Last month, many of fashion’s biggest players descended on Copenhagen for the industry’s flagship sustainability summit.

In the 15 years since the event first launched, sustainability has moved from the fringes to the core of fashion executives’ agendas. Every sizeable apparel and fashion player on the planet has formulated some form of sustainability strategy and every serious CEO has committed to climate targets. The industry has embarked on the journey.

But that’s the extent of the good news. Despite many well-intended efforts and small successes, apparel consumption has nearly doubled since 2009; the industry’s emissions, resource consumption and pollution has grown alongside it. Worse, time is running out. The year 2030 — which most companies have pegged as a magical deadline by which point change should start to materialise — is only 11 seasons away.

But at a moment when efforts need to be accelerating, one global crisis after another has sapped executive focus, drained corporate budgets and eroded the prospect that consumers might drive change. With even the luxury boom seemingly on pause, securing the next quarter has taken precedence over strategic long-term decisions for many companies.

Suppliers, start-ups and activists increasingly fear the current unclear economic climate could lead to a “hibernation of efforts,” where budgets are frozen and projects continue but do not accelerate. In effect, the industry is on track to throw over its values to secure more immediate returns.

Small wonder then that many presenters and panelists in Copenhagen pinned their hopes on the mighty arm of regulation to move the needle where companies on their own have not — a fundamental shift in narrative compared to even five years ago, when the industry insisted that self-regulation would be the preferable, more efficient and faster way of achieving results.

I agree that we need regulators to act, but have my doubts that regulation on its own will be effective enough.

While there are many bills forthcoming from the European Union to the US, the legislative process is slow and the planet doesn’t have time to waste. Elections in Europe have just delivered a more right-leaning parliament, less friendly to ambitious climate policies. Earlier this month, New York’s state legislature ended its session for the year without passing a landmark fashion-focused bill. Even as new policies are enacted, there remain questions over how effectively they will be enforced and concerns that compliance costs and complexity could distract from broader progress.

In short, the wait for regulation risks becoming just another smokescreen to disguise, delay and excuse industry inaction at a time when it needs to rapidly accelerate.

Treating it as such would be a mistake that ignores the substantial business threats presented by future climate-change induced shocks. Indeed, change at this stage will require some brand frontrunners to push the industry faster and further than even policymakers are demanding.

In the current economic climate especially, that will require visionary leadership. But fashion’s biggest brands at least have the means to make a difference. These “super winners” accrued billions of dollars in profits through the pandemic that should allow them to invest in leaner times. Many of them are majority owned by individuals and families with enough wealth and power to free them from the short-term tyranny of quarterly results and enable longer-term thinking.

These dominant players should not only feel responsibility for the industry and the planet, but should also see the strategic opportunity in being first and fast movers; they could determine standards, educate and engage consumers, and set the bar for competition.

By contrast, maintaining the status quo will undoubtedly bring fashion drama it isn’t prepared for. Dangerous may be too delicate a word for the fallout from postponing action in hopes that technical solutions will appear and scale with lightning speed to massively reduce impact and emissions. Hockey stick plans hardly ever work, as top managers should know.

If the industry’s biggest players continue on this short-sighted path, they are likely in for a nasty shock. Not only because regulators will ultimately force them to act anyway, but also because fierce competition will arrive, as it has in other markets, from disruptive players that outgun incumbents on both their appeal to consumers and sustainability. The automotive industry, which deals with significantly more complex products and operations, should be a warning. There, Chinese competitors have taken a significant share of the electric vehicle market because European laggards thought that they could stretch timelines.

Indeed, it is past due for fashion to start “walking the talk” on sustainability. At this point, it had better start to run.

Dr. Achim Berg is a fashion and luxury industry expert who has advised top executives for more than 24 years. He was co-editor of the State of Fashion report series from 2016 until 2023. He is working on a book about the future of fashion.

The views expressed in Op-Ed pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Business of Fashion.

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At The Business of Beauty Global Forum 2024, the second edition of the annual event held at Stanly Ranch in Napa Valley, California, industry leaders, founders, retailers and investors were brought together to discuss how marketplaces are an increasingly dominant channel in the retail mix.

“A major concern with direct-to-consumer brands from the jump was that you were going to cannibalise the demographic you were selling to if you consider a marketplace,” said Front Row’s marketplace partnership VP of brand strategy, Alex Carmody, in her opening remarks on stage in conversation with BoF’s associate director of content strategy, Alice Gividen. “But, post-Covid we know that Walmart, Amazon and other major marketplaces are where customers are spending time, making marketplaces a key stepping stone.”

Indeed, more than 35 percent of all online purchases are made on a marketplace, according to Wunderman Thompson research — a figure that could reach 60 percent by 2027. This shift forms part of an increasingly complex e-commerce landscape. How customers engage with brands in 2024 has been transformed by multitasking across channels, creating a 32-hour day for the average American — with 13 hours spent using tech and media, according to Activate Consulting’s Technology and Media Outlook 2024 report.

While the marketplaces that are designed to benefit from this consumer behaviour are growing, digital marketing costs, economic uncertainties and logistical pressures have driven up the cost of doing business— impacting the effectiveness and profitability of wholly DTC business models. Meanwhile, TikTok has experienced rapid ascension as both a key social platform and a search engine in its own right.

As a global commerce accelerator, Front Row supports its partners in areas such as brand strategy, digital marketing, content creation, business intelligence and end-to-end retail management across major marketplaces. Its clients include Rare Beauty, Sephora, Ouai, Kosas, Glow Recipe, Summer Fridays, Youth to the People, and Dr. Dennis Gross Skincare.

Below, BoF shares Carmody’s key insights on how marketplaces can be utilised as a route to core consumer cohorts.

Create feedback loops from marketplace data

AC: Customer behaviour on marketplaces is completely different to what we see and track in a brick-and-mortar beauty retail space. One reason is because customers are coming on to marketplaces and not just purchasing beauty products. They are purchasing apparel, items for their home — anything you could think of in addition to beauty products. So when we look at shopping habits on these marketplaces, we have a holistic view of consumers which can help beauty brands really get to grips with their audience demographics and test new cohorts too.

Within Amazon, Walmart and other major marketplaces, the insights we can pull from review data is hugely unique and valuable. It’s where brands can discover, for instance, if consumers are using your product in a different way to its intended use and can act accordingly. This kind of insight is another example of the stepping stones towards growth — Amazon makes a bit more sense if you consider it as a supplement to your existing D2C presence rather than something that will cannibalise that channel.

Leverage AI offerings to create commercial shortcuts

AC: What we’re starting to see within marketplaces is the chance to apply artificial intelligence — there are many different avenues you can go down in order to utilise it. For beauty, where seeing and testing products in-store has always been so key, there is a lot of opportunity to help customers learn more about products remotely.

Gen-Z and Gen Alpha are bypassing Google and going straight to Amazon to directly search for brands.

What excites me are the shortcuts that AI can create. AI-generated models, for instance, which could personalise the shopping experience to ensure products are [accurately] shown, which marketplaces are testing right now. Another example is, if a brand is looking to build up their Amazon or Walmart businesses, they can use AI to create optimised listings from scratch to generate more cut-through and build their brands. Beauty businesses should be asking, “how can I scale my business more quickly by utilising this technology? And what can work for my customer base?”

Consider marketplaces as search engines

AC: TikTok is an interesting example of how social content is directly connected to those major marketplaces. Gen-Z and Gen Alpha will encounter a product on TikTok and while they will do some research on DTC websites, they are bypassing Google and going straight to Amazon to directly search for the brand. As a result of that shift, we’ve seen an increase in branded searches within Amazon as well as Walmart of more than 86 percent.

This is a marked shift away from the height of the pandemic, where customers were looking more broadly at skincare and beauty concerns, rather than leading with brand search.

Amazon makes a bit more sense if you consider it as a supplement to your existing DTC presence.

This shopping behaviour should also be considered within the early stages of brand [marketing]. Take influencer marketing, for instance. Beauty brands have to play in that space — but, even then, we should be thinking about who is the perfect fit for driving customers where we need them to go? If we know consumers are bypassing Google and heading to Amazon — how does that impact influencer marketing? What kind of ads are going to resonate with that customer?

Embrace evolving partnership models across marketplaces

AC: There are significant innovations happening within partnership models being offered across marketplaces. The biggest platforms out there have done significant research to understand why they struggle to onboard premium brands onto their platforms. The result of that research has been offerings like Amazon first-party versus Amazon third-party relationships, which give brands more flexibility over how product is sold. There are also now developed subcategories for pretty much every area of beauty to entice brands to play in these spaces.

One area of growth is leveraging marketplaces to engage a cold audience from another retail channel. If people are adding beauty products to cart and not checking out, we can look at customer data to understand why that might be happening and work to actively re-engage them as they spend time across marketplaces. When brands segment out their demographics, we see less resistance to marketplaces — it becomes a much more controlled experience. And marketplaces today are increasingly asking how to put their brands first because so much education is being done off-channel.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

This is a sponsored feature paid for by Front Row as part of a BoF partnership.

Investors are not the best at predicting fashion trends. Birkenstock’s initial public offering was panned, with the sandal maker’s preferred pricing of $46 a share viewed as “reckless” given that consumers might get tired of strappy footwear at any time; since then the stock has risen 45 percent as sales rose 20 percent last year. Meanwhile, Dr Martens shares soared in 2021 on their debut, with the brand valued at roughly $5 billion; today its market capitalisation is one-fifth that.

Golden Goose, which is expected to start trading on the Milan bourse on Friday, has the benefit of learning from its predecessors’ mistakes. Demand was strong for the company’s shares last week, but only after it priced them at €9.50 to €10.50 apiece, implying a roughly $2 billion valuation. Earlier this year, top shareholder Permira had reportedly been angling for north of $3 billion.

More importantly, the brand is setting itself up to be more than a one-hit wonder – or, as brands from Levi’s to Moncler have done, keep customers hooked by endlessly iterating on the hero product. Luxury sneakers are a crowded category, and demand is uncertain amid a broader downturn in high-end fashion. But expensive sneakers mostly exist as extensions of luxury brands; they might occupy a few tables in a Gucci store, or share a wall with the rest of the footwear range at Louis Vuitton. At Golden Goose’s 200 locations, they’re the main attraction. Golden Goose is leveraging this advantage with in-store customisations such as graffiti or hand distressing, the sort of flourishes that encourage repeat visits and can’t easily be duped.

Golden Goose is also ramping up its marketing efforts – pitching itself as a “cultural brand” like Louis Vuitton or Moncler. Collaborations and performances with Native American activist Quannah Chasinghorse, architect Fabio Novembre and K-pop musician Sunmi could help forge connections with niche communities and tell stories about something other than shoes. That will also reduce the brand’s reliance on mainstream stars like Taylor Swift choosing to lace up a pair of distressed sneakers to drive hype.

So far Golden Goose’s strategy has propelled a brand many dismissed as a flash in the pan to a €500 million a year business. The question now is whether customers will come back for a second pair. The brand says it has a healthy number of repeat purchases, but the key to long-term success is whether this formula will work in new markets, and new products, such as handbags.

Elsewhere This Week

Men’s shows continue in Milan, with Gucci on Monday having another chance to win over sceptics of the brand’s direction under Sabato De Sarno. On Tuesday, Louis Vuitton will top off the first day of Paris Men’s week, where attendees will need to add navigating their way through preparations for next month’s Olympics to the usual logistical challenges.

The Week Ahead wants to hear from you! Send tips, suggestions, complaints and compliments to brian.baskin@businessoffashion.com.

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Subscribe to the BoF Podcast here.

Background:

As a self-styled “image architect,” Law Roach has earned global recognition for the red carpet looks he has created for some of the most famous — and most photographed — women in the world.

But in 2022, when he suddenly announced his retirement on Instagram, writing “If this business was just about the clothes I would do it for the rest of my life but unfortunately it’s not! The politics, the lies and false narratives finally got me! You win… I’m out.”

While Roach continues to work with top clients Celine Dion and Zendaya — he was the mastermind behind Zendaya’s tennis-inspired “Challengers” press tour earlier this year — he’s also pursuing his entrepreneurial ambitions. Later this year, he will launch a new online learning platform to train the next generation of stylists.

“It was hours and hours of me talking with a script writer and being recorded to get out all my processes, from the way I set up a room to style and the psychology of choosing the right dress. So it’s super comprehensive and I’m super proud of it. And we’re launching it with me as the very first instructor.”

This week, on the BoF Podcast, Roach joins me to trace his career right from the beginning when he was selling thrifted clothes from the trunk of his friend’s car in the South Side of Chicago and to exclusively share the details of his new online learning platform and what he hopes people will learn from it.

Key Insights:

• Roach’s first memories of fashion are from his childhood in Chicago. “My first runway show was church on Sunday morning, watching those women with the hats and the outfits, but high fashion had always been something that was very aspirational but also seen very unattainable at the same time.” He then began his career selling vintage pieces from the trunk of a friend’s car before moving to a brick-and-mortar storefront. “That turned into a revenue stream for me and which then turned into a boutique, which turned into Kanye West coming in one day,” he said. That celebrity attention led to “global recognition about this little store in Chicago.”
• Roach has worked with his most high-profile client, Zendaya, since she was a teenager. Back then, he had trouble finding brands that were willing to dress her, which forced him to get creative. “She became one of the best dressed, most looked at stars on the red carpets and had not even worn any of these brands. So at that point I was like, ‘I kind of don’t need you.’ We had just worked so hard to make her this thing that everybody wanted without using the traditional tools of getting there,” he shared.
• With his new online learning platform, Roach wants to encourage greater representation and open up opportunities in the industry. “Ours is a comprehensive collegiate level, educational, educational coursework. Everything that I’ve used to become who I am is in there.”
• Despite the various challenges in his career, Roach’s unwavering self-belief has carried him to where he is today. “No matter how many doors are closed, no matter how many times people ask me to get out of my seat at a fashion show, no matter how many times people say no, I came to L.A. to be considered the best or one of the best, and there was no way that anybody could deter me from that. I really, honestly believed in myself.”

Additional Resources:

• The Business of Being Law Roach: The celebrity stylist has built a business that goes well beyond the red carpet, from magazine covers to judging reality television competitions and getting billionaires seated at couture shows. He spoke with BoF about his approach to building a multi-hyphenate empire.
• Black Stylists Form Collective for Support and Advocacy: Co-founded by Law Roach, Jason Rembert, and Lacy Redway, The Black Fashion & Beauty Collective will serve as a kind of “black glam union” for behind-the-scenes creatives.
• What Makes a Red Carpet Moment in 2024: The race to dress fashion’s biggest stars has gotten tighter — and brands are deploying fresh, social media-friendly tactics to generate buzz.

Welcome back to Haul of Fame, the weekly beauty roundup of new products, new ideas and a sustained shoutout to Sabrina Carpenter.

Included in today’s issue: Boots, CFCL, Dime, Gisou, Glossier, Grown Alchemist, Isle of Paradise, Jenny Patinkin, Laneige, Osāna, Prada Beauty, Saltair, Savor Beauty, Solawave, U Beauty, Westman Atelier and National Public Radio.

But first

It’s all happening.

After decades of music acts turning summer into their own personal tour season, beauty brands are following suit. Fittingly, it was a pop star Ariana Grande, who really sparked the trend, with her R.E.M. Beauty tour, which made stops in Paris and Los Angeles, this spring. It included Instagram photo set-ups, product testing stations and a chance to meet the future Glinda herself.

But Grande has her own movie tour for “Wicked” gearing up, which means other brands are stepping up to the mic in her stead. On June 12, Charlotte Tilbury took over Sephora in Herald Square, Manhattan and Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. On June 14 and 15, Westman Atelier is holding a meet-and-greet for their new blush at 10 Nordstrom locations, including stores in Oregon, Tennessee and Phoenix. And Chantecaille Beauty, is hyping its Just Skin tinted moisturiser with a pop-up in SoHo, New York, plus summer visits to London, Hong Kong and Seoul.

The New York event, which takes place on June 15, will be held in a converted Airstream, with a live floral installation and makeup artists matching Just Skin shades with complexions in real time. But Chantecaille could make pretty videos and shade-matching tutorials on TikTok. Why the schlep for some added face-time with clients? “We want to convert the beauty-obsessed person who may not know us,” said Chantecaille CMO, Julia Frankenberger, noting that potential buyers “need to feel and touch” formulas to fully appreciate their quality and pigment payoff. “We also want to pique the interest of that chic New York woman or chic visitor.”

Also gearing up for the road is haircare line Ceremonia. They’re on a “Guava Summer” tour at Sephora through June 29, which takes the brand to California, New York, Florida, and Puerto Rico.

Candid interactions are the big benefit of these summer beauty tours, especially for mid-size labels that know building relationships is key to creating a sustainable revenue stream. Meeting customers where they’re at — as those customers are strolling through wealthy parts of cool cities — is a brilliant way to conjure the “authentic” experience that so many beauty companies claim to foster with their fans. It’s the “Omigod, how funny, I just bumped into her!” of branding.

Ceremonia founder Babba Rivera added that meeting customers is often phase one of new product development. “We love hearing our customers’ hair concerns, and the questions they ask,” she said. “These conversations are quantitative inputs that we incorporate into everything we do the rest of the year, including product development, kits and marketing campaigns.”

Chantecaille is currently at 650 beauty counters, including those at Bergdorf Goodman and Bluemercury. They’ve got about 250,000 Instagram followers. (Frankly, it’ll likely have more once its social channels feature a wider range of skin tones.) Ceremonia has a slightly smaller footprint, albeit with a “cool” factor that helps. In both cases, their formulas are excellent.

It’s telling, then, that they want to go back to basics: meeting fans one-on-one. As Google’s enigmatic parameters and TikTok’s infinite dopamine swipes continue to consume online shoppers’ attention spans, we’ll see even more brands rely on face-to-face contact to spread their pretty-girl gospel. (Especially ones with dynamic, but not famous, founders.)

Skincare

If you’re not an Equinox member, you’ll have to get Grown Alchemist like the rest of us at Sephora. On June 10, the label introduced Hydra-Restore Eye Serum, which has ectoin, an amino acid found in extreme heat and dryness that some scientists call “highly cell-protectant.” It’s $50.

On June 11, Savor Beauty debuted its Radiant Rose Collagen Face Cream. The brand’s MO is their small-batch production methods, which often happen by hand with local ingredients. That means this $125 cream is very limited edition, and like a Gap x Doen drop, once it’s gone, that’s it.

Skincare in New York’s West Village for under $5? Believe it! Until July 3, Osāna Naturals will be on-shelves at Bonberi Mart, founded by “Body Harmony” author Nicole Berrie. Besides Osāna’s $5 shampoo, conditioner and body wash, it is launching an exclusive vetiver and lemon verbena hand soap for $3.97.

Isle of Paradise’s Beautifully Balanced Body Oil Cleanser and Body Butter launched on June 10. Both products promise softer, smoother skin for about $25 each.

Saltair debuted a KP Body Smoother scrub with 10 percent glycolic acid, volcanic sand and microcrystalline cellulose to “smooth bumps and textured skin” on June 6. The KP stands for “keratosis pilaris,” the condition where tiny bumps form on the skin. It often fades when people hit their 30s, which might hint at who’s buying 33-year-old Iskra Lawrence’s brand.

Solawave’s new 2-in-1 Skincare Mini hit shelves on June 13. It’s a teeny $89 gizmo with “red light therapy, near-infrared light and therapeutic warmth” that promises to tighten skin and boost glow. And it looks like a little UFO, which is very fun.

On June 14, Dime Beauty’s Décolletage Defining Serum debuted. It’s $48, with imagery that includes younger and older models in tube tops. Pretty!

Cosmetics

Just a month after Sabrina Carpenter used Supergoop sunscreen in her blockbuster Espresso video, Prada Beauty is featured in the new Please Please Please video. Carpenter uses the brand’s colour-changing moisture lip balm as she struts out of jail, which is a hoot. And while it’s fun to see stunt beauty go from TikTok content to actual pop culture sensation, it’s even more fun to see Carpenter and her team at CAA hack the music video game — the subject of Haul of Fame’s very first column! — for added revenue. In the wake of paltry streaming fees and taxing tour schedules, built-in beauty fees would be a coup for musicians like Carpenter, who influence what their fans are buying anyway. Also, is there an espresso perfume coming? My Magic 8 ball says, “Duh.”

If you need designer blush before then, Westman Atelier is taking over Sephora’s NYC Meatpacking location on June 14 and 15 with their Baby Cheeks line, and launching two new shades.

On June 11, Jenny Patinkin revealed The Big Reveal, an eyelash curler engineered to address hooded and deep-set eyes. It has a flatter curve and more upright angle than typical curlers. It’s $20 at Amazon Beauty, which feels reasonable!

U Beauty is fronted by OG fashion influencer Tina Chen, who still has a ton of credibility with affluent, style-forward women. Because of that, the brand has never needed a ton of celebrity or influencer wattage. Still, the skincare label announced its first-ever collab on June 5. It’s with TikTok darling Tinx, who’s made a blushy pink shade of their Plasma Lip Compound called “Rom-Com.” Tinx describes it as “the ultimate just-kissed lip shade,” which should get a lot of mileage with the Sephora teens.

Speaking of those girls, they can now buy their current lip gloss obsession, Laneige, at Boots in London starting June 12. If they happen to score a place on “Love Island,” they can also steal Laneige from the Villa, where it will be available to contestants. Genius product placement, honestly.

Also in lip gloss land, Gisou’s new Coconut Frost shimmer lip oil dropped on June 10.

Way back in December, I talked about “nipples as beauty’s final frontier,” along with the indie brand Flirte Beauty, which launched lip liners that supposedly matched one’s nipple shade. On June 10, Glossier dropped a very similar concept with their eight new shades of Lip Line.

Haircare

There’s this trend we can call the “spa-ification of everything.” It’s when you call something a “spa” in hopes of tapping into the wellness trend that lets you rebrand beauty as a higher virtue. Calling a regular beauty joint a “spa” began with nail salons and tanning centres; now botox jabs and teeth whitening sessions are also “spa” activities. On June 11, Rossano Ferretti’s Hairspa opened at the luxe Park Hyatt hotel, with amenities like the “Deluxe Hair Treatment” for dry, damaged hair, as well as the signature “Ferretti Metodo cut,” known as the “Invisible Haircut.”

Fragrance

Is incense a beauty product? It’s certainly getting more upscale. On June 11, a new scent called Evoke dropped from CFCL by Yusuke Takahashi, the former menswear director at Issey Miyake. It comes in the form of a burnable stick. True to fragrance’s new trend to make every product sound like slam poetry, Evoke “is a unique scent inspired by the colour of the sky after rain, with notes of lavender and fennel.” It’s $24.50.

Also on June 11, Lake & Skye debuted 11 11 Azure, a fragrance oil in a rollerball that “captures the sheer power and energy of the ocean, blue skies and azure waters.”

And Finally

For a NPR segment on the fragrance boom this week, Morning Edition made its own signature scent. (According to producer Nina Kravinsky, it smells like citrus and “being fresh out of the shower.”) NPR isn’t selling the fragrance anywhere, but during their next fundraising drive, shouldn’t they think about it?