Fashion Tech Forum: In The Studio

From an early career in retail and advertising to leading one of the most beloved, aspirational fashion and luxury ecommerce platforms in the world, Alison Loehnis has always led with a unique blend of artistic sensibility and strategic thinking.

Currently President of Net-a-Porter, Mr Porter and The Outnet, Alison has an approach that is both innovative and pragmatic: she has an unrelenting curiosity, strong gut instincts and an obsession with the customer, which she pairs with a great appreciation for the data. She doesn’t believe in merely reacting to market trends, but in setting the new standards for customer experience in luxury, digital retail.

Over the now 16 years that she’s been with Net-a-Porter, Alison has navigated through the complexities of many changes in the business structure and organization, taking on more responsibility as she grew as a leader, and has served as an anchor for the business while various external changes took place. Her success and accomplishments include harnessing her clear vision for the business and providing a culture and place to work that continues to inspire her teams, and consumers, around the world.

Perhaps at the heart of what Alison does so exquisitely, the red thread of her career, is to tell stories – to take customers on a journey to discover that perfect product that creates so much excitement in its acquisition. This is Net-a-Porter’s superpower, and why Alison has been so key over the long term: both company and leader still share the love of buying and selling to serve those who are highly engaged in this industry, and who deeply value Net-a-Porter’s commitment to making fashion accessible around the world.

Roseann Lynch not only has a vast and important role as Chief People Officer and Head of the Ralph Lauren Corporate Foundation at Ralph Lauren, but she has her own personal set of values that guide her across all aspects of her own life – a fundamental value system of guiding principles and practices that shape the remarkable person that she is. Few leaders have the mindfulness, discipline, humility and generosity of spirit that Roseann has, and this comes across in all she does, and in the way that she has been able to reinvent the role of Chief People Officer at Ralph Lauren, by doing what she would say is the most important thing for any leader: showing up, talking to and listening to those she is responsible for leading and supporting.

In this conversation, we go deep into Roseann’s upbringing in Brooklyn, where her hardworking, first generation Italian immigrant parents, inspired the personal values that guide her today. We talk about how she works to define purpose, how she maintains a dharma practice as a yoga teacher, and how she keeps a rigorous plan that includes intellectual, spiritual, emotional and physical practices and goals. We also dive into her current role at Ralph Lauren, and the way that the company thinks about protecting not just 23,000 Ralph Lauren employees, but their families, partners and beyond. We discuss the nature of the role of Chief People Officer, and the evolution from Human Resources to the current, true scope and responsibilities of this role today. We close on the importance of her dharma practice, and our shared passion for connecting with people, empathizing, protecting and giving back – and that doing the work on one’s self, not just talking about it, is essential to any leader’s success in cultivating a company culture that truly is about the people it serves.

I hope you enjoy this episode, and thanks again as always for joining me In the Studio.

Known for her namesake brand of handbags, footwear, apparel and uplifting Superwoman initiatives, Rebecca Minkoff has fearlessly marched forward through many challenges and obstacles to achieve every dream she’s had for her own life: building her eponymous fashion enterprise, creating a beautiful family, and ultimately establishing a platform to support other women on their own journey towards ambitious, full and inspiring lives. In founding the Female Founder Collective, Rebecca has created a community to support female founders who, like her, didn’t have connections or resources to help grow their businesses. For Rebecca, this network is all about supporting systemic change in how business is done, to foster a more inclusive, flexible and equitable environment for women everywhere, for generations to come.

In this conversation with host Karen Harvey, Rebecca shares some of the challenges she faced in building her brand and business, which she grew over nearly two decades. They also talk about how grateful she is for her own mentors and collaborators, and the positive impact these have had on her journey as a fashion designer and entrepreneur. Rebecca encourages aspiring entrepreneurs to embrace collaboration and support other women in the industry, recognizing that it’s only together, that great things can happen.

Perhaps more than anything in this conversation, Rebecca’s indomitable spirit shines through – her perseverance, commitment to a long-term vision, resilience and fearlessness are truly inspiring. One cannot help but be in awe of all that she has accomplished – and wonder what she’s going to take on next.

Truly one of the more inspiring leaders that we’ve had the pleasure of working with, Nabil Aliffi is an extraordinary creative and brand builder, who is bringing his deeply empathetic and finely tuned sensibilities to his new role as Chief Brand Officer for Neiman Marcus.

Originally from Singapore, Nabil is someone who uniquely understands how to bring creativity to the center of a brand, to both tell stories in a truly elevated way, and to build creative strategies that drive businesses forward. Nabil brings a hybrid approach in that he is both analytical and creative - he understands not only how to create stunning visuals and experiences, but how to build community and foster a sense of engagement and loyalty within a customer base. He has been doing this, after all, his entire career - beginning even before he graduated University.

With his warm and delightful presence, Nabil is at once humble, and yet steadfastly confident in knowing who and what he is, and what he is not. His clarity on this, and his innate ambition and desire to create, have been key to his success. He brings himself wholeheartedly to every conversation, and Nabil’s innate sense of self is something that leaders from all disciplines and backgrounds could benefit from studying.

We hope you enjoy this episode, and thank you as always for joining us in the studio.

Anna Bakst is one of our industry’s most successful and inspiring leaders, a truly brilliant force responsible for growing some of fashion and retail’s most iconic global brands. An engineer by training, Anna’s passion for solving problems has been fueled by her innate understanding of innovation, creativity and leadership. From creating and building product lines that have scaled globally, to bringing biotech into the worlds of fashion and beauty, and now building a brand from scratch in a highly sustainable platform, Anna’s unique skillsets have well served the companies she has joined and run, throughout her prolific career.

From her early days as Director of Licensing at Donna Karan, to building accessories and footwear for Michael Kors, to becoming the CEO of Kate Spade, Anna’s work has made a huge contribution to helping iconic accessories brands achieve a tremendous success on a global scale - and in the case of Michael Kors - resulting in Wall Street’s biggest public offering in fashion.

As someone who is deeply driven by curiosity and an intense passion for learning and doing, Anna has ultimately come back to her roots as a leader, creator, and engineer. In 2021, after being on the board of Modern Meadow for a number of years, Anna was approached by the board to step in and become their CEO. This actually came at a tough time, because Anna had fully formed her vision for her own sustainable approach to fashion, which has now become WE-AR4. But the opportunity to lead this biotech company to the next step and lead the team to proof of concept with commercial applications, was one that she ultimately embraced, and made a significant impact.

Today, she is the Executive Chair of Modern Meadow, while simultaneously partnering with one of the best manufacturing groups in the industry, to create her own highly sustainable luxury brand, WEAR-4.

In this episode, we discuss not only Anna’s exceptional career journey and the innovative work she’s doing today, but critical lessons she’s learned along the way, her core tenets on leadership and how she has been able to both build and lead large teams, and operate through complexity, rapid growth and the numerous obstacles to innovation throughout her career. Anna is someone who has always had confidence in science, innovation, creativity and the people she works with. She knows what it takes to win, and she has always brought a level of empathy and understanding to her teams, as she knows the hard work and dedication it takes to achieve big things. I am so pleased to share her journey with you, and I hope she inspires you to think about your vision for your own future, and how we all can embrace science and innovation toward a more sustainable future.

As always, we hope you enjoy this episode, thank you for joining us In the Studio.

Kristin Patrick is a boundary-breaking leader with a track record for driving brand innovation and business transformation of top global brands in the lifestyle, entertainment, fashion, CPG and beauty industries. Kristin has a passion for building brands and businesses that challenge the status-quo, make an impact in culture, and create value by enveloping the consumer with content, product and experiences. Navigating the world’s most prominent companies through the cultural landscape of our collective moment, she combines her unique blend of strategy, business acumen, brand expertise, powerful gut instinct and ongoing connection to generational dynamics and popular culture to bring global brands to the next level of scale and relevancy.

In her current role as EVP & Global CMO of Claire’s, Kristin is transforming the iconic mall retailer into a global fashion brand powerhouse, empowering the most significant and change-making generations of young people through self-expression. To empower these Gen “Zalpha” consumers, a term for Gen Z and Gen Alpha that she is credited for popularizing by The New York Times, Kristin has activated the brand’s purpose of encouraging them to express and celebrate their truest selves and ignited it as a launch pad for some of the most innovative moments in the company’s history.

In only months, Kristin has struck a new relevance among consumers and stakeholders, taking Claire’s 50-year-old legacy to a new level of innovation and inspiration. She established a compelling new brand platform and brought new structure and marketing cohesion through the company’s first fully integrated communications approach. She has brought Claire’s into the Metaverse with unique IP and established partnerships with inventive tastemakers like Nicola Formichetti to bring this new era for Claire’s to life across all brand touchpoints and more. Under her leadership, Claire’s is inspiring these generations to discover and express themselves through new business categories, retail formats, phygital experiences and content.

Prior to Claire’s, Kristin served as the first-ever Global CMO of the Pepsi brand where she developed global positioning under a unified vision and realigned the marketing organization to create 21st digital support around the world. Tapping into her keen eye for design and appreciation of creators who define the zeitgeist, Kristin created boundary pushing creative and visual campaigns and partnered with high fashion collaborators to reimagine the Pepsi brand.

During her tenure, she was also given purview over the full PepsiCo Global Beverage Brands portfolio, where she was responsible for delivering the company’s long-term global growth strategy and expansion plans across the entire Billion-dollar portfolio of brands. From there, Kristin ushered in a new era of digital, content and data competency while continuing to build global plans and programs across PepsiCo’s portfolio.

We’re thrilled to announce that we will welcome Kristin and her creative collaborators to the stage at Fashion Tech Forum, taking place on April 11th in New York City. There, we will discuss her transformation of Claire’s, and how she is ushering in new relevancy by placing the brand squarely in the center of youth culture and igniting the creativity of Gen Zalpha - this next and most important generation of consumers.

Katia Beauchamp sees everything differently. One of the most impressive female founders in the last fifteen years, Katia has a natural proclivity toward questioning the norm. And with the launch of her revolutionary subscription business, Birchbox, she changed the way consumers and the industry at large thought about how beauty is discovered, experienced, and purchased.

While studying to obtain their MBAs from Harvard University, Katia and Hayley Barna co-founded Birchbox, essentially making them the founders of the subscription model - now ubiquitous as an online shopping method across categories.

And while Katia went on a journey of tremendous highs and numerous challenges, she was able to create her legacy as an extraordinary, successful and disruptive founder whose passion for learning and building is grounded in her innate ability to see things differently and frame opportunities through a new lens.

Now, as the new CEO for Victoria Beckham Beauty, Katia is for the first time taking the reins for a brand and business that she did not build from scratch. She will once again have the opportunity to reimagine the status quo alongside one of the most interesting celebrities and female founders of this generation, Victoria Beckham.

In this conversation, we hear not only what’s top of mind for Katia in venturing forward in this new and exciting role, we gain insight into how she thinks about being a leader in these times where almost everything has changed. We explore the idea of defining success for yourself, the future of work, leading with empathy and changing consumer expectations, and the importance of embracing the contradictions that come with change on a personal, business and macro level.

But mostly, Katia is once again elevating our thinking - as she deeply believes that leading with love is our most important and powerful tool in changing the world, and the workplace.

We hope you enjoy this conversation, and thank you for joining us In the Studio.

Leslie McGuirk is a renowned astrologer, artist, author, product designer, and a truly remarkable human being. For this episode, timed intentionally with the end of this year and the beginning of the next, we wanted to take this opportunity to share Leslie’s exceptional gifts with you, our wonderful listeners, who we appreciate to no end.

On this podcast, Leslie shares with us her extraordinary journey of self discovery and evolution - spanning from her previously unrecognized talent as an artist and illustrator, to her deep passion for animals, nature and the Earth, which she brought to life as one of the first environmentalists to connect these aspects through product design with Takashimaya in Japan.

We also dive deeply into her gift for the esoteric science of astrology, where she explains to us that, as human beings, we each have our own individual design, which can be seen and interpreted through one’s astrological chart. As a result, we can become more aware of our own inherent traits and patterns - important insights that, once better understood, enable us to break through aspects that were once perceived barriers, to create the best conditions so that we can fully realize our potential. Leslie’s extraordinary talent, intellect and inherent compassion creates a unique recipe for illuminating these patterns, and has helped her clients all over the world understand their own unique design. Her approach is refreshing, honest, and has been nothing short of transformative for many, many people.

Most of us don’t realize that centuries ago, the science of astrology was both celebrated and highly valued by the highest ranking members of many societies around the world… even Carl Jung refused to work with a patient until he read their astrological chart. Leslie reminds us that done correctly and impeccably, this work can be extremely powerful and useful.

Although astrology has more recently been discounted due to an over-saturation of horoscope predictors, this podcast will surely shift that mindset. Leslie does not read or write horoscopes, and she is not a fortune teller - she is a guide, who takes her clients on a journey of discovering their personal and individual owner’s manual, which becomes a roadmap for healing, acceptance, and ultimately finding peace.

Jenny Campbell is someone who has taken the idea of a leap of faith to the next level. Currently global Chief Marketing Officer of Kate Spade New York, Jenny has embodied the art of combining data, heart, gut instinct and vision her entire career. Her inherent optimism, positivity, empathy and tremendous success at companies like Weiden + Kennedy, Nike, 72andSunny, and Tinder, were, while not necessarily obvious, a perfect match for a brand like Kate Spade. A brand whose platform is based on the idea that Joy Colors Life - as Jenny is someone who lives her life believing in and embodying this important brand DNA.

During our talk, we explore Jenny’s special brand of thinking around marketing, where the goal and the work are really about sharing the love the community gives the brand back with the community - always thinking about ways to take care of them in return. Of course, it’s easier said than done: Jenny’s deeply nuanced, heart-infused and intellectual approach to speaking authentically about joy, positivity and even mental health, is very powerful - and what sets her apart on the global stage as one of the great marketing leaders driving brands for women today.

Charlie Cole is undoubtedly one of the most exciting new CEOs in retail today. Impressive, brilliant, delightful, humble and kind, Charlie has seemingly boundless energy. He recorded this 2-hour conversation from his standing desk, sharing story after story to illustrate his points. This powerful energy is well-needed, as Charlie recently took on one of the biggest challenges of his career: spearheading, as CEO, the revitalization of 110-year-old flower delivery company, FTD.

Charlie started his career in digital marketing, though quickly found himself in the retail industry after landing at Lucky Brand Jeans, where he was able to learn from industry veterans and founders, Gene and Barry. Not long after, Charlie joined Adam Pritzker and Vanessa Traina in building The Line under Assembled Brands, where he took his first deep dive into luxury, fashion and experiential retail. He then took his first foray into revitalizing a heritage brand by joining TUMI as Chief Digital Officer, a role which transitioned into Global Chief eCommerce Officer for Samsonite after the acquisition. The culmination of these experiences ultimately led him to his second revitalization project, this time as CEO, at FTD.

In this conversation, you will experience both Charlie’s humility and insatiable curiosity - they are part of what make him such a compelling leader. As an example, not all incoming CEOs would do what Charlie did upon joining FTD: take a few shifts in the customer service department. He read heart-wrenching stories of late deliveries… flowers that were meant for a mother dying of covid that did not arrive in time, and so many more. Not many businesses are so deeply attached to the emotional tone scale - only one of the many complexities Charlie is now facing at the helm of this formerly bankrupt, local-commerce focused flower delivery business.

We talk all the time about what constitutes great leadership - it’s not just great business acumen and intellectual brilliance, but often an acute sense of self-awareness and very big heart that contribute to the makings of a world-class CEO, like Charlie Cole.

As always, thank you for your support, and hope you enjoy our conversation.