Must Read: Prada Sees Continued Success in E-commerce, the Mood-Boosting Benefits of Wearing Certain Colors

Plus, African designers are finding global success by tapping into their cultural roots.

These are the stories making headlines in fashion on Thursday.

Prada reports earnings for 2021 so far
On Thursday, Prada reported its earnings for the first half of 2021, through June 30. The company saw growth in retail, which was up 60% from the same time period in 2020. E-commerce was an especially successful avenue, growing by a triple-digit percentage for the fifth quarter in a row. Total net revenues were up 60% from the first half of the year in 2020. {Fashionista inbox}

The mood-boosting benefits of wearing certain colors
Alison S. Cohn delves into the color trends from the Fall 2021 runways for Harper's Bazaar, specifically focusing on the potential mood-lifting benefits of wearing rosy pink, bright coral and sunny yellow. "Can we indeed dress ourselves happy as we start to emerge from our pandemic chrysalis?" asks Cohn, citing findings of a paper published in 2020 in Psychological Science. "The scientists... calculated the average probability of each color-emotion association and identified the most prominent among the 240 possible pairings, which included joy with, yes, pink, as well as... yellow and orange." {Harper's Bazaar}

African designers are finding success in global markets by highlighting cultural roots
"More designers from Nigeria, South Africa and other African countries are connecting with consumers in international markets by putting their cultures front and center," writes Odunayo Ojo for Business of Fashion. "Interest in African designers has surged in the aftermath of George Floyd's killing, which forced a reckoning in the fashion industry about a lack of Black representation....Over the last year, [African designers] have seen their earned media value, a measure of social media engagement, more than double," notes Ojo. {Business of Fashion}

How TikTok helped Hedi Slimane kill the skinny jean
As Hedi Slimane — "the man who invented skinny jeans" — reveals "the Elephant," a new baggy denim silhouette for Celine, Rachel Tashjian of GQ explores why this trend is so significant. "Since last summer, when [Slimane] released his collection 'The Dancing Kid,' he's been engaged in a project that filters TikTok 'style' through the fashion system, recreating the platform’s trends and personalized novelties with the resources and values of a French fashion house operating at its zenith," writes Tashjian. "His whole career has been about these kinds of references, an encyclopedic knowledge of youth subcultures." {GQ}

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