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The Glossy Podcast

The Glossy Podcast

Written by: Glossy
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The Glossy Podcast is a weekly show on the impact of technology on the fashion and luxury industries with the people making change happen.51c7e220-eb15-11f0-93c9-174dbbb8b2a3 Art Economics Politics & Government
Episodes
  • What are men wearing right now?

    What are men wearing right now?
    May 29 2026
    Pitti Uomo, the largest menswear trade show in the world, is coming up this month. Brands from around the world will show off their newest collections of suits, shoes and elevated basics. But many of the most stylish men aren't wearing new clothes. Vintage and secondhand fashion is having an explosive moment, and menswear content creators are particularly in love with high-quality vintage goods from years past when clothes were made to last. Not only do menswear brands have to compete with each other, but they also have to compete with the decades' worth of vintage clothing still on the market. Why buy the latest from Corso Mille when there are mountains of vintage Ralph Lauren available on eBay? On the Glossy Podcast this week, we spoke with Albert Muzquiz, the menswear writer and content creator better known as @edgyalbert, about exactly this phenomenon. Muzquiz said menswear enthusiasts tend to obsess about quality, and while there are brands making good clothes now, they're often the exception rather than the norm. "There are the lowest common denominator brands that are pushing everyone further down," Muzquiz said. "And then there are these American companies controlled by private equity that have no soul or substance. And when you touch good fabric, it's like night and day. You can tell the difference. But this is why the JFK Jr. trend happened. There were eras where basically any clothes from the department store were that good."
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    47 mins
  • Shein bought Everlane. What does it mean for sustainable fashion?

    Shein bought Everlane. What does it mean for sustainable fashion?
    May 22 2026
    Earlier this week, Glossy wrote about Everlane’s reported sale to Shein, a deal that will put one of the defining sustainability-adjacent DTC brands of the 2010s inside the world’s most scrutinized ultra-fast-fashion machine. The headline was a shock to many, as the two companies represent almost opposite ends of the modern fashion conversation. Everlane has built its identity around “radical transparency,” elevated basics and factory disclosure since its 2010 founding by Michael Preysman and Jesse Farmer. On the other hand, Shein, founded in 2008, has become known for rock-bottom prices, rapid production, and ongoing criticism from fair labor and sustainability advocates. It is also known for its $66 billion valuation in 2023, when it was reported that the company had started to chase an IPO. On this week’s Glossy Fashion Podcast, Jasmine Malik Chua, climate and labor editor at Sourcing Journal, joined the conversation to talk through what the deal says about brand values, investor pressure and the future of sustainability-led fashion. Chua has reported extensively on Shein and Temu, forced labor, textile waste, garment worker protections, sustainability regulation, and climate risk. Her first reaction to the Everlane news, she said, was visceral. “I think I just screamed inside for like two hours,” Chua said. The reported deal follows a difficult period for Everlane, which had been carrying significant debt and not been profitable for some time. But for Chua, the story points to a fundamental tension between slow-fashion values from brands like Everlane and the kind of fast-growth that venture-backed brands are expected to deliver. “Due diligence is a cost,” Chua said on the podcast. “Doing the right thing doesn’t come cheap.” As VCs demand more from the brands they invest in, consumers expect to pay less — in Everlane's case, that's because of competitors like Uniqlo and Quince, for example. Everlane was never purely a sustainability brand — Preysman often framed it around transparency, rather than sustainability. And the company built real credentials on both fronts, Chua said, with factory disclosure and a 52% reduction in absolute carbon emissions. The question now is whether those values will survive under Shein's ownership. Chua said Shein may be interested in Everlane because of its reputation, its supply chain and its position as “almost the antithesis” of what Shein represents. The numbers for Shein’s own impact are not pretty. According to Reuters, citing Shein’s own 2024 sustainability report, the company’s transport emissions rose 13.7% in 2024 to 8.52 million metric tons of CO2e, more than three times the transport emissions reported by Zara owner Inditex. According to NielsenIQ, Shein launched 315,000 new items in 2022, compared with 6,850 for Zara and 4,400 for H&M. And according to Italy’s competition authority, AGCM, Shein’s sustainability messaging has also faced regulatory challenge: In 2025, the watchdog fined the company €1 million ($1.17 million) for misleading and omissive environmental claims. Shein says it is investing in logistics changes, renewable electricity and supplier solar capacity, but those efforts sit against a model built on low prices, rapid product testing and constant newness. Everlane has disclosed supplier information, while Shein has faced criticism for not publicly listing even its first-tier suppliers. First-tier factories, Chua explained, are the cut-and-sew facilities that have direct relationships with brands, making disclosure there a baseline expectation. Shein has been trying to improve its image, including releasing sustainability reports, making sustainability executive hires and giving the Or Foundation three years of funding for its textile-waste work in Ghana, amounting to $15 million, announced in June 2022. Chua said Shein’s funding has been meaningful for the organization’s cleanup and research work, even as the company’s broader scale and rising emissions remain difficult to square with sustainability claims. But for Everlane, the risk is that the same brand equity Shein may be buying becomes harder to defend once the acquisition is complete. It would not be a stretch to say that the brand's ethos will disappear under its new ownership. “Is Everlane going to influence Shein to do more of what the sustainability movement wants it to do?” Chua said on the podcast. “Or is Shein going to work its own pressures on Everlane?”
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    32 mins
  • The AP x Swatch collab is not a wristwatch. Is the hype over?

    The AP x Swatch collab is not a wristwatch. Is the hype over?
    May 15 2026
    This week, the hype around the Swatch x Audemars Piguet "Royal Pop" watch built to a fever pitch. In the lead-up to the big reveal, watch collectors were already planning when they would start to line up at Swatch stores to secure the highly anticipated product. But then the watch was fully revealed: not a wristwatch, but a pocket watch meant to be worn on a lanyard, clipped to a bag or snapped into a desk stand. The hype shifted. Earlier this week, before the reveal, Robertino Altieri, founder and CEO of the watch marketplace WatchGuys, told Glossy that he suspected the hype would be subdued if the Royal Pop wasn't a classic wristwatch. After the reveal, Altieri joined the Glossy Podcast to talk about how the watch community is receiving the Royal Pop and what the collaboration says about the state of the watch industry. As we've previously covered on Glossy, the Royal Pop seems to be following in the path of the mega-popular Swatch x Omega Moonswatch from 2022. Despite concerns that the Moonswatch would dilute the value of Omega, sales of Omega's flagship Speedmaster watch increased by 50% based on the popularity of the Moonswatch. So will watch buyers take to the unorthodox new model? While diehard watch collectors may be scratching their head at the funky novelty of the Royal Pop, AP seems to be targeting a more casual consumer, someone who potentially has never owned an Audemars Piguet watch before, in a bid to expand its consumer base.
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    28 mins
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