The Debrief

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

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. F

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-

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

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

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, n

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 recog

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 p

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 gradu

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 hundr

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

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

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 bra

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 imag

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

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.

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

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 an

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 de

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 l