The Business of Fashion Podcast

I missed couture season for the first time in years, but that made it even more valuable for me to catch up with Tim Blanks on everything that happened this week in Paris amidst a record breaking heatwave.

At Chanel, Mathieu Blazy built his sophomore couture collection around a fairy tale he found in Gabrielle Chanel's own library.. Dior's Jonathan Anderson tore down the walls of the usual tent in the gardens of Musée Rodin, staging an open-air show inspired by the sculptor Linda Benglis. And Michael Stewart, an independent London designer debuted his very first couture offering, working obsessively to achieve his vision of craft through his signature beading technique.

This week on The BoF Podcast, Tim Blanks joins BoF founder Imran from Paris to break down the Haute Couture season that was.

Key Insights:
The Race for Over-embellishment: The couture season exposed a risk of historic houses over-indexing on extreme metrics such as hours of labour or bead counts to project status over pure visual beauty. As Amed observes: "It's almost like in some cases, there's a race to create the most elaborate, the most extreme ... so that people can trot out these statistics and say, this took 17,000 hours or this took you know this many beads or whatever... People are just taking it to an extreme that strips the beauty away.”

Chanel’s Fairytale Narrative and the Fluidity of the Body: Under Matthieu Blazy, Chanel rejected restrictive construction, deploying generous silhouettes, inspired by a book of fairytales, found in Gabrielle Chanel’s library. Highlighting his creative decision, Blanks notes: "Matthieu was thinking about fairy tales... He called it ‘Gabi and the Beanstalk.’ And then so the whole show. Meshed all these fairy tale elements, very integrated them really fully... just the story, like this is what Matthieu was talking about, the narratives that fashion can expand on."

Dior’s Experimental, Open-Air Laboratory: Jonathan Anderson treated his sophomore couture collection for Dior as an evolving work-in-progress, literally taking down the physical walls of the venue to let the elements in. "He took down the walls of the tent and in the garden of the Musée Rodin where Dior always shows,” Blanks says. “The experimental quality of his work was very much on display in the Dior collection, which is a fascinating thing to see."

Schiaparelli’s Subversion and the Call of the Void: Daniel Roseberry executed a calculated pivot away from the predictable, gold-plated hardware that has driven his recent commercial success, leaning instead into fetishistic latex and silicone. "This show, he was talking about the call of the void,” Blanks explains. “Plunging into the unknown. The abyss. Latex and silicone, which always reminds me of Vivienne Westwood when she had her sex shop in the 70s. .. It immediately said subversion in a context like couture."

The Rise of Independent Creators Outside Corporate Structures: Amidst a schedule dominated by megabrands, London-based independent designer Michael Stewart’s label Standing Ground demonstrated that couture's emotional resonance can still be achieved through pure artisanship. "Michael Stewart is David, and the fashion industry is Goliath,” Blanks says. “He just has this very pure idea which he realises in his tiny little studio in London ... Couture isn't just the huge spectacles and multi-million dollar extravaganzas ... you have to see obsession expressed in all these different ways in the face of the forces that are trying to extinguish wonder."
Additional Resources:
Jonathan Anderson: The Ultimate Art World Fan Boy | BoF
Matthieu Blazy Puts Enchantment to Work at Chanel | BoF
Haute Couture’s Heroes in Training | BoF

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As luxury shoppers push back against relentless price hikes and uninspiring boutique environments, BoF's Mimosa Spencer and Robert Williams break down why emotional connection has overtaken heritage as the primary driver of high-end shopping. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mona Kattan has been collecting fragrances for most of her life. That obsession eventually became Kayali — a fragrance brand she built inside Huda Beauty, the global cosmetics company she co-founded with her sister Huda Kattan.

In 2020, something shifted. Mona entered therapy and uncovered a pattern that ran through her entire entrepreneurial journey: she had never built anything entirely on her own. She began to ask herself what it would mean to do something, fully, by herself.

“I am a very collaborative person, but I don’t want to sacrifice my vision,” she says. “Sometimes, in a partnership … having to move both feet in the same direction doesn’t really work if you’re not able to decide on your own. That’s where I realised that if I want Kayali to survive and thrive, I need to create my own path.”

That path was made possible through a complex corporate carve-out that separated Kayali from the Huda Beauty group and brought in General Atlantic in as Kayali's new backer.

Mona joined BoF founder and CEO Imran Amed on stage at The Business of Beauty Global Forum in Napa Valley, California, to pull back the curtain on that corporate split and dive deeper into the realities of building a brand within a multi-stakeholder ecosystem.

Key Insights:
The Operational Friction of Brand Incubation: While incubating Kayali within Huda Beauty provided crucial baseline resources, it created structural constraints. Kattan notes that operating within a shared family framework required sacrificing her distinct product and brand vision to ensure consensus across the broader group.

Structuring a Mutual Corporate Carve-Out: The operational split was catalysed by the need to solve for private equity backer TSG’s eventual fund exit. Mona engineered a simultaneous solution: carving out Kayali into an independent entity with new investment, while allowing her sister Huda to take the flagship cosmetic business private again.

Selecting Private Equity for Long-Term Value: As part of the carve-out, Mona secured backing from General Atlantic, intentionally prioritising non-monetary board dynamics over pure valuation maximisation. Key operational criteria included deal terms that preserved creative freedom, patient alignment on the long-term health of the brand, and seasoned founder-friendly board members.

The Discipline of Multi-Year Operational Planning: To counteract the short-term pressures of the beauty landscape, Mona emphasises the necessity of maintaining a rolling five-to-eight-year strategic timeline. This framework includes a definitive checkpoint scheduled for Q1 2028 to evaluate structural options between an initial public offering (IPO), a sale to a strategic conglomerate, or raising further capital.

Additional Resources:
Controlling Your Destiny: How Mona Kattan Reclaimed Her Voice | BoF
Mona Kattan Is Enjoying Her Freedom | BoF
The Top Trends That Will Define Beauty in 2026 | BoF

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The 2026 World Cup marked an unprecedented milestone for global football, expanding to 48 teams playing over 100 matches across the US, Canada and Mexico. In this special episode of The Debrief, Nike’s vice president of global brand management Helena Thornton joins BoFsenior correspondent Sheena Butler-Young and sports and fashion correspondent Mike Syke to discuss the strategy behind the brand's World Cup campaign, the expansive relationship between football, culture and commerce and what the tournament means at a pivotal moment for Nike.

The episode examines how Nike approached the sport's biggest stage, from the creative thinking behind its 'Rip the Script' campaign — which brought together elite athletes, pop culture figures and cinematic storytelling — to the challenge of building campaigns that resonate in an increasingly fragmented media landscape. Thornton also reflects on how the World Cup fits into Nike's broader brand strategy as the company works to regain brand heat.

Key Insights:
Breaking beyond football fans requires becoming part of the broader cultural conversation. As brands compete for attention with creators, entertainment and other cultural forces, Nike designed its World Cup campaign to extend beyond the sport itself, bringing together elite footballers, athletes and cultural figures to appeal to both dedicated supporters and more casual fans. “Including the sort of that celebrity class alongside the elite footballers and the athletes, because I think that speaks to the more casual fan,” Thornton says.

Long-term community building matters more than tournament marketing alone. Thornton says major sporting events should serve as a catalyst for brand storytelling and momentum rather than the entirety of the brand’s strategy. You don't ever just want to be the shiny object that drops in for the weeks of the tournament and then you leave,” she says. “We really want to make sure that people have unbelievable access to the game... that moment actually really ignites this huge love of the game.” Grassroots investments, like Nike's ‘Toma’ platform, the street football movement, help build deeper consumer relationships than short-lived tournament campaigns.

Nike built its campaign around athlete instinct rather than a traditional sports marketing playbook. Rather than relying on rigid creative formulas, the brand grounded 'Rip the Script' in conversations with professional footballers, embracing emotion, authenticity and intuition as the foundation for the campaign. “We spoke to hundreds of footballers who kept telling us the same thing,” Thornton explains. “They were … just a bit sick of people telling [them] what to do... ‘we just wanna trust our gut.’”

Football creates moments of connection that few cultural platforms can match. The World Cup's global reach made it more than just a sporting event, creating a shared cultural moment at a time when people were looking for connection and optimism. “There's just a passion about the sport…there is just this larger unity right now that I'm seeing from people,” Thornton says. “I think the world just needed this thing to bring us all together and there is no other sport other than football really that truly, truly is the global game.”

Innovation remains central to Nike's broader turnaround strategy. While campaigns like 'Rip the Script' are among the brand's most visible expressions, Thornton says major sporting moments bring together teams across the company to think beyond marketing. “We sit down across all of the different departments at Nike and we talk about these big sports moments, ‘what do we wanna do to totally change the industry again? What is the athlete problem that we're solving for? What innovation can we push to allow an athlete to do something they never even believed that was possible?’”

Additional Resources:
Nike and Adidas Are Taking the World Cup to the Street
The Strategy Behind Nike’s Colossal World Cup Bet
Nike’s World Cup Takeover Is Off to a Hot Start

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The boundaries between technology, wellness and luxury are blurring. Wearable technology is no longer just about tracking steps; it has become a sophisticated tool for lifestyle optimisation, personal health intelligence and a subtle statement of identity. Now, there are more devices than ever to help us in this pursuit, and at the cutting edge is Oura.

Under the leadership of CEO Tom Hale, who joined the company in 2022, Oura has grown from $220 million in annual revenue to $1 billion last year, achieving an $11 billion valuation. Last month, Oura filed for an IPO that could be one of the most significant public market tests for consumer health technology so far.

“We are a health intelligence platform that will redefine the future of healthcare,” says Hale. “Everyone's already got a supercomputer … on their body. There should be a machine intelligence that is personalised and customised to that individual, and a large physiological model that is making predictions about health outcomes in the short term and the long term based on your ground truth of biometrics.”

Hale joined BoF founder and CEO Imran Amed on stage in Napa Valley, California, during The Business of Beauty Global Forum 2026 to unpack how the company plans to build a “large physiological model” to redefine the future of the global healthcare and wellness landscapes.

Key Insights:
The Drivers of the Inflexion Point: Oura has sold 5.5 million rings as of last year, with roughly half of those sales occurring in the last 12 months. Tom Hale attributes this growth acceleration to three strategic moves: shifting focus toward underserved use cases in women’s health (which flipped the customer base to mostly female), entering physical retail to bypass the slow shipping-based sizing process, and becoming the first wearable eligible for pre-tax employee funds via HSA/FSA accounts.

Hardware as an Onboarding Mechanism: Rather than viewing itself through the lens of jewelry or fashion, Oura defines its core commercial category as long-term behavior modification. Within this model, the physical ring functions primarily as the hardware mechanism that drives value and engagement for its subscription service.

Subscription Revenue Benchmarks: Operating on a value-to-price framework tied to a £6-a-month membership cost, Oura achieves an 80 percent retention rate at year one and an increased 85 percent retention rate at years two and three. Factual benchmarks reveal this trajectory outperforms major content subscription platforms like Netflix and Spotify at the same milestones.

Defending Market Share with IP and Clinical Credibility: To maintain its competitive advantage against new market entrants and lower-priced alternatives, Oura relies heavily on an intellectual property moat. Furthermore, the brand protects its premium position through scientific validation, noting that 11 percent of its current ring wearers are medical professionals.

Additional Resources:
Building the World of Health Tech: Oura’s Tom Hale on its IPO and What’s Next
Can Oura Become a Forever Company? | BoF

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