The Glossy Podcast

Putting on a digital fashion show isn't especially revolutionary.

But Anifa Mvuemba, the founder of Hanifa, gave her Instagram Live show a novel twist: there weren't any models, whether digital or real.

"This will be a great way to get everyone's attention," Mvuemba recalled thinking, on the Glossy Podcast.

Her virtual runway was stalked by Hanifa dresses, moving of their own accord as if draped over moving ghosts. It was a painstaking endeavor of animation and design, but it paid off.

Tens of thousands tuned in, according to Fast Company. "The sales, it was immediate -- probably the best month we've had since I started my company," Mvuemba said.

The attention was big enough to push Mvuemba into a more significant public relations hire in the Hinton Group. Next, Mvuemba plans on turning heads again with technical feats (even though "we're still coming down from the high from the first one") and launching shapewear for women of color in the coming months.

Speaking for her corner of the fashion industry -- luxury denim -- Warp+Weft founder Sarah Ahmed said that discussions around racial issues should only be beginning. "If everyone was always receptive to this -- to racial equality -- we wouldn't be having these problems," Ahmed said on the Glossy Podcast.

"We all need to take a look: maybe the joke that we make, the model choice that we made -- why did we make that?" she said.

Warp+Weft is progressive on other fronts. Its manufacturing process consumes a fraction of the water that jeans -- a notoriously resource-intense garment -- typically do, according to Ahmed.

And because of the impact of the pandemic, Ahmed hopes to make the family-owned businesses she's a part of (Warp+Weft is one, DL1961 is the other) smarter about human resources.

Ahmed said the company saw a spike in e-commerce sales -- yes, even though they're jeans, not sweatpants. But it still had to make layoffs. For the future, Ahmed said, "I talk to people on the team and tell them 'Listen, let's make you and this role irreplaceable -- and so key to the company that you feel needed, and we need you, and you're pandemic-proof.' I think that's how employers need to be looking at their roles."

Before the coronavirus pandemic, Trina Turk's self-named fashion label made 15% of its sales through e-commerce.

But with Neiman Marcus' filing for bankruptcy in May and an ongoing lack of foot traffic at mall stores, Turk ideally wants that percentage raised to 50% or more.

"If they weren't shopping online prior to this whole thing, they are jumping online now," Turk said about shoppers on the Glossy Podcast. "I don't think we're alone in really examining how we can pivot our business to be much more e-comm-focused.

Turk talked about managing her relationship with department stores to minimize the excess inventory brought about by the global retail shutdown, exploring the potential of client meetings done via Zoom and hiring more diversely once the company recovers from its layoffs and hiring freeze.

Womenswear brand Knix has already gone through the painful transition to DTC that other clothing companies are being forced into during the pandemic.

"I feel for those brands," Knix CEO Joanna Griffiths said on the Glossy Podcast. "But I also know that it's possible."

Griffiths founded the company in 2013 to make and market leakproof underwear. At the time, the business model was entirely about wholesale. "I did trunk shows at every Equinox location in the United States, I think," Griffiths said.

But in the 2016, she decided to pull out of more than 700 retail locations across North America and shift to direct-to-consumer, out of a concern for size inclusivity. "A lot of the traditional retailers wouldn’t carry our size assortment," Griffiths has previously told Glossy. On the podcast, she described it as a "really scary decision" to "basically cut our revenue in more than half and start over," she said.

That decision is panning out. This past May, sales were up 135% year-over-year, in part thanks to Knix's categories -- wireless bras and loungewear -- being in high demand in an age of social distancing.

Protests continue around the country and world three weeks after George Floyd's death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer. This new instance of police violence caught on video has boosted public support for Black Lives Matter while driving policy changes from governments, police departments and companies.

Toms is used to building strategies around public good. "We're incredibly proud to have inspired many, many companies to be purpose-driven," Amy Smith, the company's chief giving officer, said on the Glossy Podcast.

The original, core initiative behind the company -- to donate a pair of shoes to those in need for every pair purchased -- isn't exactly adjacent to the public challenges facing America today. But the shoe company is among dozens of beauty and fashion brands that have donated to Black Lives Matter, and it plans on contributing another $100,000 in the next three months.

Beyond that, Toms is looking at its own practices. "We're taking the time now to do a full assessment of what our business and employment practices are, so we can create a baseline and share with our customers, very transparently: 'What is a plan for change for Toms?'"

Toms anticipates it will cross the 100 million pairs donated mark sometime this year, according to Smith, and since 2018 it has also funded grants for socially-inclined nonprofits. The company also now donates a third of its net profits.

Last December, Toms agreed to a takeover from its creditors led by Jefferies Financial Group Inc., Nexus Capital Management LP and Brookfield Asset Management Inc., in exchange for restructuring its debt.

Fashion designer Anna Sui thinks the industry is overdue for a reckoning, in terms of diversity.

"This is the moment for black designers and companies to step up. The curtains are open. Go for it," Sui said on the Glossy Podcast.

Though not equivalent to the black experience, Sui's childhood was filled with dreams to become a designer despite not seeing anyone who looked like her at the forefront of the biggest labels, she said. "I came from the suburbs of Detroit. At the time when I started designing, there really weren't other Chinese designers."

Now Sui's main collection is sold in 50 Anna Sui boutiques across eight countries and over 300 retailers globally.

"In China, I'm more known for my lipstick and my perfume than I am for my fashion," Sui said, noting the contrast to the U.S. market.

And in the states, she said, a fashion shakeup is looming.

"We've drifted into this minimal look before -- this almost uniform look. Business usually gets bad during that period. Then, all of a sudden, something more embellished will look good," Sui said. "It's like a pendulum. Whatever is in right now, the opposite is what's going to make people excited and think, 'That's the next big thing.'"

In a three-week period shortly after the pandemic outbreak, Richer Poorer sold three times as many sweatpants than in all of 2019.

That was a small part of an overall trend for the basics clothing brand: The first five months of 2020 have greatly boosted online sales, transforming it into an e-commerce business first and foremost.

"We essentially had to kind of rebuild and restructure our team overnight to now go, 'OK, we're a DTC brand,'" the company's CEO Iva Pawling said on the Glossy Podcast.

Richer Poorer had already been planning to gradually shift to a focus on e-commerce over wholesale. The plan was to grow direct sales to 40% of revenue in 2020 and reach parity next year on the way to a primarily DTC model. Now, Pawling estimates e-commerce is set to make up roughly 75% of the company's bottom line this year.

Pawling said that a pivot in branding, already underway before the pandemic struck, has helped the company pitch its products as right for the moment. "We very much had rebranded under this belief that what we're here to do is deliver confidence and comfort -- that your comfortable clothes don't have to be these items that are just stay-at-home because they look sloppy and you don't feel comfortable going outside in them."

In a stroke of luck, the company's fall 2020 collection -- planned as far back as last November -- conceptualized around "being the most comfortable at home," Pawling said.

And because it's now seeing a much higher return on digital advertising, it's increased spending on that front. "We had suddenly way more eyeballs on us and traffic coming to us, which helps. And then on the other side, a lot of people that we were competing against from an ads perspective, digitally, had completely just turned their ad spend off when this happened. So we really were able to fast forward quite a bit of growth based on those things."

As for retail, Pawling said that a previous plan to open a brick-and-mortar store in late 2020 is now completely off the table. The earliest the company will tackle physical retail is 2022, she said.

Pawling is pretty used to tumult. She co-founded Richer Poorer in 2010 -- as a purveyor of midrange socks for men, exclusively -- before she and her co-founder Tim Morse sold it to Shoes.com in 2015. But their new owner's business model wasn't as sound as they had expected. "The whole thing just imploded," Pawling said. She and Morse had to convince two board members to buy the business out. Weeks later, Shoes.com filed for bankruptcy.

Richer Poorer's ownership has since returned to Pawling and Morse, who have turned it into a clothing line that caters mostly to women. As for the socks? "They make up about 8% of the business at this point," Pawling said.

Brideside co-founder and CEO Nicole Staple predicts there will be a wedding boom as the threat of coronavirus subsides. "We are seeing pretty overwhelming data that suggests women are postponing -- not canceling -- weddings," Staple said on the Glossy Podcast.

But she isn't sitting back and waiting for the upswing. Launched in 2012, the company went from selling bridesmaid dresses exclusively to offering wedding dresses, as well, both via e-commerce and showrooms -- that is, until the pandemic hit. Now it's working to bring the physical shopping experience online.

"We decided on a Thursday to shut down our showrooms that weekend, and by Tuesday, we had a fully launched virtual appointment platform," Staple said.

Brideside has done about 1,000 virtual appointments in a six-week period, according to Staple. She also talked about the need in the market for inclusive sizing, the outsized importance of Instagram and the fact that there may be more "groomzillas" than "bridezillas."

Designer Alejandra Alonso Rojas is taking these uncommon times as permission to question the industry she operates in.

“I think I’m going to come out of this as a rebel, because I’ve been really analyzing the business and what I want to do, and there are so many things I want to change in order to survive this and to make the business profitable,” Alonso Rojas said on the Glossy Podcast.

The usual fashion industry calendar is one of them.

“The calendar makes no sense at all," she said. "The new generations don’t shop six months before they can wear something. And the fact that, by the time you want to wear it, it's already 70-80% off — the impact on the brand was terrible.”

Alonso Rojas is currently looking to her own items from seasons past -- via her first “archive sale” -- in order to boost sales for the luxury label. The profits are going toward supporting the company’s staff, and to paying rent for the company's combined office, studio and showroom space in Soho.

“We had the inventory, and I think it was the right thing to do,” Alonso Rojas said. “It was a crazy idea, and I’ve shipping boxes like crazy. But at the end of the day, it worked.”

Jens Grede's denim-first fashion line, Frame, was growing fast until the pandemic hit. The company has 10 stores and had planned to double that number in 2020.

Instead, the company is looking to 2021. "I'm still very confident about our store strategy right now," Grede said on the Glossy Podcast.

Whenever doors do open again, Grede said they'll have a lower customer capacity, masks for visitors and employees, and an emphasis on keeping things clean. "Safety for our employees and our customers is and has to be everyone's top priority right now. Long term? We don't know anything about the long term," Grede said.

Still, he has faith in the brick-and-mortar model, even as Frame's e-commerce sales are up "close to 300%" over the last few months, thanks in part to a 25% off sale. "It's really replaced [the sales of] all of our physical stores, and a little bit more than that." Making up for the revenue from wholesale is a bridge too far, however.

And if Grede could go back in time in anticipation of the pandemic, he would have geared the company toward direct-to-consumer sales earlier. "And I'm not talking about 2019, I'm talking about 2017 or '16," Grede said. "Times were very good in wholesale. Too good, in fact."

In general, Grede thinks the fashion industry should react to the pandemic with an idea also reflected in politics: bringing manufacturing back to the U.S. "Fashion brands have to carry less inventory. For that to be possible, we have to be able to turn inventory faster than we've done in the past. For that to be possible, we have to bring back manufacturing to the United States. That is the long and the short of it," Grede said.