Articles by Don-Alvin Adegeest
Don-Alvin Adegeest is a consultant and specialist in brand strategy, communication, and design with extensive experience in the fashion and luxury retail industries. Since 2003, he has collaborated with FashionUnited as a senior editor, contributing analysis, interviews, and in-depth reports focused on the international fashion business. His career includes leadership roles at companies such as Hugo Boss or LVMH giving him a deep understanding of the market and the sector’s value chain.
Who is actually shopping in luxury boutiques?
The velvet rope outside a luxury boutique has become as much a fixture of the world's premier shopping streets as the cobblestones beneath them. In Paris, London, Milan, and Tokyo, queues snake past flagship windows with a regularity that suggests demand has never been stronger. But step closer, and a more complicated picture emerges. During...
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Fashion takes over Design Week as brands blur the line between runway and room
The crossover between fashion and the home is nothing new. From Hermès blankets to Missoni towels and Versace ceramics, luxury brands have long extended their identities beyond clothing. But at this year's Milan Design Week, running alongside the 64th edition of Salone del Mobile, that crossover has reached a new level of ambition, and...
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Resale surge and value retail strategies redefine fashion spending
Rising living costs across Europe are accelerating a structural shift towards resale, with Vinted emerging as a key beneficiary. The platform reported gross merchandise value of 10.8 billion euros, up 47 percent year on year, while revenues climbed 38 percent to 1.1 billion euros. Founded in 2008 in Lithuania, the company has scaled rapidly...
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The 4 billion dollar shoe that fashion never wanted: the rise and fall of Allbirds
In 2016, a New Zealand football player-turned-entrepreneur and a biotech engineer launched a wool sneaker on Kickstarter. They hit their 30,000 dollars goal in five days, raised 119,000 dollars in total, and set in motion one of the most instructive brand stories of the decade. This week, Allbirds agreed to sell all of its intellectual property...
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The Antwerp Six at 40: How six hungry students changed fashion forever
When six students at the Antwerp Academy were studying in the early eighties, they were hungry and open-eyed. Charged with ideas and ideals. They never thought they would collectively be known as a movement: The Antwerp Six, which this year celebrates its 40th year, have been a cultural reference point for many decades, and the exhibition that...
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Italian luxury brands stage citywide retail takeover in Manhattan
From April 9 to 11, Manhattan’s luxury corridors will double as a distributed exhibition space. Under the banner “Icons of Italy,” 43 flagship boutiques representing 56 Italian brands spanning fashion, design, jewellery, automotive, yachting, food and wine will host installations and cultural activations aimed at reframing retail as a vehicle...
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AI moves into fashion’s C-suite
As fashion navigates economic uncertainty and technological disruption, the C-suite is being redrawn. Artificial intelligence is no longer confined to design studios or marketing dashboards, it is now reshaping executive leadership itself. At Kering, CEO Luca de Meo last week appointed the group’s first chief digital, AI & IT officer, Pierre...
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H&M sales dip underscores ongoing positioning challenge amid margin gains
A first-quarter sales dip at H&M has sharpened industry scrutiny around the group’s market positioning, even as profitability continues to improve on the back of cost discipline. The retailer reported a 1 percent decline in sales in local currencies for the three months to February, while operating profit rose 26 percent to 1.51 billion Swedish...
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Oil at 200 dollars a barrel: Middle East conflict sends shockwaves through fashion
As the global conflict involving Iran escalates, the prospect of oil prices climbing towards 200 dollars a barrel no longer feels implausible. Fashion businesses across the UK and Europe are once again bracing for volatility, as energy markets react sharply to geopolitical risk. From fibre production and manufacturing to freight costs and...
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The fashion industry has a water blind spot
Water is widely recognised as fashion’s single largest environmental impact, yet it remains structurally overlooked in sourcing decisions, audit systems and sustainability reporting. At a time when 2.2 billion people globally lack access to safely managed drinking water, according to the United Nations, the fashion industry continues to consume...
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