French luxury group Kering announced the creation of a new division, Kering Beauté, which is set to develop the beauty category for several of its brands, including Bottega Veneta, Balenciaga and Alexander McQueen.

Raffaella Cornaggia, a longtime executive of American beauty conglomerate Estée Lauder, has been named chief executive officer of the unit, reporting to managing director Jean-François Palus, Kering said.

Kering has long wanted to ramp up its business in the beauty space, exploring options more aggressively in recent months, including bringing some of its brand’s beauty activities in-house. Rival group LVMH has controlled both fashion and beauty for Christian Dior since the 1980s, building its fragrance, makeup and skincare line into a multi-billion dollar business. It also operates the category in-house for Givenchy, Kenzo and Louis Vuitton.

While L’Oréal—which essentially owns the beauty business for Kering’s Yves Saint Laurent name through a “very long-term” agreementh—has built that brand into a global force in perfume and makeup, Kering has repeatedly expressed frustration with its other beauty partner Coty, which operates Gucci beauty as well as holding licenses for most of its smaller brands.

In its statement Friday, Kering excluded Gucci —which is a core business for Coty and whose license isn’t expected to expire for at least another five years. But the statement suggested a deal could be underway to recover control of beauty for its other brands.

Kering Beauté will “develop an expertise in the beauty category for Bottega Veneta, Balenciaga, Alexander McQueen” — all of which are currently licensed to Coty — as well as the jewellery brands Qeelin and Pomellato, the company said.

A Kering spokesperson declined to comment on any evolutions in the agreement with Coty. But the company could provide more detail on its plans when it presents annual results to investors on Feb. 15.

The new unit will “support these brands in the development of the beauty category, which is a natural extension of their universe,” the group said. “Kering is confident it can create value for the group and its houses, drawing on each of their unique identity in a way that is fully consistent with their strategy and market positioning.”

Kering Beauté's new leader Cornaggia, an Italian national educated at Milan’s prestigious Bocconi University, started her career at L’Oréal before moving to Estée Lauder Companies, where she worked on Tom Ford Beauty, MAC Cosmetics and Aerin as well as the group’s namesake Estée Lauder line.

Paco Rabanne — the Spanish designer best known for his Space-Age aesthetic, use of metallics and swift-selling fragrances — has died at 88.

His death was confirmed by Spanish group Puig, which controls the Paco Rabanne fashion house and fragrance business.

”Paco Rabanne made transgression magnetic. Who else could induce fashionable Parisian women clamour for dresses made of plastic and metal? Who but Paco Rabanne could imagine a fragrance called Calandre – the word means ‘automobile grill’ – and turn it into an icon of modern femininity? That radical, rebellious spirit set him apart: there is only one Rabanne,” said José Manuel Albesa, president of beauty and fashion at Puig.

”A major personality in fashion, his was a daring, revolutionary and provocative vision, conveyed through a unique aesthetic,” added chairman Marc Puig.

Rabanne founded his label in 1966. His sequinned skirts and chain-mail minidresses attracted fans like Jane Birkin, Audrey Hepburn, Mia Farrow and Jane Fonda, and landed him the role of costume designer for cult film Barbarella.

The designer retired in 1999, stepping out of the public eye. His label lay dormant until 2011, when it was revived by Puig, first with Indian designer Manish Arora and then with Frenchman Julien Dossena, who worked at Balenciaga under Nicolas Ghesquière and has designed the label since 2013.

NEW YORK — If there’s one surefire truth about today’s fashion world, with its “always on” communications, it’s that fashion week never, really, truly ends. One week after the couture shows in Paris; days after ready-to-wear shows from Mugler (Paris), Alaïa (Antwerp), and Marni (Tokyo); during Copenhagen Fashion Week; a day before Rhude’s show in Los Angeles; and about a week ahead of New York Fashion Week, Marc Jacobs took to the catwalk in New York to present his Autumn/Winter 2023 collection.

For the 100 guests who made it inside the blackened Park Avenue Armory — Lourdes Leon was turned away for being late — Jacobs lit up a single strip of floor. Violinist Jennifer Koh began performing Philip Glass’s “Einstein on the Beach: Knee Play 2″ promptly at 6:00 p.m. and by 6:12 p.m., against the clomp-clomp of platform heels clanking on the wooden floor, it was all over.

In the 12 minutes between, 45 models in 45 pairs of platform Kiki boots showed off Jacobs’ latest collection. Since a restructuring that saw the brand scale back its runway collections, while developing a mid-priced mainline and adding youth-driven Heaven by Marc Jacobs, the designer has gotten more gestural with his outings, worrying less about staging the spectacular shows stuffed with supermodels and A-list guests for which he was once known, and focusing more on what matters most to him these days: craft and soulfulness.

His show notes included a quote from the late Vivienne Westwood — “Fashion is life enhancing, and I think it’s a lovely, generous thing to do for other people” — and from the first look of a grey cotton shirt and midi-skirt hiked up, studded with crystals and bustled, it was obvious Jacobs was going for something humble but sumptuous. His own recent love of workwear and utility details, evidenced by many recent selfies in an oversize Balenciaga cargo coat, inspired arpeggiated passages of de- and re-constructed workwear: fatigue green aviator jackets turned upside down, quilted coats in denim and fuchsia, long cargo skirts with hiked up vents, and simple gray knits made heavenly with couture-inspired darting at front. Models walked menacingly with their arms crossed, big blocky shoes, hair spiked straight or sunbleached in dove grey and dust blue.

Scrunched up shift dresses in what looked like faux leather were Jacobs’ most interesting provocation, a way to both show the slender lines of his models’ bodies and to build a new physique from layers of pinned and bustled fabric. On the other end of the spectrum was a rain jacket in brown plaid, so simple a coat rendered so fabulously freakish thanks to Jacobs’ severe silhouette and the spooky setting.

Jacobs does what few other American designers do these days: go beyond mere clothes. Sales aren’t really the point with these outings. Instead, the designer approaches his now annual shows as an opportunity to incite a vibe shift in fashion and within his own business, where his collections inform the more accessible main line.

After the show, where Jacobs refuses typical press interviews, Anna Sui and Sofia Coppola waited to greet the designer with art director Ava Nirui, who spearheads the fast-growing Heaven by Marc Jacobs line. The Heaven-ification of the Marc Jacobs business is hard to ignore. Earlier in the day, Heaven by Marc Jacobs debuted its collaboration with London-based Kiko Kostadinov with a campaign starring British musician Beabadoobee and Internet It-Girl Gabbriette. A month earlier, it ran another campaign starring Kate Moss in Kiki boots. Outside the show, a fan stood bartering with security guards outside the police barricade in graffiti print Kikis boots. Parent company LVMH, at its 2022 results presentation last week, name-checked Marc Jacobs as having delivered an “exceptional” performance and the brand is set to open new stores, banking on the viral appeal of its Heaven accessories and top-selling Snapshot and Tote bags.

But do customers want more Marc? Fashion certainly does. Industry guests lingered long inside the venue, hoping to get a little something from the designer, while outside on the street departing show-goers were already putting looks on their wish lists despite the fact that the collection will go only into limited production.

Disclosure: Steff Yotka is head of digital content at e-tailer Ssense, which sells Marc Jacobs. LVMH is part of a group of investors who, together, hold a minority interest in The Business of Fashion. All investors have signed shareholders’ documentation guaranteeing BoF’s complete editorial independence.

Fashion is getting more political.

After years of light-touch oversight, the industry is facing a suite of regulations aimed at curbing everything from its environmental impact to its use of hazardous chemicals and links to labour abuses.

The growing scrutiny of fashion’s business practices has been led by policymakers in Europe. But regulation is picking up across the Atlantic in the United States, too. And, in turn, fashion brands, retailers and trade groups are stepping up their efforts to influence sustainability-focused policy in Washington DC.

The shift plays into a broader upward trend in fashion’s lobbying spend over the last decade, fuelled by torrid trade currents, pandemic upheavals and a variety of other consumer and business interests.

Last year, the fashion industry spent a near-record $28 million lobbying on US policy, according to a BoF analysis of data compiled by independent research group OpenSecrets, which tracks the flow of money in US politics.

It’s the most the industry has ever spent outside of 2017, when a proposed border adjustment tax that would have increased the cost of imports prompted a sharp uptick in spending to influence federal lawmakers. Though it’s still small change compared to the hundreds of millions of dollars industries like pharmaceuticals, tech and oil and gas lay out every year, the sum is nearly double what fashion was spending 10 years ago, according to the analysis.

And while topics like taxes, tariffs and business incentives are still a major focus of the industry’s policy engagement, an emerging and unprecedented wave of sustainability-related bills has also begun to draw more attention.

In the last 12 months, states including New York and California have passed laws to ban Perfluoroalkyl and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances, or PFAS, toxic “forever chemicals” commonly used to make clothes waterproof or stain-resistant. The New York State Senate is considering a bill, the New York Fashion Act, that would impose tough due diligence and transparency requirements, a bid to make big brands accountable for working conditions and environmental impact in their supply chains.

At the federal level, a stringent ban on imports from China’s cotton-producing Xinjiang region into the US has ratcheted up pressure on companies to bolster oversight of their supply chains. And the government is moving to update guidelines governing environmental marketing claims, while a new California law protecting the rights of the state’s garment workers has inspired a similar national bill known as the FABRIC Act.

The regulatory wave creates new challenges for fashion brands and trade groups, who have not historically had to deal with such a broad and complex policy landscape. Though many big companies have signed onto voluntary initiatives in support of high-profile commitments to curb their environmental impact and safeguard labour rights, for most, new and proposed regulations will require complex and costly changes to the way they conduct business.

“There’s all these different pieces of legislation coming up that folks in the industry feel very exhausted trying to figure out what is going to happen to them, where,” said Chelsea Murtha, director of sustainability at the American Apparel & Footwear Association (AAFA). “It’s not necessarily [that the industry has] not engaged, but it’s been very ad hoc, not organised and not moving together,” she said.

In a scramble to respond, brands are hiring subject experts and policy affairs specialists, while trade groups are stepping up their efforts to coordinate and shape lobbying efforts.

On Monday, the AAFA, The Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) and other industry groups published a series of basic recommendations for “practical, effective and workable” regulation of environmental sustainability and labour standards. Among other things, the newly published THREADS Protocol calls for harmonisation of regulatory efforts across jurisdictions, realistic timelines for enforcement and a science-based approach to policy setting.

The aim is to speed up the development of policies that are effective and drive real progress, while avoiding pitfalls that could lead to a patchwork of confusing and conflicting rules that place a burden on the industry without achieving their desired goals, AAFA president and chief executive Steve Lamar said in an emailed statement.

Critics argue that the call is a masked push back against tougher oversight. While the THREADS Protocol argues that “poorly designed policies divert resources away from successful initiatives and instead create barriers to real progress,” the drive for increased oversight in part reflects growing frustration that years of self-regulation have failed to deliver on promised environmental and social safeguards.

“The industry can’t come out and say… we don’t want to be regulated,” said Maxine Bédat, founder and director at fashion-focused think tank New Standard Institute and an architect of the New York Fashion Act.

While smaller labels with a strong brand identity linked to sustainability, like Mara Hoffman and Reformation, have publicly backed the New York Fashion Act and FABRIC Act, no major brand or retailer has.

Nonetheless, growing engagement is itself a mark of progress, said Elizabeth L. Cline, director of advocacy and policy at Remake, a fashion-focused advocacy group that has helped develop the FABRIC Act and campaigned for the California law it is modelled on.

Before the state law passed, the AAFA pushed back against the idea that brands should be held accountable for wage violations, arguing that fashion companies have “no control” over what happens in factories. But the industry lobby group has tempered its stance with the FABRIC Act, acknowledging brands should be liable for labour issues, while pushing to ensure the bill is structured so fashion companies are only accountable for work directly related to their business. The organisation remains in conversation about the final structure of the proposed legislation.

The fact that they now seemingly accept some legal liability is “an absolutely momentous change,” said Cline.

The trade group has not provided any public comment on the New York bill.

“The Fashion Act is so overwhelming and all-encompassing that people don’t know what to do with it,” said Murtha. “That makes people reluctant to grapple with it at all.”

The pressure for the industry to come up with a coherent stance on policies is growing as regulatory efforts move forward globally. So are the stakes.

Brands now face a growing roster of legal and financial risks as regulation tightens across jurisdictions. But companies seen to lobby against policies that would further environmental or social goals they’ve committed to (individually or as members of industry trade groups) face new reputational hazards. Equally, constructive, committed engagement is needed to ensure policies are workable and achieve the desired goals.

“Everyone’s pointing fingers and trying to put labels and assign blame,” said Murtha. But “everyone wants progress.”

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