Publications

January 2015 (Revised November 2016)
Case

Stella McCartney

By: Anat Keinan and Sandrine Crener

Stella McCartney launched her own fashion house under her name in a partnership with the luxury conglomerate Kering as a 50/50 joint venture in 2001. A lifelong vegetarian, Stella McCartney does not use any leather or fur in her collections, which include women's... View Details

28 Feb 2017
Blog Post

Why I Love My Job: Sierra Smith Talks Her Fashion Startup Internship

Why I Love My Job is a series of interviews with HBS students and alumni on what drives their satisfaction at work. Internship Position: Summer Fellow, Plan de Ville, Summer 2016 Location: New York, New York Describe your role at Plan de Ville. Plan de Ville is a small... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship

2010
Other Unpublished Work

Fashioning an Industry: Cognitive Processes and the Construction of Worth in the Institutionalization of a New Industry

By: Mukti Khaire

This inductive study of the high-end fashion industry in India explores how the worth of a new industry is constructed. Interviews with entrepreneurs and constituents of the field revealed that the worth of the industry was constructed through framing by early... View Details

Keywords: Market Design; Framework; Entrepreneurship; Value; Cognition and Thinking; Industry Structures; Fashion Industry; India

January 2015
Case

The Blonde Salad

By: Anat Keinan, Kristina Maslauskaite, Sandrine Crener and Vincent Dessain

In 2014, Chiara Ferragni, a globe-trotting founder of the world's most popular fashion blog The Blonde Salad, and Riccardo Pozzoli, her co-founder and business partner, had to decide how to best monetize her blog as well as her shoe line called the "Chiara Ferragni... View Details

23 Oct 2019
News

Designing a More Artful Future for the Middle East

point in my career rather than a continuation of my job after college,” he notes. “It is allowing me to explore other avenues.” One of those avenues is launching his own fashion e-commerce company, Darza, which means “stitch” in Arabic.... View Details

Keywords: Inclusion

March 2016
Case

IC Group A/S

By: John R. Wells and Gabriel Ellsworth

IC Group owned several of Scandinavia's leading premium fashion brands. How should it respond to the decline of its primary wholesale distribution channels (independent fashion boutiques and department stores)? Should it open more physical stores or focus on... View Details

March 2006
Teaching Note

Alessi: Evolution of an Italian Design Factory (A)-(D) (TN)

By: Youngme E. Moon

Keywords: Fashion Industry; Italy

November 2011 (Revised December 2012)
Case

Rent the Runway

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Laura Winig

Two months after a successful launch in November 2009, the cofounders of Rent the Runway (RTR), a website that rented designer dresses, are debating whether to grow their startup at a measured pace and focus on improving operational effectiveness, or raise a new round... View Details

Keywords: Lean Startup; Electronic Commerce; Fashion; Expansion; Business Startups; Growth and Development Strategy; E-commerce; Fashion Industry

01 Jun 2010
News

NFLers Tackle HBS

More than 35 active players from a number of National Football League teams, including the Baltimore Ravens, New York Jets, and Minnesota Vikings, spent a week at HBS in February in a custom Executive Education program. Now in its sixth year, the program is taught by... View Details

Keywords: fashion; Social Assistance; Health, Social Assistance; Religious, Grantmaking, Civic, Professional, and Similar Organizations; Personal Services

15 May 2012
News

Finally Finding the Right Fit

moved to Amsterdam for a consulting job with Bain. But that didn’t provide the satisfaction he envisioned. Increasingly, he longed to return to his roots in retailing. “I always dreamed of being in the branding and fashion business,” he... View Details

Keywords: fashion; apparel; Apparel Manufacturing; Manufacturing

06 Sep 2012
News

Fashion-Forward

be a skill I could use in my career,” Amed says by phone from London. In fact, Amed has developed a worldwide following by employing those very same qualities. Launched in 2007, his website The Business of Fashion attracts more than... View Details

Keywords: fashion; apparel; News, Library, Internet, and Other Services; Information; Clothing and Clothing Accessories Stores; Retail Trade

01 Dec 2014
News

Customizing Couture Online

The way Áslaug Magnúsdóttir sees it, her new website, Tinker Tailor, which uses interactive web technology to customize high-end designer clothing, is an old-school approach to fashion. “Couture always was a collaboration between the... View Details

Keywords: April White; fashion; Professional Services

January 2015 (Revised July 2015)
Case

Jimmy Choo

By: Anat Keinan and Sandrine Crener

Jimmy Choo is a British luxury accessories brand, specializing in shoes, handbags, accessories, and fragrances. Founded in 1996 in London by couture shoe designer Jimmy Choo and Vogue accessories editor Tamara Mellon OBE, the brand enjoyed immediate success and rapidly... View Details

01 Jun 2014
News

A Look at Olook

partnerships with everyone from fashion designer André Lima to Princess Paola d'Orléans-Bragança, a descendant of Brazil's colonial royal family. Online retail has proved to be a healthy market. Brazilian... View Details

Keywords: Dan Morrell; fashion; Clothing and Clothing Accessories Stores; Retail Trade

August 2014
Case

Rent the Runway (Abridged)

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann, Brent Goldfarb and David A. Kirsch

Two months after a successful launch In November 2009, the cofounders of Rent the Runway (RTR), a website that rented designer dresses, are debating whether to grow their startup at a measured pace and focus on improving operational effectiveness, or raise a new round... View Details

Keywords: Lean Startup; Electronic Commerce; Fashion; Expansion; Business Startups; Growth and Development Strategy; E-commerce; Fashion Industry