Kim Jones left Dior to relaunch his own label, direct to consumer. Lovely plan. Now, whose money is behind it? A designer betting on himself, finally. You're on Fashion Business Daily. Coming up, AI models gunning for the catalog shoot, and the fantasy franchise every brand wants a piece of. And whether any of it sells. Kim Jones first. The Business of Fashion, with Robert Williams:
That visibility will come in handy for Jones’ next venture: nearly two decades after shelving his eponymous menswear brand, the star designer is reviving the Kim Jones label. He’s joined in the venture by his longtime deputy, design director Lucy Beeden. Launching online in mid-2027 with a direct-to-consumer model, the brand will be rooted in menswear and tailoring, with a focus on genderless, versatile designs “unrestricted by traditional categories,” Jones says.
Kim Jones is reviving his own name. Fourteen years running menswear for LVMH's biggest houses, and now he's betting on his own point of view, with Lucy Beeden next to him, instead of waiting on somebody's succession memo. Turns out the designer was the asset the whole time. It's a plan, Joey. Online in mid-2027, direct-to-consumer, a four-thousand-square-foot Hong Kong flagship, majority ownership with Beeden plus outside investment. Sell-through? Zero, because there's nothing to sell yet. I want to know who the investors are and how big the check is. Fair. My worry's the rhythm, though. DTC-only, no wholesale, no drops. Menswear and tailoring, genderless, and he wants interiors too? How do you build heat from a website and one store? Ten-meter posters in China from the Bosideng Areal gig might help. Hong Kong for the flagship makes sense. The number I'll watch is resale on the first pieces. From Renan Botelho de Carvalho at FashionUnited:
“Photoshoots are being asked to do a job they were never designed for,” Mallela said, adding that a photoshoot for a single garment to be shown in a single color on 20 bodies would roughly cost between 19,000 and 38,000 dollars, when adding the work of models, photographers, hair, makeup, styling, and studio rental.
Nineteen to thirty-eight thousand dollars for one garment, one color, twenty bodies. Now read the line items. Models, photographers, hair, makeup, stylists. Those are people, and Lumesa's pitch is that the machine handles everything between the shot list and the approval. And that cost range is Mallela's estimate, from the company selling the replacement. Same with the conversion gain. "Up to" thirty percent is a ceiling. I'd want the baseline it's measured against, and return rates. And frankly, has anyone in this industry published a verified cost or revenue figure for AI at all? Yeah, returns are the honest test. If the AI body looks like you and the dress doesn't hang like that on you, it's coming back in a bag. Funny day for it, too. We just cheered Kim Jones for betting on his own eye, and here the creative choices happen somewhere nobody's standing. Anne Klein and Norma Kamali are the named partners, so put the question to them. Whose likeness sits under these bodies, did those people consent, and does the shopper get told the model on the page doesn't exist? From Modern Retail:
Since 2015, the ACOTAR franchise has sold more than 75 million copies globally and helped power the growth of the “romantasy” genre. As readers await the next book, and even get ready for the just-announced seventh installment, they can summon the world of Prythian via ACOTAR fragrances, apparel and drinkware. On Oct. 11, Target rolled out merchandise inspired by the Courts and characters at the heart of the franchise, including BrüMate tumblers and Alex and Ani bracelets and earrings.
Seventy-five million readers, and what lands at Target on the 11th is a BrüMate tumbler and some Alex and Ani earrings. The demand's real. I just can't tell you which of these things anybody still wants in five years. The 75 million copies since 2015 is the one hard number here, and it's counting books. Merch is its own animal. Show me how the Target racks sell through after the October 27 release, and whether that Barnes and Noble-exclusive Feyre Funko trades over retail. Wait, the exclusive Funko, yeah. That's an actual drop mechanic. And Knix on the 15th with five exclusive Court prints is the closest thing in this pile to a collab with a point of view. Leakproof sleepwear as fandom. Fine. For me the tell is Fine'ry taking four scents it already sells and slapping new names and new boxes on them. Same juice, new costume. Barbie had over a hundred brands in 2023. Name me three of those products you still see. Brian Lund, writing in Main Street Dollars:
Grunt Style, the San Antonio military-themed apparel company, is closing its Broadway store in the city, and 19 retail workers will lose their jobs by Nov. 30. The San Antonio Report says 11 of the 19 work full time. The company is shutting stores in other states, too.
Other end of retail from a Hong Kong flagship. Grunt Style, the military-themed apparel brand out of San Antonio, is closing its Broadway store in its hometown, and 19 people lose their jobs by November 30. Eleven of them full time. Five weeks before Christmas. The 19 comes from the WARN letter to the Texas Workforce Commission, so that's the company's own filing. The rest is from a third-party tracker: Woodstock, Destin, Lutz, Myrtle Beach, all November 30. Add Chandler, Arizona, with no date, and you're at 42 more workers. Grunt Style hasn't published a total. And the store closes 'in its entirety,' headquarters is still undecided, and nobody's said whether any of the 19 get offered a spot somewhere else in the company. That's the one answer that'd actually matter to those workers. The undecided HQ is the line I'd circle. A brand pulling stores in five states while it can't commit to its home office tells you more than any single closure does. If you're enjoying Fashion Business Daily, please subscribe or leave us a review wherever you're listening. Reviews help other people find the show, and we're grateful you're here.
We're watching Knix's ACOTAR-inspired underwear and sleepwear collection, out October 15, ahead of the sixth book's October 27 release. And Grunt Style's WARN-noticed store layoffs, including 19 San Antonio jobs, take effect November 30.
Links to every story are in the show notes, so check out the ones you want to dig into. That's Fashion Business Daily for today. We'll be back tomorrow. This is a Lantern Podcast.