Fashion month may be over, but the calendar is still filled with industry events. Last week in Munich, luxury retailer Mytheresa held a beautiful dinner in honour of God’s True Cashmere, the brand co-founded by Brad Pitt and Sat Hari.
That not only gave 10 DE the opportunity to visit Mytheresa’s only physical store in the heart of Bavaria to view the new God’s True Cashmere collection, but also to speak to Menswear Buying Director Sophie Jordan about the brand, her Paris Fashion Week impressions and what the current menswear luxury landscape looks like.
What did your journey into your current position look like?
My buying career started over 15 years ago. I initially worked at a retailer called Matches Fashion, when it was fast-growing and family-run. That has taught me the entrepreneurial spirit we ought to have at Mytheresa, whose womenswear team I joined 10 years ago. I transitioned into menswear 3 years ago as their Buying Director. Joining the menswear team meant learning a new customer and a new approach to building collections and categories, since menswear and womenswear differ not only in terms of how brands operate and structure their collections, but also in what the customer is looking for.
How do shopping habits differ between menswear and womenswear?
The two biggest differences I see are that in menswear, the customers shop based on needs and function, whereas in womenswear, the shopping habits tend to be more driven by trends and emotions. Trends change at a much faster pace than in the menswear market.
Secondly, men are more committed to brands. That means when introducing new brands, it can take a bit longer for them to accept them. But once you manage to build that trust, they become very loyal. It’s quite a rewarding process.
What changes do you currently see in the menswear luxury market?
I see menswear evolving on various levels.
Large brands and groups noticed how under-potentialised this element of their businesses were and began to see the untapped opportunity within the market and its customers. So they now put more emphasis into product development, merchandising, runway shows and general visibility.
On the customer side, there’s a shift in men’s shopping habits. Men tend to value versatility and wearability. When building their wardrobes, they have a 7-days-a-week mentality, rather than separating between work and weekend wear. That places more value on the individual items they purchase, as they have to adapt to a variety of different scenarios in their lifestyle. It also creates stronger opportunity and emphasis on occasionwear. I see customers starting to invest more in special items and being open to taking risks when shopping for special events.
Do you have a takeaway from the recent Paris Fashion Week?
I think we finally moved away from quiet luxury. Now that this is off the agenda, we see a lot more creativity and expression from designers. I saw more variety and different points of view coming through this season. However, especially within menswear, I’m missing consideration about how these pieces translate into everyday life, and how clients would actually want to wear it.
From a commercial standpoint, was there a collection or a designer that really spoke to you?
Commercially, these times are quite uncertain. There’s a lot of uneasiness when it comes to brands and customer relations, with all the creative director changes over the past seasons. But one that’s been a standout for me is Haider Ackermann at Tom Ford. Their SS27 show is probably one of the most talked about shows, with such a strong identity. He’s a fantastic example of a designer joining a brand and really understanding and respecting the existing customer and the established business. But he also manages to progress and to bring his own identity into the collection, for example in his approach to updating their silhouettes. Small nuances that very much make it his own, but still respect the past.
What I also love about it commercially, is that I can buy full looks from the runway. I know that they’ll resonate with the customer and sell well. I love being able to fully represent a show like that. Besides that, the pre-collections are the biggest part of our buy, and Tom Ford has always had a strong merchandising foundation to the collections. Unlike other newly appointed creative directors, Ackermann didn’t suddenly move away from the bestsellers or key categories that were there. The foundations of the collections still remain strong and even improved under him. That’s not necessarily the case for other new designers who join big brands.
Are pre-collections actually more important to you than the main collections?
We do always represent the main collections, but the weighting of our buy will be at least 70% pre-collection, sometimes up to 90%. So my commercial head always goes into pre-collections. I have to cover everything we need for the season from them, and the runway is just the icing on the cake, which can be a bit more playful. I’m less reliant on it to reach a certain number or to drive the business forward.
How do you navigate a creative director joining a house and changing the existing style in a way that might not adapt to the existing customer?
That’s a challenging one. It’s obviously exciting to see how a new designer is going to develop the collections and the maison, and the potential to reach a new customer that comes with that. But it ultimately comes down to how the brand and its executives are handling the transition and how much they want to retain the existing customer. Especially when a strong business already has an established customer, finding that balance is the most important thing. If brands don’t succeed in that, it can confuse both the existing customer, as well as the new one they try to capture, and worst case they don’t speak to either.
So, it’s something we observe quite closely. As buyers, we have to respect that it takes time, and we’re on the journey with the designer. We’re there to help them and guide them and their teams with our feedback. We let them know what we see working and who our customer is, and we understand that our customer might be different to the next retailer’s customer and it’s hard to please everyone. There can be risks and frustrations, but that’s the nature of the business, and we just roll with it.
Do you have any trend predictions for the upcoming season?
Menswear trends tend to be challenging. Men’s trends are more item-driven, and it’s a slow evolution rather than a radical change from season to season. So there’s not necessarily a whole new mood or aesthetic that I feel coming through. Preppy has been around for a while, and I think after the Gucci show, it’s not going anywhere. A lot of key items in that show stood out to me, like their denim shirts, trench coats, or leather blousons. I would say the trenchcoat is definitely coming in big for us. The silhouette is ushering into something longer, more fluid. There are some key items that evolve the men’s silhouette season to season, and it’s those small nuances rather than big trends that I notice.
Colour-wise, it’s a season of navy. We’re moving away from an era of a lot of browns, and it’s not quite back to black yet. So that is very much our key focus. I noticed lots of stripes, and nautical elements coming through as well.
I also noticed that brands are back to focusing on sneaker development.. We haven’t seen much of that during the last two or three seasons, but now we’re seeing some new styles. They’re still quite low-profile, with a slight emphasis on performance and functionality, for example by adding Vibram soles. The colour palettes are quite neutral, we definitely left behind the trend of bright sneakers being a fashion statement. They’re simple, wardrobe-building, but functional.
And I’ve noticed some surf influences as well, like the vests and little long sleeves seen at Miu Miu. I feel like that is an emerging trend we might see more of next season.
Do you ever have an internal conflict of really liking a designer and wanting to support them, but simultaneously you don’t think it will sell well?
Yes! Totally. It’s the biggest thing. Sometimes I see something, a new brand, I fall in love with them, I predict a bright future, and I just want to support them, so that I can go on that journey with them, help guide them and give them feedback. I have a nurturing side with younger brands. But most of the time I have to put my personal preferences aside. I have my own taste and my buyers’ taste, and they both come through, but at the end of the day, it’s always about the customer. Will he like it, will he buy it? I could buy something that I absolutely love, but ultimately I have a sales target to meet, so if it doesn’t sell, something else has to overperform: that’s quite a risk to take.
I read in a recent Financial Times article that menswear currently only accounts to 10% of Mytheresa’s revenue. What are the reasons for that, and where do you see chances for it to grow?
In the grand scheme of things, we’re still a young business. Mytheresa started with womenswear only, they opened their Munich store in 1987. The website launched in 2006, still offering only womenswear, and we expanded to menswear in 2020. It’s important to us to stay carefully curated, with a limited, highly edited luxury brand count. So we have to fuel our growth with the existing partners that we have, and find incremental opportunities within each brand we stock.
That means analysing our buys, finding different opportunities in products, in price points, optimising delivery phasing. Seasonality is incredibly important when creating our product catalogue, meaning the assortment needs to fit the current need of the buyer so he can buy now, wear now. This is also quite specific to lifestyle functionalities. Things like vacation wear, or performance wear are actually overperforming in our growth at the moment. So analysing and tapping into his lifestyle moments is a key part of our strategy for growth.
Another important part are exclusives. We create additional products exclusively available on Mytheresa in order to creatively fill gaps in our assortment.
In the end, it all comes down to just strengthening the offer for the customer, listening to our top customers, and nurturing our relationships with them.
Let’s talk a bit about God’s True Cashmere. When did your collaboration with them start, and what drew you to the brand initially?
SS24 was our first season, and honestly, it was quite a modest investment that has now become an extremely important part of our business. When we first discovered God’s True Cashmere, they were a single-category brand. So all they offered were checked cashmere shirts, which still remain the foundation of their collections. Their quality and fabrics are outstanding, and I think it’s very smart to take a wardrobe staple that most guys look good in, and elevate it. It’s a simple texture at the end of the day, but they’ve refined it in every single way to be the best in the market. The colour combinations, the fabrication, the thought process behind it. You don’t often see this kind of attention and authenticity you see in the details of every single item anymore. But even when I removed all of that information, at the end of the day, was it an amazing product that the customer was going to buy at that price point? Absolutely.
Many brands offer high-quality basics in the luxury market. Apart from the quality, how do you explain their success?
Sat Hari has been very smart in how she’s slowly broadened the offer of the collection and introduced just one or two new categories each season. She’s done that in a considered way that speaks to the existing customer. If they already have two or three shirts, what else might they want? How do they want to wear these shirts? What could complete the look? She carefully evaluated what makes sense for her customer base, in which moments they could use another God’s True Cashmere piece, and adapted the product range accordingly.
When you buy a brand for Mytheresa, what are you specifically looking for in the brand?
It’s really important for a brand to have a strong point of view, to know what they’re creating, why, and who it’s for. They need to make sure their product has a genuine point of difference to other brands. I think that will cut through a lot of the noise.
After that, it really comes down to understanding their customer. Evolution and development go hand in hand, so they need to understand what’s happening in the market and what the customer is looking for each season, but simultaneously not take it too seriously, so they stay true to themselves.
The fundamentals are pricepoint, quality, purpose, look and feel. Will someone want to wear that piece, will it trigger that emotional reaction, and that desire and need, especially when someone is shopping online? We need to be able to build that connection through an image.
Text LENA LAUER
Photography MYTHERESA
