The Business of Fashion Podcast

For a long time, upcycling sat on the edges of the fashion industry, associated with small independent designers, niche sustainability labels and one-off capsule collections. That's changing. At Paris Couture Week this spring, Swiss designer Kevin Germanier closed the season with a collection made entirely from excess inventory across seven LVMH-owned brands. Coach is turning used denim into new bags, and Uniqlo is remaking unsellable and used garments under its RE label.
In this episode, senior correspondent Sheena Butler-Young speaks to senior editorial associate Shayeza Walid to explore why upcycling is no longer being sold purely as a sustainability hook, why brands are increasingly marketing it through creativity, individuality and provenance, and what's really driving the shift from new EU regulations to a changing consumer mindset.

Key Insights:

Selling Creativity, Not Just Conscience: Walid points to a fundamental shift in how upcycling is marketed. It's no longer framed primarily as an environmental fix, but as a source of design distinction and story. "It felt like the term was becoming ubiquitous across marketing," she says, noting that upcycling has moved from something "relegated to a certain type of consumer or a certain type of brand" into territory claimed by the industry's biggest names.
Regulation Is Quietly Doing the Heavy Lifting: Walid connects the timing of the boom to the EU's ban on the destruction of unsold goods, which came into force in July. She notes that Kevin Germanier's LVMH-backed couture collection was deliberately built from unsold stock, not deadstock fabric — a distinction he emphasised on stage. "It also means that they'll have to figure out sustainable and approved ways for using their excess stock, and upcycling is one of the methods for that."
Deadstock vs. Textile Waste — Not the Same Debate: Walid unpacks a live tension among practitioners: using deadstock fabric is being challenged by some critics as not addressing overproduction, since it still puts commercial value on excess production. "With deadstock, it's the same as using new fabric in the sense that they're rolls of fabric... that's not necessarily what upcycling is about," while brands like E.L.V. Denim work directly with used, discarded garments instead.
The Infrastructure Is Finally Catching Up: Sorting, collecting and sourcing — the industry's biggest upcycling bottleneck — is improving. Walid cites organisations like Fashion for Good working on AI-assisted sorting, and platforms such as Nona Source and The Materialist connecting brands to deadstock fabric. "There's a greater design interest in it now more than there's ever been," she says of the shift she's tracked through conversations with suppliers.
The Consumer Wants Range, Not a Label: Walid argues the audience for upcycled product has broadened well beyond the sustainability shopper. "You could have an upcycled Miu Miu product today, and maybe that says that you like high fashion... but also you think it's cool that your product is from an upcycled material," she says, describing a consumer who wants variety in their closet rather than to be defined by one aesthetic or ethic.
Scale Remains the Unsolved Problem: Despite the momentum, Walid is clear-eyed about the limits. Sizing and colour inconsistency frustrate wholesale buyers, the process is inherently slower than working with virgin material, and export bans on used textiles in countries like Bangladesh complicate sourcing. She also flags that upcyclers in the Global South — in markets like Kantamanto in Ghana — have done this work "for generations" but remain largely excluded from the value chain brands are now building.

Additional Resources:
Why So Many Fashion Brands Are Upcycling | BoF
Why Fashion’s Economics Work Against Sustainable Brands | BoF
Can the EU Ban on Destroying Unsold Goods Actually Work? | BoF

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I've been interviewing Nick Knight for more than 15 years. This is our fourth in-depth, sit-down interview. At this stage, it's become something closer to a running conversation about how technology is reshaping fashion.

This time around, I wanted to know where Nick is focusing his energy now. It turns out, he is building his own AI datasets from scratch — photographing a model over and over so the machine sees the world only through his references, and never scrapes the internet for somebody else's. He takes his own still image and asks the AI to make it move, producing something that is neither a photograph nor a film.

I also asked him for the advice he'd give to young image-makers starting out today, in the age of AI. This week on The BoF Podcast, Nick and I get into what happened to the metaverse, how Nick believes AI is creating an entirely new medium somewhere between photography and film, and what fulfilment really means to one of fashion's defining image-makers.

Key Insights:

The Metaverse Didn't Disappear, It Rebranded: Knight argues the concept never really went away, but was tainted by association once Facebook was renamed Meta. He says, "I don't think it's necessarily drifted away. I think the term's been, to some degree, cancelled because it had too many bad connotations,” he said. "The metaverse is just a digital version of life, that's absolutely happening."

Building Proprietary Datasets to Escape the Echo Chamber: Knight's studio creates its own AI models rather than pulling from tools trained on the wider internet, specifically to avoid reproducing past photographers' work. He explains the method: "We've done a conventional session where I photographed the model lots and lots of times, and lots and loads of clothes, et cetera, and that's my data set," which is then fed into the AI, "so it sees the world only through those references."

Referencing Isn't Plagiarism, Copying Is: Knight pushes back on the idea that AI imagery is inherently derivative, arguing that all creative work draws on a subconscious library of influence — human or artificial. "When you walk around a museum, go around the V&A, you are taking in Botticellis, and you're taking in 20th century furniture... they go into your brain... so it's your frame of reference. AI does the same sort of thing." But he draws a hard line at direct imitation: "There's no satisfaction in copying an existing piece of work."

Fashion Models Should Own Their Own Digital Likeness: Knight argues that AI could extend a fashion model's career well beyond its traditionally short, youth-focused span — but only if the model, not the agency or brand, controls the rights. "I think that fashion models need to own their own digital likeness. Now, I've spoken to a lot of model agencies and there is virtually nothing happening to make sure that happens," he says, adding that agencies have little financial incentive to invest in it.

Fame, Money and Power Are "False Goals": Asked what he's chasing if not happiness, Knight rejects the premise outright. "Fame is a false goal. Money is a false goal. Power is a false goal. He locates his own fulfilment elsewhere: "My interaction with people in the studio, my interaction with my wife and my family... it comes from the human interaction with all people around me."

Additional Resources:
Nick Knight Says Heart and Mind are the Key to Fashion Imagemaking | BoF
The BoF Podcast | Inside The Future of Fashion Image Making with Nick Knight
The BoF Podcast | Nick Knight on Why the Metaverse Is Fashion's Next Frontier | BoF

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For years, follower count was the clearest shorthand for a creator's value — more followers meant more reach, more brand deals, more money. But social media doesn't work that way anymore. TikTok's For You page, Instagram's suggested posts and other algorithmically curated feeds mean creators can reach huge audiences without those people ever following them. At the same time, affiliate marketing platforms like LTK and ShopMy are giving brands a much clearer picture of who actually drives sales, with smaller creators often outperforming bigger names.

In this episode, senior correspondent Sheena Butler-Young talks to BoF US Editor Diana Pearl about how brands and creators are rethinking the value of an audience, and where creator value is headed next.

Key Insights:

A huge following no longer guarantees cultural weight. Pearl points to the gap between raw numbers and actual impact: "You look at someone like Dixie D'Amelio, who has almost 54 million followers on TikTok... but I would not say [she is] as culturally relevant as someone like Alex Earle, who has not even 9 million followers on TikTok."
New platforms have made it possible to see exactly who is driving sales, not just who has the biggest audience. As Pearl explains, "ShopMy really changed that — they offer brands a lot more insight into which creators are actually driving sales, even if they're not running a paid partnership."
TikTok's For You page and Instagram's suggested posts have done more than any other shift to break the link between followers and visibility. "Those are the two primary factors that have really diminished the importance of follower count," she says, "because you can have someone with 300 followers who goes viral."
The single most important quality a creator can build today resists easy measurement. "Trust is the number one most important thing that an influencer or creator can curate today," Pearl says, "and that trust is not something that can necessarily be measured by metrics on a spreadsheet."
Chasing every viral trend is a losing strategy — consistency is what builds a durable audience. "Playing the long game is really the best strategy," she says. "Staying true to who you are — that's how you build that community. That is how you built that trust in that community."

Additional Resources:
Why Follower Count Matters Less Than Ever | BoF
Not All Creators Convert. Here's How to Find Those That Do. | BoF
From Hype to Discipline: The New World of Influencer Marketing | Case Study | BoF

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When the designer Kelly Wearstler was five or six years old, she made little drawings and small sculptures out of cans and cartons, laid them out on the table at family gatherings, and put price tags on them.
She grew up in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, raised by what she calls fiercely independent women who took her to thrift stores, flea markets and auctions. She got her first job at 13. She studied graphic design in Boston, apprenticed in New York with Milton Glaser, the designer behind the I Love New York logo, and then moved to Los Angeles where she waited tables at a Beverly Hills restaurant until one of her regulars became her first client.

Today her design studio runs to 60 people and six verticals — interiors, architecture, licensing, creative direction, a gallery and a Substack newsletter. And next month she launches a 29-piece collection with H&M Home: the first time the retailer has put furniture into a designer collaboration, and the first time it has worked with one designer across both home and fashion.
This week on The BoF Podcast, Kelly joins Amed to talk about advocating for herself before she had any track record, what waiting tables taught her about designing restaurants and how she is using AI inside her studio.

Key Insights:
A Design Education Built on Flea Markets, Not Classrooms: Wearstler's earliest design instincts weren't taught — they were foraged. Without the money to buy expensive pieces, she and her family combed thrift stores and auctions for scarves, magazines and furniture. "I think that really kind of educated my eye in so many different elements of design," she says. "I love typography and I think that really came from the magazines and what really resonated with me and evoked an emotion."

Advocating for Herself: Wearstler talked her way into designing her first hotel despite having no commercial design experience, on the condition she partnered with an architecture firm that had. Asked where she found the confidence to push for it, she traces it straight back to her upbringing: "It really went back to my childhood, like both my grandmothers worked. They were so independent... whatever you want to do, you can accomplish. It's hard work. It's not gonna be easy. And it has to be fuelled with passion and curiosity, period." She simply refused to let the "no" stick: "I just kept on going. I really wanted this project."

A "Why" Rooted in How Spaces Make People Feel: Asked what drives her, Wearstler points to the emotional residue her spaces leave behind. "There's nothing better than to go into one of the lobbies of the hotels that we worked in," she says. "We used to see people coming back over and over again. And they always tell me how they love being in this space. It makes them feel so good."

Fashion and Design as One Continuous Language: Wearstler doesn't separate how a home is curated from how a person dresses — both are storytelling. "It's like how you dress and your design, your home, your curation style really is a form of self-expression," she says. "I really don't see design and fashion living in separate rooms."

Legitimising Mass Market Through Design Pedigree: For Wearstler, H&M's history of designer collaborations — not its price point — made the partnership make sense. "If you look just like in the past, I remember early 2000 when they did the Karl Lagerfeld collaboration ... They're really the pioneers of collaborating with designers," she says, citing Margiela's archival collection as another reference point. She argues scale and craft aren't opposed: "It's all in the economies of scale ... You have to really be a great designer, know how to take perhaps a humble material and make it shine."

Additional Resources:
The Acts of Love Behind Milan Design Week | BoF
BoF VOICES 2023: An Inflection Point for AI | BoF
What Stood Out at Salone | BoF

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For much of the last decade, fashion brands and retailers were fixated on making shopping as seamless as possible — endless product online, algorithmic recommendations, next-day delivery. But after years of digital sameness, something more analogue is starting to feel exciting again. That shift sits at the heart of BoF's new retail package, The Best Fashion Stores in the World — an insider's guide to 65 independent retailers spanning from Brooklyn's Ven. Space to Dongliang in Shanghai, Alara in Lagos and Dover Street Market.

BoF retail editor Cathaleen Chen joins senior correspondent Sheena Butler-Young to discuss why independent retailers are becoming more important to shoppers, brands and the wider fashion ecosystem, as well as why the ritual of engaging with fashion IRL is more important than ever.

Key Insights:

Chen says the list's three pillars — curation, experience and partnership — were designed to reflect more than consumer taste. Partnership, she explains, addresses "the support and the responsibilities that all retailers have to the fashion ecosystem," at a moment when department stores have earned a track record for not paying vendors and multi-brand retail has been reshaped by the collapse of players like Matches and the struggles of Net-a-Porter.

With e-commerce solving for intent-driven shopping, Chen argues stores now win on discovery. As she puts it: "If you know exactly what you want, you shop online. If you don't know what you want, you shop in stores." She adds that the best shopkeepers add value "not just discovery for new brands" but new ways of styling — an eye that "allows designers to sort of view their collection in new eyes" in a way social feeds may fall short,

Per wholesale data from the platform Joor, independent retailers' share of transactions rose from 49 percent in 2020 to 62 percent in 2025 — meaning independents "now make up the majority of transactions in wholesale" on the platform, a significant insight even when accounting for the caveat that it reflects one marketplace.

The list includes retailers in Ibiza, Hangzhou, Cairo, Cartagena and Kuwait City — a deliberate move beyond fashion's traditional capitals. Citing a conversation with Kallmeyer founder and chief executive Daniella Kallmeyer, Chen notes that regional boutiques may be " even more important than the larger international stores because they're able to penetrate these outer-tier markets," which represent white space for fashion, rather than lesser opportunity.

The appeal of independent retail is fundamentally about a different mindset: casual discovery and "bopping around the neighbourhood," which Chen calls "the opposite of online shopping, where I know exactly what I want.”

Asked to name the one quality that will define the best stores for the next decade, Chen didn't hesitate: "I think conviction is what makes these doors so special, and ultimately what makes them so successful today" — pointing to Ikram Goldman's boutique, Ikram, in Chicago, and her famously intimate client relationships as the clearest example.

Additional Resources:
Why Independent Retail Is More Important Than Ever | BoF
The Best Fashion Stores in the World | BoF
The Debrief | Why Some Retailers are Ignoring the Internet | BoF

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