Voters head to the polls this week in elections that will determine the political future of two of the most important countries for the global fashion industry.

In the UK, there is little suspense other than the size of the Labour majority after the July 4 election. Forecasters are predicting anywhere from a drubbing to a historic wipeout. British voters clearly want change, but on some of the fashion industry’s key issues there’s a surprising degree of continuity between Tory and Labour positions.

The likely incoming government has indicated it won’t repeal the “tourist tax” on purchases by visitors to the UK, which has reduced the country’s appeal to international luxury shoppers since its introduction in 2021. Labour leaders have also reportedly met with Shein and support the fast fashion giant’s London initial public offering, while resisting calls to close an import loophole that helps the retailer keep prices low. Undoing Brexit is similarly off the table.

The most tantalising change, perhaps, is the promise that the fifth prime minister in as many years can bring political stability.

France’s election is another matter entirely. The country holds its first round of polls on Sunday to determine the makeup of the National Assembly, with a second round to take place on July 7. Marine Le Pen’s right wing National Rally is expected to receive a plurality of votes in round one, but Europe’s second biggest economy’s future will be determined by the size of the party’s lead, and how its rivals fare. Pundits say both the far left and far right have a path to power, with President Emmanuel Macron’s centre-right alliance having a fighting chance as well (Macron, who called the election after the right’s surprisingly robust performance in European elections earlier this month, has pledged to remain in office through the end of his term in 2027).

What does any of this mean for fashion? French stocks have fallen sharply since the election was called, and bond yields have spiked, both signs that investors are concerned about how the economy would fare in a new, more uncertain political landscape. Golden Goose cited market turmoil in its last-minute decision to pull its initial public offering on June 18. A strong showing by the National Rally or the leftist New Popular Front would likely be bad news for French luxury conglomerates LVMH and Kering, and their billionaire owners; both parties have promised to raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for their agendas.

The Week Ahead wants to hear from you! Send tips, suggestions, complaints and compliments to brian.baskin@businessoffashion.com.

ASPEN, Colorado — One of the best things about my job is that while I am deeply immersed in all things fashion, I also have the opportunity to meet people outside the fashion bubble to learn and expand my mind, and bring the insights I take away back to my work here at The Business of Fashion. This combination of insider access, with an outsider’s perspective, has always informed my take on fashion and luxury.

This week, after attending Dries Van Noten’s final show for his namesake brand on Saturday evening, Vogue World on Sunday evening and five haute couture shows on Monday — Schiaparelli, Dior, Rahul Mishra, Thom Browne and Giambattista Valli — I flew to Aspen, Colorado where I was invited to speak at the 20th annual Aspen Ideas Festival by former Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown, who curated this year’s event.

This meant I missed some important fashion moments at the Paris couture shows, including Nicolas di Felice’s beautiful guest turn at Jean Paul Gaultier and Demna’s annual couture collection for Balenciaga, both of which I had to experience through Tim Blanks’ review on BoF, just like the old days when I would carefully read every word of what Tim wrote during his time at Style.com.

They say everything in life is about making trade-offs. So was this one worth it?

Going from Paris to Aspen felt a little like whiplash, and not just because of the 14 hour flight (via Dallas) and the eight hour time difference. The first thing I saw when I arrived at the tiny Aspen airport teeming with private jets was a warning about bears! But once I settled into my hotel and began attending talks scattered across the campus nestled in the Colorado Rockies, I got into the rhythm pretty quickly.

It was 75 years ago this week that Walter Paepcke, founder of The Aspen Institute, first convened leaders here to mark the 200th birthday of noted German polymath and writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. This gathering eventually gave life to the first Aspen Ideas Festival in 2005, drawing expert speakers and leaders from a wide range of disciplines and backgrounds to engage in deep discussions about the forces shaping the world around us.

For the thought leaders and business moguls gathering in Aspen, anxiety is rising about the outcome of the US election in November, and the impact that the potential return of Donald Trump to the White House would have in exacerbating the challenges we face from the most serious technological, geopolitical and ecological issues of our times.

A wide-ranging and expertly curated opening session examined the latest thinking from OpenAI founder Sam Altman, the global leader in the race for developing artificial intelligence, and his friend Brian Chesky, co-founder of Airbnb; the complex “American Vortex” characterised by bitter partisan divides, a broken immigration system, vast income inequality and lack of faith (and participation) in the democratic process; and the worsening climate crisis with 86 year-old actress-cum-climate activist Jane Fonda, who in a rousing conversation with Katie Couric implored attendees not to vote for Donald Trump who could take the US out of the Paris Climate Accord again.

As the festival progressed, it also became clearer to me how deeply intertwined all of these topics are. As the world is once again experiencing the hottest year on record, climate-driven migration is dividing societies in North America and Europe who fear they cannot accommodate all of these asylum seekers, leading to the rise of far-right political movements which prey on the fears of populations still contending with higher cost of living brought on by high inflation and high interest rates following the pandemic. In the United States, this is most acutely felt by people in marginalised Black and Native communities who often don’t participate in the democratic process because the system as it stands has never worked in their favour.

Meanwhile, the artificial intelligence revolution is being led by the same already dominant tech companies in Silicon Valley which are competing to develop AI. Unchecked by global regulation, AI leaders say we need to ensure that the technology doesn’t break democracy and divide societies in the same way social media did in 2016, enabling Donald Trump to be elected in the first place.

In a session called ‘The Iconoclast’ on Thursday afternoon, Peter Thiel, former CEO of Paypal and founder of data analytics company Palantir Technologies, said he would be voting for Donald Trump and thinks Trump will handily win again this year.

“I don’t think it’s going to even be close,” he said, even before President Joe Biden’s halting performance in a debate with Trump later that evening. “It’s these two different hate factories that we have targeted at each other. That’s the way politics works. My judgment is that Trump will easily win that.”

On Friday, in a conversation with Tina Brown, Endeavour CEO Ari Emmanuel said that legal issues at the State level may prevent from Joe Biden from dropping out of the race as many Democrats are now hoping he will to save the country from a second Trump term.

“We’re in a pickle,” he said. “The lifeblood to a campaign in politics is money. Maybe the only way this gets [sorted out], with smart lawyers looking at it, is if the money starts drying up. If this is, as Biden says, the fight for our democracy, man he gave us a bunch of malarky. And I’m really pissed. We all should be really pissed. I cannot believe we are in this situation. We’re in fuck city.”

Reflecting on all of this made most of the dinner table conversations in Paris this week seem rather inconsequential. While everyone in Paris was chattering about Vogue World (“Why is Conde Nast even staging this event?” and “How much did people pay to attend?”) and succession planning at Chanel (“Would they really hire Hedi Slimane?” and “It’s the only job Sarah Burton wants.”), the world is quite literally years away from a point-of-no-return climate catastrophe, extreme political divides in Western democracies are threatening to elect a far-right government in France, and there is no clear path to manage an unprecedented new technology that will fundamentally change how we live and work as a global society.

That being said, though the festival seems to have made great efforts to make the event more inclusive, global and diverse, it can sometimes feel like a very privileged group of American people mostly talking amongst themselves. It was hard not to notice that most of the attendees were older, wealthy and privileged. (Aspen has one of the highest concentrations of billionaires in the United States, underscored by some sponsors shilling retirement services and new healthcare solutions.) An important talk I attended on LGBTQIA+ issues examining transgender rights was sparsely attended and there was little discussion about the ongoing wars and resulting humanitarian crises in Gaza and Sudan.

So, in the end, the crowd gathering in Aspen is in a bubble too. We are all in our own bubbles. That’s why I try to break out of mine whenever I can. It’s the best way to learn and form a more well-rounded view of the complex, multi-faceted, fascinating world we live in, all of which has a direct impact on the global fashion industry, too.

This Weekend on the BoF Podcast

Opens in new window

The author has shared a Podcast.You will need to accept and consent to the use of cookies and similar technologies by our third-party partners (including: YouTube, Instagram or Twitter), in order to view embedded content in this article and others you may visit in future.

From her miraculous birth as the daughter of a Holocaust survivor to becoming a fashion powerhouse with her signature wrap dress, Diane von Furstenberg’s remarkable journey is one of resilience, innovation, and empowerment. She has broken glass ceilings and inspires women worldwide.

In a new documentary about her life called “Diane von Furstenberg: Woman in Charge,” Academy Award-winning filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy combines archival footage and intimate interviews with some of Diane’s closest friends and family to paint a vivid picture of a woman who has always been true to herself.

For this week’s episode of The BoF Podcast, Diane and Sharmeen spoke to me at the London premiere to share their experience of making the documentary and the new learnings this process surfaced about leading a life well lived.

Wishing you all a great weekend!

Imran Amed, Founder, CEO and Editor-in-Chief, The Business of Fashion

Plus, join me and the BoF Professional community in Manila on Tuesday, July 9 for a special event with Vogue Philippines. Secure your ticket now.

Here are my other top picks from our analysis on fashion, luxury and beauty:

1. Is Gap’s Turnaround Finally Working? Signs of recovery at the American retailer have convinced some analysts that its stock may be undervalued. Others say it’s too soon to tell, but even the sceptics note improvements on product, merchandising and markdowns.

2. Dries Van Noten: So Long, Farewell. But after 38 years, 150 collections and 129 shows, is it possible that the best is still to come for Belgium’s finest? In an in-depth profile, Tim Blanks explores the departing designer’s past, present and future.

3. In Paris, a Season of Big and Small. A sense of monumental scale dominated the Paris men’s shows, but bigger wasn’t always better, writes Angelo Flaccavento.

4. Why Influencers Want You in Their Group Chats. Instagram’s broadcast channel feature is becoming a favourite for online creators and brand founders as a place to seek feedback and share a more unvarnished look at their lives. It’s also proving to be a powerful marketing tool.

5. How the WNBA Tunnel Walk Became a Fashion Marketing Gold Mine. Superstar rookies-turned-pre-game models like Angel Reese and Cameron Brink have transformed the league’s tunnel walk into the hottest runway in town, with brands like Balmain, Prada and Versace clamouring to cash in on its newfound fashion appeal.

To receive this email in your inbox each Saturday, sign up to The Daily Digest newsletter for agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice that you won’t find anywhere else.

Since the pandemic’s upending of employment trends, from mass redundancies and hiring freezes before a huge re-hiring movement and the so-called “Great Resignation”, the current job market has stayed “in constant flux,” according to Korn Ferry, one of the world’s largest hiring and recruiting firms. Indeed, with weakened global economies affecting businesses, and mass elections contributing to further market uncertainty, companies remain cautious in their hiring.

After all, it’s expensive to hire talent — benchmarking data in 2022 from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) found the average cost per hire was nearly $4,700, although many employers estimate the total cost to hire a new employee can be three to four times the position’s salary.

Consequently, many HR teams and hiring managers are reframing recruitment strategies to ensure they find the right talent from the offset. For instance, there is an increasing emphasis on skills-based hiring, looking at what candidates know over past experiences and names on a CV — allowing for a more inclusive recruitment practice while also more thoroughly testing candidates capabilities and potential during the interview process. Recent LinkedIn data revealed recruiters on the platform search for candidates by their skills five times more often than by their degrees.

To discuss how recruiters and HR teams are approaching hiring in fashion today, BoF Careers sat down with JW Anderson’s HR director, Angela Okoro — who has previously worked at Versace, Bally and Ralph Lauren — at Graduate Fashion Week this June. Discover key insights from the interview on how to impress a fashion recruiter as emerging talent today, from demonstrating your eagerness to learn to showing an alignment with business needs.

Focus on the skills you have and want to acquire

AO: You need hard skills, even if you’re creative. So, for design, you need to know Photoshop, because a lot of the concept generation for us, in order to be more environmentally friendly, is done on tech on computers. [...] So, it’s important to update those skills. For other roles, it could be flexible, but Excel is vital if you want to go down the merchandising route, or if you’re working in a commercial team, around sales and everything like that.

Being able to navigate your way around tools [is important,] things like your emails — nobody’s got time to show you those things, so I think it’s about being open [to learning,] doing some research and getting some practice before you enter into the job market.

It’s a long game and it’s a strategic game. So, be patient, be flexible, have a bit of a plan. Careers aren’t so linear anymore.

Go on LinkedIn, find someone who’s doing the job that you want; look at their resume and see what you have that they have, as well as what they have that you’re missing. Maybe, while you’re waiting [to land a new job,] update your skills in that area. Because being able to research [is a skill] — and sometimes you get a role with the head of a department who just wants you to do research for them. You’ve got to be able to get lots of bits of information, put it together in a succinct way and present it to somebody.

Demonstrate your ability to learn

AO: I [often] say, “a job is a thing that pays you to learn from us.” Over time, somebody is giving you all the skills they have learned. So, I think people should maybe change what they’re looking for — they should look for structures that are in proximity to learning.

[...] If you’re an integral part of a team of four, these four people are going to transfer their knowledge to you and then you’ve got to make that knowledge your own. That’s what we’re looking for in the interview process.

You’re usually talking to very stressed out managers who need someone to come and help them. [...] That’s why skills are important first because if you’re great and you’re nice and you understand fashion, but you can’t do Excel, [for example], it’s just not going to work.

Consider a non-linear approach to kickstart your career

AO: I think there’s many ways to get to where you want in the end — but what I find with a lot of candidates that we interview is that they haven’t actually thought through and strategically planned where they want to go, even as a starting point. I’m not saying you have to understand your end point, but what’s the start?

For people who are creative, we need knitwear designers. You need to be able to knit and crochet, the elements that people aren’t [often] so fond of — but we do need it. It’s the same for accessories — you have to build your craft. Don’t be averse to doing an internship at an atelier, don’t be opposed to production — in that sort of work, you learn how to be in a business environment, you learn how to build a network.

Our head of design [at JW Anderson] started in retail — he went into a brand that he loved and he started to understand what the consumer wanted from that end of the chain. It’s a long game and it’s a strategic game. So, be patient, be flexible, have a bit of a plan. Careers aren’t so linear anymore.

Be open to — and ask for — constructive feedback

AO: When you come into a [work] space, even before you finish your course, ask for feedback about the work, but also [reflect on] your personality — are you okay with people telling you that [something] was bad, that it was not the standard that they wanted?

You have got to remember that you are building into someone else’s vision. The time will come when people will work towards yours, but that’s not [often] what you’re doing in an entry space.

What’s really important, which a lot of junior talent underrate, is how important it is to be nice to work with and to understand that we don’t have time for divas.

So, I find that sometimes people struggle with being given negative feedback and it’s hard because it’s not personal and it delays everything. Then, we have to coach that emotional space that could be quite entitled, if I’m honest. And it’s difficult when we have businesses to run.

Show intentionality and alignment with a business

AO: Another thing is being attentive [to] who you want to learn from and why. Why do you want to be at JW Anderson? Why do you want to learn from Jonathan Anderson? Is there a trait, a skill, a talent, an aesthetic that resonates with you? Because if you prefer Chloé styles, for example, you’re learning maybe from the wrong place, which means that you’re not aligned with the vision of the creative director. [...] I think it’s an intentionality of actually understanding what you want.

Impress with preparation, a positive attitude and emotional intelligence

AO: When you do get the interview, do your research, be prepared, share your skills, share your personality and show that company that you’ve invested some time in understanding them, that you’re a good match for the role and you have the passion to do well in the role.

Where skills come into view and what’s really important, which a lot of junior talent underrate, is how important it is to be nice to work with and to understand that we don’t have time for divas. Be kind, be good, be proactive and be disciplined. People are desperate to get an interview, but how are you going to keep the role? We’re not going to keep you for a year if you don’t meet the company’s expectations. It’s important that everybody is working together, thinking about emotional intelligence and awareness of the bigger picture.

We’re invested in what you want, but we’re not hiring you for that. We’re hiring you for what we need. And along the way, we’ll go down the same path together and when you get to the end of the line with us, we’ll be very excited for you and we’ll help you along to the next step.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.