
At the times when fast fashion brands are growing faster than the Chinese economy and the average American throws away 80 pounds of used clothing per year, the last thing we need is another clothing brand.
Yet in the beginning of 2020 I decided to create just that, launching ULTIMA, against all odds and some may say, common sense.
Despite the environmental crisis fueled by our excessive consumption, there seems to be an overload of clothes, everywhere.
I walk into a fancy NYC Hudson Yards retail complex, practically empty on a cold afternoon. Racks and racks of any imaginable colors, patterns, silhouettes. Full priced tags sadly hanging, waiting to trap another customer.
This is when it hit me. I’m completely insane!
What was I thinking, starting another clothing brand NOW? And on top of that investing a solid chunk of my own capital into the new venture.
Fortunately, it’s not the first time I’ve done a crazy thing of launching a business at the worst time, so at this point it’s a signature style. In 2008, in the midst of the recession and in contrary to the digital marketing trend of automation, I decided to launch a network of bloggers (yep, this was before Instagram) and connect those individuals with brands.
I sure looked like a crazy person for at least the first 2 years trying to get the business off the ground. Until JCPenney came and became my first big customer. I built the business to millions in revenue and sold it a few years later. At that point I was no longer considered crazy, I was an industry pioneer commenting on the business of influence on Fox News.
I don’t miss 2008, the early days of my influencer marketing business, when I had to explain to people why and what and how, all while barely keeping hope that it’s going somewhere, and it’s going to be big. Years later, lots of milestones achieved and lessons learned, I still find myself in the same spot while launching my new venture: questioning my own sanity. Apparently having one success under the belt doesn’t make it easier.
What makes it easier is having 100% confidence that despite the overload of clothing items in this world, it is still missing quality and a level of product development that is on par with our complex lives.
Out technology has advanced leaps in the past two decades, while our clothes remained the same.
Our closets are full of dumb disposable objects that fall apart after a few washes, can barely protect us from the elements and lack any ability to adjust to our constantly changing human bodies.
This realization really hit me in my 40s, after my body endured multiple fertility treatments with several losses in the process, finally the long-awaited childbirth and the less exciting postpartum recovery. Let’s just say it’s been through a lot, and somehow 10-pound weight fluctuations became my new norm. Suddenly my trendy closet full of fashion outfits became completely useless. Instead, it now served as a gloomy reminder of my 30s body, which won’t come back despite all the yoga and organic food I consume.
Here I was, in my mid-40s, with plenty of disposable income but no clothes that flatter my new midlife physique and my new midlife attitude that values comfort over trends.
If you can’t find it, make it.
At that moment I decided to engineer the perfect dress that would flatter any type of body, be comfortable enough to wear on a red-eye flight, function as a raincoat AND make anyone feel stylishly powerful.
Months of prototyping, trial and error, testing and changing the pattern by a quarter of an inch while driving insane every single person in the production process — “who takes so long to make a dress?”, I now have the perfect garment. I knew it was ready once I had nothing else to change. And I was ready to go through another vulnerable process of putting a creation on display, then have people vote with their wallets.
So does the world need another clothing brand? Probably not. But we do need more advanced clothes that can help us better function, simplify our lives and most importantly, take away the burden of fast fashion from our planet.
If you knew your weekly retail therapy contributes to 20% of all industrial water pollution, would it still be therapeutic?
If you knew that building a new trendy wardrobe every season contributes to 10% of humanity’s carbon emissions, would you still “shop till you drop” to have that latest “must have” pieces?
Or would you rather buy one quality piece of clothing that becomes your second skin, gives you comfort, accompanies you through seasons, respects your body and looks timeless enough to fit in many of your life moments?
The consumers are waking up and start questioning their emotion driven shopping habits, the advertising industry that perpetuates it and the large corporations that feed it only to promote their own economic agenda.
My bet is that thanks to our newly found environmental awareness, conscious shopping will be the new trend to win over the cool factor.
People will choose quality and function over unnecessary excess. They will vote with their wallets for brands who share this mission.
Until then, I’ll be just an insane creator of another clothing brand.
