On Tuesday October 13th, Material Wrld celebrated its latest evolution in style at the Steven Alan boutique in the heart of Chelsea.
The luxury fashion trade in service announced this week the launch of their new reloadable prepaid debit card. Customers will now have the option to access money earned from successful designer fashion trade-ins via the Material Wrld Fashion Trade-In card. This card can be used to purchase at any of the participating retails within Material Wrld’s network including Saks Fifth Avenue, Bloomingdale’s, Intermix, and Steven Alan. The purpose of the card is to allow for more seamless transactions during the personal style revolution.
To celebrate guests enjoyed light appetizers and special Svedka Mule cocktails made with ginger beer and lime wedges and and music being spun by the legendary DJ Chelsea Leyland. A very chic crowd mingled while shopping and learning about Material Wrld’s latest feature. Later in the evening, co-founders Jie Zheng and Rie Yano hosted a panel of Jenne Lombardo, DJ Chelsea Leyland, Connie Wang, Steven Alan to hear about their careers and personal style.
Check out some of quotes below from the panel where Rie Yano, interviewed CEO and fashion designer Steven Alan and Connie Wang, fashion editor at Refinery 29.
Rie Yano: How do you think your style influences your career and vice versa, how does your career influence your style?
Steven Alan: I would say that when I started the company which was quite a while ago, about 22 years ago, I was driven more as a designer. I had this idea that I was going to go traveling around the world and find these amazing products and bring them into one place, this tiny little store on Wooster St. and so the idea was that I would just do that, so I started out really as a shop owner and retailer carrying a lot of different brands, so that was the first thing that I did before designing and in doing that I had to do everything. I had to the buying. I had to work in the store and manage, wrap whatever it is people are buying, figure out how I was going to market it. At that point when I first started, it wasn’t really the web, so it was really grass roots to connect with that editor and connect with that magazine. It’s great.
Rie Yano: How do you make decisions that are intuitive as a designer versus a CEO?
Steven Alan: Everything sort of goes through the same filter. I think the company has a really strong filter, in terms of what feels on brand and what doesn’t feel on brand. Looking at the company, there are kind of different silos. One silo is really retail stores. We have several retail stores in different markets, and one silo is the fact that we represent fifteen different designers. We handle their wholesale business, and then another silo is our own brand that we design that goes into our stores.
Rie Yano: You’re a fashion editor. You must be very influenced by style in your career. How was that impacted your career?
Connie Wang: I actually see being an editor period very similar to having a strong sense of personal style because in both of these things you are making decisions that might seen arbitrary, but say a lot about who you are as person. When I first started at Refinery 29, maybe 6 years ago, all my decisions were based on “Do I like it? Do I post it? I’m gonna wear it.” As I’ve been telling more stories and finding more people have their owns stories, I see that there is a lot more to it than “Do I like it?” [Now I think about] Do I believe in the ethos behind it? Is it a compelling story? Is it a story that will branch out to other people? Are more people going to be interested that just me? I think that when you put on a shirt and buy a pair of pants, we go and make these decisions about the thing that we put on our own bodies, it’s so much more fun and so much more real if it’s thoughtful, right? So if it’s considered, and I think that’s all being an editor is, making all of these little decisions. People that have a really strong sense of personal style, whether their decision is based off of aesthetics, or sustainability, or if it’s based off of something else like your budget. Those are all valuable things to consider when choosing your personal style, so in that very pie in the sky kind of sense that’s where I think style and being an editor collide.
Rie Yano: That actually reminds us of how we started the business because we started with our own pain points. We want this kind of service to solve our problems, and as we grew we started listening to our customers and the world at large to continue to tweak, so there is some relevance there.
That same evening in another part of Chelsea, FabFitFun was throwing their first event in New York City and the stunning PH-D Rooftop at the Dream Hotel. Guests enjoyed a decadent evening complete with massages, manicures, hair styling, and a propped photo booth. Amidst all of the fun activities, the stylish crowd was able to enjoy Skinny Girl cocktails and appetizers while shirtless model were handing out cupcakes.
“I just wanted to say that we couldn’t be more excited to be here to celebrate with you guys. This is our first event in New York, and it’s truly special for us because we’ve been building this company for the past five years and we feel like it’s a momentous occasion to be able to come to east coast and share with your our story about what we do,” said Daniel Broukhim, FabFitFun Co-founder and CEO.
Photo credit Getty Images for Material Wrld.
