Vanterra Capital was better positioned than many businesses going into 2020. “The pandemic just pushed us to double down on our thesis,” said Steven Himmel, partner at Vanterra Capital, on the latest Glossy Podcast. “Everything that we were focused on before is even more relevant today.” With its venture-specific fund, launched about two-and-a-half years ago, Vanterra invests in mission-driven consumer companies, which on the fashion side include Naadam. “A big focus for us is what we call the E...
May 26, 2021•37 min
Heading up a startup, as opposed to a large corporation, has its pros and cons, said Mickey Drexler, the former CEO and chairman of J.Crew Group and CEO of Gap Inc. Today, Drexler is the executive chairman of Alex Mill. The fashion brand was founded in 2012 by his son, Alex Drexler, and Somsack Sikhounmuong, who formerly led design at Madewell. "When I started Old Navy, I had the bank of Gap to fund it… Then I started Madewell, which I owned the name of and sold to J.Crew, and [it was] the same ...
May 19, 2021•45 min
When Paige Mycoskie launched 15-year-old fashion brand Aviator Nation, she was looking to solve her own pain point. “I was most excited to wear vintage clothing -- stuff that was made in the ’70s and early ’80s. And so I found myself looking for clothes at flea markets and thrift stores. But it’s not easy to find good T-shirts from the ’70s,” she said on the latest Glossy Podcast. “I’d spend a whole day looking for one T-shirt. Then it dawned on me: ‘Why don’t I learn how to make this?’ So I sta...
May 12, 2021•39 min
When Karla Welch and Clea O’Hana launched fashion styling app Wishi in 2019, the idea was to democratize the fashion styling experience, which is usually reserved for celebs. “Karla’s dream was to bring styling to everyone,” O’Hana said, on the latest Glossy Podcast. “It’s a great partnership -- because I had the technology and the business idea, but I didn’t have the styling or the fashion part of it…[Together] we’re replicating the relationship that she has with her clients, online.” Welch has...
May 05, 2021•35 min
When Carolyn Murphy started modeling, she didn’t have a long-term plan. But thirty years later, her career is still going strong. “I didn't develop a business sense … until much, much later [in my career] -- probably until after I gave birth to my daughter,” she said on the latest Glossy Podcast. “And it was like, ‘Oh! I'm a mom, and I've got to get it together.’ This year, Murphy is celebrating 20 years as the face of Estee Lauder, making her the longest-reigning spokesmodel in the industry. Am...
Apr 28, 2021•34 min
The team behind 120-year-old Saucony is no stranger to the competition in the running shoe market. But within the last year, as former gym rats took up running and more brands entered the space, they’ve been stepping up their game. "The running boom is real,” Anne Cavassa, president of Saucony, said on the latest Glossy Podcast. “So we're making sure that we're connecting and engaging with consumers where they're at -- whether that's around what shoes they need, what their training should look l...
Apr 21, 2021•39 min
More than 100-years-old, Moscot's Lower East Side store is decidedly a New York institution. And worldwide, the eyewear company has 15 retail locations. But that's not to suggest that physical retail is the company's sole focus. "We started our transition [to go] fully into digital several years ago," Zack Moscot, a fifth-generation Moscot and the company's chief design officer, said on the latest Glossy Podcast. "So when the pandemic hit, we were able to pivot and really step on the gas when we...
Apr 14, 2021•28 min
Arezzo & Co. CEO Alexandre Birman is prepared to handle a rough 2021. “The first half of the year will be very challenging,” he said on the latest episode of the Glossy Podcast. “It's not going to be easy. And who is going to survive is not the strongest, but the most adaptable. So we have to be very prepared to adapt.” The company managed just fine in 2020, emerging relatively unscathed though big changes were necessary. Those adjustments, including putting its 6,000 store employees to work...
Apr 07, 2021•33 min
Athleta chief product officer Jana Henning described 2020 as both “a blockbuster year” and “a rollercoaster.” The company managed to do $1 billion in sales, even with amid pandemic-driven obstacles. “I credit our success last year to listening to our teams and listening to our customer,” Henning said on the latest episode of the Glossy Podcast. “We really put them at the center of everything we do, and that's been good for business.” Responding to that feedback meant quickly entering new product...
Mar 31, 2021•33 min
When sisters Kendall and Libby Glazer launched Stoney Clover Lane in 2009, Kendall was 17 and Libby was 15. “The brand you know today is not the brand that started Stoney Clover Lane,” said Kendall Glazer on the latest episode of the Glossy Podcast. “It started as beaded bracelets. It was a hobby. But we always kind of had this business mindset. We took something that so many other girls were doing and went through the motions of turning it into a business.” Today, Stoney Clover Lane is known fo...
Mar 24, 2021•42 min
Re/Done co-founder Sean Barron never set out to launch a sustainable denim brand. “We thought it was a project,” versus a company, he said on the latest episode of the Glossy Podcast. His business partner, Jamie Mazur, “had this idea of taking Levi's apart and making jeans that fit girls,” Barron said. “It took nine months for us to make that work. Then we built a website.” On the brand’s launch date in 2014, after Bella Hadid hyped the brand in an Instagram post, the first pairs of Re/Done deni...
Mar 17, 2021•38 min
Despite having 400,000-plus followers on Instagram, Patrick Janelle (@aguynamedpatrick) doesn’t call himself an influencer. “I've never fully identified with the term, because it means a lot of things, and influence itself could mean a lot of things. And the way by which people influence others can come about in many different ways,” Janelle said on the Glossy Podcast. “So using the term strictly to define somebody who has a large social media following never felt totally apt to me.” Instead, he...
Mar 10, 2021•47 min
J.J. Martin, founder and creative director of Milan-based fashion and home goods brand La DoubleJ, didn’t take the traditional path to launching her company. And now, six years in, she’s determined to run it her own way. “I started this company selling vintage clothing and vintage jewelry online,” she said on the Glossy Podcast. Prior, she had spent 15 years as a journalist, writing for publications including Harper's Bazaar, the Wall Street Journal and Wallpaper Magazine. “At the time, Italy wa...
Mar 03, 2021•45 min
According to NPD, sales of high heels were down more than 70% in 2020. But Sarah Flint was an exception to the rule. “Heels are pumps were still our top-selling category,” said Sarah Flint, founder and creative director of her namesake brand, on the latest Glossy Podcast. “There is not a real explanation for that, other than maybe women buy with their hearts more than their heads sometimes.” Even so, the brand rounded out its products in 2020 with more pandemic-friendly categories, including sil...
Feb 24, 2021•39 min
Because Drest is centered on bringing together notoriously slow-to-evolve luxury fashion brands and innovative gaming technology, it would seem that founder and co-CEO Lucy Yeomans has her work cut out for her. But with more than 20 years of experience working with luxury fashion brands, she knows how to speak their language. “I thought it was going to be much, much tougher than it was [to get brands to sign on to the platform],” Yeomans said on the Glossy Podcast. Among clinchers was the high l...
Feb 17, 2021•24 min
Workwear was different when CEO Sarah LaFleur launched M.M.LaFleur, her fashion brand targeting working women. “Dresses were the majority of our business [in 2013],” she said on the Glossy Podcast. “We didn’t even have pants until 2016.” But now that working from home has become the norm, the brand has fully embraced casual wear. “The Power Casual category [that includes joggers, hoodies and tees] was probably 15-20% of our business going into 2020. But Covid hit, and -- boom. It's now over 50%,...
Feb 10, 2021•41 min
When Jeff Abrams launched L.A.-based fashion brand Rails in 2008, he couldn’t have predicted the demand for comfortable clothes in 2020. The cashmere-like shirts that the line started with is now driving exceptional sales for the company. “We actually grew over the course of this year,” Abrams said on the Glossy Podcast. To date, Rails has generated over $500 million in retail sales and increased topline revenue and profitability every year since launch. “When Covid came around, we were top-of-m...
Feb 03, 2021•39 min
Managing corporate responsibility for a global company with 160,000 employees can’t be easy, especially in 2021. But Karin Raguin, vp of talent management and corporate responsibility at LVMH North America, is rising to the challenge. “All of the past year has been about people and safety, and well-being … and values … and how we enable people to shape their professional paths in a very meaningful way,” said Raguin, on the Glossy Podcast. “My job has not changed over the past year, but it has be...
Jan 27, 2021•35 min
Erin and Sara Foster are used to being described as writers, producers, actors, entrepreneurs, maybe influencers -- but “fashion brand founders” is a new one. “I think it’s a combination of imposter syndrome and of, like, ‘Wait, pinch me, we have a fashion brand,’” said Sara Foster, upon being caught off-guard by her Glossy Podcast introduction. After a successful collaboration with Joe’s Jeans in 2020, the sisters launched their apparel brand, Favorite Daughter, through Joe’s founder Centric Br...
Jan 20, 2021•41 min
In 2007, Michelle Wenke and Megan George set out to create the anti-Juicy Couture. “We wanted to be able to wear sweatsuits that catered to people like us, where they weren't so loud and bubble-gummy,’” Wenke said on the latest Glossy Podcast. “We wanted them to look a little more like streamlined and low-key, and not just [be about] hot colors and graphics and bedazzled everywhere. We were a lot younger, so we didn't really have this grandiose plan. We just were like, ‘Let's try it out.” In the...
Jan 13, 2021•30 min
Corianna and Brianna Dotson, better known as Coco and Breezy, have been playing by their own rules since launching the Coco & Breezy eyewear brand in 2009. “It was challenging for us when we first started [in the fashion industry] -- with nothing, like less than $1,000. We didn't go to college, and we had never been in a professional business setting. We say that we have our master's degree in trial and error,” Breezy said on the Glossy Podcast. Since, the sisters have grown the brand -- whi...
Jan 06, 2021•38 min
Many of the fashion retailers who had plans to open brick-and-mortar stores in 2020 wish they could take it all back. Not so, for Duer co-founder Gary Lenett. "We just feel very, very fortunate to be in the position we are, given where most of the world is that," Lenett said on the Glossy Podcast. The activewear brand is cash flow positive, and plans to launch new product categories and 4-8 new stores in 2021. Beyond that, Lenett said, the company wants a foothold in the Asian market. The Canadi...
Dec 23, 2020•41 min
Axel Arigato co-founders Albin Johansson and Max Svärdh have worked from the bottom-up, in the literal sense. "The footwear market -- that's where we saw the gap," Svärdh said on the Glossy Podcast. "How can a shoe cost this much? We couldn't understand that," Johansson added. But like many companies that start out with just one kind of product, shoes were just the entry point into a broader slate of products, which now include head-to-toe clothing items and a range of accessories. "This is wh...
Dec 16, 2020•36 min
Luxury shoe brand Tamara Mellon opened a store in Soho a month before lockdown. "Great timing," company CEO Jill Layfield joked on the Glossy Podcast. But one effort that's stood the test of time better than a brick-and-mortar shop is the company's truck: a shoe closet on wheels that greets customers at the Covid-conscious rate of one at a time. The 24-foot "TM Closet" has made stops in more than a dozen cities across the country. Tamara Mellon launched in 2016 as what Layfield describes as the ...
Dec 09, 2020•36 min
Running a fashion company is work enough, but Alice + Olivia CEO Stacey Bendet has also made 2020 a year of initiatives that serve -- and push -- the entire industry. In May, the Glossy 50 honoree rolled out Creatively, a job platform and networking app for creatives. "This is our gift to the Covid world," Bendet said on the Glossy Podcast. "It will always be free to creatives, because it's built for creatives," she said. But it will eventually be monetized by charging those posting jobs on the ...
Dec 02, 2020•37 min
CR Fashion Book president Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld doesn't usually go the easy route. In the spring, as the pandemic threatened to make this a bye year for the company's fashion show, he pitched another event organizer threatened by the pandemic (amfAR, a non-profit supporting HIV/AIDS research and prevention) on collaborating on a fully digital show. "We worked on it for about a month and a half. It was non-stop," Restoin Roitfeld said on the Glossy Podcast. "Everybody agreed to do a little ru...
Nov 25, 2020•35 min
Kendra Scott insists she isn't kidding when she says she's thankful for 2008's Great Recession. "I honestly believe we would not be talking today if that recession hadn't happened, because it forced me to have to run my business differently," Scott said on the Glossy Podcast. Scott quickly pivoted the jewelry business to sell directly to consumers, as opposed to via wholesale only. Today, the brand has more than 100 stores nationwide. When the pandemic hit, she said, she felt like she'd been her...
Nov 18, 2020•37 min
Fashion is a notoriously damaging industry for the environment. "It was clear to me that the industry was a solid 7-10 years behind a number of other major consumer industries like food and CPG -- in owning up to the problems, putting in place solutions and educating the consumer," Another Tomorrow CEO Vanessa Barboni Hallik said on the Glossy Podcast. Another Tomorrow is a certified B corp , making it for-profit, but with a clear set of social responsibilities. Its industry peers in that regard...
Nov 11, 2020•39 min
7 For All Mankind is nearly synonymous with the top-shelf denim trend of the early 2000s. "Premium denim didn't exist [prior]; we really launched this category," company president Suzanne Silverstein said on the Glossy Podcast. Twenty years after its founding, the company is now doing a bit more reacting to established trends. The pandemic has put a premium on comfort above all, so the jeans maker is fast-tracking a few articles that focus on just that -- via an "elastic waist, forgiving fit," S...
Nov 04, 2020•37 min
It took a pandemic for Daniella Kallmeyer to put more of her own voice in the self-named fashion brand she started in 2012. "I'm being more vocal about my personal experience and my political views," Kallmeyer said on the Glossy Podcast. "I've given some really raw interviews over the past couple of months, and I certainly have had people reach out to me and tell me how much they appreciate that." Taking a stand on social issues is a big part of what companies are expected to do now, she said. A...
Oct 28, 2020•40 min
