What Fashion’s Creative Talent Needs to Know Today

Discover the most relevant industry news and insights for fashion creatives, updated each month to enable you to excel in job interviews, promotion conversations or impress in the workplace by increasing your market awareness and emulating market leaders.

BoF Careers distils business intelligence from across the breadth of our content — editorial briefings, newsletters, case studies, podcasts and events — to deliver key takeaways and learnings tailored to your job function, listed alongside a selection of the most exciting live jobs advertised by BoF Careers partners.

Key articles and need-to-know insights for creatives in fashion today:

1. The Business of Being Law Roach

Roach has bust open the traditional boundaries of what it means to be a celebrity stylist, with multiple revenue streams and a level of personal celebrity that goes far beyond the red carpet. Some of his biggest clients are people you’ll never see in the tabloids or at an awards show: he earns more these days raising the fashion profile of high-net-worth individuals — minimum net worth deep in the nine figures — than any other work. “We’ve all learned that you have to diversify to really get to a place of financial freedom,” he said.

Zendaya is arguably Roach’s most fashionably famous client. The pair has worked together for over a decade since the actress’ Disney days. She has been a staunch advocate for Roach; as her star has risen, so has his. Their partnership has made clear what doors can open when a fashion profile is built strategically and with an authentic alignment: in addition to events and red carpets, he has styled her for campaigns ranging from Valentino to Smart Water to Lancôme.

Related Jobs:

Creative Production Assistant, Birger Christensen — Copenhagen, Denmark

Styling Coordinator, Neiman Marcus — Dallas, United States

Art Director, Banana Republic — San Francisco, United States

2. Why Kate Spade Doesn’t Need a Creative Director

It’s been 18 months since Kate Spade’s creative director exited. The brand isn’t looking for a new one, chief executive Liz Fraser tells BoF. The Tapestry-owned company, which saw sales increase 22 percent in the fiscal year ending in August, has instead hired two design veterans to help fill the role vacated by creative director Nicola Glass.

Jennifer Lyu, from Tory Burch, will be Kate Spade’s new head of design for leather goods and accessories. Tom Mora, a former creative director at Cole Haan, will be head of design for ready-to-wear, footwear, jewellery and everything else. Lyu and Mora will work alongside a newly created team of marketers and branding experts, a committee that would replace the role of a creative director. “This new structure enables the storytelling and the product to develop naturally together,” Fraser added.

Related Jobs:

Senior Associate SEM, Kate Spade — London, United Kingdom

Digital Product Manager, Tapestry — Shanghai, China

Senior Manager E-Commerce, Coach — Tokyo, Japan

3. The Ye and Adidas Conflict, Explained

Little could have prepared Adidas for the social media onslaught instigated by their top celebrity collaborator: Ye, the artist and designer formerly known as Kanye West, who has accused the company of effectively shutting him out of his namesake sneaker line. It’s hard to overstate how important the Yeezy brand is to Adidas. Since 2015, Ye has given the brand access to an audience it has struggled to engage on its own. The line, which runs until 2026, is no celebrity vanity project either, with nearly $2 billion in annual sales.

The damage control options for Adidas are limited because of Ye’s considerable bargaining power, experts said. Adidas could seek to terminate the Yeezy agreement if he is deemed to be in breach of his contractual obligations, respond to his allegations by publicly presenting its own version of the dispute, or appease Ye by giving him greater creative control, and work toward an extension of the valuable Yeezy deal beyond 2026.

Related Jobs:

Junior Graphic Designer, Joseph — London, United Kingdom

Head of Brand Content, Farfetch — Turati, Italy

Associate Art Director, Athleta — San Francisco, United States

4. The Rise of Video Has Fashion’s Content Machine Working Harder Than Ever

Consumers swapped magazines for social media and are now swapping photos for video. Fashion has little choice but to follow their lead. Creating video isn’t the same as producing photo shoots though. Video extends over time. You need more raw material. You need editing. You need sound.

If the future of social media is a combination of more video and more algorithmically driven content, where a post’s ability to grab viewers rather than who posted it is what brings it into users’ feeds, it is likely to pose real challenges for fashion brands, especially smaller ones. Not only will they have to produce enough content to keep up, but they’re also going to have to make sure that content is engaging enough that users will see it.

Related Jobs:

Production and Content Coordinator, Heat — London, United Kingdom

Senior Digital Art Director, Aeyde — Berlin, Germany

Content Creator and Social Media Manager, Anya Lust — Remote (United States)

5. Can Diesel Repeat Its Y2K Success?

Diesel’s relevance had been waning since the mid-2000s, […] as momentum was draining from the premium denim category, as well as the department stores and malls that had championed the category. The brand struggled to reverse the tide, and by 2019, its US subsidiary filed for bankruptcy protection.

Then came Y/Project’s designer [Glenn] Martens. […] While parent company OTB does not break out sales for individual brands, it cited progress on Diesel as a key driver of growth in 2021. Sales rose 16 percent year-on-year, and were flat from 2019. Not extraordinary given the large increases in sales seen by many competitors after the first year of the pandemic, but respectable considering the number of undesirable wholesale accounts Diesel had exited as a part of its repositioning.

Related Jobs:

Brand Graphic Designer, Maharishi — London, United Kingdom

Senior Graphic Designer, Mara Hoffman — New York, United States

Graphic Artist, Camilla and Marc — Sydney, Australia

6. The Great Fashion Show Boom

This year, luxury’s biggest brands came swinging out of lockdowns, with Dior staging a staggering eight runway shows since January 2022, up from seven during the same period in 2019. Chanel and Louis Vuitton have both turned out five this year. While top spenders are flown out and seated in the front row in the hopes that they’ll drop six figures on one collection, the content those very important customers and other attendees create reads as far more authentic than content conceived solely for the internet.

However, spectacular fashion shows typically cost millions of euros to produce, so the biggest brands have an advantage. It’s perhaps no surprise that Dior — which generated around $7 billion in sales in 2021, according to estimates, and is thought to be the fastest-growing megalabel over the past 12 months — has staged the most shows of any other during that same period.

Related Jobs:

Senior Manager Art Direction, Hugo Boss — Stuttgart, Germany

Creative Production Assistant, Birger Christensen — Copenhagen, Denmark

Social Media Content Director, Veronica Beard — New York, United States

7. Kim Kardashian and Dolce & Gabbana: A Match Made in Marketing Heaven

The thing industry people talk about when they talk about Dolce & Gabbana — besides the controversy they have sparked online in the past few years — is that their customer is happy and loyal. Over the past four decades, the designers have built an eager clientele that buys their beautifully constructed dresses season after season, fueling a robust ready-to-wear business that helps the label generate well over $1 billion a year, according to public records.

But the online attention that the brand garnered after throwing Kourtney Kardashian’s wedding to musician Travis Barker in May 2022 — for which they outfitted the family in a series of Dolce & Gabbana looks, and also staged the ceremony in their villa — inspired Dolce to want to do more, they said.

Related Jobs:

Creative Designer, Meng — London, United Kingdom

Director Global Creative Strategy, Tiffany & Co. — Milan, Italy

Assistant Art Director, Gap — San Francisco, United States

8. Why Brands Are Tapping Unconventional Partners for Big Collaborations

The emerging partnerships require a new kind of approach, with the balance of power shifting away from big brands. Instead, they are ceding agency to dictate the look and feel of projects to their new collaborators, whose youth culture insights, die-hard online communities and cultural cachet have empowered them to call the shots when big brands come knocking.

For example, instead of (or as well as) investing in a high-budget marketing campaign to tell consumers what to think, Nike invests money into a working relationship with a group like The Basement, whose core missions are youth empowerment and the promotion of underrepresented creatives — causes which benefit the Nike brand by association.

Related Jobs:

Team Lead Content Management, Zalando — Berlin, Germany

Creative Consultant, Mytheresa — Munich, Germany

Creative Project Lead, Ralph Lauren — New York, United States