The Business of Fashion Podcast

For most of the last 30 years, the American department store has been a story of decline: store closures, bankruptcies, endless discounting and floors packed with racks that looked the same from one store to the next.
Bloomingdale’s is starting to tell a different story. Last quarter, its comparable sales grew more than 11 percent, its second consecutive quarter of double-digit growth, at a moment when much of the luxury industry is struggling to grow at all.
The man behind that turnaround is Olivier Bron, who arrived in New York nearly three years ago to become the CEO of the venerable department store chain that had lost its lustre. Bron believes that Bloomingdale’s can still matter to shoppers and to brands, but only if it gives people a reason to walk in.
This week, Bron joins Imran Amed to talk about how you make a brand every American knows desirable again, and why some of luxury’s biggest brands are wrestling with exactly the same question.
Key Insights:

Art, science and care: Bron’s retail philosophy, distilled from his years at Bain & Company, rests on balancing instinct with data. “The magic is happening when you have this touch of inspiration and point of view that you don’t get with just data,” he says, adding that the second ingredient is simpler: “You need to care for others. You need to like serving others and helping people by bringing joy.”

Execution is essential: Asked about the biggest lesson from turning around Galeries Lafayette’s 70-store network, Bron points not to vision but to delivery. “You can have the best strategy, but if you fail in execution, then your experience will land flat,” he says.

Fewer brands, more space: Bloomingdale’s has deliberately shrunk its brand count to deepen its relationships with the ones that remain. “We probably have 10 percent less brands, but probably expressed in a better way,” Bron says of the store’s luxury renovation.

The US market keeps getting wealthier: Bloomingdale’s wealthiest base of customers is not only expanding but also spending more. “We’re seeing more wealthy people and the already wealthy people have become wealthier,” he says, though he acknowledges the midterm elections and AI-driven market jitters as real risks.

Awareness isn’t desirability: Bron draws a sharp distinction between the two, and applies it as freely to his own brand as to European luxury houses. “Everyone knows about Bloomingdale’s, everyone. In the US, the awareness is very, very strong. But the desirability, the credibility of the brand in this luxury world is not where it should be,” he says. “We were so obsessed about financial returns, about short term performance that you lose ground on this long term perspective.

Top personal shoppers run businesses inside the business: Bron says Bloomingdale's incentive for its personal shoppers is having the brands, inventory, systems and space for them to maximise sales. Home has widened what each associate can sell: “When a customer is spending millions in fashion, I can tell you that these customers are spending millions on their homes as well.”

Additional Resources:
Bloomingdale’s CEO on the Future of American Department Stores | BoF
Luxury Brands Target ‘Desirability First’ — But How to Measure It? | BoF
Pete Nordstrom on the Enduring Power of Retail’s ‘Best Mousetrap’ | The BoF Podcast
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Fashion has long been obsessed with youth, treating young shoppers as both trendsetters and the engine of growth. Yet brands including Evereve, Ulla Johnson, Frances Valentine and Poppy & Peonies are finding opportunities in catering to women in their 40s, 50s and beyond, a demographic with significant spending power and brand loyalty that rarely features prominently in fashion campaigns.

On this week's episode of The Debrief, senior correspondent Sheena Butler-Young and US editor Diana Pearl examine why brands are still afraid to make the older shopper the face of a campaign, what “multi-generational selling” actually requires, and how founders, sales associates and even a customer’s own social circle can become a brand’s most powerful marketing tool.

Key Insights:

Young consumers may drive fashion’s cultural conversation, but older shoppers wield significant purchasing power. As Pearl puts it: “What [youth] don’t often have is the spending power... there’s so much discussion about how boomers are the wealthiest generation.”

Brands will chase an older customer’s wallet but hesitate to put her face on a billboard. Pearl traces this to “a lot of ingrained misogyny in not just fashion, but in our society,” where women over 40 are seen as less interesting to market to — even though, she argues, “when [we] see older women who are chic, who are beautiful, stylish, who are successful, there’s an aspirational element to that.”

The brands succeeding aren’t just targeting a specific age cohort— they’re building for mothers, daughters and grandmothers at once. “If you can sell to the mother, the daughter, the grandmother... that just gives you access to such a wide swath of consumers,” Pearl says, dubbing it a brand’s “superpower” because it builds “long-term loyalty and deep connection with the brand.”

Long before the creator economy, community tastemakers shaped what women bought — they just weren’t on Instagram. “There’s always been that girl... who always had the best product recommendations, always knew of the hot new cool brands,” says Pearl. Those women, she says, were the nano-influencers of their time — holding “an immense amount of sway over their friends and their communities.”

Many of the brands successfully courting older shoppers are founder-led, with personal connections playing a central role in building customer loyalty. For brands looking to replicate those relationships at scale, store associates can play a critical role. Pearl’s advice: “really educating... store teams, particularly store managers, and empowering them to empower their associates, to build those relationships.”

Additional Resources:
Fashion’s Next Growth Opportunity Isn’t Gen Z | BoF
Fashion Wakes Up to the ‘Silver Generation’ Opportunity | BoF
Why Brands Cast Older Celebrities to Court Younger Consumers | BoF
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, by popular demand, we are back for the third installment of Ask Me Anything, where listeners from around the world send in their most pressing questions about what is happening in the fashion business.

This time, the conversation jumps off from the latest season of shows, specifically what’s actually happening at Gucci, whether metrics like Earned Media Value (EMV) and Media Impact Value (MIV) are worth anything at all, how brands can strike the right balance between creativity and commerce, and where human judgement still remains integral, even as AI becomes part of everyday creative work.

Key Insights:
Gucci’s creative direction has sharpened, but the business case hasn’t. After several collections that felt disjointed, Amed sees Demna’s most recent Milan show as the clearest statement yet of his vision for the house. “This most recent show, The Store, just kind of clicked.” But Amed is not ready to call it a fix: “The remaining question I have is, is it enough in this very challenging market where the luxury industry is not growing?”

Brand-measurement metrics deserve scepticism: Asked whether scores like Earned Media Value (EMV) and Media Impact Value (MIV) actually mean anything, Amed argues they’re built to serve a different purpose than the one marketed. “Honestly, these are vanity metrics,” he says, noting they’re often “designed for marketing teams to ask for money from finance people.” His test for any brand: “Long-term brand health and commercial performance, that matters.”

Creative success depends on alignment between designer and business: Comparing the current moment at Balenciaga and Chanel, Amed suggests the difference isn’t talent but clarity of the brief. On Balenciaga: “I get the sense that the brief was a bit disjointed ... can you mine the heritage of Cristóbal Balenciaga ... and then can you also keep the customers that Demna managed to attract ... Are those things even compatible?” At Chanel, by contrast: “They’re all singing from the same hymn sheet about what Chanel is trying to do now ... When it works like it’s working at Chanel, it does feel like magic.”

AI changes how humans create, not whether they’re needed. Amed pushes back on the idea that AI can generate campaigns or strategy on its own. “I don’t think AI on its own can generate beautiful campaigns ... it still requires a human to work with it.” His advice to anyone starting out: build real-world taste and judgement, “because that’s going to be priceless in the age of AI.”

Crediting artisans is what separates collaboration from appropriation. Weighing the recent Prada and Fendi controversies over Indian craftsmanship, Amed draws a clear line between the two. On Fendi’s long relationship with Mumbai atelier Chanakya: “Maria Grazia is investing in and spending time with the artisans ... that for me is an example of how these things should work.” On Prada’s uncredited Kolhapuri sandals: “That felt like a real case of appropriation.” His broader principle: “If you’re going to take something from a culture, credit the people, make sure they’re properly compensated.”

Additional Resources:
Has Demna Solved Gucci’s Identity Crisis? | BoF
Chanel: The Designer Revamp That Worked | BoF
Did Fendi Commit Cultural Appropriation in India? It’s Not That Simple | BoF
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 who bears the brunt of bad retail experiences.

In this episode, senior correspondent Sheena Butler-Young is joined by Jessica Kwon, who recently examined why poor customer service remains so pervasive across retail, and retail editor Cathaleen Chen, who spearheaded BoF’s coverage of the world’s best independent stores. Together, they explore why retailers struggle to get service right — and what it takes to deliver a better shopping experience.

Key Insights:

Kwon connects the Clarkson incident to a longer pattern of retail profiling. “There’s a reason there’s this dedicated phrase, ‘shopping while Black’, that points to this phenomenon of Black customers being disproportionately scrutinized and surveilled,” she says, noting Oprah, Cardi B and Savannah James have all described similar treatment.
Chen is skeptical of the theory that cold treatment drives luxury sales. “I personally find that very hard to believe,” she says, arguing the opposite is now true: “I don’t think that a true luxury shopping environment should make anyone feel intimidated or condescended upon.”
For Chen, salaried-plus-commission models — like those at Elyse Walker — build loyalty because staff see a path up. “The CEO of Aritzia – she started at that company as a sales associate,” she says, tying good service to employees who “feel like they have a stake in the store.”
Chen points to average tenures of five to six months as the real culprit behind inconsistent service. “It’s really not enough time... to soak up the culture of the brand and feel like you are a part of this environment,” she says.
Kwon links pandemic-era social isolation to a generational shift in what good service looks like. “A lot of young people want to be left alone,” she says, adding that attentive service can now read as “a little obsequious.”

Additional Resources:
Why Is It Still So Painful to Shop in Stores? | BoF
The Best Fashion Stores in the World | BoF
How to Build the Retail Customer Service Dream Team | BoF
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tim Blanks, editor-at-large at The Business of Fashion, joins Imran Amed for their seasonal review of the Spring/Summer 2027 shows.

In London, Simone Rocha and Erdem delivered what Blanks calls career heights, and Christopher Kane made his debut at Mulberry, which brought the label back to the London schedule. In Milan, Demna presented his third show for Gucci, and Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons built Prada’s collection almost entirely around the skirt. In Paris, Anthony Vaccarello staged his final show for Saint Laurent, a collection built around gold. Kering confirmed his departure on Oct. 9.

But the thread Blanks and Amed kept coming back to was bigger than any one show. In an industry dominated by giant groups trying to meet quarterly targets, there is a renaissance of independent designers and independent thinking.

Blanks says independence is the theme he expects to return. He describes fashion at its best as an “individual idiosyncratic statement, this passion, and that applies not just to the designers but to the people who sell the designers.” Amed adds that independent stores around the world are looking for designers who offer something customers can’t find everywhere.

Key Insights:
London finds its feet again: Blanks saw two of the city's established names reach new heights. "I saw designers who are really part of the establishment, like Simone Rocha and Erdem, who reached career heights," he says, pointing to a mood of "anything goes, reckless" confidence. "I thought Erdem's show had a particularly wanton quality that was quite enthralling ... you do feel a volcanic force building sometimes, and in this show there was just this explosion of subversive energy."
Demna's Gucci moment: After two seasons spent researching the house, Blanks felt Demna's third Gucci collection finally delivered clarity. "I really liked this show," he says, noting the designer "explored all those different elements — that hyper-bourgeois element, the Tom Ford element ... he really needed to find his way through Gucci."
Prada doing Prada: Miuccia Prada's return to the main collection, built around 63 skirts and her own maxim — "the skirt is my T-shirt" — struck Blanks as a necessary reassertion rather than a retreat. "It totally resonated with me as a reflection of her golden era ... I felt it was a necessary reassertion. I think that anyone who loves Prada would love this collection."
Rick Owens' new alchemy: Owens' Paris show marked a genuine shift for a designer whose idea of beauty is usually challenging. "This time, it was beautiful," Blanks says. "Those gowns at the beginning — they were woven from seatbelt material ... he is like an old-time alchemist, making extraordinary things out of actually quite banal things."
Saint Laurent's gilded goodbye: Witnessing Anthony Vaccarello's final show after 10 years at the house, the collection was built entirely around gold. "This is his farewell to Saint Laurent ... the single-mindedness of his vision is quite overwhelming. It's imperial fashion," Blanks says. "The clothes were like a coronation."
Chanel as "an Act of Faith": Matthieu Blazy's Chanel collection led Blanks to a bigger point about belief and independence inside a giant, privately-held house. "Fashion is an act of faith," he says. "It's something that people have to believe in for it to work ... [criticism] destroys the illusion." He frames Blazy's process as fundamentally independent: "The sheer joy in the making ... that's kind of really independent thinking. You know, when he says, 'I want something that's unknittable,' and comes up with knittable sequins."

Additional Resources:
Miuccia Prada: Future-Proofing a Fashion Dynasty
Christopher Kane Opens New Era at Mulberry
Satoshi Kondo: Crafting Issey Miyake’s Comeback
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.