Miuccia Prada, Marc Jacobs, Sarah Burton and Satoshi Kondo Are 2026’s BoF 500 Cover Stars

Dear BoF Community,

It’s a critical moment for the fashion sector.

A turnaround has been slow to materialise, as the industry puts its faith in an unprecedented number of designer revamps at many of fashion’s biggest names.

In recent years, soaring prices without corresponding creative innovation have put tremendous pressure on fashion’s value proposition, as shoppers wonder if top brands are still worth it.

But creativity is not something managers can simply turn on like a light switch. Creative directors need sufficient time and resources. They also need clear steering from chief executives and teams that know how to translate their visions into commercial products — not to mention the best factories, strong retail networks and so on.

And yet, designers, not CEOs, are the stars around which the industry revolves because the creative quotient they supply — the alchemy that turns clothes into things of desire — is ultimately the most important part of the fashion equation.

This year’s BoF 500 cover stars — Miuccia Prada, Marc Jacobs, Sarah Burton and Satoshi Kondo — offer a window into the creative quotient that’s so critical to success at this pivotal moment for fashion. They’re also navigating pivotal moments of their own as they contend with creative challenges, new business partners, succession and more.

• Miuccia Prada, the doyenne of Italian fashion and figurehead of its most important group, is contending with succession and legacy, as well as more immediate matters like absorbing newly acquired Versace. Mrs Prada sat down with editor-at-large Tim Blanks in Milan to discuss the future of Prada Group and what she’ll leave behind. Out Oct 6.
• Marc Jacobs, pop culture icon and the most important American designer of his generation who transformed LVMH’s Louis Vuitton from dusty luggage house to global fashion icon, is opening a new chapter for his namesake label under new owners WHP and G-III. Jacobs met with Eric Wilson in New York to discuss life after LVMH and whether he can work with his new partners without losing his soul. Out Oct 7.
• Sarah Burton, catapulted into the fashion spotlight after the death of Lee Alexander McQueen, is facing one of fashion’s highest-profile — and trickiest — briefs: reimagining the house founded by Hubert de Givenchy. Two years into her tenure, Burton speaks to Robert Williams in Paris about rebuilding Givenchy from the ground up and establishing her own creative voice outside the brand that shaped her. Out Oct 8.
• Satoshi Kondo, handpicked by the late Issey Miyake two years before his death, is piloting a creative and commercial renaissance at one of Japan’s most storied fashion labels, decades after its heyday. Kondo sat down with Angelo Flaccavento to discuss stepping into the shoes of a master and the label’s comeback amid growing global interest in Japanese fashion, creativity and craft. Out Oct. 9.

We hope you enjoy reading our BoF 500 cover stories as much as we enjoyed steering them. Stay tuned later this week for The BoF 500 Class of 2026, our latest additions to BoF’s definitive index of the people shaping the global fashion industry, to be unveiled Oct 2, as well as coverage of The BoF 500 Gala, live from Paris fashion week, Oct 3.

— Imran Amed, Founder and Editor in Chief and Vikram Alexei Kansara, Editorial Director

To get the first look at The BoF 500 Class of 2026 and this year’s cover stories, sign up to the BoF Daily Digest Newsletter.