Apologies for the hiatus, but we are back with a bang! On this episode we speak with Patrick Scallon, Paris-based communication consultant who was the head of communications at Maison Martin Margiela from 1993 to 2008 and at Dries Van Noten from 2008 to 2023. In the fashion world Patrick is a legend, having helped shape two of the most iconic independent brands. He was awarded the Chevaliers des Arts et des Lettrés by the French ministry of Culture for his contribution to fashion in 2019.

We get into the weeds (hence the feature length of this episode!) of his years at Margiela, discussing how the brand was molded, how it communicated its values, how much creativity was spurred by the lack of resources, how Scallon had to turn down the supermodel Claudia Schiffer, Margiela's biggest market (you will never guess), and the dangers of the current Margiela fetish. Plus, we finally get the truth about whether you were supposed to cut off that infamous label from the garments (the answer may surprise you).

We also chat about Patrick's time at Dries Van Noten, what made Dries special, how the brand grew during his tenure, the immense work of putting together Van Noten's brilliant 2014 exhibit, and some of the brand's most memorable shows.

Lastly, we speak about what it's like to work in communications, the pressures of the job, how the industry has changed over Patrick's tenure, and what the fashion press could do better.

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On this episode we speak with Robert Williams, Luxury Editor at the Business of Fashion. We start with Robert's unique career journey as an American student in Paris (it wasn't like Emily's), before going on to discuss the challenges of maintaining independence in fashion journalism. We explore the evolving landscape of the fashion industry over the past decade, discussing the intersection of fashion and marketing, the challenges faced by the fashion media, and the impact of consumer behavior on luxury fashion. We examine why heritage brands want to be luxury fashion brands, and the pricing dilemmas that have emerged as brands strive to maintain their luxury status while appealing to a mass audience. In the end Robert turns tables and asks Eugene about his upcoming book and for fashion reading recommendations.

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On this episode we speak with Emily Segal, the founder of the brand strategy agency Nemesis, publishing house Deluge, and the author of the novel Mercury Retrograde. Emily came to fame in the 2010s as the co-founder of the collective K-Hole, which coined the term "normcore." She went on to work with everyone from Prada to Supreme, and learned a few things along the way, some of which we discuss in this episode. We mostly concentrate on two pieces of her writing, the Umami Theory of Value and B for Balenciaga, a brand case study. We discuss why the current culture feels like a postmodernist, meaningless, made-for-Instagram slop, or as Emily writes, "Umami is what you got when you did not get anything," why Balenciaga is a cultural apex predator, a vortex that sucks in cultural artifacts and spits them out as memes, why Demna's irony is hollow, whether he will succeed at Gucci, and much more besides.

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We are back with Philippe Pourhashemi to review the women’s Fall / Winter 2025 season. We discuss the debuts of Veronica Leoni at Calvin Klein, Haider Ackermann at Tom Ford, Sarah Burton at Givenchy, and Julian Klausner at Dries Van Noten. We also give our impressions of what is likely to be the last collection of Daniel Lee at Burberry, and dive into the shows of Undercover, Rick Owens, Comme des Garçons and more.

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Natasha Degen, the chair of Art Market Studies at Fashion Institute of Technology and the author of Merchants of Style: Art and Fashion after Andy Warhol, is back on the podcast to discuss the ever more insidious relationship between fashion and art. We discuss her concept of Art Pop, which are commercial ventures that are given an air of an art project, what the second rounds of collaboration between Louis Vuitton and Takashi Murakami and Yayoi Kusama signify, and why fashion is increasingly getting into film, TV, and books and literature.

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We are back with the journalist and critic Philippe Pourhashemi to review the Fall / Winter 2025 men's season. We discuss the Setchu runway debut at Pitti Uomo in Florence, and touch upon the meaning of and the need to put on a fashion show, Peter Copping's debut at Lanvin, the new direction at Dries Van Noten, and the shows of Auralee, Comme des Garçons, Rick Owens, and more. We talk about the continuous grotesquery at LVMH, as well as our surprise reactions to the latest collections from Kim Jones and Prada.

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On this episode, we speak with Ana Andjelic, the strategic branding mastermind who knows her Bs from "Brand" to "Baudrillard," author of the Sociology of Business Substack and of the new book Hitmakers: How Brands Influence Culture. We discuss how the luxury industry went off rails through over-expansion, the difference between the luxury and fashion mentality and the luxury and commodity thinking, and what it will take to turn things around. We discuss how fashion trends are really created and why everything looks interchangeable. We finish the episode with a surprising marketing case-study!

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On this episode we speak with Astrid Wendlandt, the founder of the fashion news website Miss Tweed. This year Miss Tweed came to prominence as the first to break many fashion appointment news, and has made plenty of powerful enemies, such as Bernard Arnault, the CEO of LVMH, and Johann Rupert, the owner of Richemont. But Wendlandt is no rumor-monger; she is a veteran journalist who for decades has worked at prestigious publications like Reuters and the Financial Times, where she honed her investigative reporting skills. We talk about the arc of her career, including her first job at the Moscow Times in Russia's wild '90s, her eventual pivot to reporting on luxury fashion, the founding of Miss Tweed, her work methods, and the challenges she faces as a fashion reporter, including her being banned by Arnault and Rupert from getting information on their companies. We discuss Arnault and LVMH, the hot air balloon of Jacquemus, and much more.

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