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The musician plans to double down on bags and the brand's signature Damier check in what he promises will be a "crazy show."

PARIS – Last Thursday, the countdown to Pharrell Williams’ debut for Louis Vuitton officially began with the reveal of his first campaign as creative director of menswear, featuring a pregnant Rihanna.

The image did not appear on Vuitton’s social media accounts. Instead, Williams posed in front of a giant billboard on the Seine-facing side of the Musée d’Orsay in Paris and posted the image to his Instagram account, underlining just how much clout he enjoys as the first global music star to take the reins of a top luxury house.

Later that morning, Williams appeared at Vuitton’s headquarters wearing the same outfit: a black biker jacket and flared pants made from the house’s signature Epi leather, which is more commonly used for bags and wallets. The look, it turns out, was pulled from his spring 2024 collection, due to be unveiled on Tuesday at 9.30 p.m. on the Pont Neuf bridge in Paris in the season’s most highly anticipated show.

Louis Vuitton chairman and chief executive officer Pietro Beccari, joining via Zoom from a car somewhere in Greece where he had just attended the brand’s high jewelry presentation, gently chided his new recruit.

“Pharrell is unveiling the collection piece by piece, because it is already 20 days that he wears the show,” he said, noting that Williams is approaching the assignment from the perspective of a prolific luxury shopper. “He’s impatient and I said, ‘He’s the client, right? So that’s it.’”

“I am the client,” assented Williams, who had accessorized the look with a $1.2 million Richard Mille RM 88 Automatic Tourbillon Smiley watch, solid gold grills, a yellow diamond necklace spelling out the words “God Is,” and an updated version of the custom-made Tiffany & Co. diamond sunglasses that have become his signature eyewear over the last 18 months.

That distinctive style has made the “Happy” hitmaker a hot commodity for luxury brands for the last two decades.

Lest anyone forget, Williams has been active in high-end fashion since codesigning a line of eyewear with Marc Jacobs at Vuitton in 2004.

That was followed by a jewelry collection for the house in 2008, when Beccari was a senior executive at the brand; projects with Moncler and Moynat, and a partnership with Chanel, in addition to his involvement with the more mass-market G-Star Raw and Adidas labels.

Williams appeared in Chanel campaigns, walked in its runway shows, and created a one-off sneaker with Chanel and Adidas Originals in 2017 that generated a waiting list of 120,000 people for 500 pairs. After that came a unisex clothing collection in 2019, designed with the brand’s late creative director Karl Lagerfeld.

“He started in fashion with Louis Vuitton; he went to university with Karl and now he’s got the job of his dreams, which I think he deserves, because he’s a genius at large,” Beccari declared.

Williams is aware that not everyone is thrilled with his appointment, which cements Vuitton’s positioning as a “cultural” brand with broad reach across segments including sports, gaming, music and art.

Some commentators were disappointed that the job didn’t go to one of the young designers rumored to be in the running, even though his predecessor Virgil Abloh also came from a non-fashion background, redefining the role of creative director into something closer to a curator.

“I didn’t go to Central Saint Martins, but I also didn’t go to Julliard either in music and I mean, we see how that turned out,” said the performer, who has won 13 Grammy Awards. “It’s cool. That’s a very fair observation. But neither did Vivienne Westwood, right? Tadao Ando was self-taught. I mean, he’s the GOAT, right? I only aspire to express myself.”

As unexpected as the offer was, “it feels natural,” he continued.

Williams was first introduced to Louis Vuitton through rappers and Harlem tailor Dapper Dan’s bootleg logo designs, but back then, the actual brand felt way out of his league.

These days, he’s firmly entrenched in the luxury world, notably through his friendship with Japanese designer Nigo, who helped him to launch the streetwear labels Billionaire Boys Club and Icecream, and is now creative director at Kenzo, a brand also owned by luxury group LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton.

Nigo helped him design the Millionaire sunglasses for Vuitton, and subsequently created several capsule collections with Abloh for Vuitton.

“It’s crazy because you can see a photo of myself with Kanye [West] and Virgil wearing the sunglasses, so it’s like all of this serendipitous connection,” Williams said.

After the picture was taken, West and Abloh went on to found their own fashion lines, laying the groundwork for the crossover between streetwear and luxury that is the template for most menswear today.

“Every day, I gotta to pinch myself because it’s an appointment, and I was chosen,” Williams continued. “Pietro saw something, and I’m touched by that and I honor that every day.”

The two started discussing the prospect of Williams taking on the menswear role in November last year. The announcement came swiftly after Beccari officially joined Vuitton from Dior on Feb. 1, capping a storied 17-year career at LVMH.

“What would you do? Right? Like, you know, you get to come in here with the world’s greatest house; dare I say, unlimited resources. I hardly ever hear ‘no,’ and when I do, it’s always for a real constructive reason, and then I’m given an opportunity to do something even bigger, even greater. This has been nothing but a gift,” Williams said.

Over the last few months, he has drip-fed clues about his debut collection. At his Something in the Water music festival in his hometown of Virginia Beach, Va., in April, the hip-hop star appeared on stage in a biker jacket with rhinestone patches.

An online teaser for the event showed him sitting on top of a monogram-embossed wooden pyramid with the tagline: “Virginia is for LVers,” a twist on the state’s slogan “Virginia is for Lovers” that appeared on Vuitton-branded merchandise sold at the event.

He noted that his appointment was announced on Valentine’s Day.

“It’s like love at first sight,” he said.

“LV is for Louis Vuitton, but it’s also for lovers, you know: lovers of the moment, lovers of detail, lovers of this time and people who want to absolutely squeeze the best out of life, down to the last drop.”

He sprinkled extra pointers into the teaser image, which showed Rihanna wearing a shirt in a pixelated Damier check that is only partially buttoned, exposing her pregnancy bump. Her arms are laden with Speedy bags of various sizes in Vuitton’s signature monogram, but in a range of primary colors, including red, yellow and green, and made of leather instead of canvas.

“Here, I knew I wanted to do a couple things: one, I knew I wanted to make my presence known in bags,” said Williams, citing past projects like the oversized purple Haut à Courroies bag he commissioned from Hermès, and his stint as ambassador for Chanel’s Gabrielle bag.

“Bags are very important to me, it’s very important to the house, and what better person to go on that journey with us than my really good friend?” Williams said of Rihanna, who also has a business partnership with LVMH on her Fenty Beauty line.

“The second thing is, I knew that I wanted to really lean into the Damier, something that hadn’t had such a great concentration in it, and we did so by using the Damier as a platform and as a new artistic discipline, and we have some really interesting expressions,” he said of the checkerboard motif.

Williams said he was building on the work of his predecessors, including Abloh, who made history by becoming the first African-American artistic director at the French luxury house. The men’s position had remained vacant since Abloh’s untimely death in November 2021.

“His spirit is still here and now that I’m here, it’s not cancelling out anything from the past. If anything, it’s just continuing to evolve,” he said.

Beccari noted that Williams is first and foremost a fan of the brand. “He loves details and loves to be very elegant in every occasion,” the executive said.

He described the push-and-pull that defines his relationships with designers, both in his previous jobs and now with Williams and Nicolas Ghesquière, the artistic director of womenswear at Vuitton.

“You have to find the equilibrium, to find the possibility of giving them the freedom of expression of the creative mind, and at the same time, you’re responsible for a huge business, and you have to get some rationality into it, and that’s the difficult part,” he said. “I believe I created special relationships with each single one of them, as I’m creating with Nicolas and with Pharrell, and that’s the pleasure part, when you see this balance.”

He said it involved making concessions on both sides. “I try to be always authentic with them and tell them what I think. I have no hidden agenda,” Beccari said.

He praised Williams for tackling the task with a “humble spirit” and establishing a good rapport with his team. “They see not the star, the superstar, they see a good human being. That’s what makes his coming to Vuitton not only very bold, but it makes it an incredible, positive, energetic addition to the fantastic team that we have,” he said.

Beccari declined to provide figures, but said that Vuitton has potential to increase its men’s business without adding new stores. “Pharrell has a very important role,” he said. “I believe we have a fantastic network. We need to exploit what we have, but in terms of potential, being already big, I think it can be even bigger, and with Pharrell, prosper even more.”

An entrepreneur whose activities extend to film and television, music festivals and nonprofits, Williams is acutely aware of the stakes at Vuitton, the world’s biggest luxury brand and the first to generate annual revenues of more than 20 billion euros.

“It’s a big, big, big, big, big, big plane that we take off in when we do it, you know? And here we are on a tarmac right now, headed toward the 20th, and we’re about to take flight,” he said.

It promises to be a spectacular event in every respect, and one that will go down in the annals of fashion. Williams confirmed that the front row of his show would be stacked with celebrity friends. “It’s like ‘Game of Thrones,’ House Vuitton. It’s very important. It’s just such a momentous occasion,” he said.

Expect exclusive music on the soundtrack. “One [track] that I’ve been working on for, like, 10 years,” teased Williams, who has set up a mini studio in his office at Vuitton. “I’m getting into it. I want you to see it. I want you to feel it.”

He was confident ahead of his big night, buoyed by the support of his design studio and Vuitton’s master artisans. “When you add creativity to the highest arc of quality, you get this amazing alchemical reaction, which is a crazy collection, a crazy show, crazy energy and crazy messaging,” he promised.

Audit firms scrutinised over collapse of Americanas which has shocked corporate

The accounting firms PwC and KPMG have been drawn deeper into the scandal over collapsed Brazilian retailer Americanas after the publication of internal correspondence showing how the company hid billions of dollars of debt.

Americanas’ new management told the Financial Times that it was seeking “context” to explain correspondence between former executives and the two audit firms, which was uncovered by an independent investigation into almost $4bn of accounting irregularities that sent the company into bankruptcy in January.

The retailer last week said for the first time that fraud lay at the heart of the collapse. While it pointed the finger at former executives, the development also raised the stakes for the company’s advisers.

A congressional inquiry was shown evidence on Tuesday that KPMG, which audited the accounts from 2016 to mid-2019, redrafted an internal report so that the final version played down concerns about the company’s financial controls.

And PwC, which was the auditor before and after KPMG’s stint in the role, gave Americanas executives advice in 2016 on how to describe the company’s complicated supply chain finance arrangements. These are alleged to have been used to hide its indebtedness, and the advice obscured key features, Americanas’ current chief executive, Leonardo Coelho, told legislators.

Americanas’ collapse has shocked corporate Brazil and threatens to cast a pall over investment in the country. The century-old retailer is a staple of the Brazilian high street whose largest shareholders — the billionaires Jorge Paulo Lemann, Marcel Telles and Carlos Alberto Sicupira — are among the country’s most famous businessmen.

The three men, who have said they had no knowledge of the irregularities, are helping orchestrate a financial rescue by injecting new cash.

The collapse has led to recriminations between investors and creditors and the company’s banks and advisers, and between current and former management. Americanas said last week that an independent investigation launched by the company found evidence of fake advertising contracts as well as unapproved uses of supply chain financing.

Coelho told congress that former executives hid financial irregularities from the board of directors. The advice given by PwC and the changes made by KPMG helped them do so, according to his testimony.

In successive drafts of a report on Americanas’ 2016 accounts, KPMG removed a reference to “significant deficiencies” in the company’s financial reporting and ultimately agreed that the matters needed to be addressed only by management, not at board level, according to slides presented by Coelho.

He also showed an email from a PwC partner in 2016 in which she suggested alternative wording to describe supply chain financing arrangements, which he said obscured whether they should be counted as debt.

The partner “was indicating how to write a text in a final audit letter where the topic . . . was not clear to all involved,” Coelho said.

Americanas said that it would take appropriate legal action against all those responsible for the fraud.

“Regarding audit firms, the analyses are preliminary and need more context due to reports [having been] produced from falsified documents,” Americanas said. “Americanas reiterates that investigations are in progress by authorities and reaffirms that the company is the most interested in clarifying facts.”

Thaynara Rocha, a lawyer at Daniel Gerber Advogados, which is representing a group of minority shareholders, said the two audit firms had the “means of investigating inconsistencies, as well as having a duty to disclose them to the national financial system and capital market”.

“If these frauds were easily detected by [the independent investigation] in a very short period of time, why were they not detected by PwC and KPMG?” she said.

KPMG said it stood by its audit opinions on Americanas, “which were prepared in accordance with professional standards”.

PwC declined to comment either from Brazil or at its global headquarters.

Americanas’ trio of billionaire shareholders and creditors have been hashing out the terms of a financial rescue that would involve them injecting up to R$12bn (US$2.5bn), while creditors accept a debt-for-equity swap, according to local reports.

The company has also said it was selling some businesses, including its fruit and vegetable business, and considering options for others, such as its financing arm.

EU energy ministers lash out at Polish effort to extend coal subsidies

Sweden backs continued state aid for fossil fuels as part of planned reform of bloc’s electricity market

EU energy ministers have railed against an effort by Poland to extend subsidies for coal power plants until 2028 as they gather to agree an overhaul of the bloc’s energy market.

Sweden, which at present chairs the EU’s rotating presidency, has allowed an exemption to be added to a reform of the bloc’s energy market at the request of Warsaw. This exemption would permit coal power plants to receive state support for providing a steady flow of energy when other forms of energy were not available — a move that was promptly criticised by multiple ministers.

Claude Turmes, Luxembourg’s energy minister, described the proposal as “really astonishing” and amounting to a “weakening [of] our climate policy”.

Teresa Ribera, Spain’s minister for ecological transition, said that some “comfort” had to be given to Poland, which relies on coal for about 70 per cent of its energy mix, but that policymakers should not give “contradictory signals to the market”.

Robert Habeck, Germany’s vice-chancellor and minister for energy, told journalists that the exemption was “wrong [and] not compatible with the climate protection goals of the European Union”.

“It’s not that coal power plants should not run . . . this counts as well for Germany but to give them an extra subsidy system goes too far,” he told fellow ministers at the start of the EU energy council.

Coal provides about a quarter of Germany’s energy.

The exemption requested by Poland would extend allowances for EU member states to subsidise fossil-fuelled power plants with emissions above a limit at present set at 550g of carbon dioxide per kilowatt of energy produced until 2028. The subsidies, known as capacity mechanisms, are designed to ensure that countries have stable energy at all times.

The state aid scheme is seen as important to the clean energy transition in the short term while more stable storage for renewable power, which relies on intermittent sun and wind, is developed.

But electricity executives warn that paying carbon-emitting power plants suppresses incentives for the rollout of energy storage or other climate-friendly measures.

The proposed exemption should only apply to fossil fuel generators that were in operation before July 2019 and emissions limits should not be breached for more than one year.

Anna Moskwa, Poland’s climate minister, said that “it is about understanding each other’s needs. If one of us is secure, we are all secure . . . For some of us, security means capacity market.”

The European Commission proposed to overhaul the EU’s electricity market to pave the way for more renewable power in the bloc and reduce the risk of another rise in prices after the one experienced as a result of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year.

The regulation centres around the use of state-backed contracts that ensure that electricity producers only charge a set price and return additional profits.

Many countries including Belgium, Germany and Denmark raised concerns that if they are used for existing as well as new energy plants, as France has been pushing for, this could lead to distortions in the EU’s internal market and unfairly benefit certain companies.

“Electricity market design cannot be a rubber-stamping without state aid oversight,” said Tinne Van der Straeten, Belgium’s energy minister.

Ministers were due to agree a common position on the reforms on Monday so that member states can negotiate the final shape of the regulation with the European parliament in the autumn. The changes should then start to take effect in 2024.

From technology to energy to capital markets and universities, the EU cannot compete with the US

The Ukraine war has revived the transatlantic alliance. But the relationship between the US and its European allies is increasingly lopsided.

The US economy is now considerably richer and more dynamic than the EU or Britain — and the gap is growing. That will have an impact well beyond relative living standards.

Europe’s dependence on the US for technology, energy, capital and military protection is steadily undermining any aspirations the EU might have for “strategic autonomy”.

In 2008, the EU and the US economies were roughly the same size. But since the global financial crisis, their economic fortunes have dramatically diverged. As Jeremy Shapiro and Jana Puglierin of the European Council on Foreign Relations point out: “In 2008 the EU’s economy was somewhat larger than America’s: $16.2tn versus $14.7tn. By 2022, the US economy had grown to $25tn, whereas the EU and the UK together had only reached $19.8tn.

America’s economy is now nearly one-third bigger.

It is more than 50 per cent larger than the EU without the UK.”

The aggregate figures are shocking. Underpinning them is a picture of a Europe that has fallen behind — sector by sector.

The European technology landscape is dominated by US firms such as Amazon, Microsoft and Apple.

The seven largest tech firms in the world, by market capitalisation, are all American.

There are only two European companies in the top 20 — ASML and SAP. Whereas China has developed domestic tech giants of its own, European champions are often acquired by American companies. Skype was bought by Microsoft in 2011; DeepMind was bought by Google in 2014.

The development of AI is also likely to be dominated by American and Chinese firms.

The leading universities that feed the pipeline of tech start-ups in the US are lacking in the EU. The Shanghai and THE rankings of the world’s top universities both have only one EU institution in the top 30. (Britain does better — courtesy of Cambridge, Oxford, Imperial and others.)

In 1990, Europe made 44 per cent of the world’s semiconductors.

That figure is now 9 per cent; compared with 12 per cent for America. Both the EU and the US are rushing to build up their capabilities. But while the US is expected to see 14 new semiconductor plants come on stream by 2025, Europe and the Middle East will add just 10 — compared with 43 new facilities in China and Taiwan.

Both the US and the EU are looking to turn this situation around with ambitious industrial policies that provide public finance and incentives for chip manufacturers and producers of electric vehicles.

But the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency gives the Americans the ability to finance their ambitions, without spooking the markets.

As one European industrialist puts it: “They can just swipe the credit card.” The EU, by contrast, has a much smaller budget and has only just begun issuing common debt.

Private capital is also much more readily available in the US. Paul Achleitner, chair of the global advisory board at Deutsche Bank, says that Europe is now “almost totally dependent on US capital markets”. He tells me that Europe has very few of the large pension funds that give depth to the US capital markets, adding that: “If you want to get anything sizeable done — whether it is an acquisition or an IPO — you always go back to American investors.” The EU has spoken a lot about creating a “capital markets union” to give Europe some of the scale of the US. But progress has been feeble.

Unlike Europe, the US also has plentiful and cheap domestic supplies of energy.

The shale revolution means that America is now the world’s largest producer of oil and gas.

Meanwhile, energy prices in Europe have soared.

The Ukraine war and the loss of cheap Russian gas mean that European industry typically pays three or four times as much for energy as their American competitors. Gloomy European bosses say this is already leading to factory closures in Europe.

Some in Britain may be tempted to see all this as proof that, inside the EU, Britain was “shackled to a corpse” and that Brexit was a good move. But, outside the European single market, Britain suffers from an exaggerated version of the problems of scale that are hobbling the EU itself. British industry is already falling behind, as a result.

So are there really no areas where Europe is a world leader? Some point proudly to the fact that the size of the EU single market means that companies all over the world have had to adopt European regulations — the so-called “Brussels effect”. But it would clearly be better to lead the world in creating wealth, rather than regulating it.

Europe does outperform in “lifestyle” industries. Almost two-thirds of the world’s tourist arrivals are into Europe.

The luxury goods market is dominated by European companies.

Football, the world’s most popular sport, is dominated by European teams — although many of the biggest clubs are now owned by Middle Eastern, American or Asian investors.

Europe’s dominance of lifestyle industries underlines that life in the old continent is still attractive for many. But perhaps that is part of the problem. Without a greater sense of threat, Europe may never summon the will to reverse its inexorable decline in power, influence and wealth.

Opposition leader sets out plan to support net zero transition ahead of speech in Edinburgh

A Labour government would not only lift the de facto ban on onshore wind farms in England but also force councils to “proactively identify” areas suitable for renewable generation, leader Sir Keir Starmer has announced. 

Asked what would happen if a community did not want new onshore wind or solar power plants, Starmer told the BBC on Monday: “We have to have a mechanism where we can move forward.

“Otherwise you get to a situation where everybody says ‘there ought to be more renewables . . . but I just don’t want it near me’. We have to have a situation where we can resolve that.”

The Labour leader is in Edinburgh on Monday to announce a package of green policies that his party would adopt if it wins the general election, which is expected next year.

Labour had previously intended to borrow £28bn a year to spend on the transition to a net zero emissions economy but earlier this month said the figure would not be reached until halfway through the next five-year parliament.

Starmer has also announced that a proposed state-owned energy company called Great British Energy will be based in Scotland under a Labour government.

The party leader will on Monday emphasise how renewable energy projects could produce revenue that local authorities could use to cut council tax or invest in improving public services.

He has promised to use the net zero strategy to deliver investment “in the UK’s industrial heartlands”, in line with similar debt-fuelled green plans from US president Joe Biden.

“The whole world knows that the future of power is bound up with renewables,” he told the Radio 4 Today programme.

“Look at what’s happening in America with the Inflation Reduction Act — it’s like a magnet for business and for investment.

We can’t sit this out.”

Labour has committed to a target of Britain producing all of its electricity from low-carbon sources — such as nuclear, solar and wind — by 2030, an ambition seen as over-optimistic by many senior industry figures.

“That [target] will put us ahead of the world in developed economies, that is a massive plan,” he said. “Nobody in the sector is saying it’s not ambitious enough, if anything they are saying ‘it’s just about doable Keir but we’d have to work hard . . . and you’re going to have to take some tough decisions in relation to planning and the grid.”

The Labour leadership has faced a backlash from the oil industry and some trade unions for its pledge, first announced in November 2022, to stop granting new licences for the development of North Sea oil and gasfields.

However, under the policy Labour would not cancel existing licences in place at the time of the election. “Oil and gas will be part of the mix for decades to come under existing licences or licences that are granted in the near future,” Starmer said.

Equinor, the Norwegian state-owned energy company, is expecting approval for its Rosebank oilfield within weeks.

David Whitehouse, chief executive of Offshore Energies, a body representing the UK offshore energies industry, told the BBC that the Labour plan would “create a cliff edge” for businesses, given that 180 of the North Sea’s active 283 fields are due to close by 2030.

But Philip Evans, a campaigner for Greenpeace, said the idea that ending new licences would “lead to an overnight shutdown of the industry” was merely a “scare story”.

Wealth manager tries to reassure private clients as fallout from allegations against Crispin Odey grows

The board of Odey Wealth Management has told customers it is “considering several options” for the business after sexual misconduct allegations against founder Crispin Odey.

Odey Wealth, which opened in 2008 to manage money on behalf of private clients, said in a letter to its customers on Sunday that the “events of the last week have had a serious impact on our business”.

The letter, which has been seen by the Financial Times, added: “The Odey Wealth Management . . . boards are considering several options for the wealth business and your team remains fully in place to guide you through the next few months.”

However, it said the wealth manager had sufficient capital and that client assets are held in custody with a third-party company, Pershing.

On Sunday evening, the FT reported that the Financial Conduct Authority restricted the movement of cash and assets from Odey Asset Management and Odey Wealth to shore them up, after clients withdrew money and financial institutions cut ties in the wake of the allegations.

According to the letter, the boards of Odey European Inc and Odey MAC, two of Odey’s flagship funds, are “monitoring the level of redemptions received”. A number of other funds have been suspended following a surge in customer requests to withdraw their money.

The latest developments come after Odey Asset Management, one of London’s oldest hedge fund firms, said last week that it was in “advanced discussions” about transferring certain funds and staff to competitors.

Odey Asset Management, which oversees about $4.4bn, has attempted to contain the fallout after a Financial Times investigation this month reported allegations of sexual assault or harassment from 13 women against Crispin Odey. He strenuously denies the allegations.

In the past week, banking partners including JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have cut ties with the group. JPMorgan was both broker and custodian to the firm.

The letter from Odey Wealth said that “hedge funds cannot operate effectively without the services provided by prime brokers, and this has led to actions being taken by the various fund boards”.

Odey Asset Management said last week it was closing the Odey Swan fund, which was managed by Crispin Odey, and had suspended trading in four other funds, including Special Situations, Brook Developed Markets, LF Odey Portfolio and Brook Absolute Return.

Odey was removed as a partner of Odey Asset Management last week, while his holding company, Odey Asset Management Group Limited, was also removed as a member.

Odey Wealth Management declined to comment.

Rising interest in understated, classic style offers a glimmer of hope for smaller heritage houses offering everything from English knits to French shoes to Italian tailoring. Can big brands from LVMH and Kering adapt?

KEY INSIGHTS

PARIS – Located on a quiet street in Paris’ 16th arrondissement, menswear boutique Beige Habilleur proposes a tight edit of Ring Jacket suits from Japan, Justo Gimeno hunting jackets and Johnstons of Elgin sweaters alongside loafers and derbies from J.M. Weston and Paraboot.

The shop’s founder, Basile Khadiry — who created French menswear review L’Étiquette alongside journalist Marc Beaugé and stylist-designer Gauthier Borsarello in 2018 — has been carrying the torch for understated, classic men’s style for years. (He founded the retailer in 2016 after stints working at luxury retailer Chalhoub Group and Louis Vuitton.)

But in recent months, interest in the previously niche, mostly logo-free aesthetic Khadiry and his associates champion has taken off: L’Étiquette, which is dedicated to demystifying the codes of relaxed French wardrobe dressing, has seen its paid circulation surge to over 50,000 copies per issue over the course of just 10 editions — more than any other men’s magazine in France according to market sources (although rivals publish more frequently). The magazine launched its first-ever women’s edition last month, attracting advertising dollars from Hermès, Rolex and Cartier.

Amid broadening interest, Khadiry is currently renovating a more central space for Beige Habilleur in Paris’ tony 6th arrondissement, with plans to move shop in September.

And at French tailoring brand Fursac — where L’Etiquette co-founder Borsarello has been artistic director since 2019 — SMCP’s division operating the label as well as Parisienne womenswear outfit Claudie Pierlot reported first-quarter sales up 22 percent in the first-quarter, on top of 18 percent growth last year. Fursac, which has sought to complement its mid-priced suiting with an elevated, yet laid-back wardrobe signed by Borsarello, recently tapped fashion PR giant Karla Otto to help boost its international visibility and will present its collection on models for the first time during Paris Men’s Fashion Week (which kicks off Tuesday).

“Quiet Luxury” In The Real World

The moves are among the latest signs of rising demand for logo-free, understated style, and suggest that the TikTok-fuelled conversation on “quiet luxury” — obsessed with everything from the style of fictional billionaires on HBO’s “Succession” to the cashmere-clad courtroom looks of Gwyneth Paltrow — has legs beyond social media.

While leading purveyors of understated luxury like Loro Piana and Brunello Cucinelli have long enjoyed strong growth, these labels have been outliers in a sector where ultra-visible brands with flashy logos and splashy marketing budgets have squeezed rivals for market share. As the decline of officewear and department stores also pinched more formal brands, a fashion cycle of “logomania”—which blended the codes of streetwear and luxury—has boosted top-tier “clout brands.”

Now, some see fashion becoming a more “subtle game” as the return of dressing up and tailoring seen on the runway in recent seasons continues to gather pace in the real world.

“A lot of people no longer feel the need to distinguish themselves with a logo to show what tribe they belong to. They’re ready to love clothes for other reasons: the quality, the style,” Khadiry said.

Of course, logomania remains a major force in the fashion market, particularly for luxury brands that have spent years marketing lifestyles and identities represented by their marks. In Asia, orders for logo products were up by 8 percent so far this year, according to fashion wholesale platform Joor. But in North America retailers purchased 43 percent fewer logo products, Joor said. Sales of logo-ed items were down 16 percent in EMEA, too.

The shifting winds offer a glimmer of hope for smaller heritage houses which have struggled to keep up with luxury’s dominant megabrands. On the Paris street, low-key, grandpa-coded French footwear classics like Paraboot or Weston are increasingly hard to miss. Those brands have escaped the fatigue some customers feel the social-media saturation of big luxury houses, as well as tending to offer more accessible price points than luxury giants that have hiked prices repeatedly since the pandemic. But even top-end menswear house Zegna — where silk polos and cashmere overshirts are many, while logos are few — cited a “very exciting start to 2023″ on top of better-than-expected sales in 2022.

At the Pitti Uomo trade show this week, relaxed everyday tailoring from logo-free Brunello Cuccinelli was a highlight — if hardly a surprise. But even in the outdoor gear segment, whose bold colours and big logos drove interest among streetwear clients in recent years as part of the “gorpcore” aesthetic, the minimalist approaches of Snow Peak and Goldwin caught more buzz than logo-heavy options. Some outdoor brands even pushed into tailoring, with elevated looks including ultra-lightweight technical suiting.

The designer segment, where social media storytelling and branding has become as central to many labels’ model as the products themselves, could also be headed for a shakeup. At the LVMH Prize, previous editions helped boost luxury streetwear pioneers like Off-White, branding whizzes like Marine Serre or deft fashion storyteller Jacquemus—all of whom have leaned heavily into logos or monogram. This year, however, finalists identified as fashion’s most promising emerging voices by a jury including Delphine Arnault, Maria Grazia Chiuri and Marc Jacobs showcased off a more sober, product-focused view of fashion. At the prize’s final round earlier in June, there was hardly a logo in sight, with tailored jackets, cashmere coats and silk slip dresses dominating the racks.

Setchu — a Milan-based brand whose designer Satoshi Setchu cut his teeth in a Savile Row made-to-measure shop — took home the grand prize. Runner-up prizes went to Bettter, a platform that uses algorithms to re-tailor and unsold mens suiting into new styles, and Magliano, an Italian brand selling big cashmere cardigans and relaxed blazers. “We see a reinforced focus on the intrinsic quality of the product,” LVMH prize mentor and Patou CEO Sophie Brocart explained.

A Shifting Market

Economics, as well as fashion, play into the shift. In the US, luxury brands have found “aspirational customers are slowing down their consumption, are taking a wait-and-see position,” e-tailer MyTheresa’s CEO Michael Kliger said in a May 10 investor call. “The market is being driven by [high end] purchasing behaviour, which is more ready-to-wear, more focus on high price points, more focus on what the industry is currently calling ‘quiet’ luxury exemplified by brands that are less logo driven, more fabrication, and material driven.”

For big luxury groups, the momentum around logo-free items—where companies are forced to compete purely on product, and can rely less on covetable branding to close a high-priced sale—comes at the same time as rising economic uncertainty and shifting spending priorities in the US and Europe. The changes risk denting luxury brands’ renewed relevance among middle-class customers after a historic surge during the pandemic. Slowing economic growth in China has added another layer of uncertainty to whether luxury brands can keep broadening the base of their customer pyramid.

As such, many luxury brands are pivoting their efforts to the very top: Louis Vuitton, Chanel, and Gucci have all rolled out more dedicated stores and shop-in-shops for high-rolling “VICs” (very important customers) in recent months. Tiffany & Co, Dior and Chanel were among a bevy of brands to expand their high jewellery collections this season, as well as staging bigger-than-usual, client-facing activations for their launches.

Big groups are also rebalancing their offer to inject more discreet options for logo-fatigued clients: Kering announced plans this week to ramp up investments in Bottega Veneta’s supply chain, with plans to bring production for the brand’s famously logo-free handbags in-house, as well as inaugurating a 5,500 square square-metre shoemaking facility in Italy’s Veneto region.

At LVMH, “quiet luxury” favourite Loro Piana is getting major investments, while Dior has begun rebalancing its handbag offer with more understated options. While all-caps branding remains a key feature of Dior’s hit Book Tote family, Maria Grazia Chiuri’s fall-winter 2023 runway show debuted the understated “Key” bag, as well as several other styles deploying the older and more discreet mixed-case “Christian Dior” logo. (The ladylike aesthetic was of course also linked to the show’s inspiration, the founder’s sister “Miss” Catherine Dior).

At ultra logo-driven Louis Vuitton, owner LVMH has traversed dips in luxury logomania in the past, and knows how to pivot investments to the regions, categories and client clusters where its flagship brand is most likely to find growth.

Despite a more challenging environment in the US market (which drove luxury’s growth in 2021 and 2022) LVMH is still forecast to increase sales by 16 percent to €92 billion this year, according to HSBC.

LVMH stock is trading near record highs as investors continue to bet on a rebound among Chinese consumers.

The market is also betting on the notion that for the strongest brands, the number of customers for whom logos never go out of fashion will only continue to swell.

It’s a vision of the market that LVMH shares, and invests heavily in realising. In a teaser for its debut menswear show by Pharell Tuesday, “quiet luxury”was hardly on the table: Louis Vuitton tapped music-and-fashion superstar Rihanna to pose for the creative polymath’s first campaign, loaded down with heavily-logoed, multi-coloured bags.

Move comes ahead of expected increase in interest rates by Bank of England

The cost of a two-year fixed-rate residential mortgage in the UK has risen above 6 per cent, according to financial information provider Moneyfacts.

Mortgage costs have been rising sharply over the past week, ahead of an expected increase in interest rates from the Bank of England later this week.

According to Moneyfacts, the average cost of a two-year fixed-rate deal rose from 5.98 per cent on Friday to 6.01 per cent on Monday morning. The cost of a five-year deal has risen from 5.62 per cent to 5.67 per cent.

The number of residential mortgage deals available is falling. There are 4683 products available today, down from 4923 on Friday.