What Fashion Marketing Professionals Need to Know Today

Discover the most recent and relevant industry news and insights for fashion professionals working in marketing, to help you excel in your job interviews, promotion conversations or simply to 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, as well as the exclusive interviews and conversations we have with experts and market leaders every day — to deliver key takeaways and learnings in your job function.

Key articles and need-to-know insights for marketing professionals today:

1. The PR Machines Building the Next Generation of ‘It Girls’

Modern day “It girls” aren’t just born, they’re made. The elusive term, describing a girl or woman with that certain je ne sais quoi, has been part of the cultural vernacular for over 100 years, made famous in the 1927 film “It” starring silent actress Clara Bow (often referred to as the first “It girl”). Since then, it’s been used to describe a slew of women, from Andy Warhol muse Edie Sedgwick to Bianca Jagger to Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy to Alexa Chung.

Whether by necessity or desire, today’s crop of It girls are propelled by a well-oiled machine behind-the-scenes. No longer is being an It girl simply a side effect of being a paparazzi magnet (Bessette-Kennedy), attending all the right parties (Jagger), having influential connections (Sedgwick) or simply having great style (Chung). Today, it’s a job in and of itself — one that, to do successfully, requires a team behind you. At the same time, having that “It factor” is increasingly necessary to break through in fashion at all, particularly as a model or influencer.

Related Jobs:

PR Assistant, ASB PR Limited — London, United Kingdom

Senior Communications Manager, Reference Studios — Milan, Italy

Global Communications Director, Carolina Herrera — New York, United States

2. Gucci Names Alessio Vannetti Chief Brand Officer

Alessio Vannetti, who stepped down as Valentino’s chief brand officer in July, will return to Gucci to lead marketing operations as the Italian mega-label’s executive vice president and chief brand officer. Vannetti previously worked at Gucci as global communications director from 2015 to 2019. Susan Chokachi, a US-based Gucci veteran who has led the brand’s marketing since the departure of Robert Triefus at the end of April, is set to exit the brand.

In his new role, Vannetti will be tasked with reasserting Gucci’s heritage story and cultivating a more stable brand message after the radical aesthetic reinvention piloted by former creative director Alessandro Michele, as well as building excitement for new designer Sabato De Sarno. The shakeup comes as CEO Marco Bizzarri prepares to depart the brand and De Sarno gears up for his high-stakes debut at Milan Fashion Week on September 22.

Related Jobs:

Partnerships Marketing Assistant, Tapestry — London, United Kingdom

Marketing Manager, Neiman Marcus — New York, United States

Wholesale Brand Manager, Moncler — Los Angeles, United States

3. The EU’s New Rules on Personalised Social Media Feeds, Explained

On August 25, regulations came into force that require large online platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok and Snapchat to give European users at least one option for a content feed that doesn’t use their personal data for customisation. A user who chooses that alternative could still get recommended content, such as what’s popular in their country, but using their online behaviour to determine what to show them would be off limits.

The new guidelines are part of the EU’s far-reaching Digital Services Act, which aims to regulate the way internet companies operating in the EU handle data and mitigate systemic risks. It began taking effect in a tiered system last year. The latest rules apply to what it calls large online platforms, meaning those with at least 45 million users. The category includes 19 companies, such as search giant Google, marketplaces Amazon and AliExpress, and Zalando, Europe’s largest online fashion retailer, which filed a suit contesting the designation.

Related Jobs:

Performance Marketing and Sales Lead, Holzweiler — London, United Kingdom

Senior Brand Marketing Manager, Skims — Los Angeles, United States

Senior Marketing Manager, Coach — New York, United States

4. How Luxury Finally Cracked Tik Tok

Luxury is officially all-in on Tik Tok. High-end brands like Gucci and Dior have operated on the short-form video platform since 2020, if not earlier. But the fashion discourse on Tik Tok was still dominated by fast-fashion hauls and dupe talk. When luxury brands made waves it wasn’t always in the ways they wanted. For every viral success like Prada’s bucket hat challenge, there was a fiasco like the widely mocked Chanel advent calendars in 2021.

Strategies are evolving though: Media Impact Value (MIV) generated on brands’ own pages grew 4.5 percent year over year, while the share attributed to influencers dropped 8 percent. Louis Vuitton generated a similar amount of MIV across owned and influencer channels, successfully turning big events like Pharrell Williams’ debut men’s show into major Tik Tok moments. Its top conversation generator so far this year was a brand-produced behind-the-scenes video featuring K-Pop star J-Hope at the June show.

Related Jobs:

Digital Media Specialist, Ugg — London, United Kingdom

Influencer Marketing Internship, Hugo Boss — Germany

Social Media Manger, My Gemma — New York, United States

5. How Retro Sneakers Took Over Fashion

Shopping for sneakers today can feel like stepping back in time. Nike’s hottest shoes include the Air Force 1, Dunks and early Jordans — particularly the 1, 3 and 4, all models that first appeared in the 1980s. At New Balance, the 574 (released in 1988) and 550 (1989) are trending. Adidas’ current winners are even older, including Gazelles (1968) and Sambas (1950). Over on StockX, of the 50 best-selling styles in 2023, only three are less than five years old, according to Drew Haines, the company’s merchandising director of sneakers and collectibles.

For the giants with a rich archive to mine, it’s been lucrative. Nike doubled its sales to $51.2 billion over the last decade. Adidas increased sales more than 50 percent to €22.5 billion ($24.3 billion) between 2012 and 2022. Retros aren’t going away, but the market may also be ready for some newness. These days, smaller competitors such as Hoka and On are finding success with designs incumbents are now imitating. In May, Sam Poser, an analyst at Williams Trading, issued a “sell” call on Nike stock, describing its Air Max franchise as “almost dead.”

Related Jobs:

Senior Marketing Manager, Naked Wolfe — London, United Kingdom

Senior Retail Marketing Manager, The Bicester Collection — Wertheim, Germany

Wholesale Marketing Manager, Paul Smith — New York, United States

6. Why Luxury Brands Are Betting Big on Tennis

At the US Open Tuesday, Spain’s Carlos Alcaraz and Italy’s Jannik Sinner both triumphed in their respective matches, meaning the quarterfinals could see them go head-to-head in the latest chapter of tennis’s hottest burgeoning rivalry. Luxury’s biggest brands are paying close attention: 20-year-old Alcaraz was signed as a house ambassador at Louis Vuitton earlier this summer, and last week launched the brand’s spring-summer 2024 formalwear campaign. Sinner, by contrast, has taken to repping Vuitton’s biggest rival, Gucci, creating viral moments as he carried monogram duffels from the Italian fashion giant onto the court (Last night’s bag included custom handles in the US Open’s signature shades of blue and yellow).

Players have been doing more than ever to boost the sport’s appeal for marketers: Tuesday, tennis legend Venus Williams (a vanguard alongside her sister Serena in promoting synergies between tennis and fashion) attempted to create tennis’ version of the NBA “tunnel walk” — arriving for her match in an ensemble including pieces from Azzedine Alaia, Prada and Willy Chavarria.

Related Jobs:

Account Manger, Sports Brands, Next — Leicester, United Kingdom

Marketing Intern, On — Zurich, Switzerland

Digital Marketing Manager, Bugatchi — Montreal, Canada

7. From Jay-Z to the White Party: How Culture Drives the Swiss Watch Industry

In 2004, François-Henry Bennahmias — then managing director of Audemars Piguet North America — sent his Swiss employers some pictures from the New York social scene. The pictures, Bennahmias thought, showed how rapidly hip-hop and rap were gaining recognition in the cultural mainstream and among established elites. His plan? First, a collaboration with Jay-Z, a recording artist whose burgeoning crossover success he saw as being at the vanguard of what culture was about to become. In the conservative, insular world of Swiss watchmaking, there was no road map for such a deal.

Twenty years on, interest in Swiss luxury watches is driven by an increasingly close relationship with culture writ large — with associations with musicians, football stars, comic book franchises and video games all driving visibility for the once stuffy, elitist world. At Audemars Piguet, the embrace of popular culture has certainly worked. Since its Jay-Z partnership in 2005, the brand has gone on to collaborate with basketball star LeBron James and Marvel. Annual revenues have grown from around 300 million Swiss francs in the early 2000s to over 2 billion Swiss francs ($2.2 billion) last year.

Related Jobs:

Brand Manager, Fernando Jorge — London, United Kingdom

Wholesale Marketing Manager, Paul Smith — New York, United States

Communications Coordinator, Tiffany & Co. — Sydney, Australia

8. What Really Happens On a Tarte Influencer Trip?

On an unseasonably pleasant afternoon in late July, a group of 13 contest winners and their plus-ones (and one reporter) arrived in New York for “Trippin with Tarte,” a three-day whirlwind that included a stay at the Plaza Hotel, sightseeing adventures and box seats at Beyoncé’s sold-out concert.

Tarte typically spends deep in the six figures to fly influencers like Alix Earle to locales like Dubai or Turks & Caicos. The posts from these trips can generate billions of social media impressions, enough that the makeup brand doesn’t spend any money on traditional marketing like billboards, commercials or online ads. Tarte’s executives say the Beyoncé trip was in the works for almost a year, predating controversies that framed the brand as exclusionary and wealth-obsessed. The mix of the attendees gathered at the Plaza Hotel before the concert felt like a direct rebuttal to those accusations. There were healthcare workers, teachers and small business owners.

Related Jobs:

Senior Producer, Beauty, Burberry — London, United Kingdom

Senior Brand Manager, Gisou — Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Senior Market Intelligence Associate, Beauty, Chalhoub Group — Dubai, United Arab Emirates