How Founders Are Disrupting The Fashion Industry: Ownership, Influence & Identity In Fashion Today

Key Concepts Fashion as Power, Cultural Legacy, Inclusive Luxury, Direct-to-Consumer (DTC), Full Brand Ownership, Customer as Investor, Black Fashion Fair (BFF), Retail Access Barriers, Community Responsibility, DEI Initiatives (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion), "We See You Moment" vs. "Willing to Build With You," Playing the Long Game, Brand Ethos.

Fashion as Power and Cultural Legacy

The panel, featuring Brandon Blackwood, Antoine Gregory, and Janet Naylor, explores how they have redefined fashion, transforming aesthetics into a source of power and cultural legacy.

• Antoine Gregory highlights that fashion became a form of power by giving strength and a voice to people when other avenues were unavailable. He cites historical examples:
  • The Civil Rights Movement, where dressing in "Sunday's best" created a powerful visual, contrasting the respectability of protestors with the violence they faced.
  • The Black Panthers, who used aesthetics like t-shirts as a form of protest when direct demonstrations were restricted.
  • His core argument is that "all these really amazing black movements, use fashion, use clothing as their voice."
• Janet Naylor views fashion as "my armor to go out into the world," and it forms the foundation of her brand, 12 p.m. Studios. She emphasizes that people use fashion for confidence but are increasingly "priced out."
  • She advocates for redefining luxury, asserting that it's not solely about an "exorbitant price point." Instead, luxury encompasses "the experience that you have, it's the quality that you get, it's the packaging, it's opening it, it's the shipping."
  • Her goal is to make luxury inclusive, not exclusive, by delivering high quality and design at an affordable price point, ensuring everyone can experience it.

Entrepreneurial Journeys and Business Models

The panelists discuss their unique paths to success, highlighting different business strategies and their implications.

Brandon Blackwood: The Power of Full Ownership and Customer Investment

• Brandon Blackwood built one of the most recognizable accessory brands in the culture while maintaining 100% ownership, never seeking external investors.
• Freedoms of full ownership: He can "literally do whatever I want" regarding marketing, visuals, and sales strategies, without being "forced to just focus on numbers or... pleasing a board of people that don't even wear my bags."
• Limitations: This self-funded approach meant a "tighter budget" and a "longer to kind of get to this point." All brand activities, from activations to new collections, are "fully funded by my customers."
• Customer as Investor: Blackwood refers to his customers as his "only investor." This goes beyond financial investment; customers were involved in the brand's ethos from the start, influencing design decisions like color swatches. This direct relationship creates a "bigger responsibility" to ensure customer satisfaction and continued brand growth.

Antoine Gregory: Black Fashion Fair (BFF) and Bridging Retail Gaps

• Black Fashion Fair (BFF) is described as "a fashion and culture platform aimed at the discovery and furtherance of black designers and black creators."
• The Need (2020 Launch): Gregory identified a critical need to build an audience and consumer base for Black designers, as many Black brands struggled to sustain themselves beyond a year or two. This was particularly relevant when retailers claimed they "can't find black designers."
• Methodology: BFF launched an e-commerce marketplace featuring over 20 Black designers. It then facilitated partnerships, helping many of these designers gain access to "legacy retailers" like Nordstrom, Bergdorf's, Neiman Marcus, and Saks, thereby expanding their audience and fostering long-term business sustainability.
• Barriers to Retail Access for Black Designers:
  • Infrastructure: Many successful Black brands lack the capacity to fulfill large orders or the teams to scale effectively.
  • Consumer Behavior: Black consumers sometimes "take a bit too long to catch on" to supporting Black-owned brands, often treating it as "charity" rather than valuing creative output.
  • Retailer Approach: Retailers often engage in "checking a box" by stocking Black designers without genuinely aligning them with their target audience (e.g., "Gold Hair for an example. Just like that's not your audience"). This leads to poor sales, no re-orders, and the narrative that "we tried and it didn't work."
  • "We See You Moment" vs. "Willing to Build With You": Gregory argues that retailers and even consumers offer Black brands a "we see you moment" but are not "willing to build with you," denying them the "trial and error" or the grace to "not be perfect as soon as they launch" that is often afforded to non-Black brands.
• BFF's Goal: To cultivate an audience that values the creative output of Black people and designers, fostering both commercial and emotional connections through storytelling, events, and programming, ultimately "elevating the location of blackness in fashion."

Janet Naylor: Leveraging Influence into a Scalable Business

• Naylor's journey spans from influencer to corporate professional to founder of 12 p.m. Studios.
• Strategy: She attributes her success to "playing the long game" and meticulously building her reputation. Her "word is all I have, my audience's trust is all I have."
• Success Metrics: The brand sold out in two weeks, achieving over "$600,000 in sales in the first three weeks."
• Foundation of Trust: This rapid success was built on years of demonstrating unwavering commitment to quality, authenticity, and passion as a creator. She states, "I don't play about quality... I don't recommend things that I don't love... If I say something is good, I mean it's good."
• Responsibility: She feels a deep responsibility to her customers, ensuring she doesn't "play with their money" and that they "get what they pay for," or even "more than what they pay for."

Responsibility to Community and Navigating Industry Challenges

The panelists collectively emphasize the foundational role of community in their success and their ongoing responsibility to it, especially in the face of industry setbacks.

• Community as the Bedrock: All three acknowledge that their brands exist and thrive because of community support.
• Brandon Blackwood's Responsibility: As a Black, queer designer, he feels constantly "under a microscope" as his brand grows. This creates pressure to make his community proud, a responsibility he carries into "everything I do," from designing handbags to public speaking.
• Antoine Gregory's Responsibility: He focuses on "always honoring them" (the community) in his work and external projects. Having experienced a lack of community in his early career (e.g., at FIT, in corporate America), he is driven to create welcoming spaces, provide value, and "always raising the bar of what that value is."
• Janet Naylor's Responsibility: She holds herself to a "higher standard" to avoid letting people down, believing her success "makes a way for the next person." This added pressure ensures meticulous execution, as "everything has to be right" to inspire others.

Addressing the Rollback of DEI Initiatives

The discussion turns to the post-2020 period, where many corporate promises to invest in Black founders and communities have been rolled back, leading to a decline in DEI initiatives.

• Brandon Blackwood's Observation: He notes that many Black brands that gained retail access in 2020 are no longer selling in those stores, reflecting a broader decline in DEI efforts.
• Call to Action (Brandon): He urges the Black community to recognize and utilize its collective power by:
  • Supporting Black brands directly through their websites.
  • Actively asking retailers to stock and re-stock Black brands.
  • His advice: "the best thing you can do for a black brand is literally going to their website, going to them, directly supporting and sharing."
• Antoine Gregory's Analysis: He attributes the rollback to retailers "checking a box" rather than genuinely integrating Black designers. When these brands didn't perform as expected (often due to misaligned placement), retailers used it as an excuse to discontinue support. He highlights a pattern of "we see you moment" without a commitment to "build with you," denying Black brands the opportunity for "trial and error" that other brands receive.
• Janet Naylor's Sentiment: Her core message is "We are all we got." She emphasizes that her brand's success is built on relationships with other Black individuals (stylists, editors, etc.) and the core audience. She believes the community "underestimate the power that we have" and advocates for collective support: "If we all just bought from each other... If you're looking for a thing, there's somebody Black that sells it."

Future Endeavors

The panelists share exciting upcoming projects and goals.

• Brandon Blackwood: Celebrating his 10th year in business with an event on the 24th and two "really special collabs" dropping towards the end of the year.
• Antoine Gregory: Opening an exhibition next week titled "Andre Leon Talley, Stylist Forever." This is a full-circle moment for him, as Talley was a primary inspiration for his entry into fashion. A catalog for the exhibition, published with Rizzoli, is already available on Black Fashion Org. The exhibition will be at Scad FASH, with a smaller version at Scad MOA.
• Janet Naylor: Celebrating her brand's third month in business next month. Her ongoing goal is to "continue to redefine luxury" as an inclusive space, focusing on "the feeling that it gives you" and "the experience" rather than just the cost.

Conclusion

The panel powerfully illustrates how Black founders are not just creating businesses but are actively reshaping the fashion industry's landscape. They emphasize the critical role of community, both as a source of support and as a recipient of responsibility. Their journeys highlight diverse business models—from full ownership to platform creation and leveraging influence—all united by a commitment to quality, inclusivity, and cultural empowerment. The discussion also serves as a crucial call to action for the Black community to actively support its own, especially in the face of declining institutional support, underscoring the belief that "we are all we got" to ensure sustained progress and legacy.