The Glossy Podcast

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 publicatio...

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...

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 bra...

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]...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 tr...

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 st...

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 sla...

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...

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...

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...

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 bran...

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, makin...

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...

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."...

As the CEO of digitally native menswear brand Bonobos, Micky Onvural has experienced both extreme challenges and lucky breaks in getting the brand through 2020.  “We've always been predominantly e-commerce, so we didn't have the same catch-up game to play as other retailers did,” she said on the Glossy Podcast. “The biggest catch-up game we had to play was on the product side -- because we were ‘w...

Todd Snyder is a master of collaborations.  “I've always looked at brands I want to work with, and they're almost all originators in their space,” Snyder said on the Glossy Podcast. “They’re authentic and real, and American -- and the first of their version.” Snyder launched his namesake brand in 2011, after stints as a lead designer at Ralph Lauren, Gap and J.Crew. The brand now averages 2-5 coll...

Joe's Jeans is heavily invested in working with influencers. It's a relationship that has to make sense to work, said Jennifer Hawkins, the brand's svp of marketing and innovation. "It's not just plucking someone off a list and saying, 'Let's do a collaboration,'" Hawkins said on the Glossy Podcast. "It's finding people that you organically fit with from a product standpoint and working with them....

In Clearbanc president Michele Romanow's view, regular banks are pretty clueless. "Banks don't understand digital business," she said on the Glossy Podcast. "They understand if you're a restaurant with a pizza oven, and that if your business goes out of business, they can sell the pizza oven, as it has residual value." But they're less likely to accurately value inventory or to understand that a s...

People may not be getting dressed and going out like they used to, but for Bombas, sales are up. The sock company is beating the target it set for itself back in January, before the pandemic kept people at home (where socks are a little more optional). "Sales are up," Bombas co-founder and chief brand officer Randy Goldberg said on the Glossy Podcast. "There's that response to comfort and a respon...

After a summer of virtual fashion showcases, Paris is going back to the real thing. Among the labels on the (outdoor) catwalk schedule for the upcoming Paris Fashion Week is Ami, the company founded in 2011 -- but which only got into womenswear in 2018. "I do this job, for nine years now, because of the show. The show is a magical moment. It's a rendezvous which is not replaceable," founder Alexan...

Maison de Mode CEO Hassan Pierre knows that if sustainable fashion doesn't look as good as everything else on the market, it's not going to make much of a positive impact on the environment. "I always say that if a shirt saves a thousand lives, but it's ugly, no one's going to buy it," Pierre said on the Glossy Podcast. "So we need, as a retailer, to make people dream and to really make people wan...