Marc Bain

The influx of luxury brands into the sneaker business in the last few years has helped to solidify sneakers as status symbols, and on occasion, objects of obsession. New York Times writer Jon Caramanica described his eight-month search (paywall) to nab a pair of Balenciaga’s colossal Triple S sneakers, which despite their $900 price tag, were constantly sold out everywhere he looked. Other sought-after shoes by labels like Louis Vuitton and Gucci are regular sights at fashion shows and anywhere street-style photographers flock for material.

At a warehouse in Tokyo’s Ariake district once mainly staffed by people, robots are now doing the work of inspecting and sorting the clothing housed there by Japanese retailer Uniqlo.

The idea of selling fashion straight to shoppers sounds simple enough, but how often it happens today represents a big shift in retail. For decades, retailers that collected brands under one roof were industry power brokers, playing a lead role in determining which labels shoppers bought, or even knew existed, and helping to shape their images. Plenty of labels had their own stores, but establishing a global network of shops to reach all potential customers could be prohibitively expensive and complicated. Many brands, especially in luxury fashion, instead relied on multi-brand retailers to be their main connection to shoppers.

James Bond is getting old—it’s been more than half a century since he first graced the silver screen—and the last few years have seen more and more speculation about the possibility of 007 just maybe being played by someone other than a white guy.

Before the vote on whether to send Brett Kavanaugh to the US supreme Court happened, it was clear it would split along party lines. Still, countless American women hoped the senate’s few moderate female Republicans would believe Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s claim that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her in high school, and reject him.

The cold open of “Saturday Night Live” featured fired-up Republicans celebrating Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the US Supreme Cour in a rowdy locker room.

Transparency within a company is linked to employee trust and happiness—which, incidentally, has been linked to higher productivity. In that light, it makes sense that Marco Bizzarri, Gucci’s CEO, would want to keep the company’s retail workers aware of what’s happening with Gucci’s business.

Less than two weeks ago, eBay got an alert from one of its sellers. Someone else on eBay had messaged this person, trying to persuade them to start selling on Amazon. EBay, whose business relies on its sellers and the commissions it draws from their sales, decided to investigate.

For a sign of how the American mall is changing, look to Planet Fitness. In 2017, the fast-growing budget gym chain leased more new square footage in US malls than anyone else, according to CoStar Group, a commercial real estate research firm. In fact, the amount of square footage leased by gyms and fitness centers in malls has grown 70% since 2013, Footwear News reports, citing CoStar’s data.

Walmart has just announced its latest acquisition.

Each year, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) publishes a list of “notorious markets” where counterfeit and pirated products are rampant, hurting US brands whose intellectual property is infringed. The list is a warning to consumers, but also a bit of public shaming of these businesses, which in the past have included markets like China’s Taobao.

For those who love fashion, the Paris boutique Colette was simply one of the best stores in the world.

Several factors have driven the outstanding success of fashion e-commerce site Revolve. It’s adept at staying on top of trends, capitalizing as they break and hurrying on before they become overexposed. It has built a roster of 19 data-driven, private brands that account for—amazingly—eight of its top 10 labels this year. And then, of course, there are the influencers.

There aren’t many entities in our lives that have voices as loud as those of corporations. They buy up air time between the shows we watch, or sometimes placement within them; elbow their way into our social media feeds; and plaster their ads all over our physical spaces.

Not too long ago, it was unthinkable for a new Yeezy sneaker to drop and not sell out almost instantly. Every new release in the collaboration between rapper Kanye West and Adidas was a marriage of limited supply and abundant hype that sent sneakerheads scrambling for a pair and produced astronomical resale prices on secondary markets like StockX.

In 2016, Nike unveiled the HyperAdapt 1.0, a futuristic, auto-lacing shoe for athletes. The “for athletes” part was key. Nike started developing the technology more than a decade earlier to make the sneaker with “power laces” in Back to the Future II a reality, and came to believe the concept could actually make for a great athletic shoe.

Michael Kors isn’t hiding its ambition to build a global luxury conglomerate in the style of Europe’s powerhouses. It already made a deal last year to acquire high-end shoemaker Jimmy Choo, and in closing out the company’s recent earnings call with investors, CEO John D. Idol said the company was continuing to look for “strategic luxury acquisitions.”

London’s Troy Fearn is part of a new guard of casting directors and agents pushing fashion to embrace a more diverse range of models in its photo shoots and runway shows. He works with top magazines and brands to find the faces that will represent them to the world.

A “Made in Italy” clothing label suggests peak craftsmanship to shoppers around the world, helping luxury brands charge a premium for anything bearing the tag. But an investigation by the New York Times (paywall) reveals that some Italian workers making these items could be doing so in home workshops for staggeringly low pay.

Since launching in 2006, three years after Ssense’s founding in Montreal, Ssense.com has become one of fashion’s premier online retailers by satisfying fast-paced, Instagram-addicted shoppers who can tire of a trend in a moment and are always on the lookout for the next exciting thing. Brigitte Chartrand, its senior womenswear buying director, has guided the women’s department for the last four years, and was among the first to introduce brands such as Vetements and Off-White.

Shops that cater to sneaker obsessives can feel as unwelcoming as uptight luxury boutiques—with their own dress codes, their own jargon, and a culture that can require deep insider knowledge to navigate.

Denise Incandela, who joined Walmart a year ago to oversee fashion on Walmart.com, Jet.com, and Shoes.com, knows that her employer’s name is more likely to conjure thoughts of canned corn, toothpaste, or cat food than attractive clothes.

For much of 2018, H&M had a big problem: a humongous pile of unsold clothes, totaling more than $4 billion in inventory at one point. Already burdened with too many brick-and-mortar stores at a time when its customers are doing more of their shopping online, the retailer suddenly seemed unable to make fashion that anyone wanted to buy.

On Sept. 12, Apple unveiled three new iPhones—and surprise!—they’re expensive. And if you’re outside the US, the phones are going to be even more costly.