The Business of Fashion Podcast

The traditional fashion value chain is linear: fibres are grown, harvested, spun into fabric and stitched into garments, which are then distributed to retailers, sold, worn and discarded. 

“The way we make and use things accounts for 45 percent of greenhouse gases and 90 percent of biodiversity loss,” said Dame Ellen MacArthur at BoF VOICES 2021.  

In this conversation with BoF’s Sarah Kent,  MacArthur lays  out a vision for an alternate “circular” economy where the lifecycle of garments is extended through better design, including the use of more resilient, recyclable materials, and using systems throughout the manufacturing and sales process to facilitate items’ repair, reuse, and eventual transformation into something new. 

But this kind of systemic change will require a collective and coordinated push from suppliers, designers, brands and retailers across fashion’s value chain.

“We need to work together to make this happen. You need the entire value chain in the room,” said MacArthur, adding that though such comprehensive change is a challenge, it's also an opportunity. Circular business models, including resale and rental, are on track to become a $700 billion market representing 23 percent of the fashion industry by 2030. 

“Business as usual doesn't work,” said MacArthur. “It's not the solution.”

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At BoF VOICES 2021, Futurists Martin Raymond and Christopher Sanderson examined  the series of fast-paced changes that will dominate the wider world in the coming decade — and advised on how brands must adapt.  The world is at the beginning of an era defined by the emergence of fast-paced change at a never-before-seen scale, Martin Raymond and Christopher Sanderson, futurists and founders of The Future Laboratory consultancy said to a rapt audience at BoF VOICES 2021. They dubbed this moment the “Transformative Twenties.”  The pandemic’s shock and subsequent shifts are just the beginning. A series of radical resets driven by new technologies, climate change and shifting demographics will require businesses to become more agile and flexible to keep up with the pace of change. Individuals will demand more sustainable, equitable and decentralised societies.  Amid all this change, the dynamic between brands and their customers has already moved away from being purely transactional to focusing on collaboration and candour as the key tenets of a business model in flux.

“We are moving through a decade in which we are proactively looking for the businesses, the brands, the products, the goods and the services that will help us on our journey to become healthier, wealthier and happier,” said Sanderson.

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Designers Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez speak to BoF’s Lauren Sherman about their journey from one-time fashion wunderkinds to seasoned entrepreneurs, navigating a series of ups and downs.

Fresh out of fashion school — armed with approval from then Barneys New York fashion director Julie Gilhart, who bought their Parsons senior thesis collection in 2002, and Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, who helped them stage their first show in 2003 — Proenza Schouler designers Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez followed early 2000s American fashion’s script for success. They took investment quickly, produced buzzy runway shows and an ‘it’ item in the form of the PS1 bag, and began launching new categories and distribution deals — but struggled to achieve sustained commercial success.

“By 2018, the board of directors was quite large and in charge and we weren’t. That’s when, I guess, shit hit the fan,” said Hernandez. 

So, 15 years after its 2002 launch and on the brink of bankruptcy, McCollough and Hernandez bought Proenza Schouler back from private equity firm Castanea Partners, installed fashion turnaround veteran Kay Hong as chief executive, and positioned the brand for growth in 2020, just before the pandemic hit. It appears their strategy is working: Proenza Schouler broke even in 2021 and is on a path to profitability in 2022. 

On the latest episode of The BoF Podcast, McCullough and Hernandez join BoF’s chief correspondent Lauren Sherman following her feature, “The Nine Lives of Proenza Schouler,” to chat about their experience so far — and the brand’s next chapter.

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An oft-overlooked natural asset, mushrooms are not just infiltrating the fashion industry, but also have the potential to unlock new ways of thinking and healing.

One of the planet’s oldest lifeforms was the centrepiece of some of last year’s biggest stories in material innovation in fashion. But beyond fungi’s potential for shaping the future of materials, its ability to build things and create networks can provoke our imaginations and make us question the way we organise our lives, according to Merlin Sheldrake, biologist and author of “Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures.”

Download our latest Case Study: ‘Fashion’s Race for New Materials’ here

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On the heels of selling a 24 percent stake in his namesake label, valuing it at $2.7 billion, Louboutin spoke with Rozan Ahmed at BoF VOICES 2021 about how his identity and upbringing have shaped his approach to business and life.

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The best-selling author and podcaster shares a powerful equation for defining your purpose and a guided meditation to help you discover it. 

At BoF VOICES 2021, Jay Shetty spoke about how his experiences as a monk taught him not only how to find purpose, but how to live with it.

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Up until a week ago, Jonathan Anderson was set to show his J.W. Anderson show in Milan, but Omicron has put paid to that, and Jonathan had to quickly change his plans and instead film a presentation at the Scala in Kings Cross London. BoF's editor at large, Tim Blanks, sat down with Jonathan to discuss his responses to the challenges presented by the pandemic. Jonathan has done everything from a show in a box to a show on a wall, and this time he has continued his optimism and enthusiasm in the face of the pandemic. 

Read Tim Blanks' full article here. 

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The pandemic has upped pressure on brands and corporations to take action on issues from climate change to social justice. More and more investors are asking for it and more customers are demanding it.  So what role do businesses need to play in creating the kind of society we want to live in? 

Dame Vivian Hunt is  one of the most important voices in British business. During her talk at VOICES 2021, she made the case for stakeholder capitalism.

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At this year's edition of VOICES, performance artist Alok Vaid-Menon sat down with Harris Reed, a recent Central Saint Martins graduate who has emerged as one of the industry’s brightest rising stars and is vocal about pushing gender-fluid fashion to the mainstream.  Reed and Alok spoke about concrete opportunities for industry stakeholders to de-gender fashion. While many fashion companies want to be seen working with gender non-binary people, few are baking their gender-free principles into their businesses beyond one-off collaborations.

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We often think of hype as the antithesis of timelessness, especially in fashion. Chunky dad sneakers and sweatshirts emblazoned with logos, versus little black dresses and classic tailoring. But how can one brand straddle both?

At BoF VOICES 2021, CEO of Balenciaga Cédric Charbit, discusses the brand's business vision, and how a soon-to-be 103 year old luxury house continues to shape the discourse.

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