Annachiara Biondi

The Chinese jewellery brand dubbed ‘the Hermès of gold’ has gained traction with middle- and upper-class shoppers seeking homegrown luxury

High-end second-hand platforms are drawing buyers and vendors with tailored services, personality-led shopping experiences and a curated edit

The lengths — and prices — people will go to in the hunt for a long-lost scent

From Zoubida’s Sophia Kacimi to Nöl Collective’s Yasmeen Mjalli, designers across the globe are working to preserve traditional techniques and support the artisans who know them

Consumers are increasingly swapping luxury perfumes for affordable ‘inspired by’ imitations

Printemps is bringing an unlikely retail concept to an art deco landmark in lower Manhattan

The accessible luxury brand’s CEO on how they rode out a plunge into the red — and the biggest problem facing emerging fashion labels

Fetish in fashion is undergoing a revival but there is more to current kink than a nod to previous style eras

It’s early May, less than two weeks before the Cannes Film Festival, and yet calm reigns at the Chopard headquarters in Geneva. Artisans in neat white coats work in silence, only interrupted by polite “bonjours” addressed to passers-by. The Swiss brand’s Red Carpet collection, 77 haute joaillerie pieces, which will debut at the French festival — sponsored by Chopard since 1998 — has already been dispatched to the Riviera, but prototypes of the most complex pieces are still displayed on a desk.…

Imagine you had a tough day at work, but instead of commuting home in a crowded train, you could just grab your towel and go down the road for a restorative jump in the sea. Or, rather than joining a spin class in a sweaty, windowless room at 6am, you could drink your coffee, still hot from home, overlooking a quiet, sandy beach after a peaceful swim. For these four creatives based in the Philippines, Ghana, Jamaica and Finland, being close to water is all that matters. Here they share their fa…

On the first night of Italian music festival Sanremo, co-host and singer Marco Mengoni walked the stage in six different looks, including a see-through, floral embroidered top by Valentino and a Fendi leather blazer paired up with low leather Bermuda shorts designed to create a skirt effect. On the same night, Tunisian-Italian rapper Ghali appeared in a sparkling baby blue twin-set with matching high-waisted trousers by Loewe, a sliver of midriff appearing every time he moved, and Alessandro de…

When Rent the Runway launched in 2009, it hailed its model as disruptive: by allowing users to rent clothing online by subscription, the platform was supposed to revolutionise the way consumers shopped and, in the words of co-founder Jennifer Hyman, “put Zara out of business”. Fifteen years later, the company, which today says it has 132,000 active subscribers, has remained far from profitable, struggling to contain costs and battling flat revenue and subscription numbers. Demand is not the pro…

In early 2019, after seven years of growing her independent London-based label Isa Arfen, designer Serafina Sama felt it was time for a break. The brand, which was bringing in £1.3mn in annual sales, had held its first catwalk show at London Fashion Week only a year earlier, gaining accolades from the press. It counted 65 retailers across the world and had just launched its own ecommerce website. Despite all this, Sama was lost. “From outside, everything looked good, but I didn’t have a clear p…

In November, Anne Hathaway hosted the CFDA Fashion Awards, an annual ceremony that honours the best of American fashion. The film star stepped on to the red carpet wearing the most American of looks: a double denim corset and skirt designed by Ralph Lauren, worn with Bulgari jewels. The look was a crowning moment of Hathaway’s recent fashion resurgence, and it was orchestrated by celebrity stylist and fashion editor Erin Walsh. Hathaway has been in the limelight for at least two decades, but h…

Silvio Campara likes to wax lyrical about Golden Goose, the Italian label known for its £440 distressed and star-encrusted trainers. Campara has held senior roles at the company since 2013, first as commercial director and then, from 2018, as chief executive. “Golden Goose is not fashion. It’s an icon,” he tells me on Zoom from the company’s head office in Milan, speaking from a conference room with white walls and what looks like a line of washing machines. “We walk together with a Chanel bag,…

Bringing friends and members of the community into our holidays has always been a really big part of it. I love to host. I have friends who are great cooks, so that makes it really fun — just that spirit of collaboration and community. The food preparation experience is also a big part of enjoying things together. It’s really about the fragrances in the house. One thing that I do almost constantly during the holidays is boil cinnamon sticks. Heat can make the air a bit dry, so boiling water put…

I am repeatedly told that I don’t dress my age. In September a colleague described me as “quite Gen Z” (I’m a 33-year-old millennial). My best friend, visiting from Italy this summer, pointed out more than once how much “younger” my style was compared to hers. I’ve never thought age should be a factor in deciding what to wear. But these comments have given me pause for thought. Should I stop wearing graphic T-shirts printed with Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball manga characters? Is it actually time…

With only a couple of weeks to go before her first solo show in Milan tomorrow, London-based, Brazilian-born designer Karoline Vitto is facing some sleepless nights. She has reached one of the most challenging parts of the lead-up to her show: model castings. This is because Vitto’s eponymous label, founded in 2020, covers UK sizes 8 to 28 and the designer is determined to showcase most of the range on the runway, as opposed to sticking to one sample size, usually a UK6 or 8, as most brands do.…

When 32-year-old Diane Luo bought a Loro Piana Extra Pocket L19 bag in Shanghai last year she didn’t need to do much apart from paying the pouch’s £1,910 price tag. This year, however, the popularity of the mini bag has surged so much that, Luo says, she would need to build a relationship with the sales staff before getting access to the coveted accessory, a trade-off known in Chinese as “pei huo”, which means buying some other goods to get the one that you really want. “I care more about desig…

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