Bernard Arnault did not get to be Europe’s richest man by misreading the public mood, but he made a grand faux pas last September. Arnault, LVMH’s chief executive, wrote a memo to managers of his brands, which include Louis Vuitton, Dior, Fendi and Bulgari, banning them from speaking to journalists at seven news publications: La Lettre, Puck, Miss Tweed, L’Informé, Médiapart, Le Canard Enchaîné and Glitz.paris. ‘I formally condemn… giving them information or comments,’ Arnault wrote. ‘Any breach (and this will inevitably be known) will be considered a serious infraction, with the corresponding consequences.’
The memo was inevitably leaked – to one of the titles Arnault singled out, La Lettre. Cue uproar. Journalists from major print publications in France – including staff from Les Echos and Le Parisien, which are owned by LVMH – signed an open letter published in Le Monde. It reminded Arnault that the ‘mission of the press’ was not to ‘relay the official communication of companies and institutions’ but to inform the public.
Never heard of La Lettre? It’s one of a new breed of scrappy news websites across Europe that are roiling the big luxury and fashion businesses and wealthy business dynasties. La Lettre covers business, tech and wealth in France. Other new feisty French online publications, notably Glitz.paris, peer into the inner workings of luxury businesses across the world and the personal/family dynamics that drive them. Its coverage is arranged under the headings ‘Families’, ‘Houses’ and ‘Entourage’.
[See also: Who’s who in the Arnault family?]
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London has its own insurgents, notably the Dark Luxury news website, set up by Conran Quilty-Harper, former digital editor of British GQ. He has broken stories about corruption and tax evasion by fashion houses. He has also exposed Chinese manufacturers’ attempts to take advantage of Donald Trump’s tariffs on luxury imports by offering US consumers the chance to buy direct ‘genuine designer products’ – which are, in fact, dupes.
1 Granary, run by Olya Kuryshchuk, ‘documents the structural issues facing the fashion industry and challenges myths’. (Since you ask, 1 Granary is the news address of the Central Saint Martins fashion college in King’s Cross.)
[See also: Succession at the House of Arnault: who will wear the crown?]
In Italy, Susanna Nicoletti is leveraging her experience of working for Ferragamo, Prada and Tod’s to poke the Italian fashion bear. Established US fashion writers are using well-read Substacks to hold to account wealthy families and fashion businesses. The two best known are Dana Thomas, author of Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Lustre, and Amy Odell, the woman behind two recent tell-all books – one on Condé Nast global chief content officer Anna Wintour and another on actor and Goop founder Gwyneth Paltrow.
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Websites and blogs poking fun at shiny fashion folks are not new. Diet Prada has been a must-read for years. But the number of independent news voices scrutinising fashion and UHNWs such as Arnault has mushroomed in the past two or three years. What’s behind the boom?
For Quilty-Harper, it was Arnault’s memo itself that prompted him to set up Dark Luxury. ‘When I read the list of investigative publications that had gotten under Arnault’s skin, I thought, “I want to be in that club. I want to write the kind of stories they write,”’ he says.
Quilty-Harper was also getting frustrated at the lack of independent scrutiny of one of the world’s biggest industries. ‘Fashion and luxury are as important in Europe as Silicon Valley is in the US. Each dominates globally, and when things go wrong it affects the GDP of nations. But while the tech sector is rigorously reported, fashion is not.’
No prizes for guessing why. Most fashion magazines are funded by advertisers and what they expect in return is detailed and nakedly transactional, as Quilty-Harper knows from his GQ days: ‘There is a system of credits on glossy magazines and if you spend a certain amount on ads, you get a corresponding number of mentions of your products. All the editors and stylists follow the formula. The result is, all too often the coverage is pay-to-play puffery.’
Kuryshchuk, who founded 1 Granary when she was a student at Central Saint Martins, agrees that ‘genuine criticism of the fashion industry is rare’, partly because so many journalists rely on the largesse of the brands to cover the sector. She explains: ‘It’s difficult to maintain critical distance, to challenge a system that is flying you around, paying for hotels, sending gifts and feeding you at Michelin restaurants. The system rewards loyalty over scrutiny.’
Dana Thomas set up her influential Substack, The Style Files, because ‘I got tired of working for low rates and making money not for myself but for the big outlets who were often slow to pay’. With Substack, she bypasses all that. ‘I’m in control of everything. The stories – and the money, which now comes to me without chasing. It’s like having a salary again.’
All those who critique luxury brands agree that the grandes maisons have made themselves easy targets for critics by failing to address issues of sustainability, failing to root out bad working practices, and hiking their prices in recent years, sometimes as much as 100 per cent for popular items.
The new news sites spell only one thing for the luxury industry and its leaders: trouble. Not only are the independent voices breaking stories the big names would rather suppress, but also traditional media are following up the tales of woe. Quilty-Harper’s exposé of how Chinese organised crime was profiting from buying up Louis Vuitton handbags in Europe and selling them in China made the pages of the business title Jing Daily.
What’s more, anecdotal evidence suggests the newcomers’ more rigorous reporting is encouraging traditional media to take a closer look at luxury. Bloomberg recently exposed how Loro Piana has pulled the vicuña wool over subsistence farmers’ eyes by paying them peanuts to provide the yarn for its sweaters that sell for $5,000.
Other stories – allegations that Brunello Cucinelli has evaded sanctions against Russia and claims that Dior, Armani and Loro Piana have exploited labourers working in sweatshops in Italy – have been splashed over the front pages.
You might think the big brands would fight back against the new critics. But Arnault’s actions are a cautionary tale. Hit back and you risk appearing as a wealthy Goliath bullying a tiny David. Suing is always an option, but since most of the new websites were set up by reporters who wanted to hold fashion and luxury to higher standards, they tend to adopt the highest standards themselves. And they know the libel laws.
The tricks that the luxury goods houses once used to keep independent-minded writers ‘on side’ are no longer as effective. Banning a writer from runway shows or press conferences in the past spelt the end of their career, but brands now live-stream their shows, so, as Thomas points out: ‘You don’t have to go to Paris, Milan, New York or London any more to do this job. You can cover the shows without leaving your home.’ The ease of creating podcasts, as well as setting up websites and blogs, enables the new breed of journalists to build their profiles without the support of a big publishing house.
Making money can be tough, but Kuryshchuk has pioneered a model of ‘long-term partnerships, events, paid educational content, sales of our print issues, Substack, talent scouting and recruiting, and occasional consulting’. At every step of the way, she insists, ‘our editorial content remains independent from our commercial relationships. There are no affiliate links, no product placement. There’s an absolute firewall between the two.’
It might be tempting for the leaders of luxe to think – hope? – the new breed of critics will fade away. But it looks like the reverse will happen. Moves are afoot to amalgamate the best new independent voices into the fashion and luxury equivalent of Politico’s Playbook – a must-read early morning digest of all the fashion news that’s fit to print.
Thomas says the success of so many new outlets means online fashion coverage is ‘becoming like an over-invited cocktail party, a place where it is too noisy and you cannot hear yourself think – or get a drink’. The world needs ‘a new service that collects the best runway show critic, the best menswear fella, the jewellery and beauty experts, the business analyst you want to read’.
New publishing platforms, such as Beehiiv, have started to push for collaboration, rather than pit individual writers against each other for eyeballs and ratings. ‘We need to go back to the gatekeeping curating idea of somebody putting us all together, saying, “Here’s what you need to read today,”’ says Thomas.
There is a job out there for an entrepreneur who doesn’t mind getting up at 2am to start work – and enjoys ruffling the feathers of the beau monde. Just don’t tell Bernard Arnault.
