How to Future-Proof Your Fashion Career in 2025

0:07Hello and welcome to The Debrief from The Business of Fashion, where each week we delve into our most popular VLA professional stories with the correspondents who created them. I'm executive editor Brian Baskin. And I'm senior correspondent Sheena Butler-Young. Imagine you're a pre-pandemic Rip Van Winkle. You just woke up after five years of sleep. And in this much more boring version of the story, the first thing you do is head to your old job at the office. And you'd of course notice the big changes. Half your colleagues are on Zoom. Nobody's wearing skinny jeans or dress shirts. everyone's talking about AI, and Donald Trump is president again, but there's so much more.

0:45You might notice your younger colleagues aren't interested in heading to happy hour, and the HR team's talking a lot about creating an inclusive workplace, but they're not getting into specifics, and the company might be on its third CEO in two years. And when you point these things out to your colleagues, all you get is shrugs, like this is how it's always been. The fashion workplace is evolving fast, and that can be scary whether you just woke up from a five-year nap, or if you've been living it the whole time. But with all this upheaval comes opportunities. In this episode, we'll explore what's behind all these changes and what skills are most valued in the new fashion workplace.

1:19And who better to unpack all this than my co-host Sheena, who covers workplace and talent for BOF, as well as Sophie Soar, our commercial features editorial director and host of our webinar series, Building a Career in Fashion. Hello, Sophie. Welcome to The Debrief. Thanks for having me. So you've both been talking for probably years at this point to CEOs, employees, experts about the biggest changes happening in fashion's workplaces. And I know you've both had a particular eye on what's coming down the pike in 2025. So what are your sources telling you? Well, I think you covered a lot of it early on.

1:56There's this thing that happened in January in the United States. There was a new president that was inaugurated. Oh, yeah, I read about that. Yeah. So Donald Trump is back in the White House and he sort of wasted no time within the first 48 hours with all of these executive orders, at least two of which like directly targeting diversity, equity, inclusion programs. All the headlines talked about at the federal level. So sending home presumably permanently federal workers that work in the DEI function, but also in the not so fine print directing government agencies to identify private companies that have similar programs.

2:32that's going to have an effect on the workplace that we're already seeing. So these programs were meant to advance not just the equity for marginalized groups in the workplace, but they also shifted culture to be more inclusive. And I think the symbolism of rolling that back, it's only yet to be seen how that's going to shake out in the year ahead. Another thing you mentioned was around these what we call multi-generational workplaces. So for the first time, companies are having up to five generations in a workplace. If you do it right, that's an opportunity. It's an opportunity to get the best out of each cohort, but it can also be a challenge.

3:08You know, Gen Z is into sober socializing and not to use too broad of strokes here, but I'm a millennial. I remember bear kegs in the office. Rosé fountains were a thing. A lot of that's moving into the background. So how you socialize at work in a multi-generational workplace that is also, by the way, hybrid, all of that's going to be one to watch this year. Another trend that we saw in 2024 was this really frenetic churn of leadership turnover. We saw it at luxury houses from Chanel to Celine to Bottega Veneta and Valentino. They all had appointed a new creative director actually towards the latter third of the year.

3:46And then big mass retailers, so your Kohl's, your Ulta, also brands like Nike, they all had really key leadership appointments in 2024. And so new leadership means change, even if they're using the same playbook. having someone new at the top of your company tends to affect morale for better or worse or just makes people feel uncertain so all of that is going to mean that fashion workplaces are in like this perpetual transition this year which will inevitably shape culture a few themes that i would then add to sheena's there is the integration of generative ai and the next generation technologies that we're seeing being integrated into our working practices no matter what your remit is what your department is that is coming into the workforce.

4:32Also, there's a concern around financial security for many people starting out their careers and a cost of living crisis in particular. This is a really pertinent point that is of great concern to employees across the generations that Sheena was talking about earlier. There's one statistic that came from Statista recently, which is that Gen Z in particular are overwhelmingly focused on making enough money just to live comfortably with 69 % of those surveyed saying it was among their top wishes. And then also, I've been hearing about a demand to come back into the office, maybe not full time, definitely not full time, but at least some days a week, which can cause a division in employee expectations.

5:11Some people want to be in the office, they want it for learning, they want it for engagement, for development opportunities. Others, though, they want to work from home, they know they can get the job done working from home, and they've got used to being able to have their lifestyle fit around them. So that's also something that I think workplaces are going to have to adapt to. So we have a lot of ground to cover here. And I want to get to as many of those points as possible. But I guess my first question is, what are the forces that are driving all these changes? It does feel like there's more going on in terms of how the workplace is evolving now than certainly before the pandemic.

5:47But it feels like, you know, it's been five years since the start of the pandemic and that radical change to work? I mean, how much of it can we still blame on that versus Trump or just generational turnover? I mean, what would you say is the single biggest factor here? I feel like we could blame the pandemic for at least a decade. And then Trump, we've got that for four years. No, I apologize. No, I mean, I think it is just a confluence of factors and change. There used to be a time when we would say we're in a really tough climate or there's so much change. We have to settle out and that all just feels perpetual now.

6:22It feels like it's never ending. Certainly, I think things that came out of the pandemic era, obviously hybrid work. Most companies have some kind of arrangement, three days in, two days out, that kind of thing. But if you think about how long people have been working the other way, we're talking about decades of five days in the office. If you had a job Monday morning, you start out and you're in that place every day and you put your kids in daycare or whatever. That's what we've done for decades. Hybrid work is a couple years old. So I think the assumption that it should be more settled is probably just incorrect.

6:55Also, there's this thing they call moments that matter, right? So if you're coming in the office, there's a different expectation about what you'll get for showing up that you didn't have five years ago. So all of those things represent a perpetual shaking out. We're not there yet. And I think that's why it feels like so much is happening at once is because none of this stuff is really settled in completely, even if it looks like it is. Although arguably, I would say that that feeds into the opportunity for bias, for people being rewarded for being the workforce that turns up or who can turn up for turning up into the office, for sure.

7:27I think also to your earlier point, Sheena, as well, in terms of what is necessarily to blame, I do agree that the pandemic will continue to have long-lasting effects that we will have to take into consideration. For example, if we think about the next generation of talent that will be entering the workforce now, they've gone through an education system and they've gone through classes where they've had to do that in a hybrid environment too so they haven't necessarily had that ability to learn some of those really critical soft skills that you get from school before you even get into your your first job for instance or from your work experience so some of those soft skills are really lacking for some individuals who haven't yet had that interaction that engagement in a really meaningful way?

8:14I think there's simple things like, you know, I mentioned this earlier of like coming of age in my workplace where, you know, the coolest office you could go to is the one with the rosé fountain or a bear keg or all of those things that felt like it made the office fun. That's evolving too because of this multi-generational workplace. So Gen Z is very, as we call it, sober curious. Millennials are used to a certain thing that was exciting when we joined the workforce. And then you've got your Gen X and your boomers that like, you know, a standard meeting is coffee or a cocktail. So, you know, something as seemingly irrelevant to the workplace, like the Surgeon General's warning that alcohol as a link to cancer has a wonky way of perpetuating what's been happening subtly over at least the last couple of years.

8:59I think what Sophie said is true, though, about soft skills playing into even that as well, because I guess if you only have one or two days a week in the office with your co-workers and maybe you haven't been putting yourself out there as much these last few years, then the idea of going to drinks with them in this really intense social situation is probably a lot more high stakes than something like going for a hike or going to a museum or something a little more with a little more of a buffer and a little less of a lubricant involved. Okay, let's get into the Trump of it all. Trump is probably not to blame for Gen Z entering the workforce.

9:32I think that was going to happen no matter who won the election. But you were talking earlier about DEI and the immense and immediate effect. I mean, I think even before Trump took office, we were seeing a huge swing away from corporate DEI diversity initiatives and even the language that was being used. And to me, let's focus on that last part for a second. The way people are even talking about this issue has done a complete 180 in the last month, it feels like. Yeah. I mean, what I've heard, and to be fair, DEI proponents say, But I think a lot of people will agree leaders have to be careful around this particular bit, the language bit.

10:12Yes, there are now a couple executive orders in place that explicitly target DEI and the language around it. But there's been a buildup for at least the past couple of years around affirmative action being effectively overturned for college admissions in the U.S. Supreme Court. But if you as a leader of any kind of organization appear to flip flop on your values based on political wins or the way the political winds blow, I think that's going to have a harmful effect on your workplace in the long term. Like it's not in the next couple of weeks. It's what you're going to say to your workforce over the next decade.

10:49Let's unpack that. You were telling me something very interesting the other day about Walmart and Target and the reaction they've both had. They basically did the same thing. They said, we're done with DEI, essentially. I'm probably oversimplifying a little, although not much. But you said the reaction to those two is very different. Yeah, I mean, in simple terms, I think Walmart was no surprise to people and then Target was. And one of the things, you know, what you're referring to is Target, from where I sit and Brian covering some of this, right, had its moment a couple of years ago or about a year ago during Pride Month when it pulled back some of the collections because they were getting pushback from right conservatives.

11:30I thought people saw Target already differently, but apparently a lot of people still expected them to show up in a different way. Target has always been known for some of the more progressive Heritage Month collections, like being very much embracing some of those themes and having being very vocal about its D &I initiatives, even if it didn't use the phrase D &I. And it's always had a robust product assortment, a lot of black brands, a lot of Hispanic brands, all of that stuff. And I think people expected more from Target where Walmart sat in the middle a little more or maybe more to people's mind to the right.

12:04Now, Sophie, you work very closely with our careers team. You see a lot of what job seekers are looking for when they're deciding where do I want to work? How does something like this factor in? I mean, where does culture rank compared to pay and benefits and what you'd actually be doing in the job when people are trying to figure out where they want to go? So pay is always going to be the leading motivator for most employees when they're applying for jobs. But I think what's also crucial is that increasingly job applicants are looking for companies whose values align with their own. So through job applications, you will often see these individuals calling out how they themselves resonate with the values that are put forward by these particular companies, because that's just going to help with their engagement in the work that they're doing and the long-term retention of them within that workforce.

12:57They want to be a part of a company that is putting out there a product or whatever it might be, a service that aligns with what it is that they align with as an individual. We often talk about that from a consumer base and a consumer putting their money where their mouth is, but it is also from an employee perspective too about what's going into their wallets as well as out of their wallets. The interesting thing about pay I'd add there is I've heard like workplace experts and recruiters talk about pay being the most important factor to a certain point. So a lot of, if you're in a certain industry or you have, you know, if you're a marketer and you're going after a job, there's a good chance that both companies or both offers that, let's say you're considering two offers.

13:39If they're in the same pay vicinity, all of those fringe benefits, all of those value things, They tend to supersede that right away. So I think pay is the number one thing. But if you're seeking a job and you have a certain skill set, there's a good chance you're in the same ballpark. And then everything else becomes more important. And on the DEI bit, I've heard a lot of talent experts talk about the fact that the companies that whatever they call DEI, if they're intentional around accounting for the diversity that exists in their workplace, they're more likely to be successful from a revenue perspective down the line because they're going to have more innovative products.

14:16They're going to retain their team is better, which you spoke about, Sophie. So I think it's another interesting point. Yes. And I would also say thinking about leadership buy-in and thinking about those who are thinking along the lines of sponsorship of talent rather than mentorship is something that we've spoken about in the past, Sheena, as well. Mentorship is more around shared learnings and trying to pass on knowledge and helping an individual by doing so in that particular way. Whereas sponsorship is much more about advocating for that individual and really helping bring them to the table that we have spoken about, that metaphorical table.

14:53So mentorship is about explaining to people how to get to that table. Sponsorship is more about pulling the chair out to help them sit down. And I guess we're about to enter this experiment to see if companies can uphold some of the values of an inclusive workplace with opportunity for everyone that has that kind of support for all employees, regardless of background, without actually ever saying the word diversity. I'm very curious to see if they can do that without ever talking about it. One other thing that we've spoken about before in the past that came from a conversation that we had with the Outsiders Perspective, which is a nonprofit organization based in the UK, is that it's about integrating horizontally these DEI strategies rather than thinking about it as a vertical.

15:42So as there is that removal of, you know, funding or whatever it might be for that particular vertical, as we can quite often see as these companies start to row back. Actually, if it's not considered as a vertical within the company and therefore completely removed, but instead something that is horizontally integrated across the business and is a fundamental aspect of every single core pillar that this business touches upon, it's much harder to row back on those initiatives as a result. A DEI expert that I spoke to for my story on this bit mentioned an observation that she made. So companies right around summer 2023, when affirmative action was overturned, they started saying that they were going to do this work without explicitly stating the language.

16:26And she said it created this opportunity for what in many cases could have been a vocal minority to get louder as companies were quietly, quote unquote, doing the work. And that in its own way shifted the favor in the direction of people that were anti-DEI, if that makes sense. It does. I think it creates a permission structure to speak out against the whole concept in a way that probably those same employees didn't feel like they could before. We'll be back with more of The Debrief right after this.

17:26Tell us what you mean by that. What are the skills that are needed to navigate this ever-changing workplace? Sheena, let's start with you. Soft skills are things like critical thinking, creativity, being adaptable, being agile. I think it's been right around the time that that tech boom turned to bust, so to speak. We started to see a shift in terms of what talent managers thought was important. For a long time, a lot of industries and fashion included may have over-indexed on hard skills, thinking that the soft skills are just, you know, they're just table stakes. And now I think companies are recognizing, in fact, in the face of AI and more technology coming in, that it is more important to have a human element to it.

18:07Like what does the human do really well? And so soft skills is a huge focus on that. Also adaptability is a big part of it because we're in so much change. The person that's able to not be so married to one way of working, or I know this technology really, really well, and I can only excel that. And if you give me something different, I'm going to freak out. You're going to have a tough time navigating this space if you cannot adapt quickly and be very solution oriented. So it's more about how you use your own mind and your own interpersonal skills. I think that's what companies are looking for.

18:39Yeah, I completely agree. I think increasingly employers are going to be looking for a mindset. It's what they want to engage. It's the employees who will want to engage with these new opportunities and these new technologies, for example, Sheena just mentioned generative AI, they want to make sure that they're hiring somebody who isn't necessarily the most up to date on the latest skill because they felt they had to innovate to be able to stay ahead of their particular job. It's about the people who are willing to learn and develop in these areas because of how rapid the development in this field is.

19:12It's about engaging a workforce who are constantly striving to think about how it is that they can take this particular tool or opportunity to the next stage and do so with that can-do positive approach and attitude. At the end of the day, there is still a huge reluctance in the workforce in wanting to adopt tools like generative AI and also a fear too, which is understandable around the fact that we're seeing all of these terrifying headlines about how generative AI is going to replace, you know, however many jobs, but it's actually more thinking about the fact that it will potentially automate a huge amount of a part of your job.

19:58But completely to Sheena's point, it's about the human element that's so important to bring to that technology to make sure, especially in an industry that's creative like fashion, but also thinking about some of the more technological or potentially more, you know, Human resources, for example, if you think about recruitment, there was a survey that was done by Harvard Business School, I think it was last year, where they gave a generative AI tool to recruiters. They were told between two different recruitment teams. One was told that the technology was 85 % effective and one was told that the technology was 75 % effective.

20:40The results they got out of that was that the 75 % effective was actually generating better recruitment results because the team that were using it stayed switched on more because they weren't expecting to get a better result. and because they applied their sort of human touch to the program and the tool that they were using, they were able to get a better, more effective, efficient result. And I think the same can be said for all sorts of applications, if not all applications of a tool or a technology like generative AI. So if I'm not in a position to spearhead one of these AI projects, I'm just kind of, you know, middle manager, kind of, you know, living my best life at work.

21:22how do I demonstrate to my manager and my colleagues that I am adaptable and intellectually curious and all these great soft skills that we're talking about? Asking for a friend, of course. Asking for a friend. Well, for one thing, I would say that I am not an expert in utilizing a lot of generative AI tools. But a couple of years ago, last year, in fact, I wrote a white paper that was about incorporating generative AI into the fashion workplace. That sparked my own curiosity and my own research around it. And I was able to then apply what I learned from diving into that particular topic area.

21:58And I was able to think about, well, how could generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT, not even necessarily something that I needed to pay for, could potentially help my team. So I was then thinking about, well, how can we apply tools like that to try and help speed up parts of our jobs and our process? I helped train them up. I was then able to explore other technologies and uses of generative AI, which are not as immediately relevant to my particular job, but I was able to explore things like mid-journey to understand how to write prompts better to then feed that back to my wider team and help train them up.

22:34So I was able to take a small project and then become the authority within my team on that project, even though I wouldn't put myself out there and saying I am a generative AI expert because compared to other people in the field, I certainly am not, but I can at least help my immediate team who were less informed than me. That's a great reminder that ultimately new technologies, new demographics in the workplace, you can approach them the same way that you've approached any other change in your career. I mean, every article people read about these topics makes it sound like it is the end of one thing and the beginning of another and a complete clean break.

23:16And in the end, it's a continuum. These changes are generally pretty gradual and people who can adapt will adapt. So the, I think the last topic we haven't covered from your rundown at the beginning was the leadership changes that we've seen and just these general corporate restructurings. And there's been this wave of M &A this year. There's just a lot of changes happening at a very high level. And one of you mentioned, you know, every time this happens, essentially there's a year of transition at these companies. And I'm curious how leaders should be approaching that in a way that I guess causes the least pain and creates the most productivity among their teams.

23:53You know, a couple of high level thoughts. I think one thing is, you know, Lauren Lotka was one of the experts in my story that works in executive recruitment. She just said it's remembering that that's hard on people. I think sometimes in so much change, leaders can forget about the human element of things. And it's if you keep in mind that instability, it's like the stock market instability, uncertainty. It makes investors freak out. It does so for teams as well. even the most agile members of your workforce, even the people that are doing what Sophie described so well, which is positioning themselves as parts of the solution and always staying curious, leadership change can disorient people for a little bit.

24:34So keeping in mind all the areas that you can lean into culturally, super important. And the other thing that fashion is not always, it doesn't have the best reputation for is having replicable systems in place that make people feel stable. Like, what are you building within your HR and your culture that is steady and steadfast that people can point to? And even when there is a leadership change, I know how things go here. I know what our values are as a company. Having something more formal in place around your value systems and procedures, I think, helps people find stability in a season of change.

25:10I would agree. I think it's thinking both about the kind of KPIs that everybody can rally behind and making sure there is that consistency there. But also, as we were talking about earlier, thinking back to the values as well and making sure that despite leadership change, there is that continued commitment to the values that is being put forward by your company. Even if leadership changes, it's ensuring that they respect that because that is what the workforce and the employee base will have understood and used as a lens for their wider understanding of their targets and their own approach and attitude to the workplace.

25:50So consistency around that, I think, is also important. People need something to hold on to, whether that's a value system or a rosé fountain. Exactly. But I'm not too sad to see the back of ping pong tables in the workplace. Let's wrap things up by asking ourselves, which of these changes we've talked about or something we haven't talked about are we most interested in tracking this year? Maybe it's something that you just think is so big, it's going to dominate the conversation around the workplace. Or it could just be something that's so unpredictable that you just kind of want to see where it goes.

26:24Sheena, why don't we start with you? It will come as no surprise that I am laser focused on the DE &I conversation this year. It's personally important. It's obviously my beat. I think what has gotten a little lost in some of the conversations that have dominated headlines is that there are people that have lost their jobs that are really great at this work and that study it. And it's a true field and area of focus. And there have been some good signs of progress that I think will be unfortunate if those things go in the other direction. So I'll be laser focused on that. Some of the best advice I heard around that was from Kyle Rudy, who is a executive recruiter for Kirk Palmer.

27:02and he talked about from a talent perspective, because there is so much change, regardless of how you feel about DEI or any of these other programs that might evolve this year, is the people that will be successful know how to work both sides of the trend without changing who they are. So like seeing around the corner and finding the opportunities, but holding onto your values, I think if there's a way to do that, those people that do that well will be successful. I would say there's two things I would be looking at as big trends for this year. One is going to be around generative AI and how that's going to change the workplace, both from an operational standpoint and from a creative standpoint, both from what employers are looking for and for how employees are going to bring something new to the table in these different functions that they contribute towards.

27:51Something else I think that we haven't yet spoken about that I think is going to be very important to consider and how it will impact or continue to impact the workplace is also the attention economy. We have spoken a lot about this from a consumer perspective, but less so about the impact from an employee perspective. The attention economy, quite simply put, refers to one of the most valuable currencies today, which is understandably our attention. You know, whether you're a brand or a marketeer, whether you're a content creator, whether you're a media company, any of these companies with an online presence or advertising output are constantly trying to capture and monetize our attention, both online and offline, but of course, increasingly online.

28:34You know, it could relate to capturing consumer attention with a TikTok video, Instagram reels, through articles, via page views and time spent on an article, but also engaging audiences while listening to a podcast. But our attention today is also increasingly becoming diluted. It's something like individuals are spending something like 13 to 18 hours on media each day with concurrent activities across second or third screens, which we think about that from a consumer perspective as like maybe that's us scrolling on Instagram whilst watching TV and brands trying to capture our attention away from what it is that we're watching so that they can sell us something.

29:11But it's also just as pertinent to think about for people who are checking their emails whilst they're supposed to be dialed into a Zoom call, for example. Never. Never. But it's really splitting our attention in the way that we work and the way that we socialize. Back to a point that you were making earlier, Sheena, you know, we are so chronically online. And as a result, it's really affecting the way, especially, dare I say it, the younger generations are able to show up at work, are able to socialize. And it is fundamentally changing the way that we are operating as people as well as employees.

29:45And it's something that employers really need to take into consideration. We are incredibly disengaged as a workforce. It's something that Gallup's been following in their State of Global Workplace report, for instance. It's something like 77 % of the global workforce is disengaged, both actively and passively. So trying to get employees to buy back into what it is that they're doing and be a part of the workplace is going to be really challenging, especially as they're navigating a hybrid or remote working environment or whatever it might be. And then, as I mentioned, you know, another key thing is the fact that we're spending so much time online and that having such a detrimental effect on our social engagement skills, especially for that younger generation, but also what it's doing for the sense of loneliness that a lot of people feel that they're not actually getting any reprove from by a workplace that may not be as in person or as engaging as it is, you know, the difference between chatting to a colleague about what it is that you need to answer in the office versus sending a message on Slack or whatever it might be that you don't hear back from for a few hours is fundamentally a very jarring social engagement skill.

31:01It's necessary across both fields in order to operate as a hybrid workforce, of course, but it's something that I think employers need to increasingly address when they are thinking about the workplace of today and how to help optimize their workforce for tomorrow. I will piggyback off that answer for my pick, and I'll just go with Gen Z for all the reasons you described, but also because the oldest members of that generation are in their late 20s, which is the age that you start to see the best and brightest, or at least the most ambitious, entering more senior roles within companies. And I'm very curious to see how they take all these lessons from their very tumultuous early career and apply those when they're the ones actually calling the shots.

31:43So we'll see where that goes. I cannot wait. Gen Z management style. I'm so ready for it. As an elder millennial, we'll see. I think Gen Z have a huge amount to offer to the workplace. I agree. We all agree. I welcome my Gen Z slash AI overlords of the future. Sophie thank you so much for joining us today and Sheena thank you for playing this hybrid host guest role so perfectly my pleasure thanks for having me please be sure to check out Sheena's articles how to future-proof your fashion career in 2025 and from Trump to Gen Z fashion faces a culture quake or my original headline more Trump fewer drunks fashion faces a culture quake at businessoffashion.com.

32:32These and other stories are available to BOF professional subscribers only. And if you're looking for your next role in fashion, check out BOF Careers for this week's new partners and openings. BOF Careers is the global marketplace for fashion and beauty talent. You'll find the links to everything in the episode notes. You've been listening to The Debrief, produced and edited by Olivia Davies, mixed and mastered by Eric Bria. I'm Brian Baskin. We'll be back next week with a new episode. Thank you so much for joining us and be sure to follow us wherever you get your podcasts.