PODCAST · arts
The Debrief
by The Business of Fashion
Welcome to The Debrief, a new weekly podcast from The Business of Fashion, where we go beyond the glossy veneer and unpack our most popular BoF Professional stories. Hosted by BoF correspondents Sheena Butler-Young and Brian Baskin, The Debrief will be your guide into the mega labels, indie upstarts and unforgettable personalities shaping the $2.5 trillion global fashion industry. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Episodes
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Who’s to Blame for Bad Customer Service?
A $15,000 mechanical bird named Molly has become an unlikely flashpoint for retail. After pop star Kelly Clarkson accused Brooklyn boutique Art of Play of treating her “like Julia Roberts’ character” in Pretty Woman, the dispute ignited a much bigger debate about customer service, training and…
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The Verdict on Luxury Fashion’s Designer Reset
Fashion's biggest wave of creative-director musical chairs is now a year or so in, and the early read is starting to emerge. Over a dozen major houses have brought in new leadership, and while the broader luxury market is still sluggish, the areas designers can actually move — product, image,...
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Luxury’s Italian Supply Chain Reckoning Isn’t Over
In 2024, Milan prosecutors uncovered sweatshop-like conditions within the Italian supply chains of major luxury brands, revealing that workers faced degrading living conditions, low pay, and 15-hour workdays. Nearly two years later, despite brands strengthening internal controls, increasing…
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Fashion’s Latest Obsession: The Grocery Store
Fashion brands have long used cafes, restaurants and hospitality to sell a broader lifestyle. Increasingly, they’re looking to a less obvious partner: the gourmet grocery store. From branded smoothies and limited-edition tote bags to run clubs, labels are tapping destinations such as Erewhon,...
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Can Fashion Sell a New Generation on Trade Jobs?
Behind every luxury handbag, bespoke suit and couture gown lies an intricate value chain powered by skilled artisans. But as master craftspeople retire without successors, fashion faces a growing shortage of skilled workers — US tailoring employment has fallen roughly 30 percent over the last...
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Has Fashion Had Enough of AI?
For many shoppers, fashion is now experienced primarily through a screen — discovered on social media, watched on runway livestreams and purchased from a product photo. Fashion critic Eugene Rabkin argues in his new book that this shift has left the industry prioritising a garment's image over…
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Who's Winning Beauty's H1 Reckoning
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...
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Why Upcycling Is Suddenly Everywhere in Fashion
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…
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The Influencer Follower-Count Era Is Ending
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...
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What the Best Fashion Stores Get Right
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...
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The Fashion and Beauty Companies Everyone Wants to Work For
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...
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Why Everyone's Reading Clothing Labels Again
Fabric content used to be a niche sustainability conversation. Now it's a mainstream health one, driven by the same scrutiny shoppers already apply to what they eat and put on their skin — searches for "natural fibre" are up over 100 percent in five years, and searches for "what is viscose?" have...
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Is Fashion School Still Worth It?
For decades, institutions like Central Saint Martins, Parsons and Institut Français de la Mode have launched some of fashion's most successful careers. But, today's graduates are entering a more competitive industry grappling with slower growth across the board, where AI is changing how work gets...
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The Anti-Unicorn Playbook That Beat Fashion's DTC Boom
In 2016, the global retail landscape was dominated by successful direct-to-consumer (DTC) disruptors like Everlane, Glossier, Allbirds and Outdoor Voices. Backed by hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital, they prioritised rapid sales growth and hyper-aggressive social media customer...
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Luxury’s New Reality
Luxury's post-pandemic boom is over. Growth has slowed, shoppers are pushing back on years of price increases and many brands are struggling to convince customers they're still worth the premium. Drawing on BoF's 2026 State of Luxury report — which includes a survey of more than 2,000 affluent...
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How Nike Built the Biggest World Cup Campaign Ever
The 2026 World Cup marked an unprecedented milestone for global football, expanding to 48 teams playing over 100 matches across the US, Canada and Mexico. In this special episode of The Debrief, Nike’s vice president of global brand management Helena Thornton joins BoFsenior correspondent Sheena...
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Why Activewear Consumers Are Looking Beyond Lululemon
For more than a decade, activewear shoppers largely looked to Lululemon and Nike. But as the post-pandemic boom cools and growth becomes harder to find, a new crop of brands is gaining traction. Smaller labels like SetActive, 437 and Oner Active aren’t reinventing activewear. They’re winning...
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How Books Became Fashion’s Latest Status Symbol
Fashion’s book obsession is no longer subtle. What started as the occasional literary reference has become a broader wave of book clubs, salon-style events, campaign imagery and products designed to signal that a brand — and its customer — has cultural depth. It’s all happening as reading rates…
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Fashion's Ozempic Reckoning
The rise of GLP–1 drugs, such as Ozempic and Wegovy, is forcing fashion and beauty companies to rethink everything from sizing and fit to product development. With one in eight Americans having tried a GLP–1 medication, brands are grappling with how to serve consumers whose bodies may be changing...
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A Message to Listeners
The Debrief podcast is taking a short break and will be back in 2 weeks. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Inside The Swatch X Audemars Piguet Global Frenzy
In May, sleeping bags lined pavements and police barriers went up outside Swatch stores from Times Square to Dubai. The object of this global hysteria was not a piece of high-end mechanical art, but the "Royal Pop" – a $400 pocket watch collaboration between mass-market giant Swatch and…
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Why Are So Many Brands Faking Scandals?
The beauty industry is currently contending with marketing saturation, compounded by an overcrowded content ecosystem in which traditional metrics like follower counts and comments are often distorted by bots. To combat this, brands are turning to "rage bait"— content designed to trigger shock,...
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Why People Hate AI
Since the earliest days of tools like ChatGPT and Claude, industry conversations have been marked by a tension between excitement around speed and efficiency alongside deep-seated fears of job loss, creative dilution and concerns about its environmental footprint. What once played out in theory…
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Why Some Retailers are Ignoring the Internet
For years, the fashion industry operated under the assumption that digital scale was the right path. However, the "growth-at-all-costs" model is currently fracturing as luxury giants grapple with soaring customer acquisition costs and a logistical crisis fueled by high return rates. In response…
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Why Luxury Still Can’t Find Its Way Out of the Slump
Luxury entered 2026 with hopes that new creative directors and signs of stabilisation would finally help the sector turn a corner. Instead, the latest round of earnings has raised bigger questions about what growth now looks like for the industry. While brands including Dior, Gucci and Chanel are...
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Nike’s Reality Check
When Elliot Hill returned to Nike as chief executive in October 2024, he was tasked with reversing one of the most significant slumps in the company’s history. The business had lost momentum with both investors and consumers and his strategy has focused on restoring wholesale relationships,...
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Can H&M Prove Sustainability is a Growth Engine?
In March, H&M released financial results alongside its annual sustainability report, presenting two seemingly contrasting narratives. The company reported a 34.6 percent reduction in emissions from 2019 levels and also noted that 91 percent of its materials are now sustainably sourced. However,...
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The Retailer That’s Obsessed With AI
For years, Revolve was fashion retail’s byword for influencer marketing, particularly around its over-the-top Coachella event. But as the Instagram aesthetic matures and the cost of human-led marketing rises, the company is pivoting. The new mandate? To become as much an AI powerhouse as it is a...
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What European Luxury Can Learn From American Fashion
For years, European luxury brands set the pace in fashion, while American labels were often dismissed as overly commercial and too broadly distributed to compete at the highest end of the market. But that balance is shifting. As many European luxury houses struggle with slowing demand, price...
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Why Fragrance Is Fashion’s Newest Digital Frontier
Fragrance is booming, but the way consumers discover and buy scent is changing fast. While scent has traditionally relied on in-person testing, more than half of fragrance purchases in the US now take place online. As department stores decline, brands are leveraging new technologies and creative...
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How Oil Shock Fears Are Rippling Through Fashion
As conflict between the US, Israel and Iran escalates, the threat to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz has pushed energy prices sharply higher. That matters to fashion far beyond the pump: oil and natural gas helps power factories, move goods and produce synthetic fabrics used across the...
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How Fashion Picks Its Hip Hop Style Icons
Hip-hop has served as a primary pipeline for fashion’s entry into pop culture for decades, transitioning from organic street-level references to high-stakes global partnerships. Brands have historically leaned on a select group of superstar "style icons" to drive visibility, with A$AP Rocky...
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Tariffs Are Down, But Uncertainty Is Back
Nearly a year after President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs sent shockwaves through the fashion industry, the Supreme Court ruled he did not have authority to impose the sweeping levies. For an industry that imports billions of dollars in clothing, footwear and accessories into the US...
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How Dior and Chanel Are Winning Back Aspirational Shoppers
After raising prices aggressively during the post-pandemic boom, luxury brands are now confronting slower growth and a shrinking aspirational customer base. According to Bernstein, average luxury price hikes reached 36 percent between 2020 and 2023, with Dior and Chanel raising prices by 51…
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How Fashion Brands Are Winning the Winter Olympics
While the Olympics remain one of the world’s biggest sporting stages, they are also one of the most tightly controlled marketing environments. Rules limit how sponsors can interact with athletes and advertise during the Games. As a result, fashion and sportswear brands are finding alternative…
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The New Rules for Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing in 2026 is a different beast. Once dominated by follower counts and splashy sponsored posts, the sector is now shaped by richer performance data, new monetisation models and growing consumer scepticism toward overt selling. As BoF publishes a new case study on the creator...
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Making Sense of Fashion’s Brutal Job Market
Across fashion, companies that once embraced remote or hybrid work are increasingly pushing employees back into the office, with some moving towards four or even five days a week. At the same time, competition for jobs, particularly at entry level, is intensifying amid layoffs, slower industry...
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Have Sneakers Lost Their Cool?
Sneakers have driven growth for the sportswear industry for decades, in recent years accelerated by the pandemic and work-from-home culture. However, a recent Bank of America report sparked debate by suggesting the sneaker boom may be nearing an end, including a rare double downgrade of Adidas.…
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Saks’ Bankruptcy and the Future of Luxury Retail
Saks’ bankruptcy was widely expected, yet still felt like a shock to the fashion system. The department store giant’s Chapter 11 filing outlines $1.75 billion in restructuring finance and $3.4 billion owed to as many as 25,000 creditors – including $136 million to Chanel alone. Who will get paid,...
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Inside Beauty’s 2026 M&A Pipeline
2026 opens with real movement in beauty deals. As first reported by The Business of Beauty, Estée Lauder is exploring a packaged sale of Too Faced, Smashbox and Dr. Jart to free up cash and refocus the portfolio. Who’s next? Colour fatigue is depressing makeup valuations, while fragrance…
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The Themes That Will Define the 2026 Fashion Agenda
BoF and McKinsey’s annual State of Fashion report finds the industry entering 2026 with caution: 46 percent of executives expect conditions to worsen, citing geopolitics, macro volatility and the risk of shoppers pulling back. Yet there is also a pulse of optimism around AI-driven efficiency,...
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The Sneaker of the Year 2025
Choosing “sneaker of the year” has rarely been this contentious. In 2025 the debate has splintered opinion between incumbent players like Nike and contenders from Vans, Converse and New Balance as consumers test the field. Whilst Nike’s shadow looms and expands with new silhouettes, real-world...
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What Happens When Women Lead
Collectively, Clare Waight Keller and Maria Cornejo have over two decades of experience in the fashion industry. Waight Keller’s impressive career includes roles at Givenchy, Chloé and Gucci — and today, she serves as creative director at Uniqlo. Cornejo’s New York–based label, founded nearly…
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5 Big Questions About Luxury
Luxury’s most eventful year in some time is closing with a bang. From Prada’s Versace acquisition to Matthieu Blazy’s debut Chanel Métiers d’Art collection, seismic industry developments are landing on an almost daily basis. In this episode of The Debrief, senior correspondent Sheena Butler-Young...
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Is This the Year Discount Mania Finally Ends?
As the holiday shopping season approaches, consumer sentiment is slumping, yet spending is bifurcated – the top end keeps buying while the bottom 80 percent is more cautious. With Black Friday looming, brands are recalibrating promotions around value, desirability and hero products rather than...
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Can Fashion Still Meet Its Climate Promises?
As COP30 gets underway in Belém, a port city on the edge of the Brazilian rainforest, the mood is sober. A decade after the Paris Agreement was adopted internationally to limit global warming, many of the world’s largest fashion companies have fallen short on emissions cuts — and some are moving…
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Why Is Everyone Obsessed With Accessories?
Colourful charms, Labubu-laden handbags and a ring on every finger – accessories sales are booming. A surge of necklace stacks, playful rings and quirky charms is being driven by Gen Z’s push for personal style, using add-ons to customise minimalist wardrobes on a budget. With apparel prices up,...
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The Human Cost of Trump's Tariffs
In late August, the US doubled duties on Indian goods to 50 percent, in what President Donald Trump described as a punishment for India’s purchases of Russian oil. Brands reacted immediately, postponing or cancelling orders and leaving factories in hubs like Tiruppur and Bengaluru half-filled.…
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Would You Let AI Shop for You?
A new wave of AI shopping agents has emerged as Big Tech and start-ups alike vie for dominance of this new market. OpenAI, Google and Perplexity are experimenting with search-to-checkout, while fashion-specific entrants like Vêtir, Phia and Gensmo are learning users' tastes before recommending…
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Does Fashion Still Know What Women Want?
This fashion month, models walked the tightrope between fantasy and function. On the runway, spectacle was dialled up to 100: Alaïa’s armless “straitjacket” dress, Margiela’s metal mouthpieces, and Jean Paul Gaultier’s naked male body prints were among the pieces to spark a wider debate. Some...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Welcome to The Debrief, a new weekly podcast from The Business of Fashion, where we go beyond the glossy veneer and unpack our most popular BoF Professional stories. Hosted by BoF correspondents Sheena Butler-Young and Brian Baskin, The Debrief will be your guide into the mega labels, indie upstarts and unforgettable personalities shaping the $2.5 trillion global fashion industry.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
HOSTED BY
The Business of Fashion
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does The Debrief have?
The Debrief currently has 146 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is The Debrief about?
Welcome to The Debrief, a new weekly podcast from The Business of Fashion, where we go beyond the glossy veneer and unpack our most popular BoF Professional stories. Hosted by BoF correspondents Sheena Butler-Young and Brian Baskin, The Debrief will be your guide into the mega labels, indie...
How often does The Debrief release new episodes?
The Debrief publishes regularly with 146 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to The Debrief?
You can listen to The Debrief on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts The Debrief?
The Debrief is created and hosted by The Business of Fashion.
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