Two turnarounds, one basic question: does the math support the comeback? This is Fashion Business Daily. Luxury e-commerce is shrinking its audience on purpose, fast fashion is celebrating a reset, and we’re asking who’s got a product story beneath the spreadsheet. This one's from Stockopedia:
Our turnaround continues at pace. Momentum accelerated through the first half ended 31 August 2026 (“H1”). GMV grew 1.8% year on year, with growth of 0.5% in the first quarter (“Q1”) accelerating to 2.9% in the second quarter (“Q2”). Performance was most notable across the Debenhams brand, where GMV grew 14.1% to represent c.41% of Group GMV. Pretty Little Thing, boohoo and Karen Millen have all returned to growth.
Boohoo—now Debenhams Group—reported GMV up 1.8% for the half, with Q2 at 2.9%. Fine. But that 731% reported-EBITDA headline starts from minus £3 million; adjusted EBITDA rose 13.9%, to £24 million. Very different victory laps. Debenhams is the story: GMV up 14.1%, now about 41% of the group. But it’s a marketplace with roughly 30,000 brand partners, so I want to know whether shoppers are choosing Debenhams or just using it as a very large digital rack. The operating improvements are real: company-reported gross margin reached 53.9%, up from 51.9%; returns fell about 4%; and marketplace mix rose to 38.9% of GMV. That supports the model. It doesn’t make 1.8% GMV growth a roaring demand recovery. Marketplace is great at making a retailer look busier. The proof comes when Debenhams can keep that 14.1% growth without becoming a clearance aisle for everybody else’s inventory. Zofia Zwieglinska, writing in Glossy:
In the quarter ended June 30, the two retailers’ combined net sales rose 5.6% excluding currency effects, marking their first growth since Mytheresa acquired them in April 2025. Yet their active customer count fell 11.1% over the year. Michael Kliger, CEO of parent company LuxExperience, told Glossy that rebuilding the entire customer base is not his immediate goal.
Net-a-Porter and Mr Porter grew sales 5.6% excluding currency, while active customers fell 11.1%. So the plan is fewer shoppers, bigger baskets—and Kliger is saying it out loud. Glossy reports that roughly 35,000 top customers are the focus, with LuxExperience aiming to add about 3,000 more. That group generated 49.1% of GMV in fiscal 2026, despite representing just 4.3% of customers. And those former big spenders didn’t leave because the spreadsheet changed. They left because somewhere else offered a better edit—and the access and service that go with it. Winning back 3,000 luxury customers means giving them a reason to care, not merely a very polished email. The June-quarter sales growth is the first since Mytheresa acquired the platforms in April 2025, so it matters. But sales rising while customers fall is still a narrow recovery. Retention and spend per top customer have to prove out the strategy. This one's from PR Newswire:
Ravel, a textile-to-textile recycling technology company, today announced the successful closure of an oversubscribed $8.2M Seed funding round. The investment was led by One Small Planet, with significant participation from AP Ventures plus support from Overlay Capital and Lichen Ventures.
An $8.2 million oversubscribed seed for blended-textile recycling is one of the more useful funding rounds we’ve seen. Poly-elastane is everywhere in performance gear, and it’s exactly the stuff conventional recycling chokes on. One Small Planet led it, and At One Ventures came back after leading Ravel’s pre-seed. Investors are committed. Commercial proof still has to come, and Ravel says this money moves it toward commercial readiness. Ravel says it can separate poly-elastane, turning the waste into mono-material fiber that’s ready to drop in. Great—because brands love stretch fabric right up until they have to deal with it after the customer’s done. “Drop-in ready” only matters if it works at the mill, not in a seed-round release. If this process can meet cost and quality requirements without forcing factories to rebuild their lines, it has a serious route into the supply chain. From Raspberry AI:
Raspberry AI, the company helping brands move at the speed of inspiration, today announced a major expansion of its platform that brings the entire fashion product lifecycle into one AI-powered agentic workflow. In a first for the fashion industry, Raspberry AI is unifying AI agents across design, merchandising, wholesale, marketing and e-commerce, creating an entirely new path from initial concept to commerce, and transforming how brands bring products to life in the physical world.
Raspberry says it can take "men's denim for Fall 2027" from a prompt through wholesale and e-commerce. Cool—now show whether that denim gets bought at full price, instead of just getting generated faster. The client list is serious: SKIMS, Alo, Walmart, Steve Madden, Oscar de la Renta. But the release doesn’t give us results on conversion, repeat purchases, or sell-through. The platform has launched; the commercial case is still unproven. And Oscar de la Renta is the name that makes me pause. An agent can smooth handoffs and cut some dead inventory—the industry estimate is 40% unsold—but somebody still needs to know whether a look is merely efficient or worth making. “People in control at every stage” is there to reassure us. When design, merchandising, marketing, and commerce all feed one system, will the brand keep its judgment—or start optimizing for the dashboard? Kalkine Media, with Vinay Lochav:
Vera Bradley posted a net income of $4.5 million for the thirteen weeks ended August 1, 2026, reversing a $4.672 million loss from the previous year, with revenue increasing to $71.649 million. This translated into basic EPS of $0.16 and diluted EPS of $0.15, compared to losses of $0.17 per share in both metrics last year.
Vera Bradley swung to $4.5 million in quarterly net income from a $4.7 million loss, and gross margin reached 59.8%. Keep the confetti in the drawer: $7.7 million in tariff refunds fed that margin gain. Direct revenue rose 8% to $65.4 million, while indirect fell from $10.3 million to $6.3 million. So customers coming straight to Vera are holding up better than the wholesale shelf—and Project Restoration still has sell-through problems. Exactly. Direct revenue is the cleaner operating signal; the profit swing has a one-time tariff component attached. Same lesson as the Boohoo and Net-a-Porter numbers: look past the growth headline. If your team needs a daily briefing on your own competitors, market, or beat, Lantern can make a private version of this show for your company and deliver it to the whole team. Learn more at lantern podcasts dot com slash briefings, with a 14-day free trial.
Links to every story are in the show notes. Check out the pieces that caught your attention, and dig deeper when you have a minute. That’s Fashion Business Daily for today. Until next time, this is a Lantern Podcast.