01/ In Conversation

Adam Baidawi

In March 2026 OFS hosted the newly appointed Global Editorial Director of GQ Magazine where the conversation touched on fashion journalism, editorial strategy and the changing landscape of men’s media.

02/ In Conversation

Carlotta Constant

Carlotta Constant is a British stylist and alumna of British GQ and British Vogue. She has styled for a roster of brands ranging from Burberry, Chivas Regal, L’Oreal Paris, Adidas and more. The conversation included topics from how she began at Condé Nast, working with celebrity clients like Charles Leclerc and finding a balance between what’s current in fashion and a client’s personal tastes and working in the fashion industry for over a decade.

03/ In Conversation

Women in Fashion: Julia Hobbs and Daisy Hoppen

In May 2026 we hosted our inaugural Women in Fashion panel highlighting the contributions of two stalwarts in the industry. Julia Hobbs is the Senior Contributing Fashion Features Editor at British Vogue and Daisy Hoppen is the founder and director of the luxury communications agency DH-PR based out of London. The conversation traced their career evolutions from Condé Nast to beyond and talked about the struggles women face working in the industry, career highlights and advice to young people looking for careers in fashion journalism and luxury PR.

04/ In Conversation

Camille Charrière

Camille Charrière is a French fashion journalist and influencer who we interviewed in May 2026. Her career has seen bylines in Vogue, Grazia, Elle, Les Echoes, Grazia and The WSJ. Our conversation charted her journey with IVF, women’s mental health, her pivot from finance to law and the state of the global fashion industry when it comes to championing new talent. She is currently writing her debut memoir.

Past guests have included:

Simon Gresham Jones

Blake Harrop

Jonathan Kiman

Professor Daniel Groves

Liam Maher

(Image credit: Getty Images)

Marc Jacobs’ eponymous label is the latest to go in what increasingly looks like LVMH’s retreat from “middle luxury” – brands and products positioned between mass market and true luxury. For a luxury conglomerate historically known as a buyer, not a seller, these divestments suggest both internal headwinds and a broader restructuring of the fashion industry, as the average consumer shapeshifts in response to economic uncertainty and changing global consumption patterns.

The LVMH—Marc Jacobs relationship spans more than thirty years

Marc Jacobs was founded by its namesake designer in 1986. By the time LVMH acquired a majority stake in the brand in 1997, Marc Jacobs himself was already well on his way to the fashion “hall of fame.” The deal marked the beginning of a hugely productive – if somewhat unlikely – partnership between the European luxury conglomerate and the stylistically American fashion designer.

The acquisition also led to Marc Jacobs’ appointment as creative director of Louis Vuitton, a role in which he would help shepherd the heritage brand (which, at the time, was rapidly losing cultural cachet) into the twenty-first century. Under his helm, the leather goods maison embraced ready-to-wear and high-profile artistic collaborations. These changes secured the brand’s continuing relevance and the designer’s own reputation as one of the greatest of his era.

Nevertheless, the Marc Jacobs label began to hit choppy waters in the 2010s. The fashion industry was changing and becoming increasingly polarised: heritage brands repositioned themselves further upmarket, while fast fashion and sportswear swallowed market share below them. The middle ground of “middle luxury” became increasingly untenable for brands like Marc Jacobs.

By the turn of the decade, the label appeared to be in serious trouble, closing many of its boutiques and streamlining its operations. Following Trump’s election victory in 2016, Bernard Arnault reportedly remarked: “I’m more concerned about Marc Jacobs than the U.S. president.”

Still, Marc Jacobs never entirely disappeared from the cultural conversation. Heaven by Marc Jacobs became something of a lifeline for the label, with its baby tees and fun graphics reconnecting it to a younger audience fluent in irony, nostalgia and internet-driven visual culture. More importantly, Marc Jacobs himself remained a deeply respected figure within fashion — and, for a long time, that cultural cachet alone seemed reason enough for LVMH to hold on.

So why the decision to sell?

The first thing to say is: don’t panic. Marc Jacobs is not collapsing, and the brand won’t be disappearing from shelves anytime soon. If anything, it has a few obvious reasons to expect a short-term boost: a beauty relaunch, a Sofia Coppola-directed documentary about the namesake designer, and the nostalgia cycle playing firmly in its favour.

But the question is not whether Marc Jacobs has value. It is whether the brand has the kind of value desired by LVMH.

Luxury has been struggling recently. Inflation, recession fears, tariffs, geopolitical instability and a broader cost-of-living squeeze have made shoppers more cautious. That matters because Marc Jacobs’ customer is not, for the most part, the billionaire buying Birkin bags without looking twice at the price tag. Their customer base is more likely to be aspirational, trend conscious and sensitive to prices.

There is luxury, and then there is… expensive stuff. True luxury is often described as resistant to recessions because its main clients are insulated from ordinary economic pain. In some cases, higher prices can even increase desirability. “Middle luxury” or “mass prestige” works differently because consumers shopping in this category care about value for money: they ask – is this bag worth it? Can I get it elsewhere, for cheaper? And will buying this bag mean I can’t afford to pay my bills? This factor is ultimately what makes brands like Marc Jacobs uniquely vulnerable.

What’s more, the rise of resale (Fun fact: Vinted is now the third-largest fashion retailer in the UK) has changed the rules of the game. When consumers can buy older true luxury pieces at similar prices to new middle luxury items – often with better resale value – the appeal of buying brand new from an accessible designer brand becomes less obvious.

LVMH’s decision signals a vote of “no confidence” in “middle luxury”

The Marc Jacobs sale is therefore not simply about LVMH offloading a less profitable business. The luxury conglomerate’s model relies heavily on economies of scale. LVMH’s portfolio of 75 brands shares production systems, logistics, retail infrastructure and managerial expertise, spreading fixed costs across multiple businesses. This, in turn, drives down cost. But for that strategy to work efficiently, the brands within its portfolio need to be similar enough in audience, positioning and ambition – and Marc Jacobs increasingly was not.

LVMH selling Marc Jacobs suggests a widening divide between true luxury and “middle luxury.” The two categories may once have comfortably coexisted under the same umbrella, but they now require fundamentally playbooks.

For Marc Jacobs, a company like WHP Global – the eventual buyer of the label – may simply be a better fit. Brand-management groups prioritise licensing, distribution and commercial expansion over exclusivity and legacy building. That could mean wider reach for Marc Jacobs, but also risks diluting the very specificity and cultural cachet that made the brand compelling in the first place.

Perhaps, though, that is precisely the point. Marc Jacobs no longer fits neatly within the LVMH machine – and increasingly, the middle of fashion no longer fits neatly within luxury either.

Why should we care?

The Marc Jacobs sale matters because most people, and especially us students, are not shopping at the very top of the luxury pyramid, but rather in the middle: going for the accessible bag, the perfume, the second-hand trophy item and the discounted designer piece. Brands like Marc Jacobs built their entire business on making fashion aspiration feel attainable, but that middle is now under pressure.

Luxury is moving further out of reach, while resale has made older “true luxury” newly accessible. Consumers are more price-conscious, more informed and less loyal than they once were. In that environment, “middle luxury” has become a much harder sell.

So, is LVMH selling Marc Jacobs a canary in the “middle luxury” fashion coal mine? Perhaps. Not because Marc Jacobs is doomed, but because its sale reveals where the pressure in fashion is building: the middle.

On the 8th of May, Christ Church played host to an evening that proved fashion’s most compelling conversations happen far beyond the runway

There is a particular kind of authority that exists in fashion, one that has nothing to do with a front row seat or a lanyard, and everything to do with the accumulated weight of a career built on instinct, relationships, and an almost pathological commitment to the craft. On the evening of May 8th, 2026, that authority settled comfortably into Christ Church’s research centre in the form of two women who, between them, have shaped the image of British fashion from entirely different sides of the industry.

Julia Hobbs, British Vogue’s Senior Contributing Fashion Features Editor, and Daisy Hoppen, founder and director of DH-PR, were the guests of the inaugural Women in Fashion panel, hosted by Oxford Fashion Society and from the moment they arrived, the visual argument alone was worth attending.

Hobbs has, over the years, cultivated a signature that is increasingly rare in an industry prone to anonymous black: she commits. Her sleek red hair, by now as recognisable a part of her professional identity as her prose, caught the light of the research centre with the kind of cheerful defiance that one associates with early Meadows, or the more whimsical corners of Molly Goddard. The outfit itself moved in the register of soft gold and blush pastel, the heels architectural, the overall effect both considered and warm. A woman who understands that dressing for your platform is its own form of editorial. Against the stone backdrop of Christ Church, she looked, frankly, like a feature.

Hoppen, by contrast, dressed with the cool precision of someone who has spent over a decade shaping how others perceive their clothes. Her black, and this is important, was not the black of indecision. It was the black of someone who represents Simone Rocha and Ganni and understands, better than most, the full communicative spectrum available within a single colour. Pared back, yes. Austere, no. She herself acknowledged the paradox with characteristic directness: that PR can render its architects invisible, that the industry has a habit of erasing the hands that build it. Her wearing black, in that context, read less as minimalism and more as a quiet, knowing refusal to disappear.

The conversation was led initially through its formal passages by Fashion Soc vice presidents Rokia and Anaiya, before the floor opened at around 6:15 pm into something more kinetic. The questions were sharp, the atmosphere generously competitive in the way only a well-assembled room of genuinely curious people can produce.

Hobbs spoke about her origins with the kind of candour that editors of her stature rarely offer so freely. The trajectory was not the obvious one: a law degree, a serious flirtation with European legal institutions, a stint at the EU Delegation to the United Nations, and then, finally, the admission that fashion had always been the point. The pivot was daunting, she said. She credits the beginning to something gloriously unassuming: a copy of Vogue, purchased alongside a pack of Juicy Fruit. From there, a fashion coordinator role at the magazine, years navigating its digital transformation, the early tremors of AI, and a career that now encompasses BBC Woman’s Hour, BBC News, and the kind of writing that makes fashion feel genuinely necessary to people who would otherwise insist it isn’t.

She noted, without self-pity but with useful clarity, that the industry she entered possessed more generous budgets and more visible entry points than the one facing graduates today. It is a contraction worth naming.

The room’s most audible moment, a collective, involuntary intake of breath, came when

Hobbs described shooting in Kate Moss’ home. In her wardrobe. With her. The Alexander McQueen baby bump on Kate’s runway, she reminded us, was not incidental iconography. It was storytelling of the highest order, the kind that only fashion can produce because, as Hobbs put it with the simplicity of someone who has spent years arriving at exactly this conclusion: fashion is human.

Hoppen, whose agency since its founding in 2013 has grown to represent Stone Island, Tekla, Belmond and Dover Street Market alongside its fashion roster, was equally plain-spoken. She would not, she said, start the business today. What she built exists because of relationships, because the fashion world is, at its core, intimate in a way that resists the facelessness of which PR is so often accused.

Both women spoke warmly and without performance about female solidarity as structural rather than sentimental. And how, despite the assumptions that AI will be homogenising journalists’ voices, we as writers and fellow fashionistas can combat this through producing our own unique points of view or niches on Substack, and how it is more powerful than ever.

A question from the floor, including one posed by yours truly on the role of politics in fashion journalism, was received by Hobbs as not merely valid but essential. Clothes, she said, do not exist outside the world that makes them. They never have.

Christ Church, for one evening, agreed.