Marc Bain

Over the past 30 years, China has gone from a blip on the radar of luxury brands to arguably the most important luxury market in the world. In the 1980s, few brands even had a foothold in the country, due to the Chinese government’s tight restrictions on letting in foreign entities. But since 2000 or so, in the wake of major political, economic, and social shifts, luxury has flooded in. By 2010, more than 40 brands had entered China, and they’ve been rewarded in sales.

This story has been updated.

Gabrielle Chanel was born 132 years ago today, on August 19, 1883. And while there’s no particularly momentous reason for remembering her this year, the fashion house which took her name—Chanel—is as strong a force as ever.

The bombing in Bangkok yesterday (Aug. 17), which killed 22 people and injured more than 100, deliberately targeted foreign tourists in a bid to hurt the Thai economy, according to Thai authorities. Notably, the attack took place in the central Ratchaprasong luxury retail district, home to lavish shopping malls that consume as much electricity as entire Thai provinces.

Lately it feels like each week brings a new form of body shaming leveled at women. The most recent instance involves the fashion label Herve Leger, and it apparently cost the man who made the comments his job.

North Korea is once again angrily threatening war against the US and South Korea.

The International Space Station orbits more than 200 miles above the Earth, traveling five miles per second. Getting in touch isn’t quite as simple as placing a long-distance call. But if you have a ham radio, used by radio amateurs to chat on public frequencies, it actually isn’t much tougher.

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Rap and hip-hop have long been obsessed with fashion as a status symbol. But in the 1980s and 1990s, the brands rappers focused on weren’t quite like the ones they’re obsessing over now. Back then, Dr. Dre was wearing baggy jeans and flannels by Cross Colours, the Notorious B.I.G. was rapping about puffy Fubu bubble jackets, and Tupac Shakur was showing up in oversized Karl Kani sweatpants.

This post has been updated.

Regardless of whether you follow fashion or not, you know this look—a stark, industrial, sharp-cut, androgynous, predominantly black-and-white mashup of high-fashion and low. And you know it because it’s everywhere.

The rapid growth of Bangladesh’s garment industry has been a blessing and a burden to the country. Even as it has provided jobs to millions and helped Bangladesh cut its poverty rate, it has also exploited the nation’s poorest and most desperate, leading to the gratuitous and preventable deaths of thousands (see: Rana Plaza in 2013).

China is currently the world’s fifth largest luxury market (pdf, p. 5), but that ranking doesn’t show the whole picture. Chinese luxury shoppers make many of their purchases while traveling outside the country. If you take that spending into account, they become the world’s biggest group of luxury consumers. That’s why, when China suddenly announced it would devalue the Chinese yuan by 2%, luxury brands and their investors shuddered.

There’s a great artisan who resides in the village of Pile, in the hills outside Montecristi, a small town on a wide coastal plain along Ecuador’s western limit. His name is Simon Espinal, and his trade is making Panama hats.

Nike is the undisputed king of sportswear in the US, and it wants to stay that way—apparently enough that it’s employing a sneaky strategy to undermine one of its most threatening competitors.

The question before tonight’s GOP debate was whether this would be the moment when Donald Trump would finally flop. He held a double-digit lead across the national polls that Fox News, which hosted the debate with Facebook, used to pick the debaters. But he hadn’t been truly tested on policy, or forced to spar with career politicians.

Where might a costume designer turn to outfit a comedy series set on the first day of sleepaway camp in 1981? One would think a vintage shop would be the only viable option. But luckily for Leslie Schilling, who did the costumes for Netflix’s new series, Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp (based off the cult 2001 comedy Wet Hot American Summer), there was another source.

The process of picking running shoes has become absurdly involved. Shoe recommendations intended to help you avoid injury can vary based on age, gender, whether you underpronate or overpronate, and the exact way your foot strikes the ground. Getting the “right” pair now seems to require, at a minimum, a jog on one of those gait-analysis machines and lengthy consultations with salespeople who seem to hold advanced degrees in biomechanics.

Coach, the venerable but rather staid American brand best known for its omnipresent leather bags and accessories, wants to become a genuine luxury house—or at least be perceived that way.

The factory farming of livestock is a growing industry in the US, and in its wake it leaves a growing pile of animal waste products—bones, muscle, and fatty tissue, much of it going unused. At the same time, people are buying more clothes, which require more virgin resources to make. Gross as it may sound, it makes sense from a sustainability perspective to try to use some of those animal waste products to clothe shoppers.

A generation ago, pig farming was one of the main occupations in East Wind village, a spot located in China’s Jiangsu province. In Beishan, they sold sesame buns baked in clay ovens. Junpu village was slightly more modern, with its food processing work. Now East Wind has a bustling furniture industry, Beishan is home to at least one multi-million-dollar outdoor gear business, and one of Junpu’s big successes is selling denim.

Don’t look now, but Skechers is leisurely walking by its competition.

In an achievement that’s as freaky as it is functional, scientists have managed to turn cells into miniature lasers.

This post has been corrected