Skywire

  The biannual trade show London Fashion Week (LFW) is typically an exciting showcase for luxury brands’ latest wares. However, many journalists, influencers, buyers and other movers and shakers invited to LFW’s February outing could have reasonably expected it to feel somewhat subdued.  After all, long shadows have been cast over prestige goods purveyors in recent weeks and months. Although the long-awaited end of the COVID-19 pandemic ushered in a flurry of spending on high-end clothes, accessories and jewellery, a recent rise in inflation has decelerated this renaissance.  The Chinese market has long been a reliable source of revenue for many players, but even that once-roaring economy has since started spluttering. Three British houses — Burberry, Mulberry, and Watches of Switzerland — have seen their shares fall by more than 40%.  Nonetheless, if February’s LFW was anything to go by, the industry remains determined to turn a corner — or at least weather ...

  If the hype around all things Web3 in the luxury, lifestyle, and fashion sectors was supposed to have died down recently, this news evidently failed to reach Paris in February, a month that saw a complement of digital fashion symposiums that had prestige brands flocking to the French capital.  Of course, to be serious for a moment, participants and attendees at such events in the city as Digital Fashion Week, Future+, Future Fashion Summit, and the yearly NFT Paris were well aware that questions have been asked about the exact status of Web3 in 2024.  After all, the industry has taken more than enough of its own hits lately – at least in terms of broader public perception – amid the sliding market fortunes of Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs and Sam Bankman-Fried’s fraud conviction.  But even if some relatively casual observers are still deterred by the “crypto bro” trope, the evidence presented by the latest Web3 fashion events in Paris indicates that fascinating...

  It has been hard not to notice more and more instances of luxury fashion brands extending their reach to the beauty sector in recent times. This begs the question: should your fashion business follow suit? The answer is complex and can very much depend on your current corporate trajectory. In October 2023, the French-based Kering — the luxury goods purveyor with the celebrated names Gucci, Balenciaga, and Alexander McQueen under its wing — acquired Creed, a fragrance brand with a history dating as far back as 1760. Similarly, last April saw the Estée Lauder Companies purchase Tom Ford, with these two brands having already long partnered in beauty since 2005. Why have more fashion houses started embracing beauty? Many opinions on this subject were voiced at the online publication Beauty Independent ’s Dealmaker Summit EU/UK 2023 held in December. The trade show took place in London, where we have based Skywire London, our marketing agency for luxury brands . Speaking a...