Discover the most relevant industry news and insights for fashion PR & communications professionals, updated each month to enable you to excel in job interviews, promotion conversations or perform better in the workplace by increasing your market awareness and emulating market leaders.
BoF Careers distils business intelligence from across the breadth of our content — editorial briefings, newsletters, case studies, podcasts and events — to deliver key takeaways and learnings tailored to your job function, listed alongside a selection of the most exciting live jobs advertised by BoF Careers partners.
Key articles and need-to-know insights for PR & communications professionals today:
1. The Super Bowl’s Fashion Moment Has Arrived
This year’s Super Bowl shaped up to be the sport’s glow-up moment. Boss released a capsule collection with the NFL. Commercial breaks were stuffed with ads for E.l.f., Cerave and other beauty brands (at $7 million for a 30-second spot). Taylor Swift is at the forefront of a WAG renaissance, as athletes’ partners prove to be the perfect vectors for brands looking to connect with football fans. Usher, this year’s halftime act, was all over Paris Fashion Week last fall and is fronting Skims’ latest men’s campaign. Brands are even setting up gifting suites, as they would at a red carpet event.
The payoff from successfully meeting the cultural moment can be huge. E.l.f.’s Super Bowl ad last year starring Jennifer Coolidge was a masterstroke, with an afterlife on social media and broadcast television long beyond the big game. E.l.f. can probably credit some of its stunning 85 percent growth last quarter to its big marketing swing. When Rihanna wore the MM6 Maison Margiela X Salomon Cross Low sneakers during her halftime performance last year, it cemented the trail running shoe’s ascension from niche sporting gear to a crossover hit.
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PR Intern, Arddun Agency — London, United Kingdom
Senior PR & Communications Manager, The Bicester Collection — Madrid, Spain
Marketing & Special Events Leader, Bloomingdale’s — New York, United States
2. Rebranding Nostalgia: Burberry and JW Anderson
The future was what the ever-prescient Jonathan Anderson was talking about while he ruminated on nostalgia after his show on Sunday. Kate Bush topping charts with a 40-year-old song, Tracey Chapman rocking the Grammies… Anderson marvelled at “young people discovering nostalgia, glorifying it.” […] The [JW Anderson] show’s cosy focus on ageing residents in a village in Yorkshire, in the north of England, was reflected in the curly grey wig hats sported by Anderson’s models (the veritable duplicate of a mumsy perm). The clumsy chunk of Brobdingnagian cable knits also suggested a weird cosiness.
You got the feeling after the Burberry show on Monday night that anything of the good old days would suit the brand just fine right now. “Burberry is one of the names most talked about in the world of fashion,” designer Daniel Lee gamely offered backstage, but it’s hardly for the right reasons. The new strategy hasn’t taken, so Lee is now faced with the considerable challenge of making it right. […] He opted for broad-shouldered, high-collared, hawkish outerwear with chunky bags and footwear to match. Hard reassurance for hard times.
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Media Planning & Buying Coordinator, Burberry — London, United Kingdom
Senior PR Manager, P448 — Paris, France
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3. How Fashion Brands Can Survive the 2024 US Election Minefield
“Make America Ferrera Again.” In 2016, when Rebecca Minkoff debuted a T-shirt emblazoned with that phrase — a play on America Ferrera’s name and Donald Trump’s slogan — it “didn’t feel like a risk,” the designer said. The actress and designer posed in the tees at Minkoff’s Manhattan boutique; Allure dubbed the collaboration “amazing” in an October 2016 headline. Needless to say, Minkoff isn’t planning any Trump-themed novelty T-shirts this year.
As the presidential primaries ramp up — or more likely, wind down after Trump’s thumping of his opponents in the Iowa caucuses in January — Minkoff isn’t the only one inside the fashion industry who plans to tread gingerly around politics this time around. Politically outspoken designers like Minkoff and corporate behemoths like Nike have for years used progressive stances on hot-button issues to connect with consumers. But a conservative backlash and signs of audience fatigue around such messaging has raised the risk for engaging with topics like inclusivity, climate change and LGBTQ rights.
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P&D Communication Associate, Ralph Lauren — Milan, Italy
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4. In Milan, Democracy Triumphs at Diesel While Fendi Finds Its Feet
Glenn Martens opened Diesel up to the world before his latest show: 72 hours of live streaming every last detail about the preparation of a fashion show, complete transparency in an industry which prefers a veil over its activities. For the show itself, Dieselettes around the world were invited to join online; a thousand people signed up within a minute. Under Martens’ unique and unyielding vision, Diesel has finally begun to click with the universe. Parent entity OTB Group confirmed as much in releasing 2023 results in February. […] But the takeaway from the collection was a new level of construction rather than destruction, of finery tailored from tatters.
Kim Jones has already felt the warmth of that moment when you can move the dial for the whole industry with the fusion of street and salon which originally launched him as a menswear designer. His tenure at Fendi’s womenswear has been marked by sober restraint, lean, elegant, untroubled, with the emphasis on silhouette and fabrication. Maybe too tentative, it was almost like he was over-emphasising his maturity as a designer. And yet there have always been swirls and eddies running under his collections for Fendi, and it might have been the surfacing of those that gave the kick to [this season’s] show that made it his best yet for the brand.
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5. The Football Team That Finally Got Fashion Right
When AC Milan took the field this month in its home game against Napoli — a clash of two of Italy’s most historic football clubs — the Milanese team donned blacked-out jerseys designed by Los Angeles streetwear brand Pleasures. […] The initial launch of the collaboration, when jerseys went on sale for fans, was AC Milan’s most successful day in terms of e-commerce sales, up 69 percent above its last record, according to the team. The $180 cream-coloured version of the jersey proved to be the biggest hit and has become an all-time bestseller, now trading on StockX for as much as $290.
The Pleasures tie-up may have been a surprise to traditional football fans, but it was by no means an accident. AC Milan has pursued a number of partnerships — including tapping Off-White as its official “style and culture curator” — since its $1.2 billion acquisition by US investment firm RedBird Capital Partners in August 2022. Under new ownership, the team has positioned itself as not only a football club but a lifestyle brand, creating new revenue streams through thoughtfully designed merch that goes beyond one-off collaborations.
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Marketing Communications Instructor, FIT — New York, United States
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6. How TikTok’s ‘Mob Wives’ Are Fuelling the Resurgence in Fur
Characterised by animal prints, heavy gold jewellery, glossy leather trousers, perfectly coiffed hair and, of course, a massive fur coat, the “mob wife” trend has already racked up over 127 million views on TikTok, according to Trendalytics. On TikTok, trends can rise — and then fall — in a matter of weeks, if not days, and “mob wife” is no exception. While weekly searches have grown by 21.3 percent year-over-year, Trendalytics anticipates this fad to be short-lived, with an arc of roughly six months.
Anticipating and preparing for these viral moments can be challenging for brands that don’t already have corresponding products in their assortment — because fickle consumers are itching to hop on the bandwagon, selling products on a preorder model won’t work, said Mandy Lee, a trend analyst and forecaster.
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PR & Marketing Internship, Galvan — London, United Kingdom
Social Manager, Coach — Shanghai, China
Social Media Manager, Chalhoub Group — Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Rihanna became Dior’s first Black ambassador in 2015, starring in a blockbuster accessories campaign for the brand, also shot by Klein and set in Versailles, that year. The partnership — which coincided with major brand projects including the “Dior & Me” documentary and the “Designer of Dreams” fashion retrospective — helped anchor Dior’s cultural relevance as it navigated its second designer transition in less than 5 years.
As interest in luxury brands cools following a multi-year boom for the segment, fashion’s biggest names are accelerating efforts to stay in the cultural spotlight through brand ambassadorships that help reach an audience beyond fashion. […] Renewing its ties with Rihanna would be a boon to Dior, as the singer has long managed to cultivate both mainstream recognition and high-fashion clout. Her appearance at the brand’s January haute couture show alone generated press and social media visibility worth an estimated $9.3 million, according to consultancy Launchmetrics.
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Social & Community Manager, Desmond & Dempsey — London, United Kingdom
Social Media Manager, Marla Aaron — New York, United States
Marketing & Communications Director, Alexander McQueen — Shanghai, China
8. Why It Feels Like Fashion Forgot About Black History Month
According to an analysis by Edited for The Business of Fashion, the number of marketing emails from US retailers explicitly mentioning Black History Month have been trending downward since an initial spike in 2021, the first observation following the murder of George Floyd. They fell 38 percent from 2021 to 2022 between the months of January and February, and 40 percent again from 2022 to 2023 during the same period. February 2024 is on track to continue the trend: Of the 726 US retailers Edited tracked, only 51 sent emails mentioning Black History Month.
To their consumers and employees alike, how brands’ recognise (or don’t) Black History Month is an extension of their broader commitment to DEI. Complete silence — especially from brands that enthusiastically joined the DEI fray in 2020 — sends the message that companies’ don’t value their Black consumers and staffers and that companies’ aren’t serious about advancing diversity.
Source: What Fashion PR & Communications Professionals Need to Know Today
