Good morning! Karoline Leavitt will be the youngest White House press secretary, opposition leader María Corina Machado calls on Trump to save democracy in Venezuela, and Eileen Fisher goes after millennials.
- Slow fashion. Eileen Fisher, the apparel brand known for its luxe, flowy silhouettes and appeal to the older female shopper, has been built over four decades with some core principles. Its clothing is high-quality, made of sustainable materials, and can be mixed and matched from season to season—the opposite of the fast-fashion trend cycle. Many of its customers are diehards who fill entire closets with Eileen Fisher pieces, buying into what the brand calls its “system” of dressing.
But somehow, many of the ideals Eileen Fisher embodies have become popular with millennials and Gen Z shoppers—from minimalism and quiet luxury to slow fashion. The only problem is, that while some brands that claim to be similarly “purpose-driven” nevertheless take on the intense marketing competing in the fashion industry demands, Eileen Fisher has genuinely limited its scale and reach. Before the past five years, the brand had never even had a CEO; Fisher herself eschewed the title. She preferred to keep the company private, too; employees are part-owners in the brand.
Turning 40 years old this fall, the brand has about $300 million in sales and about 60 stores. So, while its aesthetic fits some current trends, younger shoppers (even Gen Xers, who are now closer to the traditional Eileen Fisher age bracket) aren’t as familiar with it. Instead, a new generation of brands popped up espousing some of the beliefs Eileen Fisher has been emphasizing for decades. Lisa Williams took over from Fisher as CEO two years ago, and one of her goals is to capture some of that zeitgeist and help more people discover the brand—without losing what has made it special. While conversations about scaling have traditionally been complicated at Eileen Fisher—often seen as coming with the risk of compromising the brand’s values—she saw an opportunity that the brand couldn’t miss.
Eileen Fisher has “the right product and the right message at a time when it makes sense,” Williams says. “Now, we’re trying to make sure that we’ve got the right visibility.” The brand is experimenting with some marketing basics, like working with influencers, from TikTok creators who film videos about their capsule wardrobes to a diverse set of models and Instagram creators.
Williams came to Eileen Fisher from Patagonia, where she saw the strengths and challenges of building a “purpose-driven” company. She also saw that it was possible to do so at scale—Patagonia has about $1.5 billion in annual sales. “Everybody is wanting to model this ‘responsible business’ thing. And in a lot of ways, we're all grading our own papers. There aren’t a whole lot of standards and definitions and methodology out there,” she says.
She also realized how savvy consumers are about brands that claim to be responsible businesses. Millennials and Gen Z shoppers “appreciate very much the values we stand on—timeless product, doing it in a way that is as responsible as possible," she says. "They’re also pretty skeptical of brands making those claims, so we have to make sure we’re walking our talk.”
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
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