What (Relatively Rich) Women Want

0:03Hello and welcome to Fashion People. I'm Lauren Sherman, writer of Puck's fashion and beauty memo line sheet. And today with me on the show is Isabel Wilkinson Schor, founder of Attersee. We discuss building a DTC brand in the post-DTC era, what women want to wear in 2025, and plenty more.

0:30Before we get going, I wanted to remind you that if you like this podcast, you'll definitely love Puck, where I send an email called Line Sheet. If you're a fashion person, you get that reference. It's an original look at what's really going on inside the fashion and beauty industries. Line Sheet is scoopy, analytical, and above all, fun. Along with me, a subscription to Puck gains you access to an unmatched roster of experts reporting on powerful people and companies in entertainment, media, sports, politics, finance, the art world, and much more. If you're interested, listeners of Fashion People get a discount.

1:05Just go to puck.news slash fashion people to join Puck or start a free trial. Happy Friday, everyone. Hope you had a great week. I'm back from Chicago in beautiful Los Angeles. The weather here is very fine. I never want to leave until September. Let's do it. Let's not leave the state of California until September. That is my goal. This weekend line sheet, we've got it all. Updates on the Devil Wears Prada 2, on the search for the next editor of American Vogue or head of editorial content or whatever the title is. I always forget. But I also look at how the business of celebrity fashion campaigns is changing.

1:52So in the last couple of years, celebs are commanding way more money than they did just a few years ago to front a campaign. I have details. I have numbers. It's a really interesting look at how the business of fashion, the business of Hollywood work and how they work together. Rachel Strugez has details on Ami Kohl's closure and why Sephora, where that brand was distributed, isn't always a magic bullet for beauty. And today, in today's issue, Sarah Shapiro has a really interesting look at the top brands trending on Shopmy, the affiliate marketing platform. This data is exclusive to LineSheet and Puck, so be sure to check it out.

2:35And let's get going with Isabel, I have known her for a long time, have a huge amount of respect for her and what she's building, and I hope you will enjoy this.

2:47Isabel Wilkinson, welcome to Fashion People. Thanks so much for having me. I'm so happy to have you. We go way back, and so I'm excited to chat about your journey. First off, what'd you have for breakfast this morning? Oh my God, I had scrambled eggs and wasa crackers, which I kind of have every day now, or some sort of yogurt. But yeah, that was today. Oh, that sounds really good. I'm about to eat some goop kitchen and I'm very hungry. So that's a perfect breakfast. So you, and the reason we go so far back is you were an editor for a long time. And in some ways you still are an editor, but tell me a little bit about your history in fashion.

3:34It started in media. Yeah, I started at the Daily Beast, where I think you and I first interacted. I was the third intern at the Daily Beast out of grad school. And I moved to LA to help Gabby Doppelt open the West Coast Bureau for Tina back in the day, which was really fun. And it was a very small, very scrappy team. And they just started kicking me assignments. And I started covering kind of everything. I started as a breaking news reporter, as an intern covering international and business. And then when I got to L.A., started specializing in entertainment stories. And then from there, really specializing in art and fashion coverage.

4:25and then moved back to New York after three years of living there. They said I was going to be moving for three months, and I ended up spending three years there. And once I got back to New York, we launched something called Fashion Beast at the time, which was the Daily Beast fashion coverage. And then everything happened with Newsweek, And I was leading arts and fashion coverage for the magazine for a while. And yeah, from there on, and it was really an incredible experience to learn so directly from Tina, who remains. Tina Brown. Tina Brown, sorry, who remains a real, you know, mentor and, you know, just kind of general leader for me.

5:18and soon after that I went to go work for Stella Bugbee at The Cut and those were two a little over two years that were so much fun it was a totally different I would say journalistic ecosystem there there was a lot of volume and there it was a really really funny, really smart team and group of women that I continue to follow and admire and, you know, stay in touch with. And Stella was a wonderful, really, and remains a friend and mentor for me as well. And wonderful boss. She had such a great news sense. And I feel like, you know, and I was, I'm lucky enough to have worked with really, four really strong women my entire career.

6:09And I feel, you know, so much of what many of them instilled was just a really fun workplace and having a great group of people where you can really laugh with your co-workers. And I felt that in so many of those early jobs. And I almost feel a duty to bring that spirit to my workplace now. So Gabby, many people know because of San Vicente Bungalows, And also, or they know her from when she was at W and all these other magazines and working on movie sets as the sort of fashion liaison. And she's a really amazing, incredible person. And I only recently found out, connected the dots that you worked for her.

6:54What was it like being in L.A. at that time and working at a place like the Daily Beast, which was sort of the future of journalism in that moment? Yeah, it was for me, it was there was something so new guard about it at the time. And I felt like I was learning how to fly and learning how to be a journalist and learning how to report and yet also learning an entirely new tool set. And so everyone, I was very lucky in that many of these extremely established editors like Gabby were also open to new voices for the first time. and they also you know I think that Tina really set a tone of the beast in a way that all of us emulated it was feisty and you know had a bit of bite I think she would say and and that it was kind of an it was very voicey and you know I think Tina I now am an avid reader of Fresh Hell her sub stack and she still definitely has that trademark voice.

8:01And, and from New York mag, you went to tea. And so you had pretty amazing experiences. And I think I actually wrote for you at every one of them because your time at those places overlapped with me freelancing. and, and I, I see that I, the daily beast was really fun. It was just, it, it felt like there was a thing of sort of, I have this idea and run with it. And that I could sense that from you, what made you, so you're on, you're ostensibly on this podcast because you own this brand Addersey that I wear and talk about and we write about a lot and everyone in the fashion industry talks and writes about a lot.

8:48But how did you go from being an editor at places that, you know, were viable and most, you know, still all three still are actually to wanting to start your own brand and why, what happened to make that happen? Yeah, I had almost a six-year run at T Magazine after I left The Cut, working for Deborah Needleman and then for Hanya. And over the course of that time, I, and again, I felt very inspired by the work I was doing. I loved the reporting and the editing. And I also felt this increasing need to be closer to product. And as I, you know, in a very personal way, sitting at a desk all day and then, you know, as so many editors do, wearing multiple hats outside of the office as well.

9:51While I was at tea, especially, I found that there were so many things missing from my wardrobe that I needed. And I never thought that this would be turned into a fashion business. I just was listening really closely to the things that I wanted to wear and the things that I was missing from my own life. And it started this curiosity about product. And I had always had a really deep passion for product as early as I can remember, I never saw myself as a big shopper. I was more, I call myself almost like a heavy wearer. The things that I liked the most, I would just have in such heavy rotation and be so loyal to certain things in my closet.

10:34And when I got to as corporate an environment as the times, I would call it a creative corporate environment and constantly having to dress for events after work and important meetings and feeling like I almost had a split personality in that I was trying over the course of a single day to be four different people. I realized how much I was lacking in what I thought of as high quality wardrobe staples. And back as early as 2015, right after I got to the Times, which the Times building happens to be kind of adjacent to the garment district in New York. I would sneak out on a couple lunch breaks to a sample room that I had found and was just trying to make a couple good shirt silhouettes that I felt were missing from my closet.

11:26And that's where the germ of the idea started. Yeah. So basics are not are easy to find. So a white shirt, a polo shirt, a slip dress, what have you. But I would say you mentioned high quality. And to me, the thing that sets Addersey apart is the quality of the fabric and the attention to detail with the design. Did you know that there was because where you sit price wise is it's not cheap, obviously, but it's also not as expensive as a lot of most designer brands. so it feels for a customer who's used to shopping designer it feels like a really good value because you can leave your showroom or leave the website under a thousand dollars and have something substantial that you've bought or a couple of things how did you think about the one once you started making these shirts and you realized okay i think i'm actually going to do something how did you start thinking about the pricing and and what when you were sort of creating the brand what was the brand architecture that you built initially and how has it evolved yeah I at the beginning when you know I was still this was still just a germ of an idea I had certain things in my closet that were a designer price point right and I felt like they always lived in plastic or in a garment bag.

13:07And I didn't really feel like I could live in those clothes. And then the clothes that I was living in every day were really low quality or frankly, they weren't that comfortable or they were not easy to style. And I felt like there was just this white space forming without even really being able to describe it for clothes that were and pieces that had so much quality that they didn't really sit inside a trend or that I knew that I could have them for a long time. I knew I could style them really easily with other things and they didn't provide friction. That was this big thing that I always felt every morning getting dressed.

13:48I had a heap of clothes that I would cycle through and I was like possibilities to wear for the day. And it was this constant calculation between the weather outside, the meetings I had that day, where I had to be later that night. And it was just a kind of option pile of discards. And I felt when I was, you know, forming Addersey and the idea really started to form, it was how can we provide this quality and also this sense of ease. And ease to me meant ease of wear. So like really comfortable fabrics that are so high quality that you're going to feel really comfortable in them throughout your day.

14:29Ease of how to style them. I know that they're going to fit in with what I already have. I know how to look good in this. Ease of fit, right? I know this looks good on me. I can sit in these pants for the whole day. All of those things started to fill in this concept of ease. The other thing, it's very polished, but the thing you're talking about ease and the thing you said about people talk about day to night a lot, but I think in New York, it's a particular issue because there's also the environmental factor. So even if you have the perfect outfit in the morning, you're outside and you're on a train and you're in this, you mentioned it's raining today.

15:16You kind of can't escape the environment. So I find when I come back and I remember I would just be carrying these like huge bags everywhere because I would need an outfit and I couldn't go back to Brooklyn to change. And then I joined the wings so that I had a place to shower and change after work and all of that stuff. And, um, there is a certain polish to everything you do. And it does make people feel, I think the dresses and the pants in particular, but also you did an, a Nick cardigan that has covered buttons that you've done in many iterations that I own that Liz Goff at, at puck owns a lot.

16:02A lot of my friends, I've worn it to a lot of events, but also you can wear it with jeans during the day. Is there something about the polish too? Because you're a very polished person, but you never look fussy or anything that you think is missing in a lot of the market and just the way people dress today. Because I find that I always want to look polished, even if I'm wearing like track shorts and a shirt, but it's hard to do that with what's on offer for the most part. Yeah, I think so many of our clients, first of all, hi, Liz Goff. Thank you for owning the sculpted cardigan. She owns much Addersey.

16:39So does Alex Bigler. Alex Bigler, you're number one fan. That's right back at you. I think the Polish question is what it's been such a delight to see women, especially at our in-person events and in the studio, buy full outfits from us. and we can talk about that. I know we'll talk about events, but I love, and this is something of really of how we design as well. We always design as kind of full outfits. Like if someone were to buy this full look and they often do, what are the components of that? Because we've seen, we rarely do full occasion wear with a capital O. We have seen that occasion in New York at least is very often going out to dinner or something like that.

17:22And it's kind of, as you say, these polished separates. But what I find really delightful is when someone takes something from that quote unquote outfit, like the sculpted cardigan, and then pairs it with track shorts or jeans. And you just see how we've kind of given you a base for your own personal style. And that to me is where it gets really exciting when, you know, to see women just interpret things entirely in their own way.

17:54When you started, you started totally. And are you still totally direct to consumer? Do you have a couple wholesale or is it all? We now have a few wholesale partners. Okay. So let's, in the beginning, you started DTC, which you started a DTC business. A, the price point is higher than a lot of the traditional, as we think of DTC businesses. But B, you started that at a time when DTC was sort of going out of fashion almost, that people were relying more on other retailers and kind of going back to the old model. Why was it important to you to ground the business in direct-to-consumer? Well, I founded Outer Sea in 2021.

18:37So we were right on the tail end of COVID at that time. And the world was opening back up again to really from a mindset perspective to travel. People were coming out of their homes. They were coming out of quarantine. But I think they were still really used to shopping online. um however i think a lot there were as you said there were you know certain quality expectations of what they would get online you know often with a when you make an online purchase if you haven't seen the brand in person you kind of don't know what the quality is going to be and very soon after we launched um we it was really by our second collection people started saying where can I try this on in person?

19:22How can I see the fabric? Do you guys have a warehouse in New York? I can pop up to your office, which we didn't have yet. And so basically right around that time, I was signing a lease on an office on 64th Street and Madison up in the top floor of a building. And we were getting these requests almost daily to try things on. And we were then doing rush orders from our warehouse to get the products in and scheduling people by appointment to come into this little office that we had rented, which was a former fitness studio. And there were reps written on whiteboards on the walls of the space. And so we got these pieces in for people from our warehouse.

20:08And then more and more of them started to come almost every day. And we realized very early on that we had to close it and reopen it as a real retail space. And what kind of data did you get from those early days of interacting with customers in person? We got all the data as we continue to do when you're standing with someone in your product in front of the mirror. They will tell you everything. And that has been the unlock for me in these first four years of the business. As you know, I do not have a traditional fashion background at all. And so I have seen these four years of just learning and building.

20:52And now, you know, from there, it was going to city, every city myself and meeting with women and hearing their feedback. And not only would they tell you extremely direct feedback about the product, they also would tell you about their lives, their lifestyle. Are they working? Are they not working? Are they doing school pickups? Are they running, sitting on a panel? Are they running a huge board meeting? They would tell you what their needs were very easily and quickly. And they would also tell you what they felt was missing in their lives. And they would tell you about certain colors that they were averse to, fabrics and how they fit, the rise of a crotch of, you know, and pants.

21:32And the feedback was fast and furious and it really helped form the basis of the brand. What were some things that bothered people or interested people that you were surprised about in those early days? You know, so basically we opened this studio and we got, you know, like I said, we then immediately closed it for renovation and only reopened it as a real store in 2023. And during that period, we were doing these trunk shows across the country and really taking the full collection and taking product with us to a range of cities. Los Angeles, Marin, Chicago, Greenwich, Connecticut, just to name a few, Palm Beach.

22:25And the thing that was so striking is how different the lifestyles were in every city. And, you know, and the you would expect Chicagoans to only want outerwear. But it turns out so many of them were going to Florida and they all wanted lightweight or, you know, and so you kind of couldn't guess until you you went. and then so many of the women we met on the road who have become long-term clients and really close friends really stay in touch with the brand. And we now know them really well by name. We know what they like and don't like. We send them pictures of new stuff when they're still in development.

23:06You know, often I take copious notes on every event and at every event and bring it back to the design team now. And we talk about these women by name in the design room. And then very often I will snap pictures and send them notes or, you know, tell these women what's coming. And so it's very personal. And it's been wonderful because many of those women have stayed close to, you know, stayed close to the brand and they come see us in New York and they shop us online. And it's been very organic from there. Is the conversion rate of the in-store or not the conversion rate, but is the basket for in-store much higher than online?

23:53It is. Yeah. And I know from my personal experience that I can't leave you without buying like four things if I go in person and try stuff on. Yeah. We have learned very quickly that in-person really works for us, both in the studio and at all of these events around the country. And can you hear me? Like I said, so much of it is understanding fit and fabric, but it's also really understanding the outfit, what I call infinite outfitting options in person. And it can be hard to do when you're, you know, obviously online, you can suggest wear it with and pair it with this, but it's only when you're standing in front of a mirror working very slowly or not very slowly, but really taking time with a sales associate to understand, okay, if I buy this jacket, it looks good with these four pants.

24:51And then this pant also works with that knit. And you start to see that there are these building blocks that all go with each other. So let's talk about the trunk shows, because it reminds me of, I think they became more popular again. They've always been popular with designer brands. Michael Kors famously will do a trunk show at a department store and it's a kind of meet and greet and he fits things. And it's this way to get the customer engaged with the brand on a deeper level and higher volume. Then they end up buying more, all that stuff. But then I think in COVID and also I moved to LA during COVID.

25:38So I get invited to a lot of trunk shows with designers who are based in New York, where I don't think in New York, you do them for everyone because you have the studio and it's a part of your business. But it just feels like it became a bigger thing in the past five years because there wasn't as much in-store interaction. But it's also, I think back to, I was actually talking about your brand with someone the other day and I said, you know, it's, and I don't, you might hate this comparison, but do you know about Carlisle collection? I don't. So it's like, you don't want to know about it, but it's, there's a great Christina Binkley article.

26:17Actually, you should read this that, and it was essentially, and I'm sure it still exists, but it is a private clothing company. They probably still do it where they would go from place to place and sell suiting and of, and separate directly to the customer. There was no website. You couldn't even buy it online for a long time. And it was really popular with like female politicians and politicians wives. And it was this big secret. I think Christina wrote it for the wall street journal. And I always thought it was such a smart business idea because you are connecting with these people one-to-one and they will spend a good amount of money.

27:01But how much of it, and yours is like the modern version of that. There's no silliness in that it's available online if you want it, it's accessible, but there is still that like real one-to-one thing, even as you scale and how much has the trunk show element of it. Is it every time you come out here, I try to stop by and I, I know you'll, you'll go up to San Francisco and stop at hero shop with Emily hold. And you're going to all these cities, meeting all these people. And I, we know my, our friend, Danielle Sherman does a similar thing with Sherman failed her jewelry line. How important has that trunk show element been to the development of the brand?

27:50It's been really fundamental in the first four years as we built the brand. Like I said, it really has been invaluable to have a direct line to the customer and have the opportunity to listen and learn from them. And the lessons are so different in every city and in every market. And it starts to get really interesting when you look at the data overall of, okay, this many percentage of women bought these pants with this jacket. Or, you know, there are always be things that surprise you. And it becomes a totally different business than your online business very easily. And, you know, the wonderful and beautiful thing that's now happening is that we're going to new markets and more people have heard of us.

28:40But so many of these women come through New York at one time or another throughout their year. And so they do come and see us in the studio and we really can show them the full collection and spend more time with them. And then the greatest thing is going back and having kind of repeat regular presence in different cities and have them kind of know that we're coming every season and it feels like an event to count on. And so it's been really wonderful. It personally is just so fun for me. I love meeting people. I love talking to people. I very often, you know, I just want to like sit and chat.

29:22And so it's just an extremely wonderful part of this.

29:33What have you learned about pricing? because pricing is such a big topic in fashion right now. I've heard from so many people about, um, you know, I'm talking to one of the groups later today about what their pricing situation and how they should manage it. And your pricing is, is just feels very intentional. What have you learned? Like, where are people willing to just go all out? Where do you have to be really careful? do they comment on the pricing? Are you dealing with a kind of customer that it's not really an issue? Like what have you learned about that during this time? Because pricing has become such a bigger, it's become more top of mind in the media since you've been doing this.