How to fix a crisis as an independent designer
For the first in our new series, Shit Happens, Elza Wandler of Wandler remembers the time a production issue nearly collapsed her entire business, and the team effort that eventually saved her.
We’re constantly being fed everyone’s successes online, but it’s not often we hear about the time something went terribly, terribly wrong. Given how much more we can all stand to learn from these moments, we wanted to launch a series where designers share just that. But first, the news.
Teen Vogue is about to lose its URL and be subsumed into its mother page, Vogue.com. In the company’s own words, this is “a transition that’s part of a broader push to expand the Vogue ecosystem. The title will remain a distinct editorial property, with its own identity and mission; sitting under the Vogue umbrella will provide a more unified reader experience across titles.” The decision, naturally, brings with it a good old-fashioned restructure, which, when you hear who’s affected, feels even more depressing than usual. According to a statement from the union representing the six affected staff members, most “are BIPOC women or trans.” The magazine now has no writers or editors explicitly covering politics, and leaves one woman of colour on the editorial desk.
Vogue Business has already been collapsed into Vogue.com as of last week. This news hasn’t seemed to elicit the same backlash. Probably because there hasn’t been mention of any staff redundancies.
Concurrently, we can’t remember the last time this many people mobilised to drag a magazine cover as Timothée Chalamet for American Vogue by Annie Leibowitz. His shaved head, terrible styling, and cringey cover line were all widely derided, but nothing angered people more than the strange way he was photoshopped into space. As one photographer put it, “It’s giving new Dr Who reveal”. This was reportedly Anna’s last issue as EiC. Out with a stratospheric bang, we suppose? With that in mind, it’ll be interesting to see if Chloe Malle brings about a new creative direction with the January 2026 issue.
Speaking of Vogue, and on a more cheerful note, we enjoyed seeing 1 Granary alum Mahoro Seward appear in a video with Millie Bobby Brown to accompany her British Vogue cover.
In other fashion news, Olivier Rousteing is stepping down after 14 years at Balmain. With no new appointment for Rousteing or successor announced, we have to wonder if this decision was less amicable than it’s being presented. Vanessa Friedman posited that this might mark the end of Kardashian maximalism in fashion.
Dover Street Market – more specifically Rei Kawakubo, Adrian Joffe, and Dickon Bowden, the store’s Vice President – will be crowned winners of the Isabella Blow Award for Fashion Creator at this year’s Fashion Awards. Given the impact they’ve had on emerging designers since launching 20 years ago, we couldn’t agree more.
And, finally, on the anniversary of David Renne’s tragically early death in 2023 (just a short time after becoming Moschino’s creative director) Polimoda, the Florence fashion school, has launched a scholarship in his memory. The David Renne Scholarship will support students enrolled on the fashion design undergraduate program by covering their fees in their second, third and fourth years.
As told to Jorinde Croese
I’ve actually never spoken about this story before, but I’m very willing to talk about the parts of running a brand that aren’t as pretty. When you look from the outside, people say, “Oh my god, Wandler is doing so well!’ But behind the scenes, for young brands, there’s a constant feeling that you’re on top of a cliff: you’re enjoying the view, but you might fall. Sometimes things go wrong that are your own fault, but sometimes it’s also something you could never, ever imagine happening. This was one of those situations.
We had a problem with the hooks on our bags, especially on our bestseller, the Hortensia. We delivered a collection, and one of our biggest US clients, with whom we’d been doing business for three years without any production problems, called us and said, “Two customers bought a bag, and the bag fell on the ground because the hook let go.” And we were like, what? That’s nearly impossible. So we said, “OK, let’s figure it out.” And then, in the same week, another client called, saying, “Hey, something went wrong,” and they had the same issue.