System #17

System launches Issue 17 exploring the future of shopping. Featuring cover stars, Mr Ji, founder and chairman of SKP Beijing, and José Neves, founder of Farfetch.

In February, this year, it was reported that SKP Beijing had become the highest-performing luxury department store in the world. The news highlighted what is arguably the defining transition – both pre- and post-pandemic – for the global luxury fashion market: Chinese consumer appetite and purchasing power is now sustaining the profitability of many Western brands.

System has spent the past six months exploring the world of SKP for our cover story. This is the first time its founder and chairman Mr Ji has agreed to be interviewed, so we took full advantage and invited Patrizio Bertelli, CEO of Prada, and Jonathan Anderson, creative director of Loewe and JW Anderson, to record conversations with him, before Mr Ji led photographer Juergen Teller on a personal guided tour (remotely, of course) through SKP’s younger-and-edgier sister store, SKP-S.

Meanwhile, our second cover story features José Neves, founder of e-commerce giant Farfetch. In a wide-ranging interview, Neves discusses the realities of online success in lockdown, the convergence of virtual and physical fashion, and how the Farfetch-coined ‘Luxury New Retail’ is transforming the shopping experience. With portraits shot by Juergen Teller.

System is a biannual magazine that explores with style and substance the dialogues at the heart of the global fashion industry. It offers exclusive long-format conversations with fashion’s most relevant, most powerful and most opinionated individuals, accompanied by portfolios created by the industry’s most in-demand image-makers.