What Fashion Designers Need to Know Today

Discover the most relevant industry news and insights for fashion designers, updated each month to enable you to excel in job interviews, promotion conversations or perform better in the workplace by increasing your market awareness and emulating market leaders.

BoF Careers distils business intelligence from across the breadth of our content — editorial briefings, newsletters, case studies, podcasts and events — to deliver key takeaways and learnings tailored to your job function, listed alongside a selection of the most exciting live jobs advertised by BoF Careers partners.

Key articles and need-to-know insights for fashion designers today:

1. Tapestry and Capri’s $8.5 Billion Mega-Merger, Explained

Tapestry, Inc., the parent company of handbag brands Coach and Kate Spade, has acquired Capri Holdings, the group behind Michael Kors, Jimmy Choo and Versace, in an $8.5 billion transaction — a deal that has the potential to dramatically reshape the US global fashion. Together, the expanded group, which also includes Tapestry’s shoe label Stuart Weitzman, will generate just over $12 billion in annual revenue, putting it ahead ahead of American fashion conglomerates, such as PVH Corp., owner of Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger.

The question now is whether Tapestry has the scale, and the right brands, to compete with European luxury heavyweights Kering and LVMH. With Versace in its portfolio, Tapestry has an authentic luxury line, along with globally known, more accessibly priced Coach and Michael Kors. But its European rivals are far larger — while Kering’s six fashion brands reported $22 billion in revenue last year, LVMH’s 14 fashion and leather goods labels generated $42 billion.

Related Jobs:

Design Manager, House of CB — London, United Kingdom

Womenswear Designer, Hugo Boss — Germany

Design Room Coordinator, Zimmermann — Sydney, Australia

2. The Brands Taking Indian Fashion to the World

The US and Middle East are priority targets for Indian brands expanding their store footprint, while Europe remains comparatively underexplored. Though most designers wish to reach customers beyond the South Asian diaspora, some are more likely than others to achieve global brand status. Designers must localise their product range and operational strategy to overseas markets without eroding brand equity or undermining their core values and identity. Meanwhile, Indian designers are increasingly worn by local and international celebrities at prominent international film festivals, red carpets and fashion weeks. At the same time, Indian stars are being tapped by global fashion brands as ambassadors.

“The world has a terrible habit of pigeonholing designers to their geographies if they’re not from the western world. I want to challenge that narrative,” says Sabyasachi Mukherjee, whose business received 398 crore rupees ($48.3 million) when ABFRL acquired a 51 percent stake in it in 2021. The company reported revenues of 274 crore rupees ($33.2 million) in the 2020 financial year. His New York store stocks a dedicated international range that is a mix of ready-to-wear and made-to-order, accessories and the brand’s biggest collection of fine jewellery outside of their Mumbai outpost. Most recent designers’ expansion plans are focused on capturing the non-diaspora customer too. Having their designs on international celebrities is one way they are trying to seep into the mainstream imagination.

Related Jobs:

Junior Designer, Omnes — London, United Kingdom

Pattern Maker, Dorothee Schumacher — Mannheim, Germany

Concept Print Design Assistant, Ralph Lauren — New York, United States

3. Fashion Execs Can’t Stop Talking About AI

A BoF analysis of transcripts from more than 30 public fashion, activewear and retail companies — mostly listed in the US but also including names such as Adidas, H&M and Kering listed on European exchanges — found mentions of AI, artificial intelligence and machine learning hit a new high in 2022. So far, 2023 is on track to surpass that figure, driven in part by the excitement around generative AI.

In the past, references to AI typically focused on its use for narrow business tasks like forecasting demand and optimising prices, along with marketing-related purposes like targeting high-potential customers. Now, on top of these capabilities, executives are talking about how they can use AI for design, hyper-personalised online shopping and more. In May, for example, Revolve’s co-founder and co-chief executive, Michael Mente, said an area where he expects generative AI will have the most immediate impact is fashion design, calling it an opportunity “to create a more powerful, innovative and streamlined” process.

Related Jobs:

Product Development Intern, Vetements — Zurich, Switzerland

Technical Design Manager, Acne Studios — Stockholm, Sweden

Menswear Designer, Amiri — Los Angeles, United States

4. How Sports Partnerships Are Making Fashion’s Waste Problems Worse

The professional sports industry is a substantial contributor to fashion’s waste crisis, with millions of items being used as little as twice per game. Major sportswear brands like Nike, Adidas and Puma — which manufacture performance wear for sports teams around the world — produce hundreds of thousands of units per season to meet the industry’s needs. No official data exists on the amount of apparel produced for teams and athletes each season, or how much of it ends up in a landfill.

But one sport’s trash can become a designer’s treasure. A small but growing number of resourceful brands are now seeking secondhand sports gear to produce upcycled collections. It helps that a sporty aesthetic — often lumped into TikTok-favourite “#blokecore” trend, characterised by outfits that include vintage football shirts, jeans and terrace sneakers like Sambas or Gazelles — is trending among fashion consumers. Nike, Adidas and Puma all offer fan jerseys for sale made from recycled polyester, but little has been done to address the sheer volume of new styles that are churned out each season.

Related Jobs:

Sportswear Fashion Designer, Oysho — Barcelona, Spain

Footwear Designer, On — Zurich, Switzerland

Womenswear Designer, Malbon Golf — Los Angeles, United States

5. Would You Stop Shopping?

A small, but growing niche of consumers are pledging to buy fewer or no new clothes, amid growing anxiety about the climate and the cost-of-living crisis. But while the anti-consumerist conversation is getting louder, the number of people actually changing the way they shop remains small. “It’s a bit of a David and Goliath thing,” said Ayesha Barenblat, founder and CEO of campaign group Remake. “We’re up against the marketing machine of an industry worth $2 trillion.”

Humans are hardwired to crave newness and the sense of social status and security that has long been linked to dress. For its part, the fashion industry has honed its marketing tactics to capitalise on these deep-rooted emotions and turned shopping into a form of entertainment, turbocharged by the rise of social media and ultra-cheap, ultra-fast e-commerce.

Related Jobs:

Assistant Designer, Menswear, Next — Leicester, United Kingdom

Senior Knitwear Designer, Massimo Dutti — Barcelona, Spain

Technical Design Assistant, Handbags, Coach — New York, United States

6. ‘Fashion Is Inherently Political’: The Woman Mixing Palestinian Design With Sustainable Clothing

Majdalawi fabric, which is woven using a single treadle loom [a foot-operated machine], originates from the Palestinian village of al-Majdal Asqalan. The village was occupied by Israeli forces in 1948, its inhabitants were made refugees, and the centuries-old practice would have died out if not for a cultural preservation project that set up a handful of studios in Gaza in the 90s. These artisans are two of the local women’s cooperatives that emerging fashion brand Nöl Collective works with to create sustainable, stylish clothes that blend traditional Palestinian designs with modern, fashionable cuts that wouldn’t look out of place in a Scandinavian storefront.

“Fashion is inherently political, whether or not it’s being produced in Palestine,” says Yasmeen Mjalli, the founder and creative director of Nöl Collective. “This generation is more open to that idea because it’s inextricably connected with climate change, but how can we take that one step further – how it intersects with women, or with labour conditions, or with economic frameworks,” she says. “The goal is to have customers thinking about fashion in an intersectional framework, to realise there is more than one element to this.”

Related Jobs:

Fabric and Trim Assistant, Me + Em — London, United Kingdom

Senior Technical Designer, Athleta — San Francisco, California

Senior Product Developer, Knitwear, Figs — Santa Monica, United States

7. Breaking Down the Barbie Phenomenon, From Mattel to Chanel

Right now, consumers are living in a “Barbie” world. That’s something the brand’s owner, Mattel, has worked to make sure of. In addition to a global marketing push for director Greta Gerwig’s much-anticipated film, which was rolled out to cinemas globally in July, a spate of Barbie collaborations are now flooding the market. […] From Gap, Boohoo and Zara, to Pinkberry and Burger King, brands from fashion to beauty to homewares have all gotten in on collaborating with the film starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling.

For Barbie’s parent company, the plethora of collaborations […] [are] a way to keep the brand front and centre while providing an opportunity and grow the reach of the Barbie brand beyond the core consumer audience for its fashion dolls. “It gives us the opportunity to monetise the brand outside of the toy aisle,” [Mattel’s president and chief operating officer Richard] Dickson said. “Despite the fact there’s a big list of partners, it’s a very carefully curated matrix across all industries, ages, stages, demographics, distribution, so that everyone can ‘play Barbie.’”

Related Jobs:

Head of Design, Stine Goya — Copenhagen, Denmark

Assistant Designer, Footwear, Tory Burch — New York, United States

Designer, Toddler, Old Navy — San Francisco, United States

8. The Unassuming T-Shirt Brand Trying to Break the DTC Curse

There was no shortage of online brands claiming to sell a better men’s t-shirt when True Classic arrived on the scene in 2019. The brand’s initial pitch wasn’t particularly innovative, either: bombard Facebook and Instagram users with images of male models in fitted shirts every time they opened the apps, and hope enough of them clicked so the brand could afford its next round of ads. And yet, True Classic is now a bona fide direct-to-consumer success story. The company expects its revenue will grow around 60 percent this year to $240 million, including nearly $3 million in sales during Amazon’s Prime Day, the two-day event in July.

True Classic’s relatively early decision to sell on Amazon has also proved pivotal. Many start-ups steer clear of the e-commerce giant, fearing the pressure to lower prices would cannibalise their DTC business or that Amazon would replicate their items for its own private label. But a brand specialising in a competitive category with low barriers to entry and low differentiation benefit from making its product as easy to find and purchase as possible, said Benjamin Bond, a principal consumer growth strategy consultant at management consulting firm Kearney.

Related Jobs:

Design Intern, Sister Jane — London, United Kingdom

Garment & Fit Technician, AWWG — Nice, France

Assistant Designer, Chico’s — Fort Myers, United States