Alison Loehnis on YOOX NET-A-PORTER, balancing work and family, food memories and growing up in Manhattan

24:19And then when I really started cooking more, actually, is when I moved to London. And I'll never forget, I moved here. It was during the May bank holiday weekend of 2001, so just before 9-11. And I was really excited about coming. I was coming for a short stint for a job. I was allowed to come and work out of our London office for six months, moved over, moved into this corporate flat, and I realized that the weekend I was going to arrive was a bank holiday and that maybe people wouldn't be around, so I might be all on my own. And I remember thinking, gosh, I'm going to be so lonely here. What am I going to do?

24:54And I thought, I did two things. One, I wrote in a little notebook the name of everyone I knew in London, just so I could remind myself that I wasn't alone, even if they weren't in town. And then the second thing is, I'm just going to cook. And I remember going to the grocery store and going to Waitrose, which was like a revelation. Yeah. Because it was so much nicer than any grocery store I'd ever seen in New York. And of course, when I moved here, I don't think London was even, you know, was not nearly where it is now in terms of its reputation in terms of food. And I remember all these Americans would be like, oh, my God, you're not going to be able to eat anything.

25:25And by the way, they don't refrigerate their eggs. That's right. That was amazing. I remember that. And I was like, I think it's going to be okay. Eggs in the supermarket. Yeah, that's right. They don't refer to it. They don't use napkins. Do you remember how people don't use napkins? Thank you. Please. Sorry about these guys. No. They don't. Can you please? Okay. Ruthie. They don't. Thank you. I have said this to so many people over the years. The number of dinners I've been to, delicious, yummy, cozy dinners at home, seasoned hosts, and I would sit there and I'd reach for the thing to put on my, and there were no napkins.

25:56No napkins. Okay. So I'm not a weirdo. Okay. That makes me feel so much better. No, no. The no napkin thing was like, yeah, shocking. I think it's changed now. Yeah, well, it seems to. I can't say. Even if I have like a piece of bread, I always have to have a napkin too. Yes, I mean, even if I'm eating someone for a drink and there's a napkin on the table, the napkin goes down. We love napkins. We go on for hours about napkins. Yeah. Does anyone ever ask you here for a black napkin? Oh, no. So I discovered this in New York. It's such a New York thing. I was having dinner with a friend who's wearing black, and your napkins actually don't shed.

26:27But there's a number, you know, some of those really linen-y napkins, you're wearing black. And a friend of mine called the waiter over and said, Hi, may I please have a black napkin? Oh, wow. And I was like, what's a black napkin? And she goes, they have black napkins. They don't get on your stuff. A friend of mine worked at Soho House in New York. One of our chefs went to open Soho House in L.A. They had square plates. I think it was fashionable at the time. And he said there were clients who just would only eat on a round plate. So there you go. You can only have a black napkin on a round plate.

26:58Anyway. I digress. And, you know, it's funny because I love trying different foods and different dishes. But, however, I'm very happy. Once I like something, I'm happy to stick with it for a long period of time. And my friends have always made fun of me. I mean, I would literally – I remember in New York, there was this one place we used to go, and I used to order the same thing. And I probably ordered the same thing for two years, and then I'm done. So you know what the equivalent of that is? Wearing the same clothes every day. Yeah, maybe. I mean, there was a period when my husband was very sick, and there were all these things that were going.

27:28And I realized that I could just wear the same denim skirt every single day. As a matter of fact, the denim skirt was stolen not long ago. Oh, no. And my suitcase, which they put out on the street, the person forgot to put it in the boot. So the suitcase was stolen. I came back and told Charles, our manager, I said, you know, the suitcase was stolen and my denim skirt was in it. And he said, well, every cloud has a silver lining. But was there only one of the skirts? Denim skirts. Or did you have a few denim skirts? Yeah, but the choice, what I realized is that, you know, Decision, decision, decision.

27:59Like you in a restaurant, that somehow just knowing that every day, I don't care, I just put on the denim skirt. Uniform. You know, whatever it is. So maybe there is, you probably would never, ever think about wearing the same thing, the way you chose the same food. Yeah, that's true. So you could eat. And I don't think I'd go to a restaurant and have the same. So there's a fashion food thing. There's really a fashion food thing. I mean, I was thinking about it a lot in this sort of run up to today and just in general. And if you, I mean, everyone has to eat. But there are people that have very transactional relationships with food.

28:31You know, they just look at it like, I'm just going to eat and, you know, it's fuel. Similar to sort of clothes in that, you know, everyone has to get dressed and you can either just treat it as, okay, I need to cover my body to go out. But for me, in the same way, it's such a source of creativity and joy. And, you know, I've been asked a lot, you know, why do you love clothes? Why do you love fashion? I always assumed it's because my mom was really into fashion and I threw osmosis. I saw the joy that it brought her. But I think also, I went to a school where we had a very strict uniform. Tell me about that.

29:02What was the school? It was called Chapin in New York. And I don't know, it's probably less strict now. But we had, for lower school, you had to wear either a yellow seersucker or green tunic. And in the winter months, there was this polyester version. And then you wore a white blouse, and you had to wear green or yellow socks and brown hard shoes. Later on, you could wear boat shoes and things. And then for the upper school, you had to wear a kilt. And you had to have a collar and specific colors. But it was quite, you know, it was strict. And when we would have a field day, a sports day, I would lie in bed thinking like, oh, my gosh, what am I going to wear?

29:37Not what am I going to wear to like wow anyone, but just I get to choose. I get to choose. And I would drive my mom insane. Do you think I could wear? Anyway, and so I realized that to me, fashion is self-expression. It's freedom. And it's the same thing, being able to choose, you know, having the privilege of choosing what you eat, where you eat it, putting things together, experimenting. And it's choice. And it's just having that, the freedom to choose. And actually, it's really funny. I was thinking, sorry, this is a bit of a tangent, but about choice. And I was, we used to, there was this candy store out in Watermill called the Penny Candy Store that was around for years.

30:16It was like the equivalent of like a little news agent here that sold candy. And when we would have this tradition with my dad, where he would take us to the Penny candy store and we each would have, I remember at first it was a dollar and then it was$2 and you could choose what you wanted. And the people in the store were super strict. So literally like if you went over by a cent, you had to put something back. But I remember there was this thing around, I don't know what made me think of this just now, but there's this thing around choice. And I, I always knew exactly what I wanted from that pen and candy thing.

30:44And I'd go to my sister and she would take like an hour. And the question was, do you want one big thing? Do you want lots of little things and how do you sort of like your grandma that can I have two lunches like how do I get the most out of this little um the thing is that it's also about I certainly think about it in food and I know you think about it in clothes the other issues the issues of food poverty of the fact that there are people who don't have a choice because there are no well first of all we know that in the Bronx where you and I know very well that there are no vegetable shops.

31:17And if you want to buy a carrot, there aren't any. And then people who can't afford to give their children a home-cooked meal because they're working at Amazon and they have to be there for the night shift. Or maybe there's a mother who'd rather do homework with her kid than cook for her kid. So they order out or they go to, you know, fast food places or, and we know that there are no choices as we know also with fashion and, you know, what we can wear and what we can afford to wear and what people can express their identity. And there's vintage clothes and there's used clothes and there's difficult times for that.

31:54But I know it's a concern of yours. Very much so. And I think that'd be interesting to discuss. Yeah. I mean, I've always felt or we've always felt such a huge responsibility to give back from a business perspective, to give back to the communities that we serve. So a really great example is for Net-a-Porter, we have these vans where we do a same-day delivery in certain cities around the world. And the dream was always, okay, we're delivering beautiful clothes to discerning, wonderful customers, but then the vans come back empty, right? And could there be a way that we could use those vans for the greater good, right?

32:26So we've done all kinds of things. For example, we worked with the Good Plus Foundation in New York. We were collecting from customers lightly used or unused children's clothing, toys, accessories the parents might need, call it a baby carrier or things like this. So when you get your delivery from the van and then you might say, well, guess what? My kid has just outgrown their toddler bed or what have you. And then we would collect that in our vans and then bring it back to the charity, which really was great. And during COVID, we were able to use the deepest, darkest moments of lockdown to use some of our vehicles for food delivery, things of that nature.

33:08I think with clothes, and I think the awareness is so much greater now, and I see this wonderfully in my kids and their generation, this notion of clothing not just having a second life, but a third life. And so on the one hand, there's industry around that. Okay, you can rent things. You can buy things secondhand if you want something designer and you can't afford it. Okay, great. And it democratizes fashion. But I think the other thing that's wonderful is there's so much – it's not wonderful that there's so much excess, but the excess can be put to good use. these wonderful organizations like Dress for Success, which work with women.

33:40Yeah, I've met them. Right? And it's fabulous. Tell us about Dress for Success. Well, we've worked with them in the past where they're bringing women back into the workforce. And so they're women who have either come out of very hard domestic situations, women who've come out of prison, and they come and they're doing these interviews and they're trying to get back into society, and they don't have anything to wear. They don't have a pair of shoes that are decent. They have an old pair of sneakers. And so it's dress for success. It's, you know, they have these outposts where essentially you could go in, you're given interview training, but also how do you show up?

34:13What's the appropriate thing to wear? And then there's a wardrobe that you can choose from. And it really sets you up. And so I think there's so many ways that one can get involved. And, you know, in London, there's so many friends who are doing great car boot sales and things of this nature, just as a way, you know, because if you're in a privileged position where you have not only enough, but you've got too much, what can you do with to help someone else or to sort of help, even in a small way, try and tackle these gargantuan problems. And tell me more about Net-A-Porter. When did you start working?

34:44So I started almost, well, 18 years ago. And we were, it wasn't, gosh, it wasn't a startup. When did it start? When did it? It's going to be 25 in June. Okay, so seven years into? Seven years in, a remarkable business, a remarkable founder, a remarkable team. and I remember, I mean, I had been there, it was a newsletter that had launched in the 90s called Daily Candy. I don't know if you remember this. And I remember, and it was all things, sort of what's going on in fashion and what's going on with restaurants, what's going on with culture. And I remember seeing, I was in New York and seeing this email saying there's this website that's going to be selling fashion.

35:22And I remember signing up immediately, thinking, God, what could be better? I always loved fashion, this idea, could you get stuff delivered? I remember the very first thing that I bought, which I still have, which is this Chloe satin drop waist dress. I haven't worn it probably for a long time, but it still sits there. It's this wonderful memento. And, you know, the mission was really to make this fashion consumer's life easier and to also inspire her. And so what we've seen firsthand and what I feel so privileged is not just to work with super teams and really amazing individuals, but really just to see the joy that fashion can bring.

36:01Again, you're not solving the world's problems, but it really can put a spring in your step, just like you see here every second of the day. People sit down, and whatever troubles they had or whatever they've got going on, they take a bite, and you'll see the shoulders come down and the spark in their eyes, and it's that... Celebratory, isn't it? Yeah. And so you started working there, and then what was the trajectory for being a woman? So I started working there running sales and marketing. And then I started running Net-A-Porter in its entirety. We then launched a number of other businesses, the Outnet, which is a discount business, Mr.

36:37Porter, which was a men's business. And over the 18 years, was involved in those launches with great teams. And then I started running Net-A-Porter and Mr. Porter. And then I ran Net-A-Porter, Mr. Porter, and the Outnet. And then we merged with an Italian business called Ux. and then I ran all four stores. So how many people were you? Well, when I joined, we were probably about 100, 150 people. And today we're 2 ,500 and change. And there's been different ownership and everything along the way. So I feel like I've worn lots of different hats under the same roof. What does it feel like to be a woman who is in this position?

37:16Is it something that you are thinking about other women? Are you thinking about your own kids? It's, you know, is it thinking about the future now, what we've achieved, what we have to do? I mean, especially in this world right now that we're here, where there seems to be so much backward going on. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you know, I think I had a couple of great role models. You know, my mom, as I said, was, you know, she's not just a working woman, but I think she really taught me indirectly that being a mom and being a working woman and having a successful career are not mutually exclusive. I also had at my school in New York this phenomenal headmistress named Mildred Berenson, who would stand at a podium.

38:00She was amazing. She would stand at a podium, our little lectern, when we had our assemblies. And she was always immaculately dressed. And she wore these little pumps. I think they must have been those Ferragamo pumps with the bows. And she had this habit of just sort of clicking her heels together. And I remember she would be sort of immaculate, clicking her Ferragamo pumps. And she'd say, because it was a girls' school I went to. And she'd say, girls can do anything. One day a woman will be president. And as a kid, I mean, I barely was paying attention, I'm sure. I thought it was washing over me.

38:29But it was interesting because when I eventually went to a co-ed school, I never for a second thought I was lesser of anything by being a girl. So I think it did kind of sink in. And then as I started a career and advanced in a career, the question that I get from younger women all the time is, how do you do it? Not even like how do you do it because you're so great, How do you do all these things? How can you do all these things? And I remember reading something in one of the supplements here, and I can't remember, it might have been Nigella Lawson who said it, which was around just, it was something around prioritization.

39:06And I think that piece had said, you know, you can have an active social life, you can have all these things, you can't necessarily have them all on full volume at the same time. But what I took away was this priority piece. And the thing that I believe in so strongly is just you need to know what your priorities are. You don't have to justify them to anybody, but know what they are. And then your answer will always sit comfortably with you. So for me, I always knew it was my family. For someone else, it might be their career. That's their choice. But then you know, okay, it's this thing and it's that thing.

39:36And so you have to, okay, sometimes you have no choice, right? But in the instances where you can make it. And I think the other piece of advice I would always give is just set your stall out early on. Meaning you're starting a job. Let's say I'm coming to work for you. Yeah, that's a good idea. Lucky me, if I were. And I'm trying to work for you, and I've just had a baby. Yeah. And there are only certain hours I can do. Instead of, or I need to make sure I'm out of, you know, in a restaurant's probably not the best example, but I'm running the shop, and these are, instead of being embarrassed about it, instead of looking at my watch and stressing out, I would say to you, hey, Ruthie, I'd really love to come and, you know, work with you.

40:13But every day I need to make sure that my bag is packed at 6 p.m. because I have a child. And then you can choose whether you hire me or not. But just lay it out. Just lay out the ways in which you work and sort of what works. Anyway, and just being upfront about it. Yeah. I think that also is the responsibility of all of us who hire people. When I did my first book, Gail Reebok was head of Random House, and she would not let a meeting be scheduled after 5 o 'clock. There were just no meetings that you could have where a woman was thinking about her kids being picked up from school. You know, a man could sort of stumble home like 7 and was late at the office.

40:53And so there was a whole initiative. But I think for us, for me, I think about the people who have no choice, you know, the people who are packing shelves at supermarkets or taxi cab driver or working in a... You know, the responsibility is on us to provide workspaces that, for the person who's washing the dishes or coming in one day a week, how we do that. And I think women helping women, women directing is so crucial. You know, women in leadership, too. I mean, luckily, we're far more evolved than we were as a society years and years ago. But still, you know, I look at my industry and way less than a third of the leadership roles are held by women.

41:37You know, people always, I mean, fashion, there's lots of women working in fashion. When you look at leadership, it's... Yeah, same thing. Architecture schools are full. I think it's something like 60 % women, 40 % men, and then partnerships, you know, the boards are really low. So there's a lot of work to do. And we, by the way, do we think that we will have a woman president? Yes, we will. This has been drilled into me. Yes, and Mildred Berenson, rest in peace, knew what she was talking about.

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43:47Malcolm Gladwell here. I recently recorded the first episode of Smart Talks with IBM, where I learned how AI agents are joining AI assistants as a major productivity tool. Let's start with AI agents. AI agents can reason, plan, and collaborate with other AI tools to autonomously perform tasks for a user. Brian Bissell, an expert from IBM, gave me an example of how a college freshman might use an AI agent. As a new student, you may not know, how do I do with my health and wellness issue? How many credits am I going to get for this given class? You could talk to someone and find out some of that, but maybe it's a little bit sensitive and you don't want to do that.

44:28Bissell told me, you could build an AI agent, a resource for new students that helps them navigate a new campus, register for classes, access the services they need, and even schedule appointments on their behalf, which in turn buys them more time to focus on their actual schoolwork. We can see patterns of how agents and assistants can help employees and customers and end users be more productive, automate workflows so they're not doing certain types of repetitive work over and over again and streamlining their lives and making data more accessible to them 24 hours a day. To learn more about IBM's AI agents and how they can help your business, visit ibm.com slash agents.

45:15So you chose the recipe for Banya Cattle, which is really a great thing. So tell me why you chose it, of all the recipes and all the River Cafe books. You chose the Bagnacotta. First of all, it's very hard to choose. I think in the case of Bagnacotta, one, I'm a savory person. I love anchovies. And it's got a real umaminess to it, I feel like, the Bagnacotta sauce. Interestingly, we've never had it in Italy. We've only ever had it either here or at home. Have you ever been to the north-north of Italy? Yes. Because that's where it comes from, like the mountainous region of Piedmont. And it's so, you know, it's been a tradition in our house for years where we always used to have it.

45:56My husband's a phenomenal cook and we always used to have it on New Year's Day. Oh, nice thing to get out of there. And it would be one of those things where you'd kind of wake up a little bit tired. Yeah, yeah. And it was just, it sort of hit all the spots that you needed it to. So we would always have Binding Cowderd and that was our thing. And so we do it with cooked vegetables in winter months, but we also do it with fresh crudités in the summertime. So you dip it. And use it as a dip as opposed to a dressing. I mean, I could drink it. I love it. Yeah, I love it too. I love the, as you say, the saltiness.

46:26And then, as you say, the seasonality of it in the winter. Well, the recipe that you have, I think it had carrots, it had chard, and it had fennel, and it had something else, an artichoke. It's really nice with an artichoke, because visually, to see a whole artichoke. Okay, so bania cauda with Prosecco. Serves six people. You will need 760 ml of Prosecco, three garlic cloves peeled, 300 grams of Swiss chard, two fennel bulbs cut into six wedges, three celery hearts quartered, 12 salted anchovies cleaned and filleted, 250 grams of unsalted butter and 50 ml of olive oil. Yum. You put the Prosecco into a saucepan, add the garlic and boil it until the Prosecco has reduced and the garlic is soft.

47:19Remove from the heat. Blanch the Swiss chard, remove, and then boil fennel and celery until soft. Drain. Return the saucepan with the reduced Prosecco and soften garlic to the heat and add the anchovy fillets. allow them to melt into the mixture. Gently whisk in the softened butter. Remove the pan from the heat after the first addition of butter. When all the butter has been incorporated, add the olive oil and black pepper. Arrange the warm vegetables on a serving plate. Pour over the sauce and serve immediately. Yum. Yum. So you're just saying that Al is a really good cook. Al is a very good cook.

47:59Tell me about his cooking. So he is the second of three boys. and growing up, they spent a lot of time in Wales, and my father-in-law was away a lot for work. And so my mother-in-law very wisely thought, oh, wait, I'm spending this time in Wales, I'm at the top of this hill, the weather's horrendous, and I've got these three boys, I'm going to teach them to cook, or I'm going to become a short-order cook. So lo and behold, you have these three men who became great cooks, and my husband trained, actually, as a chef, so he always worked in restaurants and things during his gap year, and right after, I think it was just finishing university, he was trained by the Rue brothers.

48:38And he has this just incredible, I think, curiosity, but also imagination and creativity. I mean, he can open a cupboard and see all these disparate ingredients and see a dish. And I always laugh because to me, I just see disparate ingredients. So I think my fashion corollary is I can up a closet and I can see lots of different ways of wearing things. But I do not have his skills in the kitchen. What I think has been touching from a great conversation is that how many of your memories, whether it was going to Brown, whether it was meeting your father on Friday afternoons, whether it was your mother's cooking or her work, or coming to London and making a notebook of friends to call, which I shared as well, or right now trying to, you know, deciding what to eat with your husband.

49:30It's about food and memories and memories of food and how if food is alleviating hunger and food is sharing, food is entertaining, food is creating a framework for your children of adventure, it's also comfort. If you do need comfort, if you feel like something that will just give you comfort, is there something that you would go to, Alice, and learn this? Chicken soup. Chicken soup, hands down. just from a really young age, soup was always the thing that I was given to make you feel better. But unlike things, let's say like ginger ale, which you were given when you felt sick, and any time I even smell it now, I feel sick because it's a sensation.

50:11Chicken soup was one of those things where immediately you would feel better. And I remember my grandmother, my maternal grandmother, who is not a sensational cook, made a great chicken soup, lots of dill. She had matzo balls in them that my father described as hockey pucks, but I loved them. And it was always my thing. And there was this place in New York that closed down years ago, but when I was having takeout all the time, called the International Poultry Company. And I remember ordering like quarts of matzo ball soup. And so that's always been my thing and my go-to. And I remember I wasn't married to my husband yet.

50:49I think we weren't even engaged. and I had come back from China and I got, I was incredibly sick, like sick, sick, sick. And I wasn't able to eat anything for about 10 days. And my mother-in-law, who's phenomenal, came over with this pot of chicken soup. And I just remember it was the first thing that I could eat. And it was like, it was like putting water on a wilting flower. And so always to me, it's chicken soup. And I've, you know, ideally my husband's chicken soup. There's a place in New York called Butterfield Market, these two sort of food stores on that breeze side, and they do a great chicken soup.

51:24So when I'm in New York, I mean, it could be a thousand degrees outside and I'm eating chicken soup. Okay. Well, we'll have that. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. I love having you here. I want to stay forever. Thank you. Yeah, stay forever. What are we going to do when we go to New York together? We're going to go back to that jewelry store. We'll go back to Brooke's store, Sandy Garber. We're going to go to eat. We'll have a tuna sandwich and then we'll go to the Met. Okay. I'm on. Let's do it. Thank you. Thank you.

51:54Thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table 4 in partnership with Montclair.

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53:22This is an iHeart Podcast.