Fashion’s year of transition continues. As a slew of creative directors – including new hires at Chanel, Versace, Bottega Veneta, Loewe and Jil Sander – prepare to make their runway debuts in Milan and Paris this September, the executive reshuffling continues behind the scenes. Communications experts have been moving from one marketing department to the next and there are now several newly installed chief marketing officers (CMOs) across the luxury sector, each tasked with restrategising, bringing fresh branding ideas and helping to reignite sales growth. 
 
“I want to create a media brand,” one CMO told The Monocle Minute during a recent visit to Milan. He isn’t alone. As fashion brands face a challenging macroeconomic landscape and consumer fatigue, many are calling on the power of storytelling through podcasts, films, books and newsletter platforms such as Substack.

This is not the right way forward. I believe in the power of a good story as much as any journalist – but it’s important to also consider who is telling the story. When you’re narrating your own journey, there’s an inherent bias, a lack of objectivity and often a tendency to gloss over critical details. So, as tempting as it is for brands to leverage their vast resources and maintain full control of the narrative, the key to achieving cultural relevance might actually lie in doing the opposite: refocusing on the core business of making clothes, taking more creative risks and allowing others to reach their own conclusions. 
 
We’ve seen all this before: in the early days of social media, many luxury houses decided to start acting like media brands. They pressed pause on many of the conversations that they were having with journalists and shifted their focus to livestreaming shows, Instagram campaigns and shoppable stories on their e-commerce websites. This all served to devalue much of journalism into mere content. Soon after, they realised that making “content” is an expensive, highly complex process and began slowing their media ambitions down. 
 
Now, rather than repeating the cycle, marketers would be better off thinking of new ways to bring designers’ work to life – be it unexpected runway formats, events to remember or out-of-home campaigns that make you stop and look twice. And for those with an inkling to share their worlds and tell more complex stories, why not collaborate with experts, be they filmmakers, writers or curators? Miu Miu is a great example: for its ongoing Women’s Tales film series, the brand commissions filmmakers, including Ava DuVernay, Joanna Hogg and, most recently, French filmmaker Alice Diop, to shoot short films with creative carte blanche. “It’s a unique commission – there’s no brief, it’s completely open to the filmmaker and what they want to do,” Hogg told The Monocle Minute during the debut of her film Autobiografia di una Borsetta earlier this year. 
 
While most luxury houses understand the value in hiring seasoned creative directors who have spent decades honing their craft, rather than up-and-comers or celebrity stylists, they should also recognise the value of the critic, the curator and the independent storyteller. Experience always pays off.      
 
Natalie Theodosi is Monocle’s fashion director. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.

Little is known about North Korea’s academic calendar or curriculum but yesterday was seemingly Take Your Child to Work Day (writes Jack Simpson). Kim Ju-ae, the daughter of the country’s supreme leader, Kim Jong-un, arrived in Beijing yesterday for China’s Victory Day parade on her first known foreign trip. While at times it must be hard being the most famous teenager in your country, it appeared that she enjoyed a real day out – even in a peripheral role. Ju-ae has seen her fair share of military parades: she knows the power of hundreds of legs moving in lockstep and a good photo op. But this event was singular in its stature.

Her father, who for the first time appeared publicly alongside both China’s president, Xi Jinping, and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, reportedly took Ju-ae with him as his heir apparent. It was a fitting day to do so. Beyond the overt show of patriotism, Xi’s intention was to display a unified axis of power, following a week in which he warmly received Indian prime minister Narendra Modi and referred to Putin as an “old friend”. Yesterday’s work-experience trip placed Ju-ae in that global setting and it’s valuable experience for a dictator in training. As with all children of autocrats, military pageantry and lethal technology are more than just hobbies – they are lifelines that prop up nations, win allies and scare enemies. In this regard, yesterday’s spectacle was an important lesson in political performance – intercontinental ballistic missiles, 60-foot underwater nuclear submarines and robotic wolves included.

With the turn of the seasons comes a flurry of art events and, this year, there’s a new addition to the calendar in the form of RendezVous – Brussels Art Week (writes Sophie Monaghan-Coombs). Soft-launched in 2024, it replaces the long-running Brussels Gallery Weekend and opens today. The programme includes exhibitions from artists such as Frenchman Adrien Vescovi and Congolese painter Vitshois Mwilambwe Bondo, as well as talks, club nights and a monumental bouncy-castle installation. “The city is chaotic and cosmopolitan,” Brussels Art Week co-founder Laure Decock tells The Monocle Minute. “There are lots of collectors but it’s still affordable for artists to have a studio here.”

Inspired by the city’s bar culture, an immersive installation-bar by artist Zoe Williams, “The Tip Inn”, will act as the fair’s central meeting point. It will serve as a salon de rendezvous for artists, gallerists and the public to sip cocktails and see performances in a space that’s part temporary venue and part art installation. “Even in Belgium, Brussels has a reputation for being a little wild and we wanted to tap into that,” says Decock. “It’s messy, it’s a bit old school and there’s a faded glamour.”

There has been an uptick in St George’s flags festooned on buildings and spray-painted over road signs in England. But why, despite right-wing associations, is Labour endorsing the practice?