Babak Radboy, creative director of Telfar, describes how their online bag restock performed right at the start of the COVID-19 lockdowns in March 2020.
Opinion
Radboy: Fashion industry is overwhelmingly white and uses tokenism conditionally
“You're dealing with an all-white industry. Right? And who know it. And you symbolize something specific that's useful up until a point, you know.”
Insight
Radboy: Corporate inclusion initiatives maintain existing ownership structures without sharing power
“And when you really look at the term inclusion, it means that ownership doesn't change. Now you're just being allowed here.”
Insight
Radboy: Vogue and Style.com act as historical gatekeepers of fashion
“You have to understand that when people, you know, you have these institutions like Vogue and Style.com, and they're like the Library of Congress of fashion. So they, their, your entry means that you happened. So when they refuse to even record that you had a …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Telfar generated over $1M converting fashion show marketing into revenue
“Like, at some point, we were bringing in over a million dollars just from doing shows, so what you would consider marketing is actually, it wasn't an expense, it was Our income.”
Insight
Radboy: Most fashion brand collaborations are superficial PR stunts with small fees
“Well, think, you know, these things are usually for show. They're for press. It's just, you want a press release saying that happened, and then you get a little check for your design fee.”
Insight
Fashion overproduction and unoptimized supply chains drive up retail apparel prices
“Overproducing by design, right? Two collections, like, you know, 400 items every six months. Absolutely wasteful. And you end up, when you have to make like that, that's why you are selling a pair of jeans for a thousand dollars, is because you didn't figure o…”