Discover the most relevant industry news and insights for fashion designers, updated each month to enable you to excel in job interviews, promotion conversations or perform better in the workplace by increasing your market awareness and emulating market leaders.

BoF Careers distils business intelligence from across the breadth of our content — editorial briefings, newsletters, case studies, podcasts and events — to deliver key takeaways and learnings tailored to your job function, listed alongside a selection of the most exciting live jobs advertised by BoF Careers partners.

Key articles and need-to-know insights for fashion designers today:

1. How to Launch Handbags

It took Reformation a year and a half of planning and five rounds of prototypes to launch its inaugural handbag assortment last month: a collection of three styles priced just above the brand’s $250 signature sundresses. And it’s no coincidence that Reformation is launching a bag now. Luxury brands have hiked prices dramatically in recent years.

According to a BoF Insights analysis, the average designer bag in the US cost $2,475 in 2022, up from $1,944 in 2019. Over that period, Chanel increased the price of its classic flap bag by 60 percent to $8,200. But there’s still a big market for comparatively affordable accessories: the same survey found 78 percent of respondents reported their typical budget for designer handbags is under $1,000. Labels that have launched handbags in the past year include Swedish brand Toteme, Nili Lotan and shoe brand Aquazzura.

Related Jobs:

Bags & Soft Accessories Developer, Ganni — Paris, France

Master Craftsperson, Coach — North Bergen, United States

Sunglass Designer, Mac Duggal — Chicago, United States

2. Digital Fashion’s Unlikely Alliance

This month, news emerged of what seemed on its face an unlikely partnership. The maker of Clo3D, one of the most popular 3D fashion-design tools, and Epic Games, creator Fortnite, bought shares in one another. They revealed the reason: to invest in the future of digital fashion.Simon Kim, chief executive of Clo Virtual Fashion, said it began as a technical discussion about how they could help their users to work better. Clo also happens to be the maker of Marvelous Designer, a tool used by top animation studios to simulate cloth and clothing.

Epic is the company behind Unreal Engine, the powerful 3D graphics tool used for countless games and big-budget entertainment like Disney’s “The Mandalorian.”For brands that want to take advantage, however, it can be challenging to turn their physical items into virtual ones they can sell. Having a 3D file that can be easily rendered in a gaming environment, such as one created using Epic’s Unreal Engine, could reduce the barriers.

Related Jobs:

Junior Creative Digital Designer, Next — Leicester, United Kingdom

Design & Development Bodywear, Hugo Boss — Switzerland

Assistant Designer, Lingua Franca — New York, United States

3. What’s Driving the Men’s Jewellery Boom?

Jewellery is tapping into the traditionally underserved male consumer group, who in recent months, have driven a boom in menswear overall. A number of brands and retailers have reported soaring sales recently from men shopping for rings, bracelets and necklaces. Global sales in the category grew 9 percent year-on-year last year, according to Euromonitor, compared to 4 percent growth within women’s, which still dominates the overall jewellery market.

Experts say success of the men’s jewellery category can be attributed to the factors driving overall interest in menswear, like the casualisation of fashion and blurring gender codes.”A more fluid approach to masculinity, which has been apparent across ready-to-wear for a number of seasons, is now changing how men look at jewellery too,” said Maxim De Turckheim, senior buyer of fine jewellery and watches at Mr Porter.

Related Jobs:

Assistant Designer, Jewellery, Alexander McQueen — London, United Kingdom

Product Developer, Hard Accessories, Toteme — Stockholm, Sweden

Head of Design (Hugo Menswear), Hugo Boss — Germany

4. Dior’s ‘Global Atelier’ Turns to Mexico

European fashion houses have long sampled from other cultures. [Dior creative director Maria Grazia] Chiuri’s approach stands out for the depth of her research and the emphasis she places on building mutually beneficial partnerships with local artists and artisans — all while ensuring her collections are tuned for commercial success.

“Fashion has the potential to be a bridge, and textile art, such as embroidery, can be a vehicle to connect different communities, enabling them to work together, understand each other more, and share ideas and expertise,” said Chiuri. “Of course, you have to give the original sources a contemporary attitude attractive to any cool young girl anywhere — this is fashion after all.”

Related Jobs:

Design Internship, Galvan — London, United Kingdom

Tailor, Safiyaa — London, United Kingdom

WW Senior Designer, Heliot Emil — Copenhagen, Denmark

5. Walter Albini Relaunch Confirmed

Bidayat, a Switzerland-based investment vehicle steered by Rachid Mohamed Rachid, is planning to relaunch the dormant Italian fashion house Walter Albini after acquiring its intellectual property and archives last year, BoF can confirm. Efforts to resurrect dormant but storied fashion labels, often called ‘sleeping beauty’ brands, have multiplied in recent years, with mixed results.

Bidayat says it is currently teaming up with museums, publishers and luxury advisors to raise awareness of Albini’s legacy before restarting the business. Representatives for the fund declined to comment on recent reports linking former Gucci designer Alessandro Michele to the project. Parallels aren’t hard to spot between Albini’s archives and Michele’s Gucci, but the nature and scope of the star designer’s reported involvement in the relaunch remains unclear.

Related Jobs:

Head of Design, OMNES — London, United Kingdom

Creative Pattern Cutter, Alexander McQueen — London, United Kingdom

Sr. Manager, Technical Design, Coach — New York, United States

6. DVF Launches Secondhand With ‘ReWrap’

DVF, the fashion brand launched by designer Diane von Furstenberg in 1972, is making its foray into the resale category. The brand is launching “ReWrap,” a peer-to-peer resale programme with tech start-up Archive on DVF’s e-commerce site, through which DVF’s customers will be able to shop pieces from the brand’s own archives as well as buy and sell pre-owned pieces among one another. They’ll also have access to a tab called “Missed Connections” that operates like a classifieds page where users put out requests for DVF pieces they’ve been trying to find.

While DVF’s dipping its toes into resale with a purely digital offering, the brand could expand into different models, including leveraging its stores, launching a mail-in programme and adding new markets, said Emily Gittins, co-founder of Archive.

Related Jobs:

Design Director, Chico’s — Fort Myers, United States

Design Intern, Vetements — Zurich, Switzerland

Assistant Designer, White House Black Market — Fort Myers, United States

7. Asos, Crocs Reset Net-Zero Climate Commitments

Two years ago, British fashion e-tailer Asos set a bold goal to cut its net carbon emissions to zero by the end of the decade. Now the company is abandoning that ambition — at least within a 2030 timeframe — and making an equally bold acknowledgement that the original target isn’t robust enough to align with evolving standards.

It’s a rare nod by a large fashion company to a widespread problem: while big brands have embraced splashy climate commitments as a way to bolster their eco credentials, an absence of accepted rules or government regulation has meant many of those pledges don’t actually measure up to much.Asos said it is planning to set a new net-zero target “as soon as is practicable.”

Related Jobs:

Senior Garment Designer, Broken Planet — London, United Kingdom

Designer Sneakers, Hugo Boss — Switzerland

Design Director, Alexander Wang — New York, United States

8. Asics Launches ‘Anti-Gorpcore’ Clothing Line With Kiko Kostadinov

Capitalising on the explosive growth of its sneakers in recent years, Japanese performance running giant Asics is launching a new high-end fashion line called Asics Novalis, to be designed by its long-term collaborator, Kiko Kostadinov. The debut Asics Novalis collection will launch at Paris Fashion Week in October and will be available in luxury retailers like Dover Street Market and The Broken Arm later this year.

Other performance sports brands have also leveraged the popularity of sportstyle into recent growth, including Salomon, On and Mizuno, making them desirable collaborators to an endless list of streetwear and luxury labels. The aesthetic of sportstyle — and gorpcore at large — has emerged as a successor to the streetwear staples of the 2010s: Dunks, Jordans and Yeezys.

Related Jobs:

Design Intern, Emilia Wickstead — London, United Kingdom

Fabric and Trim Developer, Tomorrow — Paris, France

Associate Product Developer, FIGS — Santa Monica, United States