BoF’s Tamison O’Connor explains how the fashion industry is betting on resortwear as consumers return to their pre-pandemic lifestyles and travel rebounds.    Background:    Every spring, top fashion clients, influencers and insiders are whisked away to lush destinations like Monte Carlo and Capri to indulge in fabulous dinners and cocktail parties — and sneak a peek at brands’ resort collections. Resortwear, which began as a way for luxury houses to cater to wealthy, travelling clients halfway through the main season, now represents so much more as a meaningful driver of sales for retailers.    “It's really attractive for the true luxury customer who sees these items as a fun way to accessorise a holiday, but it's also an entry point for more aspirational and younger consumers,” said luxury correspondent Tamison O’Connor.   Key Insights:     As consumers start travelling and treating themselves again, luxury is betting big on vacation dressing.  Resortwear stands apart with more casual designs, lighter fabrics and lower prices. Brands aren’t just using these collections to attract travellers and true luxury consumers, but also to snag wealthy domestic clients and appeal to aspirational buyers. Retailers are picking up on opportunities to engage wealthy consumers by building buzz with events and activations surrounding resortwear online and in stores. Big brands are opening more stores and pop-up markets in vacation towns.  Luxury doesn’t expect growth in the segment to slow, even amid global economic turbulence, travel restrictions in China and skyrocketing inflation.      Additional Resources:    Luxury Seizes the Vacation Dressing Boom   Loewe's Brand Within a Brand: Is This the New Way to Do Diffusion?   How Fashion Is Targeting the Travel Rebound       Join BoF Professional today with our exclusive podcast listener discount of 25% off an annual membership, follow the link  here and enter the coupon code ‘debrief’ at checkout.   Want more from The Business of Fashion? Subscribe to our daily newsletter  here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Debrief: How Vacation Clothes Became Big Business

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Husband and wife duo Gucci Westman and David Neville’s luxury beauty label Westman Atelier has become an industry favourite, winning fans for its curated collection of cosmetics, holistic approach to beauty and strong focus on ingredients.
“Our customer knows that she's getting something that is clean, is going to perform, is going to be good for her skin, and is going to be a luxury experience she hasn't had before,” said Westman.    “We think about brand-building in the literal sense of building a brand brick by brick. Every day we are building our team, building our capacity, building our assortment, introducing new products,” shared Neville. 

 In this conversation from The Business of Beauty Global Forum 2024, Priya Rao, executive editor of The Business of Beauty, sits down with Westman and Neville to discuss how they’re building a multidimensional luxury beauty brand that lasts.

 Key insights: 
Growing up in Sweden, Westman said that the importance of high quality ingredients was instilled in her at a young age. “The Swedish lifestyle is all about value over quantity, having a slow burn and really savouring that experience. I think that really informed my ideas around what we should do and how we should do it,” she shared.  
Neville believes that a product focus is crucial to longevity. “We spent about three and a half years prior to launching in the market just developing with a singular focus on our products. That mentality has been with us all along this journey.” 
Westman highlights trust as another essential ingredient to their brand formula. “Our customer knows that she's getting something that is clean, is going to perform, and is going to be good for her skin. I think we've established this sort of loyalty and trust is imperative in this kind of thing.”
To build a brand that lasts, Westman Atelier’s strategy is to take it all one step at a time. “We think about brand-building in the literal sense of building a brand brick by brick. Every day we are building our team, building our capacity, building our assortment, introducing new products. We're building awareness through new customer acquisition, whether that be direct to consumer or through our retail relationships,” said Neville. 
 Additional resourcesHow I Became… A Makeup ArtistCan Gucci Westman Build the Next Great Luxury Beauty Brand?
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Gucci Westman and David Neville on Creating a Luxury Beauty Brand That Lasts

Footballer Héctor Bellerín first made a name for himself with his defensive skills on the pitch but it’s his outspoken views and distinctive personal style that have transformed the Spanish right-back into a cultural trailblazer.
Now, Héctor, who has been called “the world’s best-dressed footballer”, is launching a new label, Gospel Estudios, which has served a creative outlet as he continues to play football.
“This was a way to recharge my battery. It was a way of learning something new, do stuff with my hands, trying new things. It was a process of discovery and learning and trial and error,” he says.
This week on The BoF Podcast, Héctor sits down with me to talk about the burgeoning relationship between fashion and football, how he developed his strong sense of personal style, and to share his plans for the launch of Gospel Estudios for the first time on The Business of Fashion.
Key Insights: 
After starting his career in Barcelona, Bellerin moved to London in 2011 to play for Arsenal. During his nine years at the club his off-duty style gained him both media admiration and criticism. “I got a lot of stick when I was at Arsenal and things didn’t go well, a lot of people used to say he’s not playing well because he’s focused on fashion,” he says.Héctor Bellerín looked to another footballer, David Beckham, as an example of how to bridge the gap between fashion and sport. “He opened doors for everyone. And I think not just in football, but for men overall … In these very masculine places it’s very hard to be different.”At Gospel Estudios, dependence, rather than independence, is the foundation upon which Bellerín is building his sustainable brand. “My mom works in the studio. My friend’s dad works in the studio. My granddad repaired sewing machines back in the day so he repairs the same machines,” he says. “It’s important to let people know that we are dependent. We are dependent on a lot of people.”Sharing his philosophy on responsible consumption, Bellerín encourages potential buyers of Gospel Estudios to really think about the item in question before they buy it. “Take the time to just breathe and think, is this something that I am ready to have a relationship with? Because this is what it is.”
 Additional Resources: 
Inside the Big Business of Styling Athletes: NBA stars and footballers are leaning on a network of powerful style consultants to help shape their personal brands outside of their day jobs, laying the groundwork for lucrative brand deals.Why Luxury Brands Want in on Football: Despite the rocky history between fashion and football, luxury brands from Moncler to Dior are looking to benefit from the cultural power and global audience of the world’s most popular sport.How Athletes Became Fashion Week Royalty: It’s not just sports superstars sitting front row at fashion week. Today, luxury labels are looking to work with emerging athletes from niche sports, giving rise to new dealmakers who match brands with eager skateboarders, boxers and rugby players. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Héctor Bellerín on Football, Fashion and His New Brand, Gospel Estudios

In 2014, in a nondescript basement club in East London, Charles Jeffrey’s Loverboy was born. At the age of 18, the Scottish-born designer moved from Glasgow to London to pursue a BA in Fashion Design at Central Saint Martins and has since earned his place in the long line of highly creative fashion designers coming from the city. With an upcoming exhibition at Somerset House, the one time upstart is ready to look back on 10 years of his brand.
“I'm Charles Jeffrey, I'm not Alexander McQueen, I'm Charles Jeffrey, I'm not Gareth Pugh. I'm Charles Jeffrey, I'm not John Galliano,” he said. “I have a way of looking at fashion and I want to nurture that and see it to its end.”
This week on The BoF Podcast, Jeffrey joins me to share his journey into London’s fashion scene and reflect on the past, present and future of Loverboy, underscoring that he has his own unique vision to contribute to fashion. 
Key Insights: 
Jeffrey credits video games for sparking his interest in fashion design. “I was a big geek and me and my friends would play in the forests and play Lord of the Rings with sticks. I would sit and draw the outfits and characters that we would all be. We all had our own alter egos and we would just really live in that world.” 
Since the inception of Loverboy, Jeffrey was conscious of building a brand, and chose not to name the brand after himself. “I could have had a business that was just called Charles Jeffrey but I wanted to keep that Loverboy thing because I felt it was a sticky kind of concept. I could apply it to products, Loverboy tartan, Loverboy polka dot, Loverboy pinstripe, or the Loverboy beanie,” he said. “All these things, you start to give them names; it's the psychology of business and brands and advertising.”
Jeffrey understands that creating core hero products is essential to creating brand loyalty and drawing in customers to discover other products.  “How can I make a beanie, which is a bit of a novelty and a throwaway, something that people will buy from us for another ten years? How do you change the perspective of that to somebody so that they come to us for that but then the psychology of this novelty beanie also makes them think, ‘I bet they do great jumpers or I bet they do a really nice bag’.” 
Looking to the future, Jefrrey’s  aim is to create a sustainable, independent business. “My goal, in the next three to five years, is to build an element of the brand that's not reliant on a wholesale model, that's not relying on the fashion model, per se.” he says. “You can push the brand into all these spaces but if the sell-through isn't right, if you've not got the story behind it, if you've not got the relationship with the clients, it just dies a death.”
 Additional resources Charles Jeffrey on What It’s Like to Be a Rising Designer in the Midst of a Pandemic Charles Jeffrey Loverboy’s Furious Physicality   A Tang of Revolution at Charles Jeffrey   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Charles Jeffrey on 10 Years of Loverboy

Esteban Cortázar first fell in love with fashion as a teenager growing up in Miami. Over the years, his career in fashion has come with lots of ups and downs. After he became one of the youngest designers to ever present at New York Fashion Week he had to shut his label down. He went on to become the creative director of Emanuel Ungaro at just 22 years old, before leaving after he disagreed with the owners’ plans to bring on Lindsay Lohan as a consultant. He relaunched his eponymous fashion house but it closed during Covid. Now, Esteban is launching ‘Donde Esteban,’ a new brand on his own terms, on his own schedule, celebrating his roots in Colombia, Miami and Ibiza. 
“Where we can lack as young designers or as designers doing independent brands is that it's really like a puzzle,” says Cortazár. “And you have to have all of the pieces in place for it to work. Having an investor is certainly not enough, you really need to have all of the different angles in place, especially today, to be able to sustain a business.”
This week on The BoF Podcast Esteban joins me to share his career journey and the lessons he’s learned about building an independent fashion business today.
Key insights: 
Born to a Colombian painter and former British jazz singer, Cortazár’s childhood straddled continents, lifestyles, and subcultures, all of which has greatly influenced his artistic sensibilities. “I grew up around a very bohemian environment through my family and my parents — colours and paints and oils and instruments. That already set the tone of a very artistic point of view from a very early stage,” he says. 
Emulating what he saw in the fashion magazines he devoured as a teenager, Cortazár’s early shows were always organised to a professional standard despite his young age and lack of training.
Cortazár jumped at the opportunity to become creative director of Ungaro at the age of 22. “I knew how much questioning there was going to be from the industry about me and my age, my experience, my lack of experience. I just took it and I went for it because I knew that that kind of opportunity wouldn't just continue to come like this.”
Heavily influenced by his upbringing, Cortazar’s new label Donde Esteban is somewhat of a homecoming. “My take on fashion has changed and evolved and I wanted to create something that felt so authentically me, that really celebrated the multicultural aspect of my life. The fact that I was born in Colombia, grew up in Miami, then went to New York, then went to Paris, that I spent all my summers in Ibiza.”
 Additional resources:Turning Point | Esteban Cortazar, Comeback Kid | BoFEsteban Cortázar Tackles Fashion's Timing Gap | BoFUnlikely Directions at Esteban Cortazar | BoF 
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How Esteban Cortázar Got His Groove Back

The first Monday in May has become synonymous with the Met Gala. Every year, celebrities and brands come together on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This year’s theme was The Garden of Time and attendees went to enormous efforts to try to catch the spotlight amid one of the busiest red carpet moments of the year, orchestrated by Anna Wintour, global chief content officer of Conde Nast and editor-in-chief of American Vogue.
“Anna Wintour has raised the ante every year to the extent that this Met Gala made $26 million in one night,” says New York Times fashion critic Vanessa Friedman on this week’s episode of The BoF Podcast. “The amount of social media impressions it generates is beyond compare. The guest list that she curates, because it is an entirely curated guest list, is like nothing else.”.
Friedman joins BoF founder and editor-in-chief Imran Amed to share her journey into fashion journalism, reflect on what this year’s Met Gala says about the state of fashion and culture and of course, dissects the standout looks of the night.
Key Insights: 
Over the past few decades, fashion has become a pillar of popular culture thanks to  the rise of social media and our image-first culture, said Friedman. “We now communicate globally more through imagery than we communicate through words or papers or speeches or books,” she says. “We are constantly making judgments based on the images we see … and those images are intrinsically connected to fashion … It's a language that we all think we speak and therefore we can use as communication.”
The Spanish luxury house Loewe, owned by LVMH, was one of the evening’s sponsors, which for Friedman is an embodiment of the culture-shaping ethos held by LVMH chairman Bernard Arnault. “He doesn't want his brands to be just fashion brands. He wants them to be culture brands. It's going past luxury into shaping culture at large.”
This year’s Met Gala raised an impressive $26 million, but Friedman says this raises questions about the event’s future. “Has this party reached its apogee? Is it possible to make more than $26 million in one night?”
Reflecting on her 20 plus years in the fashion industry, Friedman’s advice to aspiring critics is to think beyond the industry. “Learn as much as you can about things that aren’t fashion. Broaden your viewpoint and think about the world in as wide and exciting and curious a way as possible.”  

Additional resources:Met Gala 2024 Beauty Trends: Boho Princesses and Bling Queens Embrace Garden FairytaleAt the Met Gala, the Fantasy Was Intact The Met Gala’s TikTok Headache   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Debrief: How Vacation Clothes Became Big Business

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