Meet the Editors Panel: Live with Financial Times, The Face Magazine & Esquire UK

0:05Welcome to Luxury Icons, the marketing and PR podcast created by the Luxury Communications Council. I'm Rosie Shephard, the founder of the Luxury Communications Council, the world's only membership network dedicated to advancing the global luxury industry by uniting, supporting and championing marketing communication leaders. This podcast is dedicated to meeting some of the industry's most prolific leaders, delving into the challenges and opportunities that we face together. Now we have our Meet the Editor series. I'm delighted to bring you three brilliant editors. If Lizzie wants to make her way up here, you are first.

0:41They are representing three very different approaches to covering contemporary style. FT's blend of signature intelligence, precision and global business insight. We follow that with The Face, the voice of youth culture, fearlessness and rebellion. And we'll finish up with Esquire, the refined style, modern masculinity and timeless storytelling. But firstly, I'm delighted to introduce Lizzie. There we go. There we are. Oh, nice. Big, big you. Now, Lizzie Patton is the fashion editor of the Financial Times. Now, she returned to the paper just a few months ago after acting as a decade over at the New York Times as the European Styles correspondent.

1:26Now, she covers the intersection of luxury, culture and business with a sharp, authoritative voice. Hi, Lizzie. Hi. Thanks for joining. And I should also clarify, my byline is Elizabeth, but I do like to be called Lizzie because Elizabeth still makes me feel like I'm getting told off. There we go. So I'm very excited to join you. But this also feels like a real full circle moment for us because, well, not only we used to have a lot of fun in New York together back in the day, but you were one of my very first speakers for the LCC Leaders Forum. This is true. The very first one we did, which was eight years ago.

1:57And some of you have been coming to all of them ever since. So thank you so much. Now, firstly, let's start with the basics. Can you share exactly what your remit covers over at the FT? Sure. So in terms of editing, I'm responsible for anything that goes in the FT weekend newspaper pages. HTSI, set pretentity, anything on newspaper print, that's me. I also write regularly and across the paper so I'm just as likely to write a feature for weekend as I am corporate coverage for the main pages and I like it that way and this is actually the first time I've ever been an editor I've largely been a reporter and a writer so I've been flexing that muscle as well and then the last thing just because this crowd is the right one for me to mention this too I'm also responsible for the annual FT Business of Luxury Summit and making sure we get great speakers, great agenda.

2:46And I'm curating my first one for next May. Perfect. And just to clarify, you write well beyond fashion. Yes. So the reason I've always written about fashion is because I do see it as a bit of a Trojan horse into anything you want to write about. So fashion is a way of writing about social change, politics, technology, business stories, which is something I've always basically tried to do. That's not to say there isn't an enormous amount to write about luxury and fashion, about the wonderful characters, the business trends, but I also have form in making that a way to write about anything I want.

3:22And you do, which is perfect for many of us. And now, let's look at your first piece. It was entitled Why the World Fell Out of Luxury, or Out of Love with Luxury. It felt like a really big, bold piece to kick off with, didn't it? sort of like announcing the elephant in the room. Can you tell us more about it? Yes, so this ran just before Fashion Weeks in September. And I sort of did a series of pieces. I started in August, which I felt I wanted to just sort of set the tone in how I was looking at the world at the moment and also how I think our readers are looking at this world at the moment.

3:57You know, we obviously have a very specific reader demographic and I think a lot of them wanted to be heard. So this piece was really decoding the last two years, looking at a lot of anecdotes as well as hard data and saying actually how have we got to this moment and what might come next? Who's going to thrive and what do some brands need to do to survive? And it was obviously a lot about sort of the highs and lows of the premium brands. It was about, well, it was about from the consumer perspective but also from the corporation's perspective. Yeah, and it's about, I think, you know, this big question that everybody's been talking about in this room and beyond, which is pricing and that elevation up, up, up.

4:40And now how we make sure that a consumer looking to buy at any stage and stage of the market feels like they're getting value from that offering from the brand. And that's a different question and scenario for different brands. But fundamentally, it comes down to people feeling shortchanged and how do you stop them feeling shortchanged and start them feeling like they're getting what they want from a luxury purchase again. We used to talk to Dan about that. We did. I love that, by the way. It was brilliant. It was brilliant, wasn't it? Looking, obviously, you referenced this sort of growth. You know, carrying LVMH's results is low-digit growth and, you know, in different markets.

5:18Richemond doing much better. Lovely. Would you have anticipated that the watches and jewellery market is more robust? Yeah, because this has always been the case, right? You're in an economically volatile moment. Where do people want to put their money in things they perceive to be of a greater investment value? and they were doing the same thing 5 ,000 years ago. They were looking at gold jewelry and trying to use that as an investment thing. So I think the main thing I think about, and obviously the earnings season has just closed and it's been a little bit better, I would say, than analysts were expecting, so that's a good thing, was that basically there is no China on the horizon anymore, is there?

5:55There's no automatic double-digit growth coming from a specific geographic market and that has propelled two decades of growth for this market. And so, again, you just have to think about growth in a different way. What are you looking to achieve? I think with Richemont, you know, are there any Richemont people in here? Probably. Never mind. I wasn't actually going to say anything particularly rude other than. No, no, I really wasn't going to say anything other than rude. Other than it has been a bumpier few years for them in the last few years than for others, actually. And their results haven't necessarily been as stellar as some of the others.

6:25And then there is this sort of correction coming through, given they're so heavily weighted towards jewellery. It was interesting I saw. I was also off maternity leave for the last year. So actually it's been quite a kind of reintroduction back into the space. But 70 % of their sales are now jewellery. And there's still this perception that it's fundamentally a watch business. And that's been happening in the background as well. So yes, that was basically the question though, right? That jewellery is what is the sort of cornerstone of their sales. And they're doing that much better. So it doesn't surprise me.

6:55And sort of other sort of, I guess, periphery markets. we've talked about interiors about how actually people are looking to adorn spaces rather than perhaps adorning themselves yeah i mean we were just we were mulling that you know these are and this is sort of the forum where these conversations are so fun but i was saying that i think a lot of and this isn't new either but i guess there is this movement slightly away from soft fashion and people are thinking about different things i keep hearing and seeing in this new role about interiors specifically i think people somehow feeling much more comfortable adorning private spaces spaces that people aren't necessarily looking at or seeing, but they still want to use their wealth or their sense of personality to decorate that.

7:34And I mean the experience economy, which has been around forever. But I just keep hearing, especially from an ultra high net worth community, that they don't really necessarily want to buy more product at the moment. Hence why we're seeing this rise of what we were calling the cheaper challenges, like me and Em and a whole demographic there, from a high net worth client who are buying down as opposed to the aspirational customer buying up. But they are still spending. It's just in these different and occasionally more discrete spaces. And actually, was that something you covered in that piece?

8:05Or have you covered generally sort of this buying down? Yeah, because I see it as a sort of quite important trend that we should be paying attention to, which is that there is actually genuinely a very wealthy client at the moment who has stepped away from some of the brands that are outlined in this piece. And I think they see a value for money in these brands that are pretty new, like Me and Em in the UK or Cezanne in France, which has just hit half a billion dollars worth of sales last year. And they are just offering a different value proposition. And they're thinking, well, I just think that's a really interesting thing because I think most people assume those brands are catering to people for whom that's a reach.

8:42But actually, there's a lot of people buying down as well. Yeah, it's really interesting. There obviously are a few exceptions. You wrote a really interesting piece about Ralph Lauren. Can you tell us a little bit about that? What have they done differently? Yeah, I just think, you know, Ralph has had a really stellar couple of years. And when I came back from maternity leave at the beginning of the summer and was just reacquainting myself with what had gone on in the market, because I'd largely switched off, to be honest. You know, Ralph had just totally outperformed in terms of its share price, in terms of its sales.

9:16The last 12 months have been so rough. And there they were doing something great. and Ralph Lauren isn't necessarily always perceived as an outrunner of the market. So I looked into why it was and I mean, oh gosh, there's loads of reasons, but the top line was basically that they have done this quite strategic pivot away from trend-led collections across the board to around 70 % of what they call core, which is all the product that you would associate with Ralph Lauren. So cable knit sweaters, polo shirts. And actually now that is what they make 70 % of their annual inventory. And that's what a lot of people want.

9:48And then obviously a lot of the marketing is around the extra 30%. But what Patrice Louvet, the CEO, said, especially in this piece, was just actually the consumer is so confused now. We were trying to give them too many things and tell them too many stories. And actually, at a time when what America looks like or what Americans look like is kind of up for debate, but actually everyone kind of loves the Ralph Lauren version of what America looks like, we're going to double down on that. And also, we kind of know what everybody wants from us. So we're going to make sure we don't put ourselves in a risky place commercially and double down on a kind of inventory decision.

10:27And that's paying off both in terms of the stock market and in terms of sale. It's interesting because obviously we've had so many conversations about brands sort of re-making or reinventing themselves as a word. New fonts, new branding, refresh, refresh, refresh. And we've seen actually, I'll shout out for Burberry, who've actually recently gone back to their, or not so recently, fairly recently gone back to their original DNA and demographic profiling and things like that. And it's really interesting to see actually, we consumers just don't need new, new, new, which is the natural instinct of us marketeers.

11:01And also, I mean, not to tease my own content, but we do have a piece, a big piece running later this month on British heritage brands. And the report has been showing me some of the numbers. and actually there is this real reversion at the moment to heritage, to countryside aesthetic. Is it a reaction to AI? Is it a reaction to everyone just suddenly feeling overwhelmed and wanting to sort of go towards something more functional? And I don't know, it's a super interesting space and actually the reporting looks... I haven't actually finished editing it yet, but it does look interesting and it definitely plays into this as well.

11:34We'll look forward to reading that. Thinking further afield, and actually it's an interesting sort of... it makes sense to go here because there's a problem at the moment in Italy with this made in Italy. Yes. Okay, I was like, have I got that wrong? No, no, no. Okay, perfect. So we'll call it a crisis for the sake of it. Yeah, no, it is a crisis. Okay. It's obviously, you know, very much thinking about the DNA and what that means as a sort of holistic umbrella brand in its entirety. Tell us a bit more. Okay, well, so just a little bit of background. Someone didn't read her briefing notes. No, I did read my movie.

12:13No, so just a little bit of background, I guess, about me. I got my first front page at the New York Times doing supply chain investigations into the Italian luxury supply chain. So I do understand it, and I've spent a lot of time looking at it. And I think what I thought was interesting about this year, which I would term an annus horribilis for the Made in Italy label, is that none of these allegations are new to me. They're not new to people who've really studied the industry. And I think what I found interesting about this year is this failure to just engage with it as an issue. This conversation is still, well, it's just a few bad apples and this isn't a systemic issue.

12:56It's kind of depressing that that's not happening. I'm really interested. This is a story I think the FT should be doing and haven't done yet. but about why it's all coming out now and why the Milanese prosecutor has suddenly decided that right now is the moment to strategically target a number of brands. I don't even yesterday, you know, they've just announced another probe into Todd's and that was interesting as well because Mr. De La Valle has been one of the most vocal proponents that there's nothing wrong at the moment with the system. But, you know, this is a crisis moment because it really devalues people's sense of what luxury is and there has been so much focus on craftsmanship by the entire industry for the last five years.

13:33And that's why you should pay these prices. And then this is a really bad moment if people are already reassessing what value is, if they're suddenly going, well, can I really trust these brands? So it is really problematic. I personally, I am not in the luxury industry on that side of the fence, but I think I would just open my, put up my hands and say, yes, actually we have a problem. And the thing we're going to work on is fixing this rather than continually saying, there is nothing, there is no elephant in the room. um so yes they're not oh oh there yes well that's yeah one of the pieces exactly well that wasn't italy but yes the supply chain yes well exactly i just wanted to highlight that you know you are very much known for this actually really deep investigatory journalism yeah and one other thing i'd just say about it not to like toot my own horn per se but actually what's been really interesting to me is i wrote a lot of this just before covid and during covid and a little bit after COVID and sometimes it was quite hard to meet the audience actually the pandemic changed things a little bit but I was really writing it purely from a journalistic perspective because I was somewhere that had the budget that let me do it that gave me the weeks to go off and do what's proper investigative work and and and it wasn't that some of them did extremely well but not all of them did extremely well but I do think public consciousness is pivoted and people are are focusing on this now in a way that a few years ago they weren't so you know that's something that everyone journalists should be mindful of the industry should be mindful of the attention has skewed a little bit more towards these things than it was historically definitely and this is on the front page of the new york times it's amazing um the sort of other piece of your um of your i guess puzzle that you work on is really interrogating how i guess social trends so family identity gender also then play into the fashion industry um you wrote a recent piece about um how larger families are a new signifier of wealth and status this is what i meant about using it as a trojan horse and just writing about whatever you want to do but yeah this was one of the first pieces i did in august when i came um and it's just it's it's just tongue in cheek really but it comes from conversations i'm sure everybody's having now which is oh my god raising one child is expensive, two is expensive, three feels like a real luxury and then of course at the moment and especially in the moment that America is in at the moment there is all this publicity around these families that aren't even three or four, there's, you know, Ballerina Farm is one of the most popular influences at the moment and I think they've got eight that last, I don't even, I can't really keep up, but I, you know, I think sometimes it's, you know, luxury is about how people live and how they spend their money and children is a huge part of people's lives and how they spend their money um so it is a status symbol and i just wanted to kind of probe and explore that and it was sort of slightly playful but actually there's there's all the economic data to back it up as well it's also so interesting because actually it sort of it feels like it's the one thing you can't fake so if you can rent a handbag you can rent a dress and actually there's a smart strategist on tiktok who i really like called called eugene healy i don't know if any of you follow him so he was on the lcc podcast That's the latest one.

16:48Which I have loaded to listen to. But he's really smart. And he said actually a quote in this about that, which was like, you can't fake family. And there's obviously a lot about counterfeits out in the conversation about luxury in the moment and how you are authentic. But actually, you can't fake family. And that's something that, as a result, holds a pill. Finally, Lizzie, what can we look forward to seeing? More of what's coming up next? What's going on? What's coming up next? Yeah, I mean, it's been so interesting to move to editing and shaping coverage as well as writing coverage. I think I would just say in terms of the style pages, I am looking to really internationalize the pages.

17:28There is a really great British core to some of our coverage, but we've seen a lot of success in writing about the Gulf and writing about America, writing about China. I'm talking more brands are coming from there or trends that are coming from there. I've also probably brought a slightly more corporate tone to the weekend pages my bet being that actually everyone's concentration is so shot at the moment that they're that more inclined to dwell on a story with a coffee with a little bit more space and time on a Saturday afternoon than they are um if we pump it out at 7 a.m on a Tuesday and everyone squashed on the central line and so that's just a play I'm you know giving you all my experiments that haven't necessarily worked yet but but i do but i have been seeing some of that but also i do think i feel really privileged to have the ft as an audience again because everybody is curious and they're educated and they want to learn um and so i do see it as a great opportunity to introduce people to new brands they really do like being told how to spend their money perfect um and final question for you lizzie this is the question that we ask all of our interview guests um lizzie pattern what is your ultimate luxury i know it's so lame but it's true but because i have two tiny children i just want to have a coffee by myself that would be the ultimate luxury um i hear you in terms of like if i was going to splurge in the next year um and i know this is a kind of old school thing but i have been thinking about it i actually think i'm going to get a bespoke suit made for myself no i'm doing i mean i did public speaking before but i'm doing more and actually i just do think there's something really really special about it and there's some really good operations right here in London who can help me do that.

19:06Come on, fashion girls, hook her up. So that's probably my big splurge for 2026. Amazing. Thank you so much, Lizzie. Thanks, everyone.

19:18Our next editor is Matthew Whitehouse, editor-in-chief of The Face magazine. Now, Matthew Whitehouse joined the role in 2019, ready for the relaunch. He was previously at ID magazine where he was the art and cultural editor Now, just in case you don't know, The Face originally launched in the 1980s and was relaunched, as I said, in 2019. They focus on music, fashion, film, politics through a mix of daily content, social podcasts, and, of course, quarterly print editions as well. Now, I asked a number of our Big Fashion House members how they were reaching Gen Z and Gen Alpha, and The Face just came up again and again, which is wonderful.

20:02So, first of all, welcome to you, Matthew. Thank you. How would you describe The Face's core audience demographic and cultural mindset? Has it evolved since the 2019 relaunch? I mean, I think it fundamentally stays the same as it always has been for The Face, and it's curiosity. You know, I think they're curious people. They're probably the first in their kind of friendship group to know about things or want to know about things. And I think they turn to The Face because we are the people who are often very first to things. So curiosity, I'd say it's the main thing. Good haircuts. Yes. is a core part of it.

20:34But yeah, that curiosity, I'd say. And what would you say some of the work you're most proud of is? I think, I mean, for me with the face, it's when we capture now as accurately as possible, I suppose. And so by that, I mean, when it comes to the face, I'm not really interested in the past particularly, and I'm not really interested in the future at all. I really, really like now, and sort of looking around and adding context to it and adding depth to it. So it's when we've had moments like people on the cover that have been particularly timely, which is a hard thing when you make a quarterly magazine to predict, well, what's going to be timely in three months' time or six months, however you're planning it.

21:08But we've had things like we did Charlie XCX's first piece of press for the Brat campaign. We did General Tager on the cover the day that Wednesday came out and that became the biggest show ever on Netflix and all that kind of jazz. Jack Grealish on the cover the day won the league with Man City. You know, these really, really timely moments. I think when you get that right, I think that's the most exciting thing. Amazing. and how would you describe the Face's core audience today in terms of sort of the demographic and the sort of cultural mindset I mentioned that already but I guess I want more about sort of the relationship with the readers do you feel it's different between you and them in terms of how you are in contrast to other magazines well I'd say that we're very close to our audience you know I think we kind of speak to them at eye level I suppose you can feel it I wish there was a more scientific way to say, but you can feel that closeness with the audience.

22:03There is a scientific way to say engagement. That's one thing that we look at, really, particularly with the face. We don't chase exponential growth for the sake of exponential growth. It's kind of meaningless when it gets to that stage. What we look for really is engagement. Are we engaging with our audience? Do they like what we do? Are they involved in what they do? So I guess it's that closeness. And so, too, I think that age of a magazine, when the face relaunched, the face was the internet. you know it was where people went for everything there were these totemic things magazines they're not so much anymore you know people turn to us for authority and trust but they don't want to be dictated to so we need to listen as much as we talk to our audience and that's something I think we do really well at the face.

22:43So more conversation less authority? Yeah well the same authority but it comes from listening that trust comes from from listening to our audience and being where they are you know and and being where the energy is, I think. It's no point just dictating to your audience anymore. You have to listen to them as well, and that's something that we try and do. You obviously have this incredible breadth of topics, and that might be music, film, style, activism, etc. But you're also quite sex, drugs and rock and roll, is that fair to say? Me, myself? Well, that's a different conversation. The magazine, is that fair to say?

23:18Yeah, I mean, what young people are interested in, right? So to that point of kind of meeting our audience at eye level, we talk about the things that our audience talk about. And I don't think that they're necessarily edgy things. I don't think The Face is a particularly edgy publication at all. I think we want to be where the audience is at. And so we have the same conversations that they have. We show up in the same spaces that they show up. As I say, we meet them at eye level. So yeah, I suppose we do cover those things as well. I think lots of people would think it is edgy. Yeah. But you're probably surrounded by, it is already the readership, they are cool anyway.

23:58So it's sort of, yeah, it's a sort of a, they're not looking to you to be cool because they're already cool, I would have thought. That's true, that's true. But I would also politely refute the idea that the face is edgy. And I'll explain why, because I've worked at Youth Culture Publications now for nearly 12 years. and never once in those 12 years have we sat in a room and gone, how can we make this edgier? How can we freak people out a little bit? How can we shake up the straights? Never done that once. But what we have done consistently over those 12 years is gone, will young people like this?

24:30How can we talk to young people? Will they respond to this really, really well? And so I think it goes back to that point of kind of meeting your audience where they are and to just describe that as edgy and sort of put it over there would be to ignore a large section of the population and that audience. Okay, great. And tell me more about some of the work you're doing at the moment with luxury brands. Yeah, I mean, some of my favourite work that we've done has been with our partners. You know, I make a quarterly magazine. I like kind of working to briefs, I suppose. A magazine has a start and an end.

25:11It's finite, you know, so I kind of like the idea of working to a brief. And so some of my favorite moments that we've done, I suppose, go back to that idea of kind of like who you have on the cover, you know, and it feeling very, very now, as now as possible, you know. So I think brands constantly turn to us for our advice on talent that they should be working with. You know, I think we're very good at choosing people that are on the cover of the magazine. And for that trust, I suppose, and it's continuing. I suppose the work that we do is always in service to our audience, you know, and continuing to build that trust with them.

25:40So that's what makes me excited. Being excited, I suppose, is the most important part of the job. My job basically is to go into rooms and have an idea and try and convince everyone that it's the most exciting thing that they've ever heard, so they'll go and work on it. And then they go and work on it, and they make the reader think it's the most exciting thing they've ever heard, and they tell their mates, and they think it's exciting. So it's passing on that excitement, I suppose. And can we have a few examples of some of the talent that you've helped bring to you? Yeah, well, Charlie was great.

26:03I loved that. That was at the start of the Brat campaign, and that was a great piece of timing. We've been offered Charlie XX for the cover numerous times over the years since The Face has been back. But we chose that moment specifically. You know, as I mentioned, Jack Grealish was great the day he won the lead. General Tager the day Wednesday came out. He did Adele the day her record came out. It's that timeliness. You know, people often say, who puts your dream person to have on the cover? And I mean, I can't really have Paul McCartney on the cover of the face. It would be my dream person. But I would always really like to have the most timely thing possible.

26:30So I hope that when the face comes out, it feels very now. You know, there was an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery at the start of this year about the face. And it was fantastic, you know, and it had all of the sort of old face stuff and had the new face stuff. And it was the first time, I suppose, that I've seen the new face situated with the old face. You know, I'm constantly making the new face and saying, what's the new face? It's not the old one, you know. And you saw it situated next to it for the first time. And what I really took away from it was the commonality was that we do now what they always did.

26:59And that is try and be as now as possible and to sincerely and accurately reflect what now is. You know, and you hope that in the same way where you pick up a copy from 1992, you go, yeah, that's what it felt like to be young and alive in 1992. to when you pick up a copy from 2025 in 10, 50, and 20 years, you hope that's what it felt like to be alive in 2025. Love that. And for luxury brands who want to work with you in a commercial way, how does that process work? How much sort of, I guess, creative license do you guys need? Yeah, tell us about that. I mean, we're very, it's a bit of a wonky word, but we're very intentional about the work that we do, I suppose.