Christian Dior SA is the world's largest fashion group, according to Forbes' Global 2000 list. With $49 billion in revenue for 2017, the annual list of "the world’s biggest and most powerful public companies, as measured by a composite score of revenues, profits, assets and market value" puts Christian Dior SA, the company that owns 46 percent of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (and that is distinct from the Dior Couture brand which it owns), in the number 150 position, following the likes of financial institutions, big-pharma companies, consumer goods behemoths like P&G and Apple, and Amazon, of course.

While Gucci has been traipsing in the south of France for its Resort 2019 show (complete with both bridal and funeral attire and a collaboration with Los Angeles hotel and hot spot Chateau Marmont), and detailing its plans to overtake rival Louis Vuitton by way of a lift in revenue to 10 billion euros ($12 billion) up from last year’s 6.2 billion euros, the economy in its native Italy has been in swift decline. Financial markets in the Eurozone's third largest economy are inching towards what analysts are calling “a political and institutional crisis,” while the yield on bonds issued by the Italian government is rising – yields rise as bond prices fall – and thereby, suffering significant losses.

Fashion is an inherently exclusive, uppity industry, one whose leading participants stage $500,000+ runway shows twice a year in order to sell $3,000+ handbags and dresses with price tags that are even more expensive to a small(ish) segment of the population. With this in mind, it should probably not be surprising that coverage of it tends to reflect that, explicitly or otherwise. This is something that at least some have argued is being demonstrated in connection with coverage of the death of American designer and businesswoman Kate Spade

Casual luxury is driving global sales of high-end garments and accessories as big-spending consumers look for low-brow statements in t-shirts, sneakers and rubber sliders, according to a study released Thursday by Bonton-based consultancy Bain. Driven by millennial shoppers, “with help also from their comfort-seeking parents and the next generation of consumers, teens,” said Bain partner Claudia D’Arpizio, sales of personal luxury items including apparel, footwear and handbags, have been boosted upwards of $329 billion, up 8 percent from $308 billion in 2017.

Each year towards the end of the spring semester, job posting sites are rife with offerings for summer internships, ones that enable current students and new graduates, alike, to “get their feet in the door” in furtherance of their dream careers. Long touted as a way for companies to benefit from cheap – or in some cases, free – labor in exchange for on-the-job training for young people, industry internships, particularly in fashion, have been undergoing something of a significant shift in recent years.

On this day 20 years ago, a little old show called "Sex and the City" premiered on HBO. The television series, which was created by Darren Star and based on the 1997 book by Candace Bushnell, starred Sarah Jessica Parker (as Carrie Bradshaw), Kim Cattrall (as Samantha Jones), Kristin Davis (as Charlotte York), and Cynthia Nixon (as Miranda Hobbes), and depicted four women living and working in New York City. The show, itself, became soundly entrenched in the late 90’s cultural zeitgeist, and would run for six seasons, followed by still-airing syndication across the globe. 

The shadowy business of counterfeits has taken over the globe to become a $1.2 trillion industry. Despite extensive – and expensive – enforcement efforts by nearly all luxury and fashion brands, the counterfeit trade is positively booming with estimated losses incurred by brands due purely to counterfeit clothing, textiles, footwear, handbags, cosmetics, and watches amounting to $98 billion as of 2017, up significantly from the year before, thanks to the $450 billion market for counterfeit garments, accessories, and footwear. 

In light of the tragic death of designer Kate Spade on Tuesday, we take a look back at an article from 2016 addressing the value of the Kate Spade trademark and what became of her name (i.e., her trademark) when she sold her eponymous label ... 

Kate Spade has been found dead in New York in an apparent suicide, law enforcement officials said on Tuesday. Spade, 55, who was born Katherine Noel Brosnahan in Kansas City, Missouri, was found in her Park Avenue apartment at around 10:20 a.m. Tuesday. The fashion designer and businesswoman became a household name after she launched her wildly successful eponymous brand in January 1993, alongside then soon-to-be husband Andy Spade. We did not know it at the time, but Kate Spade and her brand were leaders in what would become the multi-billion dollar market of accessible luxury.

An interesting mix of individuals were abuzz when the annual Council of Fashion Designers of America (“CFDA”) Awards nominations were announced in March. As usual, many of the New York-based trade group’s favorite suspects – such as Marc Jacobs, Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen, Tom Ford, Thom Browne, and so on – were in the running for a Trova, as the CFDA Awards statue is called, again this year. But new names were in the mix: Kim Kardashian would take home the brand new "Influencer Award" and James Jebbia of Supreme would be in the running for the Menswear Designer of the Year award.