The Business of Fashion Podcast

In the summer of 2007, BoF founder Imran Amed landed in Tokyo for the first time. A young American writer named W. David Marx took him on a menswear tour of the city's back streets of Shibuya and Harajuku. That trip would eventually lead Marx to become BoF's first contributor — apart from Amed himself.

Nearly 20 years on, Marx is still in Tokyo, watching a city that experienced three of fashion's biggest shifts before anywhere else: luxury as a middle-class product, the rise — and now retreat — of streetwear and menswear as a global obsession. Marx is the author of three books on Japanese and global culture. The first, “Ametora,” is about how Japan absorbed, and then improved, American style. The most recent, “Blank Space,” is a cultural history of the 21st century, arguing that something has gone missing from the way we make culture today.

Amed sat down with Marx in Tokyo to discuss all of this and more in what is a fascinating conversation about the state of global culture and global fashion today, and how Japan’s place in it has changed. 

Key Insights: 

• Japan taught the luxury industry that luxury could be a mass-market business.  Marx traces Japan's luxury boom back to the 1970s, when newly wealthy Japanese travellers began bringing home souvenirs from Paris. He argues Japan is where brands like Louis Vuitton first learned that "luxury could become a middle class market," building duty-free stores in airports rather than relying solely on flagship boutiques for old-money customers — a model since exported across the world.

• Tokyo Was the Origin Point of the Global Streetwear Boom: Marx lays out how Bathing Ape's underground Tokyo stores became a phenomenon so outsized it reshaped how the rest of the world thought about streetwear. He recalls a Stüssy veteran saying, "Bathing Ape blew streetwear out of the water."

• Luxury's growth problem is structural, not cyclical. Marx argues luxury goods are fundamentally different from something like an iPhone, because "for every additional handbag you sell to a new consumer, you do decrease the value of the handbag that you sold originally." That tension between scarcity and growth, he says, “is at the root of the industry's current slump”.

• Culture Has a ‘Blank Space’ Where Invention Used to Be: Marx’s  central argument is that value shifts, not a lack of talent, have pushed culture away from art for art's sake. He points to hip-hop and graffiti as movements built by outsiders pursuing invention for its own sake, contrasting that with today's incentives: "If you are making things to get attention, if you're making things to make money, it's just very unlikely that your strategy's going to be to be the most inventive as it could possibly be."

Three Books W. David Marx Recommends

• Fashion is Spinach, by Elizabeth Hawes 
• On Human Finery, by Quentin Bell 
• For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign, by Jean Baudrillard

Additional Resources:

• Streetwear’s First IPO, Explained | BoF
• How Big Luxury Is Rewiring for the Future | BoF
• How BAPE Kept Its Cool for Decades | BoF 

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Beauty has long been one of the industry’s most reliable growth engines — fragrance boomed post-pandemic, prestige beauty held up better than other categories, and value-driven brands like e.l.f. proved that sharp pricing and marketing could keep consumers spending. But a slowdown that began last year and has only become more pronounced since has challenged that thinking.

In this episode, senior correspondent Sheena Butler-Young is joined by BoF senior beauty correspondent Daniela Morosini to unpack the first half's earnings across the beauty conglomerates — from Estée Lauder and Shiseido to L'Oréal, Beiersdorf and E.l.f. — and identify what’s still driving growth and what’s stalling, as well as what investors will be watching for next.

Key Insights:

• Selective Spending, Not Shrinking Wallets: Consumers haven't stopped buying beauty — they've become pickier about where they spend and what they’re purchasing. "People are just getting a little bit more selective," said Morosini. Shopping itself is shifting, too: "Maybe it's not always Sephora and Ulta. Maybe it's TikTok Shop."

• Skincare Results, Injectables and the Price-Value Equation: Affordable, results-driven skincare brands are outperforming, while medical aesthetics are surging in parallel. Morosini points specifically to "the derm-backed skincare brands or the dermatological brands, the more affordable ones like CeraVe and La Roche-Posay, alongside the growing pull of the lasers and the injectables."
• Hair's Unexpected Boom: Hair has emerged as one of the biggest bright spots this earnings season, driven equally by innovation and a cultural shift around hair loss. Morosini notes, "hair loss has just become so much more of a hot topic and I think a lot of stigma has been removed," while also crediting brands like K18 and Olaplex that “have increased what we expect hair products to do for us."

• Estée Lauder's Momentum Question: Lauder posted a 17 percent stock jump on its first results under new leadership, but Morosini cautions the win may be borrowed. "The question is how much has Estée Lauder improved its brand's desirability and how much has it benefited from a rising tide," she says, adding that stripped of Amazon Prime Day effects, US growth was closer to "about two percent."

• The Danger of the One-Hero Brand: From E.l.f.'s reliance on Rhode to Beiersdorf's dependence on Nivea, this earnings season exposed how a single hero product can mask underlying weakness. "When that's basically all concentrated around one brand, that makes investors a little bit nervous," Morosini says, noting the read-through for M&A: “At a certain point you have to buy the growth."

Additional Resources:

• Beauty Is Growing. Not Everyone’s Benefitting. | BoF
• Can Estée Lauder Turn a Moment Into Momentum? | BoF
• Beauty Is Betting on Fragrance. Why Isn’t Shiseido? | BoF

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Earlier this month, A Ma Maniére — one part of James Whitner's The Whitaker Group — was named one of BoF's Best Fashion Stores in the World, our definitive global list of retailers with the most distinctive edits and experiences.

Whitner has spent twenty years building an independent retail business that operates more than 20 stores across 16 US cities — many of them in Black neighbourhoods that mainstream retail had overlooked — based on the feeling he got hanging out in barbershops and sneaker spots growing up in Pittsburgh.

“The best things happen in the barbershop — the most interesting conversations on the block are in the barbershop,” Whitner says. “And once I got some money, going shopping … [was about] how you were serviced, the relationships you had with those people and how good you felt entering and exiting the space. The social currency tied to looking good was about feeling good.”

Back in February 2025, James spoke to me about the discipline behind the business, how he's built brand partnerships that actually last, and why he believes community development, not just retail, is where he needs to head next. 

Key Insights:

• Learning to Operate Before Chasing Scale: Whitner is candid about the unglamorous groundwork behind Whitaker Group's growth — five years learning to operate, and then another five building brand partnerships. "You have got to understand how to keep costs down, how to build an infrastructure while keeping costs down," he says.

• Brand Partners Who Play the Long Game: Whitner is blunt about who he'll work with. "If you want to work with brands who want to be for everybody, that means you're for nobody," he says. On scaling a business built on cultural credibility: "This is an industry that you can scale, but it's not built for scale."

• Nike and the Trust in Storytelling: Whitner credits an authentic relationship with Nike for the Whitaker Group's most successful drops. "Nike loves us because we're uniquely us for them... nothing scales better than a great story," he says, previewing a tighter, more intentional distribution strategy.

• From Retail to Real Community Development: Community development has become central to Whitner's business, with completed projects including Social Status Detroit — a $5.5 million redevelopment on the city's east side — and The Collective on Tuckaseegee, a ten-space retail compound in Charlotte. "At some point, realising that we needed to be the developer that helped shape the community," he says. “It's more important for us to drive connections and just try to help people who want to help people."

Additional Resources:

• The Best Fashion Stores in the World | BoF
• The Independent Retailer Built on Prioritising Black Buying Power | BoF
• The Whitaker Group Expands With New Women-Centric Retailer Jaide | BoF

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For a long time, upcycling sat on the fringes of the fashion industry, a tactic used primarily by small independent designers, niche sustainability labels and in one-off capsule collections. That's changing. At Paris Couture Week this spring, Swiss designer Kevin Germanier closed the season with a collection made entirely from excess inventory across seven LVMH-owned brands. Coach is turning used denim into new bags, and Uniqlo is remaking unsellable and used garments under its RE label.

In this episode, senior correspondent Sheena Butler-Young speaks to senior editorial associate Shayeza Walid to explore why upcycling brands are increasingly marketing upcycling through creativity and individuality rather than sustainability alone, and what's really driving the shift from new EU regulations to a changing consumer mindset.

Key Insights:

• Selling Creativity, Not Just Conscience: Walid points to a fundamental shift in how upcycling is marketed. It's no longer framed primarily as an environmental fix, but as a source of design distinction and story. "It felt like the term was becoming ubiquitous across marketing," she says, noting that upcycling has moved from something "relegated to a certain type of consumer or a certain type of brand" to being claimed by some of the industry's biggest names.
• Regulation Is Quietly Doing the Heavy Lifting: Walid connects the timing of the boom to the EU's ban on the destruction of unsold goods, which came into force in July. She notes that Kevin Germanier's LVMH-backed couture collection was deliberately built from unsold stock, not deadstock fabric — a distinction he emphasised on stage. "It also means that they'll have to figure out sustainable and approved ways for using their excess stock, and upcycling is one of the methods for that."
• Deadstock vs. Textile Waste — Not the Same Debate: Walid unpacks a live tension among practitioners: using deadstock fabric is being challenged by some critics as not addressing overproduction, since it still puts commercial value on excess production. "With deadstock, it's the same as using new fabric in the sense that they're rolls of fabric... that's not necessarily what upcycling is about," while brands like E.L.V. Denim work directly with used, discarded garments instead.
• The Infrastructure Is Finally Catching Up: Sorting, collecting and sourcing — the industry's biggest upcycling bottleneck — is improving. Walid cites organisations like Fashion for Good working on AI-assisted sorting, and platforms such as Nona Source and The Materialist connecting brands to deadstock fabric. "There's a greater design interest in it now more than there's ever been," she says of the shift she's tracked through conversations with suppliers.
• The Consumer Wants Range, Not a Label: Walid argues the audience for upcycled product has broadened well beyond the sustainability shopper. "You could have an upcycled Miu Miu product today, and maybe that says that you like high fashion... but also you think it's cool that your product is from an upcycled material," she says, describing a consumer who wants variety in their closet rather than to be defined by one aesthetic or ethic.
• Scale Remains the Unsolved Problem: Despite the momentum, there are limits. Sizing and colour inconsistency frustrate wholesale buyers, the process is inherently slower than working with virgin material, and export bans on used textiles in countries like Bangladesh complicate sourcing. She also flags that upcyclers in the Global South — in markets like Kantamanto in Ghana — have done this sort of work for generations but remain largely excluded from the value chain brands are now building.

• Additional Resources:
• Why So Many Fashion Brands Are Upcycling | BoF
• Why Fashion’s Economics Work Against Sustainable Brands | BoF
• Can the EU Ban on Destroying Unsold Goods Actually Work? | BoF

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I've been interviewing Nick Knight for more than 15 years. This is our fourth in-depth, sit-down interview. At this stage, it's become something closer to a running conversation about how technology is reshaping fashion.

This time around, I wanted to know where Nick is focusing his energy now. It turns out, he is building his own AI datasets from scratch — photographing a model over and over so the machine sees the world only through his references, and never scrapes the internet for somebody else's. He takes his own still image and asks the AI to make it move, producing something that is neither a photograph nor a film. 

I also asked him for the advice he'd give to young image-makers starting out today, in the age of AI. This week on The BoF Podcast, Nick and I get into what happened to the metaverse, how Nick believes AI is creating an entirely new medium somewhere between photography and film, and what fulfilment really means to one of fashion's defining image-makers.

Key Insights: 

• The Metaverse Didn't Disappear, It Rebranded: Knight argues the concept never really went away, but was tainted by association once Facebook was renamed Meta.  He says, "I don't think it's necessarily drifted away. I think the term's been, to some degree, cancelled because it had too many bad connotations,” he said. "The metaverse is just a digital version of life, that's absolutely happening."

• Building Proprietary Datasets to Escape the Echo Chamber: Knight's studio creates its own AI models rather than pulling from tools trained on the wider internet, specifically to avoid reproducing past photographers' work. He explains the method: "We've done a conventional session where I photographed the model lots and lots of times, and lots and loads of clothes, et cetera, and that's my data set," which is then fed into the AI, "so it sees the world only through those references."

• Referencing Isn't Plagiarism, Copying Is: Knight pushes back on the idea that AI imagery is inherently derivative, arguing that all creative work draws on a subconscious library of influence — human or artificial. "When you walk around a museum, go around the V&A, you are taking in Botticellis, and you're taking in 20th century furniture... they go into your brain... so it's your frame of reference. AI does the same sort of thing." But he draws a hard line at direct imitation: "There's no satisfaction in copying an existing piece of work."

• Fashion Models Should Own Their Own Digital Likeness: Knight argues that AI could extend a fashion model's career well beyond its traditionally short, youth-focused span — but only if the model, not the agency or brand, controls the rights. "I think that fashion models need to own their own digital likeness. Now, I've spoken to a lot of model agencies and there is virtually nothing happening to make sure that happens," he says, adding that agencies have little financial incentive to invest in it. 

• Fame, Money and Power Are "False Goals": Asked what he's chasing if not happiness, Knight rejects the premise outright. "Fame is a false goal. Money is a false goal. Power is a false  goal. He locates his own fulfilment elsewhere: "My interaction with people in the studio, my interaction with my wife and my family... it comes from the human interaction with all people around me."

Additional Resources:

•  Nick Knight Says Heart and Mind are the Key to Fashion Imagemaking | BoF
• The BoF Podcast |  Inside The Future of Fashion Image Making with Nick Knight
• The BoF Podcast | Nick Knight on Why the Metaverse Is Fashion's Next Frontier | BoF

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For years, follower count was the clearest shorthand for a creator's value — more followers meant more reach, more brand deals, more money. But social media doesn't work that way anymore. TikTok's For You page, Instagram's suggested posts and other algorithmically curated feeds mean creators can reach huge audiences without those people ever following them. At the same time, affiliate marketing platforms like LTK and ShopMy are giving brands a much clearer picture of who actually drives sales, with smaller creators often outperforming bigger names. 

In this episode, senior correspondent Sheena Butler-Young talks to BoF US Editor Diana Pearl about how brands and creators are rethinking the value of an audience, and where creator value is headed next.

Key Insights:

• A huge following no longer guarantees cultural weight. Pearl points to the gap between raw numbers and actual impact: "You look at someone like Dixie D'Amelio, who has almost 54 million followers on TikTok... but I would not say [she is] as culturally relevant as someone like Alex Earle, who has not even 9 million followers on TikTok."
• New platforms have made it possible to see exactly who is driving sales, not just who has the biggest audience. As Pearl explains, "ShopMy really changed that — they offer brands a lot more insight into which creators are actually driving sales, even if they're not running a paid partnership."
• TikTok's For You page and Instagram's suggested posts have done more than any other shift to break the link between followers and visibility. "Those are the two primary factors that have really diminished the importance of follower count," she says, "because you can have someone with 300 followers who goes viral."
• The single most important quality a creator can build today resists easy measurement. "Trust is the number one most important thing that an influencer or creator can curate today," Pearl says, "and that trust is not something that can necessarily be measured by metrics on a spreadsheet."
• Chasing every viral trend is a losing strategy — consistency is what builds a durable audience. "Playing the long game is really the best strategy," she says. "Staying true to who you are — that's how you build that community. That is how you built that trust in that community."

Additional Resources:

• Why Follower Count Matters Less Than Ever | BoF
• Not All Creators Convert. Here's How to Find Those That Do. | BoF
• From Hype to Discipline: The New World of Influencer Marketing | Case Study | BoF

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When the designer Kelly Wearstler was five or six years old, she made little drawings and small sculptures out of cans and cartons, laid them out on the table at family gatherings, and put price tags on them.

She grew up in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, raised by what she calls fiercely independent women who took her to thrift stores, flea markets and auctions. She got her first job at 13. She studied graphic design in Boston, apprenticed in New York with Milton Glaser, the designer behind the I Love New York logo, and then moved to Los Angeles where she waited tables at a Beverly Hills restaurant until one of her regulars became her first client.

Today her design studio runs to 60 people and six verticals — interiors, architecture, licensing, creative direction, a gallery and a Substack newsletter. And next month she launches a 29-piece collection with H&M Home: the first time the retailer has put furniture into a designer collaboration, and the first time it has worked with one designer across both home and fashion.

This week on The BoF Podcast, Kelly joins Amed to talk about advocating for herself before she had any track record, what waiting tables taught her about designing restaurants and how she is using AI inside her studio.

Key Insights:

• A Design Education Built on Flea Markets, Not Classrooms: Wearstler's earliest design instincts weren't taught — they were foraged. Without the money to buy expensive pieces, she and her family combed thrift stores and auctions for scarves, magazines and furniture. "I think that really kind of educated my eye in so many different elements of design," she says. "I love typography and I think that really came from the magazines and what really resonated with me and evoked an emotion."

• Advocating for Herself: Wearstler talked her way into designing her first hotel despite having no commercial design experience, on the condition she partnered with an architecture firm that had. Asked where she found the confidence to push for it, she traces it straight back to her upbringing: "It really went back to my childhood, like both my grandmothers worked. They were so independent... whatever you want to do, you can accomplish. It's hard work. It's not gonna be easy. And it has to be fuelled with passion and curiosity, period." She simply refused to let the "no" stick: "I just kept on going. I really wanted this project."

• A "Why" Rooted in How Spaces Make People Feel: Asked what drives her, Wearstler points to the emotional residue her spaces leave behind. "There's nothing better than to go into one of the lobbies of the hotels that we worked in," she says. "We used to see people coming back over and over again. And they always tell me how they love being in this space. It makes them feel so good."

• Fashion and Design as One Continuous Language: Wearstler doesn't separate how a home is curated from how a person dresses — both are storytelling. "It's like how you dress and your design, your home, your curation style really is a form of self-expression," she says. "I really don't see design and fashion living in separate rooms."

• Legitimising Mass Market Through Design Pedigree: For Wearstler, H&M's history of designer collaborations — not its price point — made the partnership make sense. "If you look just like in the past, I remember early 2000 when they did the Karl Lagerfeld collaboration ... They're really the pioneers of collaborating with designers," she says, citing Margiela's archival collection as another reference point. She argues scale and craft aren't opposed: "It's all in the economies of scale ... You have to really be a great designer, know how to take perhaps a humble material and make it shine."

Additional Resources:

• The Acts of Love Behind Milan Design Week | BoF
• BoF VOICES 2023: An Inflection Point for AI | BoF
• What Stood Out at Salone | BoF 

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For much of the last decade, fashion brands and retailers were fixated on making shopping as seamless as possible — endless product online, algorithmic recommendations, next-day delivery. But after years of digital sameness, something more analogue is starting to feel exciting again. That shift sits at the heart of BoF's new retail package, The Best Fashion Stores in the World — an insider's guide to 65 independent retailers spanning from Brooklyn's Ven. Space to Dongliang in Shanghai, Alara in Lagos and Dover Street Market. 

BoF retail editor Cathaleen Chen joins senior correspondent Sheena Butler-Young to discuss why independent retailers are becoming more important to shoppers, brands and the wider fashion ecosystem, as well as why the ritual of engaging with fashion IRL is more important than ever.

Key Insights:

• Chen says the list's three pillars — curation, experience and partnership — were designed to reflect more than consumer taste. Partnership, she explains, addresses "the support and the responsibilities that all retailers have to the fashion ecosystem," at a moment when department stores have earned a track record for not paying vendors and multi-brand retail has been reshaped by the collapse of players like Matches and the struggles of Net-a-Porter.

• With e-commerce solving for intent-driven shopping, Chen argues stores now win on discovery. As she puts it: "If you know exactly what you want, you shop online. If you don't know what you want, you shop in stores." She adds that the best shopkeepers add value "not just discovery for new brands" but new ways of styling — an eye that "allows designers to sort of view their collection in new eyes" in a way social feeds may fall short, 

•  Per wholesale data from the platform Joor, independent retailers' share of transactions rose from 49 percent in 2020 to 62 percent in 2025 — meaning independents "now make up the majority of transactions in wholesale" on the platform, a significant insight even when accounting for the caveat that it reflects one marketplace.

• The list includes retailers in Ibiza, Hangzhou, Cairo, Cartagena and Kuwait City — a deliberate move beyond fashion's traditional capitals. Citing a conversation with Kallmeyer founder and chief executive Daniella Kallmeyer, Chen notes that regional boutiques may be " even more important than the larger international stores because they're able to penetrate these outer-tier markets," which represent white space for fashion, rather than lesser opportunity.

• The appeal of independent retail is fundamentally about a different mindset: casual discovery and "bopping around the neighbourhood," which Chen calls "the opposite of online shopping, where I know exactly what I want.”

• Asked to name the one quality that will define the best stores for the next decade, Chen didn't hesitate: "I think conviction is what makes these doors so special, and ultimately what makes them so successful today" — pointing to Ikram Goldman's boutique, Ikram, in Chicago, and her famously intimate client relationships as the clearest example.

Additional Resources:

• Why Independent Retail Is More Important Than Ever | BoF
• The Best Fashion Stores in the World | BoF
• The Debrief | Why Some Retailers are Ignoring the Internet | BoF

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Independent multi-brand retailers have long been among fashion's most influential tastemakers, introducing emerging designers, shaping customer discovery and building communities around a distinct point of view. Yet many have struggled in recent years as e-commerce, rising costs and industry consolidation have reshaped the retail landscape.

Despite those challenges, a new generation of boutiques is proving that physical retail can still thrive by offering something digital platforms cannot: thoughtful curation, personal relationships and memorable experiences. 

Among them is Brooklyn menswear store Ven. Space, founded by Totokaelo-alum Chris Green, which was recently named one of BoF's Best Fashion Stores in the World.

When Green opened his New York clothing store, he never wanted it to be everything to everybody. The self-funded menswear boutique in Brooklyn's Carroll Gardens neighbourhood carries no outside investment, offers no online checkout and has an average customer dwell time two and a half hours — an anomaly in an industry that has spent the last decade racing towards scale.

This week on The BoF Podcast, Green joins BoF founder and CEO Imran Amed to discuss building a business without outside investment, why independent retail shouldn't chase endless scale, and how creating the right feeling can become a store's greatest competitive advantage.

Key Insights: 

• The best independent retailers optimise for experience, not endless growth. After decades in retail, Green built Ven. Space around financial discipline and customer experience rather than rapid expansion. "Most people want to set no limits or boundaries on what they want to do," he says. "They're so obsessed with scale they lose a lot of what makes them special." For Green, the benchmark should be the experience and the service — not the size of the business.
• 
  
• Independence lets Ven. Space to grow on its own terms. Having watched Need Supply and Totokaelo close under a broader ownership group, Green built his next business to be immune to that pressure. "I'm fiercely independent. I don't have a backer. It's just self-funded. I want to keep it that way forever," he says. Staying self-funded, he argues, lets him make decisions based on the long-term health of the business rather than short-term returns.
• 
  
• Relationships, not transactions, are what build lasting retail businesses. For Green, a completed sale is the least interesting part of the exchange. The real value, he notes, lies in the conversations and trust that build before and after a customer leaves. "The true feedback is the interaction before and after the purchase," he says — the thing he believes physical retail can offer that online shopping cannot.

• Independent boutiques remain fashion's most important discovery engine. While major retailers increasingly optimise for efficiency, Green argues that boutiques provide emerging designers with something irreplaceable: passionate advocates who understand their work and can communicate it directly to customers. “It’s the care and effort that's going into the collection. If someone has something to actually say, that's super important to me,” he says.  “I identify with the care, the passion, the artistry.” For Green, success comes from backing brands because of their craft — not simply because they're guaranteed to sell.

Additional Resources:

• The Best Fashion Stores in the World | BoF
• Why Independent Retail Is More Important Than Ever | BoF
• How to Build a Fashion Store Worth Leaving Home For | BoF

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What makes a fashion or beauty company a truly desirable place to work? BoF’s second annual ranking of the industry’s most sought-after employers looks beyond brand recognition to examine what workers value — and where companies’ reputations do not always sync up with employee experience. 

In this episode of The Debrief senior correspondent Sheena Butler-Young speaks with junior commercial writer Eoghan O’Donnell and commercial features editor Dan Hastings about the companies that topped the list, the factors shaping employees’ choices and the challenges facing employers today. They also discuss career development, leadership, workplace stability and how artificial intelligence is changing fashion jobs.

Key Insights: 

• The conglomerate stability draw: Amid market volatility, candidates are gravitating toward European luxury conglomerates and beauty giants. Chanel, Hermès and Dior topped the fashion list, while L'Oréal Paris led beauty, ahead of Dior Beauty and Charlotte Tilbury. Their appeal lies partly in perceived stability and career longevity. Founder-led brands including Charlotte Tilbury, Rhode, Victoria Beckham Beauty, Fenty Beauty and Rare Beauty also made the beauty top 20, driven more by product and creative vision than corporate scale.

• Prestige recruits, it doesn't retain: Iconic brand names remain powerful recruitment tools, but employees consistently rank pay, career progression and company culture as their top three priorities — even as prestige tops their stated reason for choosing a dream employer. The disconnect is measurable: only 28 percent of current workers say their employer's external reputation strongly aligns with their day-to-day experience, and among those who perceive a gap, 80 percent plan to leave within 12 months. "Prestige attracts talent, but it's not necessarily what retains it," says O'Donnell. 

• The ivory tower effect: Of all cohorts surveyed, C-suite and HR respondents were the least likely to say their employer's external image differed from internal reality — the group best placed to close that gap is often the most disconnected from it. A Glassdoor and Indeed review analysis (December 2024 onward) of the top 10 companies in both rankings surfaced consistent complaints about workload, benefits, and disconnects between store-level management and headquarters. "There is a [difference] between having a prestigious brand name and working for a brand that doesn't necessarily deliver a healthy workplace," says O'Donnell. "

• The generational AI divide: Sentiment on AI splits sharply by seniority, not by digital fluency. Workers over 40 are the most AI-optimistic cohort — not Gen Z, as employers might assume — while 39 percent of fashion workers and 35 percent of beauty workers say they want AI training they haven't received. A small but notable share admitted using AI at work without disclosing it to their employer.

• The "job lock" threat: Many employees are staying in roles for economic security, not satisfaction. "We know that some employees are staying in roles because of economic uncertainty rather than that sense of genuine satisfaction," says O'Donnell. Hastings sees the same pressure building from the other direction: "I don't think [Gen Z] are willing to sacrifice their [salary], paying the rent, and eating on the altar of working for a prestigious fashion or beauty company — and that will create a lot of friction within the industry."

• Women's health is the next battleground: In survey responses skewing majority-female, respondents voiced urgent, largely unmet demand for egg freezing, menstrual leave, and support through perimenopause and menopause — benefits nearly absent from current employer offerings in two female-dominated industries.

Additional Resources:

• The Most Desirable Beauty Companies to Work for in 2026 | BoF
• The Most Desirable Fashion Companies to Work for in 2026 | BoF
• The Debrief | Making Sense of Fashion’s Brutal Job Market | BoF

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