Indrė Narbutaitė and Lukas Žvikas, founders of UK-based streetwear brand Broken Planet, can vividly recall how as students in 2018, they queued for hours before Travis Scott’s Astroworld concert in London to buy T-shirts from the tour — wardrobe grails they treasure to this day.

It was a full-circle moment, then, earlier this year, when the duo was asked to design a merch capsule for hip-hop festival Rolling Loud in Portugal, which featured Travis Scott, among others, as a headliner. The collection comprised of T-shirts and drop-shoulder hoodies featuring colourful graphics relating to three of the festival’s biggest acts: Scott, Playboy Carti and Meek Mill.

Known for oversized streetwear silhouettes with large, playful text, Broken Planet hypes its products through behind-the-scenes TikToks and boisterous pop-up events. The brand’s founders used the same formula with its Rolling Loud merch.

Each day when the festival’s doors opened at 4 p.m., Narbutaitė and Žvikas were taken aback as people sprinted over to get their hands on the merch, which would sell out within 20 minutes, Narbutaitė said.

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In collaborating with Broken Planet, Rolling Loud benefitted from the brand’s clout among hip-hop fanatics and a scarcity model. To this day, the Broken Planet x Rolling Loud hoodies change hands on resale sites for as much as €340 ($370), more than double the original retail price of €140.

Broken Planet’s collection was a far cry from how music merch is typically created, where artists print graphics on cheap T-shirts that end up being forgotten or used as pyjamas. Today, artists and festival organisers are levelling up their merch by tapping legitimate names in fashion and streetwear, to not only transform their merch into valuable fashion pieces but also to be able to charge more for each shirt or jumpsuit. The market is certainly there; vintage and limited-edition band T-shirt can go upwards of hundreds of dollars for a single piece at specialty shops today.

“Music merch is this perfect opportunity to have your brand remembered for creating clothing which people have an emotional connection to, forever,” said Narbutaitė.

“It’s the ultimate symbol of belonging. This is why people go crazy for it, to be able to say: ‘I was there,’” added Žvikas.

For artists, the upside is high: If successful, merch can provide a lucrative revenue source that supplements their income from touring — a necessity considering the notoriously low rates musicians receive from streaming platforms. Rather than striking deals with licensing companies that take sole responsibility for creating the merch, top artists today are taking their merch production in-house, where they have a say over the look, feel and distribution of the product, and take a greater share of the revenues.

Travis Scott’s ongoing “Utopia” tour, for example, saw merch sales surpass $1 million per night at shows in Dallas and Denver, smashing record sales for both venues, according to Complex.

“Artists are increasingly beginning to understand the real value in owning the process of creating their merch, rather than going for standard licensing deals,” said Tersha Willis, chief executive of Terrible, a London-based start-up working with rising British artists like Sampha and TikTok-favourite singer Pink Pantheress to create and sell dedicated merch to mark album launches, tour dates and retail pop-ups.

Fashion Leans into Music

Broken Planet is hardly the only buzzy brand tapped to make merch. Last month, Balenciaga announced a partnership to create a “tech-enabled merch series” on behalf of Archive, a London-based trip-hop group. And earlier in November, British luxury designer Martine Rose designed merch including T-shirts and a scarf for “The Hillbillies,” a single released by Kendrick Lamar and Baby Keem. The collection, which included a reworked version of the brand’s signature V-neck football jersey, sold out instantly both in-person at LA’s Camp Flog Gnaw festival and on the Martine Rose e-commerce site.

In recent years, luxury brands have increasingly looked to the music industry to boost their appeal to consumers and reach new demographics. In February, Pharrell Williams was appointed Louis Vuitton’s menswear chief; Lanvin tapped American rapper Future to design a unisex capsule collection for the brand which was released earlier this month; and Dior collaborated with Travis Scott’s Cactus Jack label last year.

Sportswear brands have also got in on the act. Drake’s “Nocta” collaboration with Nike has become one of the brand’s most coveted sub-labels in the streetwear community, while Puma announced the comeback of its Fenty x Puma line with Rihanna earlier this year, and hired A$AP Rocky as creative director of its Formula 1 partnership to create a high-end range of motorsports-inspired merch.

The Fashion Transformation of Merch

The pivotal point for the intersection of fashion and music merch can be traced to the mid- to late-2010s, and was best demonstrated by Travis Scott’s 2018 Astroworld tour, according to publicist and music industry expert Eki Igbinoba.

“The Astroworld tour played a huge part in shifting people’s perception and expectation of what tour merch should look like,” she said. “It looked more like a Supreme drop, these were products from a credible streetwear brand than the usual printed T-shirts with an artist’s name and tour dates.”

Scott designed much of the clothing himself, as well as collaborating with several partners, from Virgil Abloh to the NBA’s New York Knicks, to drive hype around location-specific exclusive merch for various tour.

The rest of the industry has taken note. It’s now common for record labels, artists and festivals to tap streetwear specialists like Broken Planet to design merch as they would a traditional collection. Artists like Tyler, the Creator have built entire brands out of their merch. The American rapper and producer’s Golf Wang label has flagship stores in LA, New York and London.

“Since the pandemic, we have seen a massive acceleration in mainstream artists and record labels investing in more fashionable, better-looking tour merch offerings, sold online all year round, beyond just tour dates,” said Igbinoba.

Willis of merch agency Terrible said her business has received an influx of interest among artists as the industry emerged from the pandemic and artists were able to resume touring, looking to take a more strategic approach to merch.

The Future of Merch

Even without the halo effect of fashion, merch is a booming business, and the music industry’s biggest players are muscling in. Last year, Sony took a stake in California-based merch maker Ceremony of Roses and made it its in-house merch production arm.

Spotify has leveraged its jersey sponsorship deal with historic Spanish football club FC Barcelona since the 2022-23 season, creating one-off jerseys worn by the team during games featuring the logo of Drake’s OVO record label, the “Motomami” album artwork of Spanish singer Rosalia, and most recently the Rolling Stones iconic tongue-and-lips symbol. This unique three-way tie-up was so popular that they inspired dupes sold on the internet. It also opened Spotify’s eyes to the potential of merch as a significant future revenue stream, said the company’s vice president, head of music, Jeremy Elrich.

In November, the streaming platform announced a “Capsule Collection” project, which features weekly drops of limited-edition merch from the likes of Peso Pluma, Daft Punk, Tyler the Creator, Tems, and Rosalía.

“Merch is one of the biggest product categories that artists can generate sales from, along with live appearances and publishing recorded music,” said Elrich, who added that the company plans to expand the project to create a permanent platform where consumers can buy merch from various artists.

While online merch sales are a useful year-round source of income for artists and labels, for music fans, nothing can replicate the experience buying merch at live events — and this is where the biggest opportunities lie for brands and designers to convert new consumers.

“It’s this perfect retail moment that I don’t think is possible to replicate in any way,” said Willis. “A purely emotional connection of being in that place, at that time, with the artist and the people you share the moment with.”

“LVFW”: Las Vegas Fashion Week. The caption on Lewis Hamilton’s Instagram post — featuring the veteran driver and style star decked out in looks by Versace, Valentino, Bottega Veneta and Burberry during Formula One’s inaugural Grand Prix in the American gambling and entertainment capital — said it all.

The blockbuster race, which took place last weekend, saw the fashion industry launch itself full-throttle into the world of Formula One, with a flurry of partnership announcements, product launches and events.

French team Alpine unveiled a three-way apparel “collab” with streetwear brand Palace and its official apparel partner Kappa (the football brand owned by Italian licensor BasicNet). Japanese designer label Sacai launched a capsule collection with German carmaker Mercedes-AMG, while sportswear giant Puma flexed its new F1 deal by revealing the first products from a partnership with the league and rapper A$AP Rocky, who has been named creative director of the collaboration.

Did the event live up to the hype? Early stumbling blocks included underwhelming ticket sales (many felt the event aimed too high with its prices), concern over frigid desert temperatures at night (risking perilous driving conditions and uncomfortable viewing), and early discontent from event-goers, who filed a class-action lawsuit against organisers for failing to refund tickets to a cancelled practice.

Still, the race — won by Dutch champion Max Verstappen of Red Bull Racing — turned out to be a thrilling contest, attracting an average TV audience of 1.3 million viewers in the US, according to ESPN. The event also drew 300,000 fans in person including a VIP guestlist that most sporting events could only dream of, including David Beckham, Brad Pitt and Rihanna.

The Grand Prix came to Las Vegas for the first time as fashion brands invest unprecedented sums to embed themselves at the intersection of sports, entertainment and pop culture. Labels well beyond sports marketing stalwarts like Nike and Adidas, from luxury houses to fast-fashion retailers, increasingly see sports as key to reaching a young and diverse consumer audience. This has led to a boom in the sports-sponsorship market, which is expected to grow from $63.1 billion in 2021 to $109.1 billion by 2030, according to PwC.

But with so much excitement on and off the track, it was tricky for brands to cut through the noise and make an impact.

Louis Vuitton pulled ahead of luxury rivals by being the first of the weekend to dress Hamilton, the league’s seven-time champion, who wore a black knitted vest with pearl buttons signed by new creative director Pharrell Williams for his arrival at the racetrack for the first practice session. With brands clamouring to dress Hamilton for each appearance at every race, it felt like a coup for Vuitton to get there first.

But ultimately it was the brands who dressed Hamilton in extravagant ensembles later in the race weekend who reaped the most attention: His Burberry, Bottega Veneta and Valentino looks each garnered media impressions valued between $780,000 and $830,000 according to consultancy Launchmetrics, roughly 10 times the estimated value of Vuitton’s look for the driver.

British streetwear label Palace also won big on its Vegas gamble. Limited-edition jackets — with its famous triangle logo stretched across the back — designed for the Alpine F1 team with Kappa were worn by fans across the racetrack throughout the weekend and stood out among the typical F1 merch assortments. Palace also placed its logo on the team’s cars on the racetrack as part of the collaboration, which garnered $1.2 million worth of media impact, according to Launchmetrics.

The biggest winner, however, was likely Puma. On the evening of 17 November, motorbikes roared through the streets clearing the way for a black truck where A$AP Rocky was filmed leaning out the window, waving at screaming fans dressed head-to-toe in products from his inaugural collection for the Puma-F1 tie-up. Rihanna — Rocky’s partner and fellow Puma collaborator — joined soon after, sending the crowd into a further frenzy.

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The products also hit the mark. Puma dropped items including neon gloves with a spider-web motif, a tattered balaclava, and distressed baseball cap — a considerable departure from the logo-heavy replica jerseys which make up the bulk of F1′s merch offering.

The brand feted the launch at a petrol station on the outskirts of town, with pieces from the collection up for grabs amid customisation pumps, backdropped by neon signs celebrating the collaboration. Despite all the fanfare on the Las Vegas Strip, Puma’s less-central event showed how a mixture of star power, design and a unique pop-up can pull consumers’ attention, securing a spot in the narrative at one of the most hotly-anticipated sporting events in recent history.

THE NEWS IN BRIEF

FASHION, BUSINESS AND THE ECONOMY

Louis Vuitton is set to stage its first ever fashion show in Hong Kong. The show was planned in partnership with the billionaire Cheng family and will debut Pharrell Williams’ second collection for the brand on Nov. 30.

Nordstrom revenue sags as inflation turns holiday shoppers picky. The company’s eponymous label recorded a 9.4 percent drop in sales while discount banner Rack declined only 1.8 percent. Shares of the upmarket department store chain fell nearly 1 percent in volatile after-market trading.

Designer Nancy Gonzalez pled guilty to smuggling exotic-skin designer handbags. The designer was charged with one count of conspiracy and two counts of smuggling handbags made from python and caiman skins between February 2016 and April 2019 into the US. She is facing up 20 years in prison, as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines.

Moncler and EssilorLuxottica announced a licensing agreement. The agreement, which goes into effect January 2024, will allow EssilorLuxottica to design, produce and globally distribute Moncler eyewear. The agreement will be in effect until December 2028 with an option to renew the partnership for an additional five years.

Amazon’s logistics workers in Spain plan Cyber Monday walk-outs. The Spanish union CCOO called on 20,000 warehouse workers to stage a one-hour strike on each shift on Nov. 27. Logistics workers on both sides of the Atlantic have complained about working conditions and unionisation is starting to build pressure on the company.

Kohl’s sales miss estimates as shoppers trim spending on non-essential items. The retailer’s shares dropped more than 4 percent and its comparable sales decreased for a seventh-straight quarter. The company reported a profit of 53 cents per share in the third quarter.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday spending is projected to hit a new high. Consumers plan to spend an average of $567 during Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping events, up 13 percent from last year. About 84 percent of shoppers plan to stay within budget limits during the economic downturn and will do most of their shopping during this period.

Abercrombie & Fitch lifted its annual sales forecast after an upbeat quarter. The move sends a signal that there is strong demand for its lifestyle brands heading into the crucial holiday shopping season. Net sales at Abercrombie namesake brand soared 30 percent in the quarter ended Oct. 28.

American Eagle raised its annual revenue on strong holiday-season demand. The company now expects annual revenue to be up mid single digits, compared with its prior forecast of a rise in low single digits. Analysts on average had expected revenue to grow 2.61 percent, according to LSEG data.

Billionaire separation erases $180 million at Raymond Ltd. The company, which is the world’s largest producer of suit fabric, fell for the seventh day as the acrimonious separation between its chairman Gautam Singhania and his wife Nawaz Singhania sparked uncertainty among investors.

Waste from Adidas, Walmart and other brands is fuelling Cambodia brick kilns. The factories were burning garment waste to save on fuel costs. Workers are falling ill, especially pregnant workers, who reported the burning of garment waste is causing headaches and respiratory problems.

Renewcell launched a strategic review to explore fresh funding options. The company has been under pressure since October, when a weaker-than-expected sales update sent its share price plummeting and prompted the abrupt replacement of its CEO.

THE BUSINESS OF BEAUTY

Bankrupt male-focused skincare brand Disco shuttered. Founded in 2019, the label raised over $8 million in funding. By 2022, access to capital dried up, as interest rates began to rise and investors began to shift focus onto profitable brands. The label filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy on Nov. 16.

PEOPLE

Antoine Arnault relinquished his role as CEO at Berluti. The move has triggered an executive shuffle in LVMH’s watches and jewellery unit. Chaumet chief executive Jean-Marc Mansvelt will succeed Arnault at the French menswear brand, while Fred chief executive Charles Leung will succeed Mansvelt at Chaumet.

Amandine Ohayon named CEO of Stella McCartney. She will succeed Gabriele Maggio, who is exiting the business next month “to pursue other opportunities,” the company said.

Terry Richardson accused of sexual assault in new lawsuit. Model Minerva Portillo alleged she was abused by the photographer after concerns she raised were dismissed by her agents at Trump Model Management.

MEDIA AND TECHNOLOGY

Temu and Shein lag behind Amazon as online shopping ramps up. The e-tailers are drawing millions of window shoppers to their websites this holiday season but are having trouble turning the visitors into shoppers. Amazon trounces both online retailers with 56 percent of its 268 million unique monthly visits in October resulting in purchases, its data shows.

Compiled by Yola Mzizi and Darcey Sergison.

Matthew Williams’ luxury streetwear label 1017 ALYX 9SM has secured investment from Hong Kong-based entrepreneur Adrian Cheng, the company confirmed Friday.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Cheng serves as chief executive of the Hong Kong-based property development group New World Development Company. He also founded C Capital in 2017, an investment fund which has since taken stakes in 60 companies across the fashion, tech and media sectors, according to its website.

Williams founded Alyx with the help of Slam Jam’s Luca Benini in 2015, creating luxury clothing infused with the street culture he’d been immersed in since growing up as a skater in California. (Williams was also part of the DJ collective turned streetwear brand, Been Trill, which he founded in 2010 the likes of Virgil Abloh and Heron Preston.)

The brand, which initially focused on womenswear, received critical acclaim early on and was selected as a 2016 LVMH Prize finalist. Williams then debuted a menswear collection in 2017, which became a hit with celebrities at the forefront of streetwear’s convergence with luxury, such as Travis Scott and Ye, the rapper and designer formerly known as Kanye West.

The investment in Williams’ label comes as the hype that drove sales growth in the streetwear category in the latter half of the 2010s has cooled in recent years.

Williams — who has simultaneously worked as the creative director at LVMH-owned Givenchy since January 2020 — built a cult following at a time when the brand’s utilitarian, streetwear aesthetic was coveted by luxury consumers. Over the years, the brand has launched high-profile collaborations with companies from Nike to Audemars Piguet, whilst also building a sizeable roster of global stockists that includes Dover Street Market, Selfridges and Ssense.

Learn more:

Is Streetwear Still Cool?

Luxury brands may have pivoted away from sneakers, puffer jackets and hoodies, but new labels like Corteiz and Free The Youth are making a case for street culture’s enduring relevance in fashion.

From a sporting perspective, Formula 1′s marquee race in Las Vegas this weekend will have little effect on the outcome of the overall competition. Red Bull Racing’s star Dutch driver Max Verstappen was already crowned as the winner of the 2023 championship back in early October, with six races of the season still to go.

In many ways, the stakes are higher for the dozens of fashion brands on the sidelines, from Tommy Hilfiger and Sacai to Puma and Palace, competing in a race of their own to get a slice of the action amidst a dizzying slew of partnerships, star-studded events and product drops.

The race will be the most anticipated event in the F1 competition since it was announced last year. Formula 1′s new owner, Liberty Media Corporation, reportedly spent $500 million on the transformation of the Las Vegas strip into a racetrack, on which 100,000 fans — including a long list of VIPs like LeBron James and Rihanna — are set to descend each day from Thursday to Saturday, and millions more tuning in on TV across the world. On Wednesday, Bad Bunny, Will.i.am and others took to the stage in a glitzy opening ceremony on the racetrack’s starting grid.

Formula 1 is projecting the spectacle will generate an overall economic impact of $1.3 billion, on par with Super Bowl LVII, which took place in February. Through partnerships with teams and drivers, organised influencer trips and other costly special projects, the fashion industry has played an outsize role in contributing to that figure.

For brands, the price of entry was steep, whether they’re operating a pop-up store on the strip or hosting an afterparty and flying in tastemaker guests. Tag Heuer, a partner of the championship-winning Red Bull Racing team, will spend roughly €20,000 ($21,443) per guest to fly out VIP clients and high-profile influencers for the weekend, according to chief marketing officer George Ciz. But if the race stirs up enough buzz, it just might all be worth it.

“Vegas is going to be one of the greatest sporting events in US history,” said Tommy Hilfiger, whose namesake brand sponsors the Mercedes-AMG F1 team. “In years to come it will be bigger than the Super Bowl.”

Hilfiger added that the brand’s long-running association with F1 has allowed it to court an elevated consumer group, and that the brand is witnessing a particular increase in demand from US consumers as the sport grows in North America.

While Formula 1 lags far behind football and basketball both in terms of popularity and commercial partnerships, the sport offers an opportunity to get in front of a new kind of audience. The average F1 fan age is 32, far younger than that of baseball’s MLB (57), American football’s NFL (50), and the NBA (42), per Nielsen and F1 research. Younger fans have flocked to F1 under Liberty Media Corporation’s ownership and its subsequent modernisation of the sport; its female fanbase has also soared.

“F1 has a fan demographic most other sports could only dream of,” said Toni Cowan-Brown, a Formula 1 content creator known for championing the role of women in the sport. “I think there’s a massive untapped market for brands to cater to by creating exciting, wearable merch that is good quality.”

Seizing the Race

Tommy Hilfiger, the brand, is an official partner of Apple Original Film’s upcoming F1 movie, “Apex”, starring Brad Pitt and Damson Idris and co-produced by seven-time championship winner Lewis Hamilton (a collaboration first teased when filming began at the British Grand Prix in July).

It’s certainly not the only retailer to bet on the sport this weekend.

On Monday, British streetwear label Palace and sportswear brand Kappa announced a collaboration with the Alpine F1 team, whose cars will be wrapped in a colourful one-off design and the drivers dressed in bespoke uniforms and helmets carrying each of the brand’s logos, offering valuable product placement throughout the weekend.

Japanese luxury label Sacai, meanwhile, will launch a collaboration with Mercedes-AMG, a capsule collection that includes jackets, T-shirts and jumpsuits, which is set to be sold via Nordstrom and premiered at AMG’s Speed City. Palm Angels is releasing a set of limited edition Las Vegas-themed T-shirts as part of its ongoing partnership with the Haas F1 team; AlphaTauri, the Red Bull-owned fashion line, will release a capsule collection with Californian artist Brendan Monroe; and F1 driver Lewis Hamilton’s +44 label will drop a capsule collection in collaboration with Takashi Murakami celebrating the race. A$AP Rocky will also be in town to launch the first collection of his tenure as Puma’s creative director in the Formula 1 universe.

“The collaboration gives Sacai the potential to exist in a completely new way ... the beginning of an exciting new chapter for both brands and the world of motorsports,” said Sacai founder and creative director Chitose Abe.

This week, F1′s largest collaborator in fashion, Puma, released its first collection designed by A$AP Rocky as the brand’s creative director for the sport. The collection includes streetwear-inspired pieces such as a tattered racing balaclava, denim shorts, a long sleeve T-shirt with removable driving gloves and a distressed baseball cap — a considerable departure from logo-heavy replica team jerseys which make up the bulk of F1′s current merch offering.

Puma signed a landmark multi-year licensing deal to exclusively produce and sell F1 apparel, footwear and merch in May.

The goal of his multiyear partnership with the German sportswear brand is to turbocharge F1′s cultural revival

“I’m just really glad that what was once a really traditional, conservative industry is ready to open up and explore new things, especially when it comes to fashion,” Rocky told BoF last month.

When Toronto-based designer Spencer Badu was accepted into a well-known showroom in Paris, he was sure it would be his ticket to fame — or at least recognition from buyers and key editors during fashion week.

But Badu soon realised the showroom’s sales agents were too busy steering buyers to the higher-profile brands on display than to his own. So he took matters into his own hands the next year, renting an Airbnb and a couple of clothing rails before reaching out to buyers directly, inviting them to check out his genderless ready-to-wear line, which today includes cargo pants, track jackets and other staples.

His DIY approach, during the Autumn/Winter 2018 season, yielded instant results. Ssense — the Canadian retailer known for often being first to stock buzzy emerging labels — placed one of the brand’s first-ever wholesale orders. The designer’s sharpened pitch also appealed to niche retailers including Opener in South Korea, known for its curation of young luxury brands including Martine Rose and S.S. Daley, which also placed orders that season.

Badu found a way to catch the attention of buyers, editors and consumers without relocating his brand to a fashion capital like New York or Paris. That’s rarely easy: industry gatekeepers have less power than they used to, but they’re still more likely to give a leg up to brands they’ve already encountered. Few are making regular scouting trips outside the usual circuit of global fashion capitals. Without the prestige of “designed in Paris,” or “made in New York,” founders end up having to work harder to build credibility.

“When you’re not coming from a city with a long history of famous designers and loads of well-known stores, you have to find a way to carve your own lane,” Badu said.

But the changing dynamics of the industry has created new opportunities. During the pandemic, brands were forced to embrace virtual appointments for buyers and VIP shoppers. For many, these Zoom meetings have persisted, levelling the playing field for small remote brands that may not have the means to travel for every potential order. Meanwhile, consumers’ growing comfort in shopping online meant lesser-known brands with eye-catching social media feeds were able to attract shoppers far beyond their immediate locales.

The activewear brand Castore started out from a tiny town in the UK called Bebington, near Liverpool and now manufactures apparel for elite teams across football, cricket, rugby and F1; Story mfg, a husband-and-wife run ready-to-wear brand is based in Brighton, UK but has attracted a high-profile clientele that includes Gigi Hadid, Hailey Bieber and Kyrie Irving. Meanwhile, Manchester-based sneaker brand Clints has seen its popularity soar after a high-profile collaboration with Dutch streetwear giant Patta, followed by the opening of its first flagship store in its hometown last summer.

These brands have been able to grow since the pandemic through a combination of gritty hustle, leveraging with local as well as international celebrity fans, and choosing strategic wholesale partners to garner credibility and exposure abroad.

“It’s about doing everything you can to grab the attention of key people in key markets, whether that’s by spending more time creating compelling social media content, or reaching out to press or buyers who may have a personal connection to the city you’re from,” said Harry Fisher, whose agency, Htown, has launched the wholesale businesses of brands such as Nensi Dojaka, Maximilian and Mowalola. Htown also works with Badu.

The Wholesale Hack

For indie brands, wholesale isn’t just a revenue stream; if done correctly, it’s a way to show up in front of tastemaking consumers, stylists and other professionals in the industry with just a few retail partners, Fisher said. The key is to select stockists that punch above their weight in terms of cultural cachet and reputation.

Badu said his tightly managed roster of seven wholesale partners has helped win over a discerning but influential consumer group, including K-pop sensation New Jeans, who came across his line while shopping at Opener, a boutique in South Korea, and DJ Peggy Gou, who found Badu’s brand in Htown, Fisher’s east-London boutique run alongside his agency.

“Now we’re in stores in Korea, China, the UK and US, certain people see us adjacent to these big brands and suddenly think of your clothing as valuable, therefore you’ve made it in their eyes and you’re a real fashion designer worth paying attention to,” he said.

Each New Jeans’ appearance in his clothing — including a $120 American football-style jersey and several of the brand’s $135 “Youniform” T-shirts — has resulted in a flurry of new followers on Badu’s social media accounts.

At respected stores, brands also have a higher chance of exposure to celebrity stylists. Thanks to this, Badu’s clothing has found fans in high places, and in recent years has been spotted on the likes of American rapper Kendrick Lamar and NBA fashion icon Kyle Kuzma.

Hometown Advantage

Some designers see their provincial origins as an advantage.

This is certainly true in the case of Bertony Da Silva, the designer behind the fast-growing Belgian streetwear label, Arte Antwerp, who was able to build a loyal base of local shoppers by marketing his brand’s sports-inspired streetwear offering to fans of the the city’s nascent hip-hop and youth culture scene.

While it’s well known for the “Antwerp Six” — the collective of luxury designers that included Dries Van Noten and Ann Demeulemeester, who graduated from the city’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts in the 1980s — Antwerp wasn’t a streetwear destination when Da Silva first started experimenting with T-shirt design projects in 2009.

Arte Antwerp’s collections of puffer jackets, hoodies and knitwear rapidly spread in popularity and quickly became a symbol of pride among young fashion-forward consumers in Belgium, as well as young kids from the African diaspora who previously weren’t able to turn to many local brands they felt represented their cultural interests (Da Silva is of Angolan heritage). Da Silva’s connections to local high-profile hip-hop artists and athletes also helped spread the brand’s cool factor and gave its sports-inspired streetwear credibility.

“Creating this crossover between Antwerp’s high-fashion traditions with Arte’s elevated streetwear and hip-hop and sporting connections was exactly what helped us stand out when we first started,” he told BoF.

Coming from a smaller town or city certainly has other advantages. Badu said being in Toronto means there isn’t a relentless schedule of industry events. Rents are also cheaper, which means brands can afford to open a store sooner than their big city counterparts, Fisher added.

A Local Destination

Opening hometown flagship stores allows emerging designers to emphasise their regional identity, creating not only a retail destination but also a gathering point for local fashion fans. Meanwhile, there are often far fewer “cool” brands than in major cities, meaning when one does enter the scene, it can quickly become a mecca for fashion-forward consumers.

Clints, the Manchester, UK-based label known for its thick-soled retro sneakers, was able to turn its sleek, minimalist store into a regular hangout for the local streetwear community, according to founder Junior Clint. As the only store of its kind in Manchester, Clints has also become a destination for fashion-forward visitors to the city.

Arte’s two flagship stores in Antwerp and Brussels, which opened in 2016 and 2021 respectively, also have become hotspots for the streetwear and music communities for events, such as shows or exhibitions. It’s also where young consumers and fans may go to spot high-profile friends and collaborators of the brand, including footballers such as Belgium’s Michy Batshuayi and Rafael Leão of Portugal.

“It’s so important not to forget about catering to your local community,” Da Silva said. “These are the people who will automatically spread the word about your brand worldwide.”

A year on from the costly termination of Adidas’ Yeezy partnership with Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, a report by The New York Times has laid bare the extent to which top Adidas executives were aware of the rapper and designer’s problematic behaviour, including his use of antisemitic language and verbal abuse of the brand’s employees, according to the report.

Citing previously undisclosed internal records and information from former Adidas employees, it also detailed the extent to which the German sportswear giant sought to appease Ye, despite his increasingly combative behaviour. Beyond the royalties and cash Ye received, Adidas reportedly agreed to a $100 million annual fund that was officially for marketing but that Ye was able to spend “with little oversight.”

Adidas terminated its partnership with the rapper in 2022 after a series of public outbursts that included antisemitic comments and taunts of Adidas’ leadership. That year, Yeezy sales were on track to reach $1.8 billion, according to the Times.

But previous reporting by other outlets and the new account by the Times indicate that the company overlooked the rapper’s behaviour for years. As early as 2013, at a meeting at Adidas’ Herzogenaurach headquarters, soon after the brand and Ye formalised their partnership, Ye drew a swastika symbol on a sketch of a prototype sneaker design to show his displeasure at the proposed designs to Adidas staff, the Times reported. Over the years, Adidas instituted measures to help staff working directly with Ye, it added, such as rotating people on and off the frontlines of dealing with the artist, assigning a human-resources official to the group, giving staff a subscription to a meditation app and holding sessions akin to group therapy.

Since ending its collaboration with Ye, Adidas has been selling off the stockpile of Yeezy shoes it had already produced, significantly reducing the financial fallout it faced. Recently, new chief executive Bjorn Gulden apologised for comments he made on a podcast where he said Ye didn’t mean his antisemitic remarks.

Adidas told the Times it “has no tolerance for hate speech and offensive behaviour, which is why the company terminated the Adidas Yeezy partnership.”

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Unpacking Adidas’ Surprise Yeezy Coup

After severing ties with Ye, Adidas was left to deal with $1.3 billion worth of unsold merchandise, which it considered destroying but decided to sell instead, beginning with a first drop in May. That turned out to be the right decision.

British designer Steven Stokey-Daley will be the guest designer at January’s Pitti Immagine Uomo 105, the organisation confirmed in a statement Tuesday.

The Liverpool-born designer’s namesake brand, SS Daley, will stage an event at the prestigious bi-annual menswear trade show, which takes place in Italy, at Florence’s Fortezza da Basso.

Since founding his brand in 2020, Daley has received critical acclaim for dressing celebrities like Harry Styles and also won the 2022 LVMH Prize.

“Steven Stokey-Daley transforms the British upper class into a queer fashion fantasy” said Francesca Tacconi, special events coordinator at Pitti Immagine.

Daley will joined by Italian menswear designer Luca Magliano, who was also announced as a guest designer last week.

Previous guest designers at Pitti Immagine include Martine Rose and Eli Russell Linnetz.

Learn more:

Menswear’s New Groove: Casual Suiting Meets Gorpcore?

Established luxury brands, emerging designers and buzzy technical players alike mixed relaxed suiting with sportswear at the influential Pitti Uomo trade show.

For her latest funding round, Polly McMaster took her pitch to the people.

Her contemporary womenswear brand, The Fold, enjoyed a bumper 2022, with revenue rising 60 percent to £16 million ($19.7 million). McMaster said she needed funding to open more stores in the UK, and eventually the US, which now accounts for half of sales.

The Fold had previously raised around £10 million across different rounds from investors such as Soho House backer Active Partners. She returned to some of them this time around. But she also launched a crowdfunding campaign on the UK-based platform Crowdcube in February, aiming to raise £750,000 ($925 million) at a pre-money valuation of £30 million ($37 million). Her pitch was to her customer base of working women, who McMaster suspected would see the appeal of collective female ownership of a fast-growing brand.

“The Fold has grown over 60 per annum year-on-year with a community of 280,000 women. For the first time, you are invited to invest and join us on our journey,” the company’s pitch reads.

With one day to go, The Fold has raised over £1.6 million ($2 million) from more than 400 people.

The Fold is far from the first brand to turn to crowdfunding. Allbirds famously launched with a Kickstarter campaign in 2016, going on to raise tens of millions of dollars before its initial public offering in 2021. Its popularity has continued to grow, including with established brands that have found more conventional paths to raise cash cut off amid rising interest rates and a global economic downturn (others, like The Fold, are mixing crowdsourced capital in with traditional investments). Last year, Crowdcube saw a spike in listings from fashion-related businesses, which accounted for 14 percent of total campaigns in 2022.

A big benefit of crowdfunding is that the money arrives faster — as soon as two weeks after the end of a campaign. In return for their money, investors receive a tiny stake in the company, but companies are not obliged to appoint a crowdfunding representative to the board and shares do not carry voting rights. And in the case of some campaigns, including those on Kickstarter, there are no shares changing hands at all. Instead, people choosing to give money are incentivised by discounts and early access to merch.

But the appeal goes beyond financing needs: an offer of part ownership can also cement a bond with shoppers and introduce a brand to new audiences.

“We saw it as a more democratic and purposeful way to raise money than just from a select few angels,” McMaster told BoF. “It’s the ultimate two-way loyalty plan: consumers get to own a piece of the business they love and we are able to raise capital and secure long-term customer relationships at the same time.”

It carries risks too. Crowdsourcing campaigns typically have public fundraising goals; falling short can lay bare a company’s weakness and need for cash.

“As a founder, crowdfunding can be quite an uncomfortable place because you don’t know how it’s going to be received,” said Moses Rashid, founder of online sneaker marketplace The Edit Ldn. “If it falls flat, you’re gonna be quite vulnerable — but if it does well then obviously it elevates the status of your business and is a powerful marketing tool.”

Converting Customers Into Shareholders

There are various ways companies convince people to fork out for their crowdfunding rounds. Investors are often enticed with perks like VIP events with the brand founders, lifetime discounts and early access to products before they launch.

However, many of the most successful crowdfunding campaigns entice would-be investors with compelling purpose-driven campaigns inviting people to join the company in pursuit of a specific goal.

Ruka, a UK-based beauty start-up whose hair extensions products are favoured by the likes of Serena Williams and actress Gabrielle Union, ran a campaign last year that saw the founder encourage investors to support a Black women-owned business with the aim of becoming the “definitive hair brand for black women globally, by building an ecosystem of hair solutions which are ethical, safe,” according to their campaign on Crowdcube, which raised £1 million after an initial target of £700,000.

“Crowdfunding offers many more benefits than going out to a smaller group of angel investors because you can generate so much more positivity from what you’re doing in partnership with your customers,” said McMaster of The Fold, whose campaign encouraged women to participate in the ownership of the brand through the promise of a pledge to women’s empowerment charity Smartworks for every investment over £250.

McMaster also positioned it as an opportunity for women who had never considered investing in a business before to take their first steps with a woman-owned brand. It appears to have worked. 67 percent of the investors in the ongoing round are women, McMaster said (on average women make up 21 percent of the participants on crowdfunds on Crowdcube).

Crowdfunding as Marketing

When Rashid was looking to raise about $4.8 million, he turned first to The Edit Ldn’s existing backers, including New York venture capital firm Regah Ventures. But he also saw the perfect opportunity to bring on board long-term supporters and customers as shareholders, wedding them to The Edit Ldn.

An initial crowdfunding target of £250,000 was surpassed in 15 minutes, Rashid says, and the retailer ended up raising £550,000 from the public when the round was completed in January. The money will go toward technology, warehouse capacity and hiring more employees after revenue grew over 500 percent in 2022 to £7 million in 2022.

At a time when every brand and retailer prides itself on the strength of its community — a hard-to-quantify term used to describe anyone from consumers to general fans and Instagram followers — a successful crowdfunding campaign can prove the true extent of a business’ brand power.

“If you get 1000 or 2000 customers to invest in your business, it crystalises their relationship with the brand,” said Dan Hardy, chief revenue officer of crowdfunding platform Crowdcube, which saw £250 million raised by 244 companies last year. “They align their values, their personal brands with your business and become super advocates — that’s really what companies are looking to tap into when crowdfunding these days.”

But a brand needs to be strong already before it asks its customers to pay for its operations. Like any form of marketing, consumers will be able to tell if a crowdfunding campaign lacks substance and clarity as to what a business is trying to achieve. On Kickstarter, 60 percent of pitches failed to reach the minimum funding goal, while 10 percent never received any pledges from investors at all.

“It’s not the easiest undertaking, especially for a young business — you need to warm up your audience, educate them as to what you are doing and why they need to be a part of it, get them excited,” Hardy said. “But when done right, it will be the most powerful marketing campaign you’ve ever done.”

The $150 billion sports footwear market is veering off road.

Trail running, an endurance running sport which takes place on uneven terrain across hills, forests and mountains, is seeing its popularity soar. In 2022, global participation grew by 106 percent compared to the year before, according to World Athletics. The specialised footwear needed to withstand the gruelling physical trial, accounts for a tiny but fast-growing segment of the performance footwear category.

While still very much a niche sport, megabrands and start-ups alike are betting on trail running to be activewear’s next big category.

Back in 2020, fashion industry veterans Willa and Nick Martire founded Norda to make an ultra-lightweight sneaker which looked good and performed well on dirt tracks (trail races can range from anywhere between five to over 160 kilometres long), said Nick, a former president of Authentic Brands Group and Canadian fashion group, Aldo.

The Norda 001 trail running shoe, designed in their home outside of Montreal, caused an instant buzz among running enthusiasts and fashion insiders when it launched in July 2021, hitting the shelves at Dover Street Market, Kith and Ssense.

Three months later, they received a surprise phone call from the Italian luxury house Ermenegildo Zegna, asking to work on a product collaboration.

Norda’s $210 trail shoes are now stocked in over 160 speciality running and fashion retailers worldwide, and in February, Zegna took a minority stake in the fledgling footwear brand. On Monday, the pair launched their first collaboration, a capsule comprising trail-inspired footwear designed by the former alongside outerwear designed by the Italian luxury menswear brand, to be sold at Zegna stores worldwide and at retailers including Harrods and Ssense.

Choosing not just to collaborate, but to invest in a small trail footwear brand operating in a tiny market niche was an interesting decision. The Italian luxury group is on a hot streak as it repositions itself as a luxury leisurewear brand, rather than a formalwear specialist. Its newfound presence in the outdoors and performance-wear categories is designed to further help the brand diversify its appeal amidst menswear’s casualisation.

The partnership will allow the company to access a consumer base focussed on the “luxury outdoors” category, Zegna’s artistic director, Alessandro Sartori, told BoF.

Tapping into a business at the forefront of the fast-growing trail category could also boost the group’s bottom line, in the long-term.

Trail footwear, clothing and accessories are beginning to drive meaningful sales for larger activewear brands like On and Asics as they scale their trail assortments and sign professional trail athletes as brand ambassadors.

Fashion brands and retailers are co-opting trail running’s gritty outdoor aesthetic through collaborations with specialist incumbents like Salomon and Merrell. Buzzy brands like Soar Running and Paris-based Satisfy are making fashion-forward trail apparel and accessories like breathable balaclavas and hydration vests to capitalise on the sport’s growing appeal among regular running and lifestyle consumers drawn to the durability and technical elements of trail products, such as water resistance, insulation and ultra-light materials like the Dyneema fabric used for the upper of Norda’s running shoes.

Meanwhile, the gorpcore-friendly outdoors aesthetic of trail products has led to attention from fashion consumers. Salomon’s recent evolution from a niche outdoors equipment brand to a sneaker powerhouse was predicated on the sudden popularity of its XT-6 model, the now-famous trail shoe worn by celebrities like Rihanna and Bella Hadid. TikTok has also helped to spread the aesthetic and wellness credentials of the sport: #trailrunning has over 400 million views on the platform.

“Whenever an activity gets hot, especially one drawing a wide-ranging demographic, product will follow,” said Tim Newcomb, a journalist and sports footwear specialist. “In the same way we have seen tennis and basketball impact footwear, trail is beginning to have a similar influence.”

A Merchandising Gold Mine

For Japanese sportswear giant Asics, trail accounts for one of its fastest growing performance categories in terms of sales, with an average annual growth rate of 10 percent over the last three years, according to Magdalena Gassebner, the brand’s product marketing specialist for trail. In 2018, trail inspired the first iteration of Asics’ most famous lifestyle sneaker collaboration, with menswear designer Kiko Kostadinov, which borrowed the upper of the “GEL-VENTURE 6″ trail shoe.

Since 2020, Asics has invested heavily in the category, adding new performance products and scaling its roster of sponsored trail athletes from six to 45 trail runners, adding the likes of 24-year-old rising star Sara Alonso.

Last week, Nike announced an expansion of its own trail category, introducing new footwear models like the “Nike Kiger 9″ and the water-resistant “Pegasus Trail 4 GORE-TEX”.

Swiss running brand On is also “dedicating more and more resources” to its trail category, said Annaleigh Hockaday, the brand’s global head of product, performance outdoor. After launching trail footwear in 2016, On will debut a head-to-toe apparel line for the sport this summer. “Trail accounts for a small but significant amount of On’s business — this segment is growing year-over-year and we plan to evolve and grow to cater to more trail users,” Hockaday said.

As participation in the sport increases, there are endless merchandising opportunities for brands with dedicated trail offerings like Nike, On and Asics, thanks to the range of equipment needed by participants. Due to the extreme nature of trail running competitions, many of which last for over 100 kilometeres and take place in sub-zero or sweltering temperatures, each race comes with a list of mandatory equipment, including hydration vests which allow runners to drink through a tube and store essential food and medical equipment, as well as breathable jackets, shorts, visors, thermals and sunglasses, depending on the conditions.

Alongside the growing popularity of trail running itself, Gassebner credits the adoption of trail products by regular runners and lifestyle consumers for the uptick in sales.

So too does Brice Partouche, founder of fast-growing luxury running brand Satisfy, which raised $2.5 million in late 2021 in a funding round led by public investment bank Bpifrance.

Over 70 percent of Satisfy’s clothing is made for trail competition use and is compliant with the industry-wide gold standard known as the UTMB, named after a famous trail race in the French Alps. These days, a growing portion of the brand’s sales comes from casual road runners who see the durability and quality of trail gear as worth the added investment, said Partouche. (A Satisfy windbreaker will set you back €390 ($419), for example, and the brand’s shorts cost €180 — far more than what consumers fork out for performance running gear at Nike or Adidas.)

Gorp-Friendly Gear

When Partouche founded Satisfy in 2015, he “made it a clear strategy to align ourselves with the fashion calendar,” hosting showrooms and group runs with buyers and friends of the brand during Paris Fashion Week Men’s each year, he said. The brand’s visually stimulating marketing campaigns, often shot mid-race in deserts and forests, feature many of the long-haired, tattooed, hipster ultrarunners that make up its community. Meanwhile, the popularity of trail products as fashion items has soared over the last few years as trends such as gorpcore-centred technical footwear and clothing.

It’s Satisfy’s fashion-forward take on the trail aesthetic, combined with its reputation for creating technologically advanced gear for experienced trail athletes, that has led the brand to be stocked at market-leading speciality running stores such as Glasgow’s Achilles Heel, as well as luxury fashion retailers like Browns, Mytheresa and Mr Porter.

“Trail culture is like skateboarding — even when you are not out practising the sport, people still want to display they are part of the community, by wearing trail shoes or the technical clothing,” Partouche told BoF.

Brands are betting that demand trail products will long outlive the trends like gorpcore which helped bring the niche sport into the wider fashion industry.

It’s no longer about the watch you own, it’s about what the sneakers on your feet say about you as a person.

Merrell, a 40-year-old Michigan-based hiking and trail footwear manufacturer, has become an unlikely in-the-know gorpcore favourite over the last two years, co-creating colourful iterations of its footwear with brands like Sweaty Betty, and recently launching a capsule collection in collaboration with celebrity stylist Jason Bolden.

“Performance is a lifestyle now,” said Nick Martire of Norda. “Particularly in menswear, it’s no longer about the watch you own, it’s about what the sneakers on your feet say about you as a person.”

On Monday night, as show-goers from around the fashion world took their seats at Daniel Lee’s debut show for Burberry, drinking hot toddies and clutching tartan-covered hot water bottles, expectations ran high. How would the new creative director interpret the return to Britishness, central to CEO Jonathan Akeroyd’s strategy to build the brand into a £4 billion ($5 billion) megabrand?

During his tenure at Bottega Veneta, the designer created a series of It bags — the ubiquitous “Pouch”, the “Jodie” in the brand’s signature intrecciato weave and of course the “Cassette” crossbody that remains popular with men and women alike — so perhaps it’s not surprising that buyers and editors were particularly keen to see if he could bring the same magic to Burberry.

But while there was no shortage of bags on offer, it was the shoes that had insiders really talking afterwards. At Bottega, Lee’s “Puddle” boots and padded “Lido” mules set afire footwear trends that swept across fashion. At Burberry, he seems to have set out to do the same, with shoes making statement after statement, in varied — and often wacky ways.

Models walked the runway in heels embellished with faux fur; there were thigh-high boots in light grey and olive green; chunky-soled oxford shoes; rain boots in multiple colourways; and shearling-trimmed Wallabee-style moccasins. Sneakers, once a favourite for Burberry under Riccardo Tisci, did not feature at all.

As consumers shed their pandemic-era, work-from-home slippers, designer footwear is set for growth, but in an unconventional way. High-income luxury shoppers in the US, UK and China told BoF Insights in a recent survey that dress shoes remain a staple, but now they want footwear that is not only statement-making with fancy embellishment, but also comfortable.

For Burberry, like countless other brands, footwear is a category targeted for growth, with plans under way at the British house to more than double its footwear business over the next few years.

Growing footwear and accessories is part of the standard playbook for luxury brands’ strategies. At luxury brands like Chloe, Prada, Saint Laurent and Bottega Veneta, footwear accounts for around 20 percent of sales, according to BoF Insights data.

Explore all the statement shoes from the Burberry Autumn/Winter 2023 runway show.

The former Asos executive is the latest hire to join the leadership team under chief executive Nick Beighton, and will oversee all creative output at the luxury retailer, the company said in a statement Tuesday.

During his tenure at Asos, which began in 2010, Mooney was responsible for scaling the fast fashion giant’s private menswear label before becoming the business’ first global creative director.

Mooney’s appointment comes a week after Apax Partners, the private equity firm which acquired Matchesfashion in 2017, injected £60 million ($74.2 million) into the retailer to support the business through its turnaround plan.

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Can a New CEO ‘Transform’ Matchesfashion?

The British luxury e-tailer reported another year of widening losses in 2021. But new chief Nick Beighton is focused on the future, looking to attract young customers and revamp the site’s user experience.

The shapewear, intimates and loungewear label has recruited Robert Norton, formerly president of Moncler Americas, to the newly created role, the company confirmed in a LinkedIn post Monday.

The news of Norton’s appointment was first reported by WWD.

The veteran fashion executive had held his post at Moncler since 2017, and prior to that, worked as Roberto Cavalli’s chief executive of the Americas.

Last year, Skims was valued at $3.2 billion following a Series B raise of $240 million, while the brand passed $475 million in revenue for 2022.

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The Strategy Behind Skims’ Viral White Lotus Campaign

The brand’s latest celebrity-fronted ad serves as another example of how it is wielding star power beyond its famous founder.