Steven Stokey-Daley has won the Queen Elizabeth II Award for British Design for his brand S.S. Daley.

The London-based designer received the 7th iteration of the award from The British Fashion Council a day before his show at London Fashion Week.

Since founding his label in 2020, S. S. Daley designs have caught the eye of fashion insiders (winning 2022′s LVMH Prize and being invited as a guest designer to Pitti Uomo in 2023) and British celebrities alike. Earlier this year, Harry Styles invested a minority stake in the label.

Stokey-Daley draws inspiration from his childhood in Liverpool, incorporating designs like horse races, geese and florals reminiscent of the British countryside that have become the label’s signatures.

The Queen Elizabeth II Award recognises budding designers who engage in sustainable practices or community engagement. S.S. Daley garments are handmade in the UK, using deadstock materials and salvaged fabrics.

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Steven Stokey-Daley Named Guest Designer for Pitti Immagine Uomo

British designer Steven Stokey-Daley will be the guest designer at January’s Pitti Immagine Uomo 105, the organisation confirmed in a statement Tuesday.

Valentino is scrapping its bi-annual menswear shows as well as its spring-summer haute couture outing. The Roman fashion house will now stage co-ed ready-to-wear shows during the Paris womenswear season, as well as switching to a once-yearly outing for couture.

The future of Valentino’s dedicated menswear shows has been in question since Alessandro Michele was named creative director in March: the designer favoured co-ed, gender-fluid shows during most of his tenure at Gucci.

Less-frequent couture shows will “pave the way for true and unbounded artistic inspiration,” Valentino said in a statement. “The workmanship that haute couture requires will now be venerated even further by lending it the luxury of time.”

After cancelling some fashion shows and shifting others to Italy during the height of the pandemic, Valentino returned to its historic rhythm of showing 6 times per year, usually in Paris, in 2022 and 2023. That helped to underscore Valentino’s couture identity and create frequent marketing moments, but the pace sometimes felt like overload.

Time will tell whether a scaled back calendar will provide enough opportunities to keep Valentino top of mind for customers and industry insiders.

At Gucci, big co-ed shows helped to express Michele’s worldview: a kind of radical identity fluidity. But the twice-yearly timing also reinforced his tendency toward comprehensive, iterative collections rather than more succinct, propulsive fashion statements.

The brand’s owners, Mayhoola and Kering, may be breathing a sigh of relief. As luxury demand slows across nearly all major markets, the new calendar will likely come with significant cost savings.

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Valentino Chairman Bets Quiet Luxury Is Over After Michele Hire

Affluent consumers will soon want bold designs again, Rachid Mohamed Rachid predicted.

Milan wants to set up a supply-chain database to help address incidents of labour exploitation in the fashion sector, according to a draft of the plan seen by The Business of Fashion.

The protocol put forward by the Prefecture of Milan comes amid a scandal over poor working conditions in Italian factories used by major luxury brands. Since the start of the year, Milanese prosecutors have linked companies including Dior and Armani to sweatshops operating on the outskirts of the city. Their presence in luxury brands’ supply chains reflected a lack of adequate controls to prevent and stem labour exploitation, prosecutors concluded.

Armani has said it has always had measures in place to minimise the risk of supply chain abuses. Dior has said the findings don’t reflect the way it operates and that it is working to improve its supply chain oversight.

The scheme put forward by the Prefecture of Milan is an effort to address holes in the industry’s controls. It aims to establish a common system to support supply-chain monitoring processes and would create a centralised platform where manufacturers could upload documents certifying their compliance with tax and labour laws, making it easier for regulators and brands to carry out checks.

However, participation would be voluntary and it would only apply to the Lombardy region, according to the draft plan. Many of the small and medium-sized businesses that populate Italy’s manufacturing base are located elsewhere in the country and are already struggling to meet demands for additional investment in compliance from brands amid a market downturn.

The proposal is in the process of being finalised in consultation with a working group of government and law enforcement agencies, unions and fashion trade groups.

Several important details remain under discussion and how the protocol will be implemented still requires clarification, said Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana president Carlo Capasa in an email. Outstanding concerns include its limited geographic scope, challenges in ensuring confidentiality of sensitive information and the complexity of documentation the scheme would require, he said.

Still, any initiative agreed in Milan would likely set a precedent for other manufacturing hubs in the country, particularly since brands, who drive the industry’s purchasing power, are largely based in the city, said Matilde Rota, a partner in the Milan team at the law firm Withers.

Others worry adding more layers of screening will place additional pressure on manufacturers without addressing the underlying cause of the problems. “It’s not a problem of control; it’s a problem of how much pressure brands put on costs,” said Flavio Sciuccati, a senior partner and director of the fashion unit at consultancy and think tank The European House - Ambrosetti.

Simone Stern contributed to this article.

Disclosure: LVMH is part of a group of investors who, together, hold a minority interest in The Business of Fashion. All investors have signed shareholders’ documentation guaranteeing BoF’s complete editorial independence.

Fashion retailer Scotch & Soda is relaunching with a new strategic focus. After a period of retrospection and organisational assessment, its new owner Bluestar Alliance is looking to drive growth through a major strategic overhaul, hiring a new chief product officer, formerly at Acne Studios, restructuring teams and introducing new categories and lines. This includes a capsule menswear collection, launching today, co-created with Scotch & Soda’s new ambassador, musician Joe Jonas.

Initially founded in 1985 by Laurent Hompes in Amsterdam, Scotch & Soda was originally known for producing affordable menswear, later introducing womenswear, accessories and denim ranges, with a brand heritage championing the spirit and lifestyle of the Dutch capital. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Scotch & Soda, like many independent brands, fell victim to unpredictable market conditions, exacerbated by high inflation and a squeeze on consumer spending. In March 2023, the company filed a bankruptcy request to Dutch operations.

Scotch & Soda was purchased in April 2023 by American brand management company Bluestar Alliance — the group that counts the likes of Hurley, Bebe, Elie Tahari, Brookstone, Justice and more among its brand roster — which is overseeing a new era for the Dutch label.

The Scotch & Soda brand is also focusing on signing new licensees and franchisees to increase brand awareness and seeking to reinvigorate its retail ecosystem, with new locations across key international markets, including a newly opened flagship on Carnaby Street in London.

Now, BoF sits down with Bluestar Alliance CEO Joseph Gabbay, to understand more about how the company is strategically preparing Scotch & Soda for intentional growth and product category expansion while retaining its heritage as a label from the heart of Amsterdam.

How are you restructuring for success while preserving brand identity?

One of the ways that we are restructuring is by identifying the design, sales and marketing talent that was in place and layering on additional talent to those teams to position them for success. We have kept the team that was already at the headquarters in Amsterdam and built upon it as we plan to expand and grow the brand.

Our consumers outside of the city love the fact that Amsterdam is at the core of Scotch & Soda’s identity and its heritage — it’s one of our strengths. Our campaign photo shoots take place in Amsterdam and we have a team of marketing members based there and across our markets that our head of marketing oversees from the US.

There is an incredible archive at the Amsterdam headquarters where the design team is based. So that team, which is made up of people that have been with the brand for years, along with new people who have come onboard to offer a fresh perspective, have access to this archive, which ensures that the heart of the brand is beating strongly.

We are not looking to change the brand’s identity or make it US-based — the heritage is clearly part of what our consumers value. The leaders who were retained also know the brand well. With them in place, they are building teams to continue our strong market share in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, the Middle East and more.

Which markets is Bluestar Alliance focusing on for Scotch & Soda and why?

Both in the US and Canada, where we were originally pretty weak, it’s grown in leaps overnight, so we are expanding our retail footprint there and opening up standalone Scotch & Soda stores. We are opening outlet stores as well to help facilitate our end-of-season product. We have grown the business in the US by 50 percent since we acquired the company last year — it most likely will supersede sales generated this year across the rest of the globe.

The second-biggest market for us that we are targeting has been Asia — specifically, China, Japan and Korea. Initial leads have been strong, with the two stores in China we opened recently performing well. In Korea, we have approximately 15 proposals from very compatible franchise partners. We are looking to pick the best in class that are going to help us expand in these markets.

Our global retail footprint will aim to be 20 percent of our business model. We currently operate over 250 stores globally and we plan on hitting $1.4 billion in sales by the end of 2025.

At the same time, we are still looking to grow in Europe. While there was turmoil in the UK market prior to our acquisition, it rebounded really well. We re-opened our Carnaby Street flagship recently and we have a few more stores in the pipeline over the next 12 months in the UK, with our wholesale business growing there too. We also announced recent expansion in Belgium and France, and are about to announce additional expansion in Austria.

What are the plans for Scotch & Soda’s retail footprint expansion?

It really depends on the market — we are still trying to test the markets. Our global retail footprint will aim to be 20 percent of our business model. We currently operate over 250 stores globally and we plan on hitting $1.4 billion in sales by the end of 2025. By the end of 2024, we are looking at hitting about $900 million in retail sales, so brick-and-mortar is definitely part of fulfilling that expansion plan.

Aside from our own stores, having the best partners in place and the right relationships with the right department stores — like Saks Fifth Avenue, Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus and Bloomingdale’s in the US — has been really positive and that is where we are seeing a lot of growth.

We also have a new pricing structure. We had to bring pricing back down to where it was in its best day to make it more affordable and work properly for the brand because, in part, it was the pricing model which wasn’t working.

What is your strategic focus on licensees and franchisees?

Our core business is licensing. Once we got our arms around the brand, we had our partners come in and take over certain aspects of the business. We have a licensed partner that handles all of the menswear business globally and we have a licensed partner that handles all the womenswear business globally: United Legwear and Mamiye Brothers respectively. Although they are separate organisations and separate teams, they are collaborating together in the same office in Amsterdam, so everything stays consistent.

Our main focus in the beginning was putting those partners in place; breaking out men’s and womenswear separately so that we could grow the womenswear business.

We have had many calls from licensees to get into perfume and women’s handbags too, for example — particularly accessories categories. We held off on everything until we were ready and prepared, which we are now, so we will be expanding into those categories.

I think a strong marketing strategy is what had been lacking under the previous company ownership and we are strong believers of, and investors in, businesses where there is heritage to market.

We are also looking to enhance the franchise model and we are looking to enhance our brand image in those territories I have mentioned. We are announcing the opening of an additional 20 franchise stores — franchisees are very important for us. In New York and Amsterdam in particular, there are a number of franchisees who want to work with us and we are choosing them now.

Which product categories is Scotch & Soda looking to expand into?

By the end of 2025, we plan to have expanded into a host of categories as we head towards becoming a lifestyle brand for the home as well. Fragrance is top of mind for us — we produced a fragrance called Barfly for a while and consumers still demand it, so we are still producing it. It is not what we do best, but we are doing it through the same factory to keep the consumer happy. You don’t want to let anybody down.

It is really driven by retail demand. Retailers request that we have women’s handbags displayed among our offerings, whether it be in Saks or other wholesale partners. Bloomingdale’s, for example, asked us to consider branching into homewares, which is something we are now looking into. So we are engaging with that demand but it has to make sense for the brand.

What can we expect from Scotch & Soda in the near to mid-term?

Now that the business has stabilised — and I would say we finally stabilised about a month ago — what is really going to be changing a lot and driving the brand forwards is our marketing strategy. I think a strong marketing strategy is what had been lacking under the previous company ownership and we are strong believers of, and investors in, businesses where there is heritage to market. The first collaboration, which we signed right off the bat, is with Joe Jonas and we have about five new, very strong collaborations coming out over the next 9 to 10 months.

This is a sponsored feature paid for by Scotch & Soda as part of a BoF partnership.

NEW YORK — Could there be a more fraught time to stick clothes on an American runway than this particular September? New York Fashion Week took place during an incredibly intense political season, with many anxious about the outcome of the presidential election, a mere 55 days away. How can you be expected to pay attention to fashion when your head is spinning with hope and fear?

Some designers confronted these stakes head on. At Willy Chavarria, perhaps the best show of the season, the designer put a copy of the United States Constitution on each seat. As for the clothes, Chavarria once again offered his gorgeously rendered capacious trousers; workers’ shirts were embroidered with Willy Chavarria Fashion Services in the spot where a company logo usually appears; and oversized blazers were paired with khakis for leaps into the white collar world.

The entire collection was a loving take on classic American sportswear — this country’s real gift, if we care to be honest about it, to the world of fashion. Chavarria is proudly Mexican-American and his shows consistently celebrate his heritage: living, breathing refutations of anti-immigrant fervour. At the end of the show, the designer emerged wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the letters ACLU, for the American Civil Liberties Union.

If the clientele at Alaïa didn’t seem too worried about the results in November, maybe it is because they are citizens of the world, flitting from Fishers Island to Positano. “It’s fun seeing all these old models,” the critic next to me mused, and indeed, the air-kissers circulating in the ivory confines of the Guggenheim Museum included Linda, Naomi and other legends known by their first names.

The proceedings began 45 minutes late. It was clear we were waiting for somebody famous, who turned out to be Rihanna, sweeping in like a voluptuous sea creature swathed in sparkling Alaïa net over a too-tight corset, pearls creeping up her legs. The show itself made use of Frank Lloyd Wright’s iconic spiral ramps, with the models starting at the very top, looking like chic ants you could barely see. But as they grew closer the details of their outfits were revealed — palazzo pants with a clown ruffle at the waist; small swishy low-slung skirts paired with bra tops; a scrumptious salmon pink chubby jacket; a curvaceous white puffer that was an homage to the famous quilted satin evening jacket by the American couturier Charles James. It was all beautifully executed, a discourse on elegance and proportion, and it was obvious that designer Pieter Mulier had put his heart into it — so why did it seem so bloodless?

The Guggenheim is a far cry from the hidden East Village cemetery where Collina Strada had a guy in a tiny velvet ensemble pushing a hand lawn mower across the grass, and a modern dancer was leaping and writhing and threatening to ingest the sod. Hillary Taymour, the line’s creator, has a mile-wide playful hipster streak, a goofiness that can be endearing, but this time around she reigned it in, to good effect. Some of the pale tie-dye chiffon frocks brandished ruffles; some were pulled over trousers; one disclosed a bared shoulder, and all were disarmingly pretty and managed to resist wallowing in the saccharine.

How do you keep your signature fresh without betraying the ideas that attracted customers to your brand in the first place? Catherine Holstein, founder of Khaite, appears to be grappling with this conundrum. Her solutions this time around included puffy garments that looked like the unhappy offspring of Comme des Garçons and the Michelin Man; similarly unsettling were the thick braided organza tubes used to create bulbous tops. When she returned to her trusted playbook — her famously slouchy leather jacket, a long satin trench in a deliciously buttery cream, a narrow white dress with sheer panels and silky trousers peeking out from beneath the hem — the collection was on steadier ground.

The crowd at Khaite was as polished as a marble egg — I sat next to two women who were clearly keeping Cartier and Bulgari in business — so the youthful, naughty audience at Kim Shui provided a welcome tonic. The kids here were unembarrassed to show off rolls of rollicking flesh, undulating from atop jeans; overflowing brassieres hardly bigger than pasties. The runway was similarly frisky: fake snake pants were held together, barely, with laces; spiky white flowers encircled waists or were employed as bra tops. Filmy dresses could have begun life as demure Cholé-esque frocks, but the sullen gender-fluid wearer, desperately in search of a little fun — and maybe more than slightly inebriated — took a pair of scissors and eviscerated these garments, leaving them delightfully misshapen and ready for action.

There were no men in dresses at Carolina Herrera, where Wes Gordon presented a knowing treatise on haute bourgeois dressing. What cosseted grown-up has the life for these clothes, you wondered, suddenly feeling sludgy and sloppy, perched in your little chair waiting for the show to begin. The sleek parade of posh ranged from a one-sleeved lace dress secured with a gigantic blossom to a pink shirtwaist worthy of Grace Kelly sailing on the True Love. Though it seldom got kickier than the surfeit of polka dots, there was a bit of sly wit in the glitter that illuminated houndstooth mini-dresses, along with the welcome introduction of a pouffe of a black-cloud tulle jacket over toreador pants.

At his spectacular show outside Rockefeller Center — last season Beyonce, this season Madonna in the house! — Luar’s Raul López, another brilliant Latino, offered shoulders that managed to reconcile the warring concepts of sharp and distended; huge leather jackets were almost consumed by their curved sleeves. (Full disclosure: writing this up from the photos! This reporter raced home after Michael Kors to watch one of the most important debates in American history.)

At Meruert Tolegen, a beautiful show in a Gothic church across from Central Park, light coats featured wide Claudine collars and were sprinkled with — wait for it — glittery copper-coloured unicorns. No imaginary creatures animated the outerwear at Toteme: the pieces were rendered in a fetching cashmere-Lyocell blend, absent of collar and cuff, as austere as a school uniform at the University of The Row.

The concept of “see now, buy now,” once so promising, has apparently faltered — you don’t hear much about it anymore. Maybe that’s because it was hard to decide, say, immediately after a Burberry show in London, what you wanted to drop thousands of pounds on. So the revival of this idea at Batsheva was a surprise hit. The “see now” portion of the proceedings was a runway show without a runway — it took place in the middle of Elizabeth Street in front of the designer’s boutique, and the diverse models, all member of Batsheva’s expanded fashion family, held paddles with numbers, as if on an old-fashioned catwalk. The defiantly demure clothes — square necked jumpers whose low waist devolved into a swingy skirt; a ruffly black and white number decorated with narrow bows; a puffy black taffeta skirt — were immediately available inside the shop, so you could stroll by, watch the show, spend a few hundred dollars, and have something new to wear that night.

“Is this boat going anywhere?” a seatmate at Tommy Hilfiger wondered, as we sat on the wooden benches of a decommissioned Staten Island ferry listing in the waters off Pier 17 at South Street Seaport. Yup, this behemoth was heading straight to the nearest mall, where these Hilfiger fashions — jackets in Tommy’s trademark colour blocks; lanky Bermuda shorts; baggy sweaters emblazoned with anchors — would surely be right as home. Hilfiger himself described these clothes as “nautical, preppy, collegiate, all-American and modern,” and not just that — many of these items bore the letters TH. Unless your name is Trevor Howard, you might prefer your own initials, in which case — free consulting for the gang at Tommy! — why not install a monogrammer in the corner of each store, so the customer’s own initials can grace these cheery tees shirts and windbreakers?

If the Tommy cohort is spending summers at the Jersey shore, the Proenza Schouler woman is frequenting a far tonier resort. Still, the two houses share a love of seafaring signifiers. At Proenza, there were takes on multi-buttoned sailor pants and those flappy square collars that enliven middy shirts. The sporty striped dresses had an undeniable appeal, but some of the evening looks were heavy on notoriously hard-to-pull-off fringe and — even more challenging — in a few cases these were made of what appeared to be strips of studded leather.

Instead of a welter of fringe, Michael Kors made the case for raffia, a summer staple that turned up here in surprising ways. Copies of the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera peeked from raffia handbags, a nod to the locales in Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley. The latest Netflix iteration of this tale, Kors said, influenced this darkly glamorous collection. In any case, the raffia wasn’t just confined to purses: there were also crocheted garments with raffia hems, raffia jackets, and even a full-on raffia skirt. The runway was decorated with faintly threatening boulders — the beach can also be a dangerous place! — that glowed in the gloom just before the lights came up.

Sometimes you don’t realise how much you didn’t miss something until it raises its ugly head again. When Tory Burch promulgated sweatpants, you immediately thought: “Ugh, Athleisure!” Mitigating the horror somewhat was the fact these items were pulled over quite appealing sequined maillots. If you drop these monsters on the sand (maybe someone would steal them?) and went for a dip, you could replace them with one of Burch’s long ruffle-y skirts, like the lovely white one that closed the show.

Once upon a time, long before they had had their own social media accounts, teenagers used to like to write on each other’s clothes, and scribble personal messages on toys — there was even a canvas animal that was called an autograph hound. This predilection dates back to at least the College Joes of the 1920s; if you hunt hard at vintage shows you might find one of these relics bearing faded messages, eerie missives from the past. Could Stuart Vevers at Coach have come across one of these survivors? (We know for a fact that Vevers loves a flea market.)

His show featured versions of these scrawled-upon artefacts, here decorating tees, sweatshirts, and handbags. Other totes winked at the famous Coach bags designed by the iconic mid-century American designer Bonnie Cashin, but this time around they were ridiculously gargantuan, and shaped like massive teddy bears. “I Love New York” pullovers, in at least one case artfully shredded, offered, perhaps unwittingly, a distinct metaphor for how so many of us feel about our beautiful, crazy hometown — and our valiant, tattered country.

Sephora has announced its succession plan for the chief financial officer role in its US business. Delphine Herve, who joined Sephora in 2014 and is currently the beauty retailer’s senior vice president, finance and analysis, is set to move into the position in April 2025.

Le Boterff joined Sephora in 2017, and will remain in his role until Herve begins. His prior roles at LVMH include CFO at Benefit Cosmetics, Celine, and Givenchy and COO at Bliss. Prior to joining the luxury conglomerate, he held positions at IBM, Lagardere Groupe and Bally.

Herve’s tenure at Sephora parent company LVMH began in 2011 with an audit role at Moet Hennessey. She previously worked at Ernst & Young.

This is just the latest executive move for Sephora in recent months: In April, Jean-André Rougeot, Sephora North America’s chief executive and president retired, and was succeeded by Artemis Patrick, another longtime Sephora executive.

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Who Is Buying a $500 Moisturiser?

As aspirational shoppers pull back from spending, brands are investing in hyper-premium products in an effort to court high-net-worth individuals who are happy to spend triple digits on a single item. These shoppers are more discerning than most.