“Being a boss is not my strength,” Eileen Fisher said as she shifted awkwardly to her seat in a sleek meeting room inside the headquarters of a company she started almost 40 years ago.
That might seem surprising, given the degree to which Fisher, 72, has proven herself a leader of staying power in an often brutal industry defined by relentless change.
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After all, she is a designer who built a fashion empire offering the modern woman comfortable yet empowering designs in natural fabrics that simplify busy life. In an industry in which, by some measures, a truckload of clothes is burned or buried in a landfill every second, she was an early pioneer of environmentalism as a core brand value. She is a founder of a company who, in 2006, decided that instead of taking her business public, or being acquired, she would transfer ownership to her employees.
But front and center has never been Fisher’s style. For most of its history, Eileen Fisher (the brand) has rarely had a CEO, opting instead for “collaborative teams” of various shapes and sizes. Only in the last 18 months or so has the company had a single CEO, in the form of Eileen Fisher (female). She stepped up to anchor the ship as the brand, as she put it, “lost its way.”
FILE Ñ The Eileen Fisher store on Columbus Avenue in Manhattan July 14, 2005. Fisher, who went from fashion industry to godmother of a movement, is preparing to pass the torch. (John Marshall Mantel/The New York Times)
Now, the queen of slow fashion is ready to step back from that role (albeit slowly), part of what she described as a “responsible transition” away from directing. This latest step back, she explained, would allow her to focus on formalizing her design philosophy so that the brand could eventually exist without her.
“Being a chief executive has never been part of me IdentIty; it’s never been something I’m comfortable with,” Fisher said in a video chat. “I like to think of myself as an idea leader.” Her signature bob shone like a pearl helmet, bouncing against her dark glasses as she spoke. She was dressed in one of the elegant, bountiful knits on which she has made a name and fortune for herself, in the process creating what The New Yorker called a “cult of interesting simplicity.”
“I have a vision for how this company should move forward, but I know I’m not the person to execute it,” she added. “Not by myself, though.”
Just do less
After searching for more than a year, Fisher said she was delighted to have found a successor. As of early September, Eileen Fisher’s new CEO will be Lisa Williams, the current head of product at Patagonia.
On paper, at least, Williams appears to be a good fit. Patagonia, which donates 1% of its sales environmental Groups, is another atypical retailer, also with a visionary founder and Eileen Fisher-like ideals of how products should be made, worn and — ideally — made and worn again.
A decade ahead of such efforts by many of her competitors, Fisher launched her Renew line in 2009, which sells used clothing, while the Waste No More initiative turns damaged clothing into fabric. Patagonia was also an early adopter of organic materials, has a long history of political activism, and once ran an ad telling people not to buy its products.
“The fashion industry is in a terrible mess, with too much stuff and rampant overproduction and overconsumption,” Fisher said. “How do we begin to understand it? How to grow our brand without growing ours carbon footprint? I just found that Lisa and I were so in sync when it came to scratching the surface of these complex conversations.”
Designer Eileen Fisher at her company’s Manhattan offices. (Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times)
Fisher noted that the two women were also fully committed to not being driven simply by financial results. (Likewise, Eileen Fisher has been profitable for all but two years since its inception, the company said, with sales of $241 million last year.) And few are as knowledgeable or connected as Williams when it comes to about the complex workings of the fashion supply chain, a global and murky ecosystem in which many brands have little or no knowledge of who makes their clothes.
“We both agree that one of the most important ways we can be sustainable is to reduce,” Fisher said. “Just do less: Buy less, consume less, produce less. That’s a really tough road to walk when you’re trying to run a business and you’re measuring your success by how much you sell. But I needed someone who was totally on board with that.”
A 20-year veteran of Patagonia, Williams said this week that she felt “family and admiration” for the Eileen Fisher brand and her way of doing business.
“The unconventional leadership structure there doesn’t make me nervous; I’m really in my comfort zone when things seem unorthodox,” said Williams, who has never held a CEO position before. “I think the idea of co-creation and collaboration absolutely can work in a company.”
“The past few years have been tough enough for anyone in retail, let alone those trying to change the fashion paradigm,” added Williams. “And I have great admiration for everything Eileen and her team have done in the midst of that chaos to re-anchor the brand back to its original values.”
Part of getting things back on track included cutting out some of the bolder colors and prints that had crept into the collections, instead re-emphasizing the hallmarks Fisher is known for. The latest clothes on her website come in a range of muted colors such as ecru, cinnabar and rye. Forms, like kimono jacket and sleeveless tunics and palazzo trousers cut in cotton or soft Irish gauzes and linens, are uncomplicated and designed to flatter.
The key now is to find a way to serve those views to the next generation.
A desire for simplicity
As the “beachy granny” trend on TikTok and the success of high-end luxury labels such as Jil Sander and The Row suggest, minimalist capsules – clothing collections made up of interchangeable items, thereby maximizing the number of outfits that can be created – have a renewed fashion moment. There seems to be a collective desire for simplicity—something Fisher has consistently delivered since the mid-1980s and her first kimono-inspired designs she saw on a trip to Kyoto, Japan.
A stereotype persists that the brand primarily caters to a more middle-aged, upper-middle-class demographic that seeks a distinct air of unfussy elegance. Fisher pointed out that this was no longer entirely true.
When she started the job in 1984, Fisher was a recent graduate of the University of Illinois. The second of seven children raised in the Chicago suburb of Des Plaines, she had originally come to New York to become a interior designer. (She had $350 in her bank account and couldn’t sew.) But she wanted to liberate women by giving them a formula.
The simpler something is, her thinking went, the more things go, the longer you wear it and the longer it stays in your wardrobe. It was an approach she felt might also resonate with young women, who are aware that they can vote with their wallets if they believe in the way their clothes are being made, even if it makes them more expensive. .
“It’s hard to get people to buy less with a promise that it will last longer, but I want them to see that they have a choice when they buy into our capsule system,” Fisher said, noting that she had found common ground between older and younger shoppers in their favorite pieces (box tops are a huge hit, she said). And it’s an approach that’s influencing not only young shoppers, but young designers as well.
“Eileen was one of the few industry leaders who made me feel like my company’s success was possible,” said Emily Bode, a menswear designer, who added that Fisher had been “extremely inspirational” to her while she laid the groundwork for it. own brand.
“When I was going through growing pains with Bode, I visited with Eileen and her team,” Bode said. “Her dedication to retail, slow growth, remaining privately owned and of course creating an unconventional but successful business model around reuse and sustainability has undeniably shaped my business strategy and achievements.”
Looking at past interviews, it’s clear that Fisher has long been struggling with how to break away from her brand. She has often spoken over the years about how she felt like she no longer needed to be there; she talked about the idea that the company had developed beyond her. And yet, here she is, still a long way from leaving.
“Those quotes were true in their moments,” she said. “But I think, over time, I came to realize that the idea of simple clothing and design, and how we spend money here, hadn’t quite come into the company in the way I thought it would. I had to go back to the center and rearrange things so that people know exactly how things are supposed to work. It is an important part of my legacy and what I leave behind.”
It is not finished with work
With the impending arrival of Williams, Fisher faces the prospect of a little more free time. She doesn’t want to travel, she said, instead preferring to spend more time doing kundalini yoga and meditation, playing mahjong with friends and learning how to cook good Japanese food after her boss’s recent retirement from many years. She also has two grown children, Emily and Zach, with whom she wants to spend more time.
Designer Eileen Fisher. (Source: Vincent Tullo)
But it’s clear Fisher isn’t done with the job. For one thing, outside of the office, she wants to continue focusing on education through her philanthropic organization, the Eileen Fisher Foundation. She has also fantasized about starting a design school.
And it wants to ensure its employees — all 774 part-owners of its brand — are ready for what comes next. Being a privately held company and giving its employees a piece of the business have been a big part of its success.
“I hope that what we’ve built here in Irvington is a close concept that in 30 years, the prototype of what we’re building is what other people can try and build,” Fisher said, referring to New York City. York. on the Hudson River where she lives and works.
“I don’t do trends, I don’t do runway shows, I haven’t been a conventional CEO,” she said with a small smile. “But then again, I guess I’ve never really been a conventional fashion designer.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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