BoF VOICES 2024: Fashion’s Next Moves

OXFORDSHIRE, United Kingdom – Simon Porte Jacquemus took the stage Wednesday morning at The Business of Fashion’s VOICES 2024 gathering to tell the story of how his unique knack for playful branding allowed him to build a business with over €270 million in sales last year.

“I don’t have time to be a snob. When you’re independent you have to make noise,” Jacquemus told BoF’s editor-in-chief Imran Amed. “I have to make fun things.”

Jacquemus, who batted away rumours that he is in talks for the creative director job at Chanel, citing how busy he is as designer and CEO of his own brand, was among more than a dozen industry insiders who shared their visions for how fashion must adapt and evolve amid a sales slowdown.

The State of Fashion 2025

Following a sluggish 2024, uncertainty reigns among fashion executives eyeing their growth prospects for next year: BoF and McKinsey’s “The State of Fashion 2025″ Executive Survey found that just 20 percent of leaders expect market conditions to improve.

Amed and McKinsey senior partner Gemma D’Auria presented key findings from the report, underscoring that brands will have to seek out pockets of growth to drive sales in a market that’s expected to remain lacklustre overall.

While China’s fashion market is likely to remain in a slump, other key Asian markets are expected to shine. India will be a focus, particularly for high street players, while Japan will continue to outperform for luxury brands. “Its important to lean into these markets, to respect the consumers there and take time to figure out what it is that makes them tick,” D’Auria advised.

India’s Rise

India, which is home to nearly 18 percent of the world’s population but currently only accounts for 1 percent of the luxury goods market, was top of mind for Ravi Thakran, founder and managing partner of Turmeric Capital Holdings and former chairman and managing partner of L Catterton Asia.

A high concentration of wealth in the hands of the few has limited the addressable market for Western fashion in India, as has the fact that the country has preserved its traditional dress to a greater extent than other Asian countries.

Brands that wish to crack this fast-growing, young market need to adapt to local priorities, emphasising value-for-money on the high street while dialling up opulence, craftsmanship and customisation for local tastes and traditions in luxury.

“India across all segments is still very Indian, and will remain so… Indian-ise and customise,” Thakran advised. “Stupendous growth is right in front of us” as Indian’s young people gain spending power, he added.

Luxury E-Commerce Survivors

“Rumours of our demise have been greatly exaggerated,” quipped Lauren Santo Domingo, co-founder and chief brand officer of Moda Operandi, as she took the stage alongside MyTheresa CEO Michael Kliger.

Following the collapse of MatchesFashion and Farfetch’s fire-sale to Coupang, the way forward for luxury e-commerce has been unclear. Key players in the sector have struggled to navigate rising interest rates, high customer acquisition costs and declining demand from occasional luxury buyers.

For remaining players, it’s more important than ever to have a differentiated offer and a clear sense of who their target customer is, Kliger said. MyTheresa’s more controlled approach to growth — focused on identifying and engaging a core cohort of top-spending customers — has allowed it to keep posting profits and ink a deal with Richemont to take over Yoox Net-a-Porter.

“We didn’t know that this big slowdown in aspirational demand would happen, but we were well prepared,” Kliger said.

The company invests in customer acquisition and retention with a careful eye to which buyers are likely to become long-lasting customers. Particular attention is paid to customers whose first purchases are high-end ready-to-wear, which “correlates with a big lifetime value,” he said, while someone who is eyeing a similarly-priced handbag may not be retargeted to the same extent.

“An expensive bag has very little predictive power — it could be a one-time, very occasional purchase, or else someone’s 15th bag,” Kliger explained.

Following the YNAP deal, which is still pending approvals, Kliger said the company will phase out its sprawling back-end for technology and logistics, which services both Yoox and Net-a-Porter as well as external partners for whom the company runs e-commerce as a white label service.

Yoox will get a leaner, more cost-efficient back-end that’s suited to making off-price sales profitably, while Net-a-Porter will be replatformed onto MyTheresa’s tech stack. The moves will allow the group’s brands to focus on their front ends. “They can focus on their business and focus on customers — inspiring customers,” he said.

Santo Domingo spoke about how she’s ramped up efforts to differentiate Moda Operandi to stand out in a sea of “endless scrolls with the same font.”

“A small retailer has to win on differentiations. We’re leaning into curation, leaning into editorial,” she said, adding: “Brands want to sell with us because we are brand-enhancing.”

Like MyTheresa, Moda Operandi has sought to leverage its customer data to identify and focus on the most profitable top-spending clients. Its multi-brand trunk shows are a particular treasure trove of data, helping to get feedback on forthcoming collections ahead of the buying season, as well as surfacing high-value shoppers.

“A woman who wants to shop the most expensive looks from the runway — and is willing to pay for them 6 months in advance — that’s a very small subset of customers,” she said.

Heat in Fashion’s Supply Chain

A blistering heat wave across Asia this year underscored how workers’ rights, climate change and fashion’s bottom line intersect. Workers got sick from high temperatures in garment factories, and were sometimes unable to work effectively. Their health and incomes suffered, and fashion’s supply chain felt the strain.

In Cambodia, temperature data is rarely monitored in factories — and nearly all of them fail tests when inspected during the hottest months, said Laurie Parsons, a human geography scholar looking into the impact of heat on workers’ health, on a panel moderated by BoF’s chief sustainability correspondent Sarah Kent.

Indoor temperatures of 35 degrees celsius (95 degrees Farenheit) are not uncommon. “The infrastructure of most factories is not adequate to handle that kind of heat,” Abiramy Sivalogananthan, a human rights advocate from Sri Lanka said. “Garment workers fell sick but were forced to work; ones forced to take leave faced wage issues.”

Some tell stories of being denied water breaks while working on sweltering factory lines. Collective bargaining agreements are essential to improve conditions, but union busting remains rampant in the garment sector, Sivalogananthan said.

Sourcing consultant Beto Bina, who also joined the panel, spoke about how heat waves and droughts are also making it harder to grow raw materials like cotton, particularly when more sustainable (yet more labour-intensive) practises are employed.

H&M x Glenn Martens

H&M’s new CEO Daniel Ervér told Amed about a plan to ramp up creativity and story-telling at the Swedish fast-fashion giant.

The plan has gotten a boost from good timing: Charli XCX was included in the cast of its fall campaign this year, which ended up being released at the height of the English singer’s so-called “brat summer.” (Global interest in the singer, an established pop performer, exploded on the back of her most recent album).

The company has also sought to hone a more luxurious image by renovating flagship stores and casting buzzy runway models Lila Moss, Ajus Samuel and Loli Bahia in its campaigns.

“H&M is about the promise of making the inaccessible accessible to many,” Ervér said.

For its next move, H&M revealed a plan to further its longstanding tradition of designer collaborations by releasing a guest collection by Belgian creative director Glenn Martens, known for his work at Diesel and Y/Project. Previous tie-ups have included collaborations with Karl Lagerfeld, Comme des Garçons, Giambattista Valli and Mugler.

The collection will be “very me, very quirky, very experimental,” Martens said. “It’s about creating little monsters. These are garments that Y/Project couldn’t really bring to life on the street but with H&M’s resources you can.”

How Independent Fashion Brands Get By

1 Granary founder Olya Kuryshchuk hosted a panel on independent fashion, assembling London-based designer Roksanda Ilincic, Chinese publicist and consultant Bohan Qiu, and the designer and Antwerp Royal Academy director Brandon Wen.

Qiu spoke about how some emerging Chinese designers have struggled to maintain momentum, as popular paths to success for rising names, like showing in Paris and signing international wholesale stockists, broke down during the pandemic.

Ilincic sold her label to The Brand Group in May as the brand struggled to navigate upheaval in the wholesale market. “The beauty of an independent brand is you can quickly adapt, quickly change,” she said. “Building a community — those personal, intimate relationships you’re able to have with your consumers — is so important as a way of staying in the game,” she added.

Wen also spoke about community, noting how the  next generation of designers have a more interdisciplinary approach — making connections with art, music and other disciplines that allow them to build a “distinctive and personal view of success” as opposed to emulating more established paths for growing a brand.

Jacquemus’ Investor Hunt

Jacquemus has been one of independent fashion’s rare success stories: After bootstrapping his brand with just a few thousand dollars in savings and marketing his designs on Facebook, the designer steadily built a business leveraging a playful aesthetic and a knack for self-promotion. His brand, whose universe blends contemporary minimalism with nostalgic references to French pop culture, registered sales of €270 million last year according to sources.

“My only rule was to be visible — the next show always needs to be more visible, people need to know my name,” he said.

Growing up looking at fashion, “I felt like there was always so much distance between creativity and the audience. There was so much darkness, so much concepts my grandmother couldn’t get,” Jacquemus said. He wanted to do something sunnier, simpler and more immediate.

The designer confirmed reports that he’s looking for an investor to support the business in its next phase of growth, which is increasingly about opening new stores. After inaugurating its first US door in New York last month, a London store is set to open Friday. Other locations in the pipeline include Los Angeles and Courcheval.

Jacquemus coyly deflected rumours that he is in talks with Chanel to succeed Virginie Viard as creative director. “I would probably be too busy,” he said.