floor staff. Their revenue scales without adding meaningful fixed costs. The marginal cost of adding the 200,001st creator is essentially zero. The marginal cost of Bergdorf adding another 10,000 square feet is not. The model gets lighter the bigger it gets.

What this doesn’t solve

ShopMy and LTK handle discovery and conversion. They don’t handle fulfillment, returns, or the brand building that comes from physical retail. A creator storefront can drive a sell-through moment. But it can’t replicate what it felt like to walk into the old Barneys on Madison.

A few things still need to be worked out:

• Attribution leakage: Shoppers screenshot products and buy later, breaking the affiliate trail. As commerce fragments across devices and time, that gap matters.

• Saturation: If every creator becomes a retailer, curation loses meaning. ShopMy’s hand-picked model reflects awareness of this but the pressure to grow will only increase it.

• Value capture: Creators are currently taking a small percentage of every transaction, and as these platforms mature and gain leverage, that negotiation will get more interesting.

Department stores aren’t disappearing either. Their role is changing from inventory-heavy sales floors to experience-led spaces built around curation and service. The ones that survive will lean into being cultural hubs rather than competing on discounts or convenience.

What this means for brands

The brands doing this well are thinking about creator relationships the way they used to think about wholesale accounts - with the same attention to LTV and fit. A curated group of creators who actually use the product is a distribution channel. But treating it like a marketing tactic is how you get content that converts once and disappears.

Luxury is running a different play. For LVMH and Kering brands, affiliate content functions more like editorial - brand reinforcement rather than direct conversion. The purchase happens later, in-store or on owned DTC. Affiliates warm the customer; the brand controls the close. Kering has watched wholesale revenue decline while DTC and e-commerce grow. The math is pointing in the same direction across the board.

The metrics that matter now:

• Affiliate GMV

• Creator-driven CAC

• Content conversion rates

🥀Thanks for reading! Let’s get to know each other. Find me on Instagram, TikTok, or connect with me on LinkedIn!

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I’ve been keen to watch ‘Love Story’ - it has the Substack girls locked in with the CBK aspirational moodboards that crop up every other scroll. Anyway, back to business. This week's essay dives into what I think is the hottest space in fashion right now - the multi-brand retail experience. Aritzia's acquisition of Fred Segal is the perfect case study: a digitally-native brand planting a flag in physical retail through one of the most culturally loaded names in the business.

Mentioned in this issue: Aritzia, Fred Segal, Jen Rubio, Away, Barneys, Farfetch, Ssense, Saks, Hirshleifers, Dover Street Market, Kate Spade, Juicy Couture, eBay, Depop, Demna, Gucci, Kering, Maria Grazia Chiuri, Fendi, LVMH, Dior, Instagram, ShopMy, LTK, Adam Baidawi, GQ, Quince, A$AP Rocky, Erin Walsh, OTB, Margiela, Glenn Martens, John Galliano, Diesel, Marni, Jil Sander, Hervé Léger, Marc Jacobs, Coty, Authentic Brands Group, Emily Adams Aujla, Bode, Raw Mango, and more.

CAFE SOCIETY

{A weekly section of headlines worth reading. The name originates from the 1930s term “café society,” coined to describe the glamorous writers and artists who lived in Paris cafés. These are the stories I imagine they’d debate over champagne and cigarettes.}

1. The Met Gala dress code just dropped, "Fashion is Art" and honestly, it's one of those themes that sounds exciting until you realize how many directions you can take it. Designers have been pulling from art references for decades, so there's no shortage of options on the table. We could see archival looks, we could see literal interpretations like a Schiaparelli paintbrush dress. But that's exactly what makes this one tricky. The choice is everything here. Anyone can show up in something Klimt-inspired or draped in a Basquiat print, but the ones who actually nail it will be the guests who have a POV of why that artist and why that moment.

2. eBay just acquired Depop from Etsy for $1.2B and honestly, the logic makes total sense. Nearly 90% of Depop’s active buyers are under 34, and that’s exactly who eBay needs. Their user base isn’t getting any younger on its own. But Etsy’s run with Depop is worth paying attention to here. They paid $1.62B for it back in 2021 with the exact same pitch - get into Gen Z resale - and four years later sold it at a $400M loss because Etsy genuinely couldn’t figure out what to do with it. The two brands never clicked, and Depop just kind of existed on its own rather than becoming the strategic asset Etsy had in mind. So the real question is whether eBay actually has a plan for it or whether they’re just buying cultural credibility and hoping it sticks.

3. Demna’s first major runway show for Gucci (this week) is the most anticipated moment of fashion month and not just for critics. This is a genuine commercial inflection point. He gave us a taste last September with “La Famiglia,” a lookbook/capsule that set the tone, but this runway show is where his full vision for the house lands. The stakes couldn’t be higher. Gucci revenue was down 23% in 2024 to €7.7 billion and Kering’s operating income dropped 46% across the group. They need this to work. But here’s the thing about fashion math: even if the show is a critical slam dunk, the collection doesn’t hit stores until around June or July. Which means Kering won’t actually see the commercial impact in their numbers until the second half of 2026. So while everyone is watching the runway, the real verdict comes six months later.

4. Also debuting at MFW this week is Maria Grazia Chiuri's first collection for Fendi. If you don't know the backstory, this is actually a full circle moment. She started her career at Fendi in 1989 designing accessories - she literally helped create the Baguette bag and then spent nine years at Dior, where she grew the brand from €2.2 billion to an estimated €9 billion in revenue. Now she's back at Fendi, which is also under LVMH, stepping into the creative director role. The woman knows how to run a house commercially and fashion is watching to see if she can do it again.

5. Puck’s Sarah Shapiro broke a really interesting story this week - Instagram has been testing a “Shop the Look” feature that slaps shoppable product links onto creators’ content without their knowledge. The links aren’t even visible to the creator in their backend data. Followers assume it’s a personal recommendation. It’s not. This is a massive threat to platforms like ShopMy and LTK whose entire value proposition is trust-based creator recommendations and honestly, it was always a matter of when, not if, Meta would try to own this. [Read the full article here.] I have a breakdown on ShopMy coming soon, stay tuned.

6. Adam Baidawi has been named GQ's new Global Editorial Director, replacing Will Welch, who left to work with Pharrell Williams in Paris. His mandate is to bring GQ back to what he's calling "the North Star of masculinity," a version that's progressive but also, in his words, sexier and more aspirational than what's out there. His first print issue drops in September 2026. One to watch.

7. Quince just hired its first-ever Head of Brand Strategy and Narrative: Dakota Kate Isaacs, formerly of Deciem, the parent company of The Ordinary. The fact that this is a brand new role says everything. Quince has scaled to over 700M in revenue and a $4.5B valuation, but it's still fighting the "dupe brand" label. The A$AP Rocky partnership, the Erin Walsh collab, and now this hire are the next moves in the same playbook. Here’s my breakdown on Quince, if you’re interested.

8. OTB, the group behind Margiela, Diesel, Marni, and Jil Sander, reported its 2025 results, and the headline is a tale of two brands. Overall group sales were down about 5%, with wholesale particularly brutal, dropping 15%. But Margiela was the standout, up 8.4% and the fastest-growing brand in the portfolio. A lot of that momentum is tied to Glenn Martens, who took over from John Galliano and debuted his first couture show last July. The numbers suggest the transition is landing… at least commercially.

9. The Loewe Foundation just announced the 30 finalists for its 2026 Craft Prize.

10. The bandage dress is back, and Hervé Léger threw a 40th anniversary party at NYFW to prove it. Searches for "bandage dress" on Depop are up over 1,200% in the last few months, and honestly, I'm not surprised. What I find interesting, though, is how creative director Michelle Ochs is playing this. She's not just reviving the micro-mini from 2008. She's pushing midi lengths, daywear proportions, color-blocking… basically making the argument that the bandage dress doesn't have to live exclusively at midnight anymore.

11. Marc Jacobs Beauty is relaunching, and I have to be honest, the timing is making me ask questions. LVMH spent most of 2025 actively trying to sell Marc Jacobs. They hired JP Morgan, put a $1 billion price tag on it, got deep into talks with Authentic Brands Group and then it all fell apart in November. So now the brand is still sitting in LVMH’s portfolio, and suddenly the beauty line is being brought back under a Coty deal with a splashy NYFW runway moment. Is this a genuine recommitment to the brand? Maybe? But relaunching beauty is also one of the fastest ways to juice a brand’s revenue and cultural relevance before putting it back on the market. If LVMH is still looking for an exit, and I think they are, a beauty relaunch makes Marc Jacobs a considerably more attractive asset to sell. Are we watching a cleanup operation dressed up as a comeback?

12. Bode just opened its first Tokyo flagship in Yoyogi-Uehara, a residential neighborhood known for independent boutiques. That location choice alone tells you everything about Emily Adams Bode Aujla’s strategy. The store was designed with Green River Project, the LA-based studio of her husband, Aaron Aujla, featuring custom woodwork and vintage furnishings that feel more like a lived-in home than a retail space. Designers are treating their stores less like points of sale and more as an experience, as an extension of the brand’s creative world.

13. Raw Mango made its London Fashion Week debut this week, and if you don’t know Sanjay Garg yet, consider this your introduction.

14. Designer on my Radar: Dreaming Eli AW26

    

15. Architecture on my radar: Rockefeller Center, La Maison Française. Engraving by Alfred Janniot.

    

16. Art on my radar: Church of Palm, an art installation at Kochi Biennale by NorBlackNorWhite, Indian designers who just collaborated with Nike a few months ago.

    @norblacknorwhite

    

    NORBLACK NORWHITE on Instagram: "Spent this week @kochibiennale…

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The Hottest Space in Fashion Right Now

Last week, Aritzia acquired Fred Segal, the ivy-covered Melrose institution that defined LA cool for three decades. In October 2025, it was shared that Jen Rubio, co-founder of Away, signed a lease for a 10,000-square-foot concept store in New York’s Meatpacking District.

Two different operators, two different cities, yet the same bet. Now, it’s worth asking why.

The collapse that created the opening

To understand the opportunity, you need to understand what broke. Barneys went bankrupt in 2019. Matches shut down last year. Farfetch, once a Wall Street darling, briefly the future of luxury e-commerce, was sold to a South Korean firm that has effectively turned it into a grey market workaround. Ssense, once valued at $4 billion, filed for bankruptcy protection. Saks declared bankruptcy. This has effectively been the end of the legacy department store wholesale model.

The model was simple: brands wholesale to big multi-brand retailers, while retailers aggregate discovery and traffic. It worked until it didn’t because the unit economics of the wholesale model kept breaking at scale. I’ve written a deep dive on this here:

Sprezzatura

Issue No. 01: The Hard Truth About Scaling Luxury Online

Hey everyone, welcome to the first issue of Sprezzatura…

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8 months ago · 8 likes · Shannon Almeida

The problem nobody solved

The collapse left a real gap. Small and mid-size fashion brands can’t go fully direct-to-consumer; the unit economics don’t work without high traffic. They need third-party retail. But the third-party retail they depended on is gone.

At the same time, consumers haven’t stopped wanting discovery. People still prefer browsing across multiple brands in a single experience over visiting individual brand websites or boutiques. So the appetite is still there. It’s just that the model to serve it imploded. That’s the white space. And it’s big.

The new It-space

What’s filling it is more interesting than anything the department store ever was. “Multi-brand retailers” are built around a genuine point of view where the buyer’s taste is the product, and being carried actually means something.

And the format has many names: concept store, multi-brand boutique, specialty retailer, experiential retail - but it’s all the same underlying model: a curated point of view expressed through product selection and the space design. What makes these stores work is exactly what made the legacy department stores lose their way: a genuine editorial identity that consumers feel loyal to, independent of any single brand they carry.

ByGeorge in Austin. Hirshleifers on Long Island. McMullen in San Francisco. Dover Street Market in Paris. Stores where the floor resets every two weeks, where the owner knows the customer by name, where discovery feels personal rather than algorithmic. Early-stage brands are already reorganizing around this reality. Arlo Mott, a one-year-old womenswear label co-founded by Alex Drexler of Alex Mill, is building its entire wholesale strategy through boutiques where the owner is also the buyer and sometimes on the floor with customers.

Which brings me back to Fred Segal. The original Melrose location pioneered exactly this model - shop-in-shop, curated discovery, a space where being carried meant something. Fred Segal was where Kate Spade and Juicy Couture broke through. The brand lost that identity through a series of ownership changes and an ill-fated expansion push that added locations faster than it could maintain the curation quality. By the end, it was a mall tenant with a famous name.

Now the format is going institutional. Aritzia is reviving Fred Segal’s original Melrose location as an “experiential destination”, a 29,000-square-foot multi-brand space anchored by real cultural credibility. Jen Rubio is opening Elsa in the Meatpacking District in 2027, designed to fill the void left by Barneys. Rubio built Away into a $1.4 billion brand by understanding that retail is theatre and that the store is the product as much as what's in it. So two operators who know how to build things at scale are betting on the same model. And that’s a signal.

What’s next

Here’s what I think happens next: this format goes from a niche workaround to the dominant discovery layer in fashion. Because it solves a problem that nothing else solves.

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🥀Thanks for reading! Let’s get to know eachother. Find me on Instagram, TikTok, or connect with me on LinkedIn!

First things first: this movie is an anachronism by design. It’s not an accurate historical depiction of life in the Georgian era when Emily Brontë wrote the book in 1847. It’s Emerald Fennell’s perspective on what the book felt like. So I didn’t watch it, asking whether it was an accurate adaptation. I didn’t care if it was horny enough or slutty enough. I didn’t watch it for Margot Robbie or Jacob Elordi (or whatever the “it’s for the girls” narrative online suggests).

What captured my attention was the world-building. This movie was a visual feast - the set and costume design were extraordinary. Charli xcx’s soundtrack brought the perfect amount of contemporary yet classical yearning that was notably absent from Jacob’s performance.

The surrealist sets were opulent, a sharp juxtaposition to what life actually looked like in the 1770s. The imagery incorporated throughout the film was mind-blowing. The motifs that stood out: skin, wetness, hands. Cathy's bedroom walls featured extreme close-ups of Margot Robbie's skin, blown up to show veins and moles, printed on latex. The chrome silver dining room was covered in crystal droplets to make it appear perpetually wet. The fireplace was built entirely from plaster of Paris hand moldings.

Then there’s Cathy’s wardrobe. Costume designer Jacqueline Durran used the technical silhouettes of the Georgian era but executed them in modern fabrics like cellophane, latex, liquid organza, and stark colors that weren’t remotely period-accurate. Kudos to Durran (who is also responsible for Keira Knightley’s infamous green dress, and has won 2 Oscars) and production designer, Suzie Davies (the genius behind Conclave) for creating something this visually arresting.

In last week’s issue, I linked to Architectural Digest’s set tour of Wuthering Heights, so do check it out even if you don’t care enough to watch the film.

This week’s essay is on a topic I was dwelling upon right after I sent out last week’s issue, “Why does every cool brand becoming boring?” and felt there was sufficient follow up from a cultural angle, namely titled: “How to find out if you’re basic?”

CAFE SOCIETY

{A weekly section of headlines worth reading. The name originates from the 1930s term “café society,” coined to describe the glamorous writers and artists who lived in Paris cafés. These are the stories I imagine they’d debate over champagne and cigarettes.}

1. We're in the throes of fashion month and I'm trying not to get too deep into collections. But Veronica Leoni’s Calvin Klein seems influenced by Phoebe Philo-era Celine and Peter Mulier's Alaïa.

2. J.Crew tapped 5 American designers to reimagine its iconic rollaway sweater: Buci NYC, Collina Strada, Eckhaus Latta, Patrick Taylor and Tanner Fletcher - SMART.

3. “We have healthy budgets” is a joke. Chloé Malle and Anna Wintour were interviewed together for the first time to promote Chloé’s first Vogue issue (Rosalía on the cover - it was fine). And yikes. That video was plain awkward and revealed exactly how much control Anna still wields over American Vogue.

   The generational divide was stark when they answered “what would you do if Vogue had healthier budgets?” Chloé said she’d increase salaries. Anna dismissively claimed they already “have healthy budgets.” Their body language, Anna turned away for most of it, said everything. Honestly, I feel bad for Chloé. This is a role a million girls would die for, and she’s not getting a chance to show her best work.

4. And concurrently, Chloé launched a newsletter with the witty name “Malle Wear.” What’s interesting is why she’s launching this newsletter because everything she plans to share would traditionally go in the editor’s note at the start of each Vogue issue. But I guess they’ve realized no one is actually buying Vogue anymore, so the newsletter becomes a way to link out to Vogue stories, stay culturally relevant, and hit their click-rate numbers. Ah, Vogue. Always chasing trends rather than setting them.

5. On the same track, Bhavitha Mandava was featured on the cover of British Vogue, a huge moment for her. But British Vogue, led by EIC Chioma Nnadi, got a bit too excited announcing she was the first brown model on their cover. That’s not accurate. Edward Enninful put numerous brown women and models on the cover during his tenure, and a full-blown discourse erupted online. But here’s what struck me: Bhavitha has been the face of so many “firsts,” doesn’t have a particularly active social media presence, yet is spoken about by nearly everyone in fashion in overwhelmingly positive terms. If that’s not the marker of a true supermodel, I don’t know what is. I’m genuinely happy to see her success.

6. The EU just banned brands from destroying unsold clothes. This is big deal for brands. Because if you can’t destroy unsold stock anymore, you actually have to deal with it (through repair, remanufacturing, donation, etc.). The European Commission positions this change as a competitiveness issue, too. If products must be more durable, reusable, and recyclable, then design, supply chains, and margins change. The question is: what does fashion look like when waste is no longer built into the business model?

7. Maison Margiela has officially announced “Maison Margiela/folders,” a multi-city exhibition series taking place across China this April. In a move to democratize the brand’s internal process, “Maison Margiela/folders” also features a global digital component. The house is making its internal Dropbox folders public for the first time, allowing users worldwide to access images, project timelines, press releases, and working documents.

8. The LVMH Prize semifinalists were released and Kartik Research made the shortlist!! Rooting for him.

9. Kering reduced debt by 24% even though revenues didn't increase… still a notable achievement for a conglomerate carrying over €10.5 billion in debt. Demna will debut his vision for Gucci later this month, which hopefully turns things around for the struggling luxury group.

10. Saint Laurent has a new hero product for the season - this fall athletic jacket from Resort 2026. Everyone from Rihanna to every influencer has been spotted wearing it.

11. I’m a wired headphones girls, always and forever. So Diesel dropping this charmed headphone means that I must have them. Currently they’re only available in the UK and sold-out?!

12. Hanky Panky, the brand known for the world’s most comfortable thong, has sold to PE after 48 years in the business.

13. Veritas raises $1.75M to solve luxury’s $30B counterfeit problem - the founder is an ex Tesla product manager, Luci Holland. They’ve developed a “chip” that are linked with digital certificates to verify the authencity of the products.

14. Jonathan Andersons Dior’s RTW is in stores and customers are stunned with the pricing. This sequinned top will cost you $64k…. let that sink in. I cannot imagine how much their couture pieces will be going for.

15. Hermes posted double digit growth as they gear up to launch couture as well. They will also be launching luxury skincare: they launched makeup in 2020 and had a decent fragrance business. Skincare products have become major revenue drivers in the luxury brand space.

16. Interiors on my radar: Beit Kotn is opening up a private hotel in Shoreditch London that is only available for creatives - for no cost.

    

17. Designer on my radar: Don't Let Disco (manifesting that I interview Ashley one day)

    

18. Art on my radar: Stanley Kubrick's Lolita poster by Bartosz Kosowski

    

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Is your “taste” basic?

Last week, I wrote a deep dive on “Why every cool brand eventually becomes boring?” which is this inevitable shift from cult favorite to mass-market mediocrity and it’s usually accelerated by private equity’s demand for unsustainable growth. And in PE’s pursuit of profitability, brands have become less cool. I encourage you to read it before we move on to today’s essay.

Sprezzatura

Issue #18: Why Does Every Cool Brand Eventually Become Boring?

Welcome to the latest issue of Sprezzatura! I’ve been going through a spell of writer’s block lately, and I think my disposition of, “I enjoy working on weekends because it’s not work, it’s creating,” has finally come to an end. It’s been 2 months of non-stop work, so I think I will be back to taking time off on weekends to recover so I can write better…

Read more

2 months ago · 16 likes · Shannon Almeida

So this took me back to something I had tweeted (or on substack notes) a while ago, “Cool and profitability are inversely proportional” and it made me confront an idea in a similar vein, that even cool and algorithmic virality are inversely proportional. Let’s dive into this.

Algorithmic taste is just simply social conformity

We talk about “algorithmic taste” like it’s the algorithm’s fault, like some AI is force-feeding us content that erodes our sensibilities. But that fundamentally misunderstands how these NLPs work.

Algorithmic taste doesn’t mean what the algorithm is pushing to you. It means what’s performing well with a large cohort of people similar to you, which the algorithm then serves up because the data suggests that you’ll like it too. And you do. There’s no shame in it.

Your cohort are the tastemakers.

Think about it: when TikTok serves you coastal grandmother aesthetic, or quiet luxury, or whatever micro-trend is having its moment, it’s because thousands of people like you engaged with it and made it socially acceptable within your digital cohort. And it’s definitely not what some people think which is an engineer that has programmed those preferences into the system.

Algorithmic taste is just a fancy term for what we used to call “basic” or what I used to call people with “iTunes Top 40” taste back in the day. (This will probably date me.) So yeah, it’s consensus taste.

The three tiers of “taste”

(PSA: I don’t like using the word taste, but for the sake of explaining this subject matter I will be using it)

When we curate our taste, whether that’s the clothes we wear, the music we listen to, or the brands we align ourselves with, we’re making choices based on one of three frameworks:

Bucket 1: What’s socially acceptable. This is pure conformity. You like what you’re supposed to like because it signals the right things to the right people. Rare for anyone to admit they’re here, but let’s be honest, we’ve all made purchases or decisions that live in this bucket.

Bucket 2: What you truly like, unedited. This is your authentic taste with no filter and no audience in mind. You truly don’t care how you are perceived. This is also extremely rare to achieve. Most people who think they’re in Bucket 2 are actually in...

Bucket 3: What you truly like, edited for social palatability. This is where most of us actually live. You have genuine preferences, but you’ve toned down the weird edges that make you different, eliminated the stuff that would make people question your taste. You’ve basically optimized for a version of yourself that performs well within your social context.

Do you relate? Because Bucket 3 is also exactly what happens to cool brands when they scale.

Are we all just “optimising” for our own profitability?

If most of us live in Bucket 3, we’re curating authentic taste but editing it for maximum social return. And so technically, we’re not actually that different from the brands we have criticized for selling out. We’ve just replaced financial profitability with social capital. We’re optimizing for acceptance and for the validation that comes from having taste that resonates with our cohort, i.e., engagement, virality, etc.

The cool brand starts with a weird, specific vision (Bucket 2), gain a cult following, then dilutes that vision to appeal to a broader audience and hit growth targets (Bucket 3), and eventually becomes unrecognizable (Bucket 1).

We do the same thing with our personal taste. We start with genuine curiosity and preference, we discover what gets positive reinforcement from our peers, we lean into that while dropping the stuff that doesn’t land, and eventually we’re just consuming and displaying what the algorithm which is to say, our cohort, has pre-approved.

Maybe that’s actually fine?

So here’s what I keep coming back to: maybe we need to stop caring so much.

Cool and profitability are inversely proportional, fine. Cool and algorithmic virality are inversely proportional…also fine. But the only way to break out of this cycle is to push the norms of what we consider “cool,” even if it’s driven by algorithmic taste.

Cause who really cares if you’re in bucket 1, 2 or 3? The only person that should care and be happy with their choices, is you.

So I don’t think algorithmic taste is inherently good or bad. It’s democratised information. And it’s actually a great starting point for people to discover where their interests lie. Perhaps, its value only depreciates when that’s the only depth you’re willing to explore? When everything you know about your own preferences is bound by what shows up in your FYP or when you’ve never pushed past the algorithmically approved options to find the stuff that might expand your understanding.

So here’s the thing: just because something is algorithmic-driven doesn’t mean it’s no longer cool. The problem is our relationship to it, which is treating it as the ceiling rather than the floor.

Where does this leave us?

Maybe cool doesn’t have to mean obscure. Maybe we’ve been too precious about this whole thing.

The brands are chasing profitability. We’re chasing social capital. Everyone’s optimizing for something. And if we’re all stuck in Bucket 3 anyway, then the move isn’t to pretend we’re in Bucket 2, maybe the move is to push Bucket 3 wider. To make it expansive enough that “socially palatable” doesn’t mean “really fucking boring.”

We’re all performing. We might as well perform something interesting.

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This week’s issue is on a topic I’ve been dwelling on for a long time, “ Why does every cool brand eventually become boring?” And in true Sprezzatura fashion, I wanted to straddle the analytical and the creative with this article.

Mentioned in the issue: Permira, Reformation, Ganni, Mansur Gavriel, GF Capital, Isabelle Fevrier, DFS Group, LVMH, L Catterton, Nicolaj Reffstrup, J.Crew, TPG Capital, Leonard Green & Partners, Moncler, The Carlyle Group, Simone Rocha, Craig Green, Pierpaolo Piccioli, Khaite, Catherine Holstein, Schiaparelli, Daniel Roseberry, Marc Jacobs, Coperni, Dilara Findikolgu, Coach, and more.

CAFE SOCIETY

{A weekly section of headlines worth reading. The name originates from the 1930s term “café society,” coined to describe the glamorous writers and artists who lived in Paris cafés. These are the stories I imagine they’d debate over champagne and cigarettes.}

• Fashion month has kickstarted in NYC with Marc Jacobs. said the collection seemed restrained, and that “there was a certain sobriety throughout the show and the man of the hour came out for a lingering bow for the first time in many seasons.”

• It’s also the day after Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance, so let’s unpack. The performance itself was historic. The representation. The messaging. The symbolism. And honestly, the visuals echoed a lot of South Asian cultural language too - plastic chairs, blue-collar workers… same idea. Just different font. I wasn’t ecstatic about the fact that he chose to wear custom Zara, which clearly signalled accessibility. But there are hundreds of sustainable, accessible Latin American brands that he could have worn. But on the other hand, artists don’t get paid to perform at the Super Bowl. So I imagine that Zara paid him a shit ton to wear their clothes. So yes, this was Bad Bunny making a cultural statement and making money. Both can be true at the same time imo.

• Both Deckers and Birkenstock have been leaning more heavily into wholesale and it’s showing up in the numbers. Deckers reported a 26.7% YoY jump in wholesale sales, while Birkenstock saw wholesale grow by around 15%. What’s interesting is that this kind of expansion doesn’t seem to hurt them. Unlike luxury brands, where too much wholesale can start to cheapen the brand - Michael Kors is the cautionary tale everyone points to - Deckers and Birkenstock sit in a different lane. They operate at price points and in categories where broader wholesale reach boosts visibility without eroding brand value.

• Coperni won’t be showing at Paris Fashion Week this season, following its split with Tomorrow London, which took a stake in the label back in 2019. At the time, founders Arnaud Vaillant and Sébastien Meyer partnered with the London-based showroom-turned-brand accelerator to help scale the business. Since then, though, the relationship has reportedly soured, prompting Coperni to step away from the Paris calendar for now. It’s a notable as Coperni has built a reputation for some of the most talked-about tech forward shows in recent seasons… we all remember when they spray painted a dress on Bella Hadid.

• A$AP Rocky launched his own jewellery brand called Pave Niteo and even though I’m usually skeptical about celebrity brands, he’s 100% an exception. A$AP is a fashion boy. He just gets it. I’d buy something from his brand.

• Liz Fox Roseberry, a jewellery designer, who also so happens to be the sister of Daniel Roseberry, Creative Director of Schiaparelli has been sharing the BTS of Schiaparelli’s latest couture collection on TikTok and Instagram. It’s rare to get such a detailed look into how a Schiaparelli couture piece actually comes together. She also shared a video of the stack of books that Daniel referenced for this collection - and because I’m so benevolent, I decided to share the list of whatever books I could identify:

  1. Avionne (aviation book)

  2. ICONS by Paul Aires

  3. Getting There by Gavin Bond (featuring Katharine Hepburn)

  4. Gabrielle Chanel: Fashion Manifesto

  5. Vogue: The Jewellery

  6. Okkanische Teppiche Die Kunst Der Moderne (carpets/modern art)

  7. Christian Dior

  8. Charles James

  9. The Thirties in Vogue by Rosamond Bernier

  10. Yves Saint Laurent (appears multiple times)

  11. Eyewear (Taschen)

  12. Avedon Advertising

  13. Cartier Jeweliers

  14. Endless Forms: Charles James and the Art of Dressmaking and the Visuality

  15. Toulouse-Lautrec

• Daniel’s father also wrote a substack on the collection… very endearing.

• The trailer for The Devil Wears Prada 2 pulled in 222 million views in its first 24 hours, making it the most-watched trailer in 20th Century Studios history, truly groundbreaking.

• Coach’s 25% sales growth last quarter reinforces why the brand continues to rank strongly on the Lyst Index - No.6 for Q4 of 2025.

• It’s safe to say Margot Robbie’s Wuthering Heights press outfits are some of the best method dressing I’ve seen in a while, even better than Barbie. It’s also very Sprezzatura coded, so I’m biased. The BTS of the making of a dress designed by Dilara Findikolgu was shared on Instagram and it’s truly breathtaking. AD also released a tour video of the Wuthering Heights set design and it’s a must watch, Margot said it’s the craziest set she’s ever been on.

• I came across this video by fashion designer Zahra Omarji and really loved her take on polyester, which has long been treated as fashion’s villain. It’s plastic-based and it’s often lumped in with everything wrong about fast fashion. But she makes a useful counterpoint, that polyester isn’t a problem when it’s used intentionally - it can actually improve durability and extend a garment’s lifespan. She points out that Issey Miyake built an entire design language around polyester. The brand’s pieces are often 100% synthetic by choice.

• Interiors on my radar: Borghese Gallery in Rome

  

• Designer on my radar: Vinzoo Studios

Art on my radar: James Turrell’s newest Skyspace Museum

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Why Does Every Cool Brand Eventually Become Boring?

You know the moment. You walk into the store that used to be your favorite, and something feels... off. The clothes look the same, but they feel different. The prices are higher. But the thing that made you love it - the vibe, the je ne sais quoi - is just... gone.

Take Reformation as an example: our once-upon-a-time sustainable fashion darling. The belle of the ball. The brand built a cult following over their infamous tagline “Being naked is the #1 most sustainable option. We’re #2.” The girls were gagged. “Ref girls” became an identity - flaunting their eco-conscious dresses and their moral superiority over fast fashion girls.

Then in 2019, Permira, a private equity firm, bought a majority stake in the brand. By 2023, customers were flooding Reddit and Instagram with complaints: cheap polyester replacing the signature sustainable fabrics, prices creeping higher, and label tags that now read “Made in Vietnam” instead of the brand’s proud “sustainably manufactured in LA” origin story. The Instagram comments section became a graveyard of “this isn’t the same brand anymore.”

Reformation wasn’t the only brand. So did dozens of other brands you used to love. And it’s not an accident. This is the private equity playbook, and once you see the pattern, you can’t unsee it.

When PE firms invest in a brand, they don’t just write a check and sit back. They’re working backwards from an exit in 3-5 years. They’re not asking “will customers still love this in 10 years?”, they’re asking “can we show enough growth to flip this?” And for them, more money = faster growth. They look for brands that already have momentum, inject capital, crank the levers to grow the brand into something sellable on paper to another strategic buyer, another PE firm or take public.

But the problem is that fashion doesn’t really work that way. It’s volatile. Brands take decades to build.

And the data reflects that tension. PE-backed companies are estimated to be up to 10x more likely to go bankrupt than non-PE-owned peers. Roughly half end up in Chapter 11 or some form of financial distress. That doesn’t mean every deal fails. It does mean the model is structurally mismatched with an industry that runs on… and I hate to use this word but taste.

How cool brands become “boring”

Brands start feeling boring when private equity optimises for growth - stores open quickly. Product cycles tighten. Assortments widen.

What gets lost is the thing that made the brand matter in the first place. Creative decisions become safer. Risk starts to feel expensive. The brand stops surprising people.The brand just flattens.

The clothes are fine. The stores are busy. The numbers work. But the emotional pull weakens.

This is PE’s Dilution Playbook

#1: The Homogenisation Effect

When PE gets involved, brands start looking the same. Creative direction becomes safe. PE doesn’t want the brand taking risks on an avant-garde collection when it needs to hit aggressive revenue targets. You lean into what’s already working. And cool brands stop surprising. They start repeating themselves.

Mansur Gavriel is the clearest example. When GF Capital invested in 2019, the brand was already generating roughly $35 million in annual revenue, riding the success of its bucket bag, the “first post-recession It-bag.” Leadership shifted soon after, with the appointment of Isabelle Fevrier, whose background was at DFS Group, a global duty-free retailer owned by LVMH, a mass retail environment rather than a founder-led brand culture.

Over the next few years, the change was visible. The product began looking more generic, chasing trends rather than making them. It’s the classic PE fashion story: these firms see a brand on the rise and assume a cash injection will accelerate growth. But when a company is still founder-driven with a singular vision, growth is slower. A fashion brand typically needs to be north of $100 million in annual sales to stand on its own without its founder. Even then, it’s not easy to maintain. Today, nearly six years later, Mansur Gavriel’s revenue still appears to hover around $35 million. And the brand is still trying to find its footing, culturally speaking.

#2: The Brand Dilution

Overexpansion is where brand dilution begins. Once PE steps in, brands are often pushed to scale faster - stores open quickly, categories expand earlier than planned, and collaborations and frequent drops become a way to smooth near-term revenue. The result is sudden ubiquity - a brand that goes from being cool to being everywhere.

This is how brands end up with too many doors, too many SKUs, and not enough sell-through. Growth looks healthy on paper, but the consequence is brand dilution.

Ganni is often framed as a PE success story. Commercially, that’s hard to dispute. But culturally, the story is more nuanced.

When L Catterton acquired a 51% stake in late 2017,Ganni was generating roughly $40-45 million in annual revenue. It had strong cultural momentum with its influential It-girl following. The PE funding was to professionalise the business.

At the time, co-founder Nicolaj Reffstrup was explicit about restraint, “We do not expect to grow aggressively over the years. We are going to slow down slightly.” Wholesale had become too dominant. The long-term plan was to rebalance away from it. And in reality, the opposite happened.

Ganni expanded quickly from around 21 Nordic stores to more than 50 locations across Europe, the US, and Canada. Wholesale followed the same trajectory. Despite earlier plans to cut accounts, the brand grew to over 400 premium stockists across 20 countries. Wholesale came to represent roughly two-thirds of total sales.

Financially, the strategy delivered. Revenue reached €76 million by 2020, even in a pandemic year, and rose to around €160 million by 2022. Growth stayed in the double digits. Within five years, L Catterton was reportedly exploring an exit at valuations of up to $700 million.

But culturally, Ganni’s position shifted. As availability increased - more stores, broader wholesale - the brand’s edge softened; it was less insider.

A similar pattern played out at Reformation.

In July 2019, Permira took a majority stake in Reformation, and from there, the brand’s strategy shifted. Scale was a priority. And in fashion, nothing kills coolness more than scale unfortunately. Stores opened fast. What was once a tight retail footprint jumped from around 14 locations in 2019 to roughly 61 by 2025.

Product cadence followed the same logic. Reformation started releasing 15–20 new styles every week - a pace that worked with growth, but sat awkwardly with a brand that built its identity on restraint. The clothes were still “Ref.” The messaging was still sustainability-first. But the feeling changed.

Like Ganni, Reformation shows how private equity can scale a fashion business quickly. It also shows how, under that pressure, what a brand actually optimises for can drift, even when the story it tells stays exactly the same.

#3: The Margin Optimisation

Under PE ownership, margin expansion is usually the fastest lever to pull. Revenue growth still matters, but it’s unpredictable. Costs aren’t. You can’t force customers to buy more, but you can make each unit cheaper to produce. And revenue growth still drives a large share of returns, roughly ~50–55% in many deal-level studies.

In fashion, that tends to show up in different ways. Suppliers change. Materials get swapped. Production moves offshore. On the rack, things don’t look dramatically different. But they’re cheaper to make.

At Reformation, that shift is measurable. In the four years following Permira’s investment, revenue roughly doubled, reaching about $300 million by 2023. The company has since signalled it is on track to exceed $500 million in annual sales. From a growth perspective, the strategy worked.

But the cost structure moved alongside that growth. Production that was once heavily Los Angeles–based shifted largely overseas; recent estimates put roughly 75% of manufacturing outside the US. Fabric composition changed as well. Materials that once leaned toward wool and silk increasingly gave way to viscose and polyester - including 100% synthetic pieces, even as price points stayed premium.

Emissions rose alongside growth, and external reporting showed an increase in absolute carbon output year-over-year - a predictable outcome of more stores and globalised supply chains.

Permira bought a brand with real demand and a sustainability story that justified premium pricing. That story does a lot of work. It protects margins. It gives consumers a reason to pay more without asking too many questions. Sustainability starts functioning more like brand equity. Something to maintain in the narrative, even as the underlying cost structure shifts elsewhere.

#4: The Debt Trap

Most PE fashion deals are structured as leveraged buyouts (LBO). The buyer puts up a relatively small slice of equity, sometimes as little as 10–20%, and finances the rest with debt. That debt is secured against the brand’s assets and future cash flows. And crucially, it lives on the company’s balance sheet, not the PE firm’s.

From day one, the business has to service it. Interest payments become a fixed annual obligation. Cash that might have gone into better product, stronger store experiences, digital infrastructure, or quality upgrades is instead diverted for lenders. The longer the fund holds the company, the more that pressure compounds.

This is also why timing matters so much. Most PE funds are working toward an exit around year five. Returns are expected. By that point, the business just needs to look sellable.

J.Crew is the clearest example of how this plays out in fashion.

In 2011, TPG Capital and Leonard Green & Partners acquired J.Crew in a LBO valued at roughly $3 billion. At the point of acquisition, the company was loaded with more than $1.5 billion in debt. Soon after, J.Crew was required to take on an additional $787 million in borrowing, much of it used to fund dividend payments back to the sponsors rather than reinvestment in the business.

Over the course of ownership, the PE firms extracted an estimated $765 million through management fees and debt-funded dividends. J.Crew, meanwhile, was left carrying a total debt burden of roughly $1.65–1.7 billion.

That leverage stripped the brand of flexibility at exactly the wrong time. As consumer tastes shifted toward casualwear and digitally native brands, J.Crew was boxed in by debt servicing.

By May 2020, J.Crew became the first major US national retailer to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy during the pandemic.

The lesson here is that leverage changes what a brand can afford to do. When cash is already spoken for, creative risk narrows. Long-term brand building is forgone to give way to short-term survival.

When PE Has Been Successful

PE doesn’t always hollow brands out. In rare cases, it amplifies a vision that already exists. Moncler is one of the clearest examples.

In October 2008, The Carlyle Group acquired a 48% stake in Moncler. Instead of forcing a fast flip, Carlyle leaned into operational scaling that stayed consistent with luxury discipline. Expansion was selective. Distribution stayed tightly controlled. Growth prioritised D2C and flagship retail. Discounting and wholesale dilution were largely avoided.

In typical PE fashion - when Carlyle invested, Moncler operated roughly 6 mono-brand stores. By the time of Carlyle’s partial exit, that number had grown to 50+ globally, across key luxury markets in Europe, the US, and Asia.

Financial performance followed. Between 2008 and 2012, revenues reportedly increased by more than 200%. Sales rose from approximately €364 million in 2011 to around €780 million by 2015, with EBITDA expanding alongside revenue - driven by margin capture through owned retail rather than aggressive cost-cutting or quality erosion.

Carlyle exited gradually, selling down its stake ahead of and during Moncler’s 2013 IPO, and fully exiting by mid-2014. The IPO itself underscored the success of the strategy:

• shares were 27x oversubscribed

• the stock jumped 47% on its first day of trading

• Moncler debuted with a valuation of over €4 billion, outperforming many luxury peers on entry multiples

Importantly, Moncler didn’t stagnate post-PE. In 2018, the brand launched Moncler Genius, rewiring the traditional fashion calendar. Instead of seasonal collections, Moncler invited designers like Simone Rocha, Craig Green, and later Pierpaolo Piccioli to reinterpret the brand through ongoing drops.

That same thinking carried into how Moncler showed up in the world. The Moncler Grenoble presentations evolved into headline events, blending high fashion with experiential spectacle. Shows were staged en plein air in rarefied mountain settings like Courchevel, St. Moritz, and most recently Aspen, where the Fall/Winter 2026 show unfolded against snowy peaks and rugged terrain.

Moncler also stayed tightly connected to the broader zeitgeist. Its “Warmer Together” Fall/Winter 2025 campaign starred Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, an unexpected pairing that extended the brand’s cultural reach well beyond fashion’s usual cast of faces. The signal is clear: Moncler is part of the cultural zeitgeist, and far from “boring.”

Moncler shows what happens when private equity enters after a brand’s identity is fully formed, leadership remains intact, and expansion follows luxury logic rather than financial urgency.

The second breakout case and one that’s still very much in motion is Khaite.

Khaite is useful precisely because it shows what PE can look like when creative control is preserved and growth is paced. After taking on a majority investment from growth equity firm Stripes in March 2023, founder Catherine Holstein has continued to lead the brand with a clear, intact point of view.

Importantly, Khaite wasn’t an early-stage rescue. The brand had already crossed $100 million in revenue by 2022, before Stripes invested.

Roughly two and a half years after Stripes’ reported ~$150 million investment for an 80% stake, Khaite began reporting double-digit growth across categories, including accessories, denim, knits, handbags, and footwear. That matters. It suggests Khaite’s appeal translated beyond fashion-insider buzz into repeatable commercial traction.

Operationally, the expansion has been measured. Their current plan is to open around one new store per year. As of now, Khaite operates five stores in the US and one in Korea.

What’s notable is where the capital seems to have gone. While many PE partnerships in fashion dilute creative identity through cost-cutting or material substitution, Khaite’s product has not visibly cheapened. Fabrication and price-value alignment appear consistent with earlier collections, and the brand’s design language hasn’t flattened into something more generic.

Holstein has stayed focused on the same product logic that built the brand: clothes and accessories that feel timeless and not trend-chasing.

Khaite sits in the narrow middle ground where private equity might work: creative leadership retained, disciplined retail expansion, quality maintenance and a brand identity that remains protected. The risk, as always, is time. The longer PE ownership stretches on, the more pressure builds.

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🥀Thanks for reading! Let’s get to know eachother. Find me on Instagram, TikTok, or connect with me onLinkedIn!

CAFE SOCIETY

{A weekly section of headlines worth reading. The name originates from the 1930s term “café society,” coined to describe the glamorous writers and artists who lived in Paris cafés. These are the stories I imagine they’d debate over champagne and cigarettes.}

1. Mathieu Blazy just debuted his first Haute Couture collection for Chanel today, and at first, it seemed more RTW than couture. But after the first few looks, the work of the Chanel ateliers really came through. And without a doubt, these clothes, up close, will be dreamy with the intricate fabric manipulation that Blazy is so famous for. The feathers, the fur, the beading, the trompe-l’œil plaid sequinning, all with Bhavitha Mandava, Chanel’s first Indian model, closing the show as the bride. Great work overall, even with a glitchy start imo.

2. Jonathan Anderson’s debut at Haute Couture Week for Dior was ethereal. It just goes to show that creative directors need time to execute a vision inside a house with this much history. He referenced a lot of Raf Simons and John Galliano (who came to the show!). But as we all know, commercial success is what really matters here. The real question is whether clients are willing to spend on Anderson’s Dior. The couture bridal gown was easily one of my favorite looks… and it could very likely set a bride back well over $100,000. Still, some couture clients are already saying they’ve placed orders…and in this industry, that’s the signal that actually counts.

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1. Véronique Nichanian staged her final show for Hermès after 37 years as creative director. But what really landed was her exit interview with Tim Blanks, where she explained why she decided it was time to step away: “I want to stop that because it’s not interesting anymore, the way it’s going faster and faster. Last time, my team showed me something: ‘Do you see that? It’s so nice’. And I said, ‘Yes, I did that at Cerruti in 1988.’ So I think, okay, it’s time to stop when they’re bringing me my old things.”

2. Jaquemus announced his grandmother as the brand’s first-ever ambassador, which feels very on the nose right now. It leans into this cultural zeitgeist, where older figures are considered cooler and more interesting than the usual faces for a campaign. And I’d say that Jaquemus is the one designer who understands how to leverage social media in luxury fashion better than anyone else. So, as fresh as it sounds, it’s also smart marketing - just like Maggie Smith (rip) for Loewe, or for Al Pacino and Robert De Niro for Moncler.

3. And, as Lauren Sherman reported, Jacquemus’ Valerie bag is a hit, something I called back in Nov when it launched. What can I say… you know a hero product when you see one.

4. More refreshing news from Fashion Week was Lyas’s fashion watch parties, which popped up all over Paris. At one point, he even secured a full watch-party entry to the Willy Chavarria show, which was iconic in its own right. What makes these watch parties interesting is what they disrupt. Fashion thrives on gatekeeping, and this is the opposite of that. In that sense, they’re kind of fashion’s worst nightmare and exactly what the industry needs more of.

5. 1granary speculated that Daniel Roseberry’s Schiaparelli couture collection could have been inspired by this book.“The novel is about Michelangelo and the realities of the creative process. Both Stone’s book and Roseberry’s collection manifesto operate within the same logic: how the intensity of complex craft can be transformed into creative expression.”

6. Bottega Veneta CEO Bartolomeo Rongone is set to exit the brand as of March 31. He was appointed in 2019, and it’s hard to overstate how much changed under his leadership. During his tenure, Bottega evolved from a craft-forward label within Kering’s portfolio into one of the most culturally dominant brands in fashion.

7. We all knew this was going to happen: Pat McGrath Labs filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. It doesn’t signal a shutdown, but the numbers are still stark. Around $50 million in listed liabilities. Despite Pat McGrath’s continued runway presence, the business side has clearly been under pressure. Slowing sales and leadership churn seem to have caught up with the brand. I wonder if they’ll bring Pat back into the company if there are plans to revive it, but I'm not sure how it would play out given her contract with Louis Vuitton Beauty.

8. Vinted has officially launched in the US, starting with a push in New York. It’s a meaningful move into a crowded secondhand market, and a signal that Vinted is ready to play on a bigger stage. And the competition is real - platforms like Poshmark and ThredUp already have scale and familiarity on their side. Still, Vinted’s European track record makes this one worth watching.

9. Kaia Gerber has joined Re/Done as an investor, creative partner, and advisory board member. Celebs are no longer just brand ambassadors at this point; they want a piece of the pie, and it’s the formula that many are pursuing nowadays.

10. Artist on my radar: Susan Lichtman

    

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11. Designer on my radar: Ellie Misner, a London-based fashion designer known for her demi-couture collections.

    

12. Interiors on my radar: Hotel Central d’Annecy Paris

    

    🥀Thanks for reading! Let’s get to know eachother. Find me on Instagram, TikTok, or connect with me onLinkedIn!

Today’s essay is a fun one - I wrote it as a guest post for As Seen On by Ochuko Akpovbovpo. It’s called “So you want to build a $100M brand.” I break down the most reliable paths by category, explaining why some brands stall at $50M, and make the case for hero products and operational control as the real unlocks. If you’ve ever wondered why some brands become empires while others peak for a moment, this is your blueprint. Moreover, this is a great resource for fashion founders. I’ll be sharing the whole deep dive right after Cafe Society. Stay tuned.

CAFE SOCIETY

{A weekly section of headlines worth reading. The name originates from the 1930s term “café society,” coined to describe the glamorous writers and artists who lived in Paris cafés. These are the stories I imagine they’d debate over champagne and cigarettes.}

1. The fashion world has lost a legend. Valentino Garavani, the iconic Italian designer, has passed away at 93. To honor his immense legacy, Vogue Italia is dedicating a red cover to him.

2. The Saks saga continues, but some relief is on the way as the court approves 400 million in rescue financing. Chanel, Kering are some of the top few brands that Saks owes money to. It’s a mess. Not many are betting on Saks turning things around, but many fashion insiders are hoping that Bernard Arnault buys Bergdorf’s, an institution. Let’s see if he pulls the trigger.

3. Skims and Nike are back with the new NikeSkims Rift Mesh shoe, featuring the split-toe look. Many are calling it a Margiela copy. But it’s not. Margiela didn’t invent the tabi, he just made them famous. Only if it has a tabi AND a cylindrical heel is it a Margiela copy.

4. Standout show from Milan Fashion Week has to be Ralph Lauren, and one thing Ralph Lauren is going to do is layer. There were some exceptionally styled looks.

5. Safa Shahin is making the move to Chanel as a sneaker designer. He’s bringing experience from Nike, Balmain, and Bottega Veneta. And this feels like a clear signal. Chanel is putting serious focus on athleisure now as they need to keep up with a category that’s absolutely exploded.

6. There’s a changing of guards at Sporty & Rich. David Obadia, the brand’s CEO, has stepped away. He led the growth phase, including new flagship stores and the whole expansion. Now, with that foundation set, founder Emily Oberg is taking the reins back. She’s in charge of both the creative vision and running the company again. Full circle.

7. Gap has appointed Pam Kaufman as its new Chief Entertainment Officer, and it’s opening a new LA office to go with it. The goal is clear: they want a real seat at the entertainment table. Sure, fashion and entertainment have been linked for a while, just look at LVMH’s 22 Montaigne Entertainment. But giving it a dedicated C-suite title is what makes this different.

8. Just six months after securing $40 million in funding, Shopify competitor Swap has landed another $100 million. The company, founded in 2022, provides an AI-powered platform that helps brands build their online storefronts.

9. Five months into bankruptcy protection, Ssense’s future has been decided. The winning bid came from its founders, the Attallah family. They’ve successfully reclaimed ownership of the luxury e-tailer. This move stops the business from being sold off to outside buyers or creditors. It keeps Ssense firmly in the hands of those who built it.

10. The new editorial of Elle Fanning, shot by photographer Szilveszter Mako, is absolutely everywhere right now. And Mako’s been busy. He recently shot features with Ramla Duanji and Miley Cyrus, too. What makes his work stand out is this soft, surreal quality.

11. Victor Horta’s own home/studio just outside Brussels completely redefined the limits of Art Nouveau. It was a true statement of what the style could become. And the best part is that it’s now a museum.

12. As a pianist, I’d absolutely love to own a Louis Zwicki. The mid-century design is stunning and looks like a piece of art.

13. Kwame Adusei is an edgy LA brand with deep roots in West African heritage. It's getting noticed. You've probably seen Kylie Jenner wearing pieces from the label, and it's definitely having its moment.

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Now for today’s deep dive.

So You Want to Build a $100M Brand

This started as a founder’s reflex: reverse-engineering the winners. I wanted to understand what it really takes for a fashion brand to scale to $100 million in revenue. The questions were simple: Which vertical? Which tier? What’s the combination that keeps showing up? I’m calling these brands the $100M club.

Why $100M? Because it’s my litmus test. Any time I evaluate a fashion business opportunity, I’m asking the same three things: Can it get to $100M? How long will it take? And what actually drives that outcome?

Two caveats:

1. I focused on brands founded in the 2000s or later. The older generation built with advantages today’s founders don’t have: heritage tailwinds, early fast-fashion scale, decades of runway, and true first-mover territory.

2. This isn’t a definitive list of every brand that’s crossed $100M. I’m bound by what’s publicly available - financial statements, acquisition news, press releases, and credible reporting.

The pattern is simple: the brands that reach $100M aren’t just “good brands.” They’re businesses with a repeatable commercial engine.

At a high level, $100M usually comes from one of three paths:

• High AOV + repeat purchases (hero product + product family)

• High volume + operational efficiency (distribution + unit economics)

• Multi-category expansion that raises LTV (the portfolio play)

Across price points and tiers, the same verticals keep surfacing. Here’s the benchmark.

The Reality of Luxury

The luxury and couture tiers are the hardest to scale quickly. These brands are built on scarcity, and scarcity can’t be rushed. There’s a natural ceiling: once a brand becomes too ubiquitous, its value starts to depreciate. The few that do scale tend to grow laterally over time: expanding into new categories, introducing tiered pricing, and building out a broader ecosystem. It’s a decades-long game, which is why there are very few true contenders in those tiers.

Now, the landscape. For this analysis, I’m focusing on four main verticals: Bags, Footwear, Apparel, and Multi-Category brands. Deep dives into micro-verticals like jewelry, denim, athleisure, and others are for another day.

With that out of the way, let’s see what the modern-era $100M+ club actually reveals.

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BAGS

This section focuses exclusively on brands that sell only handbags.

Within this vertical, a clear pattern emerges: reaching $100M in revenue is a milestone that typically takes at least 7 years, and very few pure-play brands ever get there. This seems counterintuitive, as handbags appear to be the perfect business for most brands. High average order value (AOV), strong margins, loyal customers with a high repeat purchase rate. And they’re often the cash cow for big fashion houses.

$100M Blueprint:

Key Finding #1: Commercial mechanics beat brand storytelling

The data reveals that successful pure-play handbag brands win through execution and can’t just rely on brand storytelling.

• Take Polène. They identified the gap in the market for accessible luxury bags, and they hit $100M by doing one thing really, really well: building a family of leather goods, instead of chasing trends. It all started with their Numéro Un bag. From there, they created related shapes and sizes. They sell almost entirely through their own website and a few flagship stores. No wholesale. A customer buys a $450 tote for work, then later buys a $380 mini version for evenings. It’s repeat purchases at a high average price, driven by a solid product range.

• Dagne Dover followed a similar playbook. They built everything around a hero product, the “Legend Tote,” then systematically expanded into sizes and specialized bags (for the gym, for diapers). Customers came back for new use cases.

• The lesson? In handbags, scale comes from perfecting a core silhouette and building a product family around it. High initial margins help, but the real engine is that they are repeatable purchases.

Key Finding #2: Scaling happens in the “middle”

Successful pure-play handbag brands almost exclusively live in two tiers: contemporary and entry-level luxury. You won’t find a true luxury house or a fast-fashion brand scaling on bags alone.

• Why the middle works: This space balances aspiration with accessibility. Price points between $200 and $800 justify quality and healthy margins, without the intimidating friction of a $2,000 luxury purchase. The customer isn’t buying an inaccessible logo; they’re investing in a specific, functional item, like Dagne Dover’s “organized carry” niche, or Polene’s accessible leather luxury bags.

• Why does luxury fail here? A $2,000+ handbag isn’t an impulse buy, and to support that decision, consumers need a fully formed brand universe - a lifestyle story that’s nearly impossible to tell with bags alone. Established luxury houses like Bottega Veneta and The Row use apparel to build that world first; their iconic bags, like the Bottega Cassette or the Row Margaux, then become the revenue drivers for the brands.

Key Finding #3: Distribution is the main reason most brands stall between $30M and $50M

Look at Mansur Gavriel. Their iconic bucket bag drove roughly $35M in revenue within four years, becoming a cultural moment. But they built that buzz on scarcity, selling through exclusive stockists and limited drops. That meant when the trend for that one silhouette cooled off, so did the brand. They’d outsourced their relationship with customers to department stores, and once those buyers moved on, there wasn’t much left to fall back on. Compare this with Polène, which had direct relationships with its customers.

FOOTWEAR

If you’re looking for a surefire path to $100 million in fashion, start with shoes.

Footwear has a competitive edge because it behaves like a classic product business. It’s inherently more stable, and scales through repetition, and not constant reinvention. Once a brand nails the fit, return rates fall, and core styles become predictable sellers. That means brands aren’t forced to pay the constant “reinvention tax” that apparel deals with. This stability creates breakout potential at almost any tier, from mass-market brands like Dolce Vita to luxury brands like Aquazzura.

$100M Blueprint:

Key Finding #1: The “Hero Product” is the Business

Similar to handbags, the clearest path to $100M is to perfect one hero product.

• We’ve seen this at every level. Crocs scaled to billions on the back of its Classic Clog. Rothy’s rode its original The Point II Flat to nine figures. Even in the masstige space, Axel Arigato built its initial surge on the Clean 90 sneaker, simply iterating it through new materials and colors instead of designing entirely new models.

• Why does this work so well? It works because footwear is fundamentally a simpler product. The fit is straightforward, just a size, and the iconic silhouettes stay stable for years. Look at Golden Goose’s Super-Star. That one hero shoe has been refreshed endlessly for over a decade through new colors or materials. It creates a powerful commercial engine.

Key Finding #2: Your supply chain is your speed limit

Ultimately, how fast you can scale is dictated by your operational architecture.

• Compare two approaches. There’s Larroudé, which launched in 2020. They built a direct-to-demand model that uses vertical integration to produce shoes in weeks, not the industry standard 120 days. That hyper-speed lets them catch viral demand in real time and cross nine figures in about five years.

• Then there’s Freda Salvador. They started back in 2011 and follow a traditional, craft-led approach. They work with family-owned factories, which means longer lead times and incredible quality, but it naturally limits how fast they can scale and react to the market. (Their numbers are private, but the operational model speaks volumes.)

• The difference is stark. In the race to build a $100M brand, your supply chain is your core strategy.

APPAREL

Can you build a $100 million brand on clothing alone? You can, but it’s rare. The path is narrow and incredibly specific. A few have done it, and their playbook is nearly identical.

$100M Blueprint:

Key Finding 1: The Main Lane is “Contemporary.”

If your goal is $100M with apparel as your only category, the data is clear: you almost have to be in the contemporary tier. It’s the only space with the right economic conditions. Brands that pull this off share a simple strategy: higher price points to absorb costs, a core uniform, and operational discipline.

1. Take Favorite Daughter. They hit $100M in around five years, which is seriously fast for a clothing brand. A lot of that speed came from having celebrity founders, the Foster sisters. But they kept things simple: a well-edited line of elevated basics - the perfect ribbed tank top, or a great pair of boyfriend jeans. And their prices land in that sweet spot between $100 and $300, which is high enough to handle the notoriously high return rates of online apparel sales, but it doesn’t require the high margins of a luxury brand just to survive.

2. Doen and The Frankie Shop followed a similar, if slower, path. They went deep into a singular aesthetic. Doen with its romantic prairie dresses, The Frankie Shop with its minimalist suiting, and repeated it across core staples. Their customers came back for variations on a trusted theme.

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MULTICATEGORY

The data points to a simple truth: reaching $100 million in a single category is the exception, not the rule. Instead, the most durable successes come with building a portfolio. Apparel, footwear, and bags all play together, and they have different jobs.

$100M Blueprint:

Key Finding 1: Apparel builds the brand, accessories build the business

• Apparel as the Brand Driver: Clothes build the aesthetic universe. Think about Sézane, a contemporary brand. It established a Parisian chic identity through its vintage-inspired blouses and knits. The Row, a luxury brand, is synonymous with minimalistic chic. Victoria Beckham, a luxury brand, is known for their luxury silhouettes. Apparel is how you define the brand and cultivate a loyal community.

• Accessories as the Revenue Engine: Sézane’s clothes define the brand, but the higher-margin “Milo” bag likely drives a disproportionate share of revenue. Victoria Beckham had to eventually lean into makeup to finally hit that mark. Or take The Row: it’s the +$6000 Margaux bag, a scalable, high-margin product that often funds the brand.

Key Finding 2: In Contemporary, Accessibility Drives Scale

Even at the same contemporary level, there are two very different paths: one for building a wide audience, and one for a dedicated niche. Look at the contrast between Kith and Aimé Leon Dore.

• Kith went broad. They built a $100M+ brand by making their world accessible. High-profile collabs, multi-brand stores, and a relatively approachable price point brought many people in. For them, launching a new category was a way to reach a whole new set of customers.

• Then there’s Aimé Leon Dore (estimated rev around $30M). They took the opposite route. By perfecting their specific world through tight collaborations and a highly curated look, they’ve built an incredibly loyal community. For them, it’s all about brand equity over broad reach.

Both models are completely valid. But so far, only the broad-access model, Kith’s path, has actually been proven to cross the $100M mark on its own.

🥀Thanks for reading! Let’s get to know eachother. Find me on Instagram, TikTok, or connect with me onLinkedIn!

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CAFE SOCIETY

{A weekly section of headlines worth reading. The name originates from the 1930s term “café society,” coined to describe the glamorous writers and artists who lived in Paris cafés. These are the stories I imagine they’d debate over champagne and cigarettes.}

1. We have officially begun award season and earnings season. Uniqlo's having a great run in North America, with double-digit growth last quarter and 11 new stores on the way this year. A lot of that momentum comes from their huge success in China, which is now funding their big pushes in North America and Europe.

2. Aritzia just posted its strongest quarter ever, surpassing $1 billion in revenue. A huge 54% surge in US sales drove that result, with America now making up 60% of their global business.

3. And for award season, it’s basically one of fashion’s highest-EMV periods. Actors are stepping out in the latest runway looks for the Golden Globes, with Jennifer Lawrence's sheer floral Givenchy dress by Sarah Burton being a standout moment.

4. Will Welch is stepping down from leading GQ after six years. He's moving to Paris for a new role, where he'll be working closely with Pharrell Williams.

5. After 16 years leading Vestiaire Collective, co-founder Fanny Moizant is out as part of a major leadership shake-up. Moizant said the decision wasn’t hers, marking an end to one of resale’s founding stories as the company pivots under new leadership.

6. Erin and Sarah Foster, the celeb founders behind Favourite Daughter, are on track to hit $150 million in sales this year. In just five years, they've expanded everywhere from Saks to Nordstrom, opened flagship stores, and gone from “not fashion girls” to retail darlings.

7. The celebrity brand space just got more crowded with Millie Bobby Brown launching her own fashion line, Mills, aimed at young women. It's a collaboration with Delta Galil USA, a global apparel company, and will launch exclusively at Walmart. While her star power will drive initial hype, true longevity for the brand will have to be earned.

8. Last week, we talked about Lumia’s tech-driven health-tracking earrings. In a similar wellness vein, ear seeds - tiny adhesive beads rooted in Chinese medicine- are now trending with celebrities. They offer a non-invasive take on acupressure to help manage stress and anxiety, proving that whether high-tech or traditional, the ear is having a major wellness and fashion moment.

9. A Jeremy Scott's 1998 Batwing dress sold for €9,750, which is around $11,000 - roughly 16 times its pre-sale estimate. It seems people are more willing than ever to pay for a piece of fashion history.

10. If you're looking for a cool Indian brand, check out Bodements. Founded by Divya Saini, it breathes new life into vintage Indian textiles, transforming them into unique, contemporary pieces. It’s a brand that really celebrates heritage and sustainability.

11. James Turrell, known for his immersive light installations, has taken his vision even further into fragrance. He’s collaborated with Lalique on a pair of sculptural perfumes that translate his obsession with light and desert landscapes into scent, proving that even perfume can be a medium for art.

    

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“I Bought a Luxury Boutique at 22”

I walk into Fleming by Le Bibloquet on the Upper East Side just as the ladies are filtering out. The tables were clearing, mink coats were being pulled on, and the room had that brief silence that comes after a busy hour. It felt like the right setting for the conversation I was about to have.

I’m meeting Madison Dowd, the founder of Ludivine, an influential luxury boutique on the Upper East Side that’s known for introducing designers to New York (mainly the UES ladies) well before they are mainstream.

Here’s our conversation:

Taking Over Ludivine

Shannon: You didn’t start Ludivine, you bought it in your early twenties. Can you walk me through that decision - from scrolling BizBuySell to actually taking over a Madison Avenue boutique?”

Madison: I graduated from Fordham in 2018 and then worked at a fashion tech company called Trendanalytics. I went there thinking a startup would teach me how to run a business. It didn’t. I was a Business Development Rep, doing outbound outreach all day, and I got bored very quickly.

I really wanted to start my own business. I couldn’t imagine spending ten years moving from job to job and waiting to feel ready. It felt like it would take forever to feel confident. So I thought, why not just jump in and learn?

While I was at Trendanalytics, I found Ludivine listed for sale on BizBuySell. My dad actually suggested the idea first. He said, “I don’t really know fashion businesses, but why don’t you look for a template?” So we started browsing together, and one day this listing came up.

I walked in expecting a random T-shirt shop on the Upper East Side. Something small and forgettable. But it wasn’t. The store carried brands like Khaite, Gabriela Hearst, and R13. It felt thoughtful and real. At the time, it was on 82nd and Lexington, and I remember thinking, oh, this is actually something.

Shannon: Of all the businesses you could’ve bought, why a luxury women’s boutique on the Upper East Side? What itch were you trying to scratch personally?

Madison: I really wanted to curate. I've always wanted to have a store. I would play "store" with my own clothes as a kid. I've always had a creative side to curating a wardrobe and styling. And I wasn't quite ready to dive into a collection of my own at the time. So, this was a perfect opportunity to cut my teeth.

But when I looked at (Ludivine’s) P&L, I saw a lot of white space. The previous owner didn’t have a website, was selling only from one store, and wasn’t offloading old inventory. There were so many obvious areas where the business could grow.

It was a healthy business. But she had no interest in building an e-commerce business, investing in social media, or leaning into marketing to scale it further.

Shannon: How did you finance the acquisition? Did you fund it yourself, or were your parents involved in the purchase?

Madison: I took out loans and bought the business from the previous owner, Ludivine, which is also the name of the store. It took about five years to pay everything back.

Both of my parents are entrepreneurs. They started a business together when my mom was still in college, and my dad was just a year out. They’re very much learn-by-doing people, and that definitely influenced me.

I was 22 and really energized about building something. I don’t think I would’ve been as brave if they hadn’t encouraged me and said, you can do this. But taking on that much debt at that age is scary. If the business can’t cash-flow it, the risk feels very real.

Shannon: How hard is it to run a boutique retail store?

Madison: I think it was hard for a long time. Cash flow and inventory are especially tough in retail, and for years, I kept asking myself whether it would ever feel easy. But we’ve finally hit our groove, and social media has been a big part of that.

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Shannon: What unfair advantage do you think you had?

Madison: I think I’ve always had a really discerning eye and a strong taste level. I was genuinely excited to bring that into the world, and it’s proved to be something people actually respond to.

Many stores buy purely based on numbers and sell-through rates, not on a genuine love of the clothes or a truly edited point of view. For me, I’m in the showroom touching everything. I’m thinking, where would I wear this? How would I wear it? And how does that translate to how our customer actually lives and dresses?

I think that’s where our advantage comes from - we’re small, and we know our customer really intimately. We can curate very specifically for that person. We’re not left sitting on a bunch of inventory that nobody wanted because we actually know who we’re buying for.

Shannon: You were much younger than Ludivine’s core customer. Did that ever create a disconnect or make you hesitant to be visible as the owner early on?

Madison: At first, I didn’t tell anyone I owned the store.

I was lucky because of Gretta, since she’d worked for the previous owner, and she stayed on. She had all the customer relationships. So we kept that status quo: she was very customer-facing, and I did everything else.

I handled all the back-end stuff. Buying, operations, you name it, anything that wasn’t customer-facing.

I was there all the time, but mostly in the back room. I had this little office, and I would just listen and learn. If I were out on the floor helping Gretta, I wouldn’t say I owned the store. People thought I was the intern.

Maybe that was insecurity on my part, but it felt like there was nothing to gain by announcing myself as the owner. I didn’t see the upside.

Customers still thought Ludivine owned the store, even though she was never there, and Gretta was the one selling. And honestly, that felt safer. There was more to lose by disrupting that than by staying humble and quiet about it. Especially as a 22-year-old who, at the time, really felt like she knew nothing.

The Ludivine Model: Where Taste Meets Cash Flow

Shannon: Who is your core client today?

Madison: It’s really about curating for the Upper East Side mom. I think her lifestyle is actually a little unique. There’s a lot of travel, a lot of daywear, a lot of dinner outfits and events, too, but it’s not what you’d think of as downtown sexy. It’s cool, but laid-back.

Shannon: What’s Ludivine’s buying philosophy?

Madison: When it comes to the brands we choose, our customer isn’t looking for something that says Chanel all over it. She can afford it, but that’s not why she comes to us.

What’s been most interesting is that the pieces performing best are often from brands I’m scouring the internet for. Things you can’t easily find elsewhere, interesting knitwear, shearling pieces, certain denim brands that don’t have many doors where you can actually see and try them in person. That’s been the sweet spot.

Of course, we also carry brands like Gabriela Hearst, Etro, and Missoni, but it’s always our edit of what we think the Upper East Side woman should be wearing. The mix matters. We carry established names alongside completely undiscovered ones, sourcing them from the US and around the world.

Tariffs have only impacted me a few times, like when I’m landing an order myself instead of the brand handling it - the price jump is real. A shearling coat we originally priced at $5,500 now lands closer to $6,300. That’s a big difference.

Shannon: When you’re buying, what are you optimizing for - margin, novelty, or how pieces integrate into your clients’ wardrobes?

Madison: I don’t think we ever think margin first. If something isn’t good and it’s not going to sell, a high margin doesn’t really matter.

Early on, we had a small customer base that we knew incredibly well. We could predict quantities instinctively, one of this, two of that, because we knew exactly who was going to buy what.

As we’ve grown, we’ve started relying more on data, mostly around volumes. We’re selling out consistently now, so we need to buy more just to keep up with demand.

That’s been my biggest challenge lately. I didn’t expect this level of growth, and we’re selling out so quickly that I’m constantly chasing inventory that doesn’t exist, especially in denim.

Shannon: From a buyer’s perspective, what do emerging designers consistently misunderstand about working with independent boutiques?

Madison: I’d say designers misunderstand how lookbook and runway can transition to retail without getting watered down. The most disappointing thing is falling in love with a piece, only to have it cancelled in production because it wasn’t commercially produced in large enough quantities.

While I totally appreciate and understand the financial burden of producing items in small quantities, I do think it’s important for designers to keep producing special items. We have plenty of black trousers and white shirts out there.

Customers want to see you’re capable of more... and then buy the white shirt anyway. But you can’t discount the value of showing the customer what’s possible. We sometimes buy a special jacket or dress for this reason; we’re not going to sell 100 of them, but it’s what makes the customer walk in and say, “Wow, this is such a cool store.”

Shannon: As the business grows and demand becomes less predictable, how do you think about managing inventory risk - especially when you’re paying brands upfront and holding all of that product on your balance sheet?

Madison: Cash flow is the hardest part.

I plan everything week by week, mapping things out from now through about July. I look at which orders are coming in, our historical sales, and where I think we’ll land this year.

I also factor in that when new inventory arrives, there’s usually a sales bump because people are excited to buy. If a week feels too heavy on inventory, I’ll push some deliveries to the following week.

I treat the cash-flow plan like a rule book. If something isn’t on the cash flow, it doesn’t get paid that week. One miss can throw off the entire system. This process helps me anticipate slow and peak months, understand how much extra cash we’ll have, and plan marketing initiatives and other activities.

Shannon: On a day-to-day basis, what numbers are you actually looking at?

Madison: Sales numbers, first. And then I’ll log in to my cash-flow model and check what inventory I have coming in that week.

Shannon: And more broadly, what are you tracking - sell-through rates, repeat customers? What’s the North Star metric for you?

Madison: For sell-throughs, I recently brought on a consultant who handles our planning. He has a system that integrates directly with Shopify and breaks everything down by category, showing what we have and what we’re missing.

We meet once a month, and he’ll say things like, “You’re overbought in tops, you’re underbought in denim, you should go find another $10,000 worth of denim.” It’s been helpful to have a numbers-driven person say, “This is what you need,” instead of relying purely on my gut.

He can see all our purchase orders and what’s arriving week by week, so he can project monthly sales and show where those sales should land by category. That makes it easier to spot gaps early and adjust before they become a problem.

From Curator To Creator: The Birth Of Freya

Sprezzatura context: Freya is the private-label line from founders Madison Dowd and Gretta Bannister, specializing in couture-level beaded skirts, dresses, and silk pieces in groovy prints. Each piece perfectly bridges daytime ease and special-occasion glamour. The brand sources exquisite materials such as hand-beaded French lace, playful silk prints, and luxurious designer tweeds, and crafts them into timeless silhouettes.

Shannon: Freya, when did you launch that? And what was the reason for starting an in-house brand? How did that come about?

Madison: Gretta was already working at Ludivine under the previous owner and stayed on after I took over. We worked very closely together, and she has a design background.

In 2021, she came to me and said she wanted to start a DTC brand and do it together. Between the two of us, we had a lot of knowledge about what our customers did and didn’t want, so it felt worth trying.

Gretta and I are brick-and-mortar retail people. We know how to sell to someone walking through the door. We had e-commerce for Ludivine, but we weren’t running ads or actively driving traffic. We didn’t know how to launch a brand with zero name recognition - like, how are people even finding this website?

So we sold the first round of inventory to Ludivine's customers, but it became clear pretty quickly that it wasn’t working as we’d hoped. After that, we began developing patterns and testing pieces on-site in the store. Small runs, not full collections. If we noticed a gap, like not having enough dresses, we’d make a dress and see how it performed.

Shannon: Was it because you couldn’t find a dress from other brands? Or was it more like, we don’t have enough dresses right now, maybe we should just make our own to fill that gap?

Madison: I think it was a combination of both. Sometimes we genuinely didn’t have the right thing, and we wanted to test - does our dress actually work?

We also felt like there was a real gap in the market. I know “day to night” gets overused, but it was more about simple shapes like a slip dress with interesting textures. Everything out there felt like either a plain white slip dress or a plain black slip dress. And unless you were spending, like, $20,000, nothing felt interesting. Or it was so minimal that you were like, what am I actually paying for?

I felt our customer was looking for something else. So we said, okay, let’s figure out what that is and start testing shapes.

All the patterns were brand new; we developed them ourselves. We needed to see if the fabric worked, if the shape worked.

The best part was that Ludivine customers would buy the pieces, and we could literally see them on bodies in the fitting room. It was an amazing way to test everything in real life.

By March, Gretta and I felt like we finally had data. At that point, we decided to try scaling it into the wholesale market. Producing one piece, let alone four, at the tiny quantities we were doing in-store was really expensive. If we were going to do this properly, it had to be bigger than just the store.

Shannon: So, were you just wholesaling through Ludivine, or were you trying to sell it elsewhere, too?

Madison: At first, we were only selling through Ludivine. But it was too expensive to keep making pieces just for one store, so we decided to try wholesaling to other retailers.

In March, we created a full collection and took it to market in Paris. It was seen by a few buyers, but unfortunately, it was the same season when Saks, Bergdorf’s, and Neiman’s were all merging, and everything felt kind of stalled. We ended up getting zero orders.

So instead, we did a trunk show at Ludivine. All of our customers came and pre-ordered specific pieces. It turned out to be a really smart way to fund our samples and production, and just keep moving forward.

Shannon: What’s Freya’s price point?

Madison: It’s expensive. Around $1,500 for a silk dress, and up to about $6,000 for a beaded bomber.

Shannon: Was the intention to create something luxury, or did you design the clothes first and then realize, okay, this is what it costs, so this is the price?

Madison: Exactly. It just costs that much to make things.

We weren’t really thinking in terms of contemporary versus luxury. Obviously, the lower the price, the easier it is, and I’d always love to get the price sharper.

But we make everything in New York. The fabrics come from Italy and France. Many of the pieces are hand-beaded by women artisans in France.

Overcoming the Camera: From 1,200 to 41,000 Followers

Shannon: So I think somewhere on the internet you said that you didn’t like to create your own content. What flipped the switch for you?”

Madison: In August, I had around 1,200 followers on Instagram and zero posts. My boyfriend kept telling me, “You have to post on TikTok and Instagram; they’re your best marketing channels, they’re free, and you’re not even using them.” But he was right.

I started posting in August, and it was uncomfortable at first. Being on the internet like that isn’t really my thing. But I posted every day and landed on a simple formula: walking down the street in an outfit. Nobody’s reinventing the wheel here, but it is working.

It has been driving traffic to the store and e-commerce sales, which feels validating, especially compared to how much I resisted it at the beginning. I’m now at about 37,000 followers on Instagram. (Today, Madison is at about 41k followers)

Shannon: I found you on TikTok. Where is your traction/growth/customers coming from?

Madison: Social media is driving a lot of traffic to the store. Historically, we’ve always had a strong base of repeat customers, very much the Upper East Side mom. She came in every season, and we knew her so well it was almost predictable. You could say, these four people are going to buy these four pieces. It was that obvious.

That kind of customer base keeps the business very stable. You know a certain level of demand will always be there. But then the question becomes: where does growth come from? If you only rely on that group, once they’re tapped out, that’s it.

Instagram really changed that for us. We’re still reaching the same customers we’ve always had in New York, but now she might be in Texas or LA At the same time, we’re seeing completely new people walk into the store. There’s the neighborhood customer in a similar demographic, a younger shopper who didn’t know about us before but still has the ability to spend.

Then there’s another, more aspirational customer. She might start with denim or T-shirts, but it brings her into the brand’s world.

Shannon: What advice would you give to someone who wants to start their own boutique? What would you do again, and what would you avoid?

Madison: I think the biggest thing is trusting yourself and getting comfortable standing on your own feet. You’re the only person who can really take control of your future, so you can’t outsource that decision-making to other people.

I spent a lot of time dealing with imposter syndrome, and looking back, it didn’t really serve me. It’s important to be humble and honest about what you don’t know, but not to the point where it stops you from taking action. You figure things out by doing, not by waiting until you feel ready.

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Thanks for reading. To get to know me, you can follow me on Instagram, TikTok, or LinkedIn!

Today’s issue is special. It’s the first in an interview series where I’ll be speaking with founders, operators, and investors shaping the fashion industry.

To begin, I’m in conversation with Madeleine Cohen, founder of Nelle Atelier, a New York–based brand built for petites. This was one of those conversations that stayed with me. We talk candidly about what it really takes to build a fashion brand in New York, a market that’s as demanding as it gets.

Stay tuned for the interview.

CAFE SOCIETY

{A weekly section of headlines worth reading. The name originates from the 1930s term “café society,” coined to describe the glamorous writers and artists who lived in Paris cafés. These are the stories I imagine they’d debate over champagne and cigarettes.}

1. Phoebe Philo’s eponymous label has done something very few brands manage. In just two years, revenue has roughly tripled, with 2025 sales projected at around $41 million. Wholesale now accounts for about a third of the business, driven by partners such as Dover Street Market and Galeries Lafayette, an expansion from the brand’s original digital-first strategy. That’s an exceptional growth curve for a brand this young.

2. Saks CEO Marc Metrick is stepping down. The company has been struggling under heavy debt from its acquisition of Neiman Marcus and has even missed interest payments as it prepares for bankruptcy.

3. Wellness accessories and fashion hardware go hand in hand. Lumia, a health-tech startup, has just launched earrings that track blood flow and has raised $7 million from J2 Ventures, BonAngels Venture Partners, and a group of angel investors. The data they’re collecting can surface patterns around circulation, temperature regulation, fatigue, and stress.

4. Aureum Collective actually started in jewelry, but now they’re going all-in on leather goods—think bags and belts. Honestly, it’s a smart pivot. Leather probably has better margins and is a more stable business for them.

5. Indian streetwear is having a global moment. Homegrown brands are blending heritage craftsmanship with contemporary style, attracting customers outside of India. Labels like NorBlack NorWhite and Dhruv Kapoor have been taking that unique fusion to the world stage, showcasing at major fashion weeks.

6. Gucci has just opened its second-ever bar, this time in Osaka. Gucci Giardino Osaka blends Italian vibes with contemporary Japanese style, anchored by the brand’s signature Rosso Ancora red. It’s part of a broader move we’re seeing across luxury: using hospitality to exist in culture beyond product and to give people a way to experience the brand without having to buy from it.

7. The most saved image on Vogue Runway in 2025 was from Ludovic de Saint Sernin’s one-off haute couture show for Jean Paul Gaultier.

   

8. Stumbled upon this brand, Mel Usine. It’s a new New York–based womenswear fashion label founded in 2024 by Parsons graduate designer, Stephen Biga, who previously worked at Proenza Schouler, Gabriela Hearst, and Rodarte. I love the romantic style and medieval aesthetics.

9. There’s a bookstore in Tokyo that sells only one chosen book at a time - Morioka Shoten

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Now onto the main event…

How Nelle Atelier Is Building a Profitable Petites Brand in NYC

It’s 10:10 am, and I’m late. My 10 am interview with Madeleine Cohen is already underway without me. I’m stuck in an Uber barely crawling toward Soho, wondering why I didn’t just take the subway. I jump out early, sprint 6 minutes to the Crosby Street Hotel bar, and find Madeleine seated at a table, unbothered.

An apology and a quick croissant order later, we dive into the economics of building a petite brand in New York City.

Here’s our conversation:

The Category Nobody Was Building For

Shannon: For people who are new to the brand, what is Nelle Atelier?

Madeleine: We describe Nelle as the essential edit of wardrobe staples for women 5’4” and under. But over time, we’ve evolved beyond that. I’d say we’re really about petites, perfected.

I obviously didn’t invent the petite category; it used to be a real category in our moms’ generation, and then it just sort of disappeared. It was never properly replaced. So a big question for us early on was: what does petite look like now?

What we’re doing is executing it better, from a fit, materials, and brand perspective. And we’re reimagining it for the modern shopper.

We started with denim because it’s one of the hardest categories to get right, second only to swim. Jeans are incredibly mainstream. Everyone wears them. People wear them at night, to work, everywhere. They’re a true wardrobe staple. So it felt like the right place to start.

Shannon: Was Nelle starting driven by your own customer experience, where you felt something was missing?

Madeleine: Yeah, I didn’t see myself in any of the denim brands. And I think I felt the same way my customers feel.

I’m shopping at The Frankie Shop and Isabel Marant. And then all of a sudden I’m buying jeans at Abercrombie. It just makes no sense.

So I wanted something for myself that was premium - premium price point, high quality from a product perspective, and aspirational from a brand perspective.

And our customer is about 25 to 35, lives in a major city, and is a fashion girl who happens to be short. What we’re really focused on is being cool, relevant, and very niche for the woman who cares deeply about quality, fit, and tailoring. That’s the real gap we’re addressing.

Shannon: The denim market is incredibly crowded, and petites are often treated as an add-on. What do you see as Nelle’s real moat - especially when mass brands could, in theory, copy what you’re doing?

Madeleine: Ironically, the moat is that we’re petite-only. People used to ask me, “Who’s going to eat your lunch?” And what’s funny is that no one really wants to eat it.

Big brands have had plenty of opportunities to do this properly, but they can’t be bothered, and I understand why. From an inventory perspective, doing petites right means carrying essentially double of everything. You need different fit models, different shoots. It’s basically building a second business, and the financial burden is huge, which is why companies that do it are J. Crew, Gap, Old Navy, and Abercrombie, which are huge and have the resources.

Some premium denim brands have started offering petites, but it’s always an afterthought; it’s never their primary focus. We actually surveyed our customers at one point and asked why they shop with us, and the number one reason was that we’re a petite-only specialist.

So we’ve really leaned into that. Women under 5’4 make up a huge portion of the market, so there’s plenty of demand. For us, the real challenge now isn’t competition, it’s building awareness without a big marketing budget.

Shannon: What is the biggest pain point around petites denim?

Madeleine: I once went to get a pair of trousers altered, and they quoted me $200. The pants were $70 on sale, so I was paying three times the price just to get them hemmed.

But the hem actually isn’t the biggest issue. The real problems in petite denim are the rise, the knee placement, and the length.

Founder - Market Fit (Without the Fashion resume)

Shannon: Before Nelle, what was your career like?

Madeleine: I began my career at Estée Lauder through a rotational program. I was on the omnichannel strategy team, and we were building early digital tools that bridged e-commerce and wholesale - buy online, pick up in store, online appointments - before that was really a thing.

After that, I joined Casper, first on the experience design team, where we optimized the in-store buying experience and rolled it out across more than 50 stores, and then in merchandising, where I led go-to-market strategy and took products from concept to omnichannel launch.

In 2021, I moved to California to join Bala Bangles as Chief of Staff. Product was my main focus, but I also opened their first Soho pop-up and was briefly head of marketing.

Shannon: How has that background shaped what you’re building at Nelle?

Madeleine: I honestly couldn’t have done this without my past experience. I am an outsider to the fashion industry - I never worked in fashion. But consumer experience is incredibly relevant.

Shannon: How did you build a fashion network when you didn’t have one?

Madeleine: I genuinely believe you can build a network that’s industry-agnostic. You can figure it out if you’re willing to put in the work.

I built the network once I had the idea. I’d always been in DTC and consumer, and beauty is very adjacent, so I was probably halfway there already. But beyond that, I just made a lot of phone calls. I talked to the first person who said, “You should speak to this person,” and then I talked to that person, and so on. I brought everyone along with me.

I think in the US, especially, there’s a strong culture of entrepreneurship, and people genuinely want to support founders. I try to be very generous with my network - making introductions, taking calls - and I was lucky that people did the same for me.

I spent a long time early on just networking. I literally networked my way to our factory, which is a big reason our product was so strong from the beginning. We work with an unbelievable factory, and through that, I was able to attract really talented designers who’ve been in this business for decades. Once you build trust and rapport, people say, “Okay, this person is legit,” and they bring others along. That’s really how we got here - just making calls, taking calls, and being generous in return.

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Leveraging Influencer Marketing

Shannon: How exactly are you targeting your core customer?

Madeleine: Our most successful channel has been influencer marketing. We haven’t paid anyone. We’ve done some really great product collaborations with creators who naturally and organically took a liking to the brand. We really love our community, and it’s worked quite well for us.

We’ve done almost no paid ads. We spend very little money on a monthly basis. So I’d say it’s mostly been word of mouth, influencer, and pop-ups. We do really well in person, which isn’t shocking, because jeans need to be tried on.

Shannon: I want to dive deeper into the gifting side of influencer marketing. How do you think about the budget and allocation?

Madeleine: It’s a good question. I don’t do it very scientifically. I build a list every time we have a launch. ShopMy is amazing - we have so much data. We know who converts, who’s brand-building, and who’s driving awareness.

We’ve seen the most success by gifting the same people over and over again. For a launch, I’m not gifting twenty new people. I’m gifting twenty people who already love the brand, and maybe five new people, to see how it goes because we can see all the data.

Merchandising Discipline

Shannon: How many SKUs did you start with, and what made you decide on that number?

Madeleine: We launched with 3 styles and 2 washes, so 6 SKUs, but really it was 60, because we have ten sizes, which is why denim is such a nightmare.

We now have 16 styles across different washes, so we’ve grown significantly. Honestly, the assortment is probably too big. I’m phasing things out right now and really tightening it.

Going forward, it’s new washes on existing bodies, and maybe one to two new styles a season. When something works - multiple lengths, multiple colors - you can go wide or deep, and a lot of the time it’s better to go deep.

Shannon: When a style underperforms, how long do you typically give it before deciding to kill it or rework it?

Madeleine: What I’ve learned is that it takes a little bit of time for a style to catch on, and in the end, time is really what creates a bestseller.

We definitely look at returns to understand performance, but this usually speaks to sizing issues vs a style’s performance. We have worked on sizing for most styles based on customer feedback, but we have not really killed any styles yet.

Fashion is cyclical; sometimes we won’t remake a style for a season, but bring it back the next.

The Economics Behind Wholesale

Shannon: Regarding your Nordstrom partnership, when did you start that wholesale account?

Madeleine: It’ll be about a year next week. We launched the day after Thanksgiving. We’re a drop-ship partner, so we fulfill everything ourselves. Their marketplace program is great. It’s a really good way to test wholesale. It’s logistically and operationally pretty challenging to manage, candidly, but it’s worth it for the exposure.

Shannon: Roughly what percentage of your sales comes from wholesale?

Madeleine: About 25% blended wholesale.

Shannon: People often talk about prioritizing DTC for control versus wholesale. What’s your view?

Madeleine: No, you need both. Wholesale stabilizes the business from a cash-flow perspective, assuming you’re taking deposits and getting paid before you ship. Obviously not if you’re giving net-90 terms or doing any of that other craziness.

But you need all of it.

Eventually, you’ll likely need a store, too. A retail store is an amazing discovery platform - it’s a billboard, if it’s placed correctly. So no, you need all three channels to build a successful business. It’s just about the order, the timing, and how you do it.

Shannon: When you’re choosing a wholesale partner - especially given the current climate, with so many retailers under pressure or going bankrupt - how do you think about risk? Do you insist on upfront payment?

Madeleine: We’re candid with them from the start: we really want to do this, but we have to share the risk. That usually means a conversation around deposits. Sometimes we can be more flexible on the margin if they provide those deposits, and they have to pay before shipment. I’m not shipping anything unless it’s been paid for.

And it’s okay to say no. If they say no, it’s not the right time. I get the opportunity, but with the way things are going, which is sideways for a lot of these guys, it’s not worth literally going bankrupt over.

But at the end of the day, if you want cool indie brands in your store, the brands can’t be bankrolling you.

Shannon: When you’re entering wholesale partnerships with retailers like Nordstrom, what kinds of hurdles do you run into?

Madeleine: Honestly, the biggest and most annoying thing is GS1 barcodes. You need these unique UPC codes, and you have to pay for them - they’re actually really expensive. It’s one of those things that reminds you why you have to be a real operator to run a business like this.

So that was the biggest change for us: implementing GS1 barcodes and managing inventory really tightly. Returns are also difficult - the Nordstrom customer likes to return things, so it’s hard. But we love them anyway.

Try now, Pay later

Shannon: I want to talk about the Try Now, Pay Later program with Shopify.

Madeleine: Try Now is amazing. It was a total no-brainer for me. It does create some backend challenges, but we keep it on.

Many people have told me to turn it off, but for a new brand, especially in a category where people have had fit issues their entire lives, it really helps them get over the hump.

And honestly, when I have a pop-up, I send people into the fitting room with three sizes. Why wouldn’t I do that online? Not everyone wants to put $1,200 on their credit card just to try things on.

We’re protected - they have seven days, and if they don’t return it, they get charged. And it actually helps our flow, because people aren’t holding onto things they don’t want forever.

Shannon: Are there any downsides to the program?

Madeleine: It’s really just an inventory management question. People usually keep one pair out of the three or four they order, so we’ll have a few pieces that are technically out of the warehouse and showing as potentially out of stock on the site, which is annoying.

But aside from that, it’s worth it. The biggest drop-off for us is between the first and second orders. Once a customer places a second order, they’re essentially obsessed with the brand. We have customers who’ve placed 10+ orders.

For us, it’s about driving more trials and building trust, then getting them to come back. Because once they’ve come back twice, they tend to come back five to seven times. Our repeat rate is incredibly high.

The Metrics That Actually Matter

Shannon: What are the most important metrics you’re tracking in the business?

Madeleine Cohen: Sales. And then repeat is a big one that I’m constantly looking at because that’s how sustainable businesses are built.

Shannon: What do your margins look like?

Madeleine Cohen: We have pretty high margins. Denim is a nice category in that way. There’s a healthy delta, and it’ll only get better as we scale. But it’s strong to begin with.

Shannon: What has been the most expensive product decision you’ve made so far - financially or in terms of time?

Madeleine: I think expanding beyond denim with our capsule collections. It was a financial expense before we were ready for it, but it was super helpful in terms of figuring out the next direction for the brand. We are pausing capsules for now, but we have the data to execute it well when we have the capital.

The 5-Year Plan

Shannon: Looking ahead five years, how do you see Nelle evolving? Is it still a denim-first brand, or something more expansive?

Madeleine: We’ve asked our customers what they want more of, and the answer is actually more breadth in denim. We’re obviously constrained by capital, so we do as much as we can — more washes, more styles of denim, and non-denim bottoms. I really think we’re a bottom business.

Shannon: What advice would you give to fashion founders?

Madeleine: I think being a founder is really glamorized. And this is, honestly, the least glamorous, hardest job you could have. So if you’re not interested in working really hard and being really stressed, this probably isn’t the career for you.

That said, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I love what I do. I think that’s the biggest thing people miss. They see the TikToks and the brand dinners, but that’s maybe 5% of the job. The rest is really liking accounting, really liking taxes, really liking logistics - calling UPS a million times because your inventory is somewhere in Tennessee and you don’t know why.

Thanks for reading. To get to know me, you can follow me on Instagram, TikTok, or LinkedIn!

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This will also be the last issue of the year. I’m spending the next few weeks planning some new formats for the new year, including conversations with founders and investors across the fashion industry, conversations that usually stay off-record. And it’s something I’m really looking forward to exploring more deeply.

The first interview drops on January 5, so keep an eye out!

CAFE SOCIETY

{A weekly section of headlines worth reading. The name originates from the 1930s term “café society,” coined to describe the glamorous writers and artists who lived in Paris cafés. These are the stories I imagine they’d debate over champagne and cigarettes.}

1. Bezel-set engagement rings are having a moment. They’re showing up everywhere, replacing oversized solitaires and sparkle-first designs with something more intentional. What’s interesting is how widespread this shift is becoming - jewelers say demand has noticeably increased.

2. Pieter Mulier, the current creative director behind Alaïa, is emerging as the front-runner to become Creative Director of Versace, and the appointment signals a major tonal shift. The move follows Prada’s €1.25 billion acquisition of Versace from Capri Holdings, officially bringing the Medusa empire back into Italian hands.

3. Declining sales at Stella McCartney spotlight a growing tension in luxury: can sustainability-first positioning survive in a slow, value-conscious economy without scale? As consumers tighten discretionary spending amid inflation and economic uncertainty, ethical credentials alone are proving insufficient to drive volume. The pressure is particularly acute in the UK, where British labels such as Burberry have cited weaker domestic sales following the previous government’s decision to end VAT-free shopping for tourists. Reports also suggest that the label could run out of cash by 2028 if performance doesn’t materially improve.

4. Elliott Management’s $1+ billion stake in Lululemon is a warning shot. The investor is backing former Coach and Ralph Lauren executive Jane Nielsen as CEO, signaling a pivot toward discipline over distraction. At Ralph Lauren, Nielsen helped reignite North American sales, double the stock, and expand margins by slashing discounting, echoing her Coach-era turnaround playbook. The timing is pointed: recent moves like Mickey Mouse and NFL-branded apparel have raised eyebrows for cluttering Lululemon’s once-tight brand.

5. These clothes and shoes promise better skin, mental clarity, and blood flow. Welcome to fashion’s wellness era, where clothing and footwear promise to boost circulation, improve skin, sharpen focus, and calm the mind. From compression-infused fabrics to “bioactive” materials and recovery footwear, brands are borrowing the language of health tech and functional medicine to unlock new value. The appeal is obvious in an optimization-obsessed consumer economy, but the tension is growing. The question is when or if consumers will start asking for proof instead of promises.

6. Matches gets a second life. The luxury e-tailer (and its in-house label) has been acquired by Hulcan, a new luxury group formed by the co-founders of shopping app Mile, with a relaunch planned for 2026.

7. Wedge sneakers are back with Isabel Marant’s signature wedge, once again setting the tone. It’s proof that fashion’s nostalgia cycle is undefeate,d but this time it’s more intentional.

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How Quince Built Retail Like a Tech Company - and Reached $700M

Onboarding

Everyone in fashion knows Quince. And, almost uniformly, everyone in fashion hates it.

The SF–based startup has become one of those brands that triggers an immediate eye-roll among fashion insiders. It’s dismissed as a dupe-adjacent and knock-off brand. And yet, it’s also everywhere, on your TikTok FYP, across affiliate storefronts, inside lifestyle newsletters, and, most jarringly, on the chairs at Vogue World in LA earlier this year. A night ostensibly devoted to Hollywood costume and creativity, with a Quince scarf waiting for every guest. Offline, the brand’s cultural footprint has grown equally visible as last-minute blankets at a rain-soaked Hamptons wedding for Huma Abedin and Alex Soros.

These moments captured the tension at the heart of the brand. Quince doesn’t belong in traditional fashion rooms. But it keeps showing up anyway.

Founded in 2018 by Sid Gupta, Quince built its reputation on a single proposition: premium essentials, without the markup. Its earliest breakout hit and now hero product, the $50 Mongolian cashmere crewneck delivered the look and feel of a luxury sweater at a price point that undercut incumbents by hundreds of dollars. And it became clear that the brand wasn’t interested in playing into luxury’s performative codes.

The timing was precise. As quiet luxury entered the mainstream and consumers grew more fluent in materials like cashmere grades and fiber sourcing, Quince positioned itself at the intersection of the stealth wealth movement.

Social media did the rest. On TikTok and Instagram, creators dissected the product in real time, scrutinizing the 100% Grade A Mongolian cashmere and comparing it against higher-priced alternatives. What might have remained a quiet basics item became a viral proof point, frequently described as “anti-luxury luxury”, the promise of high-quality clothing without the traditional markup. These details are presented as proof points, inviting consumers to evaluate the product the way they might assess a piece of hardware rather than a fashion item.

Although reviews across Reddit threads, Business Insider, and Oprah Daily consistently praise Quince’s cashmere for its clean design and accessible pricing, they also point to durability as the clear trade-off. Pilling is inevitable with any cashmere, yet many note that it appears earlier with regular wear, reflecting the realities of the brand’s price point and production model.

And yet, there is room for Quince precisely because it isn’t trying to compete with fashion houses or trend-driven brands on their terms. Operationally, Quince runs less like a fashion retail platform and more like a tech-enabled retail platform. And their take is either disruptive or simply pragmatic.

Fashion may bristle at their approach, but the numbers suggest consumer demand is aligned. Quince’s sales more than doubled to $700 million last year, supported by significant funding rounds that now value the company at over $4.5 billion in just 6 years. The latest round was led by Iconiq Capital, the Silicon Valley venture firm that manages wealth for tech heavyweights, including Mark Zuckerberg, underscoring deep investor confidence in Quince’s manufacturer-to-consumer model.

Quince’s growth reflects what a large segment of consumers wants: accessibility and prices they can justify, especially in a moment when the meaning of “luxury” is increasingly under scrutiny.

But to understand how Quince reached this scale so quickly, you have to look past aesthetics and into how the company actually operates.

Cashmere As The Proof Case

Quince’s real differentiation isn’t branding but infrastructure. Unlike most DTC labels, it operates on a Direct-from-Factory model - a system that ships products straight from the factory to the end consumer, removes wholesale entirely, and centralizes distribution through its own site, rather than through a network of retail stores or wholesalers. This supply-chain structure is closer to Temu and Shein than to traditional DTC retail, which is exactly why the unit economics work.

Cashmere, in particular, is a category well-suited to this model. The global cashmere market is growing steadily, valued at roughly $3.36 billion in 2024 and expected to expand through the decade as demand for premium natural fibers increases. Retailers also report a 29% higher repeat-purchase rate for cashmere compared with synthetics - a signal that once consumers enter the category, they tend to stay. That behavior maps directly onto Quince’s proposition: accessible, premium basics that encourage customers to return.

Cashmere’s competitive landscape is essentially a price ladder built on the same two sourcing regions - Mongolia and Inner Mongolia. Differentiation tends to come from fiber selection and traceability claims, knitting and finishing standards, and where the final garment is manufactured.

Most entry-level cashmere brands source their fibers from Mongolia but manufacture in China. Quince starts at $50, Nadaam at $98, and Italic ranges between $99 to $499 (the brand doesn’t specify its manufacturing country). Even the “cozy luxury” tier uses nearly the same inputs - Mongolian Cashmere, Chinese manufacturing - with Guest in Residence ranging from ~$300 to $800+, and Jenni Kayne sits around $475. At the top end, Elder Statesman sells at ~$1,000 and manufactures in the US, while Brunello Cucinelli, the benchmark for true luxury, is known for sweaters around $1,250 and proudly emphasizes production in Solomeo, Italy.

What Quince exposes, unintentionally or not, is how much of the category is effectively white-labeled - drawing from the same raw materials and manufacturing bases, with price inflation driven more by branding than by fundamentally different inputs.

If cashmere revealed the structural sameness of the category, the question becomes: why did Quince scale so much faster than everyone else, selling essentially the same product?

Why This Growth Is Rare, Even in DTC

Quince’s trajectory is striking precisely because it breaks from the dominant DTC pattern of the 2010s. Quince hit $700M in just 6 years, and that’s exceptionally fast.

Most breakout DTC brands from the early 2010 era followed a brand-first playbook, leaning on heavy storytelling and cultural positioning, and then reached a plateau once novelty faded, and customer acquisition costs rose.

• Warby Parker took 14 years to approach the $700 million revenue mark, built on brand trust and physical retail expansion.

• Allbirds, deemed as an ‘IPO Darling,’ took 10 years to cross roughly $250 million in revenue, with growth now stalled as leadership has acknowledged the company had drifted from its core and struggled to sustain demand.

• Everlane, which also sells Cashmere sweaters at a ~$200 price point and relies heavily on branding and mass marketing, took 13 years to cross the ~$250M revenue threshold.

What usually breaks at scale is consistent: margins compress, CAC rises, and category expansion becomes operationally complex.

Quince breaks from this pattern because it is not a brand-first company. It deliberately deprioritizes seasonal fashion cycles, heavy brand-building, and taste-led differentiation. Instead, it removes inefficiencies across pricing, merchandising, supply chain, and acquisition.

In other words, Quince behaves less like a fashion label and more like a tech company operating inside a retail category.

The Quince OS - A Retail Engine Built Like Tech

1. Pricing is cost-first, not brand-first: Products are priced by working backward from a target consumer price. Quince removes wholesale and retail markups by selling DTC only. Product specs - materials, construction, packaging - are then engineered to fit a predefined cost and margin range. This creates predictable gross margins across categories, rather than margin swings tied to brand positioning.

How this differs: Most DTC brands price relative to competitors or perceived brand value, then discover margin problems at scale.

2. Value is anchored through comparison: Quince explicitly positions many of its products as comparative alternatives to higher-priced items from other brands. On its product page, it explicitly compares its cashmere sweaters to Naadam sweaters. By showcasing price comparisons (e.g., “Comparable value $150, Our price $50”) the company not only highlights affordability but also accelerates perceived value. This dupe culture positioning fuels visibility and demand without the expensive brand storytelling typical of premium fashion marketers.

What this comparison table really reveals is not just pricing aggression, but a fundamentally tech-driven way of competing. Quince is not asking consumers to trust the brand; it is asking them to evaluate a system. By laying out price, savings percentages, material composition, shipping, and return windows side by side against Reformation, Naadam, and Vince, Quince behaves less like a fashion label and more like a software product benchmarking itself against competitors.

How this differs: Traditional DTC brands avoid explicit comparisons because they dilute brand equity; they rely on storytelling and lifestyle framing to justify higher prices.

3. Merchandising is demand-led, not seasonal: Quince does not follow traditional fashion seasons. Assortments expand based on real-time demand signals - what customers buy, rebuy, search for, or request. SKUs are introduced or retired purely on performance, not on collection narratives. Shortened lead times, real-time manufacturing responsiveness, and near–just-in-time scheduling allow the brand to move from insight to inventory far faster than seasonal calendars allow.

Winning staples can be scaled quickly while slow movers are phased out. Prioritizing repeatable, non-trend items minimizes inventory risk and avoids the volatility of seasonal cycles.

How this differs: Most fashion DTC brands plan seasonal collections months ahead; Quince follows Sid Gupta’s near just-in-time model, reacting to real demand instead of forecasting trends.

4. Category expansion follows adjacency logic: Quince adds new categories only where existing operations can be extended with minimal friction:

• suppliers already exist or can be reused

• logistics and fulfillment requirements are similar

• margin structures align with current categories

This approach has allowed Quince to expand into adjacent DTC verticals - beauty, accessories, home goods, leather, silk, linen, bags, travel, etc., without overextending its infrastructure. Each new category runs through the same pricing, sourcing, and fulfillment framework, creating consistency in margins and operational efficiency across the assortment.

How this differs: Many brands expand categories for brand growth, introducing new cost structures and operational complexity.

4. Supply chain is standardized: Quince builds direct relationships with manufacturers, enabling tighter control over cost and production. Suppliers are reused across multiple categories wherever possible, creating operational consistency and scale. Assortments favor fewer SKUs with higher volume per SKU, reducing complexity and increasing efficiency. Customization is minimized - fewer one-off designs and more repeatable, standardized products - which keeps production fast, predictable, and cost-efficient.

How this differs: Other brands often scale SKU count faster than operational capacity.

Essentially, Quince treats fashion as a pricing and logistics issue, not a taste issue.

Cultural Output: The Dupe Engine

Quince is the new age Zara or Steve Madden, but the mechanics are fundamentally different.

Zara and Steve Madden thrive on trend duplication: short product life cycles, high SKU churn, seasonal relevance, and constant refresh. Their business models depend on novelty.

Quince, by contrast, knocks off staples. Its economics are built on repeatability, production efficiency, and a narrow set of core SKUs that transcend trends.

Where fast-fashion dupes must constantly reinvent, Quince compounds value by refining the same products at scale. In doing so, it captures the economics of software more than fashion: fewer variables, higher repeatability, and margin expansion through efficiency.

Dupe culture, in this context, is a feature of the system.

But like any system that pushes aggressively, it has pulled Quince into multiple lawsuits.

1. Williams-Sonoma sued Quince over allegedly deceptive dupe” and price-comparison advertising, arguing that Quince’s marketing tactics blurred the line between comparison and misrepresentation.

2. Deckers Outdoor Corp., the owner of UGG, filed suit in 2023, alleging that Quince copied its boot designs. But in a notable ruling, a federal judge found that UGG’s Classic Ultra Mini and Tasman styles were too generic to qualify for trade dress protection. A major win for Quince, and a signal blow to UGG’s attempt to legally monopolize what the court effectively deemed category-level silhouettes.

3. More recently, Coach has filed suit alleging that Quince infringed on the trade dress of its Rogue and Soho bags through lower-priced lookalikes.

What’s important here is what these cases reveal. Quince is testing the limits of protectability - its model assumes that many of the most commercially successful products in fashion are, from a legal standpoint, difficult to own once they are now considered “classics.” And the recent UGG ruling reinforces that assumption.

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Data, Acquisition, And The Search War

1. Data scraping: Quince reportedly tracks competitor performance, including brands like Aritzia and Everlane, to identify which products are gaining traction. Instead of relying on intuition or seasonal forecasting, the brand monitors search behavior, social engagement, creator performance, and pricing data to decide what to produce next. Data becomes a product-development input.

2. Targeted search ads are a core lever for Quince — not to build brand narrative, but to undercut competitors at the point of intent. Search for a women’s fisherman crew, and you’re likely to see Quince at $39.90, sitting next to near-identical options from Everlane, La Ligne, and Jenni Kayne priced three to six times higher.

3. According to industry insiders, the brand’s digital campaigns have disrupted the paid search and paid social returns for smaller rivals by appearing in comparison contexts that are hard for competitors to reverse without rebuilding their own marketing strategies. For smaller DTC brands, this creates a double bind: Quince undercuts pricing while also dominating acquisition channels, forcing competitors into constant recalibration. Rebuilding these customer acquisition channels typically takes a full business quarter. Yes, this is simply how the DTC. Games are played these days, but for better or worse, there are few brands doing it better.

What Quince Signals For The Next Decade of DTC - The Rise of Anti-Brand Companies

Quince is an early signal. For most of the past decade, DTC success was synonymous with brand-building and founder-led storytelling (we really don’t know much about Sid Gupta). That model worked when customer acquisition was cheap, categories were fragmented, and consumers were still learning how to shop online.

That environment no longer exists. What Quince reveals is the emergence of a different kind of DTC company. These “anti-brand” companies do not attempt to manufacture desire through storytelling. They manufacture conviction through systems: price transparency, comparable value, logistical efficiency, and repeatable infrastructure.

For founders, this signals a fork in the road. You either build a brand that is meaningfully defensible - through design language or materials innovation that cannot be easily replicated, or you build an operational machine that can win on price and scale. The middle ground, where many DTC brands once lived, is increasingly untenable.

For investors, Quince complicates traditional brand metrics. Cultural relevance and aesthetic cachet matter less when revenue is driven by repeat purchasing.

For legacy fashion houses, the threat is not aesthetic imitation. It is exposure. Quince doesn’t undermine luxury by copying design; it undermines it by revealing how much of the category is standardized beneath the surface. In response, premium brands are already investing in what might be called a dupe-proof playbook: proprietary materials, distinctive silhouettes, controlled distribution, and brand worlds that cannot be reverse-engineered from a spec sheet.

The uncomfortable truth is this: not every fashion company needs to be loved to be successful. Some only need to be efficient. And Quince is redefining the rules of retail.

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What you’ll find in this issue:

• The worldbuilding of Sabyasachi: how his design codes made Indian craftsmanship a global luxury brand

• How jewelry has become the brand’s profit engine

• The blueprint I’d run as CEO to take the brand from ~$156M to a $2B valuation

• A breakdown of his retail and wholesale distribution strategy which mirrors a specific French fashion house

• Strategic risks: gold prices, tariffs, and scaling without diluting the myth

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Inside the Cult of Sabyasachi

Outside India, Sabyasachi still feels like an insider secret. But the trajectory is obvious. Give it five years, and he’ll sit in the same cultural stratosphere as jewelry juggernauts like Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, and Tiffany Co. And when that moment arrives, it will look sudden - a designer who is suddenly everywhere, referenced everywhere, shaping culture everywhere - the kind of “overnight success” that only took 25 years.

Let’s get into it.

Long before “craftsmanship” became luxury marketing jargon, Sabyasachi treated Indian artisanship as a strategic asset - the invisible engine of global couture. The irony is obvious: Indian craft has powered European luxury for decades. Dior’s ateliers rely on Indian embroidery, Gucci’s beadwork is produced by Indian artisans, and Valentino’s couture houses depend on India’s masterful handwork. Where others outsourced, Sabyasachi insourced, building an ecosystem that could finally anchor Indian luxury in its own country.

Sabyasachi’s aesthetic is unapologetically rooted in heritage yet infused with a bohemian contemporism, existing in a space that is neither too vintage nor trend-driven. The result was a new category of luxury altogether: deeply traditional, yet cosmopolitan.

He created a name for himself by redefining the Indian bride, and creating a cultural archetype, ‘The Sabya Bride.’ His design codes are instantly recognizable: the Bengal-tiger motif, the muted gold zardozi embroidery, the vintage Bengal palette, the maximalist storytelling.

His work isn’t just couture; it’s world-building - the sepia-toned imagery, the antique jewellery, the Calcutta nostalgia - together, they form a cinematic universe of Indian heritage. Walk into a Sabyasachi store and you’re stepping into that world. And the world is so complete that it’s hard to imagine a wedding without him, which is precisely the point. He made himself synonymous with an entire category, the way Hermès once did with leather or Rolex with time.

That language now extends far beyond couture. Sabyasachi has built an ecosystem - ready-to-wear, leather accessories, and most importantly, jewelry. The jewelry division has become the brand’s quiet empire. When Sabysachi launched jewelry, he said he wanted to be India’s Cartier - he did it within a year. He once said he made more money in a single year of jewelry than in a decade of fashion. And the company is growing at a pace that’s already reshaping the jewelry market, positioning itself as India’s answer to Cartier and Van Cleef.

But what makes the story land now is timing. India is entering a new chapter of wealth creation, with a growing class of HNIs and NRIs (Non-Resident Indians) who want heritage expressed on their own terms. And globally, luxury consumers are exhausted by Eurocentrism. They’re looking for cultural authenticity - heritage that feels personal, not performative.

He also has the institutional backing to scale. In 2021, Aditya Birla Fashion & Retail bought a 51% stake in the company for $48M (Rs 398 crores), valuing the company at roughly $ 94M. The investment gave him scale without sacrificing identity. Years earlier, he famously walked away from LVMH’s L Capital, a signal of long-term conviction in building an Indian luxury house on his own terms.

In less than a decade, Sabyasachi has gone from bridal couturier to a company generating $60M+ in annual revenue with 24% operating margins - numbers that rival established European houses.

None of this is accidental. It’s founder-level clarity: no discounting, no volume chasing, no creative dilution. Sabyasachi Mukherjee is the designer who turned Indian craftsmanship into a global language of luxury.

What He’s Built So Far

1. Vertical Integration

Unlike most designers who outsource embroidery or rely on seasonal ateliers, Sabyasachi owns the full stack: design, production, and retail. His workshops in Calcutta employ over 1,000 artisans - effectively functioning as an in-house métiers d’art ecosystem. He controls quality the way a French maison would.

2. The Halo Product: The Couture Bride

Bridal couture is Sabyasachi’s true halo, the product that defines the universe he’s built. In a $75B Indian wedding market growing 7–8% a year, he built near-monopoly territory. With lehengas priced between $6,000 and $30,000, bridal contributes roughly 30% of revenue.

It anchors the world-building: craftsmanship and heritage. It generates cultural capital far beyond its volume - there’s an entire Instagram account dedicated just to documenting brides wearing his looks. Every other category (jewelry, leather, even the H&M collaboration) borrows equity from this halo. It functions the way Chanel’s haute couture or the Hermès Birkin does - the prestige engine that powers the rest of the house.

3. Pricing Discipline

Sabyasachi did something almost no Indian designer dared: he opted out of the volume game entirely. “We never go on sale.” In a market conditioned to wait for markdowns, that is a radical act of discipline. (I’ve written before about why discounting is slow poison for luxury.)

Then came the anti-customisation rule, “We don’t customise.” And his now-famous line: “People probably have to give up a little of their identity to imbibe our brand.” Most brands bend to the customer; Sabyasachi built a world that the customer bends toward. That’s what happens when a brand has gravity.

No diffusion lines. No trading down. Entry prices stayed high. Growth stayed deliberate. The pricing made a statement: Indian craftsmanship deserves the same reverence as European luxury. By pricing like a couture house, he trained an entire generation to see Indian luxury not as an accessible brand, but as an aspiration.

4. Cultural Placement as Marketing

Sabyasachi breaks every modern luxury rule: no influencers, no red carpets on repeat. Instead, he pursues high-profile moments. Celebrity weddings became his biggest accelerant. When Priyanka Chopra, Deepika Padukone, and a generation of high-profile brides chose him, they were stepping into the myth he’d been building for two decades. And dressing Shah Rukh Khan at the Met Gala generated $19M in EMV - a cultural placement more powerful than any paid campaign.

Even his financials reflect that controlled approach. Sabyasachi officially spends 7.85% of revenue on marketing, and that’s likely understated. “Advertising and sales promotion” rarely captures the true engines of luxury: content, photography, fashion shows, and stores. Once those are factored in, his brand-building investment is probably closer to 9–10%, which sits firmly in luxury territory.

5. Retail as Theatre

Sabyasachi’s retail philosophy rests on one idea: stores as living museums. He’s not building points of sale, he’s building a hundred-year legacy, one flagship at a time.

Step inside and the intent is unmistakable: chandeliers, Persian rugs, Tanjore paintings, Mughal textiles. Each space feels like a gallery of Indian heritage. This approach earned early validation when the Delhi flagship made GQ’s list of the Top 100 Stores in the World, and Sabyasachi Mumbai was named one of the world’s most beautiful emporiums by the Prix Versailles.

The model crystallised with Mumbai and New York. Mumbai’s restored neoclassical mansion houses bridal salons, jewelry, and even a quiet tea room. New York follows the same route: dim lighting, antiques from Calcutta, heritage carpets.

He grows through restraint. Physical distribution remains limited to a handful of cities - Calcutta, Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, and New York - ensuring every encounter feels intentional.

6. Wholesale & Global Distribution

Sabyasachi’s global distribution is meticulously controlled. Instead of chasing wholesale scale, he builds a tight, prestige-driven network that prioritises cultural authority over physical reach.

His presence at Bergdorf Goodman New York is more than symbolic - it’s proof of demand. New York’s fashion grapevine still whispers about the day he reportedly outsold Chanel, crossing $1 million in sales in a single day. At Saks Fifth Avenue Beverly Hills, he was placed on the top floor beside Chanel - a high-stakes bet that paid off with $2M in sales during Oscars week.

Pop-ups at Selfridges (London) and Holt Renfrew (Canada) serve a different function: low-capex market testing. Short-term takeovers allow him to read demand without overcommitting to leases or diluting scarcity.

Today, DTC accounts for an estimated 70–80% of sales, with wholesale contributing 20–30%. That ratio is the sweet spot for modern luxury - enough control to protect brand equity, enough third-party presence to build recognition and legitimacy.

7. Merchandising Strategy: Luxury as Cadence, Not Churn

When Sabyasachi stepped away from fashion weeks in 2016 and began releasing collections directly on Instagram, it was an early adoption of slow luxury. That deliberate cadence keeps margins high and sell-through strong.

While most houses chase the churn of resort, pre-fall, and cruise, Sabyasachi builds on scarcity economics. Off-cycle capsules - jewelry edits, accessories, selective collaborations - keep the brand culturally present without flooding the market.

It’s the same logic Kering’s CEO recently noted: collections should represent no more than 20% of sales, with the rest driven by perennial staples. And that’s exactly where Sabyasachi sits.

8. Jewelry: The New Core of the House

Jewelry is already Sabyasachi’s goldmine, the most portable expression of his design language, and now 30–35% of revenue. With prices ranging from $1,500 to $100,000+, it’s the rare category that blends emotional pull with repeatable scale. Launched in 2017 as an extension of his couture authority, jewelry has quietly become the engine of the brand’s next chapter - the category that puts him in the same competitive frame as Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, and Tiffany & Co.

• A Distinct Visual Code: Sabyasachi created a jewelry aesthetic with instant recognisability, his equivalent of Cartier’s Panther, Bulgari’s Serpenti, or Van Cleef’s Alhambra. The core code is now unmistakable: the Bengal Tiger. That single motif makes the pieces collectible and scalable - a complete design system for jewelry.

• High Jewelry - The Apex: At the top sits High Jewelry Editions - one-of-a-kind pieces crafted using Bengal goldsmithing and deconstructed jadau techniques. The materials are uncompromising: museum-grade old-mine diamonds, Colombian emeralds, tourmalines, uncut diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and antique stones sourced globally. Showcased at his flagships and at Bergdorf Goodman, and priced well into the $100,000+ range, these pieces place him confidently alongside French maisons in the high-jewelry tier.

• Fine Jewelry - Couture Meets Commerce: Beneath high jewelry sits a broad, aspirational tier - 18k gold necklaces, signet rings, diamond earrings featuring the Bengal Tiger. Pricing spans from $200 to ~$9,600, with hero pieces landing between $2,400 and $6,000. This tier acts as the brand’s acquisition funnel, amplified through Tata CLiQ Luxury platform to widen access without diluting brand codes. It’s the layer where volume meets prestige, and where Sabyasachi converts cultural storytelling into recurring revenue.

• Why Jewelry Works, Financially and Strategically: Jewelry carries some of the strongest margins in luxury, especially in the fine and heritage segments. It’s also repeatable, unlike couture, it has a far higher purchase frequency. By proving that Indian craftsmanship can command six-figure price points, Sabyasachi has redefined what “ultra luxury” from India can look like. Jewelry isn’t just another category for him, it’s the blueprint for India’s first true global jewelry maison.

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What’s Next (If I Were The CEO Edit)

“My next 25 years will be about building the business globally,” Sabyasachi says. “The dream is to become a $2 billion brand by 2030.”

Here’s where I take the CEO’s seat and map the route to $2B.

Back in 2021, when ABFRL purchased a 51% stake in the company, the deal valued Sabyasachi at $89M (₹780 crore) on FY2021 revenues of $31M (₹275 crore), about a 2.8x revenue multiple. Since then, with institutional backing and controlled category expansion, he’s nearly doubled revenue in three years. His last reported top line was $52M (₹457 crore) for FY2024. Applying a conservative 3x revenue multiple puts the brand valued today at roughly $156M.

From here, the target is clear: to reach a $2B valuation (₹17,400 crore) by 2030. If we assume a 5x revenue multiple - the upper end of multiples for private luxury houses and justified by Sabyasachi’s healthy ~24% operating margins - he needs to reach about $400M (₹3,480 crore) in annual revenue.

To get there, the company must grow at roughly 33% year-on-year. Tough, but let’s break down strategies that could make that trajectory somewhat possible.

Product Mix Must Flip: 50% of Revenue Has to Come From Non-Bridal

Today, Sabyasachi’s business is still heavily bridal-led. The current mix looks roughly like this: 12% of revenue is Leather & Accessories, 25% to 30% is Jewelry, 30 to 35% to Bridal & RTW collections.

Bridal is high-margin, but it’s fundamentally low-volume. To reach ~$400M in revenue, the brand needs categories that scale globally and repeatedly - not just seasonally. The next phase lies in creating everyday touchpoints that extend the mythology without breaking its mystique.

So a $2B, jewelry-led Sabyasachi by 2030 would look more like this: 50% of revenue is Jewelry, 25% bridal & RTW, 12% Leather & Accessories, 9% Beauty & Fragrance, 4% Home.

• 50% Jewelry: Jewelry becomes the engine. It has the right unit economics to be the hero category: highest margins, the largest global TAM, resonates with diaspora markets, scales without creative dilution, and already leads global demand.

• 25% Bridal & RTW: It remains the cultural core, the storytelling engine, but should not exceed this share. Bridal can’t drive scale.

• 12% Leather Goods & Accessories: Keeping this ratio stable makes sense. These pieces create everyday visibility, open global distribution doors, and serve as accessible entry points without undermining the brand codes.

• 9% Beauty & Fragrance: A reach category with real promise. Two beauty collaborations already under his belt with Estée Lauder and L’Oréal indicate a long-term play. Beauty won’t be a $500M line by 2030, but a ~$100M business is realistic and a high-margin division.

• 4% Home: A natural extension of the world he’s built: wallpapers (Nilaya), ceramics (Pottery Barn), tableware (Thomas Goode), textiles. It’s high-longevity, visually iconic, and low operational risk.

This is the category mix that gets him from a bridal-centric house to a global luxury maison and one where half the revenue comes from repeatable, globally resonant, high-margin categories.

Product Expansion

Leather Goods

Sabyasachi has already built a strong foundation: the Royal Bengal minaudière, signature clutches, totes, logo belts, and the tightly curated leather line launched post-ABFRL. The category is profitable and primed for scale, which will come from expanding both product breadth and distribution (distribution will be its own section later).

• New SKU Development - Small Leather Goods (SLG): Wallets, cardholders, pouches, travel wallets - the entry-tier products every global maison uses to build repeat purchases. SLG widens the funnel and increases purchase frequency. Couture and jewelry are episodic; SLG is habitual.

• New SKU Development - Travel Goods: Trunks, vanity cases, weekenders, garment bags, monogrammed luggage - the category that built Louis Vuitton, and defined Goyard. A limited collaboration with Rimowa would be a strategic way to test the category without overcommitting. Travel goods often command 4x the ASP of handbags and offer excellent margins.

Beauty & Fragrance

Sabyasachi has already tested the category through his Estée Lauder and L’Oreal collaborations. The natural next step is a full beauty expansion, led by fragrance - a high-margin segment where production costs are low and brand equity drives price (though marketing costs can reach ~20% of sales). Estée Lauder would be the obvious partner: they’ve scaled Tom Ford Beauty, Le Labo, and Jo Malone without diluting identity. A JV or licensing structure would preserve creative control while unlocking global distribution.

Homeware

Homeware is the most natural extension of his worldbuilding. Leading fashion houses have successfully translated their design DNA into interiors - Fendi Casa, Versace Home, Gucci Décor. Sabyasachi can leverage India’s craft heritage. He’s already taken early steps with Pottery Barn, Nilaya, and Thomas Goode. A full-scale home line could include hand-embroidered cushions, rugs, crockery, tableware, textiles, and furniture - all anchored in his established design codes. It would give customers something rare, a way to bring the living museums he has built into their own homes.

Jewelry

In Sabyasachi’s own words: “When I launched my jewellery saying I wanted to be India’s Cartier - I did it within a year.” Jewelry is already the fastest-growing division. FY24 was the brand’s highest-performing year, with revenue touching $52M (₹457 crore) and Sabyasachi has said he expects jewelry to eventually make up 50% of the business, outpacing clothing.

• Build a Global Signature Collection: Sabyasachi has strong motifs, most notably the Bengal Tiger, but he doesn’t yet have a single global signature line that can scale the way Van Cleef’s Alhambra, Cartier’s Love bracelet, or Bulgari’s Serpenti did. To become a true global jewelry maison, he needs one hero collection with instant recognisability and perennial demand. That line becomes the scalable commercial engine beneath the high-jewelry halo.

• Leverage Strategic Partnerships for Legitimacy: Global cultural partnerships can underpin credibility and position Sabyasachi as a custodian of heritage rather than a commercial newcomer. Global cultural institutions like The Met, V&A, Musée des Arts Décoratifs to host temporary jewelry exhibits. Cartier does this masterfully. In 2023, the Hong Kong Palace Museum hosted “Cartier and Women,” an exhibition of 300 archival pieces tracing how Chinese art shaped Cartier’s design language. A similar strategy would elevate Sabyasachi’s jewelry narrative globally, anchoring it in culture and craftsmanship - not just commerce.

Challenges:

• Gold at ~$4,000/oz (up ~60% YoY): Gold’s price surge puts pressure on margins across fine and high jewelry. Unless the brand shifts toward lighter-weight designs, more gemstone-forward pieces, or tighter ASP discipline, rising input costs will erode profitability as the category scales.

• Nearly 50% U.S. Import Duties on Indian Jewelry: The US is a non-negotiable growth market, but Indian-made jewelry carries tariffs approaching 50%. This makes global price parity difficult and risks pushing U.S. retail prices above what the market will tolerate. To offset this, Sabyasachi will need a new operational strategy, selective overseas production, bonded warehousing, or differentiated SKUs - to keep the jewelry division competitive as it grows toward 50% of revenue.

Retail & Distribution Strategy

Retail Strategy: Controlled Global Scale

• Flagship Stores: The New York flagship proved that Indian luxury can hold its own against European maisons. The next step is expansion without homogeneity. Each flagship should operate as a museum of Indian craftsmanship - immersive ateliers in Paris, London, Singapore. Inside each: private bridal and couture salons, archive rooms, and limited-edition capsule exhibitions.

• Stand-Alone Jewelry Salons: Jewelry salons are the most powerful global expansion lever. The logical first market, Dubai, is the financial capital of the South Asian luxury consumer. Followed by London, with intimate high-jewelry spaces that evoke Cartier’s Place Vendôme or Buccellati’s Milan atelier, but through an Indian lens. These salons become the launchpad for the brand’s 50%-jewelry future.

Wholesale Strategy

Over the past few years, Sabyasachi has been expanding with remarkable discipline. His approach reveals a consistent logic: when mapping his current wholesale presence, I noticed a clear pattern - Sabyasachi only wholesales in locations that already have a Chanel boutique. So the thesis is simple, go where Chanel goes.

Every city that sustains a Chanel boutique already signals the trifecta Sabyasachi needs - wealth, taste, and cultural literacy. Overlay that with NRI density, and you have a blueprint for his next phase of growth.

When you plot his current partners - Bergdorf Goodman, Saks Fifth Avenue - against Chanel’s wholesale map, the overlap is striking. And it’s not a coincidence, it’s his playbook.

• Benchmark cities: Each wholesale presence aligns with a Chanel location - a shorthand for luxury maturity and spending capacity.

• Testing grounds: Combine that with cities that have strong NRI clusters and high HNI inflow - London, Dubai, Singapore, Toronto -, and you find his next logical frontiers.

• Purpose of wholesale: not volume, but legitimacy. Placement beside Chanel builds instant legitimacy, allowing the brand to inhabit the same visual and psychological real estate.

• Next Likely Markets - London (Harrods, Selfridges) – previously tested through pop-ups, confirming appetite for couture and jewelry.

The Chanel + HNI/NRI matrix becomes a predictive tool for where the next Sabyasachi counter or capsule should appear, long before a flagship opens.

Sabyasachi is a luxury heritage brand that’s only just establishing international footing. With his price points, the classic “growth through restraint” model won’t work outside India. Domestically, he’s already perfected controlled scarcity - limited bridal collections, capped production, and unwavering price integrity. But in global markets, restraint without visibility risks irrelevance.

Globally, he needs to maintain a rough 30/70 wholesale-to-DTC split that gives him reach without eroding exclusivity: enough wholesale doors for discovery, anchored by his own flagships where the full universe comes alive.

At his current trajectory, he has about five years of aggressive growth runway before dilution becomes a real risk. The real challenge is expanding the world of Sabyasachi without puncturing the worldbuilding that makes it so powerful in the first place.

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Meanwhile, I listened to Charli xcx on the Goop podcast with Gwyneth Paltrow, where she revealed that she doesn’t listen to much music beyond Lou Reed. Instead, she draws from movies which fuels her creative process. She scored the entire Wuthering Heights soundtrack, inspired by Todd Haynes’ documentary on The Velvet Underground. In it, John Cale says every song should be “elegant and brutal,” a phrase Charli kept returning to while writing. I can’t wait to see how that translates on screen - but if Fall In Love Again is any indication, the soundtrack’s going to be insane.

Obsessed with how only Rosalía would turn a listening party into a full-blown installation. LUX debuted in Barcelona, and of course, it was an experience, not an event.

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CAFE SOCIETY

{A weekly section of headlines worth reading. The name originates from the 1930s term “café society,” coined to describe the glamorous writers and artists who lived in Paris cafés. These are the stories I imagine they’d debate over champagne and cigarettes.}

1. Lyst has dropped their hottest brand list and coming in first is Saint Laurent.
   The rest of the lineup reads like a moodboard for quiet luxury: COS, The Row, Bottega Veneta, Ralph Lauren. All brands that trade less in logos and more in language of cut, texture, and silhouette.

   

2. Jacquemus just launched Le Valérie, a sculptural new bag named after his late mother. It marks a shift toward a more mature, sophisticated tone for the brand and feels destined to be his next hero product. With prices starting at $1,690 (and $2,090 for the large), it’s positioned squarely in the quiet luxury tier and already shaping up to be an “It” bag on FWRD.

   

3. The Chanel 25 Mini Handbag is officially the newest obsession in circulation. The bag has gone viral in the last 24 hours with people begging Coach and Steve Madden to release dupes. It’s now one of the most requested finds on fashion sourcing platforms like Sourcewhere and Sourced By.

   

4. Olivier Rousteing is leaving Balmain after 15 years at the creative helm. During his tenure he built more than collections, he built the “Balmain Army,” a social-first, celebrity-driven ecosystem with the Kardashian as its frontline. Now the house moves into a new chapter and while no successor has been formally named, Christian Cowan is already whispered as a potential creative-director candidate. The British star designer - whose silver mesh dress for Sydney Sweeney made headlines - has the show-business fluency Balmain will lean on.

5. Shein opens at BHV, and the backlash says everything. 5 days ago, Shein opened its first permanent store on the sixth floor of BHV Marais in Paris and France isn’t pleased. The launch followed outrage over the sale of “child-like” sex dolls and banned items on the Shein platform. Twelve French brands have already quit BHV in protest, while the mall’s owner calls the partnership a “retail experiment.” The French government has warned that if such listings reappear, Shein could face a market ban.

6. Tory Burch has appointed Joëlle Grunberg, former McKinsey retail partner, as President of North America. She will oversee the brand’s retail, e-commerce, and wholesale operations across the region.

7. Gen Z is cutting back on $15 salads and burrito bowls but not on handbags. Tapestry’s Q1 results show Coach gaining new Gen Z customers even as Chipotle and Cava report drops among the same group. It seems like younger consumers are trading lunch money for luxury, redefining what “small indulgence” means.

8. H&M Group Ventures has invested in reverse.fashion, an AI-powered textile sorting startup, to advance automation in clothing reuse and recycling. The pre-seed funding aims to scale circular fashion infrastructure and accelerate the shift toward a more sustainable apparel. A quiet but significant step toward making circularity actually scalable.

9. Hong Kong–born designer Robert Wun abandoned the traditional wholesale model for a bespoke, client-first approach. His couture house now serves a private clientele - from art collectors to modern brides - with custom orders averaging £45K–£60K. By rejecting mass production, Wun’s model proves that creative control and commercial success can coexist.

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Full Price Is the New Luxury

When I was building my company, I learned that pricing is never just about margins - it’s a narrative. The second you start discounting, you’re not just lowering prices, you’re lowering conviction - in your product, your brand, your audience.

In a world where everything is always on sale, paying full price has become the ultimate flex. It signals conviction -in taste, in brand, in value. But for companies, holding that line is harder than ever.

I get why brands cave. A sale spikes visibility and moves inventory in days - it’s seductive. The allure of mega-sales like Singles’ Day - which pulled in an estimated $156 billion in 2023 and $200 billion in 2024 in China alone - is hard to ignore, especially for brands trying to hit their quarterly numbers. But there’s a hidden tax on growth: the erosion of expectation.

As Maggie Sellers said on the HSR podcast, “When you go on sale too often, people start to expect it.” That expectation quietly rewires your customer base. I’ve seen it firsthand - you start thinking you’re training the market, but you’re really training your audience to wait.

Ssense is the case study every founder should memorize. It built a world around avant-garde cool and then discounted it to death. Markdown culture turned prestige into predictability. When everything is -40%, people stop believing your full price was ever real.

And now, that same psychology is playing out with Singles’ Day - once an electric, 24-hour spectacle — has stretched into a month-long clearance ritual. Early deals rolled out in October, but spending hit a three-year low. The hype cycle flattened into a habit.

That’s the real danger of constant sales: they make your brand feel algorithmic, not aspirational. When everything’s always “on sale,” nothing feels special anymore.

That said, sales themselves aren’t the villain. When done right, they create urgency, help clear excess inventory, and bring new people into your orbit. The trick is restraint: make a sale feel like an event, not a routine.

Founders who last understand restraint as a strategy. The Row does this with almost monastic precision. They rarely discount, and when they do, it’s an event - people camp overnight, hire someone to arrive 15 hours before opening to secure a spot, all to be part of a moment. That’s not commerce; that’s conviction.

The scene becomes a proof point in this culture of full-price as luxury. If people are willing to queue, sleep on a sidewalk, and pay for tickets to line-sitters to get into a markdown event, what does that say about the power of staying at full price?

Luxury has always been about scarcity, but in today’s economy, scarcity of discipline might be the rarest commodity. Holding full price isn’t arrogance - it’s authorship. Because the real luxury today isn’t price, it’s patience. To keep your line when everyone else is racing to the bottom. To build desire slowly, deliberately, even when the algorithm punishes you for it.

The Row knows it. Hermès knows it. Even Ssense, in its fall from grace, proved it. In a world where every brand is fighting for attention, the real differentiation is discipline.

And sometimes, the most radical thing a founder can do is refuse to flinch.

CAFE SOCIETY

{A weekly section of headlines worth reading. The name originates from the 1930s term “café society,” coined to describe the glamorous writers and artists who lived in Paris cafés. These are the stories I imagine they’d debate over champagne and cigarettes.}

1. Grace Wales Bonner is appointed as Creative Director of menswear at Hermès. She’s a visionary bridging heritage and innovation and now sets a new benchmark as the first Black woman to helm a major luxury house.

2. Kim Jones, the man who made streetwear luxury at Louis Vuitton and Dior for 15 years, is now bringing his touch to China. He’s been appointed creative director of Areal, Bosideng’s new high-end urbanwear line. Interestingly, Areal doesn’t even have an Instagram handle, and this appointment is its entry ticket into the Western market. It’s a reversal of the 1980s and ’90s playbook, when Western houses hired Japanese designers to expand into Japan.

3. LVMH is quietly offloading Marc Jacobs - a brand it never managed to scale beyond nostalgia. The likely buyer, Authentic Brands Group (ABG) , runs on licensing, not runway. That means ABG doesn’t build its business on creative direction or fashion shows - it monetizes brand names by licensing them out, selling the rights for others to produce and distribute products under those labels. It’s not buying Marc Jacobs for design; it’s buying it for distribution. It’s a reminder that in fashion, the machinery of commerce often outlives the artistry; that even when a brand’s creative relevance fades, its logo and retail infrastructure can still be immensely valuable.

4. Prada Group’s revenue climbed 9% to €4.07 billion in the first nine months of 2025, powered by Miu Miu’s explosive momentum. The Prada label remained flat, down roughly 1%, but Miu Miu’s retail sales soared 41%, extending its streak as one of luxury’s fastest-growing brands. With growth across all regions, led by Asia (+10%) and the Americas (+15%), the group’s results highlight how Miu Miu has become Prada’s growth engine heading into its €1.25 billion Versace acquisition.

5. ShopMy raised $70 million at a $1.5 billion valuation, cementing its spot as the new power player in affiliate commerce. The platform has driven over $1B in brand sales, grown 200% year over year, and has been profitable since 2024. With over 185,000 creators on the platform and estimated affiliate take rates of 10–20%, ShopMy’s model is proving far more lucrative than its mass-market rivals like LTK. By courting higher-end labels like Khaite and Gucci, it’s pulling influencer marketing and its profits, decisively upmarket.

6. Lululemon just trademarked “LULULEMON DUPE” - a clever way to reclaim control of the dupe economy by turning a viral search term into brand property. Rather than chasing knockoffs through lawsuits, the brand is owning the language that fuels them. It’s a smart counterattack: by legally trademarking the phrase that drives viral “dupe” videos, Lululemon can dictate how it’s used and discourage creators from monetizing its name.

7. Amazon has launched “Help Me Decide,” an AI shopping assistant that recommends a single product when users seem overwhelmed by too many options.
   This signals Amazon’s next phase: agentic/conversational shopping in e-commerce, competing with ChatGPT’s growing retail integrations. I’ve done a deep dive here on the space.

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The Great Beauty Reset

Three headlines this week, one theme: beauty isn’t broken but who it belongs to is changing.

LVMH is reportedly exploring the sale of its 50% stake in Fenty Beauty, the Rihanna-backed brand it launched in 2017 through Kendo Brands. Fenty was once a cultural earthquake - the brand made inclusivity a business model but insiders say its momentum has slowed. Revenue reportedly peaked a few years ago, and North American sales are down double digits. With roughly $450 million in 2024 net sales, Fenty could be valued between $1–2 billion, yet inside LVMH’s $17B beauty empire, it’s now a small player. The group’s real priorities are Sephora, its retail engine, and Dior Beauty, one of the most profitable beauty lines in the world.

This isn’t a retreat from beauty, it’s a reallocation of attention. LVMH is pruning what it doesn’t fully own to focus on what it controls end-to-end.

Kering, meanwhile, has gone the opposite way - out. It sold its entire beauty division to L’Oréal for €4 billion, ending its three-year experiment with Kering Beauté. The deal hands L’Oréal 50-year licenses for Gucci, Balenciaga, and Bottega Veneta beauty, while giving Kering, weighed down by over €10 billion in debt, a much-needed cash injection. What looks like portfolio discipline is really balance-sheet triage under new CEO Luca de Meo, who joined just five weeks ago.

Both moves mark a retreat from vertical integration and a quiet admission that the luxury beauty division, which once looked like a high-margin growth engine has now become a capital-intensive distraction.

And yet, outside the conglomerates, beauty has never looked stronger. Victoria Beckham has done what Kering and LVMH are backing away from: turning a once money-losing fashion label into a beauty-first success story. After years of operating at a loss, her company’s 2024 revenue jumped 26% to £113 million ($152 million), driven by Victoria Beckham Beauty’s 24% annual growth. The turnaround has been so sharp that the business is now reportedly valued at around $700 million, proof that beauty didn’t just save her brand, it made it investable again.

In other words, luxury groups are exiting beauty to protect margins, while celebrity founders are entering it to build them.

The new benchmark? Hailey Bieber’s Rhode, acquired by e.l.f. Beauty for $1 billion, now commands the kind of valuation that once belonged to pioneers like Fenty. The center of gravity has shifted, from conglomerates to founder-led brands that move like startups and market like media companies.

The real winners, though, are the operators. L’Oréal is tightening its grip on luxury licenses, and Sephora, LVMH’s quiet powerhouse, dominates global distribution. Beauty is consolidating into the hands of those who know how to scale it.

What LVMH and Kering treat as overhead, Beckham treats as leverage. Beauty is now where brand equity becomes liquidity - faster, leaner, and with better multiples than fashion.

The landscape has polarized:

• Operators like L’Oréal, Sephora, and e.l.f. win on scale and efficiency.

• Luxury houses either own it fully (Dior) or license it out (Gucci) - nothing in between.

• Celebrities like Rhode and Beckham Beauty win on cultural velocity.

Beauty’s new rulebook is about control of product, of retail, of narrative. Fenty, once the symbol of democratization, now sits in the uneasy middle: too corporate to feel founder-led, too small to matter to LVMH.

And so, as Kering and LVMH streamline, Beckham’s $700M glow-up proves that beauty still works, just not the way luxury used to do it.

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Sofia Richie Grainge’s SRG Atelier: The Quiet Luxury Paradox

Sofia Richie Grainge became the face of quiet luxury after her wedding… but she didn’t capitalize on that moment fast enough. Two years later, the internet’s fascination with “old-money minimalism” has peaked, and SRG Atelier feels more like a reaction than a revelation.

Her brand is positioned as “quiet luxury,” yet the collection is quietly not luxury. $300 viscose cardigans and polyester blends distributed through Revolve and FWRD don’t align with the codes she built her persona on. These are influencer-economy price points, designed for LTK links, not legacy.

Aesthetically, it’s more Toteme/Khaite cosplay than original point of view. There’s nothing wrong with commercial minimalism, but when your personal brand has access to the best ateliers and stylists in the world, the bar is higher.

If the goal was to produce dupe versions of those styles, she didn’t need to wait this long to launch the brand.

What’s the hero product? What’s the design language that’s distinctly hers? So far, it feels like a collection that exists because she could, not because she had something to say.

The Dupe Economy: Fast Fashion in Disguise

There’s a growing fatigue around celebrity fashion brands. Too many are built around names, not ideas.

KHY by Kylie Jenner sold over $1 million in its first hour, proving hype still converts - but the brand quickly drew criticism for polyester pieces and that undercut its supposed designer positioning.

SKIMS, by contrast, is valued at $4 billion, with annual revenue approaching $750 million. Its success lies not in celebrity, but in a clear product thesis: shapewear that evolved into everyday essentials, all with inclusive sizing and a consistent aesthetic.

The Luxury Trap: When Fame Isn’t Enough

Luxury fashion rewards narrative and craft, not algorithmic virality. Even Rihanna’s LVMH-backed Fenty proved that. Launched in 2019, it offered $1,000 denim jackets and $810 corseted shirtdresses, but shuttered within two years, costing her roughly $62 million.

The lesson: celebrity reach can open doors, but it can’t build credibility without substance.

SRG Atelier sits somewhere in between: priced like aspiration, produced like accessibility, and styled like déjà vu. In trying to bottle the quiet luxury moment, it may have missed the point, the silence only works when there’s something worth listening to.

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CAFE SOCIETY

{A weekly section of headlines worth reading. The name originates from the 1930s term “café society,” coined to describe the glamorous writers and artists who lived in Paris cafés. These are the stories I imagine they’d debate over champagne and cigarettes.}

1. Véronique Nichanian, Creative Director of Hermès Men’s, is stepping down after 37 years!?! What an incredible run in one of fashion’s most coveted roles. I’ve always admired Hermès for its consistency. The house keeps creative directors for years, allowing them to truly define its aesthetic instead of chasing a new look every few seasons. When a designer stays long enough to shape a brand’s DNA, that stability doesn’t just show in the collections; it shows in the bottom line. I think John Galliano or Hedi Slimane could take up the position? Currently, Nadège Vanhee-Cybulski remains Creative Director of Women’s.

2. The VS fashion Show aired a few days ago, marking Creative Director Adam Selman’s debut, and there’s a huge improvement from last year. The direction, styling, and casting feel more cohesive. BUT, the production value is still lacking. The set design and overall experience looked low-budget compared to the show’s iconic past. And even though VS is trying to rebrand around inclusivity, VS fashion shows, before they were cancelled, had an unmistakable energy and grandeur that’s still missing.

3. Maria Grazia Chiuri is baaaack… as the Chief Creative Officer of Fendi. I actually prefer that title over Creative Director; it feels more expansive and directional. And she’s returning to familiar territory too - Chiuri worked at Fendi in 1989 - and we need to give her credit for designing the iconic Baguette bag; she also recruited designer Pierpaolo Piccioli to join Fendi. So in a way, it’s a full-circle moment.

4. Speaking of which, Balenciaga needs a new hero product, an It bag, and that responsibility now falls to Pierpaolo Piccioli. Sometimes I really feel for creative directors; the entire weight of a brand’s success and the industry’s expectations rests on their shoulders. Obvious, but still.

5. NikeSkims made history as the most successful apparel collaboration in Nike’s history, at least in terms of sales. But despite its commercial success, it didn’t quite dent the cultural zeitgeist. It moved product, not culture.

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6. For the first time in 56 years, Cartier has redesigned its hero product, the Love bracelet, unveiling a new, flexible version called the Love Unlimited. The design retains the signature screw motif but introduces modular links that allow it to move fluidly, wrapping around the wrist like a second skin. The Love bracelet still accounts for roughly 35% of Cartier’s jewelry revenue. But, fatigue has started to set in because 1) Many consumers feel they’ve already “done” the Love and 2) The brand’s quiet decision to stop authenticating Love bracelets amid a flood of convincing counterfeits, so Cartier needed something new to re-ignite desire. The Love Unlimited is that reset. Jewelry makes up about 63% of Cartier’s total revenue, with high jewelry contributing around 10%, underscoring just how crucial this icon remains to the house’s bottom line.

7. The talk of the town: Chanel’s pintuck shirt collaboration with Charvet. And we finally have a price - it’s retailing for a staggering $4,350. In last week’s issue, I predicted it would be one of Chanel’s bestsellers, and honestly, if I could afford it, I’d buy one. What’s fascinating is the comparison: Charvet’s own shirts start at around $500, with bespoke versions closer to $1,000. So while Chanel’s markup is monumental, the real winner here might be Charvet - I expect sales for their original shirts to spike.

8. Versace’s UK sales are down 21%, and prices under Dario Vitale have shifted noticeably on Moda Operandi - though there is a spread. Some of the collection’s more extravagant pieces, like a yellow silk dress listed at $26,000, sit alongside items priced below $1,000. The new pricing strategy signals a clear move: Versace wants to compete in the upper tier of luxury, alongside houses like Givenchy and Chloé, which now occupy similar price bands. Not every piece shown will make it to stores; many of the higher-priced looks function more as halo items, reinforcing the brand’s aspirational positioning. For context, Givenchy is currently selling a coat for $47,000, and rumor has it a Celine piece by Michael Rider’s collection is priced at $90,000.

9. LVMH is back to growth…sort of. The group reported lacklustre third-quarter results on Tuesday, but they were still an improvement over the past two quarters, a sign that the renewed buzz around fashion might finally be trickling into sales. Growth turned positive for the first time this year, up 1% on an organic basis. Still, the core Fashion & Leather Goods division, which drives most of LVMH’s profits, fell 2% in the period; a reminder that sentiment and sales aren’t always aligned. And a few takeaways from the earnings call:

   • Retail experience matters. The LV ship in China is proving a major success, and refurbished Tiffany stores are outperforming older ones - a clear signal that design and environment directly drive sales.

   • Jonathan Anderson’s Dior. We’ll start to see the retail revenue impact of his appointment reflected in Q2 2026 results.

10. Kering’s new CEO, Luca de Meo, reportedly told his team last week that the runway should drive no more than 20% of the business. In other words, Kering is going back to basics, prioritising recurring staples over seasonal spectacle. The runway collections are meant to provide the fantasy; the real business lies in the pieces that quietly sell every day.

11. 1Granary has published a list of nearly 1,000 brands owed money by Ssense - a signal that young brands can’t count on platforms or wholesalers as dependable anchors anymore. You can read my analysis here. Ssense has paid back larger houses like Bottega Veneta, but many smaller designers are still waiting. Reportedly, Shushu Tong is owed $1.1 million, and Totême is owed about $725,000.

12. Speaking of e-tail platforms: Jessel Taank is relaunching Oushq, in partnership with the CFDA. The platform focuses on South Asian and Middle Eastern designers - a niche with potential, but high risk. The average order value (AOV) is expected to be high, but the volume is likely to be modest. That’s a difficult balance, and few e-tailers manage to build truly sustainable business models in this space.

13. The global resale market is projected to reach $360 billion by 2030, and Fashionphile is making its next big move. The California-based luxury reseller has expanded into the UK with its acquisition of Luxe Collective, marking its first direct push into Europe and a clear attempt to differentiate itself from regional players like Vinted and Vestiaire Collective.

14. Walmart is partnering with ChatGPT just like Etsy. And it signals what might be the next frontier of ecommerce: agentic commerce, where instead of typing product searches, users simply ask for what they want and AI does the rest. I’ve done a deep analyis on this space, which you can read here.

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FASHION HARDWARE

A new fashion hardware necklace has launched, and it’s already showing more promise than its competitors, purely on design. Founded by Elena Wagenmans and Amy Zhou, both ex-Apple engineers and Stanford product-design grads, Taya reimagines wearables as jewelry you’d actually want to wear.

The Taya necklace is designed to listen, transcribe, and record conversations and reflections, turning them into a searchable, AI-powered “living journal.” The idea is simple: make technology invisible, a piece of hardware that blends seamlessly into daily life.

The global wearable technology market is projected to nearly double, from $84.2 billion in 2024 to an expected $186 billion by 2030, yet most products remain tech-forward. The broader fashion-hardware category has seen successes like the Apple Watch, Meta Glasses, and Oura Ring, demonstrating that wearables can be effective when design meets utility. However, others, such as Rabbit and Humane, which aimed to build AI companions, failed to integrate into people’s lives - Humane has since shut down.

As Taya’s co-founder put it: “We’ve seen tech giants fail at wearables over the past 15 years, not for a lack of engineering, distribution, or capital. No matter how good the tech specs, a wearable needs to be wear-able.”

And perhaps that’s the differentiator here - for the first time, women are designing wearables that they’d actually wear. Elena tweeted, “Honestly, it’s about time women are at the forefront of designing wearables, because we know what we want to wear.”

Taya is currently available for pre-order at $89, while industry commentary suggests the “price barrier” for jewelry-first wearables sits between $499 and $799, roughly where its competitors, such as the Rabbit R1, are priced. According to PitchBook, the company has raised $500K to date, lean for a hardware startup, but fitting for an early, design-led launch.

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The way the clothes moved was almost divine. Matthieu’s tailoring is architectural yet alive. The construction, the fluidity, the way each piece seemed to breathe - unreal. When I saw this dress, I actually gasped. I’ve never wanted anything more.

But alas, I’m not a fashion critic - my lens is always the business one. And from that perspective, many of these pieces feel incredibly commercially viable. Several choices stood out to me, both aesthetically and strategically.

I loved the elevated basics - the pintuck white tuxedo shirt, the houndstooth blazer (Zara dupes incoming). This white dress is perfect for the modern working woman. The tweed sets - here, here, here (this one will likely require a lining on the inside of the skirt), and here - will do very well. They uphold the house’s heritage codes: what Chanel’s existing clients will buy, and what keeps the brand’s identity fresh yet familiar.

And then, the bag, which is where the real profit lies. It’s a status update, instantly recognizable, designed to sell. This other white dress. It’s a direct play for the bridal market - perfect for rehearsal dinners. It’s a high-emotion purchase that drives full-price sales.

There’s truly something for everyone: the modern professional woman, the man who gets a chain-free Chanel bag, the sophisticated Chanel bride, the woman escaping to St. Tropez for the summer.

Chanel is back. Fashion is back. And, quite honestly, that realization made me a little emotional, because along with that, this fashion month came with an unusual number of designer debuts and, predictably, a flood of Instagram fashion critics.

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Today I’m diving into something that’s been on my mind since fashion month started: The Green Screen Fashion Mafia.

It’s the wave of social-media fashion “critics” who think it’s edgy to rate an outfit 4/10 or call a collection meh, without grasping the storytelling, history, technique, or construction behind it. Their commentary is surface-level, and fittingly, you usually see their heads bobbing against a backdrop of the very looks they’re dismissing - courtesy of the green screen.

Social media has pushed fashion into an age of instant gratification. The Green Screen Mafia is playing fastest finger first, and it shows. Their takes often sound like drafts that accidentally got published.

It has been especially disappointing during fashion month, where so many creative directors debuted - arguably the most debuts we’ve seen at once in years. Yet these debuts are being judged on a single collection, often just for the sake of having a contrarian take or standing out from the crowd.

These fashion grifters are algorithmic opportunists - more focused on gaming views and accumulating authority for themselves than on offering meaningful insights. They build followings by dressing up pseudo-intellectual hot takes as insight. And the grift isn’t always financial. It’s social capital - followers, brand deals, a seat at the fashion discourse table.

But debut collections deserve context. These designers are often stepping into legacy houses with only a few months of preparation, inheriting complex histories and expectations. They deserve a grace period, not instant ridicule.

And in luxury fashion, it’s worth remembering: online criticism rarely mirrors reality. The people buying aren’t the ones commenting. Because at the end of the day - what matters more: online sentiment or actual store sales?

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CAFE SOCIETY

{A weekly section of headlines worth reading. The name originates from the 1930s term “café society,” coined to describe the glamorous writers and artists who lived in Paris cafés. These are the stories I imagine they’d debate over champagne and cigarettes.}

1. Balenciaga’s collection, but specifically this dress, felt contemporary and modern. Pierpaolo Piccioli managed to honor Cristóbal Balenciaga’s legacy while bringing a fresh relevance to it. The dress and many other looks had strong commercial viability.

2. Among the standout collections, Saint Laurent remains close to my heart, that precision in construction, the jewelry, the confidence of it all. Sean McGirr’s Alexander McQueen was another high point. This dress, military jacket, and the skirt - each look carried commercial strength without losing edge. All these pieces will sell, and deservedly so.

3. Beni, an app designed to solve the frustration of endless resale searches, just rolled out a major update. It’s introduced image search, letting you upload a photo or screenshot to instantly find secondhand listings across Depop, ThredUp, eBay, Poshmark, The RealReal, and more. So if you spot something on Pinterest or in a Vogue runway image, you can now track it down - sustainably and seamlessly.

4. The European Commission has officially approved Prada’s acquisition of Versace. Earlier this year, Prada struck a $1.38 billion deal to buy Versace from Capri Holdings. The Commission concluded that the deal raises no competition concerns.

5. Shein is set to open its first physical stores in BHV France through a partnership with the owner, Société des Grands Magasins, a decision that’s already drawn sharp criticism. Galeries Lafayette, which previously franchised those locations, called the move a breach of contract and of principle, citing Shein’s ultra–fast fashion model as fundamentally misaligned with its values. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo echoed the sentiment, arguing it undermines the city’s commitment to sustainable, locally rooted commerce. It’s a particularly interesting turn for France, which recently banned advertising for ultra–fast fashion. And honestly, what a shame if a department store founded in 1856 has to rely on Shein to stay relevant.

6. Office Magazine, the New York–based fashion and culture publication, has acquired the Instagram account Archived Runway - known for posting archival runway photos and has over 500K followers. It’s an interesting move, and as fashion commentator Immaculate Style pointed out, it could mark the start of a new trend: magazines acquiring independent fashion accounts that hold the kind of authenticity and reach traditional media no longer does.

Now for today’s deep dive…

This Is the 1995 Amazon Moment for AI

The architecture of online shopping is shifting - not incrementally, but tectonically. We’ve lived through two eras already: the computer gave us websites, and the smartphone gave us apps. Now, AI is ushering in a third wave: conversational, or agentic, commerce, and it arrives through a ChatGPT feature that could rewrite the mechanics of how we discover, desire, and buy.

From Search to Conversation

OpenAI’s latest update allows users to complete purchases directly within ChatGPT. In partnership with Shopify and Etsy, the integration marks a fundamental inversion: from searching to conversing. The market grasped the significance almost immediately - Etsy’s shares jumped 7.3%, while Shopify’s rose 4.5%. “Shopify merchants will be able to sell directly through ChatGPT conversations - no links, no redirects, just seamless commerce,” the company announced. Etsy’s Chief Product and Technology Officer, Rafe Colburn, called the shift a meaningful new frontier for online marketplaces.

The Three Waves of E-Commerce

I. The Computer: Website Shopping

The first wave brought commerce from catalogs to digital shelves. This was the era of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), where merchants optimised for visibility on Google. In 2000, global e-commerce sales hovered around $27 billion, led by Amazon and eBay, who taught consumers to trust the web with their wallets.

II. The Smartphone: App Shopping

The second wave put a mall in every hand. Shopping became mobile, constant, and impulsive. By 2015, app commerce was already a $155 billion industry. Social advertising blurred into entertainment; scrolling turned into spending. By 2023, e-commerce had reached $4.4 trillion, with mobile accounting for over 60% of sales.

III. The AI Era: Agentic Shopping

Now we enter the third. The interface is no longer a page or an app - it’s a conversation. You won’t search “black rain jacket.” You’ll tell your AI, “I need a waterproof jacket for work and travel, something timeless but practical.” Discovery shifts from SEO to GEO - Generative Engine Optimization, which optimizes your content to appear in responses generated by AI search engines. Success is no longer about ranking highest; it’s about understanding best.

This transformation stands on three pillars:

• The User Base: ChatGPT already has 800 million weekly active users (WAU), a built-in audience that dwarfs most marketplaces, with a 71% six-month retention rate (this is extremely high).

• The Infrastructure: Shopify’s 4 million merchants and Etsy’s 5.4 million sellers form an instant global inventory.

• The Incentive: No fees for users, and a performance-based model for merchants, adoption becomes almost inevitable.

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How GEO Works

In the world of AI commerce, relevance replaces visibility. Imagine telling ChatGPT:

“I need a professional but stylish outfit for a conference — natural fabrics, minimalist lines, a pop of color, under $300, size 8.”

A traditional search engine would drown you in options. ChatGPT, connected to Etsy or Shopify, could deliver the right linen coord set in seconds. The future of shopping isn’t browsing. It’s briefing.

The Mechanics and the Momentum

For merchants, the economics are clean: a small fee to OpenAI on completed purchases, with no markup for users. “Instant Checkout” leverages stored payment information for frictionless conversion. It’s a model that plays perfectly to Etsy’s strengths, a marketplace defined by craft, context, and curation, all qualities that AI is learning to interpret in language.

How Big Could This Get?

The numbers are staggering. The global e-commerce market is projected to expand from $25.9 trillion in 2023 to $83 trillion by 2030. Even a small reallocation toward AI-driven transactions reshapes the landscape:

• 10% adoption: $8.3 trillion

• 15% adoption: $12.5 trillion

• 25% adoption: $20.8 trillion

At a 25% adoption rate, AI commerce would already surpass the entire global e-commerce market of 2023. What we’re witnessing isn’t an innovation - it’s a migration.

Beyond Retail: The Agentic Future

This evolution stretches far beyond retail. We are transitioning from e-commerce to agentic commerce, where AI acts as a personal operator, buying, booking, and arranging across every layer of the consumer economy. There are a few startups already building in this space, like Daydream and Plush. You won’t “shop” for a vacation; you’ll tell your agent your budget, preferences, and dates, and it will handle the rest - flights, hotel, even the new swimsuit. That leap takes the addressable market from goods to the entire services economy, worth tens of trillions of dollars.

The Inflection Point

This feature may sound modest, but so did Amazon’s first bookstore or Apple’s original App Store. Each marked a hinge in history - small user experiences that quietly became empires.

To put it in perspective, the first wave was measured in billions, while the second was measured in trillions. The next interface of the internet isn’t something we click. It’s something we converse with.

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But what stayed with me just as much was the city’s Gothic St. Mary’s Chapel, begun in the 14th century. It also holds the grave of Neumann himself, the Baroque genius behind much of Würzburg’s architecture. I’m genuinely drawn to Gothic for its macabre details, skulls, angels, and Baroque for its intricacy and grandeur.

CAFE SOCIETY

[A weekly section of headlines worth reading. The name originates from the 1930s term “café society,” coined to describe the glamorous writers and artists who lived in Paris cafés. These are the stories I imagine they’d debate over champagne and cigarettes.]

1. We’re in the thick of fashion week, and creative director debuts are landing one after the other. My pick so far is Louise Trotter at Bottega, and this has been my favorite look so far. Lauren Hutton walked in carrying the same red Bottega clutch she made iconic in American Gigolo, a piece Tomas Maier had her bring back once before, at the Spring 2017 show.

2. We’re also getting access to sneak peeks before debuts, especially from Loewe and Dior. And then there’s NikeSkims. But does it actually stack up against Alo Yoga or Lululemon?

3. Stella McCartney is partnering with Bambuser on a live shopping event, Shop With Stella: Winter 2025. The show will spotlight the new collection, Laptop to Lapdance, with the ability to buy pieces as they appear on screen. Beyond the day-to-night codes, Stella will also highlight sustainable innovations like vegan snakeskin made from fungi mycelium.

4. Highsnobiety is shutting down its e-commerce arm by year’s end (are we really surprised- my industry breakdown). And Founder David Fischer admitted the shop “never made any money.” With e-commerce contributing less than 10% of its revenue, the model has proven to be challenging for numerous online retailers, such as Ssense (for my analysis, see here) and Farfetch.

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And now onto today’s deep dive.

The Anti-Fashion Formula: How Brunello Cucinelli and Jacques Marie Mage Could Save Luxury Fashion

Luxury’s growth model is breaking. Bain expects the luxury goods market to contract by 2% to 5% in 2025, a steep decline from the 8–10% run rate of the last few years. The drag is structural: the aspirational buyer, the middle-class customer who once aspired for a logo belt or entry-level bag, has pulled back due to inflation and fatigue.

For years, houses leaned on that consumer with entry products, endless seasonal drops, and wider distribution. The payoff: swollen inventories, diluted equity, and shoppers trained to wait for sales. Profit warnings at groups like Kering are symptoms of the same disease - too much product, too little conviction.

Now, two brands - different in scale but aligned in philosophy - point to another way. Brunello Cucinelli, the philosopher-king of Italian cashmere, has seen its share price rise nearly tenfold since its 2012 IPO, reaching a market value close to $7 billion. Jacques Marie Mage (JMM), the Los Angeles eyewear atelier established almost a decade ago, has become the so-called “Birkin of sunglasses.”

Both reject mass-market logic, instead embracing an anti-fashion formula rooted in:

• Artisanal Integrity: craft and longevity as the basis of value.

• Engineered Scarcity: controlled supply that builds desire instead of killing it.

The solution to luxury’s crisis isn’t more fashion. It’s less.

The Problem: Luxury’s Addiction to “More”

• The Aspirational Contraction. The mass-luxury model, perfected by Bernard Arnault, was built on courting the aspirational buyer for a taste of luxury through entry-level products. That foundation is now cracked. Inflation has squeezed disposable incomes, and aspirational buyers are pulling back. Kering’s 42% drop in operating income in the first half of 2024 was the most apparent casualty.

• The “Smartening” of the Customer. Today’s consumer is harder to fool. Logos and monograms no longer carry the premium. Shoppers want investment pieces. Craft speaks louder than hype. The old playbook of flooding the market with monogrammed entry-level goods is losing power. In this new climate, scarcity and substance speak louder than ubiquity.

• The Growth-At-All-Costs Model: Luxury’s recent expansion has relied less on creativity than on financial engineering; repeated double-digit price hikes (Chanel’s Classic Flap being the poster child), expansion into lower-tier cities, and an overdependence on wholesale partners to drive volume. These tactics delivered short-term revenue but at the cost of brand dilution, discount cycles, and eroded trust.

• The Inventory Bloat & The Off-Price Treadmill: The industry overproduces €50–60 billion worth of goods every year. This leads to a Faustian bargain: burn the stock (Burberry’s scandal), or flood the off-price market. The latter option catastrophically erodes brand equity by training consumers to never pay full price. Even Cucinelli was recently accused, though the company denied it, illustrating the suspicion that haunts the sector.

The Antidote: The Artisanal Foundation of Value

Brunello Cucinelli and Jacques Marie Mage reject the logic of disposable fashion by grounding their value in undeniable, tangible craftsmanship.

Cucinelli. This isn’t just knitwear. Cucinelli sells a philosophy. His “humanistic capitalism” is rooted in Solomeo, the medieval hamlet he rebuilt to house his ecosystem of workshops. The supply chain is entirely Italian, entirely artisan. That control isn’t cost, it’s pricing power. In 2023, Cucinelli reported a gross margin of 78.2% (vs. ~67–69% at LVMH’s Fashion & Leather Goods) and grew revenue 23.9% to €1.14 billion, proving that disciplined, value-driven growth can outperform volume-driven models.

Jacques Marie Mage. JMM was founded in response to an industry that had prioritized marketing over product innovation. Each frame is conceived as an artifact. The materials are uncompromising: 10mm Japanese acetate, titanium, palladium silver, and 12k gold plate. Production runs to ~300 steps, involving over 100 artisans, with each style released in numbered editions. Retail prices range from $600 to $2,000+, roughly double what Gucci or Prada sunglasses command. While JMM is a private company, financial analysts estimate its revenue climbed from ~$30 million in 2019 to ~$100 million in 2023, with EBITDA margins around 30%, levels that rival, or surpass, much larger listed players, which point to a highly profitable business model built on its artisanal, high-value proposition.

The Engine: Scarcity as Strategy

Luxury operates on the logic of the Veblen good, where demand rises with price. Scarcity amplifies this effect.

Cucinelli. Where many brands chased explosive, double-digit growth during luxury’s boom years, Cucinelli played the long game. The brand publicly commits to ~10% growth a year, no more, as a promise to investors and customers that the market will never be flooded. Cucinelli himself has said he’d prefer fewer people know the name, framing exclusivity as a form of governance. The results are measurable: between 2019 and 2023, revenue compounded at 12.5%. Even in 2020, when sector revenues collapsed by 20–30%, Cucinelli’s decline was smaller and recovery faster. Scarcity here isn’t treated as a marketing gimmick.

JMM. Scarcity is embedded in the product itself. Every frame is a numbered edition, and once it sells out, it’s gone forever. That engineered limit creates a self-perpetuating demand loop visible in resale markets: JMM styles like the Zephirin or Jax routinely fetch 2x to 3x their original $895 price, with some climbing above $2,500. That 150–200% premium is the clearest KPI of desirability. Primary sales tell the same story: analysts estimate new drops sell through at nearly 100%, at full price. By constraining supply, JMM doesn’t just avoid discounting; it manufactures demand.

Distribution as Discipline

Cucinelli. The channel mix is deliberate: approximately two-thirds of sales are through monobrand boutiques, and one-third through carefully selected wholesale partners. That balance matters. Unlike peers that flood department stores to chase volume, Cucinelli limits exposure only to partners who can maintain context and sell-through. It’s restraint as strategy. The payoff is clear: revenues doubled in five years (€608m → €1.3B), and margins held steady at the top of the industry.

JMM. Even stricter. Distribution runs through its own site and flagships, as well as a handful of optical specialists and prestige accounts, including Bergdorf Goodman, Mr Porter, and Dover Street Market. No department-store racks, no discount channels. The result is cultural positioning. Where you sell is part of the worldbuilding.

Both brands use distribution as a gatekeeping mechanism, not just a sales channel, protecting brand equity and preserving margins.

The Synthesis: The New Luxury Math

The model that Brunello Cucinelli and Jacques Marie Mage represent is not about chasing scale. It’s about discipline. Four principles define it:

• Target the Core, Not the Fringe. The economics of luxury depend on the few, not many. The top 2% of clients drive ~40% of spend (Bain). These are Hermès-level buyers, largely insulated from volatility. Cucinelli aims even higher, at the 0.1%, and still projects steady 10% growth through 2026, while the broader sector contracts.

• Higher AOV & Protected Margins. Neither house relies on entry-level logo goods. Their models are anchored in high-priced hero products, resulting in higher Average Order Values and gross margins of 10–12 points above the industry norm.

• Lower Marketing Costs. Cucinelli invests just ~7% of revenue in marketing, well below peers. JMM skips traditional advertising altogether, instead embedding itself in culture through collaborations with Jeremy Strong or paying homage to The Velvet Underground. Cultural equity, not paid reach, fuels demand.

• “Light” Vertical Integration & Strategic Sourcing. Both exercise control without the drag of full ownership. For Cucinelli, that means a fully Italian, artisan-driven supply chain. For JMM, a lighter form of integration: Japanese acetate, titanium, palladium, and gold crafted in Japan’s boutique ateliers. Enough control to secure quality and margins, without excess overhead.

Luxury fashion stands at a crossroads. It can continue down the path of volume and value erosion, or it can look to the anti-fashion formula of Brunello Cucinelli and Jacques Marie Mage. They prove with hard data that the future of luxury isn’t about being faster or louder. It’s about being rarer, more devout, and more disciplined. In a world saturated with product, true luxury is a relic - something consecrated by scarcity.

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CAFE SOCIETY

[A weekly section of headlines worth reading. The name comes from the 1930s term “café society,” coined for the glamorous writers and artists who lived in Paris cafés. These are the stories I imagine they’d debate over champagne and cigarettes.]

1. Demna’s Gucci: Demna just debuted his first Gucci collection, La Famiglia, on Instagram, a spectacle that’s extravagant, unapologetically sexy, and daring. At its core is world-building, or what fashion does best: theatre. He’s introduced a cast of Italian archetypes, L’influencer, the IT-girl, La Drama Queen, La Diva - each with a distinct visual identity. It feels as if Gucci has a look for everyone, which is precisely their intent after all. But beyond the characters and codes, Demna has done something bigger: he’s made Gucci feel sexy again.

Gucci is also adopting a See-Now, Buy-Now model for this debut collection, with pieces available immediately in select boutiques worldwide, sidestepping the industry’s usual six-month lag. Demna’s full runway debut is slated for February, but this early release lets Gucci start monetizing sooner, rather than waiting for the traditional retail cycle to catch up.

The timing matters. Gucci’s performance has been weak: sales fell roughly 25% in Q2 2025, and revenue slid from €10.5 billion in 2022 to around €7.65 billion in 2024, a decline of nearly 30% in just two years. In that context, See-Now, Buy-Now is a way to cut inventory risk and keep revenue flowing during a critical turnaround.

2. Meta wants its Apple Watch moment: Meta is betting hard on smart glasses as its next growth engine. At Meta Connect 2025, Zuckerberg unveiled three new models: the second-gen Ray-Ban Meta, the Oakley Meta Vanguard, and a Ray-Ban Display with a wristband controller, framing them as the next step toward everyday AR.

Meta claims to have sold 2 million of the first-gen Ray-Bans since 2023. “This is now our third year shipping AI glasses with our great partner, EssilorLuxottica,” he said, “and the sales trajectory that we’ve seen is similar to some of the most popular consumer electronics of all time.” For context: the iPad sold 1 million units in 28 days, the iPhone in 74 days, and the Apple Watch in just one.

So far, Meta’s glasses don’t show mass adoption. For AR hardware to matter, the company needs tens of millions in circulation. Against Apple’s scale, Meta’s footprint looks small: Apple’s Wearables, Home & Accessories division, powered by the Apple Watch, generated nearly $40 billion last year. And all this comes at a staggering cost. Reality Labs, the R&D-heavy unit behind Meta’s AR/VR bets, has accumulated close to $70 billion in losses.

The playbook, though, is clear. Don’t reinvent the frame; graft tech onto brands that already carry cultural weight. Ray-Ban for mass cool, Oakley for sports and outdoor credibility. Oakley, in particular, feels like a Trojan horse, slipping into outdoor lifestyle niches like skiing and cycling where Apple hasn’t planted a flag. The problem is Apple’s moat: Watch + Health + Fitness + iPhone, a fully integrated ecosystem that Meta doesn’t have. Whether this becomes Meta’s “Apple Watch moment” depends on turning cultural cachet into mass adoption and building an ecosystem strong enough to make daily use inevitable.

Eva Chen went on TBPN to talk about Meta’s glasses and made a point: “The key to smart glasses adoption is style first.” What stuck with me, though, was a tweet I saw from a prominent-ish voice on tech Twitter, who admitted he had no idea Meta even had a VP of Fashion Partnerships. So, let me share the lore of Eva Chen. Eva Chen isn’t just any exec. She was once the EIC of Lucky (Condé Nast fam), joined Meta in 2015, and is one of the key reasons Instagram became Instagram. She was a pivotal hire, before the platform had any credibility with brands or retailers, and she bridged that gap. A legend that straddles the worlds of fashion and tech.

3. Affiliate Becomes the New Luxury Battlefield: LTK may have written the original playbook, and ShopMy later disrupted it, but now the incumbents are moving in. Sephora, working with Motom, has launched My Sephora Storefront, a tool that lets creators build their own curated shops. Condé Nast is following close behind with Vette, set to debut in early 2026 under Lisa Aiken, Vogue’s executive fashion director and the company’s SVP of commerce. The logic is straightforward. Most brands already pay creators 8–15% in affiliate commissions on top of platform fees. By building affiliate platforms in-house, Sephora and Condé Nast aren’t just playing defense against third parties; they’re pulling the economics closer, using affiliate as both a loyalty lever and a way to keep more of the revenue

4. Louboutin has named Jaden Smith its new Men’s Creative Director.

I’ll be honest: I’ve never understood the logic of fashion brands handing creative roles to celebrities rather than designers. Sure, it spikes EMV in the short term, but that doesn’t always translate into long-term sales. We’ve seen this play before, Future at Lanvin Labs, Lindsay Lohan at Ungaro. Headline hires that raised eyebrows more than revenue.

5. I absolutely loved the recent interview with Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons.

There’s something rare about hearing two designers with decades of authority reflect on how their work evolves alongside the way fashion itself is perceived today. What struck me most is that their outlook isn’t anchored in nostalgia; it’s relentlessly future-facing. They also touch on something we all feel: technology has flattened taste, leaving everyone looking more or less the same. Their response is to design against that sameness, to imagine what comes next rather than recycle what’s already everywhere.

6. Dries Van Noten has felt visibly re-energized since Julian Klausner, the 33-year-old Belgian, took over as creative director in December 2024.

Tucked inside Puig’s “niche brands” division, Dries posted double-digit growth last year. Klausner’s latest collection leans into rich jewel tones, historical flourishes, contemporary tailoring, and subtle nods to dance, a natural fit for a designer steeped in theatre, dance, performance, and exhibitions. Menswear is especially strong in the brand’s new doors, which have been opening at pace: London, New York, Brussels, and a reopened Tokyo boutique all join the map, with Milan next in line. In total, Dries counts 14 stores worldwide, including three devoted to beauty, leather goods, and jewellery. Expansion that feels less like overreach, and more like momentum.

7. Dilara Findikoglu is shifting gears.

She’s moving beyond niche experimental into growth mode: handbags, more ready-to-wear, and a tighter push on both wholesale and DTC. Her runway will still carry her signature drama, but now with pieces that feel built for real wardrobes, making her collectibles more accessible. It’s the familiar trade-off: scale without losing the edge.

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On another note, Lyas hosted a Dilara Findikoglu watch party and I love the concept. Fashion shows are screened in a pub, the way people gather to watch football at bars. It reframes runway as a communal spectacle, not just industry insider content.

Cafe Society

[A weekly section of headlines worth reading. The name comes from the 1930s term “café society,” coined for the glamorous writers and artists who lived in Paris cafés. These are the stories I imagine they’d debate over champagne and cigarettes.]

1. Gucci has a new CEO: Francesca Bellettini. Reviving the brand is now Kering’s most urgent task as Gucci still drives nearly half of the group’s sales and two-thirds of its operating profit.

2. A year after exiting Helmut Lang, Peter Do is back with a new venture: PD-168. It’s an offshoot of his namesake brand but, as he insists, not a diffusion line. The project has already landed its first commission: designing uniforms for the consulting and creative agency Office of Applied Strategy. And the results? Impossibly cool.

3. Klarna’s $1.37B IPO sent shares up 30%. The Buy Now, Pay Later giant has long been embedded in fashion e-commerce, partnering with H&M, Sephora, and other retailers to boost conversions and streamline the checkout process.

4. The RealReal’s 2025 Resale Report is out: Louis Vuitton tops the list as the most-searched brand, with Chanel close behind. Pucci had a breakout year, Isabel Marant claimed Comeback Brand of the Year, and Coach saw the sharpest surge in interest—searches spiking 160%.

5. Stella McCartney has tapped Tom Mendenhall as its new CEO, a veteran of Tom Ford and Ralph Lauren, now tasked with steering the brand’s next chapter.

6. Bentley has appointed two creative directors: Mai Ikuzawa, owner of Team Ikuzawa, and Greg Williams!!

7. Ralph Lauren has rolled out Ask Ralph—an AI-powered shopping concierge designed to guide customers through the brand’s world.

8. Tamara Mellon, the co-founder of Jimmy Choo, may have shut down her namesake label…

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Now onto today’s deep dive.

Vogue, If I Were CEO

I’ve built a media tech company before. Which is why watching Vogue stumble through the digital age feels almost painful. Sprezzatura usually breaks down how fashion companies are built and, today, how I’d run them differently. Welcome to the CEO Edit.

At its core, Vogue’s challenge is cultural irrelevance. To matter again, it needs three things: a unified digital product, content that reasserts authority, and a reimagined magazine that justifies its existence. Everything else ladders up to this.

Vogue’s cultural presence today is, unfortunately, almost non-existent. It no longer holds the same status it did decades ago, and the real question is how a publishing house regains that kind of weight.

Last year, I wrote an article on Vogue needing to pivot: “The quality of a Vogue magazine today is lackluster, produced with inexpensive materials that starkly contrast with its contents. Vogue should reimagine itself by producing hardcover editions akin to coffee table books, recasting them as revered collector's items displayed in people's homes.

Additionally, they could introduce special edition coffee table books in collaboration with fashion houses like Schiaparelli, leveraging these as potent marketing tools with price points ranging from $100 to over $1,000, depending on the exclusivity of the content. Assouline books, priced between $100 and $15,000, demonstrate the potential for such a premium product.”

And interestingly enough, Chloe Malle, the new Head of Editorial Content, echoed the same idea in her interview with the New York Times: “Ms. Malle believes that issues should be released less frequently and around specific themes or cultural moments, upending its current monthly schedule. These issues should be viewed more as collectible editions, printed on thick, high-quality paper.” Now, I’m not saying she read my article, but…

There’s been pushback online. One Instagram user argued that collectible editions are a mistake since Vogue is aspirational luxury, not true luxury, and higher pricing risks alienating its core audience. But here’s where I disagree. The monthly magazine was already unsustainable: low demand, high editorial costs, content nobody read. Collectible editions aren’t for aspirational readers; they’re for loyalists who value Vogue as an object. Aspirational readers still engage daily through Instagram and TikTok, and most were never paying subscribers anyway. So this isn’t alienation. It’s recalibration: fewer readers, higher value per reader, and a chance at breaking even.

Moreover, in my article, I expand upon the idea of why magazines still matter: “I mentioned the trend in a tweet last year: magazines are most definitely making a comeback. The entire world went through 'digital fatigue' during the pandemic, which has quite possibly revived interest in print. But it's also attributed to Gen Z's analog preferences, as evident with the resurgence of vinyl and film cameras.”

Magazines, when done well, create cultural relevance. By charging a higher price, Vogue is also reducing its dependency on advertisers. But a collectible edition can’t just be the current issue printed on heavier paper; that would flop. For this to work, Vogue has to rehaul the content: unique articles, editorial spreads featuring truly iconic figures. Collaborations with fashion houses could add credibility, while reissues of archival spreads could tap nostalgia. Handled creatively, the formats are endless. Done right, this pivot could not only generate meaningful revenue but also reassert Vogue’s role as a cultural purveyor in fashion.

The digital side is no better. As someone who builds digital products, I find Vogue’s pricing and product mix inconsistent to the point of absurdity. Some progress has been made: Vogue Runway and the main Vogue app have finally been consolidated. Until last week, though, you could still access Runway for free on the website after it was paywalled in the app. That loophole is now closed, thankfully.

So let’s look at monetization:

On the Vogue Website, these are the subscription options -

• Digital-only: $12/year, then $34.99/year

• Condé Nast All-Access Bundle: $60/year, then $180/year (The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, WIRED, etc.)

• Print + digital: $15/year, then $72/year
  (All include a tote bag and Vogue Runway access)

And on the Vogue App, this is the subscription option: $20/year or $5/month. You don’t get a tote or a print magazine.

Why does nothing line up? Why is the app more expensive than the website, when the website actually offers more? Why does one come with a tote bag and the other doesn’t? (We should retire tote bags entirely, tbh.) I could subscribe to print + digital on the website for $15/year, get the magazines, and still have app access, for less money than just the app at $20/year.

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What Vogue needs:

• Consolidate pricing across app and web.

• Create a clear benefits page. Subscribers should know what they’re paying for.

• Decide the fate of half-abandoned products like Vogue Club. Right now, it’s shut to new members and hidden in navigation.

At the end of the day, if I subscribe to Vogue, I shouldn’t need a flowchart to figure out what I paid for or where to access it. Right now, the reader has no clarity on what they’re actually buying. And that’s fatal for any media company competing for wallet share.

But the broader problem is digital product sprawl.

1. Vogue Business, for instance, is priced at $230/year (vs. BoF’s $400). Fair enough, given the quality gap. However, its premium tier, with the Vogue Fashion and Beauty Index, costs $1,655, which is a significant jump in the pricing tiers.

   

2. Why should Vogue.com and VogueBusiness.com even be separate platforms? A unified site would strengthen brand equity and provide a more seamless experience.

3. The Vogue app, for all its potential, feels clunky. The layout is overcrowded, with no clear hierarchy - what does Vogue actually want me to read or watch first? There are too many fragmented digital products and no clear USP. For example, the contributors section is buried. If it matters, give it visibility and purpose; if it doesn’t, strip it out. Or the videos don’t feel clickable. Rounded corners, shadows, and consistent formatting across the app and site would help.

The app looks like a patchwork of half-finished experiments. And I could go on, but the point is simple: the user experience is confusing. And right now, the app’s only real USP is the runway section. Everything else feels like an afterthought. For a brand that has defined style for a century, the digital experience doesn’t feel stylish.

Finally, content. Last year, I wrote: “Vogue still has the potential to recapture its iconic status. It needs editors who understand the art of curating and are adept at setting trends and capturing the zeitgeist, much like Outlander Magazine, which is deeply embedded in the culture. The fear of AI and algorithms eroding human uniqueness makes the need for human curators and cultivated insights more necessary than ever right now.”

Reestablishing Vogue’s cultural presence depends not only on the type of content it produces, which determines its credibility, but also on its standing within the publishing ecosystem. As I mentioned, “Over the years, Vogue has remained a benchmark of credibility, serving as a barometer of success for models or celebrities featured on the cover. A mention within its pages could propel emerging designers to international recognition. Vogue was known for its ability to set and forecast trends, with designers and consumers looking to it for guidance on what’s next in fashion. But that trendsetting influence has waned in the digital age, and the magazine has been stuck chasing trends instead of creating them.”

Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you see it, editors today are essentially influencers. If they can’t shape opinion on Instagram or TikTok, their influence is limited. That said, there’s real value in incubating fashion commentators who actually know their craft and have built authority on platforms like YouTube. Imagine bringing someone like HauteLeMode under the Vogue umbrella for their podcast division. In terms of content rehaul, creator Remy does a great job outlining what changes could be made. I urge you to watch her TikTok.

If Vogue were run like a modern platform, it would stop chasing trends and start setting them again, through bold editorial choices, seamless digital products, and print editions that feel like cultural artifacts. The path forward is about creating clarity, authority, and cultural heat in a landscape that desperately needs it.

That’s how Vogue becomes Vogue again.

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In other news, American Vogue has named its new Head of Editorial Content: Chloé Malle. I wouldn’t technically call her Anna’s successor, as the role isn’t the same. The control still sits firmly with Anna.

Cafe Society

[A weekly section of headlines worth reading. The name comes from the 1930s term “café society,” coined for the glamorous writers and artists who lived in Paris cafés. These are the stories I imagine they’d debate over champagne and cigarettes.]

1. Something I can’t quite wrap my head around: Alo Yoga is launching leather handbags priced at $3,000.

2. Margiela has featured Miley Cyrus in its latest campaign - a departure from nearly forty years of avoiding celebrities. I have mixed feelings about this. The portraits, shot by Paolo Roversi, are beautiful. But Margiela was founded on anonymity: no interviews, press handled by fax, and even after Martin’s 2009 exit, the maison was steered by an anonymous design team. The codes were always about namelessness, not star power.

   maisonmargiela

   

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3. Margiela has also introduced a new product line - Line 2

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1. Valentino is bringing back Studio54 for one night only!!

2. Brunello Cucinelli’s first-half operating profit was up 8.8%.

3. Alaïa shot its latest campaign entirely outdoors, a first for the maison.

   maisonalaia

   

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Alright, now time for the main event.

The Rise and Fall of Ssense

For most of the 2010s and early 2020s, Ssense became the default portal into “Gen-Z luxury”: a white-backdrop interface aggregating Prada next to Off-White next to Auralee, underwritten by data-driven buying and, most importantly, rapid, almost continuous markdowns. At scale, it looked like a luxury version of Amazon: massive catalogs, algorithmic pricing, global shipping, and a knack for discovering small labels before anyone else. In 2021, Sequoia took a minority stake, valuing the Montréal company at approximately $4.1 billion. Insiders claim that annual sales reached $800 million at their peak, and the company repeatedly reported profitability.

The “tech company that sells clothes” framing wasn’t just branding. Algorithms did the work: projecting demand, adjusting prices in real-time, and sometimes nudging designers toward what the data said would move. Full-price sell-through was no longer the religion. Traditional retail targets called for 60% full-price sell-through; Ssense was fine with 20%, making margin on the 80% that cleared at discount. The message to shoppers was obvious: wait. Sales bled into each other, winter into private into summer, and odd markdowns like “43% off” became part of the brand’s vernacular.

The core customer was Gen-Z and millennial aspirational luxury. These weren’t Hermès clients buying Birkins at full retail. They were picking up Jacquemus or The Row the moment it hit markdown. For this group, luxury at a discount wasn’t a compromise; it was the norm, and Ssense trained them to see luxury through the lens of deals.

At its best, that machinery expanded the market for interesting clothes. Ssense carried 500+ brands, placed life-changing first orders with brands from $30k growing to $150k within a season if sell-through hit, and, in blockbuster cases like Fear of Gods Essentials, inked deals worth tens of millions annually.

It also used its editorial arm (overseen by 032c’s Joerg Koch) to spotlight emerging designers. The company shipped globally to 114 countries, introducing Seoul and Montréal names to shoppers in New York, Paris, and Tokyo. And for many emerging designers, Ssense wasn’t just a stockist - it was the distribution funnel. Those upfront orders covered factory minimums and kept collections alive in a way small boutiques couldn’t.

The downside was that customers would visit local boutiques but purchase online as soon as the price dipped on Ssense. Loyalty flattened: if another site was $10 cheaper, Ssense lost the cart. Independent retailers, bound by strict markdown calendars, couldn’t match early discounts and often dropped brands entirely.

The turn: tariffs, demand, and creditors

The numbers tell the arc. US sales grew +46% (2019), +34% (2020), +50% (2021), +26% (2022), +5% (2023), then –28% (2024).

In 2024, US luxury spending finally cracked after two years of post-pandemic highs. Bain flagged that it wasn’t the top 1% cutting back; it was the aspirational buyers. They make up ~60% of Ssense’s business. When they pulled back, so did Ssense’s leverage with lenders.

Policy made it worse. In early 2025, the US imposed a new 25% ad-valorem tariff on imports from Canada, directly affecting shipments from Ssense’s Montréal warehouse to its majority US customer base. Then came the bigger structural blow: the end of the de minimis exemption, the rule that previously let packages under $800 enter the US duty-free. As of Aug 29, 2025, those parcels face duties, removing the cushion that once softened Ssense’s cross-border economics and often made it the cheapest “luxury at a discount” option for US shoppers.

The financial stress surfaced fast. In late August 2025, a creditor group led by Bank of Montreal filed a Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA) application in Québec’s Superior Court to force a sale. Ssense counter-filed under the CCAA, Canada’s version of bankruptcy protection, similar to Chapter 11 in the US, to pause creditor claims, stay in control, and propose its own restructuring plan.

The filing doesn’t mean liquidation, but it does acknowledge insolvency: a court-supervised process where management can renegotiate debt terms by extending maturities, reducing or suspending interest, converting portions into equity, or securing new financing. Lenders include BMO, National Bank of Canada, Royal Bank of Canada, Scotiabank, and JPMorgan Chase.

How the model amplified the shock

Discount culture is a great customer-acquisition machine but a fragile profit model. Once tariffs raise import costs and the de minimis threshold disappears, the “always cheaper than retail” promise is broken. Antonio Padilla (@immaculate.style) posted a side-by-side where a The Row tee cost more on Ssense than direct, once duties and fees were added. The behavioral loop flipped: if Ssense no longer cleared the “cheapest reputable option” bar, the same price-sensitive shoppers moved on.

On the supply side, Ssense’s scale was double-edged. Large upfront orders often kept small labels alive by helping them hit factory minimums. However, the same volume pushed brands into a vast catalog, where they were quickly discounted, and their local boutique partners became increasingly frustrated. Now, with Ssense under bankruptcy protection, designers face what many call the “stolen inventory” problem: their clothes have been sold, but payments are frozen in court proceedings, leaving them to be paid out of pocket.

Competition context

Ssense isn’t an isolated failure. The “digital department store” thesis has been under pressure (I’ve published a deep dive on this earlier): Farfetch went through a rescue and overhaul, Matches changed hands and shuttered, and Net-a-Porter has struggled through divestment. The outlier is Mytheresa, which has remained smaller, full-price focused, and service-heavy. In other words, breadth and discount velocity scaled revenue, but not durable profit.

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A look into Hudson’s Bay and Lord & Taylor

When Hudson’s Bay Company was still under NRDC Equity Partners (which bought HBC in 2008), its private equity owners knew Lord & Taylor was bleeding cash. In 2019, they offloaded it to Le Tote, a rental startup, for about $100 million. A textbook pre-distress sale: cut loose a weak division while it still had value. The key is that HBC wasn’t in bankruptcy yet, and NRDC could negotiate terms in private.

By 2025, the story looked different. Hudson’s Bay itself had entered CCAA protection. Everything from the striped logo to store leases was sold under court supervision. Canadian Tire’s C$30 million purchase of the trademarks wasn’t a boardroom deal; it was a distressed auction with proceeds funneled to creditors. That’s the shift: pre-distress sales maximize value for owners, post-distress sales maximize recovery for creditors.

What That Means for Ssense

Ssense has already crossed into CCAA. That changes the playbook.

The founders can’t quietly spin off a division or sell the platform whole on their own terms anymore. Pre-distress moves like NRDC’s Le Tote sale aren’t on the table.

Inside CCAA, two options remain:

• Restructuring. Management can still propose a plan of arrangement to reschedule debt, swap some into equity, or sell off certain assets. But any deal now needs creditor and court approval.

• Liquidation. If restructuring fails, creditors take control. Assets get auctioned - warehouses, the tech stack, vendor contracts, even the Ssense brand. A stalking-horse bidder usually sets the floor. After a 28% sales contraction in 2024, estimates now put Ssense’s equity value between $300–600 million, down from a $4.1B peak.

Who buys in this scenario? Three possibilities:

1. Private Equity (most likely): This is PE’s wheelhouse - distressed assets, bought through asset purchase agreements that leave the debt behind. Creditors want speed and certainty; PE funds bring cash, DIP financing, and stalking-horse bids. For PE, the play is simple: buy cheap, cut costs, and prep for resale.

2. Strategics: Global e-tailer player Mytheresa or a department-store group looking to deepen its online footprint would be drawn to Ssense’s logistics infrastructure, brand roster, and Gen-Z customer base, but would also inherit the same structural headwinds: tariffs, discount dependency, and fragile loyalty.

• Holt Renfrew: A cultural fit as a Canadian department store, but limited capital and a Selfridges investment make Ssense a stretch.

• Nordstrom: The high/low mix of brands makes sense, and Liverpool’s backing helps, but they just exited Canada in 2023. Buying Ssense would reopen that exposure, which would also include tariffs.

• Mytheresa: They’re positioned as a full-price player; taking on Ssense would undermine that. With FY24 revenue at ~€855m, they’d also need outside financing for a deal this size.

3.Tech players: For years, insiders have speculated about Ssense positioning itself as an acquisition target for Amazon, which has struggled to crack luxury fashion. Ssense’s scale, data-driven systems, and brand relationships could make it a viable solution for Amazon, looking to gain credibility in the high-end apparel market. But the risk of brand flight is existential: labels already bristle at markdowns, and under Amazon, many would walk. Amazon has the cash, but money can’t buy credibility in luxury, and losing half the roster would gut the deal.

Ssense’s future isn’t cultural rescue, it’s financial triage. Creditors want out, strategics are tied in knots, and tech giants would blow up vendor trust. The only buyers built for this kind of wreckage are private equity funds. If Ssense is sold, it won’t be for salvation; it’ll be because someone sees value in the ruins.

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