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It is a huge month and it's been on the calendar circled in red.
I am incredibly excited to see what happens at Chanel.
Also looking with huge interest to Dior.
These shows are enormous productions, so they are five, six million euros to pull off for three to four hundred guests.
If a creative director hasn't found their footing or sales are struggling, you'll see them replaced.
Pain tolerance is low when there is an unstable overall economic environment.
That's Sarah Ball, editor-in-chief of The Wall Street Journal's WSJ magazine.
As the fashion world navigates an unprecedented wave of turnover from Chanel to Dior, I wanted to talk to Sarah about the most closely watched New York Fashion Week in years, what she calls a September to remember.
Sarah takes us inside the drama and anticipation what's at stake and what to look for, plus how Vogue is poised to take shape post-Anna Winter, the shockwaves from Giorgio Armani's recent passing, AI's impact on fashion creatives and more, whether or not you self-identify as a fashionista.
Sarah offers a guide to an industry that ripples through commerce at large, which is at a historic turning point.
So let's get to it.
I'm Bob Safian, and this is Rapid Response.
I'm Bob Safian.
I'm here with Sarah Ball, editor-in-chief of WSJ Magazine.
Sarah, thanks for being here.
Oh, I'm so thrilled to be here, Bob.
Thank you for having me.
We are speaking in the midst of New York Fashion Week, a key moment in the fashion industry calendar.
But there are so many fashion weeks these days around the world, across the country.
Is there something that makes this one distinctive?
There's a huge thing that makes this thing distinctive.
And in fact, it's almost, it's I think close to a dozen things that make this year distinctive.
And that is The number of new creative directors that are being appointed at brands around the world.
This is considered the quote unquote September to remember, in fashion, a huge sort of sea change of designers.
And that's not just kind of oh, they're sort of people are kind of sprucing creative and next gen is coming in.
It really is.
A remarkable and historic number of changes of leadership that kind of represents fashion heading into ever more uncertain economic times and really making sure that creative is incredibly fine tuned.
Caring.
In addition to having several new creative directors take over, some of their brands also has a new CEO who starts on Monday and who spoke this week for the first time officially in the capacity as CEO, kind of alluding to changes that are ahead for all of those brands.
Those include Gucci and Balenciaga and.
Alexander McQueen, another caring brand.
So it is a huge year, a huge month, and it's been on the calendar circled in red for at least nine months.
So it's kind of that drumbeat as well of anticipation of so many exciting debuts.
So this transitional moment is all like coming to a head for this fashion week.
Correct.
Correct.
We're going to see, I think, close to a dozen collections as revamped through new creative directors' eyes.
And what that – again, what that means is that sort of brands are fine-tuning their market position.
Who is the customer?
What do they want right now?
We're coming out of a bit of the you know quiet luxury emphasis on – sort of inoffensive, expensive craftsmanship.
We have returned to a sort of explosive creativity.
We've returned to color.
But kind of at the business level, I think what you're seeing is a true next generation.
Almost all of these new creative directors are in their early 40s, so they're older millennials.
You have Places like Chanel that have only had four creative directors in their entire history, are trying, in their appointment of Mathieu Blaise, to have a sort of the next Karl Lagerfeld, someone who's going to be in that role for decades and decades.
So it kind of has higher stakes than a simple...
You know, to use a sports analogy, the way that there's a head coach shuffle at the end of a season, say, this is sort of a much higher stakes version of that to have so many changing over at one time and really rooted in fashion brands and beyond that, fashion conglomerates, luxury conglomerates, trying to weather these sort of uncertain macroeconomic conditions. this transitional moment, like how much of it is about sort of the state of style, you know, of the designers versus this like larger economics and these externalities in a lot of ways.
I think they're both related, you know, and it all ties into consumer confidence and where consumers are going to spend their money now.
I think you see some categories that are still sort of incredibly important and explosive in growth jewelry, accessories.
These things have a resilience to them, especially through kind of up and down times.
I think with pure fashion, with ready-to-wear, that can be more challenged.
And I think you do see sort of brands trying to assess what the customer is going to want.
Not only in trend.
Cycles have gotten so short.
With TikTok and social media, a trend cycle is really quite brief now.
So it's like It's both become a more aggressive game of hopping lily pad to lily pad and also more consequential, because you know there are again.
There is uncertainty in that pond.
To extend the metaphor, there's little white caps and waves.
And then also, to your point, style has become...
You know, much more expressive.
We're showing what we're wearing.
We're kind of exuberant.
Always on camera at work.
We're on camera off work, like in this vertical video world that we live in.
And then there are important conversations that influence styles such as sustainability and people who want to reduce waste.
So there's kind of all of the swirl of factors.
Before coming to the Wall Street Journal, I worked for a long time at Condé Nast.
I worked at GQ.
So I was very embedded in men's style discussions.
And that really is a group that likes to just be told how can I very seamlessly, quickly and easily buy something and have it and always be able to rely on it.
But at the same time, I was always playing more and more and wanting to be more expressive.
And challenge notions of conventional sort of suit and tie masculinity.
So you see, you know, the way that menswear has exploded and changed over the last five, 10 years.
You have seen these trend cycles are becoming more and more brief.
So I think style has changed.
The conditions have changed and brands are now just trying to respond to that.
As you've got this date circled in red on your calendar, are there any particular shows that you're most focused on that?
You're like I gotta be there.
Yes, I think there's a couple.
I am incredibly excited to see what happens at Chanel.
Again, I think of an appointment.
Mathieu Blaisy was appointed.
I believe he's 41 years old.
He previously was the creative director at Bottega Veneta, really revived that brand through craftsmanship, a sense of play, especially of using the house codes of leather.
And it's very famous, as you may know, for like woven leather, sort of basket woven leather.
He used that and sort of subverted that and made incredibly interesting collections that were very sought after.
And now he comes to a house where, with a ton of heritage and legacy in Chanel that has a ton of these house codes established in the 20s by Coco Chanel.
It's considered maybe the biggest and highest pressure job in all of fashion is to run Chanel in Paris.
So that's like got every Hollywood element to kind of be glued to what he'll do.
And then I'm also looking with huge interest to Dior.
Dior will be now run.
Both the men's and women's sides of that business and couture will be run for the first time by one person.
In the past, they've been run by multiple creative directors.
Now they're united under one person who's Jonathan Anderson.
He is known for taking the kind of small, relatively inconsequential brand of Loewe at LVMH and growing it into a multiple, you know, billion euro business for the Arnaud family.
He's seen as such a superstar talent, very interested in sculpture and art.
And really grew that business into this massive, it is the cool kid.
So he grew that into the cool kid of LVMH and then was given the crown jewel job of taking over Dior.
He's had one collection already.
A men's show where he really dabbled in kind of 18th century motifs.
If you can imagine, sort of French Revolution frock coats and cravats, but married with slouchy jeans and a sort of really playful humorous, very fresh, modern look.
And it's again, a huge high stakes position.
This is an enormous business and he'll be leading it forward through again tropes that he kind of has to pull for himself.
Dior's actual fashion history is pretty brief.
It was founded in 1946.
It is not 400 years old.
It didn't exist at the time of Les Miserables, Frog Codes.
So he's really pulling out of art and history as he's want to do.
He's got you know an incredible network the filmmaker Luca Guadagnino, and really interesting actors and actresses and authors Zadie Smith and Greta Lee, and Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz.
This is sort of his world now. of talent and friends that he kind of brings with him.
So I think he's going to build a whole new set of references for Dior, and I'm very excited to see what that yields.
For these houses, whether it's Chanel or Dior, the other ones, like...
How do they know whether their show has been, you know, successful?
Is it what folks like you say about it?
Is it sort of things that come out from influencers?
Like, how do they know?
It's a great, great question.
I think that you can immediately usually feel the energy, right?
So there's standing ovations, there's cheering, there's whooping.
If it's a real triumph or success.
Usually it's quite a decorous crowd, excuse me, lots of clapping and people take videos and, you know, immediately share snippets from the show.
These shows are enormous productions.
So they are...
Five, six million euros to pull off for three to four hundred guests.
You know, there's music.
It's dark.
You're sometimes transported.
In many cases, you've been transported to a particularly magical setting.
Just this real atmosphere that you're instantly, you know, aware of as a guest at a show.
Those in the audience are not just editors or VIP celebrity guests.
They're also clients, very important VICs, very important clients who are there kind of as a customer, as a sort of passionate collector really is probably a better word way to describe them a collector of this artist's work.
And you can, of course, see in them a level of enthusiasm.
And then how it's then shared out to the world.
Is the collection immediately, you know.
It appears on fashion news sites.
It appears across social media TikTok, vertical video moments that happen.
How are people sharing those?
So it's a whole ecosystem of reaction.
And then, of course, a few days after a show... a designer and the brand are meeting with buyers.
And those buyers again who are present at the show are saying we'd like to order, you know these, we'd like these modifications, or this is what we'd like, what our customers want.
How can we meet in the middle on this?
And that you'll get a sense from those meetings and conversations.
You know the salability, so to speak, to put it in like sort of less less exciting, creative terms.
But you know, How is this collection going to filter out through to the customer?
I think there's a variety of metrics that companies are using to test success.
But I would say the most instant assessment is, frankly, applause.
You know, it's just that metric of, you know, huge enthusiasm.
Even though these fashion weeks are happening all the time, like it's still about the buzz that you sort of can generate each time.
Correct.
Correct.
And that buzz can translate into immediate covetability of items that come down fresh silhouette, a new accessory or shoe that's shown like.
That buzz can translate into real excitement, commercial firepower for certain components.
That buzz can translate into okay, this collection was a designer finding their footing, but we're overall really enthusiastic about it.
It can be akin to the way you might buy and sell stocks.
You're hearing good things.
You want to invest in this company.
You can get a sense of how a designer is going to sort of match with the brand codes, with the house codes, how they might develop over time.
Not every debut is a smash hit instantaneously.
Sometimes it takes a few seasons.
But, by the same token, after a few seasons, if a sort of creative director hasn't found their footing or sales are struggling, you'll see them.
You'll see them replaced.
And I think those cycles have gotten shorter as well.
I think pain tolerance is low when there is an unstable overall economic environment.
The fashion industry has always fascinated me like any other business.
Fashion is beholden to financial metrics, but it also feeds off of buzz.
So how is social media and social buying impacting that buzz machine?
And what should we expect from Anna Wintour's successor at Vogue?
We'll talk about that and more after the break.
Stay with us.
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Before the break, WSJ Magazine's Sarah Ball shared how New York Fashion Week reveals an inflection point in the fashion business.
Now Sarah talks about the passing of Giorgio Armani, the ascension of a new editor at Vogue and the role of social influencers as tastemakers.
Let's dive back in.
Social influencers play a bigger role now in every industry, including fashion.
How do you look at the role of influencers in the industry?
Like, are tastemakers coming from new places?
That's a great question.
So I think you know this.
Initially, this quote unquote democratization, maybe a fashion shows started when a street style bloggers would set up outside of shows.
This was, you know, at this point 15 years ago, at the rise of sort of fashion blogs, when maybe traditional glossy fashion media was on the slower side to embrace fashion um having a lively digital presence.
And then you saw some of those fashion bloggers become invited to shows and sitting in the front row.
And that represented at the time this great pearl clutching moment in fashion media that, oh my goodness, the it's no longer closed to just editors and buyers and clients.
I think today, in my mind I, even though they're quite different and working at the, so different than being a fashion influencer.
I think that in the minds of these brands, it's now press and influence.
You'll notice, even people who work at fashion brands, vice president of press and influence.
They press and influence in their mind are kind of joined.
And that is external comms as furthered by inclusion in fashion press and media, as well as furthered by influencers.
Now, how we work is very different.
Fashion media as expressed now very robustly through digital, through site and app, and social.
We use the clothes, the accessories, the jewelry, the product.
You know you're looking at a photo of Right, behind me, of Kylie Jenner and Martin Scorsese.
They're wearing beautiful luxury fashion that we, you know, put on them and styled and shot them in incredible locations.
So there is the side of fashion media that continues to profile designers.
We have, you know.
So our September men's and women's issues that are out right now, you know, include these clothes and ambitious work talking about what they're putting out in the marketplace.
An influencer is not doing that.
An influencer is wearing the product, is showing up to talk about the product and is much more, you know, speaking directly as proxy for the consumer.
In Here I Am.
It's So Fun, Oh My Gosh, I'm Seated Next to Sofia Coppola at the Chanel Show.
Look How Beautiful She Looks.
It's the fan experience, I would say.
It's obviously a huge part of Having them represented at shows and choosing who the right influencers are for your brand.
I can't think of a single fashion brand whose show I've been to where there was absolutely zero presence from someone who would be considered a content creator or an influencer, even the sort of most elite and exclusive fashion shows.
As a former magazine editor myself, I was intrigued that Vogue finally named a successor to Anna Wintour as editor Chloe Moll.
Vogue's been like the Bible for fashion under Anna's reign.
How significant is this transition for the industry?
And like, what does Chloe need to do to sort of grab that alpha tastemaker reputation?
I love her.
I'm very proud of her and very excited for her.
She's an old friend and a dynamo, fiercely talented.
And my favorite thing about her is her sense of humor.
So I know that even the challenge of taking on this incredible job she will bear with a lot of wit and playfulness, which is something that I think I hope to see expressed in Her Vogue.
I've definitely seen it expressed in hervogue.com.
I think Anna's reputation as a tastemaker.
I think the Condé has been very strategic in underlining that Anna is still very involved as a tastemaker, and not just over Vogue but I think over all of those brands.
I think Anna's role as tastemaker still remains intact.
And I think Chloe gets to kind of put her stamp on the execution and still set this sort of taste and agenda of what Vogue is.
I know she has big ideas for how it shows up in the world.
But I think You know she views it as an asset that she's not necessarily forfeiting Anna's presence to help her with navigating the overall fashion industry.
I think that's the right attitude.
I think fashion is bigger and more challenging and more complex and more global than ever.
And you need, you know, many hands make light work, I would say.
So I want to ask you a few quick hit questions in the couple of minutes we have left.
AI.
Vogue recently featured a guest ad with an AI-generated model that sparked some debates.
AI, net negative or net positive for fashion?
Oh. remains to be seen.
Incredibly interesting ways it's being applied mining archives for new ideas that then can be riffed on by sort of human creativity, how they show up to the customer and, of course, all of the data and logistics that AI will make a lot easier.
So I think I'm sure net positive for efficiency, neutral on creativity.
All right, dupes, the rise and normalization of dupes, including this craze around Lububu.
How does that impact the industry?
Does it help build connection with new audiences or just, you know, make things more complicated for brands?
I think it makes things more complicated for brands, as it forces a ton of transparency from brands that they're not used to giving.
I think there's the idea that customers don't want to know about how it gets to them.
We're going to tell them it's sustainable and we're going to emphasize that we use the best materials.
But there's a lot of nuts and bolts they maybe don't need to know.
They just want to go in. have the glass of champagne, feel the bag, purchase the bag and go home.
I think that's out the window.
I think the customer is really prizing traceability, provenance, tell me how it was made well.
I think customers genuinely are interested in these because of the rise of these videos on TikTok that show, you know, super fakes being made easily in China, et cetera.
I think that's given them a lot of fear that we have to emphasize how our products are so much better in order to justify these huge five-figure, if not six-figure, prices.
I want to ask you about live stream shopping.
This is a new phenomenon for me.
So part social media, part QVC, huge in Asia, maybe starting to take off in the U.S.?
?
I absolutely think it will continue to grow.
I think even just—this isn't livestream, but even the rise of hauls to go far beyond the small corners of YouTube to now—we had a story published this week about the ways in which back-to-school hauls of tweens and teenagers— showing their back to school shopping and taking you along for the journey of what they're shopping for back to school is now so much the norm that it's driving up the cost of going back to school for families and creating this whole subgenre of content that feels ubiquitous and inescapable and like you have to participate.
So I think that's going to continue for sure.
I mean, the industry needs to access and animate Gen Z buyers, right?
Their future customers as time goes by.
And this is one of the ways to do that?
I think so.
And I think that again it challenges these traditional notions for luxury brands that are used to.
Not only would you not necessarily be filming inside of the store, you still have people at the door gatekeeping, who even gets in your store.
And then, in the case of some luxury brands, you're limited on what product you can access, unless you've kind of built up a history as a customer with that store.
So I think The luxury industry is used to being sort of really closed off and, dare I say, gatekeepy.
But the live stream shopping experience is radical, radical transparency.
So I think you're going to see these forces at loggerheads for a little bit, but absolutely engaging younger customers in the fact that shopping can be an adventure and a journey.
I think it could be net positive for luxury brands if they're able to kind of adapt to that.
Giorgio Armani, iconic designer, brand builder, recently passed away.
His will apparently puts Armani Group for sale.
What do you see happening here?
I think this is so fascinating and is going to be one of the most interesting stories in fashion over I would probably guess over the next year.
So obviously he was CEO, sole shareholder and creative director. of the brand.
It's not just even the ownership of such an enormous, again multi-billion euro luxury brand that's up for sale.
It's also its entire direction because he did not have any heirs.
There was not this kind of sort of airtight succession plan that you maybe see over at LVMH, with all of the Arnaud children taking bits and pieces of the.
This was not the case with Armani.
So I think this will throw some chaos into the landscape.
It's a huge prize.
It has many, many businesses.
There's, of course, the men's and women's businesses.
There's Privé, which is all of your Oscar dresses.
There's Casa.
There's a hospitality element and hotels.
There's fragrance and beauty.
And so it's just enormous.
And I think this bidding war for kind of who gets the keys to the literal castle is going to be all I'm hearing about when we're over in Europe for Fashion Week, hearing sort of fashion gossip.
I asked earlier about tastemakers.
You are also a tastemaker.
Do you have any predictions for what you see ahead for the fashion industry?
I couldn't have predicted that we would whipsaw from talking about COVID recovery to talking about tariffs, to talking about AI.
I think the climate is so uncertain.
So I think my biggest prediction is that I think I know this is quite pat, but I truly believe it that charm and creativity will kind of win the day.
I think the customer is feeling a little jerked around and nervous and scared.
And I think that the collections that we see, the more someone is able to kind of harness that a positive outlook, beautiful and inspiring work and not maybe your sort of Zoolander cliche of the dark, black austerity steering into the mood.
I think that charm and covetability in that really classic sense is what the customer's craving almost comfort, if you will and that I hope it yields some sort of really frisky creative, exciting work.
Well, Sarah, this was great.
Thanks so much for doing it.
Thank you for having me.
It's been a true pleasure.
Some applause for Sarah for making fashion's rarefied world so accessible.
I find her observation about consumers' desire for comfort particularly applicable, whatever business you're in.
With geopolitical and macroeconomic uncertainty sparking volatility across every industry, customers everywhere are looking for a safe haven, something warm and reassuring.
So, as we begin to feel the chill of fall in some places and oversaturation of pumpkin spice, I urge you to consider how you radiate that feeling of warmth and safety to your customers, to your audience and to your team.
We can all use that sense of togetherness these days.
I'm Bob Safian.
Thanks for listening.
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