As luxury executives eye India’s high growth potential, Christian Dior Couture has added Hindi film star Sonam Kapoor to its roster of ambassadors for Maria Grazia Chiuri’s womenswear.

Kapoor is Bollywood royalty: the daughter of Anil Kapoor, one of the industry’s biggest stars. She rose to prominence in a mix of critically-acclaimed films and Bollywood blockbusters throughout the 2010s, culminating in 2016′s “Neerja,” one of India’s top-grossing pictures featuring a female protagonist.

Kapoor has previously worked as a brand ambassador for L’Oréal and watch brand IWC Schaffhausen as well as appearing in a commercial for Pepsi. She is also a champion of contemporary art, and recently joined the Tate Modern’s South Asia acquisitions committee.

After taking two years off to have a child, Kapoor recently confirmed plans to return to acting with a “big project” set to start filming in early 2025, the details of which remain under wraps.

“A multi-talented personality, the actress, producer and fashion icon henceforth embodies the audacity, grace and elegance of Dior style, a femininity constantly reinvented,” Dior said in a statement. “More than ever, this unique alliance celebrates the powerful cultural ties that have united Dior and India since the very beginning of the house.

Dior has sought to underscore its links with India in recent years: the country is a nexus of craftsmanship where many of the brand’s suppliers for embroidery and embellishment are based, as well as a burgeoning market for luxury brands: luxury goods spending by Indian consumers is expected to roughly triple by 2030, reaching €25 to €30 billion per year, according to Bain & Company. Last March, Dior presented its pre-fall 2023 collection with a multi-day celebration in Mumbai.

The French couture giant’s Kapoor deal follows several tie-ups between luxury brands and Indian actresses as executives target not only India-based customers but the South Asian diaspora, among them Ananya Panday for Jimmy Choo, Alia Bhatt for Gucci, Deepika Padukone for Louis Vuitton and Cartier, and Priyanka Chopra Jonas for Bulgari.

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Can Global Brands See Beyond Bollywood in India?

Casting actors as ambassadors is an effective way of reaching Indian consumers, but fashion brands should consider widening the net to include other famous faces like local musicians and athletes, marketing experts say.

In the next two weeks, brands have two inescapable forces to compete with for eyeballs online.

In the lead up to election day on Nov. 5, presidential nominees Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are expected to flood social media and Google with campaign ads in last ditch efforts to reach undecided voters, particularly chronically online Millennials and Gen-Zers — the very cohort that digital brands count on for sales.

At the same time, the end of October is already an expensive period for brands to advertise online, with more labels ramping up their digital ad spend to prepare for Black Friday. Already this month, the cost per click for a Google ad is up as much as 12 percent year over year, while the cost per thousand impressions on Facebook and Instagram is up as much as 8 percent, according to marketing agency Belardi Wong. Some industry experts expect an even steeper price surge in the coming weeks as supercharged politicians fight for eyeballs in a tight election race. Ad tracking firm AdImpact estimates that political media spend this election cycle will reach around $10 billion, up 13 percent from 2020.

“If I could spend [millions] on my brand in the next three weeks, the [political] campaigns are gonna spend four times that much,” said Greg Portell, senior partner at global consulting firm Kearney.

While presidential elections typically raise advertising prices across media, this one can be particularly consequential for brands. It’s the first election since Apple’s sweeping privacy changes in 2021, which drove up the cost of digital ads and curbed access to data that helps brands find their target audiences. There’s also increased competition for consumer attention — not just from fellow digitally-native brands, but also ultra-fast-fashion giants like Shein and Temu. While retail sales remain better than expected, it’s anticipated that consumers will be more cautious in the weeks leading up to and after the election. To top it all off, there’s fewer days between Black Friday and Christmas this year, prompting brands to start putting out holiday ads earlier than usual, bumping directly into the election cycle.

“The first week of October, the earliest brands start putting their gift guides for the holiday season, which is not where we were five years ago,” said Ariel Stoddard, chief revenue officer at intimates brand MeUndies.

This period is crucial for brands looking to meet sales targets before the year is over. But even with the tidal wave of political ads, there are still ways for brands to stand out. To break through the cluttered advertising landscape, companies are leaning into channels outside of Meta and Google, such as text message marketing and shopping newsletters.

“There’s no reason for a brand advertiser to get caught in the melee of the political cycle,” Portell added.

When Diversification Pays Off

Brands are diverting advertising dollars to channels where they can speak directly to their customers, such as email and text messages.

In choosing where to spend, brands should look to the alternative channels that have already proven to be effective in reaching their target audience — not use the busiest time of the year to test out something new.

“With the costs going up, there doesn’t need to be a work around; you know that this is an effective channel for you,” said Calla Murphy, senior vice president of digital strategy and integrated marketing at Belardi Wong.

It helps that given the declining effectiveness of social media ads, most brands have already been figuring out what those channels are. For example, private equity and brand management firm Bedrock, which owns watch brand Shinola and the western wear label Filson, has been building both brands’ text message subscriber list for a year to curb its reliance on paid social media ads. In early October, Filson sent texts giving select customers early access to a sale on a few of its bestselling items, including its $1,000 utility Packer jacket, generating its highest sales day from a text message campaign in the company’s history, said Kevin Wertz, Bedrock’s chief marketing officer. Shinola will also use texting in the coming month to promote add-on services like same-day delivery and gift wrapping.

“Our subscriber list for email and SMS for both brands is going to be a major driver of revenue for us this holiday season,” Wertz said.

Marissa Lepor, director at investment bank The Sage Group, also encourages brands to try to get more out of their existing channels. If a brand has a mobile app, for instance, it can use push notifications to distribute holiday advertising content and directly reach customers when competition is so high in traditional marketing channels, she said.

“There’s a significant amount of sales that can just be generated through the app and typically those are also their most engaged customers,” Lepor said.

Brands should also consider the advertising opportunities that are nearly guaranteed to be free of politics, even if they reach fewer people. In May, bootmaker Tecovas began targeting shopping newsletters — a channel that has gained popularity in recent years, with a typically smaller but highly engaged and trusting audience looking to make the right purchases. In August, sales for Tecovas’ $295 zip-up men’s boot, The Dean, rose 45 percent year over year after it was featured in menswear newsletter Cool Material. The brand expects its inclusion in holiday-themed newsletters to increase traffic on its site in the coming months, said Krista Dalton, Tecovas’ chief marketing officer and senior vice president of digital and e-commerce.

The instability of this period underscores how important it is for brands to develop a marketing strategy that works year-round, and prevents them from being so reliant on one particular period in time. For the brands that do feel a squeeze over the next few weeks, there’s good news: After the election, consumers will likely welcome a distraction from politics — and ads about handbags and shoes could fill that void.

“Either way the election goes, some people may be very pleased and some people may be very disappointed,” said Murphy. “There’s an escapism with online shopping and retail therapy that is very real.”

Shifts in both customer shopping behaviours and regulatory requirements from governmental bodies are moving digital product passport (DPP) technology from the edges of brand consideration towards a central strategic focus.

A digital record that accompanies a product throughout its entire lifecycle, DPPs record key information relating to the provenance of materials, manufacturing and supply chain information, the item’s environmental impact, and repair, recycling and circularity services to consider at end-of-use. Information is accessed on smartphones by scanning digital markers, such as an NFC tag or QR code. Since 2006, Certilogo, a company specialising in connected products and digital authentication, has implemented engaging digital experiences and DPPs within the fashion and luxury industries. Today, more than 540 million items from its brand partners have a complementing digital asset.

The technology is increasingly timely as, last year, new EU regulations were announced that will require fashion and other consumer goods to be fitted with unique DPPs as early as 2026. Meanwhile, as luxury and fashion goods become increasingly commoditised, authentic brand identity is increasingly key. Indeed, ‘dupe’ culture is training Gen-Z and Gen Alpha to seek out comparable goods for the champion products they aspire to — a sentiment which extends into counterfeit goods. A June survey conducted by the European Union Intellectual Property Office, showed more than 50 percent of consumers between the ages of 15 and 24 said they had purchased at least one counterfeit product online in the last 12 months.

Indeed, the total value of counterfeit and pirated goods will hit $3 trillion this year, triple the amount in 2013, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Sophisticated authentication measures are a critical component for many consumers to embrace the secondary market and place trust in peer-to-peer transactions.

To learn more about how applications of DPPs can unlock growth, engage new generations of consumers and solve brand pain points, BoF and Certilogo hosted a roundtable discussion at Maxim’s in Paris, gathering marketing leaders from across the French fashion and luxury sectors.

Conducted under the Chatham House Rule, executives from Balenciaga, Jacquemus, Veja, Kering, Patou, Courréges, Balmain, among others, were in attendance. Below, BoF shares condensed and anonymised insights from the discussion.

Turn compliance into a growth opportunity

“Right now, the urgency is compliance. It’s the biggest business headache and problem to solve, and it’s the main driver for brands to get digital product passports on their products,” said one guest. “However, while they make sense from a compliance perspective, we need to think strategically about the evolving use-cases and opportunities. We want to make decisions that make this implementation future-proof.”

“From a compliance piece, there is a real anxiety around the data,” agreed another guest. “But ensuring that you comply needs to be part of a bigger incentive. Before you have a clear vision on your supply chain, you need to marry the compliance factor, the risks, the opportunities. That’s when we’ll start to see a real roadmap of the downstream opportunity.”

“Transformational governance is the elephant in the room, but we need to envision the opportunities and hygiene factors that should be baked into this technology,” said another attendee.

Authentication remains a primary consumer use-case

“We’re seeing a lot of small pilots that are looking upstream at the traceability and authenticity side – that level of comprehensive services which is all about supporting the client, is key,” said one guest. “That service that allows remote authentication remains the most relevant use-case for shoppers.”

“At this current stage, DPPs are all about serving a purpose — something that is meaningful to consumers. Of course, it makes sense to start thinking today about those future use-cases, but brands should be scaling the applications that offer the most value and help to build the customers’ connection to the product,” agreed another guest. “Authentication is a big problem-solve.”

Consider how DPPs could build customer lifetime value

“In terms of functionality, DPPs, in theory, enable brands to draw some powerful insights,” added one guest. “Yes, they’ll be able to get greater insights into the lifecycle and use of products but, in theory, send a signal to customers that it’s time to repair an item or that there’s a resale opportunity to sell your product back to the brand. This unlocks new revenue, but critically helps to build customer lifetime value.”

“DPPs could help improve the customer experience all with the goal of increasing the lifetime value of the customers,” agreed an attendee. “As soon as you have NFC built into a bag or shoes, then you have a communication tool in that bag or in those shoes. Of course, GDPR is an important consideration, but if you can send signals about circular services, that’s a really powerful second touch with the customer.”

Explore entertainment strategies as a future DPP use-case

“DPPs could unlock the possibility for the consumer to experience the physical product in multiple dimensions — playing into ideas of education and even entertainment,” said an attendee. “There are some neat capabilities such as sharing music, games or creative content from your brand [universe]. DPPs could be another, more personal route to be building and sharing these sorts of things with customers.”

It’s interesting to think about something fun at the end of that connection that’s opened up by DPP technology, said another guest. “Yes, that could be access to discounts or circular methods, but it could also be a scan to gifts, new products, digital assets that can be shared on social media. It feels like a whole new frontier of customer engagement, although we must ask if customers are ready for this kind of use.”

Acknowledge the need to evolve plastic components of DPPs to align with sustainability goals

“One obstacle we face in implementing this technology is ensuring that any hardware attached to DPPs work with our sustainability objectives. For instance, ensuring their use doesn’t impact the recyclability of products,” added one guest. “We have the resources to innovate this if we collaborate across the industry.”

“Chip makers are aware this needs to be addressed, but there is a bigger issue playing out across many sectors,” countered another guest. “We have global anonymous supply chains with middlemen, agents and unreliable data — we have a responsibility to go back and fix all these bad practises downstream — and that’s a much bigger conversation.”

Break down team silos for implementation and scale

“We need to see two levels of collaboration in order to agree on and develop the business models that DPPs could bring. The first one is cross-functional and must be led by a brand’s executives. We must ask, which functions are critical to get the necessary compliance and opportunity in the room?” said one guest, in an opening comment. “And then, the other collaboration component is really on the industry level. We are in the early stages of conversations, but deeper collaboration will be needed for us to go beyond the pilot stage.”

“The brands who are winning in this space are getting out of their silos and building cross-functional cases for implementation. You need sustainability teams, operations, IT experts all collaborating together — even the e-commerce and marketing teams,” added one guest. “If it’s isolated to just one function within the business, brands will miss out on connecting all the important key metrics.”

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

China’s second-hand and grey markets for luxury goods are booming, as price hikes from luxury brands in a weak economy are prompting some shoppers to look for cheaper ways to buy them, deepening concerns for the likes of LVMH.

LVMH, the world’s biggest luxury group, reported a 3 percent fall in quarterly sales last week, undershooting estimates in its first decline in quarterly sales since the pandemic as demand in China and Japan weakened.

Italy’s Salvatore Ferragamo also reported a fall in quarterly revenue, hit by a slowdown in demand from China.

“The elephant in the room is that, in China, as long as price gaps (between China and other countries) exist, there is the opportunity for price sensitive consumers to go to the grey market,” said Max Piero, CEO of luxury intelligence consultancy Re-Hub, which tracks grey market luxury purchases in China.

That market, estimated to be worth $57 billion a year, has been fuelled in recent years by the rise of platforms such as DeWu, where luxury products, often sourced overseas, are sold at discounts from 20 percent to over 50 percent to prices at Chinese flagship stores.

Re-Hub estimates that sales across 48 brands on DeWu rose 19 percent year on year in the second quarter to more than 7 billion yuan ($984.4 million).

China’s retail sales, a gauge of consumption, grew a subdued 3.2 percent in September and the weakness is a bad sign for global luxury giants as China accounts for around 25 percent of worldwide revenues for the sector.

Growing consumer interest in both the second-hand and grey markets is adding a headache to top-end brands seeking to defend their sales in China.

“The rising prices of those luxury brands is definitely one of the reasons that more and more consumers are turning to the secondary market,” said Yi Kejie, a 28-year-old marketing content manager and luxury consumer.

Following the release of their third quarter sales, executives of LVMH, home to Louis Vuitton and Dior, defended their labels’ upmarket push and said they did not plan to introduce new ranges of more affordable products.

They also said they had no intention of getting involved in the second-hand market, noting that the tight control their brands hold on distribution makes them less exposed to parallel markets.

But China’s second-hand market is also fuelled by the country’s slowing economy, as more people are looking to make some cash off their luxury collections.

“The number of sellers is growing really fast, and the majority of them are selling luxury items for the first time. But for the buyer’s side, it’s pretty steady,” said Zhu Tainiqi, founder of second-hand luxury goods marketplace ZZER.

That has caused average purchase prices to drop from last year, and average order values also fell around 10 percent, Zhu said, adding however that brands such as Louis Vuitton and Coach are still selling quickly.

The second-hand luxury market in China - which includes platforms such as Plum, ZZER and Alibaba-owned Xianyu - has grown at a compound annual growth rate of over 30 percent since 2020, according to consultancy iResearch estimates, although Zhu personally thinks this year the sector as a whole in China is more likely to grow around 20 percent this year.

Zhu said some of the consumers turning to second-hand and grey market goods will still buy new luxury items and shift just part of their consumption to those markets.

“If the deal is really attractive, and they trust us, they notice every item is authenticated, they will buy it,” he said.

By Casey Hall; Editing by Miyoung Kim and Raju Gopalakrishnan

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Inside Luxury’s Slowdown

Economic headwinds, high prices and a lack of novel design are all weighing on what was previously fashion’s most dynamic segment. How severe is the slowdown and how long will it last?

Just a few months ago, Bach Buquen was a mid-tier content creator from Paris. Today, he’s a bona fide TikTok teen idol with 6.1 million followers. But it wasn’t his shirtless, thirst trap workouts or his meme-worthy shoulder dance to Modern Talking’s “Brother Louie” that catapulted the 19-year-old to social media stardom. It was something he’d been doing since his early teens: wearing makeup.

In the late 2010s, queer beauty influencers like James Charles, Patrick Starrr, and Bretman Rock rose to internet fame by serving up sassy humour in full-glam faces. Buquen’s image couldn’t be more different: he’s traditionally masculine and straight. But that may be precisely why Buquen has not just attracted a sizable following but shifted social norms, making it less taboo for men to wear makeup.

Buquen is certainly having a moment. In the last six months, he’s inked partnerships with everyone from Armani Beauty and Anastasia Beverly Hills to Charlotte Tilbury and Hugo Boss. Gucci and Balenciaga have dressed him to attend their fashion shows. During a recent trip to New York (his first), teen girls stopped him on the street for selfies and Interview magazine dubbed him “TikTok’s favourite French heartthrob.” Last week, Kate Moss appeared on his TikTok (alongside Tilbury). Last week, he’s working with Jacquemus to promote the brand’s New York store opening.

“I think he’s one of a few boys who are very influential right now,” said Claudia Soare, president of Anastasia Beverly Hills. “They can help break that barrier [around men wearing makeup].”

Boys of Beauty

At 14, Buquen, who is half Vietnamese and half French-Italian, began stealing his mother’s foundation to cover his pimples, hiding behind his school bag while applying it on the Paris metro. “I was scared,” he recalled. “A lot of people are close-minded and think it’s just for women.”

Three years later, he had attracted 200,000 followers on TikTok with a mix of selfies and lipsyncing videos. But he soon grew weary of the haters and quit the platform. Last September, with encouragement from By Imhotep, a Paris-based Gen Z-led talent agency, he started posting again.

He wanted to combat the sense of shame associated with men wearing makeup. So, this August, during rush hour at the St. Lazare metro station, he set up two iPhones — one for lighting, the other for recording — and filmed himself applying his makeup. He posted it on TikTok with the call to action “Normalise makeup for men” and the hashtag #makeupformen.

He posted a few more versions of the video, and what followed was a viral success, fueled by both love and hate, that pushed #makeupformen to prominence and grew his TikTok following to over 4 million.

But Buquen isn’t the only teen TikToker making waves in men’s beauty.

In January, 22-year-old Matteo Sinet, known for his colourful, ever-changing hair, saw a similar rise. A TikTok showcasing his extensive skincare routine, featuring The Ordinary’s pink-coloured serum, went viral, amassing nearly 3 million likes and 40 million views in one month. His followers topped 4.2 million. North West — daughter of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West — engaged him in a playful makeup battle on TikTok. Recently, Sinet starred in Armani Beauty’s back-to-school makeup campaign.

Everyday Masc Appeal

Buquen and Sinet have a few things in common. They’re both straight and in many ways traditionally masculine, and that’s a big part of their appeal.

Buquen is a former rugby player who fits the “hyper-masculine hetero dude” image, said UTA marketing executive Nate Jones. Meanwhile, Sinet is an avid boxer who played basketball in the OTE (Overtime Elite) league, a French pathway to the NBA.

For Buquen, putting on concealer or dabbing liquid blush on his face makes him “feel more confident.” Sinet says he wears light makeup, lipstick and lipgloss for the same reason, insisting that wearing cosmetics isn’t just a TikTok stunt. “This is my routine in real life,” he said.

“You can’t call them beauty influencers — they’re not,” said Anastasia Beverly Hills’ Soare. “They’re guys with a following who do a lot of things — one of the things that they happen to do is beauty.”

Be Like Bach

While Buquen and Sinet have attracted the most attention, a growing number of TikTok creators focused on men’s makeup are gaining traction, such as @hwaniieww (1.6 million followers), @lucamornet (415,000 followers), and @joelerdmann_(262,000 followers).

“Men’s makeup is shifting from niche curiosity to a rising trend,” according to Quilt.AI. Internet searches for men’s makeup rose 120 percent in the past two years, the company said. And the category is expected to continue to grow. Future Market Insights estimates the global market for male colour cosmetics will more than double over the next 10 years, from $17.57 billion in 2023 to $43 billion by 2033: a small fraction of the overall beauty market, to be sure, but more than pocket change.

“There is a cultural shift towards men incorporating makeup into their daily routines,” said Armani Beauty president Richard Pinabel, noting “a strong reception to our brand among male consumers” and that “face and lip are the biggest opportunities with concealer, gloss, and [products for] brows.”

Tom Ford and Chanel have long offered beauty products for men. But launching men’s-specific makeup lines may not be the best strategy for brands targeting the opportunity and Armani Beauty has avoided launching a cosmetics offering that’s overtly for men.

In March, Anastasia Beverly Hills launched Beauty Balm, a genderless skin tint serum that quickly resonated with men because “it doesn’t look like makeup,” said Soare. “It’s very Gen Z, very fluid.”

“I think the nonchalance [Buquen] brings to the conversation is the same nonchalance a brand should bring,” said Jones. “It’s a product for everyone. Don’t make a big stink about it.”

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