Philadelphia Fashion Incubator’s new Designers-in-Residence

(Photo:marieaustralia)

Tucked away on the third floor of Macy’s is a room where one wouldn’t think twice when passing by. But this room is where busi­nesses, ideas and the next gen­er­a­tion of fash­ion en­tre­pren­eurs have quietly been grow­ing for the last five years. It’s the Phil­adelphia Fash­ion In­cub­at­or at Macy’s Cen­ter City (PFIM­CC), an 800+ square-foot space with state-of-the-art ma­chinery, a con­fer­ence area and work space. More im­port­antly, it’s a place where the latest de­sign­ers are be­ing mol­ded in­to the next fash­ion and busi­ness lead­ers. This year’s De­sign­ers-In-Res­id­ence (DIR) are Kristen and Tom Le­onard, own­ers of Char­ley Girl Designs, Mil­an Har­ris, own­er of Mil­ano Di Rouge, Nigel Richards, own­er of 611 Life­style, and Tara Hig­gins, own­er of At­ar­ashi.

For the next 12 months these DIRs will ex­pand their un­der­stand­ing of the fash­ion world. Elissa Bloom, ex­ec­ut­ive dir­ect­or of PFIM­CC, com­pares the ex­per­i­ence to an MBA pro­gram for de­sign­ers where they’re try­ing to gain five years of know­ledge in the span of one year. The DIRs began in March with 14 work­shops in one week giv­ing the artists an over­view on all the vari­ous as­pects on the busi­ness of fash­ion. Bloom likes to think of it as a busi­ness boot camp.

“Our main pur­pose here is really to help de­sign­ers get to that next level of sus­tain­ab­il­ity and scal­ing their com­pany,” Bloom says. “We want to make sure that de­sign­ers see this not just as a cre­at­ive op­por­tun­ity, but it’s a busi­ness pre­pos­i­tion for them.”

Bloom has been present even be­fore the pro­gram launched in March 2012 and is truly a one-wo­man show who makes it all hap­pen. Not only did she cre­ate the cur­riculum for the pro­gram, but she also mar­kets the or­gan­iz­a­tion, con­nects de­sign­ers with in­dustry lead­ers, or­gan­izes events, de­vel­ops stra­tegic part­ner­ships and that’s just the tip of the ice­berg. Trunk shows, pop-up shops, monthly re­tail cri­tiques and the cul­min­a­tion of The Phil­adelphia Col­lec­tion, a weeklong fash­ion cel­eb­ra­tion in the city, are just some of the mul­tiple fash­ion events DIRs will take place in over the next year to ex­pand their brands.

Home to the fash­ion schools of Drexel, Moore, Phil­adelphia Uni­versity and the Art In­sti­tute of Phil­adelphia, PFIM­CC came about from a need that was seen in the city of Phil­adelphia.

“We wanted to find a way to sup­port some of the gradu­ates from these schools be­cause there were really no re­sources or in­cent­ives for gradu­ates,” Bloom says. “They were mostly mov­ing to LA and New York get­ting in­dustry jobs, but not ne­ces­sar­ily com­ing back to Phil­adelphia to start busi­nesses so we saw this big void.”

The cur­riculum PFIM­CC of­fers is a com­bin­a­tion of core work­shops and sem­inars fo­cused on busi­ness de­vel­op­ment as well as how to build brands and break in­to the fash­ion mar­ket­place. It’s a bin­ary learn­ing ex­per­i­ence where Bloom wants the de­sign­ers to un­der­stand that fash­ion is not only cre­at­ing, but also sus­tain­ing a busi­ness.

Each month Bloom fo­cuses on one ma­jor busi­ness top­ic and brings in an ex­pert to teach a three-hour work­shop on the sub­ject. The vari­ous work­shops throughout the year de­tail trend fore­cast­ing, re­tail pri­cing, cost/value ana­lys­is, dis­tri­bu­tion chan­nels, profit mar­gins, sourcing, pro­duc­tion and all the dif­fer­ent in­tric­ate gears that make a busi­ness grow. The best part of the cur­riculum is it’s ad­apt­able to the DIRs’ goals and really looks at what they’re try­ing to ac­com­plish since the de­sign­ers’ busi­nesses are all at dif­fer­ent stages. In do­ing this, the cur­riculum is al­ways evolving and nev­er stale.

The de­sign­ers must go through a lengthy ap­plic­a­tion pro­cess, which in­cludes sub­mit­ting im­ages of their work, an es­say about their busi­ness, who they want to be and who their com­pet­i­tion is and an in­ter­view pro­cess. They must also be from Phil­adelphia and com­mit­ted to stay­ing in the re­gion after com­ple­tion of the res­id­ency. This year’s DIRs are com­prised of a di­verse group from all dif­fer­ent back­grounds and ages. Al­though only one month in­to their res­id­ency, they already see the price­less op­por­tun­ity the in­cub­at­or is.

Kristen and Tom Le­onard of Char­ley Girl Designs cre­ate hand­made skirts from re­claimed and re­pur­posed ma­ter­i­al, mak­ing each piece 100 per­cent unique. Both artists by school­ing, they’ve been try­ing to learn the busi­ness part of their com­pany for the last three years.

“The designs is the really nat­ur­al part for us, but what to do with them is the really un­nat­ur­al part,” Tom says. “How do you dis­trib­ute them? How do you make a liv­ing do­ing that? Where do you sell a couple thou­sand skirts a year? We’re kind of at a point where we need help get­ting to the next plat­eau.”

Kristen says this is ex­actly what their com­pany needs at ex­actly the right time. Not only have they been able to do this full time for the last three years, but the Le­onard’s are el­ev­at­ing their com­pany to the next level. Last year they sold 1,500 units and the in­cub­at­or is go­ing to help them reach their goal of 5,000 units this year.

“It’s an op­por­tun­ity to mod­el for our daugh­ters that you can spend your time do­ing something that’s go­ing to im­pact people in a pos­it­ive way,” Tom says. “We keep all this ma­ter­i­al out of land­fills and in­stead it comes to us and we turn it in­to these beau­ti­ful skirts.”

Nigel Richards was cre­at­ing clothes back in col­lege when he and his bud­dies didn’t like the book­store’s designs at the Uni­versity of Rochester. Richards and his friends took it upon them­selves and screen prin­ted cloth­ing that stu­dents ac­tu­ally wanted.

Own­er of 611 Life­style, a menswear col­lec­tion in­spired by mu­sic and Phil­adelphia’s icon­ic re­cord store and la­bel, 611 Re­cords, Richards is in over 20 re­tail loc­a­tions. He’s been ab­sorb­ing everything the in­cub­at­or has to of­fer. He of­ten walks out with four pages of notes when a speak­er comes in to talk. For Richards, he wel­comes cri­tiques of his cloth­ing even if they’re a “butt-kick­ing” as he puts it and loves the in­ter­ac­tion they’re able to get with Pro­ject Run­way judges or Whar­ton School of Busi­ness ment­ors.

“We’re get­ting in­side tours of com­pan­ies that charge $25,000 a month for their ad­vice and we’re rolling in and hav­ing a two-hour brain­storm­ing ses­sion with them,” Richards says.

The young­est of the group is Tara Hig­gins a Moore Col­lege of Art and Design gradu­ate and win­ner of the pres­ti­gi­ous Edu­cat­ors for So­cially Re­spons­ible Ap­par­el Prac­tices (ES­RAP) Award for Sus­tain­able Design in 2015. Hig­gins is look­ing to launch her brand At­ar­ashi in the spring or sum­mer of 2017. At­ar­ashi, which means new, fresh and cre­at­ive in Ja­pan­ese, is loosely in­spired by Ja­pan­ese cul­ture and will fo­cus on sea­son­less and con­vert­ible pieces. She ad­mits she was a little in­tim­id­ated at first be­cause of all of the ex­per­i­ence around her, but quickly got over it and real­ized she could use it as an im­mense as­set to help grow her own brand.

“They made all the mis­takes for me,” Hig­gins jok­ingly says. “Be­ing around all the oth­er de­sign­ers in res­id­ency, they’ve been in busi­ness so I get to bounce my ideas off of them and they have in­valu­able ad­vice for me. Some­times it’s good to see it from an out­side per­spect­ive and some­body who un­der­stands the busi­ness.”

The last de­sign­er this year is Mil­an Har­ris, own­er of Mil­ano Di Rouge. An ap­par­el brand that’s lux­uri­ous but af­ford­able for the street wear en­thu­si­ast. The brand’s mes­sage is “Mak­ing Dreams Real­ity.” Har­ris whole­heartedly be­lieves it’s nev­er too late to fol­low your dreams.

After they com­plete the pro­gram the de­sign­ers are en­cour­aged to stay in con­tact and Bloom meets up with alumni reg­u­larly to dis­cuss the con­tinu­ous chal­lenges of run­ning a busi­ness. Bloom wants PFIM­CC to be in­clus­ive and for de­sign­ers to share as much in­form­a­tion between one an­oth­er as pos­sible. A group of alumni ac­tu­ally cre­ated the Phil­adelphia Fash­ion Al­li­ance which helps main­tain the sup­port net­work they had dur­ing their res­id­ency as well as cre­at­ing monthly op­por­tun­it­ies for pop-up stores and trunk shows.

“For me, see­ing that we ac­tu­ally have 15 out of the 20 com­pan­ies that are still in busi­ness and are still design­ing col­lec­tions, are still selling and get­ting out there and grow­ing their busi­nesses, that, to me, is suc­cess,” Bloom says.Read more at:evening dresses