Daily LInks
1. If the First-Quarter GDP Report Looks Bad, the Second Quarter Will Be Worse: Retail sales, which make up about 25 percent of household spending, dropped 8.7 percent in March, compared with February. Stockpiling at grocery stores and online wasn’t enough to compensate for a collapse in spending at bars and restaurants and falling sales of new vehicles and gasoline. – Read More on WSJ
2. Retail in the US won’t be bouncing back like in China: While masked shoppers are lining up to return to stores in China — hoarding cosmetics and fashion — offering retailers a glimmer of hope that the same patterns will play out across America, but they rebounds will be different, in part because of high end enduring unemployment in the U.S. – Read More on CNBC
3. RETRO READ: As North Korea Continues to Boost its Imports, a Look at the Role of Luxury in the Hermit Kingdom. Despite sanctions, luxury goods continue to make their way across the border into North Korea, with China serving as the nation’s most well-established and largest trading partner. Singapore-based traders have also been linked to a “substantial amount of” imports into North Korea in recent years. – Read More on TFL
4. How Eileen Fisher became a model of sustainability in the fashion industry: “I’m much more interested in growing in what we call a circular way, like how do we grow this company in a way that it’s taking full responsibility for its impact on the environment, on the people working?” – Read More on Fortune
5. “Cool’s Over. Chic’s Over.” Balmain’s Olivier Rousteing Says, “ We have to be more spontaneous, not follow rules—we need to be more inclusive as an industry. I want to do fashion shows for different people; to open my doors to people who are not part of the system.”– Read More on Vogue
