1. Viktor & Rolf made couture fashion statements for the meme age: The design duo used couture techniques to plop stock phrases such as “No photos please” and “I’m not shy I just don’t like you” and “No” on the fronts of their usual pretty-but-oddball gowns. Predictably, images of the clothes, or more specifically the clothes and their slogans, exited the normally tight gravity of fashion followers and spread—along with many jokes—to a broader audience that usually wouldn’t much care about couture. – Read More on Quartz

2. RETRO READ: Runway Shows are Only as Successful as the Number of Impressions They Receive: Brands show over-the-top runway shows as a means of building hype (or prestige) which they can translate to sales of accessible wares, such as commercially-minded garments, and more affordable, often-licensed goods, such as eyewear or bags. In furtherance of that model, one the depends on sales volume, social media impressions are a metric of success. – Read More on TFL

3. How plus-size models (and celebrities) are challenging the shape of the fashion industry: After InStyle is accused of covering up curvy comedian Melissa McCarthy on its cover, and Cosmopolitan magazine is slammed for ‘normalizing’ obesity, there is still a long way to go before plus-size women are recognized and represented by the industry. – Read More on SCMP

4. Gender discrimination runs rampant in the fashion industry. Condé Nast and Burberry pay women just a fraction of what they pay men. Vice Media, the publisher for i-D, Garage, Noisey, and of course, Vice, is in the midst of litigation for consistently paying women “less than male employees for the same or substantially similar work." And a recent McKinsey study found that more than 80 percent of survey participants were unable to cite a concrete initiative their company had implemented to address gender inequality. A potential solution: Harvard Business Review finds that gender pay gaps shrink when companies are required to disclose them. – Read More on HBR