Sublime

In the UK, The Restory is an aftercare service that’s gained a massive social media following for its luxury repair videos. Meanwhile, in the US, newcomer Lotte offers a remote sustainability styling service focused on your relationship with the clothes you already own.

Thanks to a logistics overhaul executed a year earlier, Proenza Schouler’s spring collection was by March already in stores and paid for. By luck, their collaboration with Birkenstock — for which they topstitched the German sandal-makers’ popular Arizona and Milano styles, glazing them in what have become signature colours like cobalt blue and burg... See more

Ultimately, Proenza’s fortunes unravelled for many of the same reasons so many of its peers are no longer in business: misallocation of funds, disagreements with investors, seismic shifts in the industry at large, and a fashion ecosystem that did a poor job of preparing young designers for the realities of entrepreneurship.

Shein shows one way this can go - it’s built a smartphone-only fast fashion brand that appears to be bigger than H&M and Zara combined in the USA. Part of the Shein story is the pace of inventory and the use of data (it claims to add 8-10k new SKUs every single day) but the other is that it has built this business with cheap shipping and (like ... See more

Odds of success are stacked toward brands with hybrid business models. These hybrid models mix luxury strategy (investing in desirability, scarcity, status-signaling) and fast retail (trend, availability, price) in a way that capitalizes on the strengths of both.

The secondary line, rebranded Proenza Schouler White Label, now makes up 30 percent of revenue, while direct retail, including one physical store and e-commerce, accounts for 20 percent of business, up a few percentage points from before the pandemic.

Entireworld was born in 2018 as a D.T.C. (direct-to-consumer) line, with no seasons, no shows, no novelty. “I wanted complete freedom from that,” he said.