The Business of Fashion
Agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice for the global fashion community.
Agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice for the global fashion community.
THE CHEAT SHEET
What Happens to Luxury When Tourists Stay Home
Tiffany & Co storefront | Source: Shutterstock
For years, luxury apparel and accessories brands have relied on tourists to drive growth, even on their home turf. Tourists from Asia and Europe pack flashy Manhattan flagships and take bus tours to outlet malls. Or they did, at least. Tourist visits to the US were down 1.9 percent in the first five months of the year, a decline driven by a steep drop in visitors from China. The impact was first felt late last year, but has accelerated over the last few months as the tariff fight took hold, with Macy's and Ralph Lauren among the companies blaming weak tourism volumes for poor US sales. Tiffany, which reports earnings this week, has been especially vocal on the subject, and what they say about Chinese visitors to US stores in particular will be worth watching. The outlook is not good, as China has allowed the yuan to weaken against the dollar, making visits to the US more expensive, and on Friday escalated the trade war further with new tariffs on US imports.
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The Bottom Line: Savvy brands saw the decline coming and invested in stores and e-commerce in tourists' home countries. Tiffany is one of those brands; the company is bullish on sales in China itself, even if fewer Chinese are shopping in its stores abroad.
Fashion’s Climate Pact Takes Shape
François-Henri-Pinault | Credit: Carole Bellaiche
The Bottom Line: Though many of the Pact's signatories will attempt to meet their goals by producing more, sustainably, the clearest path toward meeting the agreement's goals involves the much more painful decision to produce less.
Fashion's Documentary Boom
Chiara Ferragni stars in a documentary about her life debuting at the Venice Film Festival | Source: Instagram/@chiaraferragniunposted
The Bottom Line: Ferragni's documentary is something of a wild card. She's at the height of her fame, but whether Ferragni's 17 million Instagram followers will sit through a feature-length documentary like they do her 20-second Stories is another question.
COMMENT OF THE WEEK
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Saint Laurent Men's Spring/Summer 2020 runway show in Malibu, California | Source: Getty
"People are complaining about the carbon expenditures from air travel?! I'm all for holding companies supremely accountable for their environmental impact and am happy to see that we're starting to get somewhere, but that's ... a slippery slope of hyperbolic environmentalism." @esperbeats, commenting on "Gucci and Saint Laurent Face Uphill Battle to Get Green."
SUNDAY READING
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