"Weekend Reading" is a weekly rundown of our favorite stories from around the web.
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How Christopher Bailey Transformed Burberry and Redefined Brand Revivals in the 21st Century
"Christopher Bailey hasn’t left Burberry yet. That will happen, as we now know, in December next year, a move on from the company he has spectacularly transformed into a powerhouse over the first 17 years of the 21st century. Still only 46 years old, he’s acted as a game-changing pioneer in the time of the globalization of fashion, a revolutionary titan of industry who leapt to the forefront by harnessing every technical innovation that has hit the world in the digital age. Under his watch, a company formerly known as little more than an unexciting British producer of raincoats and checked scarves has exploded into the vast empire it is today."

via: Vogue

Why Haven’t Chinese Designers Taken Over the World Yet?
"Rain pours down outside a nondescript shopping mall in Shanghai. Passersby clutch umbrellas or hail cabs to escape the downpour. A roll call of Chinese fashion brands on LED billboards signal that this is one of the official locations for Shanghai Fashion Week, but there are no photographers, hangers-on or event staff crowded outside, just a couple of guys in BAPE hoodies staring into their smartphones as they shelter from the rain. A Gucci billboard the size of a football pitch looms over them."

via: Highsnobiety

I Think About This a Lot: When a 60-Something Feminist Artist Dragged Overgrown Skaters
"The story involves the cult skatewear line Supreme, in the years before it was fashion-relevant, back when it was just an expensive hobby for rich teens and cool dads. Important historical context: Before Supreme partnered with Louis Vuitton, it ripped them off. In 2000, Louis Vuitton sent Supreme a cease-and-desist letter when their trademark showed up on skateboards. So did other entities whose logos Supreme used on hoodies and jackets, such as the NHL and the NCAA."

via: The Cut

I Think About This a Lot: When a 60-Something Feminist Artist Dragged Overgrown Skaters
"Buying limited-edition shoes is complicated and not as fun as it should be. The rise of violence in sneaker culture (people have been murdered for a pair of Air Jordans) led companies like Nike to launch hyped products almost exclusively on digital channels. But selling sneakers on a website, or doing raffles on Twitter, came with challenges of its own. That's because resellers started using bots, automated computer scripts, to buy or reserve pairs faster than a human could. If you couldn't enter an address and credit-card number in a matter of seconds, whatever you were hoping to get was going to be sold out."

via: EndGadget

Artificial Intelligence Is on the Rise in Southeast Asia, Helping Everyone from Fashion Designers to Rice Growers
"Lingga Madu dreams that one day his company will design and sell fashionable clothes at a price everyone can afford. Born of past experience, it is a business vision very much focused on embracing the future. Having grown up in Jogja–where the average daily wage of US$3 means it ranks as one of Indonesia’s poorest cities–the 32-year-old software engineer recalled how the latest fashions were beyond the reach of most people."

via: South China Morning Post

Originally a Dud, One of Nike’s Bestselling Shoes Only Exists Thanks to a Disobedient Employee
"The Nike Huarache almost never existed. The shoe, made of a sock-like bootie encased in a supportive exoskeleton, was definitely unusual when Nike began showing around the prototypes in the early 1990s. Practically nobody placed orders, and Nike seemed to have little choice but to kill the idea. Lucky for Nike, one product manager didn’t listen."

via: Quartz

How Dickies' Workwear Went From Old Reliable to High Fashion
"Dickies’s chief archivist Ann Richardson, who started working in Williamson-Dickie Manufacturing Co.’s merchandising department in 1970, remembers when Dickies’s primary focus was to make tough workwear that was designed not to draw attention to itself, while managing to embody American durability."

via: Bloomberg

Clothes Made from a Data-Storing Fabric Will Remember Pass Codes for You
"Fabrics that conduct electricity have been a fertile area of exploration for researchers. They’ve come up with textiles that can keep you warm with just the turn of a dial, or that power your phone with your normal movements. A team from the University of Washington has now developed fabric that can store data without any electronics or batteries. “You can think of the fabric as a hard disk—you’re actually doing this data storage on the clothes you’re wearing,” Shyam Gollakota, one of the researchers on the team, told UW News."

via: Quartz

The Costume Institute Takes On Catholicism
"The Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is stepping into the religious fray. The title of the department’s blockbuster 2018 fashion exhibition will be “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination.” Stretching across three galleries — the Anna Wintour Costume Center, the medieval rooms in the Met on Fifth Avenue and the Cloisters — and approximately 58,600 square feet, it will feature 50 or so ecclesiastical garments and accessories on loan from the Vatican, multiple works from the Met’s own collection of religious art and 150 designer garments that have been inspired by Catholic iconography or style."

via: The New York Times

The New Marker of Luxury Is Feel-Good Storytelling
"How does a cashmere brand stand out in the age of $80 cashmere sweaters? Quality itself isn’t enough these days. The cashmere from the young label Naadam may be nicer than what you’ll find for lower prices at Uniqlo or J.Crew, but identifying good cashmere is hard, unless you really know what to look for. And the brand’s crewnecks aren’t so distinctive that their design makes them stand out from the crowd."

via: Quartzy

Tags: weekend-reading