The Glossy Podcast

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 -- which counts celebrity fans including Lady Gaga and Nicki Minaj -- as well as careers as influencers, DJs and producers. In 2020, they collaborated with eyewear brand Zenni on a kids’ line and, in October, they were one of seven companies to be accepted into VC firm Andreessen Horowitz’Talent x Opportunity brand accelerator. The program grants them investment dollars, training and access to top mentors. “It's definitely a confidence builder,” said Coco, of participating in the program. “And we're learning so much.”In addition to career challenges and recent opportunities, Coco and Breezy discussed their DTC-wholesale balance, their TikTok plans and their rule to “be intentional” in the projects they undertake across the board.

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 Canadian company was founded in 2013 and launched its first product on Kickstarter, a model that Lenett argues is inherently more sustainable. "You're not creating a bunch of inventory and then trying to create demand; you're gauging demand and then building the inventory to the demand."Duer was "basically doubling" its sales "every year for the last five years," according to Lenett, and it's ending 2020 with a 30% bump compared to last. It's now selling in 52 countries.The company made inroads with men's products that are both suitable for exercise and fit the part in an office setting. While first pitching his products, Lenett said, "my barriers were these retail buyers who kept saying to me, 'No, we don't want to do light and stretchy. That's not masculine.' And I'm going, 'No, I'm wearing it! It's actually a superior product.'"

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 where we'll create, hopefully, some brand awareness, and then we'll explore with other categories," Svärdh said about the founders' reasoning when launching the brand in 2014.Despite an ongoing pandemic, the Swedish company has opened two new stores in Germany in recent weeks, and has one in Dubai planned for the first quarter of 2021.Last month, private equity firm Eurazeo took a majority stake in the company, to the tune of a $66.1 million (56 million euro) investment.The United States is one massive market it could turn to next. Online sales from the U.S. make up close to 10% of the brand's digital total, Svärdh estimated.

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 only "true luxury designer footwear brand that's direct to-consumer," Since then, after a Series C last year, it has raised $87 million.DTC now accounts for an outsized portion of its revenue. Co-founder and namesake Tamara Mellon said the fashion industry, as a whole, has been overdue for a shakeup."As Marc Andreessen said, 'Every business will eventually be eaten by digital,'" Mellon said. "I felt like the business model needed to change, and the way people talked and spoke to their customers needed to change. So that's how we came up with doing direct-to-consumer."

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 platform.In June, Bendet also co-created #ShareTheMicNow, starting by handing over her Instagram account (which has, at last check, 1 million followers) to a less represented voice for a day."Like, 'I trust you, here's my password, here's my account, you speak your voice. Let us listen,'" Bendet said.Kourtney Kardashian, Gwyneth Paltrow and Diane von Furstenberg participated, as did dozens of prominent women who replicated the initiative in the U.K. in October, tthe country's Black History month.

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 runway very safely from their own house[s] or apartments, and to wear whatever they wanted to wear from their closet."Another feat in the face of serious inconvenience: launching a magazine in China. "It's not an easy place to launch a publication, with the political difficulties or censorship that you have to also face," Restoin Roitfeld said.

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 here before. "It was like my muscle memory came back."Scott joined the podcast to talk about the importance of charitable giving ("Since 2010, we've given over $30 million to women's and children's charities," she said), the human need for physical places like stores and the company's Texas origins, which give it an edge.

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 include Patagonia and Allbirds.Each of the company's garments include a QR code that can be scanned for "the customer to see the entire provenance journey," Barboni Hallik said, adding that most customers use the function.

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," Silverstein said.One focus of 7 For All Mankind that has remained intact is sustainability. The denim industry has a notoriously wasteful reputation, which it's "probably earned," Silverstein conceded. Two-thousand gallons of water are typically required to create one pair of jeans.But by 2023, 7 For All Mankind expects that 80% of its products will clear certain scores by the Higg FEM standard."The only thing that's really slowing us down, quite frankly, is our existing raw materials," Silverstein said. "All new materials we work with fit our criteria."

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. And for those that don't? "You could become irrelevant."Kallmeyer had projected "major growth" for the calendar year -- "January was our best month in business, to date," she said -- but then the pandemic hit. Since March, she has temporarily closed and reopened the company's newly opened physical store, and has launched a range of digital services for Kallmeyer customers.