The Fashion and Beauty Companies Everyone Wants to Work For

**Sheena Butler-Young** (0:08)
Hello, and welcome to The Debrief from The Business of Fashion, where each week we delve into our most popular BoF professional stories with the correspondents who created them. I'm Senior Correspondent Sheena Butler-Young.
In July, BoF careers published its 2026 rankings of the most desirable fashion and beauty companies to work for. In fashion, Chanel tops the list, followed by Hermès and Dior. In beauty, L'Oréal Paris leads, followed by Dior Beauty and Charlotte Tilbury. They're all great brands in their own right, but the ranking points to a deeper tension. Workers say compensation matters, yet the brands they most want to join are often selling something broader, prestige, stability, and access to a bigger career ecosystem.
So today we're asking, what makes a fashion or beauty employer desirable in 2026, and how much of that desirability survives once you're actually working there? Joining us today are Dan Hastings and Owen O'Donnell from BoF Careers to unpack these rankings. Dan, Owen, welcome to The Debrief.

**Eoghan O'Donnell** (1:12)
Thank you, Sheena. I'm delighted to be here.

**Dan Hastings** (1:15)
Thank you for having me again.

**Sheena Butler-Young** (1:17)
So Dan, welcome back. I want to start with the ranking itself because both lists, they have a very healthy range. You see everything from luxury giants and conglomerates to these founder led brands to other indie brands.
What did you set out to accomplish with the rankings?

**Dan Hastings** (1:32)
So this is the sophomore edition of this ranking. We started last year with Sophie Sore and Owen, leading this project alongside Annabel Bolton. And last year, the question was, what do fashion and beauty workers want from their employers? And we mentioned things like remote work and flexible working, and how they feel about pay and salary and other things. And then this year, we really wanted to focus on AI. So how do fashion and beauty workers feel about this increasing role of AI in these industries? Do they receive training? What do they feel about the employers delving more into AI?
And then, just like last year, we also asked them what makes a dream employer and who do you dream to work for and why?
So that's why now we have the second report with a standalone ranking of the most desirable fashion employers and most desirable beauty employers.

**Sheena Butler-Young** (2:37)
Okay, so I want to get into some of these rankings because I always joke that we do not cater to Instagram and social media comments, but it was very interesting how much reaction we saw online to the list and to the rankings. Not that anybody was particularly surprised. I mean, the list of names are probably somewhat what you might expect. But I want to start with fashion. So in fashion, Chanel, Hermès, Dior, they top the list. What are those brands? They're all luxury, European, very glossy brands.
What do they tell you about the mood right now, Owen? What does that say to you about where the industry is? Is it different than what you saw last year?

**Eoghan O'Donnell** (3:17)
Well, I think, as you mentioned, the fact that they're slightly luxury and they're glossy means that they appeal to Candidates because there is a sense of desirability, particularly at a time when that is actually increasingly hard to come by. Consider the macroeconomic climate and you have things like hiring freezes and high youth unemployment. These elements are all continuing to shape the job market, and really today's professionals are looking for employers that can offer that long-term sense of security. I think if we look back towards some of last year's rankings, there is an overlap with some of the big names on the list, and they've come up again because they're financially resilient and they're seen to have solid internal structures and might be more likely to invest in talent even when the wider market might be slowing.
These are organizations where talent can actually build a career and weather periods of that industry volatility. As well, when we think about these big brands, they offer craftsmanship and that enduring cultural relevance, and this is something people are drawn to when they're thinking about career longevity and that sense of investment in long-term career goals.

**Sheena Butler-Young** (4:37)
It's so interesting because there was a time when I first started doing some of the workplace and talent reporting at BoF that we reported a lot on the glossy veneer of fashion starting to fade and that it wouldn't be brand identity alone that would attract talent. But when we do these lists, and this is the sophomore edition to use Dan's phrase, it seems like actually what's old is new again. I don't know if that's the best way to describe it, but the truth is these almost luminary kinds of brands still seem to, their reputation still seems to be very much intact. Dan, I want to talk about the beauty's top three. So similar trend, L'Oréal Paris at number one, Dior Beauty at number two, and then not a wild card, but newer Charlotte Tilbury at number three.