Retail Confessions is a subscriber-only series featuring anonymous, firsthand accounts from inside luxury fashion. It follows “Loose Threads.”
Loose Threads
By Marissa Scharlau
Despite including Demna-esque leggings and streetwear in his new pre-fall collection for Balenciaga, Creative Director Pierpaolo Piccioli seems to be trying to distancing himself from, well, Demna. “I think the cynical and the dark world is no longer young… There’s nothing worse than trying to be cool,” he told The Business of Fashion. Guess we’re not getting any odorous mud runways from him any time soon!
TikTok users called Chanel’s recent winter sale in New York a “hot mess.” Videos depicted lines down the block and customers scrambling over marked-down flats. This was such a great follow-up to The Row’s viral sample sale.
Speaking of sales, marked down picks from Ssense that you can buy without waiting for hours in the cold: this Jil Sander black midi slip dress; black ballerina flats from The Row; and this Acne Studios beige belted blazer.
After winning the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress, Teyana Taylor attended the premiere for her new movie The Rip wearing a black dress by Ashi Studio with protruding hips that she seemed unable to walk in. She gave interviews through the built-in face mask, which was kind of fantastic.
Since when did the internet decide that on-screen costumes based on source material must be exactly historically accurate? We see that with Ryan Murphy’s upcoming show about Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and now with Emerald Fennell’s upcoming Wuthering Heights adaptation. Jacqueline Durran (who also did the Barbie movie with Margot Robbie) hinted at this in Vogue, saying, re: the milk maid dress, “It’s a costume and you know it’s a costume — and it’s not necessarily realistic or unrealistic.”
Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
Chiara Ferragni has been acquitted of fraud charges relating to sales of “pandoro” Christmas cakes. (More on this soon in the Back Row podcast.)
Earlier in Back Row
Retail Confessions: Chanel, Part III
By Amy Odell
“Everyone wanted this job. It was like Emily in The Devil Wears Prada,” said today’s Retail Confessions interviewee, who worked in Bergdorf Goodman’s Chanel boutique in New York City.
Though it was sometimes hard to balance Bergdorf’s concerns with Chanel’s, “It was fun nonetheless,” said the former employee, a veteran of luxury fashion retail.
This week, Saks — which owns Bergdorf — filed for bankruptcy. The company owes Chanel the comically large amount of $136 million, according to the bankruptcy filing. A good chunk of that surely came from Bergdorf customers, some of whom spent seven figures a year at the store.
Ahead, the former employee talks about the mistakes mistresses made when they came in to shop with sugar daddies, the one bag color that sales associates had to be specially trained to sell, price increases, and more.
Did you get men shopping for mistresses?
Oh my God. That was all through Bergdorf Goodman. You knew who they were because they were such an odd couple.
You had guys come in and say that they were buying bags for their girlfriend, but then they would say something like, “Oh, my wife has this one.”
Was it the sort of stereotypical profile of an old guy and someone who could be his daughter?
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