The Loom

Cost-of-living protests across France on October 17-18 ended in riots and looting, with about 3,000 businesses damaged, according to the government. Fashion stores were among the hardest hit, especially those stocking brands that sell well on resale, FashionUnited reports; the Alliance du Commerce estimates fashion shops' Saturday sales fell 14% on average, more in Lyon, Grenoble and Nantes. The government approved aid including partial unemployment, deferred social charges and interest-free loans.

On October 19 digital minister Anne Le Henanff summoned Vinted, Amazon, eBay, Leboncoin, Meta and TikTok and told platforms to remove listings for items stolen in the unrest, AFP reports. Vinted said it has "zero tolerance" and has stepped up monitoring; eBay said it could not confirm an increase in such listings.

Al Jazeera reports on AI tools that can generate or reproduce traditional Indian textile designs, from a system built by Shillong professor Bitupan Deka to create new gamusa motifs, to the Rekh Sanganeri dataset of hand-block prints and Tata Consultancy Services' Bridgital Loom, which turns designs into loom instructions and is being piloted in Kanchipuram.

Artisans quoted are split: Bagru block-printer Dinesh Chhipa says he doesn't fault digital tools but asks that they stop borrowing regional names like Bagru and Jaipuri; Kanchipuram weaver Ananthalakshmi Vadivel says machine imitations "can never replace the original." The piece notes that India floated a "blanket licence" for AI training in December 2025, but that intellectual property law assumes a traceable author, while a motif is communal property.

Kering's third-quarter revenue fell 1% on a comparable basis to €3.34 billion, below forecasts, with Gucci down 6% to €1.29 billion after a 2% drop in the second quarter, Vogue Business reports. Asia-Pacific excluding Japan fell 8% while North America grew 1%. CEO Luca de Meo called Gucci's recovery "our defining priority"; Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta and Brioni grew.

Hermès reported a 5.5% rise to about €4.1 billion, slightly below analyst expectations but with its full-year outlook confirmed, FashionUnited reports. The Americas rose 10.7% and Europe excluding France 8.6%, while Greater China dipped in the quarter; finance chief Eric du Halgouët cited a still-declining property market, low confidence and new tax rules for Chinese taxpayers.

China's second-hand luxury market grew 15-20% in 2025 while the mainland's personal luxury market shrank another 3-5% after plunging as much as 19% in 2024, according to Bain & Company figures cited by AFP (via FashionUnited). Insight & Info Consulting estimates second-hand sales reached 38.4 billion yuan ($5.7 billion) in 2025 and could top 100 billion yuan by 2030.

Louis Vuitton has closed five stores in mainland China in two years, and Galeries Lafayette shut its Beijing flagship in May. At Shanghai's two-storey Super Zhuanzhuan store, shoppers wear black gloves to handle the goods. "People used to compare who had spent more," a 24-year-old dance teacher told AFP. "But now everyone compares who got a better deal and spent less."

The World of Anna Sui opened at Cranbrook Art Museum in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, on October 21 and runs through February 28, 2027, Michigan Public reports. The show, which originated at London's Fashion and Textile Museum and was adapted by Cranbrook chief curator Laura Mott, covers more than four decades and over 100 looks, from mod and grunge to cowgirl and Pre-Raphaelite styles.

The Detroit-born designer, who calls her suburban upbringing "purely a product of pop culture," said she still has many roots in the city; she has endowed a scholarship at the College for Creative Studies and plans Detroit pop-ups, including one at Third Man Records. Mott says music, "from punk and grunge to mod and psychedelic rock," drives Sui's work.

LVMH opened the workshops, production sites, cellars and archives of 45 of its houses to the public free of charge from October 16 to 18, the first Journées Particulières since 2022, Oui Speak Fashion reports. The sixth edition covered 71 venues in 13 countries, 26 of them opening for the first time, under the theme "Aux Racines du Rêve." Shanghai opened the event with the country's first collective edition at Maison LVMH in the Zhangyuan district.

In Tokyo, Rimowa showed its Re-Crafted repair and refurbishment programme as a pop-up for the first time, and in Paris 69 artisans were named new LVMH Virtuosos. Antoine Arnault said the event avoided VR and AI staging to show artisans as they are and was not a customer promotion.

Textile Exchange named Theory, owned by Fast Retailing, among winners of its 2026 Climate and Nature Impact Awards at its annual conference in Vancouver, FashionUnited reports. Theory shared the Collaboration for Global Impact Award with Australia's Congi Farm, Sea Forest and Italian mill Botto Giuseppe for a pilot that fed the seaweed-based supplement SeaFeed to 2,000 Merino sheep for 120 days.

The pilot cut enteric methane by 43%, avoiding about 54.5 tonnes of CO2e, and the wool went into Theory's spring 2026 Regal Wool collection. Theory's Gonzalo Pertile said the lessons on "measurement, traceability, cost, and scalability" mattered as much as the results. Other winners included Green Worms founder Jabir Karat, Amiha Agro's Amitabh Singh for regenerative cotton and the Circulose recycling ecosystem.

Americans on GLP-1 drugs such as Ozempic and Mounjaro are altering the clothes they have instead of buying new ones, Reuters reports (via Vijesti and The Independent). Cobblers Direct, which has 25 stores in Texas, says it now shortens up to 500 belts a week; Manhattan's Jim's Cobbler Concierge calls the trend "belt-zempic." Rising out-of-pocket drug costs, a Trimi survey finding about 80% of users wear clothes that no longer fit, and University of Cambridge research showing patients regain an average of 60% of lost weight within a year of stopping make many reluctant to buy a new wardrobe.

In Europe, FashionUnited reports brands from Salomon to Next and Primark launched repair programmes in the first half of 2026. The Fédération de la Mode Circulaire and KPMG value the region's clothing and footwear repair market at about €2.8 billion in 2025, projected to reach €3.7 billion by 2030, though repair is labour-intensive and many low-quality garments aren't worth fixing.

Ladakh presented "The Fifth Season: A Fashion Story from Ladakh" at Lakmé Fashion Week x FDCI 2026 in New Delhi on October 18, with four local designers showing Pashmina, indigenous textiles and traditional craft, the Hindustan Times reports. The show centred on the Changpa pastoralists of the high-altitude Changthang plateau, who raise Changra goats, and the artisans, many of them women, who turn the fibre into textiles.

Lieutenant Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena said in a virtual address that growing recognition must benefit herders, weavers, craftspeople and women's self-help groups while preserving the authenticity of Ladakh's traditions.

An Ipsos survey commissioned by Woolmark across the US, France, Germany, Italy and China found that, on average, 82% of consumers prefer natural fibres over synthetics when price, style and fit are equal, and 65% prefer Merino to polyester, FashionUnited reports. Sixty-seven percent said they would pay more for clothes made mainly from natural fibres, and 71% said independent verification of fibre content matters.

The survey coincided with Woolmark's "Natural Intelligence" report, which includes four years of research with North Carolina State University on how Merino base layers keep a steadier next-to-skin microclimate during stop-start activity.