Over 250 years ago the textile industry was the catalyst of the Industrial Revolution. It’s time for the industry to start an environmental one. In October 2019, I wrote an article for The Robin Report entitled "The Day Without Yesterday" where I took the reader for a ride to space. My hope was by better understanding our place in the universe and by offering a perspective on where we live, we could understand what a very special place Earth is and how important it is to protect it. By the end of that article, I had no solutions, but was …
The Day Without Yesterday
Author's Note: When Robin asked me to write an article for The Robin Report, he said just do it about whatever's important to you right now. The following article is not one that describes inventory levels, gross margins, markdowns or macroeconomic trends. Though important, I thought I would put all those things aside and take the reader for a ride, literally, to space, and take a minute to share with you my perspective on where we are and where we are going. How we get there is another story that needs to be written by all of …
Fit To Be Un-Tied
Menswear Inches Forward When John F Kennedy was elected president in 1960, it was an exciting time for the country. Young and handsome, with a pouf of great hair, Kennedy signified the new vitality and promise of America. With a beautiful wife and celebrity appeal never matched in an elected leader, he had appeal in every way, for every aspect of menswear, except one. He didn’t like to wear a hat. The hat industry was beside itself. Here was the leader of the free world, seen by millions, who was rarely seen wearing a hat. It may be a myth …
The Rise of the Perennial Millennial
“That which seems the height of absurdity in one generation often becomes the height of wisdom in another.” Adlai Stevenson I've never been one to use traditional demographics in my product or marketing. I acknowledge it, but don’t rely on it. I prefer to use psychographics as the driver of my consumer focus. It's not how old people are or how much money they make: I’m more interested in how they think and feel. I've also never been a very political person, but I think we would all agree that this year has to be one of the most dynamic …
Streaming Style: Fashion Goes Netflix
The “Runway, Same Day” movement is not really a game changer. The game has already changed. The recent discussions around the "Runway, Same Day" business model, solidified by Burberry’s recent decision to combine both its men's and women's collections into a see now/buy now semiannual event is a dramatic, but not unsurprising, sea change for the industry … and the function of fashion itself. By eliminating the anticipatory behavior accorded by the traditional calendar of showing products four to six months ahead of their availability, …
If It’s a Race to the Bottom, Then Who Really Wins?
To put it mildly, the current retail climate, both meteorogically and financially, has to be one of the most dynamic we’ve ever seen. The forces of nature, distribution, and global conflict have created a new consumer behavior without historical precedent. Seventh Avenue these days looks like it’s returning from the dentist but without the benefit of Novocain. And to make it worse, it knows it has to go back tomorrow and do it all over again. Like the HBO series “The Leftovers,” the consumer seems to keep disappearing. Blockbuster Vs. …
If It’s a Race to the Bottom, Then Who Really Wins?Read More
The Future of Everything
In 2011, at the TED conference in Long Beach, surgeon Anthony Atala demonstrated an early-stage experiment that could someday solve the organ-donor problem: a 3D printer that uses living cells to output a transplantable kidney. Dr. Atala and his team take an image of a kidney to create an exact 3D image of the organ, then print the kidney layer by layer based on the patient’s kidney using their own living cells. In seven hours, you have an exact replica, ready to transplant. Given that 90% of the people who are on the transplant list in this …