Join us at Glossy's Beauty and Wellness Summit from November 11th through 13th in Napa, California. Influential Beauty and Wellness leaders will meet to discuss strategies and pain points, discover innovative tech, and ultimately make valuable business connections through one-on-ones and casual networking. For a limited time, we're offering $200 off with promo code GBS24NoSpaces. Again, that's GBS24 with No Spaces. Go to glossy.co/beautysummit for more information and to secure your past today. Thanks for tuning in to this New York Fashion Week edition of the glossy podcast. I'm your host, Jill Manock. Today, I'm sitting down with Kate Davidson Hudson, street style star, former fashion editor and founder of Vittier, a smart shopping app that launched this year. I had to embarrass you, Kate. As Vittier will be hosting an event at the start of Fashion Week, I wanted to ask Kate about the strategy, including how it fits into Vittier's overall marketing plans. I'm also interested in her take on the role of Fashion Week in the industry today and her approach to planning consecutive days of A+ looks for the shows, giving the people what they want. I'm just speaking for myself, Kate. I'm such a fan of your looks. Okay. Welcome. How are you? Happy Fashion Week. Thank you. Happy Fashion Week. Happy Fashion Month. It's only day negative one, and I'm already feeling like we're in it. Oh my gosh. I am so amateur hour because I'm feeling very daunting. I'm only doing New York. Are you making the circuit? Are you going to all every week? Well, I'm not doing London, but I will do Milan, and then I'll come home for few days, and then I will go back to Paris. So, yes, the whole shipping. Oh my gosh. You're company. This isn't the first event that you're doing time with Fashion Week. I feel like you maybe have had dinners or maybe other events leading up. First of all, for those who don't know what you're up to these days, you've got this amazing shopping company that's been in the works for a while now. Definitely getting off the ground as the months go by recently. But, yeah, tell me about it. So, the tier is a smart shopping app. We'll be launching a website version of it as well in the next month, but it really is just a smart shopping app using all of the advances and AI also incorporating the growing importance of a stylist in the shoppers journey into the whole ecosystem of shopping. So, it basically creates a custom algorithm for you as you shop and integrate with the app. And then we think of us as kind of your co-pilot as you navigate the really dense kind of loud world of e-commerce at this point. So much and it's so hard to contextualize it and sit through it and personalize it. So, what we've really done with the tier through many different modules and functionalities is made a store for one that's custom curated for you. You can lean on our AI stylist, which is an AI search functionality that can actually go through your digital closet or our product feeds and create outfits for you if you ask in about specific events you have or specific things you're looking for. And you can also work with one of our stylists or invite your stylists into your app. So, it becomes a very streamlined, personalized experience. It's so exciting. It's the future. And, yes, you can upload your styles from your closet like clueless, except better. A modern version of this, yeah? Modern clueless, yes, exactly. I love it. So, what is your event? And what was your decision to activate? I hate that word, but activate around Fashion Week. So, we are launching a really exciting new initiative that we partner with WME IMG Fashions on to, for the first time, make the selection at least of the New York Fashion Week Runway Shopable. So, we built, when we launched the app, a Shopable Video Technology. It was typically utilized for our stylists to be able to communicate with their whole roster of clients in a really interactive, highly experiential way, even when they couldn't reach them physically. And they would use our Shopable Video Technology style outlooks to talk through capsule collections, to talk through new arrivals. They could deploy it through the app to their clients, and their clients could shop as they talked. So, what we're doing now is we're applying that technology to Fashion Week Runways, and we'll be filming and making the runway Shopable either in a pre-order capacity, or in the instance where some designers have the immediate spot walk, you'll be able to experience it and shop it in real time. So, we have kind of done this little initiative. Tomorrow night, we're kicking off with Tommy and Dee Hilkinger. Which is also where a lot of the shows will be taking place, just to kind of celebrate both all the new collections that are coming into the store, plus this new technology that we're piloting for the first time with New York Fashion Week. Wow, I did not know this runway activity was happening. This is interesting. Yeah, it should be interesting. Yeah, I mean, if you look at what's happening in Asia with the dominance of Shopable Video with live and pre-recorded, it's really instructive in terms of, you know, a lifting conversion rates in terms of how do you capture that experiential element that fashion so emotional experience files into that so heavily, but it's so hard to capture real experience in a 2D application. So we're really, we're really keen and really bullish on video. Amazing. So this will be an amazing trial or test to see how this kind of a live activation happen. Yeah, yes, and to see what it does in terms for these designers to who are really trusting us with their shows and this capacity to see, you know, if we can deliver a lift in terms of conversions. And I think also just the data that we are able to kick back to them in terms of what pieces trend did what pieces, you know, had the most impressions what pieces had the most engagement with pieces didn't. And how all that data goes on to inform what they put into production, how they produce it, you know, where a job that one color track tire than another in the same skew. So it's going to be an interesting play. We'll see. That's fantastic. I also saw that the tier at Hudson Yards was for your listed for your event. Is this a permanent store? Is it a pop up location? I, again, I was intrigued. Yeah, I am too. I don't know what the right answer to that is because, well, it's we signed a six month lease. And depending on how well it goes, we will extend it and we'll stay there. I have been so pleasantly surprised by both the foot traffic and the quality of the clients that have come through the door at our new but tier store. The store is half experiential and half private client until EA. So it's the 3000 square foot space on the main corridor on the first floor. And the front half is is concept driven. So every four to six weeks, the concept will flip and then all of our brand partners that we partner with on the app will do an edit and merchandise their new season products through the filter of whatever. The concept is for that time period, meaning we have influencer and celebrity closet that are being installed today. So we will pull will go to all the influencers and celebrities that are creating their own closet and they'll pick from our brand partners, the key pieces they're buying and wearing for the season. And then they'll do a digital tableganger of that closet in the app so that people can come and shop. You know, if you love Ashley Graham style, you can go go into a closet, shop for outfits, shop or closet. If you love Gigi, Gigi style, same thing. And then the back half of the space is by appointment only. So it's where all of our private stylists can bring their private clients and do appointments one on one. And so when the client walks in, it's a physical store of one. So it's kind of the physical version of what the app is, and it will be outfitted with everything in their size, everything that they've asked for for the season, everything that addresses special occasions that they have. So it's an interesting hybrid space and then of course, you know, post purchase everything gets uploaded into the client's app. And then our stylists are able to clientele to them in an incremental way throughout the season through the app, even if they don't come into the store. So it's really like a, I know the new term is like, physical or physical digital. So it is that, whatever that is. I hate that term, but it's not. We're dropping things we hate left and right. We got to go there. No, that makes really good sense. So interesting. It was this, I would think that as you kind of, again, gotten the weeds with what consumers clients were interested in or where the pain points were between the stylist and the client. Like a go to physical space that really represented Vittier. Well, that was kind of like you're fulfilling that need. Yeah. Yes, completely. And we heard it from our stylist first that, you know, a lot of the conversions were happening through the chat channels, but they felt like they needed a tenthful moment a couple times a year where they could meet with the client and just go through because people change sizes. They, you know, you still do need that human touch. And a lot of them were renting out sweets at different hotels, like the Carlyle or the Plaza. So they're super excited to have a permanent kind of a footprint that they can use. So, yeah, it should be. It should be great. Tell me, you obviously see the value in Fashion Week, you're going, you're linking your event. Anyway, adjacent to Fashion Week. Tell me what role it plays. I like for a brand for the industry. Like, what are we going to just starting tomorrow? Yeah. Good question. And I think it's so different city to city to be honest. And I think for New York, it's, you know, obviously it just so much for in this new social environment environment, not even new in this heavily driven social environment to amplify the brand and to build that brand equity. How much it drives immediate conversions is yet to be I'll report back on that. But I think in terms of brand building exercise, there's still such an important role for Fashion Week and what we do. And, you know, how the consumer experiences fashion and really registers on a deep level, you know, a brand and a brand ethos. So I do feel like it's still an important play right now. Yes, we're going attending as a founder, as opposed to an editor, like your perspective has changed when you're going to shows. Are you, you're eyeing the product or what's your role this season. Yes. Well, for us a lot of it, we're really keen on discovery brands. So I think a lot of that kind of overlaps with what I did as an editor and kind of that whole effort to discover new talent. So that's really important to us because we don't want to be derivative of every single other e-commerce that's out there, even though, in terms of our buy and kind of what we're we're offering to the client who's a product selection. And then, you know, I think you see it through a different lens because you have this immediate feedback loop with the client, whereas when you're an editor, if it's beautiful, if it's different, if it's directional, then you clock and register, you likely shoot it. It goes off into the world when you never get feedback, and you never hear, think about it again. Here, when you're, you know, really tightly in tune with the client, especially the client at this level, the feedback loop is immediate, and that inevitably informs how you see the viability of different pieces. So I think that's a big difference across the board and how you have your thinking as you're watching a show. For sure. Well, I'm so annoying, but you're based in New York. So you haven't spent like today packing, like I'm just about to start packing, but like, how are you planning your looks because they will be photographed? So, well, packing, I don't envy you. I have packing anxiety. Yes. And when I will do not be insulted if I ever see you when I got off the plane in Europe, because I take a shoot trunk, like, you know, this big hot and I'll be like lugging it. I will pretend I don't know people because it's so embarrassing. I feel like I need options. I feel like it's packing is the hardest. Yes. But in terms of, I mean, now I have this new technology. So I have all my looks. You know, I started when I'll just be like sitting with my kids watching a movie or something and I'll start like looking at looks and putting looks together in the app and it becomes almost like gaming in a way. So I've organized them all in my app, all the looks that I've shopped out from my closet combined with pieces that I bought from our feeds. So it's all in there. And then I can, when I go to Europe, what I'll do is I'll sync the looks with my calendar. So I'll say, you know, I land them along. The first show is Fendi at three o'clock. So in the two o'clock time slot, I'll put whatever look I'm supposed to wear there. And it's just your jet lags are tired, your everything's stuck in a suitcase. You just open it, tell us where you're wearing, and it takes all the kind of, you know, heavy lift of getting yourself dressed out of the equation. Oh my gosh, you, I'm sure you could, you could have like this very unique marketing pitch to all of these different niches of fashion people like here's your ultimate fashion week wardrobe planner. That's brilliant. So brilliant. Thank you. Oh my gosh. Tell me about the brands. We haven't had anyone on this fashion week podcast series that like has, again, your perspective as somebody who's shopping the brands, scouring the brands. You're, you're not in house. What brands are you excited to see or even check out what's catching your eye now in terms of new brands or, yeah, or even those that are kind of, I don't know, known and loved, but yeah, what's exciting you today. I'm a shop high low so I am always excited about what Frankie shop is doing. I'm a huge Frankie shop fan. It is doing some great stuff called guys doing some great stuff, but then of course we have the way they who we work with with some of our private clients is doing really well, shock most as well. The row, Celine, St. Laurent, all of those, all of those guys are always my favorite. Are you a brand in the fashion or luxury industry, the glossy fashion and luxury awards provide the opportunity to recognize your company's work with categories, including sustainable brand of the year, best collaboration, best experiential marketing activation and more. Don't miss the chance to be recognized alongside past winners from good American skims and Gucci. Learn more and start your entry at glossy.co/awards/fashion. On that note, on fashion planning, any typical rituals or any tips for those who are show hopping and trying to remain sane, and this is such a consumer type of a question, but it's just fun. What are your rituals? Do you make time to work out? Who does? But maybe, like, what do you like to do? Well, I have to really work out outfits. I'm hoping that, like, that suggested packing will conjure something. Like, I always pack and don't wear them, but it's hopeful. If I get there once, I'm like, I am winning. I am like, awesome. Because the jetlag kills me, and then you're working across time zones, so it's virtually impossible to escape, but, yeah, so that is, I think what I might do this time is I might get, which they say helps with jetlag is I might get an IV treatment. That sounds a little like, barbaric, but just get your vitamins up, and there's been so much sickness going around, and I have so many international plates that I might just do that. No, that's really smart. Yeah. Really smart. Is Viteer a global company or a lot of the clients beyond the states or more so consolidated to the US for now? It's more so consolidated to the US. We have clients in multiple homes, and they have homes in Europe and parts of Asia, but we haven't officially launched there yet, so that will happen early next year. Right on. Anything that you've told yourself as you do these time and time again of, like, what's worthy of your time? Is it more so about the more intimate events like you're throwing that are less, I don't know, crazy. Or, yeah, how do you kind of weed out what's worth it? I think a lot of the times it's, it's really just the caliber of the partner that we have or the initiative that we want to talk about. I really don't like throwing events. Personally, I think the team loves it. I don't personally love it, but I think there's something we really are excited about communicating on, and we have a strong partner who wants to get behind it, then that makes sense. Events stress me out to no end, so I only would, I feel I keep telling Caitlin from my team. It feels like we've launched this company 20 times because we didn't have been in March at Vogue to launch it, and then we've done different pop ups, the different stylists in other markets. But I think, you know, we've had amazing people that I respect and that have wanted to kind of get behind it. So in those cases, that makes sense. I don't think we'll keep up the same cadence of events next year, but that could be eating the word. So, yeah. It doesn't get easier, no matter how many you do, right? No, it's just in there so many moving parts and, yeah, you have to be, yeah, I don't love events, but yeah, we're so honored and happy to have Tommy, a part of this one. And, you know, obviously we have a lot happening that the whole team has been working so hard on. So it's nice to kind of shine a spotlight on them and give them a minute off to have a cocktail. Yeah, for sure. Well, looking back at Fashion Week, if we look back at your event, what would make it successful? Maybe some sales are happening. And Fashion Week is, overall, like, what are you looking to accomplish this season? I think, yeah, for us, it's just communicating what the tier is. When I explain it, it sounds very dense, and I understand that. And I think you have to just get on it and play around with it, and it is so intuitive. I mean, the tech stack is so deep that when you try to explain it to somebody, they kind of, you can see it. They glat and big waves over there like AI and they're just not, you know, so keen to understand it on that level, but I think, you know, the more we get out and talk about it and the more we kind of illustrate the different use cases. One of the big things that we're showcasing in the event tomorrow is we have all of these, you know, kind of friends with the tier who have come in and done their own closets and open them up to our community. People who style I love, like I mentioned, we have side to Silva, Gigi Hadid, Ashley Graham, they've all done their own closets. They're sharing a link to their closet and their outfit so that people can shop it. And that's something that's really interesting and different that no one else is doing, you know, at all in the market that the tier is doing. It's, you know, creating this funnel for social shopping that hasn't been done in opening your closets and, you know, in that way, I'm excited to do this specific event. Now I'm still sitting on your first question. What did you ask me? Yeah, kind of what equates to success, whether it's around your event or Fashion Week as a whole. So yeah, so I think Jess, you know, the proliferation of the actual app and just, you know, getting a little bit further down that learning curve for people, having them download it and try it. Yes, you know, sales are not going to work. They've been pretty healthy, both in store and on app. So it's just about scaling it with the right audience. Yes, I thought it was so interesting. Some of the brands that you called out are in this like not ultra ultra high fashion range, like more contemporary advanced contemporary, a little more attainable, which was refreshing to hear. Is that kind of what's thriving right now? Yeah, well, you know, it's, I feel like we do have such a specific subset. We have the, you know, we have the clients that we're taking to Paris that are going to do or in Celine and doing good tour orders. But those women predominantly were we just launched, you'd be and we're launching men's the week after Fashion Week, but those women are the first to mix it with Zara jeans and a Frankie shop laser. So it's, you can, you really have to understand the world or present the world to them. And it's just about, you know, contextualizing it and giving them a good edit. But, yeah, I mean, I wear it all I'll mix. You know, I love that's how most people address, I think, regardless. So those brands are doing very well. But there's also the way they and the, you know, pro lenses and the roads. And, like I said, do your salines of the world that, you know, are for us for our client is still performing pretty well. Yes. Those usual hot, hot suspects. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. No doubt about it. Well, Kate, anything I didn't ask you about this week coming up. I think it's the end of the day we're going in. We're ready. You feeling good? Yeah. Yes. Yeah. The packing. I do need your, oh my God, your app as a, as a tool, as a guy. That's brilliant. Thank you. I get the packing anxiety. It's a real thing. It's fun. Yeah. Do you know what I do? This is like, I sometimes think that it's better because I stress so much about my packing. Like, I give myself a time limit. So I get up at the crazy hour. Like, if my flight is six, I'll get up at like, I don't know, three. And like, you have an hour to pack. And then like, you have to pack in an hour. You have no choice. So then I just like, and do it. That's actually, otherwise it'll be like a 12-hour project. I know, I know. That's actually kind of smart. I might try that. Although I want to make you crazy. Yeah. Because it would be so trusted out about not having enough time in the morning. We like to make it, I don't know. It's so hard to live on the edge. It's so hard. And like, guys have no, for the most part, guys have no idea. Like, they don't deal with this. Oh my God. But you're launching men. So they actually, they do care about style. They just, they do. They're just so long. But we work with, we have male clients that we work with on a, like on a one-to-one basis. They're just not, we don't have the men's product feed in yet. So we need to work with them off the assignment. Like, holes and whatnot. But yeah, they are just easier all around. I hate to generalize, but you kind of, you know, give them the components. They don't overthink it. It's less, there's less of a fit issue. There's, you know, I buy through pairs of jeans based on like how I feel that day. And they're just, they're easier and they just, they pack faster. They don't overthink it. Yeah. They don't have this so unfair. Yeah. Yet another thing that, so unfair. Oh my gosh, Kate. Well, good luck this week. In luck with the event. I will see you tomorrow. Yes. Yes. We'll have a much. It deserves a lot of money. Yes. It sounds amazing. Oh my God. Well, thank you so, so much. That's all for this episode. Our theme music is by Otis McDonald. If you liked this episode, be sure to share it with someone else you think would. Thanks for listening to the glossy podcast. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]
