Now, the answers to all your most pressing fashion questions…

It’s fair to say that 2025 was an absolutely wild year for the fashion industry, and your questions reflected that. It was the year that resale went mainstream, tariffs terrorized, and half the brands on the fashion calendar started fresh with new designers. Herewith, I answer reader questions on all of the above—and even acknowledge the existence of Labubu.

Did more American shoppers actually buy secondhand clothes in 2025? The RealReal reported 17 percent year-over-year revenue growth last quarter, but a way smaller increase in total customers. I skimmed a few blogs-slash-“white papers” that want investors (and maybe even little ole me) to believe that the answer is a definitive “yes,” but they’re mostly authored by resellers themselves, like Vestiaire or ThredUp.

I agree that the reports by the resellers are mostly self-serving B.S. that you should use as a guide, not gospel. And yet, when we have access to broader resell market numbers from NPD or another research firm next year, I’m sure they will corroborate that sales are up—even if it’s actually impossible to measure whether a wholly unregulated market such as resale is growing as quickly as we believe. After all, almost every store sells secondhand clothes now in small and big ways, from Levi’s to Urban Outfitters, and there are simply many more vintage stores than there used to be. (See: the Lower East Side.) The rise of online secondhanders like The RealReal and Vestiaire has definitely, definitely changed fashion enthusiast/luxury consumer shopping patterns in particular. (Becky Malinsky and Jacob Gallagher and I get into this on a future episode of Fashion People.)

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Does that mean it’s a good idea to invest in one of these companies? Unfortunately, the unit economics are pretty unforgiving because shipping and logistics eat up so much of the margin. So while the secondhand market has affected full-price sales in the past couple of years (and diminished the value of luxury brands), it’s not necessarily making investors rich. The stock price of The RealReal, which is approaching profitability, is up about 50 percent this year, but down almost 50 percent since the I.P.O. The hope, I guess, is that the free market will eventually figure it all out. (As my Puck partner, the great Bill Cohan, always counsels: This is not investment advice.)

Will Flamingo Estate sell, and should Puig buy it?

That’s an interesting idea. It could be the Aesop of the Puig portfolio, and my guess is that they could get it for pretty cheap. My issue with Flamingo Estate—other than the Friday marketing emails being about 8,000 words too long—is that there are just too many things going on at Richard Christiansen’s omnibus lifestyle brand. They should not sell crappy wine (we have Avaline for that) and negative-margin farm boxes. They should just sell candles and hand soap and a few ridiculous food items: olive oil, jammy strawberries, etcetera. Aesop meets Il Pelicano. Whatever company buys Flamingo Estate will surely get rid of the more unconventional items that were good marketing tools in the early days, but are just money suckers now.

What do you think about Emma Grede’s sudden push for a bigger personal brand? She was already a known person in the fashion business. The podcast and book only stretches her further away from core businesses. Unclear what she gains?

For the uninitiated, this reader’s message refers to the forthcoming self-help book Start With Yourself: A New Vision for Work & Life, which fashion entrepreneur Emma Grede is publishing next April. I hope to have Emma on Fashion People to discuss this very topic, but let me project for a minute. Emma is a serial entrepreneur: She ran a successful endorsement agency before launching Good American, Skims, and some other less successful ventures, like Safely. (They’ll say it’s doing well, but I don’t believe it.) Though I don’t know Emma super well, she is incredibly smart, capable, and well-liked. She also does not believe in the concept of work-life balance. (Her husband, Jens Grede, is the C.E.O. of Skims, and they are constant collaborators on all the businesses they own.) Why would she want to do this? Well, she probably wants to inspire other people who don’t come from a rich-and-privileged background to become rich and privileged. Who knows where the book will take her? Maybe nowhere, but she’s a striver, and a person to bet on if you’re the betting type.

Can we discuss the real impact of tariffs? You kind of brush it off most of the time, probably because it’s sensitive to talk politics. How is the whole industry handling it? And what’s next? Thank you for your excellent work.

I brush off the tariffs question because anyone who tells you they have the answer is lying. The impact of tariffs is different for every single company that we write about, and this is a topic where I believe sweeping generalizations can be damaging. Still, let me set down a few big ideas. I believe in a free market and that the overuse of tariffs could set the American economy back 30 years. But I also believe that, in some limited cases, they could work as a negotiation tool. There are some big, important fashion executives working with the U.S. government to sort this on a product-by-product basis, and I suspect there will be some positive narratives that come out of this truly stupid storyline in 2026.

In your article from January, you mentioned that J.W. Anderson was “ramping up distribution,” but recently I read Vogue’s interview with C.E.O. Jenny Galimberti, where she said the brand now sells through roughly a third of the wholesale accounts it used to.

Additionally, I noticed that the brand currently has three stores and plans to open more in New York and Paris next year. I’m curious—what is happening behind the scenes?

So, when I said “ramping up distribution,” I meant retail distribution. What’s happening behind the scenes? When Jonathan Anderson got the Dior job, LVMH essentially wiped his J.W. Anderson debt clean, and let him and Jenny start over and try to reimagine J.W. Anderson as something other than an entry-designer brand overdistributed in the unprofitable wholesale market. The stores they’re opening still sell plenty of handbags and shoes (and some clothes), but the draw is the limited-edition scissors and Wedgwood tea cups. It could work, if they move carefully. Fundamentally, people say they want to go shopping in stores, but they’re doing it far less frequently, so you’ve got to make it worth it. If it doesn’t work, that’s also fine. But they have a good decade or so to figure it out.

Who should be the fashion director of the new Matches?

Multibrand retail is such a trash fire right now that I wouldn’t wish that job on anyone. I am highly skeptical of the Matches relaunch, although I do think it’s smart to relaunch in-house label Raey. It was minimalist, but more original and less affected than many comparable bridge lines around. The dream, of course, would be to bring back O.G. fashion director Natalie Kingham, who, along with Tom and Ruth Chapman, made Matches so great. But what I really want is for everyone to start new things, from scratch.

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

Fashion's full-funnel future is here 🚀

Amazon Ads is revolutionizing fashion advertising with AI-powered full-funnel campaigns that launch themselves. Our AI-powered tools help you:

• Understand your brand and craft your story automatically

• Optimize across awareness, consideration, and conversion in real-time

• Reach over 300M U.S. ad-supported audiences where they shop and stream

With 90% of fashion audiences already engaging with Amazon Ads, you're not just reaching customers. You're reaching customers ready to discover and buy.

LEARN MORE 

What do you think is going to happen now that all the designer changes are done?

Well, they’re never over over. (See: Versace.) I suspect there will be more turnover at companies where the recent appointments are duds that have no chance of taking off. Gone are the days where weak creative directors get three years to make it work. More like one… especially if sales keep dipping. Everyone learned a lesson with Sabato. The test begins this spring, when the product lands in stores. We’ll know then whether the industry is totally screwed.

Will the fashion Substack bubble burst in 2026?

Nah, it won’t be like that. Remember that fashion people are hangers-on, which means the fashion Substack economy will continue chugging for a few years before the affiliate money starts to dry up. However, I do think the Substackers who are clearly this generation’s version of the Instagram influencers buying followers will begin to fade away. A word of advice: Do not claim you are making $1 million in income off of your Substack when you are not, because I am smart, and I know you are lying.

But when will the Labubu bubble burst?

When kids and tacky people get sick of Labubu? I don’t know why people are so obsessed with these next-gen troll dolls.

Where does New York Fashion Week go from here?

Who cares!? I’m moving to Paris.

Bryanboy wrote a smart rebuttal to his Villain of the Year award. Naturally, it’s great. “Clients are not merely consumers anymore. They are distribution.” [Screenshots]

I’m increasingly disillusioned-slash-bored with The Cut, but these photos of Rama Duwaji are gorgeous and it’s impressive that they landed this interview. [New York mag]

“My longtime policy for beauty treatments is, the crazier the better.” —Linda Wells on the rise of phony-plasma products, and real-plasma treatments. [Air Mail]

My queen Morgan Stewart in one of my favorite magazines. [Interview]

It’s cool that Laura Burdese is going to be the next C.E.O. of Bulgari. [Centurion Jewelry]

This is the best Christmas movie if you love fashion and being awkward! [Metropolitan]

Daphne Zuniga in The Sure Thing represents one of my many aesthetic ideals. [YouTube]

Marty Supreme is the closest thing we have to monoculture right now. [The Hollywood Reporter]

This spread from the latest issue of 72 is gorgeous and what we want from Edward Enninful. [Instagram]

Until next year,

Lauren

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