Some trends are emerging in our times

1. Nostalgia or Back to the Future
   Even if, as wisely Tim Harford on the FT Weekend wrote, “in the scramble to get what is new, we shouldn’t overlook the value of what is old”
2. Ideological Conformity
   In the respect of every position and with a peaceful attitude, freedom of speech is the sign of civilization and when it is put in danger by a monolithic unquestionable thought it gets toward a perilous direction.
   “We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without the professional consequences” wrote 153 writers and intellectuals in a letter to Harper’s magazine and signed by the likes of Noam Chomsky, J.K. Rowling and Salman Rushdie.
3. Rebooting Suburbia
   The lockdown imposed new social rules. Remote working has been one of them ever since. Cities like Milan that relied, for the life of the central areas, on commuters and tourists are sort of ghost towns.
   People realized that a different way of working is possible and companies that expensive office buildings are not so necessary. Suburbia and far away places came back to life. Maybe forever?
4. Plan B
   “Life is all about how you handle you plan B”
   That’s it
5. Breathe
   Nature, fresh air, rural landscapes are so up lifting.
   Concrete is not good.

Dear Gucci,

Shall we say goodbye to Alessandro Michele?

Fashion and luxury do not need revolution nor “renaissance”…

They need:
– a business model
– a carefully crafted brand strategy
– a yearly action plan
– a strong vision
– a unique path to be developed through all the key state-of-the-art tools
– a motivated and dedicated team of professionals open to innovation

Christian Dior Couture is the classic example of successful brand evolution.

In one week they scored:
– best project for haute couture with Maria Grazia Chiuri “The Myth of Dior” movie directed by acclaimed director Matteo Garrone
– a huge queue in front of the store in Paris selling the Nike Dior Michael Jordan edition by Kim Jones

Great strategy + impeccable execution

And, no it’s not just a matter of money invested…

Just a video with dancing models…and some amazingly deja vu craftmanship videos

Maybe it’s time to look ahead, instead of just focusing on the ‘80s…

Maria Grazia Chiuri vision beats Virginie Viard

While Dior seemed dreamy and refreshing, Chanel emerged ad stucked in the past…

Will Phoebe Philo come to rescue the French Maison?

Are you convinced that Inditex Zara brand is going soon into trouble because it’s shutting down 1.200 stores?

Or do you read between the lines and you analyse what’s going on inside this smart fast fashion company?

Certainly these are very challenging times for the fashion system and anything could happen.

What Zara can teach us is very interesting anyway:

1. A strong branding does not mean huge investments in advertising nor in press. It means creating a strong relationship with your community through different touch points: the store, the (social) media, the positioning on the market
2. A strong brand is not rigid: it can re-size its retail network, it has hugely invested in logistics, it has a growth mindset
3. Pivoting ability is the key success factor. This means leaving behind attachment, nostalgia, accomplishments and being ready to: understand the evolving world, adjusting the strategy and the execution, setting up new business objectives.
4. A marketing strategy is broader and deeper than press office activities.
5. As per the slide attached from Statista, the group has grown steady but smartly. It has a high level of cash flow and it’s getting ready for the next chapter.

Start working well in fashion and luxury

It seems that a new trend is taking place in these days: fashion and luxury companies are becoming big believers in smart working.

They call it smart working but it is just “work from home” and it is an obsolescent concept and dangerous if used as a solution for cutting fixed costs.

The risk of this misleading idea of smart working is that an employee is requested to work exactly in the same way as in the office, from home.

Trouble is that not everybody has a house with a space that can be dedicated to a desk, an office chair (as requested), proper lighting and silence.
Not everybody has a nice spot to be adorned as a background nor has proper air conditioning.

Facebook has already anticipated that its employees are free to work from home but if they choose to move from the area of the HQ they might face pay cuts.

In Switzerland a court ruled for the employer to give a fixed contribution to the employee who has to set up an office space at her house.

Who pays the bills? A good wi-fi (powerful enough for a family with different needs), office furnitures, proper lights, air conditioning and heating.

Who educates managers to enhance a different mindset to favor smart work instead of just mere execution of tasks?

The world is at risk.

Some may say that the coronavirus emergency was unpredictable.

Well, this is not the case.

In September 2019, the World Health Organization (a specialized agency of the United Nations dedicated to health) issued a report called “The world is at risk”

The introduction said “While disease has always been part of the human experience, a combination of global trends, including insecurity and extreme weather, has heightened the risk. Disease thrives in disorder and has taken advantage–outbreaks have been on the rise for the past several decades and the spectre of a global health emergency looms large. If it is true to say “what’s past is prologue”, then there is a very real threat of a rapidly moving, highly lethal pandemic of a respiratory pathogen killing 50 to 80 million people and wiping out nearly 5% of the world’s economy.”

“A global pandemic on that scale would be catastrophic, creating widespread havoc, instability and insecurity. The world is not prepared.”

It also stated that ” The world is at acute risk for devastating regional or global disease epidemics or pandemics that not only cause loss of life but upend economies and create social chaos.”

And “The world is not prepared for a fast-moving, virulent respiratory pathogen pandemic. The 1918 global influenza pandemic sickened one third of the world population and killed as many as 50 million people – 2.8% of the total population (16,17). If a similar contagion occurred today with a population four times larger and travel times anywhere in the world less than 36 hours, 50 – 80 million people could perish (18,19). In addition to tragic levels of mortality, such a pandemic could cause panic, destabilize national security and seriously impact the global economy and trade.”

And it also focused on 7 urgent actions to prepare the world for health emergencies:

1. Heads of governments must commit and invest

“Poor” luxury risks to be deeply impacted by the Coronavirus emergency.

It is news of today that the former SIHH, now “Wonder and Watches”, the high-end watchmaking fair in Geneva, has cancelled its 2020 edition.

Unstoppable Luxury

The Coronavirus appeared recently as a totally unexpected emergency in a time of double digit growth for many luxury houses.

Nothing seemed to stop them and the sense of entitlement grew accordingly.

It was like being on a high speed train projected to unstoppable success and rewards.

The Black Swan Effect

Then a Black Swan appeared at the horizon.

“What is a Black Swan?” might ask someone who hasn’t read Taleb bestseller book yet.

“A black swan is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics:

1. It is unpredictable;
2. It carries a massive impact;
3. And, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was.”

While a recession was in the air, this epidemic has a less controllable psychological impact in the markets.

The luxury industry was not prepared, nor were the big consulting firms, because they were stuck in a honey trap.

The wake up call will be very hard for those ones who just followed the flow of cashing in on Chinese customers and didn’t properly developed a balanced, solid growth.

Is it too late to change direction? It depends on how the companies have been developed to be “antifragile”…

What is “Antifragile”?

As per the book of Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the author of “Black Swan”, the “antifragile” is one step beyond robust, as it benefits from adversity, uncertainty and stressors, just as human bones get stronger when subjected to stress and tension.

“He who is not antifragile will perish” Taleb, a former trader, a NYU professor and a bestseller writer, said.

It’s time to go back to the fundamentals and start playing seriously, again.

 

More to follow…

Luxury Industry Neglects Women 

Take the Deloitte “Global Powers of Luxury Goods 2019” report and give a look at the top 50 best luxury companies. Only 3 of them are headed by women: Tory Burch, Miuccia Prada, Ferragamo CEO Micaela Le Divelec. Two of them are founders. The only one recruited is the latter (kudos to Ferragamo!).

Women are often confined in the least powerful roles in fashion: design, communication and HR.

Despite the fact that most part of the offer of the industry is dedicated to women.

In 2015 the New York Times published an article about “In Luxury, the Female Factor”. It mentioned several women promoted CEO like Isabelle Guichot, Liza Montague, Patricia Barbizet, Sarah Crook.

It said “Female chief executives also have historically been few and far between, despite a recent spate of high-profile appointments.

But there are signs that this is one industry-defining trend that may no longer be in vogue.”

Those who were mentioned have been rapidly replaced by men.

Recently Barbara Calò was promoted at Marni replacing the CEO Stefano Biondo, but she just scored a less powerful job title of Managing Director.

Luxury Brands work on Stereotyped Women

Recently Mary Fellowes, celebrities stylist of Olivia Colman and Scarlett Johansson, said to the Daily Mail online that the fashion industry ignores middle-aged women.

‘They are its biggest users, women with something to say for themselves, with money to spend,’ she cries. But so much of the industry still seems to be designed for tall, thin young women.”

“‘Grown-up women aren’t interested in logos and street sportswear, but the big luxury brands are putting all that out there, for the customers who aspire to be the likes of the Kardashians and the Hadids, who don’t represent their customers at all”.

It’s a pity that such a relevant part of the industry customers are neglected.

And it’s a shame that women do not have space and voice in the sancta sanctorum of the brands.

In its article “When Women are On Board, Men are less Overconfident”, the Harvard Business Review points out that:

“One benefit of having female directors on the board is a greater diversity of viewpoints, which is purported to improve the quality of board deliberations, especially when complex issues are involved, because different perspectives can increase the amount of information available.

At the same time, research has found that female directors tend to be less conformist and more likely to express their independent views than male directors because they do not belong to old-boy networks.

So a board with female directors might be more likely to challenge the CEO and push him to consider a wider range of options, as well as pros and cons, when making strategic firm decisions.

This could then attenuate CEO overconfidence and correct for potentially biased beliefs.”

So, will Women Save Fashion?

Very likely they started a new silent trend: niche brands, excellence, style, elegance and the cool factor.

Brands like The Row, Gabriela Hearst and the upcoming Phoebe Philo project are taking women on a different road compared to the tacky and flashy styles of most of the brands.

It was called timeless elegance once. Now it’s the come back in style.

This Week in Luxury and Fashion is Back!

1. Eraldo Poletto, former Furla and Ferragamo, is out at Stuart Weitzman. Will he re-join Furla for the 3rd time? He still has loyal executives in the company and recently Antonio Burrello, who he recruited at Ferragamo, joined Furla as Chief Marketing Officer…

2. Tom Ford and Ralph Lauren won’t show at NYFW…is game over for the New York week despite being the city of the most powerful insider like Vogue Anna Wintour?

3. Oliviero Toscani ousted at Benetton following his unfortunate comments. Dejà vu of many years ago?

4. Hermès launched its very first make up product: a lipstick. It’s refillable and it costs 62 euros. It’s not a license (higher margins!). Is it a trailblazer in the industry?

5. Will Mayhoola expand its luxury group through new acquisitions? Will Stefano Sassi become the chief of the group leaving to Jacopo Venturini the CEO job at Valentino?

6. Apple alone sold more watches than the whole Swiss Watch industry. Time to move on, Luxury!

7. While Versace amazes by dressing JLo at the SuperBowl Halftime show, Gucci (un)dresses Achille Lauro at Sanremo Festival…à chacun sa spécialité… Winning Soundtrack: JLo “Let’s Get Loud”

Happy Weekend!