The Business of Fashion Podcast

In the summer of 2007, BoF founder Imran Amed landed in Tokyo for the first time. A young American writer named W. David Marx took him on a menswear tour of the city's back streets of Shibuya and Harajuku. That trip would eventually lead Marx to become BoF's first contributor — apart from Amed himself.

Nearly 20 years on, Marx is still in Tokyo, watching a city that experienced three of fashion's biggest shifts before anywhere else: luxury as a middle-class product, the rise — and now retreat — of streetwear and menswear as a global obsession. Marx is the author of three books on Japanese and global culture. The first, “Ametora,” is about how Japan absorbed, and then improved, American style. The most recent, “Blank Space,” is a cultural history of the 21st century, arguing that something has gone missing from the way we make culture today.

Amed sat down with Marx in Tokyo to discuss all of this and more in what is a fascinating conversation about the state of global culture and global fashion today, and how Japan’s place in it has changed.

Key Insights:
Japan taught the luxury industry that luxury could be a mass-market business. Marx traces Japan's luxury boom back to the 1970s, when newly wealthy Japanese travellers began bringing home souvenirs from Paris. He argues Japan is where brands like Louis Vuitton first learned that "luxury could become a middle class market," building duty-free stores in airports rather than relying solely on flagship boutiques for old-money customers — a model since exported across the world.

Tokyo Was the Origin Point of the Global Streetwear Boom: Marx lays out how Bathing Ape's underground Tokyo stores became a phenomenon so outsized it reshaped how the rest of the world thought about streetwear. He recalls a Stüssy veteran saying, "Bathing Ape blew streetwear out of the water."

Luxury's growth problem is structural, not cyclical. Marx argues luxury goods are fundamentally different from something like an iPhone, because "for every additional handbag you sell to a new consumer, you do decrease the value of the handbag that you sold originally." That tension between scarcity and growth, he says, “is at the root of the industry's current slump”.

Culture Has a ‘Blank Space’ Where Invention Used to Be: Marx’s central argument is that value shifts, not a lack of talent, have pushed culture away from art for art's sake. He points to hip-hop and graffiti as movements built by outsiders pursuing invention for its own sake, contrasting that with today's incentives: "If you are making things to get attention, if you're making things to make money, it's just very unlikely that your strategy's going to be to be the most inventive as it could possibly be."

Three Books W. David Marx Recommends
Fashion is Spinach, by Elizabeth Hawes
On Human Finery, by Quentin Bell
For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign, by Jean Baudrillard

Additional Resources:
Streetwear’s First IPO, Explained | BoF
How Big Luxury Is Rewiring for the Future | BoF
How BAPE Kept Its Cool for Decades | BoF

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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 year and has only become more pronounced since has challenged that thinking.

In this episode, senior correspondent Sheena Butler-Young is joined by BoF senior beauty correspondent Daniela Morosini to unpack the first half's earnings across the beauty conglomerates — from Estée Lauder and Shiseido to L'Oréal, Beiersdorf and E.l.f. — and identify what’s still driving growth and what’s stalling, as well as what investors will be watching for next.

Key Insights:

Selective Spending, Not Shrinking Wallets: Consumers haven't stopped buying beauty — they've become pickier about where they spend and what they’re purchasing. "People are just getting a little bit more selective," said Morosini. Shopping itself is shifting, too: "Maybe it's not always Sephora and Ulta. Maybe it's TikTok Shop."

Skincare Results, Injectables and the Price-Value Equation: Affordable, results-driven skincare brands are outperforming, while medical aesthetics are surging in parallel. Morosini points specifically to "the derm-backed skincare brands or the dermatological brands, the more affordable ones like CeraVe and La Roche-Posay, alongside the growing pull of the lasers and the injectables."
Hair's Unexpected Boom: Hair has emerged as one of the biggest bright spots this earnings season, driven equally by innovation and a cultural shift around hair loss. Morosini notes, "hair loss has just become so much more of a hot topic and I think a lot of stigma has been removed," while also crediting brands like K18 and Olaplex that “have increased what we expect hair products to do for us."

Estée Lauder's Momentum Question: Lauder posted a 17 percent stock jump on its first results under new leadership, but Morosini cautions the win may be borrowed. "The question is how much has Estée Lauder improved its brand's desirability and how much has it benefited from a rising tide," she says, adding that stripped of Amazon Prime Day effects, US growth was closer to "about two percent."

The Danger of the One-Hero Brand: From E.l.f.'s reliance on Rhode to Beiersdorf's dependence on Nivea, this earnings season exposed how a single hero product can mask underlying weakness. "When that's basically all concentrated around one brand, that makes investors a little bit nervous," Morosini says, noting the read-through for M&A: “At a certain point you have to buy the growth."

Additional Resources:
Beauty Is Growing. Not Everyone’s Benefitting. | BoF
Can Estée Lauder Turn a Moment Into Momentum? | BoF
Beauty Is Betting on Fragrance. Why Isn’t Shiseido? | BoF

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Earlier this month, A Ma Maniére — one part of James Whitner's The Whitaker Group — was named one of BoF's Best Fashion Stores in the World, our definitive global list of retailers with the most distinctive edits and experiences.

Whitner has spent twenty years building an independent retail business that operates more than 20 stores across 16 US cities — many of them in Black neighbourhoods that mainstream retail had overlooked — based on the feeling he got hanging out in barbershops and sneaker spots growing up in Pittsburgh.

“The best things happen in the barbershop — the most interesting conversations on the block are in the barbershop,” Whitner says. “And once I got some money, going shopping … [was about] how you were serviced, the relationships you had with those people and how good you felt entering and exiting the space. The social currency tied to looking good was about feeling good.”

Back in February 2025, James spoke to me about the discipline behind the business, how he's built brand partnerships that actually last, and why he believes community development, not just retail, is where he needs to head next.

Key Insights:

Learning to Operate Before Chasing Scale: Whitner is candid about the unglamorous groundwork behind Whitaker Group's growth — five years learning to operate, and then another five building brand partnerships. "You have got to understand how to keep costs down, how to build an infrastructure while keeping costs down," he says.

Brand Partners Who Play the Long Game: Whitner is blunt about who he'll work with. "If you want to work with brands who want to be for everybody, that means you're for nobody," he says. On scaling a business built on cultural credibility: "This is an industry that you can scale, but it's not built for scale."

Nike and the Trust in Storytelling: Whitner credits an authentic relationship with Nike for the Whitaker Group's most successful drops. "Nike loves us because we're uniquely us for them... nothing scales better than a great story," he says, previewing a tighter, more intentional distribution strategy.

From Retail to Real Community Development: Community development has become central to Whitner's business, with completed projects including Social Status Detroit — a $5.5 million redevelopment on the city's east side — and The Collective on Tuckaseegee, a ten-space retail compound in Charlotte. "At some point, realising that we needed to be the developer that helped shape the community," he says. “It's more important for us to drive connections and just try to help people who want to help people."

Additional Resources:
The Best Fashion Stores in the World | BoF
The Independent Retailer Built on Prioritising Black Buying Power | BoF
The Whitaker Group Expands With New Women-Centric Retailer Jaide | BoF

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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 a collection made entirely from excess inventory across seven LVMH-owned brands. Coach is turning used denim into new bags, and Uniqlo is remaking unsellable and used garments under its RE label.

In this episode, senior correspondent Sheena Butler-Young speaks to senior editorial associate Shayeza Walid to explore why upcycling brands are increasingly marketing upcycling through creativity and individuality rather than sustainability alone, and what's really driving the shift from new EU regulations to a changing consumer mindset.

Key Insights:
Selling Creativity, Not Just Conscience: Walid points to a fundamental shift in how upcycling is marketed. It's no longer framed primarily as an environmental fix, but as a source of design distinction and story. "It felt like the term was becoming ubiquitous across marketing," she says, noting that upcycling has moved from something "relegated to a certain type of consumer or a certain type of brand" to being claimed by some of the industry's biggest names.
Regulation Is Quietly Doing the Heavy Lifting: Walid connects the timing of the boom to the EU's ban on the destruction of unsold goods, which came into force in July. She notes that Kevin Germanier's LVMH-backed couture collection was deliberately built from unsold stock, not deadstock fabric — a distinction he emphasised on stage. "It also means that they'll have to figure out sustainable and approved ways for using their excess stock, and upcycling is one of the methods for that."
Deadstock vs. Textile Waste — Not the Same Debate: Walid unpacks a live tension among practitioners: using deadstock fabric is being challenged by some critics as not addressing overproduction, since it still puts commercial value on excess production. "With deadstock, it's the same as using new fabric in the sense that they're rolls of fabric... that's not necessarily what upcycling is about," while brands like E.L.V. Denim work directly with used, discarded garments instead.
The Infrastructure Is Finally Catching Up: Sorting, collecting and sourcing — the industry's biggest upcycling bottleneck — is improving. Walid cites organisations like Fashion for Good working on AI-assisted sorting, and platforms such as Nona Source and The Materialist connecting brands to deadstock fabric. "There's a greater design interest in it now more than there's ever been," she says of the shift she's tracked through conversations with suppliers.
The Consumer Wants Range, Not a Label: Walid argues the audience for upcycled product has broadened well beyond the sustainability shopper. "You could have an upcycled Miu Miu product today, and maybe that says that you like high fashion... but also you think it's cool that your product is from an upcycled material," she says, describing a consumer who wants variety in their closet rather than to be defined by one aesthetic or ethic.
Scale Remains the Unsolved Problem: Despite the momentum, there are limits. Sizing and colour inconsistency frustrate wholesale buyers, the process is inherently slower than working with virgin material, and export bans on used textiles in countries like Bangladesh complicate sourcing. She also flags that upcyclers in the Global South — in markets like Kantamanto in Ghana — have done this sort of work for generations but remain largely excluded from the value chain brands are now building.

Additional Resources:
Why So Many Fashion Brands Are Upcycling | BoF
Why Fashion’s Economics Work Against Sustainable Brands | BoF
Can the EU Ban on Destroying Unsold Goods Actually Work? | BoF

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I've been interviewing Nick Knight for more than 15 years. This is our fourth in-depth, sit-down interview. At this stage, it's become something closer to a running conversation about how technology is reshaping fashion.

This time around, I wanted to know where Nick is focusing his energy now. It turns out, he is building his own AI datasets from scratch — photographing a model over and over so the machine sees the world only through his references, and never scrapes the internet for somebody else's. He takes his own still image and asks the AI to make it move, producing something that is neither a photograph nor a film.

I also asked him for the advice he'd give to young image-makers starting out today, in the age of AI. This week on The BoF Podcast, Nick and I get into what happened to the metaverse, how Nick believes AI is creating an entirely new medium somewhere between photography and film, and what fulfilment really means to one of fashion's defining image-makers.

Key Insights:

The Metaverse Didn't Disappear, It Rebranded: Knight argues the concept never really went away, but was tainted by association once Facebook was renamed Meta. He says, "I don't think it's necessarily drifted away. I think the term's been, to some degree, cancelled because it had too many bad connotations,” he said. "The metaverse is just a digital version of life, that's absolutely happening."

Building Proprietary Datasets to Escape the Echo Chamber: Knight's studio creates its own AI models rather than pulling from tools trained on the wider internet, specifically to avoid reproducing past photographers' work. He explains the method: "We've done a conventional session where I photographed the model lots and lots of times, and lots and loads of clothes, et cetera, and that's my data set," which is then fed into the AI, "so it sees the world only through those references."

Referencing Isn't Plagiarism, Copying Is: Knight pushes back on the idea that AI imagery is inherently derivative, arguing that all creative work draws on a subconscious library of influence — human or artificial. "When you walk around a museum, go around the V&A, you are taking in Botticellis, and you're taking in 20th century furniture... they go into your brain... so it's your frame of reference. AI does the same sort of thing." But he draws a hard line at direct imitation: "There's no satisfaction in copying an existing piece of work."

Fashion Models Should Own Their Own Digital Likeness: Knight argues that AI could extend a fashion model's career well beyond its traditionally short, youth-focused span — but only if the model, not the agency or brand, controls the rights. "I think that fashion models need to own their own digital likeness. Now, I've spoken to a lot of model agencies and there is virtually nothing happening to make sure that happens," he says, adding that agencies have little financial incentive to invest in it.

Fame, Money and Power Are "False Goals": Asked what he's chasing if not happiness, Knight rejects the premise outright. "Fame is a false goal. Money is a false goal. Power is a false goal. He locates his own fulfilment elsewhere: "My interaction with people in the studio, my interaction with my wife and my family... it comes from the human interaction with all people around me."

Additional Resources:
Nick Knight Says Heart and Mind are the Key to Fashion Imagemaking | BoF
The BoF Podcast | Inside The Future of Fashion Image Making with Nick Knight
The BoF Podcast | Nick Knight on Why the Metaverse Is Fashion's Next Frontier | BoF

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