Coach & Kors’ Marriage of Convenience

Coach, for instance, is well-managed, but it hasn’t “spread as a lifestyle brand,”

Tapestry and Capri companies don’t have the infrastructure to pull off that vaunted upmarket leap. They are, after all, basically holding companies that deal in fashion products

Tapestry will likely boost margins by moving more of the Capri businesses to the direct-to-consumer channel. (About 90 percent of Tapestry’s sales are D.T.C., a big number for any brand.)

For Tapestry, the most important customer has been the investor, and in that way, it’s not a bad business

Arnault has never acquired a business with back-office synergies on his mind

Capri C.E.O. John Idol , who has achieved some of the most impressive financial exits in fashion history. After a few formative years as group president of Ralph Lauren, Idol took over as C.E.O. of Donna Karan, which he helped sell to LVMH for $243 million in 2001. A year later, along with investors Lawrence Stroll and Silas Chou , who already owne... See more

This started with the Seventh Avenue, shop-and-copy approach that has defined the industry, but no longer works with consumers on a global scale. America created the concept of lifestyle brands—it drove the rise of casualization as early as the 1950s, first through denim, then khakis, and now leggings. But the fashion itself has long been predicate... See more

the merger of these two companies speaks to the predicament of American fashion, which is not focused on managing brands so much as it is about managing businesses