Fashion Mogul Says Working Moms Need to Stop Apologizing
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What inspired Emma Grede to launch fashion brands with celebrity partners?
Last week, we hosted a live show in New York City in front of a great audience of journal superfans. On stage, I sat down with fashion mogul Emma Greed. She helped found a number of businesses, including the apparel brands Skims and Good American, with Kim and Chloe Kardashian, respectively. Emma and I talked about starting successful businesses, working with celebrities, and saying no to Mom Guilt. You can watch the interview on Spotify.
Welcome to the journal, our show about I'm Jessica Mendoza, coming up on the show, Emma Greed, on the business of fashion, making millions, and the trade-offs it takes to succeed.
Well Emma, I'm so glad you're here tonight. Um I'm so excited to talk to you. Partly because I think you're the perfect guest for us. I've read your book, I've listened to your podcast, you heard the tagline, Money, Business, Power. I feel like this is this is your gym. This is my area. This is it. This is my area.
All the things I like the most.
Well, I want to start with the fact that we're in New York City at a time when you know the power brokers of fashion are coming into town for New York Fashion Week. Um, as somebody who's like really plugged into the industry, I am curious where is the money in fashion going right now?
The money in fashion. I I mean, that's a really great question. You mean But where should it go? I mean, where should it go? It should go to the things that we all love the most. You know, it's really interesting actually because being somebody that came from more the business side of fashion, right? I started my career in production, working for the great and the good of the European fashion business and quite frankly spent my entire twenties going, Where's the money? Like what what is happening here? Um So decided to come to America where the money was and sort it out with uh with you know feverish intention. And so, you know, I'm coming up on the 10-year anniversary of Good American, which for me is just crazy to think about.
And I think about how many companies in that time have come and gone, and how many things I did before that company, how many things I've done in between that. Yeah. And you know, you get this kind of one golden goose moment, which for for me has been really around skims. Which is And so it's kind of amazing and quite interesting to look back on the last 10 years and understand what has actually happened.
And I actually want to talk to you about both those companies. As you said, they've both had real staying power in the industry. And you built these companies by partnering with celebrities like the Kardashians, and not just partnering as an endorsing, which is typically what we see, but bringing them on as business partners. Can you talk about that distinction? Like, why was that so important to you?
Well, it's not even it's not even a distinction. It's the way those partnerships come about, right? And I think that anybody that believes that, you know, putting talent together with a brand is an opportunity either to make money or create a credible brand will learn very, very quickly that that is just simply not the case. I think we can all count way more businesses that have failed than have succeeded. And so you have to come back to what It really is. Talent can be an incredible accelerator to popularity, to visibility, to be able to do that. It's a marketing. It's a marketing. It's a focus. Well, I wouldn't say just marketing, that depends on that depends on the individual. And I don't want to be overly pedantic about it, but I think it is an important distinction.
No. What you can do with talent to accelerate the knowledge and the visibility of a product on one hand is incredible, but to make a real product work, you You need a business partner. And if you're going into a partnership, the partnership has to equate to more than somebody's following. And I'm really lucky that I found partners who are capable of that.
And so how much of it okay, I know you can't really like m show me the recipe for this, but like how much of it was partnering with the right person, the right and then the right product, and then the timing.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What inspired Emma Grede to launch fashion brands with celebrity partners?
0:05–7:27
2
How does Emma define the “money in fashion” and where should it flow?
7:27–13:53
3
Why does Emma stress true business partnerships over simple endorsements?
13:53–20:28
4
What product gaps did Good American and Skims target for success?
20:28–21:41