The German sportswear company is working with external legal counsel after receiving the letter on June 7, it said in an emailed statement.

It’s the latest blow for Adidas, which has had to deal with multiple crises in the last few years, including consumer boycotts in China and a significant hit to sales after severing ties with the rapper Ye. Chief executive officer Bjorn Gulden, who joined last year and visited China in September, is in the midst of working to restore Adidas’s fortunes.

The anonymous letter briefly appeared on the Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu earlier this month, the Financial Times reported over the weekend. The letter, which claims to have been written by “employees from Adidas China,” named several Chinese employees, including a senior manager involved with Adidas’s marketing budget in the country.

The letter, based on screenshots that circulated on social media and news websites in China, claimed that Adidas employees received kickbacks from external service providers, with another senior manager having potentially received “millions of cash” from suppliers and physical items such as real estate.

Adidas said it could not provide further information. The company takes the allegations very seriously, it said. The shares fell 1.4 percent in early Frankfurt trading. They have gained about 21 percent so far this year.

China was a growth engine for Adidas before the pandemic, but demand dried up as shoppers there began boycotting Western brands.

The boycotts took place in 2021 after a number of foreign brands, including Adidas and rival Nike Inc., denounced the use of cotton from Xinjiang, the province where China is accused of human-rights violations against the Uighur minority. The boycotts pared sales and allowed domestic rivals like Anta Sports Products Ltd. to gain market share.

Since last year, Adidas has returned to growth in the country, albeit from a smaller base, after giving its Chinese staff more autonomy to create products for their home market and as the marketing restrictions eased.

Adidas reported increased profitability in the first quarter, boosted by demand for classic sneakers like the Samba and inventories that are coming down to healthier levels. Sales rose 8 percent in Greater China, Adidas said in April.

By Tim Loh

Learn more:

How Adidas Sambas Took Over the World

The humble trainer, once the reserve of football fans, Britpop kids and the odd skateboarder, has become as ubiquitous as battered Converse All Stars in the 00s indie sleaze years.

In an exchange filing published on June 17, the company updated its buyout offer, giving shareholders an option between the existing HK $34 ($4.35) per share in cash, or 10 shares in the new private company for every share held. Trading was halted in the morning in anticipation of the announcement, and resumed later the same day.

L’Occitane originally made an initial privatisation bid in April, with billionaire chairman Reinold Geiger partnering with Blackstone and Goldman Sachs to fund the $1.8 billion takeover. Geiger owns more than 70 percent of the company’s shares.

The conglomerate owns its namesake L’Occitane en Provence and skin care line Elemis, as well as the hugely popular Gen-Z body and fragrance line Sol de Janeiro.

The share offer may help to move the needle for shareholders who believe the current cash offer undervalues the firm. In Hong Kong, where the firm has been listed since 2010, the consent of at least 90 percent of minority shareholders is required. The cash offer values the company at $6.4 billion.

With the success of brands such as Sol de Janiero, which is expected to clear $1 billion in retail sales this financial year, some shareholders may not be ready to give up their stakes just yet.

Learn more:

L’Occitane Is Going Private. Here’s Why.

Going public is usually a pivotal moment in a company’s history, cementing its heavyweight status and setting it up for expansion. In L’Occitane’s case, delisting might be a bigger conduit for growth.

Beauty’s latest crop of influencers are just likely to be adept with a pestle and mortar as they are with liquid eyeliner.

The likes of Nara Smith and Hannah Neeleman, known as Ballerina Farm, have soared to the height of TikTok fame, partly for their model-esque good looks, but also for their domestic prowess. Neeleman starts many of her videos in front of her stove with one of her eight children wandering around; Smith has been known to make cereal and Oreo cookies from scratch.

While these creators are unlikely to use the term themselves, they’ve both been labelled as “tradwives” online. A portmanteau of “traditional” and “wife,” the term refers to women who undertake traditionally gendered roles, such as cooking, cleaning and child-rearing, as their primary duties. Online, their lives have a lofty, idyllic veneer, as they often sport full makeup, coiffed hair and glamorous outfits for their daily grind.

Some beauty and lifestyle brands have been quick to move in. Smith has promoted the K-Beauty brand Laneige and filmed a beauty tutorial for Vogue. Neeleman, meanwhile, is a literal beauty queen – she was crowned 2023′s “Miss American”.

For many viewers, their bucolic content provides a welcome sense of escapism, said Rachel Lee, global insights strategist at trends agency The Digital Fairy.

“There’s this desire for simplicity that kind of makes the tradwife aesthetic and narrative seem quite attractive to people who feel really overwhelmed with the algorithm, the trend cycle or just the state of the world,” she said.

However, the tradwife trend has a dark underbelly. Creators such as Gwen The Milkmaid mix extreme right-wing views and conspiracy theories alongside otherwise innocuous videos of pasta making or tending to their gardens. “Vaccines are a scam” and “Modern feminism leads to misery” are stamped over one of Gwen’s videos.

Brands are still trying to figure out how to navigate these tricky waters. Though Gwen the Milkmaid’s roughly 65,000 TikTok following is dwarfed by Smith’s 7.6 million, in some viewers’ eyes, they’re all part of the same content stream, or they’re at least on a slippery slope to becoming more radicalised.

Many tradwife creators focus on homesteading, cooking or beauty content without any explicit mentions of politics, and rack up millions of views in the process. In some ways, they’re also a safer pair of hands than it-girl style influencers, said Casey Lewis, who writes the youth culture Substack newsletter After School.

“They’re not going to be going out and getting wasted…they’re very uncontroversial in terms of their content,” she said.

If brands want to tap into the movement, they need to carefully weigh up the sociopolitical risks against the potential to reach new audiences, and discern who’s simply a homemaker, and who’s an agitator.

The Tradwife Roots

For many, the popularity of tradwives is less about politics, and more about polish. Milkmaid-style dresses, light makeup, heatless curls and skincare routines that feature natural ingredients are popular.

“It’s just very editorialised and fashionable … there’s no flyaways on their hair, no ribbons out of place,” said Lee.

That’s especially true for Smith. In one recent clip, she makes condiments from scratch while wearing a strapless polka dot sundress, long polished nails, dangling earrings and a full face of makeup. Through her representatives, Smith declined to comment for this article.

Despite its projections of perfection, some viewers find this content comforting in a sea of “cool girl” influencers who cycle between buzzy nightclubs and exclusive parties.

“I feel like I’m escaping when I watch her content,” said Sophia Aziza, a 28-year old brow technician from London, saying that Smith’s videos have made her want to try her hand at baking and even DIY beauty products.

To that end, some creators are likely just playing dress-up – they’re enhancing and editorialising their everyday lives for their content. A spotless kitchen, and two hours spare to make a home-cooked meal and pristine bathroom filled with premium skincare products is just as much a fantasy to some as a fast-paced, cosmopolitan city life is to others.

Brands should be careful to parse trending content carefully, and examine the truly resonant parts of the creator’s output.

“On a macro level, why are these things appealing? What are the larger trends here?” said Lewis, adding that brands should consider how tradwife content is enmeshed or overlapping with other trends like cottagecore or clean girl, as it might simply be those aesthetic elements rather than the entire lifestyle that’s appealing to viewers.

The Personal is Political

That hasn’t stopped even the most apolitical tradwives from getting swept up in the discourse around the trend.

On dedicated Reddit forums, in articles in The New York Times and Rolling Stone, and in their own comment sections, viewers try to surmise creators’ political leanings, their message to the world, and even the authenticity of their content.

“If they were more transparent about the privilege behind the lifestyle, I’d say cool, live your life,” one Reddit commentator wrote of Neeleman, who is married to JetBlue scion Daniel Neeleman. “She’s not a homestead wife … they have nannies and tutors.”

Judah Abraham, whose firm Slate Brands regularly partners with influencers to co-create brands, the line in the sand comes down to the creators’ own output. As long as they aren’t harming others or doing something the firm determines to be inappropriate, they are safe for brands to partner with, he said.

“While people disagree on a lot of issues, at its core, [most people] are not that far apart…[the US] as a country stands behind different opinions,” he said, adding that most issues are not as much of a “blowout” as they feel online.

Cooking Up a Partnership

By Lewis’ estimations, the trend is nowhere near at its peak, and is still gaining steam – she points out that as the US moves closer to another hotly contested election, how some of these creators choose to respond to the political agenda will be indicative of their own beliefs.

Social media algorithms are powered by engagement, good or bad, said Lee. Creators who post homemaking content aren’t inherently risky – some would argue Smith’s content is far more luxury than domestic, given her unboxing videos of designer purses and large, spotless home – but finding the right match is key.

“It’s easy for brands to get swept up in that momentum, but keep your brand’s values [in mind],” she said.

What’s more, the work of great marketing is often closing the gap between what consumers find aspirational and the way they really live their lives.

“Yeti are selling the outdoor lifestyle with those big coolers, right?” said Abraham. “But they’re selling it to finance guys …they’re selling that lifestyle.”

Milan men’s fashion week is where all the big Italian names converge. It’s where Prada dictates what trouser shape everyone will one day be wearing and where Gucci drops the next it-bag. But as the shows got under way at the weekend an unexpected new trend was emerging: the great fashion Brexit.

Just four months after making his debut as creative director of Dunhill at London fashion week, Simon Holloway instead chose the Italian capital for the brand’s Spring/Summer 2025 show. On Sunday he aimed to recreate “the sense of a beautiful spring day in England” by showing in a garden in Milan.

Martine Rose, the cult London designer whose clothing riffs on traditional codes of masculinity such as football and club culture, and is loved by celebrities including Kendrick Lamar, has also defected this time. Showing directly after Prada on Sunday, Rose took a prime spot on the schedule, which has more than 80 events and runs until 18 June.

David Koma has been showing womenswear in London since 2009 – his glamorous designs have been worn by Rihanna and Beyoncé – but for his menswear debut he decamped to Milan, while this month Paul Smith headed to Florence as a guest designer at Pitti Uomo.

Gianluca Borghi, chief executive of 10 Corso Como, a luxury concept store in Milan, says the Italian city’s fashion week is gaining more power. Borghi says different fashion cities dominate at different times, but “Milan offers a rather peculiar and almost unique scenario, thanks to the combination of a preferred location for both the creative world and its business counterpart.”

The exodus of British talent is a blow for the fashion scene in London already hit by Brexit, the abolition of tax-free shopping for tourists and the cost of living crisis.

Rose has spoken about feeling “very disheartened and sad about the landscape of London fashion, really demoralised”. Half of her team is now based in Milan. Holloway says that while London is “the epicentre of creativity”, commercially it makes sense to focus on Milan.

It is a marked contrast to the 2010s, when Rose showed in London alongside a host of pioneering designers. Victoria Beckham, once a key London draw, moved her show to Paris in 2022 and since then Grace Wales Bonner and Bianca Saunders have followed suit.

While Paris has earned its moniker as the fashion capital of Europe, more recently it is Milan – once regarded as a slightly dull and industrial city – that has creatives flocking to it.

Brexit has played a key role in increasing its allure. A generous tax incentive introduced in 2015 to entice Italians back to their homeland – and later expanded to include foreigners – has also proved fruitful. And you can add to the mix the country’s recent introduction of a digital nomad visa, which allows non-EU nationals earning more than €28,000 (£24,000) to relocate and work remotely, and the fact that fashion is taken seriously as an industry.

Lisa Bridgett, a fashion tech entrepreneur who recently relocated to Milan after stints in London and Paris, describes fashion as “the lifeblood of the city”.

“Here, la bella figura, which means to put your best face forward, is a way of life,” she says, explaining how typical it is to hear “not just fashion people” discussing the length of a shirt sleeve or type of collar.

Koma says the city’s reverence for fashion was a key factor in his decision to make his menswear debut in Milan. “I wanted to bring in new voices and a fresh audience,” he says. “The men really do love fashion here so I think it will be more interesting to get their reaction.”

Olya Kuryshchuk, the founder and editor-in-chief of 1 Granary, a fashion education platform and creative network, believes that the logistical challenges, including higher venue costs, posed by the upcoming Olympic Games in Paris is also benefiting Milan.

But she is doubtful that the city can steal Paris’s crown. “With London rapidly loosing its advantages primarily due to Brexit, Paris will stay the most important hub for independent brands as that is where the majority of the buying is happening,” she says.

While Holloway’s commercial and sales teams have recently relocated to Milan, he is keen to keep as much of Dunhill’s manufacturing in the UK as possible. More than 60 percent of its fabrics are woven in the UK and he says working with heritage mills and specialists in Scotland and the north-west of England is “core to the brand’s identity”.

“We exist in a marketplace that is dominated by Italian menswear,” he says. “We are able to offer something rarefied. The hand of Scottish knitwear is very different to what they do in Italy. So using British manufacturers is of paramount importance to us.”

By Chloe Mac Donnell

Learn more:

‘Hyper Beauty’: Inside Alessandro Michele’s Surprise Valentino Collection

Over 260 images dropped during Milan Fashion Week provided a look at the star designer’s plans for the Roman couture house. ‘It’s a continuous orgasm,’ he said.

MILAN — When Alessandro Michele unveiled his debut collection for Gucci in 2015, his evident mastery of the brand’s codes was the fruit of a dozen years’ labour designing behind the scenes under Tom Ford and Frida Giannini.

At Valentino, Michele took just two months: the Roman brand, which named the designer its creative director on March 28, surprised the fashion world Monday by dropping an unscheduled lookbook on the last day of Milan menswear week. The mixed-gender collection slated for pre-spring 2025 features more than 260 images including propositions across categories, from ready-to-wear to handbags, shoes and silk scarves.

More than a teaser, the collection provided a comprehensive overview of how Michele is approaching the Roman couture house’s codes: Belted ivory peacoats with V-motifs on pockets, or cropped jackets styled over matching tailored dresses paid homage to Valentino Garavani’s breakout white collection from 1968. The ladylike looks were styled with turban hats and looping strands of pearls that added a whiff of Michele’s cinematic kitsch. Elsewhere, gender-fluid styling gave a jolt of modernity to throwback silhouettes as male-presenting models wore bell-shaped capes and ruffled turtleneck blouses, while many of the most sartorial looks (including bell-bottom suits Garavani himself might have worn in the 70s) went to the girls.

“Something magical happened, a chemical reaction, and we started to work as if in an orchestra — with love, and without looking at the time. We lost ourselves in Valentino’s archive,” Michele told reporters from The Business of Fashion, Vogue and WWD about he and his team’s process of immersing themselves in the legacy of Garavani, who founded the brand in 1958.

“It’s something coming from our heart and our guts,” he added.

Where Michele’s tenure at Gucci was marked by an embrace of over-the-top, twisted glamour, at Valentino he is making an effort to connect with the intense prettiness of its founder’s couture.

“There’s a sort of obsession with what I would call hyper beauty. As if this life was not enough for him, so that it had to be amplified,” Michele said.

The debut collection is titled “Avant les debuts”, or “before the beginnings.” Michele insists that he and the “orchestra” of his studio are still “tuning [their] instruments” ahead of their first runway show scheduled for this autumn’s Paris Fashion Week, which is certainly the most hotly anticipated designer debut of the year.

The mention of beginnings, plural, was surely no accident, but rather signature Michele: During eight years as creative director of Gucci, Michele attracted a new generation of customers to the luxury fashion industry by deploying multifaceted collections that celebrated fluid self-expression and a broad range of identities. Collections blended mens and womenswear, archival shapes and maximalist embellishments, sportswear and demi-couture. Watching Michele juggling those plot lines, while testing the limits of how far the brand could be extended via collaborations was central to the thrill.

Michele’s first outing for Valentino, as such, might be seen as a collection of first steps in the designer’s latest round of simultaneous journeys.

“The process is not going to end. I still have the same gaze … It’s still me remixing things,” Michele said.

In his initial outing for Valentino, Michele interspersed hallmarks of the brand’s intensely pretty, ladylike identity — like pleated, tea-length skirts and ultra-classic pocketbook — with decadent touches associated with his own aesthetic: cascading shiny ruffles, (faux) fur trim, retro sunglasses and metallic or jewel-tone details. Other Michele-isms included contrast piping on ivory blazers, or looks that simultaneously featured plaid, paisley and monogram.

By releasing the collection on the morning of Gucci’s second menswear show by creative director Sabato De Sarno, Michele might be seen as announcing to partisans of the old Gucci that there’s a new place to shop — all while invoking Valentino’s codes just enough to not alienate existing fans.

But Michele insists that his reverence for the house Garavani built goes deep.

“I’m really in love with the place I have decided to inhabit, which is becoming my home,” he said.

“I’m touching extraordinary relics worn by extraordinary women who were his friends … His creations talk about him, about his very sophisticated fixations. About how a dress is a vehicle for extraordinary lives,” Michele said. “This world is very, very complex — and much less banal than we might think”

Meanwhile, as Michele gears up for his first foray into couture — set for early next year — the designer says he finds himself in ecstasy over the capabilities of Valentino’s ateliers and suppliers.

“There’s a level of workmanship that I see for the first time in a company. I can ask for the impossible, you know?,” Michele said. “For someone like me, it’s a continuous orgasm. It’s a climax.”

All the Looks From Alessandro Michele’s Valentino Debut

Valentino Spring 2025 Details