Daily LInks
1. The Newest Thing in Fashion? Old Clothes. After years of pushing only new, new, new (while behind the scenes scouring flea markets for inspiration), fashion brands are beginning, finally, to publicly embrace the old. Upcycling is reaching critical mass. It may be the most concrete shift in the fashion system to come out of the pandemic: the one real product to emerge from all of the industry talk about change and sustainability and value systems. – Read More on the New York Times
2. Business “Luxury Sector Ripe For Consolidation,” says GAM’s Swetha Ramachandran. “This is a sector that is ripe for consolidation. It’s highly fragmented. If you look at the soft luxury sector the top three brands have less than 5 percent market share each, which is why this gap between the winners and the losers is set to polarize further as we continue. These companies that have sort of kept their powder dry understood what it means to operate under the aegis of a lockdown. This will provide meaningful opportunities for consolidation.” – See More on Bloomberg
3. Hermès and Kering add to signs of luxury goods recovery: The sector is grappling with its worst downturn in decades as the pandemic prompts wealthy consumers to delay purchases and hampers usually free-spending Chinese tourists from travelling to Europe. Analysts have predicted sales will fall as much as 30 percent this year and take up to three years to recover. – Read More on the FT
4. RELATED READ: Hermès Says it Will Increase Offerings Online as e-Commerce is Now its “Biggest Store.” The brand’s chief financial officer Eric du Halgoüet says that Hermès’ e-commerce platforms are now the group’s “biggest store,” with online sales up by nearly 100 percent across the globe for the first nine months of the year. – Read More on TFL
5. Gap shares hit 52-week high on plans to close stores, focus on e-commerce and off-mall retail:Its online sales grew by 95% and it gained 3.5 million new customers in the second quarter ended Aug. 1. Athleta was the only brand within Gap to report an overall increase in sales.– Read More on CNBC
6. Louis Vuitton web traffic surpasses pre-pandemic levels as luxury makes a comeback: Louis Vuitton’s average Alexa Rank, a measure of website popularity, increased by 50 percent over the last six months, as online shopping became the norm. Nonetheless, its operating profit declined 68 percent in the first half of the year, despite cutting spending on store leases and slashing hiring and advertising budgets. – Read More on ThinkNum
