Discover the most relevant industry news and insights for fashion creatives, updated each month to enable you to excel in job interviews, promotion conversations or impress in the workplace by increasing your market awareness and emulating market leaders.
BoF Careers distils business intelligence from across the breadth of our content — editorial briefings, newsletters, case studies, podcasts and events — to deliver key takeaways and learnings tailored to your job function, listed alongside a selection of the most exciting live jobs advertised by BoF Careers partners.
Key articles and need-to-know insights for creatives in fashion today:
1. Puma Hires A$AP Rocky as Creative Director of Formula 1 Partnership
Fashion’s convergence with the world of sport continues. This week, it comes in the form of A$AP Rocky’s appointment as creative director of Puma’s Formula 1 partnership. The German sportswear giant — which signed a landmark multi-year licensing deal to exclusively produce and sell F1 apparel, footwear and merch in May — tapped the standout American hip-hop-artist-turned-fashion tastemaker to expand its audience and capitalise on the growing intersection between streetwear and motorsports.
Next year, Rocky will design a series of capsule collections linked to high-profile F1 races throughout the 2024 season. He will also be tasked with hosting in-person activations at each of the races, as well as managing the marketing for each release. By the 2025 season, Puma plans for Rocky to have wider creative control over the entire Puma-F1 partnership, providing creative input for the production of racewear, fanwear and more fashion-forward collections.
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Junior Creative Account Manager, Kendal and Partners — London, United Kingdom
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Key Accounts Art Director, On — Portland, United States
2. Work-in-Progress Gucci Weighs on Owner Kering
Sabato de Sarno’s Gucci debut didn’t offer the big bang the brand needed. […] A panel of experts debriefing on the show agreed on five key points: (1) Sabato De Sarno’s Gucci marks a welcome shift away from the aesthetic of former Gucci designer Alessandro Michele; (2) De Sarno presented a coherent project […] ; (3) the shift to a “bon chic, bon genre” look makes the collection more commercial; but (4) there doesn’t appear to be enough originality to De Sarno’s vision to fuel a new Gucci dream; and (5) the move to a more classic, upmarket and timeless aesthetic pits Gucci against more credible incumbents, while the brand has historically proven to perform better when it’s over the top.
This doesn’t bode well for a rapid turnaround. And softening demand for luxury goods, as consumers sober up from the post-pandemic spending boom, only exacerbates the issue. We have seen multiple times that when consumers cut their discretionary spending, they also cut the number of labels on their shopping lists, concentrating their luxury budget on “must have” brands.
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Creative Pattern Cutter, Alexander McQueen — London, United Kingdom
Fabric Research Specialist, Moncler — Italy
Creative Brand Director, Show Me Your Mumu — Los Angeles, California
3. New Paris Design Fair to Launch Alongside Fashion Week
Fashion editor Dan Thawley and trade-show executive Mathieu Pinet are creating a new design salon with backing from WSN, the organiser of events including accessory trade show Premiere Classe and fashion fair Who’s Next. The fair, called “Matter and Shape,” will run alongside Paris Fashion Week and be held in the Tuileries Garden starting February 2024.
Positioned as a business-focused fair, Matter and Shape is “an open call to design companies, fashion houses, independent makers, raw material innovators and contemporary galleries to show meaningful displays of product — from limited edition designs to full-scale production — available for immediate and short-lead deliveries worldwide,” the fair’s statement said.
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Womenswear & Homeware Stylist, Couverture & The Garbstore — London, United Kingdom
Visual Experience Production Manager, Tapestry — London, United Kingdom
Interior Designer, Apparatus — New York, United States
4. Queuing Is Not A Luxury Experience
One of the most frustrating things about shopping for luxury fashion in the post-pandemic era is queuing — or “lining up,” as North Americans say. The default experience at luxury brands is increasingly arriving at a store — be it Chanel, Dior or Balenciaga — and being told by someone with an iPad that you must wait outside, often behind scores of other people, before you’re allowed in to have a look around. […] What’s bizarre is that sometimes these stores seem to have massive queues outside while the store inside looks completely empty.
If you have a direct relationship with a sales associate and are able to make an appointment in advance, you might be able to circumvent the queue, but this makes it difficult to pop by spontaneously. […] [Some] luxury executives […] [have] said it’s to ensure they can assign one sales associate to each customer to deliver the best shopping experience while also helping to manage the higher levels of shoplifting that they’ve had to contend with in recent years.
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Visual Merchandiser, The Bicester Collection — Belgium
Senior Visual Merchandiser, Burberry — Hong Kong
Window Design Manager, Tiffany & Co. — New York, United States
5. How Bad Will the Luxury Slowdown Get?
After a post-pandemic boom in luxury sales, it’s no longer a question of whether a downturn is coming, but how deep, and how long it will be. Sector bellwether LVMH’s soft sales report last week (9 percent growth in the third quarter for the critical fashion and leather goods unit that included Louis Vuitton and Dior, or about half its pace in the first half of the year) proved that not even the biggest brands were immune to economic forces.
In many ways, the luxury downturn resembles the bursting of the e-commerce bubble last year. In both cases, the pandemic changed the way people shopped, spurring record sales. But the “new normal” proved temporary, and the reversion to the mean painful.
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Digital Marketing & Graphic Designer, Citizen Femme — London, United Kingdom
Graphic & Print Designer, Vetements — Zurich, Switzerland
Associate Art Director, Gap Inc. — San Francisco, United States
6. Chloé Confirms Chemena Kamali as Creative Director
Chloé has officially named Chemena Kamali as its next creative director. As previously reported in BoF, the Richemont-owned label had tapped Kamali to lead a parallel studio at Chloé as it prepared for the departure of former creative director Gabriela Hearst, who staged her last show for the brand on September 28 at Paris Fashion Week. Kamali joined Chloé from Saint Laurent, where she was a key deputy of Anthony Vaccarello, serving as design director for women’s ready-to-wear, but has a history at Chloé, where she worked under designer Phoebe Philo and again as design director to Clare Waight Keller.
Now back at the label and officially installed in the top creative job, Kamali has her work cut out for her. In recent years, Chloé has struggled to keep pace with rivals as sales surged for many luxury brands. Under Hearst, Chloé enjoyed momentum selling lower-priced items, such as its knit “Nama” sneakers, but struggled to sell the more expensive leather goods that once anchored its business, according to sources.
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7. Inside the Big Business of Styling Athletes
As more athletes are invited to sit front row at the biggest fashion week shows in Paris and Milan, their need for stylists, rather than “plugs” — a niche economy of personal shoppers who bring selections of logo-heavy luxury and streetwear items to athletes’ houses or hotel rooms for them to buy and style themselves — is on the rise.
While the convergence of fashion and sport is well documented, what often flies under the radar is the multifaceted roles that stylists and fashion consultants perform, helping mould their athlete clients into lifestyle influencers, and laying the groundwork for lucrative brand deals.
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Assistant Booker, The Claw — Paris, France
Graphic Designer & Illustrator, Broken Planet — London, United Kingdom
Visual Stylist, Neiman Marcus — Newport Beach, United States
8. How Danielle Bernstein’s WeWoreWhat Broke the Influencer Brand Curse
Danielle Bernstein has been to the brink and back. The influencer, known for her outfit photos and candid Instagram Story posts, was an early fashion blogger who translated her fame to Instagram, and later, product, with a 2015 collaboration with swimwear brand Onia that turned into an ongoing partnership and a 2019 team-up with Joe’s Jeans. But her attempt to parlay that moment into a fashion empire seemed to hit a roadblock in 2020, when, shortly after releasing a collection with Macy’s, Bernstein was hit with accusations that her brand’s skirts, dresses, and even face masks copied smaller designers’ work.
Bernstein always denied the allegations, even suing one brand after it accused her of copying a print. Three years on, Bernstein is no longer working with Macy’s (her partnership ended in early 2021). But her other brand, WeWoreWhat, is still going strong. Bernstein said she feels she’s been able to beat the odds because she’s found the right partners and taken a slow-and-steady approach to building the business, beginning with swimwear before embracing other categories like ready-to-wear, activewear or jewellery.
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Graphic Designer, Fred Perry — London, United Kingdom
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