Sometime in 2004, Minerva Portillo had a meeting with Terry Richardson in his downtown Manhattan studio.

Richardson was one of the most famous fashion photographers in the world, going on to work for the likes of Tom Ford, Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Yves Saint Laurent.

Portillo, 22 years old at the time, had just moved to New York from Spain and was excited for the next phase in her modeling career.

Richardson appeared enthusiastic at the idea of working with Portillo, but she left the meeting feeling perturbed, according to a lawsuit she filed Wednesday.

“During their meeting, Mr. Richardson wore nothing but a robe. Ms. Portillo was disturbed by this,” her lawyers wrote. “She tried to keep the meeting professional and kept her distance from Mr. Richardson while they looked through her portfolio together.”

After the meeting, Portillo expressed her trepidation to her agents at Trump Model Management — the modeling agency founded in 1999 by now-former-President Donald Trump — and told them that Richardson had worn only a robe, according to the lawsuit.

They waved away her distress, her suit alleges.

“Trump Model Management dismissed her concerns, telling her that such behaviour was commonplace and that given Mr. Richardson’s prominence and influence in the industry, Ms. Portillo should overlook his behaviour,” the lawsuit claims.

The agents booked a photoshoot with Richardson for that May, according to the suit. When she arrived at his studio, an employee offered a beverage that made her “feel dizzy, disoriented, and not fully in control of her body,” the lawsuit alleges.

During the photoshoot, the lawsuit alleges, Richardson instructed her to remove her clothing before forcing her to perform oral sex on him.

“She tried to push Mr. Richardson away and attempted to back away from him. But she was closely surrounded by Mr. Richardson’s employees, some of whom were cheering,” the lawsuit alleges. “Mr. Richardson had his hand on her head, keeping her in place.”

Richardson and his employees snapped photos while he sexually abused her, Portillo’s lawsuit says.

Portillo had another appointment with Richardson the next day, for a fashion brand, according to the lawsuit. She “attempted to tell an agent at Trump Model Management about the assault,” her lawsuit says, but the agency “insisted that she proceed with the appointment.”

Portillo, Richardson, and other members of the photography crew traveled in a van back to Manhattan from the shoot location. In the van, Richardson “unbuckled his pants, grabbed her head, and forced it towards his penis without her consent” before commanding her to perform oral sex, the lawsuit alleges, also while his staff took photos.

Portillo returned to Spain a week later, abandoning her modeling career, according to the lawsuit.

Richardson has faced numerous sexual assault accusations since the early 2000s and was effectively ousted from the fashion industry in 2017 amid the #MeToo movement. An attorney for Richardson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Portillo’s lawsuit.

Portillo had previously recounted her story in 2017, to Vogue Spain. She brought her new lawsuit in Manhattan federal court under the Adult Survivors Act, a New York law passed in the wake of the #MeToo movement that created a one-year window permitting accusers to bring civil sexual misconduct lawsuits that would otherwise be barred by the statute of limitations. The window for new lawsuits closes on Thursday.

In addition to Richardson, corporate entities related to Trump Model Management, which stopped operating in 2017, are named as defendants in the lawsuit. Attorneys representing those entities didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The lawsuit does not identify the particular agents who represented Portillo and booked the meetings with Richardson.

“What happened to Ms. Portillo was foreseeable and preventable, because she had shared her concerns about working with Mr. Richardson with Trump Model Management,” Aleix Cuadrado, a Spain-based attorney representing Portillo in the case, said in a statement.

Richardson published the photos allegedly depicting Richardson’s sexual assault in a photo gallery and a book, and sold at least one of them to a private collector, according to the lawsuit. The photos depict Portillo gripping Richardson’s penis, Portillo performing oral sex on him, and Richardson ejaculating on Portillo’s face while she wears his glasses. Richardson often photographed models wearing his glasses.

Portillo’s lawsuit says she signed a release form for the photos, but that she did not understand what the form said because her native language is not English.

The release form falsely states the photos “do not depict actual sexually explicit conduct,” according to the suit.

Portillo relied on her agents at Trump’s management company to handle release forms for her, the lawsuit says.

“There is a difference between provocative — but consensually made — art, and sexual assault,” Christine Dunn, another one of Portillo’s attorneys, said in a statement. “Ms. Portillo alleges that this was the latter, and Mr. Richardson did not have the rights to distribute the images.”

By Jacob Shamsian

Raymond Ltd., one of the world’s biggest producers of suit fabric, fell for the seventh day in Mumbai as the acrimonious separation between its billionaire chairman Gautam Singhania and his wife sparked uncertainty among investors.

The stock has tumbled 12 percent since Nov. 13 when Singhania announced separation from Nawaz Singhania, his wife of 32 years and a Raymond board member, erasing more than $180 million in market value. The shares fell as much 4.4 percent on Wednesday, set for the biggest drop since Oct. 25.

The Economic Times reported late Monday citing people in the know that Nawaz has sought 75 percent of Singhania’s $1.4 billion fortune as part of a settlement. A representative for the Raymond Group didn’t immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment.

“Uncertainty around the separation is weighing on the stock. Nobody knows what kind of impact it will have on the company,” said Varun Singh, an analyst at ICICI Securities Ltd. “Since the wife is a board member, this has become a corporate governance issue.”

Singh initiated coverage on the stock with a hold recommendation on Nov. 20. The company has seven buy and no sell ratings, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

By Alex Gabriel Simon

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Retailers aren’t the only ones looking to profit off the holidays. The end-of-year shopping rush is prime time for cyber attackers targeting shoppers and businesses, too.

The flood of marketing messages landing in busy and distracted shoppers’ inboxes is the perfect cover to try and get someone to click the wrong link or send over their information, as are the customer inquiries and complaints that inundate businesses.

“It does make the conditions right for greater levels of cybersecurity attacks, [from] the most complex ones all the way down to the most bare-bones types of attacks,” said Paul Caron, head of cybersecurity for the Americas at S-RM, an intelligence and cyber-security consultancy.

Those attacks are getting more expensive. In a new report that surveyed 600 C-suite and IT budget holders from large organisations in the US and UK, S-RM found the average cost of an incident grew 11 percent in 2023 compared to last year, reaching $1.7 million. Among the respondents, 63 percent said they’d experienced a serious incident in the past three years.

The worst cases can have gigantic costs. Hanesbrands was the victim of a ransomware attack in May 2022 that disrupted its global supply chain and left it unable to fulfil customer orders for three weeks. The hit to its net sales was approximately $100 million, it later revealed. The company recouped a small portion of the loss through insurance — about $20.6 million so far this year.

And the attacks aren’t only becoming more costly. As more shopping happens online and retailers collect more data, they’re increasing.

Retailers are generally dealing with large numbers of individual customers while holding onto sensitive information, such as credit card data. The scenario makes them attractive targets and creates numerous opportunities for criminals to try to trick someone into a misstep.

When an attacker is successful, the disruptions to employees can extend far beyond the IT department. In July, Estée Lauder confirmed that a hacker had breached its system and appeared to have stolen data, though it provided little detail on what data. The company said it took down some of its systems in response and began an investigation. Employees at Estée Lauder offices around the world said they were locked out of email and other key functions.

Retailers are taking steps to mitigate the problems. Of the industries S-RM surveyed, retail actually allocated the highest share of IT budgets to cybersecurity, though Caron pointed out the figure can be slightly deceiving.

“What we see unfortunately is that there’s an aggregate lower total investment made within that sector,” he said. “When you look at other sectors that are a little bit more regulated, the cybersecurity budget as part of the IT [budget] might be thinner, but the net pot of available resources is a lot higher.”

The amounts retailers devote to cybersecurity can vary greatly depending on their size. It might range from hundreds of thousands of dollars to tens of millions, Caron said. The costs include everything from security training for staff to technology like multi-factor authentication, firewalls, response solutions and more.

Part of the reason the problem continues growing is that cyber crime is getting more profitable, one expert previously told McKinsey and BoF. Criminals are becoming more sophisticated and will even specialise in different fields.

The advent of generative artificial intelligence is adding a new wrinkle, though it’s not always for the worse. While experts say it makes it easier for criminals to launch phishing scams that aim to get victims to share information or ransomware attacks that lock a company out of its systems until it pays up, it also offers a means of fortifying defences. IBM has noted the technology can speed up security processes and quickly spot threats by recognising patterns in large amounts of data.

S-RM holds a similar perspective. In its cyber security report, it predicted a surge of AI-enabled attacks but said the technology also gives security teams the ability to simplify previously complex tasks, allowing for capabilities like automating creation of scripts to analyse data.

Caron said there are some steps retailers should consider to bolster their overall cybersecurity. First, companies should be sharing information. If one retailer is seeing an uptick in attacks, there’s a strong likelihood its peers are as well, and they may be coming from the same attacker. By communicating with each other, companies stand to gain valuable intelligence at no cost.

Second is to have an instant response plan ready. Businesses need to decide beforehand who will be in charge of key activities like restoring backups and recovering data. They need to understand where their critical data resides and which systems and applications are affected. Working out these details after an attack has occurred can mean delays in getting the business back up and running, which may translate to millions of dollars in costs.

It’s better to be prepared, Caron said, noting the increasing frequency of cyber threats means “it’s not ‘if,’ it’s when it’s going to happen.”

Upstart online retailers Temu and Shein are drawing millions of window shoppers to their websites this holiday season, but they far lag market leader Amazon where it counts - turning those visits into actual sales.

Nine out of ten visitors to their websites were window shoppers, not buyers, according to SimilarWeb, a website data tracking firm.

Singapore-based Shein this year added kitchen mixers at $100, $10 bathroom holiday decorations and $6 headphones alongside clothing such as $13 dresses and $16 jeans. PDD Group’s Temu sells $9 dresses and $12 women’s shoes.

Shein’s website drew 28.6 million unique monthly visitors in October, up 7.25 percent from a year earlier, according to SimilarWeb. But visits to Shein’s website that resulted in actual transactions declined to 4.1 percent from 4.6 percent a year earlier.

Amazon trounces both online retailers with 56 percent of its 268 million unique monthly visits in October resulting in purchases, its data shows.

Temu, which launched in the US in September 2022, is offering deals for cheap goods for the holiday shopping season. It had 42 million unique monthly visitors in October 2023, more than four times the amount a year earlier. Only 4.5 percent of those resulted in actual transactions.

The additional eyeballs on the retail websites is thanks to aggressive marketing. Shein is ramping up holiday marketing in the US and Europe as it extends its reach and products on its platform. The company’s valuation rose to $90 billion after it acquired UK-based online retailer Missguided in October.

Shein increased its ad spend 60 percent in the first two weeks of November, compared to the same period a year earlier, according to data from marketing intelligence firm SensorTower. Its rival, Temu, doubled its ad spend within the same time frame, the data showed. SensorTower does not provide dollar amounts for ad spend.

In New York’s Times Square Shein in November launched a pop-up shop in the Forever 21 store, highlighting home goods and apparel along with its first Times Square billboard.

Shein has been able to trump fast-fashion incumbents Inditex’s Zara and H&M, with revenues reaching $24 billion in the first three quarters of this year, according to reports.

But the fast-fashion giant continues to face more challenging competition from other online marketplaces such as Temu and Amazon.

Melissa Minkow, director of retail strategy at information technology firm CI&T, said that online shoppers have an “inherent comfort level” with Amazon’s expansive product categories, shipping speeds and return policies compared to Shein and Temu.

At Amazon, which hosted a two-day Prime event in October, purchasing visits and unique visitors in the US both increased in October compared to a year earlier, according to SimilarWeb.

Amazon cut its spending on advertising for the holidays in early November compared to a year ago, but saw more user engagement than it did in 2022, according to SensorTower.

The competitive landscape continues to heighten as shoppers get closer to Black Friday.

Peter Pernot-Day, head of corporate strategy at Shein, said Shein has advised its marketplace sellers “to optimise their product listings” by “providing competitive pricing and keeping inventory up to date.”

By Arriana McLymore

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Why Shein Keeps Buying Its Rivals

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Again and again over the past two years, consumers defied predictions that they’ll stop spending. This time around, it might come true.

While analysts predict an uptick in sales from last year, the rate of growth will be slower and the overall volume of goods sold will likely be smaller. It’s a departure from the surprisingly resilient consumer economy seen in the US, fashion’s biggest market.

The US National Retail Federation forecasts holiday retail sales, defined as the period between November through the rest of the year, to grow between 3 percent and 4 percent this year, to about $960 billion, which accounts for inflation. That reflects a deceleration from last year’s 9 percent rise and 2021′s explosive 12.7 percent growth.

A modest increase will not be a reflection of heightened demand but rather an effect of continued inflation. In other words, shoppers will turn out this season and stomach the higher prices, but only because they have to. And they certainly won’t be treating themselves to extra gifts.

“Spending is going to be up, of course, because everything is more expensive,” said Rebecca Duval, retail analyst at Bluefin Research. “But if you look at it from a unit perspective, everything is down significantly. When I’m out and speaking to consumers, people are feeling it, the pinch of everything costing them so much.”

This new normal is already settling in. US retail sales in October fell 0.1 percent from the prior month, breaking a six-month growth streak during which the economy expanded nearly 5 percent, the fastest pace since 2021, largely driven by consumer spending. But shoppers now are finally seeing their savings dwindle and credit card debt accumulate as they start to reject sticker shock; consumer confidence dropped to a five-month low in October.

Retailers have reacted accordingly, by forecasting downward sales and aggressively marking down products to drive sales. Macy’s, for instance, expects its annual revenue to fall 6 percent to 7 percent this year; Target announced in its third-quarter earnings that it anticipates in-store sales in the fourth quarter to fall in the mid-single digits. Meanwhile, Burberry announced last week it won’t be able to meet its full-year revenue target if demand continues to slide on its current trajectory.

Meanwhile, Black Friday markdowns have begun early — a tactic to offload slow-moving merchandise. According to Adobe Analytics, discounts are already ramping up to break records, with an average of 25 percent markdown in apparel compared to 19 percent last year.

“Convincing people to pay up for things will be in the rearview,” said Simeon Siegel, analyst at BMO Capital Markets. “That was a blip through the pandemic.”

What can retailers expect this holiday season?

A number of forecasts project very little growth in spending after adjusting for inflation.

Shoppers will buy fewer items this year and seek out promotions, according to multiple consumer surveys. A Deloitte report found that while spending will rise about 14 percent compared to 2022, gifts lists are shorter, from nine presents to eight.

“Customers are factoring in inflation,” said Brian McCarthy, principal at Deloitte. “They’re saying, ‘Hey, I’m going to spend a lot more this year, I just know that’s going to get me less.’”

As a result, respondents also said they’ll be looking for promotional events, with 66 percent this year stating their intention to purchase during Black Friday weekend, compared to only 49 percent last year. McKinsey’s holiday survey, meanwhile, found that fewer people are planning to splurge on gifts this year: 35 percent versus 39 percent in 2022.

“People are heading into the new year thinking inflation is bad, interest rates are tough, there’s geopolitical conflict in the world, and that’s why consumers are so negative,” said Kelsey Robinson, senior partner at McKinsey. “They’re in betwixt, and their uncertainty is what’s keeping them from splurging.”

Who will be the winners?

In reaction to the sky high prices this year, shoppers are on the hunt for value — even if that means trading down.

This is evident by the stellar performance of off-price retailers TJX Companies, which owns TJ Maxx, TK Maxx in the UK and Marshalls stores, and Ross Stores Inc. TJX third-quarter sales rose 9 percent to $13.3 billion, the company reported Wednesday, while raising its full-year profit guidance. Ross, meanwhile, saw sales increase about 7 percent to $4.9 billion in the same period, and also projected strong holiday season earnings.

“Off-price is a value proposition so they might be in the best position right now,” said Duval. “Consumers are seeking value, so I think they’ll continue to reap the benefits.”

Personal care and beauty will also be strong categories this holiday season because these products are far more affordable compared to clothing, footwear or handbags, according to retail consultants. Mini-sized beauty products, for instance, have dramatically grown in popularity at stores like Sephora and Ulta.

Alongside off-price, resale companies might also be in a position of strength this holiday season as consumers look for deals. Sites like The RealReal, Fashionphile and even eBay allows users to filter by condition of products, including new with tags.

“You’re seeing so many brands launch reused sections on their websites, and I think that is a subcategory that will continue to grow this holiday season,” said Tierney Wilson, senior vice president at January Consulting.

How can brands improve their chances?

The holidays aren’t hopeless. Brands can convey a sense of value to consumers by emphasising quality over price, or other differentiated offerings, such as convenience or speed.

“It’ll be really important for brands to communicate to customers how it sticks out,” said Wilson.

“Its value could be saving me time, being able to order it last minute or browse online and the localised inventory is accurate so I can buy it in-store.”

It’s also important to be clear and concise in marketing materials, Wilson added. “Lean into one thing, and not be everything to everyone,” she said. “That way, you’re clear on who the target customer is.”

Any kind of targeted deal or promotion will go a long way. To boost sales as well as margins, brands should consider personalised promotions rather than offering discounts en masse, according to Robinson, of McKinsey.

By leveraging consumer purchase histories, retailers can identify for instance the customers who only purchase when there is a sale and customers who will transact regardless of price. Withholding discounts from the latter then would result in higher margins.

“Maybe I’ve purchased with you three times in the past, but if you gave me a promo this year, it would pull incremental sales from my wallet that was going toward another retailer,” said Robinison. “You have to test out where promo dollars will have the highest ROI.”

What’s ahead in 2024?

This year, retailers have been able to maintain heightened profit margins despite weaker sales, because transportation costs have plummeted since pandemic-era bottlenecks. Freight costs have dropped as much as 90 percent since 2022, and retailers from Gap Inc. and Macy’s to Costco and On Running have cited lower freight rates as a driver of year-over-year margin improvements.

But come next year, this tailwind will disappear, according to Duval, while consumer spending will likely continue to cool. “There’s a little bit of magic going on right now and it’s actually worse than what people realise,” she said. “That’s going to be a big reveal next year.”

On the other hand, the consumer economy has been far more resilient than anticipated. The much-feared recession has not happened, and economists agree that the likelihood of a recession in 2024 is slim. Goldman Sachs named the odds at 15 percent in a report published Thursday.

As inflation has moderated in recent months, signs are pointing to the so-called soft landing that the Federal Reserve has been aiming for, economists say, and this could result in interest rate cuts as early as next year.

There’s always a lag between inflation moderation and the perception of shoppers, according to Deloitte’s McCarthy. This means that while consumer sentiment is at a low point right now, it will recover in time as long as inflation continues to ease.

“As long as employment stays strong and inflation levels out, customer sentiment which is how they perceive the economy and how they want to spend will also improve,” he said. “Starting next year, customers should feel more upbeat.”