NEW YORK — The animal rights protester who tried, and failed, to walk the Coach runway with a sign reading “Let Cows Live” could have chosen any number of catwalks to disrupt this season. Why this one? It was actually the rare event that did not feature a floor-sweeping leather coat. And what to make of this desire for swagger? Does it portend a yearning for protection, armour for a terrifying world?

Coach staged its show at the James B. Duke House, an Upper East Side mansion that once belonged to Doris Duke’s family. The press dubbed Doris “the Million Dollar Baby.” She inherited the 32-room house when she was fourteen years old. In 1958, the building was donated to New York University.

Had it remained a private residence, you can imagine a feisty young woman sweeping down the majestic staircase in one of Coach’s vastly oversized pullovers — maybe the yellow one with the duck on the front? If she is sick of wearing a long leather overcoat, she could trade it for Coach’s fringe suede jacket, more reasonably priced, surely, than the western wear on the Vuitton runway in Paris last January. Whatever she chooses, she needn’t bother to muck up her own combat boots; Coach appears ready to provide this princess with artfully pre-scuffed footwear.

A plethora of experimental techniques and fabrics were pressed into service at Tory Burch’s show, in the grand hall of the New York Public Library: Heat-sealed seams! Nylon, a distant cousin of a shower cap! These were employed in the creation of an unbending faux-croc suit, and a tiny swirly tutu dress; and, for comic relief, a couple of nutty dresses made of tinsel raffia. Merry Christmas! An elongated version of the handbag Burch named after Lee Radziwill was presumably meant to convey an aura of upper-crust hauteur.

If you were willing to schlep to the Brooklyn Navy Yard in the snow, Gabriela Hearst at least rewarded you with a lavish buffet. The floor was painted red, and we sat on red cubes as the first look appeared which was — bingo! — yet another long black coat, this time in shearling, but with leather to come. There was so much sheepskin on the runways this season, and a lot of the time it was worked so that the furry side showed, that it seemed as if we might be inching closer to that anathema, the fur coat, and perhaps expressing a longing to rehabilitate this exiled outerwear.

The yen to don something fuzzy next winter — throw that puffer in the trash! — was likewise on display at Michael Kors, who salted his audience with Kors-dressed celebrities, including Blake Lively in a giraffe-print calf-hair balmacaan. A pale pink coat of curly lamb could be tossed over one of Kors’ lacy slip dresses, but would be sexier hanging open, revealing a tank undershirt and low-slung trousers. The show took place in the original Barneys on 17th street, a location suffused with nostalgia for many in the audience. This was a store that stocked retail dreams; now it is a great white empty whale in Chelsea. When Bobby Short, once the resident performer at the Café Carlyle on Madison Avenue, sang “I Happen to Like New York” on the soundtrack as the models took their final walk, you were seduced, if only for a moment, by the idealised city that still mesmerises Kors, a place where women in stilettos — because they have a car and driver! — live impeccable impossible lives in sequinned shifts.

There is no getting away from those Capote swans. If they were not gliding down a runway at Michael Kors, they were literally opening the show at Batsheva. Molly Ringwald, who plays Joanna Carson on the influential mini-series, was the first out of the box, clad in a hooded black widow-ish dress. This was only one example of Batsheva’s credo, a kind of droll bohemianism: Little House on the Prairie meets Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. But then again, who doesn’t like a slouchy sequin capelet slipping off one shoulder or a leopard frock that has the audacity to be trimmed with tulle?

Whispers turned to screams: Beyoncé in the house! Beyoncé! Not just Bey, but her sister and mom trekked to Bushwick for the Luar show, which was the celebrity get of all time and left all other attempts at star-studded front-rows in its rearview mirror. The Knowles were in attendance to see Solange’s son walk the runway, and there he was, in a leather suit of vast proportions over a white shirt and cravat — a new kind of subversive black tie. Luar always attracts a wildly enthusiastic crowd, and this night it hit new heights of hysteria, threatening to undermine the reason we were ostensibly there: to see the clothes.

From what could be gathered from the models sprinting by in the semi-blackness, the collection was a revisionist take on “metrosexual”— a further exploration of the notion of Executive Realness that Luar continues to investigate. The designer’s trademark massive shoulders, squared and ready for boardroom battles, were given Elizabethan puffs; leather jackets had wide open bejewelled necklines; a skirt suit, shown on a woman but also fine for a guy, was reimagined in denim. To balance the colossal silhouettes, there were fur legwarmers so capacious they could be mistaken for boots, and furry mitts to render your hands chic but useless.

Centre stage at Thom Browne’s fractured fairy tale was occupied by a figure thirty feet high, with a model’s face and a tree branch growing out of its head. This terrifying character wore a massive garment with a slit, from which emerged a quartet of Browne-clad kiddies. A raven cackled, and Carrie Coons, who plays the parvenu Mrs. Russell on The Gilded Age, read Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” as models in bizarre but irresistible ensembles ambled by. If there was no lack of Browne’s usual fantasias, there were also clothes that surprised with their wearability: a trench shyly signalled its signature striped lining; a small gold cardigan topped a huge raven-printed skirt; a Poiret-esque coat closed with big bows.

At the end of the affair, Browne came out carrying a giant red heart for his partner, Met curator Andrew Bolton. Coons’ anguished “Nevermore” ceased, and the soundtrack shifted to “At Last.” Beyoncé, who, for better or worse, will be remembered as the queen of this particular New York fashion week, performed this song at the 2009 presidential inauguration. If you closed your eyes you could still see Barack and Michelle dancing to it: a bittersweet reminder of what once was, and a faint hope for the rough times ahead.

Aurelius, the German restructuring specialist which bought The Body Shop last year and has now put it into administration, had previously broken up two other UK retailers. Staff at the ethical cosmetics group fear it will be next, with more than 2,200 jobs and 200 stores at risk.

Aurelius, a specialist in distressed companies, has been active in the UK for some time. It bought the parent of the Lloyds Pharmacy chain in 2022, TV shopping business Ideal Shopping Direct in 2018 and the European and UK arm of retailer and office supplies business Office Depot in 2017, and went on to break up all three businesses.

But it has also held on to some of its acquisitions. It acquired trainer store Footasylum in 2022 and still owns it, and it also owns tile retailer CTD, which bought up 13 Tile Giant branches last year.

Aurelius has yet to set out its plan for The Body Shop. But the group’s track record suggests administration may not necessarily mean oblivion.

Based in Munich, it was set up by Austrian entrepreneur Dirk Markus and German Gert Purkert in 2005 with initial funding of €500,000 (£425,000).

Markus, a keen racing cyclist who currently lives in London, started his career as a management consultant at McKinsey and then co-founded Mercateo, an online business procurement platform, which was sold to energy firm E.On in 2000.

Purkert, a fellow McKinsey alumnus, co-founded equinet, a German advisory firm for small and medium-sized businesses.

Aurelius has been operating in the UK for several years, but hit the headlines after it bought McKesson UK, the parent of the Lloyds Pharmacy chain, for £477m in what the group called the “biggest deal in its history”.

At the time, the chemist chain employed more than 2,500 pharmacists at almost 1,300 pharmacies. The pharmacy business was then gradually dismantled.

In January last year Lloyds announced the closure of more than 200 outlets in Sainsbury’s supermarkets. That was followed by a year-long process of disposing of high street pharmacies to local independents. The group’s private travel clinic company MASTA was sold to Irish-led travel group Nomad Travel in May last year.

The rump of the Lloyds retail business was put into liquidation in January this year, owing about £30m to trade creditors and more than £250m to other parts of the company. Aurelius still owns the parent company, now called Hallo Healthcare, which runs an online doctors’ service and wholesale pharmacy distribution service for NHS hospitals and others.

The pattern was not dissimilar to Aurelius’s tactics after buying the European arm of Office Depot, which had more than 100 stores and provided office supplies to over 100,000 businesses under the Viking brand.

The business was gradually broken up in a series of transactions, with a large chunk of the wholesale arm sold to French Raja group, before the rump was put into liquidation with debts of more than £1m in 2021.

Ideal Shopping Direct was also broken up, with its Create & Craft channel and Freeview number and flagship Ideal World teleshopping businesses going to separate new owners.

Insolvency experts say Aurelius could simply be slimming down The Body Shop in order to buy it back and run it more profitably. Whatever the plan, the first steps have been about conserving cash.

The Body Shop at Home, a home selling arm which employed more than 100 people and had thousands of freelance sellers across Europe, has already been closed.

The company has also refused to pay more than £3m in long-term bonuses promised to current and former workers – despite the fact that they were supposedly protected by being written into conditions of the sale by The Body Shop’s former owner Natura. Payment of the bonuses is now in the hands of administrators.

Last month The Body Shop’s loss-making European business was separated off, with Aurelius telling staff and media it had been sold to an unnamed “family office”. No further information has been disclosed.

Filings in Europe suggest the buyer is a group named Alma24, which has close links to Aurelius via director and majority shareholder Friedrich Trautwein. He has been a director of companies linked to a number of Aurelius-owned groups including Autostore and book wholesaler Bertram group. He was appointed interim chief executive of Ideal Shopping Direct under Aurelius’s ownership.

Aurelius said it was not a shareholder in Alma24.

Putting the UK arm into administration can be used, say insolvency experts, as a way to cut costs at head office, warehouses and stores, with industry insiders expecting up to half of its 200 UK outlets to close.

Doing this via administration means redundancy payments and lease obligations are handled by administrators and are not a cost to Aurelius.

Meanwhile, documents filed at Companies House show that on 30 January, Alma24 took out a charge, a form of financial guarantee, using as collateral a list of Body Shop properties including its Littlehampton head office and stores on Oxford Street and Manchester’s Trafford centre. This is understood to be linked to providing security over completion of the European deal.

It is understood Aurelius is also a direct creditor of The Body Shop, which could make it difficult for rival interested parties to outbid the German firm when the UK shops come up for sale. The firm is understood to be the largest secure creditor, putting it in prime position to buy back a downsized Body Shop.

A source close to Aurelius said it “wouldn’t be against that option being put forward” and saw “a lot of potential in a restructured business”.

Andrew Pepper, a restructuring expert at ReSolve, said Aurelius was likely to be “slimming down the shops to create a right-sized business fit for the future” with more focus on selling online.

He said the UK business was likely to survive as it was vital to supporting the international network of franchise businesses.

“What will they sell to the world if they don’t have the flagship business? They still believe in the Englishness of it. The real value is in its global presence.”

By Sarah Butler

Alastair McKimm, the editor-in-chief of British fashion and culture publication i-D, announced on Wednesday that he is leaving the title. In an Instagram post showcasing his many i-D covers, he thanked his staff and collaborators for their support during his five year tenure.

Under McKimm’s leadership, i-D magazine balanced commercial success with British cool.

The news comes at the heels of model turned entrepreneur Karlie Kloss’s acquisition of the magazine in November 2023. She currently serves as the brand’s chief executive and chairperson of Bedford Media, the magazine’s parent. The title was previously owned by Vice Media.

According to a note sent to staff that was obtained by BoF, McKimm said he truly believes his departure is “the best thing to do for i-D, Karlie and [his] own sanity.”

”I’m truly grateful that Karlie invested in i-D’s legacy,” he wrote. “I’m behind her 100% in what she wants to do and to that end I feel that stepping aside and opening the door for a new team is the way to go.”

McKimm will continue his work as a stylist and design consultant with clients including Marc Jacobs and Gucci.

A successor has not yet been named.

Learn more:

Karlie Kloss Is Acquiring i-D Magazine

With the acquisition, the model will become i-D’s CEO.

VF Corp, the owner of the North Face, Vans and Timberland brands, said on Tuesday it will appoint one new board member and select a second with input from activist investor Engaged Capital.

Engaged, which has a 1.3 percent stake in VF, has been pushing for board representation and further restructuring since disclosing its position in the company late last year.

Caroline Brown, who worked at investment firm Closed Loop Partners and was previously chief executive officer at Donna Karan International, will join the board immediately.

The company will also find another independent director in the near term, a choice that will be mutually agreed on with Engaged.

One of VF’s 12 existing directors will also not run for re-election at the company’s annual shareholder meeting later this year. The company has not yet announced who this director will be.

Brown was among the candidates the company was already looking at independently of Engaged, two people familiar with the matter said, declining to be identified because the discussions were private.

“Caroline is highly respected in the apparel industry, with a proven track record of turning around, scaling and transforming global brands, and her insights will be valuable as the company continues to execute its Reinvent strategy,” board chair Richard Carucci said in a statement.

Engaged, run by hedge fund veteran Glenn Welling, has pressed VF to cut costs and explore strategic alternatives, including selling its non core brands.

VF has embarked on restructuring efforts under chief executive Bracken Darrell, who took the position in July 2023 and previously led computer peripherals maker Logitech International. He has laid off staff and cut costs.

By Svea Herbst-Bayliss; Edited by Edwina Gibbs.

Learn more:

What Is VF Corp.’s Plan for Vans and Its Other Struggling Brands?

Activist investors are demanding big changes at the fashion conglomerate, which also owns The North Face, Supreme, Timberland and other brands.