Back Row with Amy Odell

PJ Smith, director of fashion policy for Humane World for Animals (formerly the Humane Society), has spent almost 20 years getting companies from Gucci to Net-a-Porter to go fur-free.

Now that most top fashion brands have sworn off fur, is wool the next big target for animal welfare activists? PJ talks about why, thanks to LVMH, the fur fight isn't quite over, how he got brands to change their mind about fur, and what's next.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Introduction

02:30 Why fur-free NYFW is historic

08:00 How Humane World actually changes brands' minds

18:30 Fur farming down 85% — the numbers

22:30 PETA vs. H&M: the wool protests

25:30 Is wool humane? Mulesing explained

46:30 Exotic skins: the next target

52:00 PJ's biggest lesson after 20 years

Subscribe to the Back Row newsletter: https://www.backrow.net/subscribe

Follow Back Row: @backrow · Follow Amy: @instamyodell

Edited by Chrissi Harris.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Superfakes have never been better and counterfeiters have never been smarter — so how can consumers buy secondhand luxury with confidence?

Sarah Davis started Fashionphile on eBay in 1999, while she was in law school. Resale has exploded since: Her company now employs more than 350 people and authenticates roughly 1,500 luxury bags a day. Sarah reveals how she turned luxury authentication into an almost CIA-like operation, what gives away a fake Birkin bag, and how a $35,000 machine can tell if a Cartier Love bracelet is real or not.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Introduction

02:00 Law school, eBay, and the Fashionphile origin story

15:00 A real Chanel, a fake one — can you tell?

21:00 Fake bags bought at real stores

23:30 "Your dupe isn't cute"

26:30 The $75 fee that killed the counterfeits

29:30 The $35,000 machine that catches fake Birkins

44:30 Where resale goes next

Subscribe to the Back Row newsletter: https://www.backrow.net/subscribe

Follow Back Row: @backrow · Follow Amy: @instamyodell · Follow Sarah: @justsarahdavis · Shop Fashionphile: @fashionphile

Edited by Chrissi Harris.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

*SUBSCRIBE to the Back Row newsletter for more coverage like this: https://www.backrow.net/subscribe. Go Premium and save three months on an annual subscription.*

Trend forecaster Sean Monahan coined the "vibe shift" five years ago to describe the unease millennials felt coming out of the pandemic. Of all the terms Monahan has coined — from "normcore" to the "boom boom aesthetic" — the vibe shift may have been the stickiest. He and Amy revisited his predictions from five years ago and discuss what he got right and wrong.

Monahan offers predictions on whether smart glasses will take; where rage bait is heading; the future of "flexing"; where the Met Gala goes from here; and what luxury fashion has to do to recover.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Introduction

03:00 The boom boom aesthetic and the '80s that weren't

06:00 Why crypto killed streetwear

08:30 Normcore, and the anxiety behind it

19:00 Did tackiness give way to taste?

24:00 Smart glasses, glassholes and surveillance

38:00 Rage bait and the clipping economy

47:30 'The Devil Wears Prada 2' and Jeff Bezos

1:04:30 How does luxury fashion recover?

📩SUBSCRIBE to the Back Row Newsletter: https://www.backrow.net/subscribe

Back Row on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@amy_odell

📷 Follow Back Row on Instagram: @backrow
📷 Follow Amy on Instagram: @instamyodell

Follow Sean Monahan
📷 Follow Sean on Instagram: @8ghtb4ll
📩 Read 8Ball: https://www.8ball.report/
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Amy Chozick has spent her career writing about polarizing women — she covered Hillary Clinton for The New York Times, profiled Elizabeth Holmes right before prison, followed Stormy Daniels for Vogue, and wrote the widely dissected profile of Lauren Sánchez Bezos.

Her new novel, With Friends Like You (https://amzn.to/4yjRlvI), follows Emily, a broke new mom in Manhattan, who goes looking for the college friend who vanished — and finds her working as a high-end escort to billionaires.

To write the book, she researched the world of the ultra-rich obsessively. She also reveals what surprised her about Lauren Sánchez Bezos, discusses the detail everyone rehashed from that profile, and more.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Introduction

02:00 A new mother, a missing friend, and a billionaire's escort

4:00 Billionaires' Row and the empty towers

13:00 Covering Hillary Clinton, and what power does to people

17:00 Profiling Lauren Sánchez Bezos

23:00 "They stopped apologizing" — the new rich

30:00 Hillary's suits, Lauren's taped-up Vogue pages

41:00 Is fashion getting tackier?

Subscribe to the Back Row newsletter: https://www.backrow.net/subscribe

Buy With Friends Like You: A Novel: https://amzn.to/4yjRlvI

Follow Back Row: @backrow

Follow Amy: @instamyodell

Follow Amy Chozick: @amychozick

Edited by Chrissi Harris.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is a teaser of a paywalled episode. To listen in full, become a paid subscriber of Back Row at: https://www.backrow.net/subscribe. Or sign up in Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

In a stunning move, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has cancelled "John Galliano: Horizons," the Costume Institute retrospective planned for May 2027.

Galliano's biographer and fashion journalist Dana Thomas joined Amy hours after the Met made the announcement. They discuss what this means for fashion, for John Galliano, and for the Met Gala's planner and previously all-powerful architect, Anna Wintour.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Introduction

00:30 Why Dana wasn't surprised

01:30 When you lose the politicians and the donors

03:00 "Not an aberration" — Dana's New York Times op-ed

05:00 The incidents that never got reported

06:00 The 2019 spa incident

07:30 What the comment sections revealed

11:30 Philippe Virgitti, still waiting for an apology

Subscribe to the Back Row newsletter: https://www.backrow.net/subscribe

Buy Gods and Kings: The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano: https://amzn.to/4cSeZHw

Edited by Chrissi Harris.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices