1. Luxury lifestyle: After scooping up luxury travel pioneer Belmond, LVMH is reportedly one of a handful of parties in the running to buy the Ritz hotel in London from the feuding Barclay family for an estimated £800 million. – Read More on the Times

2. Kohl’s women’s business is one of its biggest weaknesses: Macy’s and J.C. Penney have cited similar obstacles, as fewer women are visiting department stores to buy clothes or buying less clothing altogether, and more are turning to rental options, like Rent the Runway, to build out their work wardrobes. Or they are buying used clothes, via platforms such as ThredUp and Poshmark. Amazon is also becoming a bigger force in fashion. – Read More on CNBC

3. In the Circular Economy, Products Are Designed to Be Recycled: Many business leaders and governments — including China, Japan and the U.K. — argue that we should ditch this linear system in favor of a so-called circular economy of take, make, use, reuse and reuse again and again. – Read More on Bloomberg

4. Why Louis Vuitton, MAC, Gucci are getting into gaming – and why it won’t stop any time soon: As of 2018, China’s online gaming population was made up of nearly half a billion players, with women making up more than half of this market. As such, a stream of fashion and cosmetics collaborations have hit the gaming scene recently, looking for new audiences in a $152 billion market. – Read More on SCMP 

5. RETRO READ: With the Video Game Market on Track to Reach $300 Billion, Luxury Brands Want to Make Real Money from Virtual Clothes. Given the size of the market, its ever-escalating growth rate, and the high levels of engagement that come hand-in-hand with these popular games and the related real-life events, it is not terribly surprising that Louis Vuitton and others want in. – Read More on TFL

1. The fashion industry in 2020: Amid uncertainty, brands, retailers, and other fashion-industry players must act strategically to capitalize on digital opportunities, boost earnings, and address sustainability. – Read More on McKinsey

2. For the fashion industry, the fallout from the coronavirus may be just beginning: China, where the virus originated, is a major manufacturing hub for many industries, including fashion. It currently manufactures more than a third of all clothing and textiles globally, although its market share in apparel manufacturing has declined slightly over the past few years. – Read More on Fast Co. 

3. An Insider’s Guide to the Fast Fashion Industry: “I think people who buy from Boohoo think the clothes are cheap because it’s cheap material. But it’s cheap labor. People are overworked and underpaid.” – Read More in Vice

4. Fashion Nova Reportedly Spent $40 Million on Influencer Marketing in 2019: To put that in perspective, note that the No. 2 brand—Flat Tummy Co.—is said to have spent nearly $14 million. The top five is rounded out by Ciroc, Walmart, and PrettyLittleThing. – Read More on Complex

5. RETRO READ: How Fashion Nova Won the Internet and Is Transforming the Way Millennials Dress. “To paying customers, especially hard to fit ones, Fashion Nova symbolizes a revolution in terms of access to trendy, affordable clothes.” – Read More on TFL 

6. Unions press FTC to investigate Amazon’s market power: In a petition to the agency, they urged the FTC to examine alleged anti-competitive behavior on Amazon’s part, including directly and indirectly controlling product prices, tying its search rankings to the company’s own profit, price discrimination against users of competing e-commerce platforms, using data from its platforms to give it an advantage, and depressing wages in local labor markets. – Read More on Retail Dive

1. Rivals Race to Catch Nike’s Vaporfly: Competitor concerns about the shoes that might make athletes run “too fast” mounted, and World Athletics formed a group in early 2019 to study the issue. But what the governing body saw as careful deliberation, many athletes and brands saw as frustrating silence on an issue central to competition: Did Nike’s shoes provide an unfair aid that the rules had long prohibited? – Read More on WSJ 

2. What’s Holding Up Sustainable Change for Fashion Players? One of the common challenges within the fashion industry, which also applies to consumers and stakeholders, is that there is no common understanding of what a sustainable product is. – Read More on Sourcing Journal 

3. RETRO READ: The Problem with “Sustainability”? It Doesn’t Really Mean Anything. Even the FTC has “somewhat sheepishly admitted that it could not define what sustainability really means in concrete terms for marketers” or brands. – Read More on TFL 

4. How the coronavirus is affecting global fashion production, from high street brands to luxury labels: Companies and designers with factories in China are facing huge disruption to their supply chains as people are unable to return to work. “It is going to have a massive impact on the global fashion industry, far more than just in China.” – Read More on SCMP 

5. Do Luxury Houses Need Fashion Designers? Today there are still grandiose shows staged, but they largely serve as window-dressing and marketing exercises that hide the lack of ideas instead of highlighting them. – Read More on Highsnobiety 

6. RELATED READ: Can Bottega Veneta’s Daniel Lee Go Beyond the “It” Bag? Or Better Yet … Does He Need to? The full collections of garments that brands trot out every season are, more often than not, loss leaders for their beefy accessories businesses. – Read More on TFL

1. Vietnam’s fashion market is booming and attracting brands like Louis Vuitton, Uniqlo and Zara: Long a power in global textile and garment manufacturing, Vietnam is taking on a new role: a fast-growing consumer market. The next 10 years will be a ‘pivotal period for the growth of luxury shopping across the country.’ – Read More on SCMP 

2. As Victoria’s Secret’s star wanes, the lingerie market is growing more fragmented: Victoria’s Secret’s market share has declined for years — a combination of a dated approach, oversexualized images and a plethora of competition. But the number of startups and retailers vying to take a slice of the business that previously belonged to Victoria’s Secret hasn’t slowed down. – Read More on Modern Retail 

3. Can sneakers ever really be sustainable? “As long as these brands are pursuing growth, they are not creating sustainability and cannot make any claims about sustainability.” Nike and Adidas need more than recycled products if they’re serious about saving the planet. – Read More on Input

4. We bought dozens of products from AliExpress, Amazon, eBay, Walmart and Wish. Over half were suspected fakes. From MAC lipstick and Kylie Cosmetics lip kits to Nike sneakers and Valentino shoes, each product listing seemed legitimate, with some prices that compared to retail stores and official-looking advertisements. – Read More on CBC

5. What Makes a $60,000 Watch So Expensive? It can take years of research to perfect a movement’s flow, a case’s ideal weight or the optimal way to fit each component together beneath the dial. A lofty sticker price recoups such development expenses. Finally, there’s the brand name. “You’re paying for that status symbol and name recognition.” – Read More on WSJ

1. China’s Appetite for Luxury Was Waning Even Before the Virus Hit: About 10% of Chinese consumers said they were planning to reduce their luxury purchases in 2020 compared to 6% last year, according to a December survey of 1,599 affluent shoppers. – Read More on Bloomberg

2. Forever 21’s new owners face a slowdown in fast fashion: “The desire for cheap fast fashion has absolutely waned, and consumers obviously want to invest in better quality and better brands … Rental, resale, off-price — those good deals for good quality — is a complete contrast to fast fashion.” – Read More on Retail Dive

3. COUNTERPOINT: No, Forever 21’s bankruptcy does not mean that fast fashion is dying. In reality, fast fashion pioneers like Forever 21 are being replaced by faster, more digitally-fluent brands, such as  Boohoo.com, Fashion Nova, and Missguided, which debut thousands of products each week. – Read More on TFL

4. Jane Birkin: Birkin bags are now coveted luxury items that re-sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars — though the woman behind the idea never received royalties for the design. And while her association with the bag means “nothing much” to the actress and singer, she seems unfazed that her name has achieved a fame of its own. – Read More on CNN

5. How French Department Stores – including the soon-to-reopen La Samaritaine – are Courting the 1 Percent: Retailers are wooing high-spending clients with the kind of exclusive experiences previously linked with the rarefied world of haute couture. – Read More on WWD

1. How Fashion Designers Became the New Instagram Influencers: Designers like Marc Jacobs, Virgil Abloh and Donatella Versace are moonlighting as social media influencers. “The more people that tune in [to a designer’s account], the less money that brand has to spend on traditional advertising. So it can transfer over and it can have a benefit for the brand.” – Read More on the WSJ 

2. ‘The modern Goodwill’: How ThredUp positioned itself as the struggling retailer’s resale partner-in-crime. The 10-year-old company as a peer-to-peer platform for people to buy and sell men’s shirts. Three years later it adopted more of the consignment model, having people offer up their clothes which the company would then price and sell itself. – Read More on Modern Retail 

3. How Kanye’s lusted-after Yeezy 350 V2 lost its hype: “There is the potential for this brand to recover the real scarcity that’s out of control, but it won’t be easy to get there. You can’t slow it down for one year and get there the next year.” – Read More on Input 

4. Should we ration fashion? What if, for example, we could buy only a certain amount of new clothing – and then buy as much secondhand as we wanted? What if we got a tax break for ethical shopping – just as in Scandinavia the government gives a tax break to repair shops? – Read More on the Guardian 

5. Coronavirus will cost the luxury industry an estimated $40 billion: a survey of top luxury executives estimates the total hit to the industry’s sales could reach as high as €40 billion ($43.4 billion). – Read More on Quartz

1. The Take-No-Prisoners Rivalries in Online Luxury Fashion: In the increasingly competitive realm, high-end fashion retailers, like Moda Operandi, are trying to distinguish themselves by promoting exclusive merchandise and being the first to offer it to customers online. They are also aiming to specialize. “Having a distinct point of view is something that can create a unique customer base.” – Read More on WSJ 

2. Harvey Weinstein Is Found Guilty on Two Counts: Harvey Weinstein, the powerhouse film producer whose dramatic downfall over sexual misconduct ignited a global movement, was found guilty of criminal sexual act in the first degree and rape in the third degree. – Read More on the New York Times

3. The Guilt-Free Engagement Ring Is Here: The toll that producing sparkly gems takes on the environment often goes largely unnoticed, but customers are waking up to the reality that beautiful jewelry often has an ugly side. Each metric ton of gold produced last year was responsible for 32,689 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions. – Read More on Bloomberg 

4. RETRO READ: With a Rise in Lab-Grown Diamonds, Disclosure and Questions of Value Become Hot Topics. “Not even perfect replicas, however, will extinguish strong preferences for mined diamonds.” In the short terms, experts suspect that nothing will change, including prices. – Read More on TFL

5. Fast fashion sellers are stealing influencers’ faces: For now, platforms are not proactively dealing with image theft on behalf of influencers. It’s up to the individual to report it. But fortunately for them, they have legions of fans watching feeds on their behalf, and can publicize the misuse of their images when it happens. – Read More on Wired 

6. Millennial Women Made LuLaRoe Billions. Then They Paid The Price: A handful of multi-million dollar lawsuits, mountains of unsold leggings, and families drowning in debt: the tumultuous story behind a multilevel marketing brand that promised millennial women a pathway to financial freedom. – Read More on Buzzfeed 

1. The Mystery of the $2,000 Ikea Shopping Bag: We tend to think of status symbols starting at the top tiers of society (among the glitterati and trend setters of high society) and then trickling down to the rest of society. But a new trend seems to contradict this pattern. – Read More on HBR

2. How the resale revolution is reshaping fashion: We’re buying more clothes than ever, but it’s not all fast fashion. More than half of 25- to 34-year-olds buy secondhand or vintage clothes, and resale apps such as Depop, Stock X and Vestiaire Collective are tapping into the millennial and generation Z market. But if people are buying secondhand they’re not buying new. – See More on the Guardian

3. How Rolex Became its Own Currency: In January, Rolex quietly raised the prices of their timepieces between 3-6%. The brand produces more individual pieces per year than any other Swiss watch manufacturer (800,000+ as of 2016, with more recent numbers hard to confirm, as Rolex is highly secretive), but carefully controls the supply of their most popular steel models. – Read More on SSENSE

4. Fashionphile Is Turning Luxury Authentication Into a Science: There’s a device that can precisely identify Pantone shades, which is especially useful in authenticating Hermès; equipment that can detect lab-grown diamonds, which can sometimes (but not always!) signal counterfeit jewelry; a machine that can X-ray a bag to reveal the hardware within — another giveaway in particularly well-done fakes. – Read More on Fashionista

5. Sustainable, Slow Fashion Startup ADAY Raises $8.5 Million To Simplify Your Wardrobe: “A lot of VCs are scared or nervous about investing in fashion because it’s capital intensive and super crowded. We’re bombarded with new brands launching on Instagram all the time … What we liked about ADAY is that they genuinely have a cult-like following.” – Read More on Forbes

1. After acquiring Shopbop in 2006, Amazon is pushing its big-name brands onto the platform to build its fashion credibility: “There are some brands that create restrictions. It’s almost a negotiating point; you can negotiate to not let them [sell your brand on Amazon], but we didn’t see anything wrong with being on Amazon.” – Read More on Glossy

2. Gucci’s creative director: “Fashion is not only about garments.” Michele has been an industry sensation since 2015, when he radically transformed Gucci, then a fading icon of glossy noughties glamour, into a purveyor of quirky, eccentric maximalist chic. – Read More on the Guardian

3. Forever 21’s New Owners in Talks to Keep Most U.S. Stores Open: The company is planning to launch or expand wholesale lines in jewelry, footwear and handbags. It’s also planning to expand the Riley Rose beauty brand. Authentic Brands’ owner envisions “multiple” collaborations with other brands, both his own (Juicy couture, anyone?) and outside ABG. – Read More on Bloomberg

4. Amazon Will Be a Pale Imitator of Alibaba’s Luxury Look: The U.S. tech giant is readying a new fashion site to rival Tmall Luxury Pavilion. But it will have a harder time luring important brands than its Chinese rival because outside of their non-native China, many brands prefer to do the work themselves. – Read More on WSJ

5. Why the Solution to Fast Fashion Might Be Luxury Goods: Despite the massive success of fast fashion brands across Southeast Asia and the world, consumer sentiment is gradually shifting as companies become more conscious. – Read More on Entrepreneur

6. How Victoria’s Secret Lost Its Grip: Victoria’s Secret became a powerhouse lingerie retailer thanks to the vision of executives at its parent company. But amid changing consumer tastes, harassment accusations and ties to Jeffrey Epstein now under scrutiny, the once iconic brand’s stock has been tumbling and it has signaled it may be looking for a buyer. – Watch More on WSJ

1. Consumers are now viewing cell phones as a luxury item: Today, smartphones can last considerably longer and have infiltrated nearly every waking second of our lives, making it seem reasonable to invest as much in a phone as you might for a high-end suit. – Read More on WSJ

2. Are We in the Golden Age of the ‘Influencer Brand’? A crop of these OG bloggers (made up in large part by millennial women who have spent the greater part of the last decade hawking products on social media) have started to pivot away from pure influencer marketing to start their own fashion, beauty and wellness brands. – Read More on Fashionista 

3. RETRO READ: Influencers Are Launching Businesses of Their Own, But How Will They Fare Compared to Established Fashion Brands? As part of a larger trend, fashion bloggers-turned-Instagram figures have placed their bets on their own lines, hedging their bets as the notion of influencer fatigue continues to loom. – Read More on TFL 

4. Walmart CEO Doug McMillon wants to crack the code on apparel and home goods: “These aren’t just private label brands,” he said of Walmart’s fashion/apparel-centric acquisitions. “They have a soul, a social media following. They give us the DNA to create these digital native brands in-house.” – Read More on CNBC

5. Speaking of Walmart, here’s how Walmart will take on Amazon in 2020: Sales growth for its e-commerce site is up and the number of unique job listings at Walmart’s recruiting websites is down suggesting that the world’s largest retailer has its future pinned on digital as opposed to brick-and-mortar retail. – Read More on Thinknum