Issue #716 August 2026

Week of 16 August 2026

Lisa’s take

More people are asking me about freelancing in fashion than at any point in my career. Some of them are ready. Some of them are not. The difference is rarely about talent.

What freelancing actually requires

The work is the easy part. The harder parts are chasing invoices, managing client relationships when a project goes sideways, filling the gaps between bookings, and maintaining your own motivation without a team around you.

You need a specialism

'Fashion consultant' is not a specialism. 'Womenswear trend forecasting for mid-market retail, with a track record in colour and print direction' is a specialism. The more specific you are, the more easily clients can find you and brief you correctly.

Start before you leave

The best time to build a freelance client base is while you still have a salary. Take on small projects, build the relationships, understand what the market will pay for your time. Leaving employment and then starting to look for clients is doing it the hard way.

I did not go freelance intentionally. It found me. But if I were doing it again, I would start building the infrastructure much earlier. If you are thinking about it, feel free to reply — I am happy to share what I have learned.

Anyway, here's your week in fashion.

The week in fashion

The $800 loophole is dead, and the ultra-cheap parcel economy goes with it.

The de minimis ruling holds

A US trade court has refused to overturn the executive orders scrapping the $800 duty-free exemption. That threshold was the entire business model for cheap direct-to-consumer imports. Landed costs rise from here, and the brands that undercut everyone on price lose their best trick. If you are pricing an autumn range on last year's assumptions, redo the maths this week. Ask your suppliers what they are absorbing and what they are quietly passing on.

Copenhagen turned twenty and stayed sensible

Copenhagen Fashion Week marked its twentieth anniversary with SS27, and the street style outside told the honest story. Oversized button-ups, baggy jeans, flip-flops. Nobody was suffering for a photograph. The Danes worked this out years ago. Clothes you can actually walk in photograph better anyway. Twenty years in, wearability is the whole proposition, and buyers are still writing orders on it.

Made-to-measure wants to go mass

Charvet sits at one end of this, Buck Mason at the other, and the language in between has gone slippery. “Semi-custom” now covers everything from a genuine pattern block to picking a collar shape off a card. The appetite is real enough. Clients want fit long before they want logos. Just ask precisely what is being altered before anyone hands over a deposit.

Gap keeps winning on casting

Malcolm Todd and Inde Navarette front Gap's new “Denim on your own” campaign. Gap has not reinvented the product. It has reinvented the telling. Two years of casting people who look like people has done more for that brand than any logo refresh would have. Heritage labels should be taking notes. Casting is the cheapest fix available to any brand that has lost its footing.

Seventy-five deals and counting

Capstone puts fashion at 75 M&A deals so far in 2026, and the pace is holding. Samsonite bought Béis this week, with Shay Mitchell keeping 15 percent. Celebrity brands are finding buyers now rather than quietly folding after three seasons. Build real distribution and someone will want it. The exit has replaced the licensing deal as the goal, which changes how these brands are built from day one.

The A/W26 looks worth saving

AnOther has pulled 26 looks from the A/W26 runways and the edit is sharper than most. Jonathan Anderson's Dior, Prada, Jil Sander, Saint Laurent, and August Barron doing prom in a gym hall by way of a 1970s princess. Save the images now. Half of this will be on the high street by spring, badly. Texture is the thread running through all of it, so pull fabric references while you look.

Autumn deliveries land in the next fortnight. Start editing your rails before they edit you.

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