By Tsvetelina Stancheva and Anagiulia Bianchi
European Luxury/Retail reporter Angelina Rascouet, who covers the luxury fashion market for Bloomberg in Paris, told London Metropolitan University students recently that the secret to successful reporting is to keep your opinions to yourself.
“I still have to be careful not to put my personal opinion, remaining neutral,” she said, while talking about the latest scandal linked to Balenciaga’s advertising campaign last November and its creative director, Demna.
Critics “condemned the house for showing children holding bags designed to look like destroyed teddy bears, with studs and harnesses, amid an array of grown-up items before them – a Balenciaga-branded wine glass, for example,” commented Vogue in the aftermath.
“Many felt the bags referenced BDSM, and that their presence on the shoot was an abhorrent sexualisation of children.”
All about Bloomberg
Fashion journalists like Rascouet, working in the Paris office, write about everything that happens in the French capital when it comes to fashion – including scandals. It’s a fairly new job for Rascouet, who until a few years ago was covering the oil and gas industry.
A privately owned global provider focusing on financial news and information that offers various types of services in several sectors, Bloomberg is headquartered in New York but also has offices in London and Hong Kong. Bloomberg TV is distributed globally and reaches 310 million homes worldwide.
While the fashion world is slowly returning back to normal in the aftermath of Covid, Rascouet says that the pandemic had both positive and negative impact on fashion brands. Fashion weeks were held online causing another blow to the industry.
“Covid really affected the fashion market. Fashion shows are not only to show your product but also it is a very important event where high end brands invite influencers and well known people to get more exposure,” she said.
“Some companies like Gucci decided to not be active on social media and not invest in advertisements, when meanwhile brands like Louis Vuitton and Dior has spent a lot of money on promoting their work which brought them many more customers after Covid-19 rules eased.”
According to her that is why brands who kept their socials and PR on point throughout the pandemic had a faster and easier recovery because of all the “revenge shoppers” fleeing in their stores.
This is why it’s important to look at fashion not just as art and self-expression but also a financial operation, Rascouet explained. For example, certain Hermes bags are a lucrative investment: “When you buy a Hermes bag, the moment you leave the store with it, it already has a bigger value if you decide to re-sell the item.”
“Many women prefer to invest in these bags, than to invest in stocks for example. And above all, the products are very limited, which makes them very desirable,” Rascouet said.
She emphasised the importance of the materials used for the bags and how the demand is way bigger than the supply, saying this is why the brand is so high end – and very expensive.
Paris Fashion Week is the last (not least) of the ‘Big Four’ fashion shows after New York, London and Milan.
Leave a Reply