TT Vol. 39

Bottega SS21, Nordstrom, Seasons, Kiko FW21, Move to Zero

Feb 07, 2021

Clockwise from Top.

Bottega Veneta SS21 Campaign

Creative Director Daniel Lee hasn’t just revitalized the Bottega product assortment, he also kicked their editorials into overdrive. This image from their FW19 was seemingly everywhere. This week, Lee and Bottega launched their SS21 editorial, a chic take on shelter in place. With pets!:

Bottega Veneta SS21 Is a Blend of Vibrant Colors and Textured Finishes Fashion Luxury Italian Daniel Lee HYPEBEAST

There is a whole lot of green going on. Images here, here and of course, here.

Nordstrom Investor Day

On Thursday, Nordstrom held its investor day and announced a raft of new initiatives that it believes will well position the company for 2021 and beyond. Two items jumped out to us.

First, Nordstrom will be dramatically expanding its Rack business. While the in store Rack business has underperformed compared to competitors like TJ Maxx and Ross, it has a thriving e-commerce Rack business. As we’ve noted, there is little to no competition for Rack in the off-price e-commerce space. The Rack e-commerce site will be merging with the main Nordstrom website, giving the brand even more visibility.

Second, Nordstrom plans a 5X increase the number of SKUs it sells from 300,000 to 1.5 million. The goal is to accomplish this in five years not through the traditional wholesale model, but by deepening relationships with vendors:

The plan is reduce its traditional wholesale operation, which now provides 85% of its assortment, to provide 50%, by increasing drop-shipping and concessions and instituting a hybrid model with shared revenue and risk.

With Q4 sales falling a disappointing 20% compared to last year, the pressure is on to right the business.

Seasons: Rent The Runway for Men

Clothing rental has been a big winner for women, but there haven’t been many options for men. Seasons is a start up that is hoping men will pay a flat fee per month for access to a fixed number of items. They work with an impressive number of contemporary and luxury menswear brands like Acne, Prada, Dries Van Noten, HOMME PLISSÉ ISSEY MIYAKE and Our Legacy. Prices start at $65/month for 1 item and go up to $125/month for 3 items.

Dries Van Noten Seasons Shirts — A snapshot of Season’s Dries shirt selection

If Seasons is able to maintain a healthy inventory to choose from, I can see this working for certain categories. Why not pay $65/month to rent a nice Prada or Stone Island parka for a few months in the winter?

Kiko Kostadinov FW21

The shows are starting to wind down, but Kiko Kostadinov snuck in a presentation of his FW21 collection. There was a lot of quality, especially these tweed coats:

The footwear was also fab. Lots of designers out there are making these post apocalyptic, all weather boots. Collection notes are here.

Nike's Move To Zero

We wanted to very belatedly highlight Nike’s Move To Zero initiative, its signature campaign to address climate change impacts associated with its business. The Nike Sustainability landing page has lots of great visuals on what the company is up to. There’s a lot going on, but it seems that they have made the most progress on material use. For example, they are using a lot of recycled nylon:

Our recycled nylon is transformed from a variety of materials, like carpet and used fish nets. The nylon is cleaned, sorted, and converted into flakes, all before undergoing a chemical or mechanical recycling process. The new recycled nylon yarn reduces our carbon emissions by up to 50% compared to virgin nylon.

They released the Space Hippie over the summer, and just this week released the Cosmic Unity, which is 25% recycled content.

While it will be challenging for a resource intense company like Nike to ever be truly sustainable, they are moving quickly in the right direction.