Today I'm going on a style journey with serial entrepreneur
who founded a string of game changing companies in the
world's of beauty and Wellness. She's recognized globally as an
industry leader, a business visionary, a beauty expert and
an inspiration for female entrepreneurs everywhere.
The truly brilliant Marcia Kilgore.
In 1997, Time magazine chose a 29 year old Kilgore as their
cover star, pecking her as one of the new generation of
entrepreneurs whose hard work, ingenuity and fearlessness
trumped the networking Business School big shots.
In May 2011, when Oprah Winfrey's final show ad, Oprah
referred to her former facialist Kilgore as one of the most
inspiring people she'd ever met. In 2022, The Sunday Times said
her new digitally native business had forever changed the
way we shop for cosmetics. In between, Kilgore has sold one
business to LVMH, another to Alliance Boots Walgreens, and
started three others recognized by Vogue UK as one of the most
powerful women of 2023 in their power list.
Hello and welcome Marcia. Thanks Amanda.
So good to be here. Oh, it's lovely to have you
here. Usually we meet in Switzerland,
but we go back. Under duress.
Under duress, climbing mountains together and we talk so much, so
much to forget that we are climbing but we feel so good at
the top. Feel great at the top.
Now I know we were trying to work it out this weekend when we
first met, and I think it was back in the 90s during your
Bliss spa heydays in London. And I have to admit that I've
followed your career in awe as you built and sold Bliss,
followed by building and selling the upbeat tongue in cheek soap
and glory. And not content with those two
juggernaut successes, you founded the bio mechanics meets
fashion footwear brand Fitflop. You've only sold 65,000,000
pairs of sandals, sneakers and boots worldwide to date, and
probably another million as we speak.
And if that wasn't enough, in 2016 you created my slight
Obsession, the fabulous Buyers Club skin care and makeup brand
Beauty Pie. Bringing luxury beauty to a
wider audience and knowing you, there'll be many more chapters.
But as the complete Beauty Pie junkie that I am, I would love
you to explain to my style hungry audience because it's
such a disruptor in the beauty industry how how the whole thing
works. What inspired you take us on
that journey? To create beauty pie.
I mean, it was such an obvious one.
Usually when I create a business, I am trying to create
something that I myself would like to buy or shop from or
have. Beauty pie was easy because I
had sold my beauty business, which was soap and glory.
And I realized when I was in an airport in Hong Kong going to
work on a footwear collection in Donguan, that I hadn't bought my
own beauty products in probably 20 years, that actually, I
didn't really understand how much they cost.
Because when you're in charge of a beauty brand and when you've
got one, you have labs from all over the world sending you free
samples, sending you submissions so that you might buy their
submissions, rebrand them and put them on the shelf as your
own. I was constantly, you know,
receiving boxes and boxes of, I mean, it was always like
Christmas, right, Boxes of samples from labs.
And it was so great. It was like, oh, my God, I love
that lab. And a box would show up and
you'd open it up and there would be all of all of these products
to try. So I hadn't actually shopped for
beauty products in 20 years, so maybe I'd have a few gifts from
different people. But it never occurred to me how
expensive things had gotten on the other side.
So like George Bush, I believe there was a time when he was
president and he went into a grocery store.
He had no idea how much milk cost because it had been so long
since he had to go buy his own milk.
It was kind of the same. Obviously I'm a Democrat, but I
had no idea how much good moisturizer cost.
So I'm in the airport in Hong Kong, about to go to Dongguan
where they don't heat the factories in the winter until it
gets really, really cold. And I had forgotten to bring
facial moisturizer And I was going to be out there for a
couple of weeks and I thought, you know what, let me just go to
duty free. I haven't been in a duty free to
buy anything in years. And I headed over to one of the,
you know, well known high quality Asian brands where there
were a lot of choices of moisturizers and I had been
given one of those moisturizers by a friend who worked for one
of those brands many years before.
So I knew it was a really nice texture, etcetera, etcetera, and
it went to buy it and I grabbed it from the shelf and it was 150
lbs or dollars or whatever, you know, whatever.
They're selling it or not. I just thought, are you kidding
me? It's like, who is paying
$150.00? And then I'd be like, Oh my God,
everybody was paying this much for the moisturizer.
And I looked at it, looked at the ingredients, how it was
packaged, etcetera, etcetera. And I thought, well, this cost
$5 to make maybe, you know, And I thought I can't, I can't do
it, I can't pay $150.00 for something because $5 to make.
And I literally went to a factory for two weeks in the
cold at probably the age of, you know, 40 something and didn't
have moisturizer because it just seemed so ridiculous to pay that
kind of markup. And I had a similar situation
probably a couple of months later, where I went to Italy and
one of the labs that makes all the good makeup for all the good
brands, and they also make some of the cheaper makeup for some
of the cheaper brands, but they make all the luxury makeup for
all the luxury cosmetic brands. They had invited me to their
open house, probably knowing that at some point I would start
another brand and start buying things from them again.
And they gave me a bunch of samples.
So I had my bag full of samples. And I'm in the train station in
Milan and there happens to be a Sephora there.
And I've got all these samples that they've been giving me over
the last couple of days of the show and tell because it's kind
of like a buffet. You go in, they show you all
their new technology, they say we have this lipstick, that
lipstick that, this, that's the and you kind of choose right as
of next. Time.
I want to come hurry your back, but anyhow.
That's exactly it. I remember I had the bag over my
shoulder and I knew what was in there because I had sort of
chosen. I was like, that's interesting.
This is interesting. You try all the different
samples and the textures and you've, you know, you choose
which ones feel really luxurious.
You know what the they'll tell you what the ingredient lists
are and so you that's sort of a starting point.
And then you can make some tweaks.
You'd mix the colors, but the formulations were all in my bag.
And I walked into a Sephora, which is in the Milan train
station and I saw so many items that probably were on preview or
you know, limited. You know, they get the first
shot at it for certain brands that had big distribution.
This lab will sell them that product first for six months,
etcetera, etcetera. And I thought, Oh my God, I
looked at the prices in Sephora and I knew what was in my bag
and how much that would cost if we were to buy it as a, you
know, cosmetics company. And the difference again was
like 1215 times from X factory to sitting on a shelf.
And I thought, well, a I've got $5000 worth of street value
cosmetics in this bag over my shoulder.
And second, while I was getting on the train, I thought, Oh my
God, all my friends would love to come here and do this with
me. That was it.
And then all the hair on my body went up, you know, when your
hair stands on it. And I thought, that's it.
How do we get everyone to have this really fun experience of
kind of being able to shop for the really good stuff direct
from the lab or direct from a warehouse where you don't have
to go. I really want that.
But it's, you know, 60 lbs. You know, you can go, you know,
I love that. Let me just get 5.
And so I had to then figure out, well, how how do you do it,
which is that was a much longer kind of consideration and
building the idea of it and how much stock do you need and how
does a membership work and all of that.
But there was, there was some precedent.
There were brands, you know, like Netflix.
There were brands like Ever Lane at the time.
They had just started out where people were doing this thing
where they were cutting out middle men and they were
bringing products for much less direct to customers.
So I had a few guidelines to follow, but I didn't tell the
labs what I was doing until the day before we had a feature in
Vogue. Yeah, I mean, you're scared at
any point because these these big beauty companies are
enormous. They have so much muscle.
They have a lot of muscle. And that's exactly why I didn't
tell the labs because I thought, my God, if they know what I'm
doing, I'm about to like rip the, you know, the wool off of
everybody's eyes and expose the markups in the cosmetics
industry for what they are. They might not manufacture for
us anymore. So I had to buy the inventory
and get into the warehouses and have enough inventory for 18
months, right, forecasting on how many members we thought
would join. So that if those labs decided
not to sell us anything, we'd have the opportunity to go
somewhere else and remanufacture with someone else.
So it was a little bit of a risk because you don't know like no
one might join, right? Or everyone might join, the labs
might not care at all or they might go, are you kidding me?
And close the door on you. And we didn't know.
But I did think first I thought, I'm going to need a bulletproof
vest. Speaking of our weighted vests,
my weighted vest would have come in handy because I thought
everyone's going to kill me, right?
The first thought was, Oh my God, if I do this and I show
people how much cosmetics really cost to make and skin care and
everything else, everyone is going to hate, all of it was
actually the industry is going to hate me, right?
And then I thought, but millions of women will love me.
They they so do now for those couple of women that might be
listening to this who aren't already.
Beauty Pie, Can you? Can you just give them the
elevator pitch as to what Beauty Pie is?
Because I really believe that we all need to know and we all need
to be members, because I am just obsessed with it.
I would love to pitch everyone my elevator pitch.
PewDiePie is a Buyers Club for people who love skin care,
makeup, hair care, beautiful candles.
We have supplements. We have a lot of different
categories now. We started with makeup and then
we expanded into skin care of course because that's really my
area. And then we expanded into
supplements and body care and hair care and perfumes and
candles and everything. And what we do is we buy in
large quantities from the world's leading third party
labs. So those that manufacture for
other high end brands whether that's a Tom Ford or I mean what
is high end anyway, you know it's luxury quality brands.
And so we buy from the same manufacturers that they buy from
and we buy the best quality product with the most cutting
edge science in skin care. We actually formulate with those
labs, but we formulate better than they do.
So we tell them what to put into the products and then we bring
the products to our warehouse. And instead of the product
costing our members 12 times or 15 times or 20 times what it
would normally cost, which is what the average cosmetics
industry markup is, it'll usually be between two and three
times what it costs to make. So we're able to disintermediate
the normal system and bring products to customers for 1/4, a
third, 1/5 of what they would normally pay for the same
quality. Thank you.
I I have to admit that you do this wonderful thing when you
place your order and and it sort of it comes up with the total
and then it goes. Congratulations Amanda.
Not only are You Beautiful, you're clever too.
You have so far saved and for the sake of this podcast, I am
not going to say one how many thousands of pounds I've saved.
I have saved £55,000. Well, that's more.
Than me, but I give a lot of product of course to friends
also, right? So you end up buying candles and
bring them for dinner parties and all that kind of stuff.
So it's also very handy just to fill a cupboard.
And amazing. Now, we are not here to talk
about your brilliant entrepreneurship, although I I
could do that all day. I want to know what makes you
tick sartorially. So we're going on a style
journey. So how did you decide what to
wear today? Oh well, I dressed from a
suitcase, which is almost a bit. Generally, yes, I dress a lot
from a when I need to look styled.
It is normally in a suitcase scenario because if I am in
Switzerland which is where I live, I can just put on,
Although I will you know put on a great cashmere jumper off in
one of yours and and a pair of you know trousers normally
something kind of Italian and floppy and then a pair of flip
flop sandals and I'm at my desk on zooms so I don't necessarily
have to be styled up any other time.
If I'm doing a podcast or an appearance, I am dressing out of
a suitcase. So it will be Navy, camel, black
and white, just, you know, automatically.
And it's usually a great jumper, a great pair of trousers, a
great jacket, and that is easy. If I have to go to an event in
the evening, it'll usually be some or come to car sign smock
type thing or an icy macky type thing because they cram into a
suitcase and do not require too much ironing.
You are so practical. I'm incredibly practical.
And you grew up in a small Canadian Outback town.
Is that fair enough, Saskatchewan?
Saskatchewan, yes. I mean, but yeah, a farm farming
town, I mean, I grew up in. I was born in Saskatchewan in a
little town called Outlook, before Outlook was, you know,
Microsoft. And it was a beautiful little
town on the top of a river that had sort of deep, you know, deep
valley and it was gorgeous. But there's nothing, right?
It was like prairies and grain silos and barns and nothing.
And cold. Oh my God.
So were you permanently in sort of technical clothing just?
Completely frozen. There was no technical clothing,
you know, it was you're. Right, actually.
There wasn't. I mean, technical clothing is a
relatively recent phenomenon where they thought about like
the different layers and how it holds air and how the air, you
know? So what were you running around
wearing? Is it?
Was it? You know, I mean, I it was
survival, right? We did not think so much about
how we looked. I don't think anybody.
Even still, when I go back to visit my mother, people are not
really dressing for style, they're dressing just for
survival. I was going to say, did your
mother have, you know, was she stylish or was she just
functional? My mother was completely
functional, so my mother is still to this day I will bring
her skin care products. She still will have one bottle
of Doctor Brunner's soap in her shower, and she often will use
that as her shampoo, her shower gel, her soap.
I can't get her to use moisturizer.
And I bring her all these, you know, beautiful things that are,
you know, of course, safe. She's very green, clean, always
has been, you know, the yoga, healthy eating grinds, her own
flaxseed, all that kind of stuff.
But I can't get her to use my. That's why you have.
Such my life. Beautiful skin.
Well, that flaxseed child, So when did you, when were you
first exposed to fashion? Then what was your first sort of
what was your early memory of thinking that feels good?
Oh well, that came a lot for like a lot.
Later when I moved to New York, I'd say my my first memory of
fashion as such was that we were not a well off family
whatsoever. And my parents used to be quite
strict about manners and also kids chipping in and doing their
fair share of household work. And we would get new school
clothes once a year, and we would get them if we remembered
to pick our plate up off the table on the evening that our
father had put $40 underneath that plate.
And that would be our budget for school clothes for a year,
right. So of course, this was a long
time ago. So $40 got got you a little bit,
but not it wasn't like I was rotating, you know, 30 outfits.
You were you were rotating three or four kind of like your school
uniform. And if you grew, everything was
going to be too small, a little bit too small, until you
remembered to pick up your plate on the right night of the week
when they had stashed and that was, you know, yearly.
So you didn't put your plate in the dishwasher.
You were not wearing clothes for another year.
So that's that's a tough lesson to learn, isn't it?
Yes, to this day, even if I am out at someone else's house or
dinner. And I have seen this pick up.
Your plate is coming up and I am taking it to the dishwasher or
to the sink because it's just now like it's epigenetic.
I wish I could get my sense to do the same thing.
They don't should. Be in your DNA by now.
I think so. I think it is.
It's like some kind of vibration.
But it it missed them. But you got into bodybuilding as
a teenage. Doing I was so bored.
There was like, nothing else to do, right?
You're in the middle of Saskatchewan.
So what was the gym look? What were you wearing back in
the 80s? Thank you.
Yes, it was the 80, early 80s. Oh my God.
Was it the G String leotong? Thank God they didn't have those
in Saskatchewan. I mean, it was again like
choices were sort of few and far between.
There were tights and I remember having T-shirts and having just
sort of, you know, typical exercise clothes.
But again, not a lot like Saskatoon.
SK was 20 years behind anywhere else, right?
They probably just got a Lululemon.
Well, thank God you missed the G string.
Yes, you did. You wear the G string unit.
I tell the truth. I had a moment.
Don't even go there. And you?
Brought that, you brought that? I've got, I've got a photograph.
I mean, I'm modeling photograph I got.
Yeah, it just fills me with horror.
But you. Find it.
Did it so well. I mean you can see there was
that like there was. 80s colors. They were just so bad.
And the and the what were they called?
Leg warmers. Leg warmers and and cycle
shorts. Oh my God, that.
Yeah. No, not can't.
Wait, November Flashdance? OK, Did you go home after you
watched Flashdance and Just Dance around your house?
Oh. Completely that I so did not
look like. Was it Jennifer?
Biel. Yeah.
No, yeah. I don't think anybody looked
like Jennifer Biel and got that body warmers.
Incredible. Yeah, there was a body double.
That makes me feel, isn't that a lot better?
Me too. But you moved to New York at the
age of 17, in the 80s. Do you remember your favorite
looks from back then? Well, you know, at that point
again, I was a personal trainer so there was a little bit more
to buy, but I spent a lot of time in tights T-shirts until
and I made $10.00 an hour, right?
But you were a bodybuilder, didn't you?
I mean. You had a lot.
Of yes, covers the muscles and all that you're trying to.
Well, you know, but if you walk around in tight clothing in New
York City in like the late 80s, early 90s, you're just going to
get mugged or attacked. However, I was so muscular that
even, you know, I I was a force. Did you have a A6 pack?
Oh yes. I had a six pack.
I had, I had biceps, triceps, deltoids.
I mean, people would go, are you an Olympic athlete?
I would have that God. So I wasn't particularly I was
again, quite functional until I could afford clothing.
I mean, you kind of When you don't have the budget, you don't
look because it's just too painful.
Yeah, no, I get. That to be left out right, But
when you can start to afford a little bit of fashion and
actually in the bodybuilding phase, I was never like I was
never like Arnold. I was more like, I guess,
dancer, sprinter, you know, someone got to.
See pictures. It was actually pretty
impressive. When I look back, I think, how
did I do that? I mean, you have to work out
four hours a day, right? And then you have to eat the
healthy diet. It's like, only no carbs.
And I mean, I do that now. It still doesn't have the same
effect. What has gone wrong?
We're just our bodies evolve.
They do evolve, so I'm doing my best.
But it was amazing how when you could try on a good piece of
clothing and you have that kind of like really swelt firm, even
though my body is really difficult.
So I was prepping and thinking about how I think about
clothing. And actually clothing for me has
always been a bit of a love hate relationship, right?
It's almost like there's a fight between myself and clothing
because western clothing is not made from my type of body.
I have wide shoulders, flat chest, short term legs, right
long torso. I am a Japanese buddy.
So that did that lead you to Japanese?
As soon as I'd walk into Yojiyama Moto, you fell home
Booked. Amazing.
Sadly, it was all $2000 and I was making 10 bucks an hour, so
I had to work my way up. You know, it was ever an
inspiration. Do you remember the first piece
of designer clothing that you saved hard for and bought and
thought I feel $1,000,000 in? There was.
So I think at the time I was dating this guy who had like a
little bit more money than I did and loved Matsuda.
Do you remember Matsuda? I mean, what?
I don't know. Whatever happened to it?
But one of the very, I guess, early Japanese designers who
made it over to New York, and, I don't know, I always went down
this one strip of 5th Ave. between 23rd St. and 22nd, and
there was a Matsuda store there. It was when it was.
It wasn't the flatiron yet. It was, sort of.
I remember, yeah. Kind of like Soho, but 5th Ave.
And I remember them having a sale and there was this coat in
the window and it was the most beautiful coat and it was, I
mean, we're talking like 1990, right?
It was $1800, but on sale. It was only 9 and I just
couldn't stop thinking about it. And I thought, well, nine, it's
only 90 hours of work for $900 coat and I saved up and I got it
and I was probably, I don't know, 20 right And still making
$10.00 an hour. But I could not live without
that cover. Oh, it was so beautiful.
Even of your gym kit. And Oh my God, anything.
I mean T-shirt. That's the thing with a great
coat, right? You can put a white T-shirt and
whatever, and then you put the coat on and you're a completely
different person. And it's a transformative piece,
isn't it? Coats are everything, yeah.
If you just don't have time or you, you know, you just throw it
on. So I have a terrible weakness
for coats and I try not to buy anymore, but sometimes I do.
Do you always buy ladies clothes, women's clothes, just
sort of hearing you talk about your shoulders and in this time
of very. Yeah, sort of.
Unisex dressing. Unisex dressing.
These jeans are too good, Do you know?
Too good? Yeah.
So they're unisex.
I don't have that much time. This is everything.
I don't have a lot of time to go trying on clothes, so I will
tend to repeat myself because I'll just head to where I know
I'm going to find stuff and generally I will head to the
women's section. But I would try on men's stuff
for sure, why not? And then my son would steal it.
Oh, that's another story. Now you created the iconic cult
beauty destination Bliss Spas in New York, and you had some
incredibly famous clients, you know, from Uma Thurman, Madonna,
Oprah and even Calvin Klein, to name a few.
Were you ever impressed by their style?
You know, I thought about this and I thought most of the time
by the time I would see the client, they would deliver to me
in a robe. Yes, I I thought about that.
So in fact, and often they were coming in at like 7:30 in the
morning because we couldn't fit them in during the day.
And they'd call it the last minute and I'd say, oh, God,
can't get you in. But if you come at 7:30, I'll
come at 7:00, and they would be just as slumpy as the average
person. And I can't.
I was trying to think about who just looked fabulous all the
time and there rarely was anyone.
However, Shalom Harlow, who was one of the sort of she know
there was a supermodel. She's kind of a super, maybe a
minus, you know, there was Super A's we.
Won't quote you on that. Yeah, I know.
I mean, she was still a super, but you didn't hear about her so
as much. But she, it was that like long
tall body. She was a dancer and so I think
it was just the way she held herself.
Everything just, like, hung off of her, like, I mean, this is
amazing. About posture isn't there that
can be so transformative. Yes.
But when you were. Yeah, I know I'm just sitting
oh, I'm pulling my shoulders back.
But when you were creating the concept for Bliss.
Yes. What did you, how did you work
out what you were going to put your?
Aestheticians and yeah, well, it had to be.
Again, if you think about what they're doing all day, it had to
be quite practical. Conan O'Brien once said that our
our uniform, especially in the wet body treatment rooms, made
us look like sexy tugboat captains.
Can you explain that one to? Me.
Well, you have to have, you know, you've got to be wearing
things where you can scrub people with Bailey Salt and
rinse them off and, you know, it stays you, you know, you don't
have anywhere and you don't want people to have to change 18
times a day. So when people were doing what
body treatments, which involved like showering people, housing
them off, there's water splashing all over the place.
We had to get them like sort of a water resistant or waterproof
dungaree, right. But over top of like a cool
T-shirt. Yeah.
So at the time it was like splendid T-shirts or James Press
T-shirts, and we would put a big giant Bliss logo on them and
then they would have these kind of really cool kind of
waterproof. But that's fantastic.
Fabulous. Yeah, it was super, really
fabulous. Super cool.
And I thought of trying to do something like and I see Miyake,
right. But those fabrics don't
necessarily breathe when you're massaging people.
And so important when you show up to be standing in close
proximity to a client that you are fresh.
So that was fresh and clean. You know, you had to just think
like, OK, fresh and clean and friendly and kind of cool,
Groovy, yeah. And everything you touch is is
super cool. But I, you know, bliss was my
first experience of Marcia and and I just remember everything
about it was cool, right. It was it.
It just it had it was it had some humor to it, had mega
luxury to it. And yeah, anyhow, so my first
experience of bliss was in London and you, you moved here
to open the spa. Did your personal style change
when you hit London from the streets of New York?
You know what? Quite a lot, actually.
Because when you live in London, in New York, it's about black
and white, right? White T or a white shirt,
generally, You know, Yeah, Oxford.
And everyone is wearing like a a white Oxford shirt and a black
jacket. Here you look like a waiter and
I and but in New York that is what everyone's wearing and
that's what stylish. Is very much a new there's a
uniform in New York, absolutely, and whereas London is far more
eclectic. It's much more eclectic.
So how did? You so much.
More. Eclecticism.
Well, it was. Quite difficult for me because I
I don't know if it's just the way my brain thinks, but I like
simplicity. You're quite a uniform person, I
always think. Just yeah, default.
Yeah. I have so much going on like
this I can't look, Even if I put on earrings sometimes I'm like,
I can't. It's too much.
It's almost like attention deficit disorder, earring
overload. I just can't look at myself if
there's too much going on. And it's the same with clothing.
I tried very hard when I moved here to like fit into the mix
this color with that color, these pattern mixes.
It was really quite difficult. I'd buy a lot of clothes
thinking I'm going to break out of my style rat, which wasn't a
rat in New York, but it was certainly a rat in London and
everything would just hang there.
So I did kind of venture into a little bit more Shanya Watanabe,
who at the time was doing some really cool colored pattern
fails, which is different for a Japanese person.
And of course since I'm a Yogi Yamamoto come to Garcin Amanda
Wakeley or too good or nilly lotin type of person, there's
not a lot of patterns there, right.
So bringing in those patterns and and that color is kind of
tough. Thank you for the little Amanda
Wakeley plug. There, got the Amanda Wakeley
stuff. That is the stuff.
Oh, when you. Stop it.
Flashing now, Flashing your weekly cash.
I'm just showing off because my weekly cash.
When you did your first big sell out and you suddenly found
yourself with a chunk of cash in the bank.
We called it The Eagle Has Landed Day.
The eagle has landed. So when the eagle had landed,
the. First Eagle.
Did your did that impact on your buying habits or your style
actually? Well, of course I was still like
very hands on in the spa. So day-to-day I'm still wearing
a uniform, but I do remember. So I think the eagle landed on
like, I don't know, sometime in early April 1990.
Was it 1999? Must have been 1999.
I would say several Eagles landed, by the way, but anyhow,
what was the? First chunk of the Eagle and it
was quite funny. We, I, I remember my husband and
I, we then got married about. We like planning to get married
anyway. We got married about two weeks
later and for our for the weekend that we got married, we
had a board meeting. So we got married I think on a
Friday. We had a board meeting on a
Monday in New York, so we couldn't really go anywhere.
We just got married at City Hall.
But we weren't. We stayed at The Four Seasons
and we called it. We ended up calling it the
Barney's weekend because the Barney's was still open.
We went to the first season. We stayed there for two nights
for our sort of wedding nights and ended up wandering over to
Barney's, which was three blocks away, and just shopping for that
whole weekend. He didn't actually buy that
much, but I certainly did. There was a lot of, you know,
like a lot of Japanese fashion that went down there, a little
bit of Dolce and Gabbana when it wasn't quite so ornate.
Like they actually used to do some good, you know, simple tops
and things like that. I don't see you as a Dulce girl.
Nothing flashy, just like the welfare.
I mean they. They used to do a beautifully.
Yeah, they used to do a few sort of simple things that were just
beautifully cut and really high quality because, you know, the
Italians. Yeah.
So I did end up with a few Nice. You know, Jill Santa was still
going. She used to do some great suits.
So I got a few suits. I mean, Calvin Klein even had
still like fashion at that time, not just underwear and.
So you seriously filled your boots?
I mean, compared to most people, I would say no.
If you look at Jenna Lyon's closet, which is like a whole
apartment, no, right? I still have like a realistic
kind of closet. It's the same thing with my
brain. If I have too many things, I
just get confused. And had you planned what you
were going to wear to get married in, or was that part of
the Bonnie Barney's Trolley Dash?
No. So we got married before the
Charlie Dash, and actually we decided to get married on
Thursday. We had to go get a license or we
bought the license or we went to, I think you'd go to City
Hall to get the license. So we got our license and you
have to wait 48 hours before you're allowed to get married.
So we probably got our license on Tuesday and they said, well,
what about Friday? So we just took Friday off.
But we didn't have, I didn't have a ring, we didn't have
rings, I didn't have a dress. I had no shoes.
So we got a car to pick us up from Terry's house in Brooklyn,
because he had a house in Brooklyn at that time.
And we went to Soho. I went to Morgan Lafay, which
had, like, really kind of cool Little Rock starry dresses, but
you could always find something beautiful there.
I bought a dress. We got rings.
I remember them saying we can have these done by like, May.
And we were like, how about 2:00?
Tell me about the dress. It was actually, it was a
beautiful just sort of a brown like brown multi layered thing.
So not white. Not white.
It was just the one that I looked good in.
I didn't really care about white or but I tried it on and you
know, for me when you're shopping for clothing, which I
don't get to do very often. But the one rule I've learned is
if it's not an instant yes, it's a no.
Yeah, yeah. If you have to like, shift
around and you're not going like.
Really good tip you will. Never wear it if you have to.
Like, oh, if I lose 5 lbs, I'm going to look good in this.
Or if I wonder if I have the right things for I don't work.
Maybe if I put this switch it's like no, if you don't put it on
and go, then you should not buy it.
You got to keep looking. Top tip, Top tip.
Then you went on to create this amazing brand for Super women
Flip flop. And I I remember at the time
having a pair of those Maasai barefoot technology trainers
which were effective. They were pig ugly.
They ripped my feet to pieces, but they did the job.
And then you came along and worked in a different approach
to this bio, mechanically engineered shoe.
How difficult was it to combine form and design with function?
Quite difficult the. Main reason being that no one
had ever thought of that before. So when I first set out to find
a shoe that would do all the right things for your body when
you walked in it, I thought I needed a shoe designer to help
me. And so I would.
I would try to find shoe designers by networking.
This was sort of early Internet days, right?
It wasn't like you could type in shoe designer or ask ChatGPT.
I was going to say ChatGPT. What?
Kind of professional do I need if I wanted to bio mechanically
engineer a shoe you there was no such thing So I just thought
shoe designers and you kind of know well I'll find the shoe
design college or fashion college or whatever and they'll
send me to someone And I remember making so many
different people sign a non disclosure agreement because I
had this idea about a shoe that would work with your body and
you know do all you know align it and multitasking shoe because
there were no good looking shoes actually that were comfortable
at all. I mean, I too would go to
Barney's same probably same weekend from maybe another
weekend. It's like my favorite weekend
destination when I lived in New York.
And you go to the Barney's shoe floor and you'd be wearing, you
know, I'd buy a pair of Andam Ulemeister beautiful flats that
I thought, well, these are really cool and they look like
they're going to be really comfortable and literally be
trying to walk to the office or walk my child to school and they
would be coming off my feet, right?
They're so fashionable. Shoes are not always fit with
any kind of care or any concern for a body and how the shoe
affects the body. And to this day I'm still really
fascinated by the fact that if you make a shower gel right, a
body wash, a study thing that is going to go down the drain and
not really affect you whatsoever.
You have to test that body wash for 60 days and sixty people to
make sure it has no negative effect on those people.
You can however, design A5 inch heel that will pinch the nerves
of someone's foot and damage them forever and put it on the
shelf no problem. It's extraordinary, isn't it?
When you think about it and you know, killer heels or killer?
Who is it? That someone I I read, I think.
Is it Dolly Parton? Because she has always worn
heels, literally even slippers with heels.
She now cannot. When she walks.
In bare feet, she's walking around on her tip toes.
Like Barbie. Like Barbie.
I might have that completely wrong.
I'm sorry Dolly if I have got that wrong.
We love Dolly. We love Dolly, even if she has
to work work on her tip toes. So she's a legend.
Legend. Is such a legend now, so so you.
Created. Yes, I found.
Finally I found I I would interview these shoe designers
and then I would tell them what I wanted to create and they
would say, well, they'd look at me like I was a lunatic and then
say I don't know how to do that. I just draw shoes and that was
one after another after. So did you go to an engineer or
a, you know, how did you, how did you get the technology in
there? Because it's real technology,
isn't it? Yeah.
In the end, through another conversation I was having with
someone else, they I said I'm trying to do this by the way and
it was an academic from Swansea and he said, oh, you need to
come and meet with our bio mechanics department.
That's where I realized, oh actually he said biomechanics.
And if you were, if you were Canadian, you'd say bio
mechanics. So I I then took a train to
Swansea and met with their bio mechanics department.
I have another hilarious story, but too long for now about that
meeting. And then I finally found
someone, someone who's working for my e-mail me and said, hey,
did you realize that London South Bank University has a bio
mechanics department? So I made made an appointment to
go meet them and walked in described to these two guys who
were there, You know, professors of bio mechanics or
biomechanics, what I wanted to do.
And Doctor Dave Cook looked at me and he goes, well, I know how
you can do that. You do XY and Z.
And from the initial prototype. Yes, which looked like a lump of
coal. I was going to say, was that
really? Hidden Oh my God, it was so
hideous. I remember them bringing it out
and then measuring it and having people walk in and they had all
the Electras hooked up to the models bodies.
Oh it's incredible. It's how apparently they do
animation by doing this, right? So they could measure what does
it do to the gate, what how much pressure is on the heel strike.
They had heat maps on the bottom of the feet so you could see
that the pressure was being diffused perfectly across the
whole foot, which is so good for your whole body because it
stimulates your organ systems, all of this stuff.
But I remember looking at it going I don't care if that thing
like lifts my butt between my shoulder blades.
I am not leaving the house in those.
So how did you take it from the lump of cold to what we now know
as Fitflop? So really this was quite a
lucky, a lucky situation. I had remembered that one of the
companies that manufactured Sexy Motherfucker for Soap and Glory
happened to tell me during a hello this is who we are meeting
when I had first moved to to London and was looking at
different labs to work on Soap and Glory.
With that, in part of their presentation about the history
of their lab and their company, they had a sister business that
sourced shoes for M&S, believe it or not.
So they were footwear sourcing business and they have these
cosmetic manufacturers out in Trowbridge.
And I just remember thinking, wow, this shoe is actually once
we had the results back from what Doctor Dave, I call him
Doctor Dave head engineered. He was like, I'm not taking this
to one of the big guys cuz who knows.
But it would be a David and Goliath situation.
I didn't want to end up there. And then I had remembered, wait,
people make sex. In my hypothesis, they know
some, they do footwear. So I called them and then had a
meeting with their sourcing person.
They set me up with a shoe designer who then went to work
with Doctor Dave to make sure that the shoe and the bio
mechanics were something wearable.
So the first one was like really quite crude.
It was just this sandal. It was kind of like sporty
looked like a flip flop, chunky saw, but we saw the millions out
there. Yep.
No, I I remember it well. And nothing better than
multitasking. No.
As we walk, we lift up bottoms. I love it.
You're a woman of words. I always think you're probably
one of the most talented copywriters I've ever come
across. But I'd like to know how you
would want someone else to describe your style DNA in three
words. OK.
Missing in action. No, stop.
It stop it. I'm not taking that.
That's my answer. I don't have.
I don't. I think I've had to work really
hard because my body is not like a typical, you know, feminine
woman's body with like tiny shoulders and, you know, a
chest, a long legs and like perfect knees, as my friend Ali
said about my Ali. My friend Ali is a creative
director and she used to work in the music industry and she would
tell me about certain people who, when she'd have to style
them for record covers, it was like impossible because there
was nothing easy, right? And I once did.
Carla Welch is a quite a famous stylist now in Hollywood.
Before she was that famous, when she just first got together with
Matthew, who was her photographer, now husband.
They recruited me to do this ad for charity, for a rug company.
And I warned her. I said don't try and get me in a
dress. Like whatever you do, do not
bring dresses. And she's like, oh, I'll just
bring a few blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And I was like, I'm telling you, it is hard to dress me.
It's like. What did you end up?
In Oh my God. I care of a stylist that would
be quite interesting to know she.
Didn't listen right. And also I had just had a baby.
So there's like the then I was like a little, you get a little
thicker, right? And I'd had sort of boobs for
the first time in my life because you get them and then
they go back away, so they disappear again.
So I was not even having, like, the Super slim upper body that I
would normally have, which would be easy because then you do
like, the long. You could then do a long dress
or a long skirt and some kind of slim top.
But I didn't have that. I didn't even have my, like,
muscular arms at the time. And she put me, I kept saying,
no, not a dress, not a dress, not a dress.
And she's like, come on, try it on, try it on, try it on.
And I remember this is like one of those traumatic fashion
experiences. I tried it on and she looks at
me and she goes, I see what you're saying.
It was like I told you, but, you know, then you just feel like I
can never wear a dress again. But I don't have the knees for
it, right? And so I have to kind of.
I have to stick with that style, which means it it does become
kind of a uniform, but defaulting to Japanese stuff
just really works for me. I mean, I know that you
obviously get photographed a lot and I know also that you're very
aware of who you are and what you are.
And I I know that you also sat for the legendary Irving Penn.
And did you know in advance how he was planning to style you for
that shoot? Yeah.
No. So it was quite interesting when
Vogue was, you know, I was shooting with Mr. Penn back in
that day. Phyllis Parsnik, who was the
sittings editor, was one of my facial clients.
So she would come in and I would be giving her facial and she'd
say, oh, Mr. Penn wants to do a shoot about, blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah. Do you have anything like she
was sort of looking for what can we, you know, physically kind of
style onto what looks cool? What can we stick on a model's
face that is going to look really cool?
What are the latest trends in beauty?
And so I'd be giving her facial going well, we've got this wax
thing or we've got this blah, blah, blah mask or whatever.
And so she ended up recruiting me to come in and be like the
prop stylist for him for a couple of shoes.
So we did one shoot where we had like one of those thermal masks
that you put over a piece of gauze.
It was actually really cool and and then it hardens and then you
kind of lift it off. So it's.
And then we had one shoot where we were using, I had all this
really colorful wax for body hair removal that you that
wasn't the models funnest. They didn't really enjoy that
one. It was a little like screaming
coming from the studio, but it was, you know, all these
beautiful colored wax that we were sort of spreading onto
their skin. So there's that.
And then he asked Phyllis. He didn't ask me, which was
quite funny because, I mean, maybe I asked Phyllis if I would
be the model for the next one, and then she said he wanted to
do something like seaweed or something.
I was like, well, OK, and so we actually found a whole bunch of
really weird looking seaweed. And he he decided to turn me
into a sea creature and put like crazy seaweed all over my head
and I had like one eye and. It's an extraordinary image,
kind of. Did you freaky?
Did you just let him get on with it because he was this legend?
Why? Couldn't see at that point?
You're like laying against the board, right?
So I couldn't move. And he I remember like slapping
pieces of seaweed across my and just being like, OK.
But don't. Smudge the makeup.
Other than Irving Penn, are you very much in control of what you
wear for? For a photo shoot, Yes.
Yes. Yeah.
Generally.
Because you know what? There's just no point.
Yeah. I mean, I'm sure the same with
you. It's like, what?
Who's going to know how your body will look better than you?
Nobody. Right.
At this stage. Yeah.
Yeah, you kind of know. I mean talking at this stage.
This stage. Is you know when you think of
hair and beauty as we evolve? Yes.
What are your tips to staying youthful as we age or as we
progress in years? However, you want to put it
whenever GET. Smarter.
Yeah, get smarter. Get more in into our own skin.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, into our power.
But what? As such an aesthetic person,
what would you say are good tips?
I think a get the best haircut you can.
Yeah. And your your natural hair color
as close to whatever that was when you were younger is what
you should have like fighting against.
It means that you have to then put a lot of makeup on that
matches whatever that hair color is, and so as close to your
natural hair color as possible if you are dying your hair is
game. Changing.
That's a very interesting point. Yeah, and I think people either
go to a stylist who tries to do something a little bit off, or
they don't know if they're warm or cool or whatever it is.
And as soon as you change your hair too much from what goes
with your natural skin tone, it's a lot of work.
Yeah, it's a lot of work. And if you can find someone who
can cut your hair and give your hair a style, that really is
your signature. I mean, I have Garen.
I haven't I I only get over to New York like once every six
months or so. But I will literally not book my
flight until I know he's available because because he
cuts my hair and I feel like a totally different person.
I haven't been there since October, so it's grown up quite
a lot. But when he cut it, people will
literally stop me on the street and go, I love your haircut and
you just feel like the character that you want to inhabit when
you have that perfect haircut, taking great care of your skin,
obviously, right. Sunscreen and and I think just
like knowing what your style is, yeah, like there is a uniform.
By the time you hit like 40-50, you know what you can pull out
of your closet and it's going to look great.
Doesn't really change that much. I always think it's what makes
you feel. Confident.
Yeah, whatever. Whatever that is.
And. And for each of us, it's going
to be something different. But if we're feeling good, yeah,
you just exude a. Confidence.
Yeah. You're going to feel like
yourself. Yeah.
Do you think you've got a style
icon? Oh.
My God. Well, OK, I'm going to say it's
probably, Oh my God, that's a really hard one because I love
Ray Caracubo, but sometimes she's so out there that you
can't do that, right? But.
But she's an icon. She's a.
Icon. And she also has such a vision.
But I yes, I mean, she's an icon.
I wouldn't be able to emulate that, but she is an absolute
icon. Yeah, good.
Good answer. And.
Fearless Would you think you had a worst fashion moment?
It was a worst haircut moment. The worst haircut moment?
Tell me about that. It was OK.
I'll just say 3 words perm asymmetrical. 80s. 80s like.
You can just imagine it from there.
It was too painful to relive. How?
Long was the said haircut. Oh my God, it was so bad.
I don't think I even wanted to go to school.
This was some guy. His name was Jay.
I still remember the name. I could.
I could picture him in my head and I think he thought he would
do something like really cool on me.
And I was kind of game. You know, I've always been a
little bit like, yeah, let's try it.
But I remember getting home and just thinking, I can't go to
school like this. It was probably Grade 9, maybe
Grade 10. No, Grade 98.
And I mean, it was devastating and traumatic.
And I don't even know how I got out of that haircut.
You know when someone cuts your hair so badly that you almost
need to, you know? But I couldn't do a buzz cut on
grade eight? That would have been just too
extreme. That trauma behind.
Yeah, maybe we should cut this part.
Yes, we talk about travel. You're constantly hopping on and
off planes. Are you a good hacker?
Relatively, yes. Now, yes.
And you know what I've realized? If you don't have what you need
when you get there and you're going somewhere like New York or
London or other, I used to really panic.
And I was like, wait a second. It's like order it, it's.
So true. Yes.
Favorite luggage? Oh, well, I actually love the
away luggage because the wheels. There are four wheels, right?
And you can just pile your stuff on top of it.
And it's just how you can walk through the airport with those
luggage. It's.
It's so true because actually I've got the two wheel wheelie.
Yeah, I am good about tripping. Myself up on it.
And also you have to kind of hold your arm like yes.
You end up with a sore shoulder. Yeah, good one.
Ruins your posture. Back to posture.
Back to posture wardrobe secrets.
Do you have a guilty secret brand?
Wow. What did What does guilty even
mean? Well.
Is it that it's something you don't want to admit that you
buy, or is it that you spent too much on it?
Oh. Now you're turning the tables on
me. What is guilty?
Guilty is, let's say, let's say, the most expensive item.
Well. Actually, I think the most
expensive clothing item I've ever bought was for my husband
when he turned. I don't know, maybe 45 or 50 or
something like that. And there was this Hermes Parka.
Parka. Yeah, with layers and things
that kind of snap that and it weighs about 40 kilos you have.
A pinch chip from him. It is like a weighted vest.
It is so heavy that when he hands it to people at
restaurants to hang, they go like that's like that.
But it's amazing. Shearling lines like, just so
beautiful. But I I don't know why.
I find it easier to spend money on him.
But I will buy like, I've bought the odd piece from the row,
right? I've bought the odd Yogi
Yamamoto. Or come to go some pieces that
are kind of those incredible layered coats that do many
things that are really pieces of art.
They really are pieces of art, like clothing.
Good clothing is art. Have you ever bought a super
expensive designer bag? Not that expensive.
How expensive is expensive? That's it's all.
Relative pounds per well. Don't think about it.
You never do. You never do because.
It. No, because if I'm going to wear
it, I'm going to wear it. And then I don't even think
about it. It's just like it's again, that
instant. Yes.
It's like, am I going to wear this everywhere?
Yes. I'm just going to get it.
And it doesn't really matter. I'm not a one of those people
who goes out and shops all the time and you just think, oh, I
got to see that. No, I don't have time.
What's your approach to sustainable fashion then?
Well, I think if you love it and you're going to wear it for a
really, really long time, it's sustainable.
Very good one. Very good one.
Do you buy vintage ever? Not.
Really. Any reason?
Well, I don't again don't have time to go starting through it
many things. And of course, probably vintage
now is maybe a little bit different than vintage when I
was 20 because vintage when I was 20 was cut for the 1950s
kind of body type, which is not mine.
So I just wouldn't find anything and I really like my clothes to
be kind of fresh and that can be difficult also.
So it's a it's a time issue. I I get that, I get that.
Let's spin on to some quick fire questions.
What fashion advice would you give your 20 year old self?
That's if it's not an instant yes, it's a no.
Good one. Which fashion trend would you
most like to see make a comeback?
That's a pass and I don't understand the next one.
What does room one O 1 mean? Do you know?
What if you're not British? You don't seem to understand
what room one O 1 means. That one is where you consign
things really to the bin. Oh, like it never comes.
Back like you just never ever ever want to see it again.
I. Don't know if I ever saw in the
first place. The perm.
The perm? No.
I think maybe like flares. Like, really big flares.
Who can? Wear those.
Is that what they're called? I mean?
They were. They wore loons in the 70s, but
that was maybe slightly before your time.
What was your last impulse buy? I think it was this jacket.
It was it was quite good. I did well on that day.
You do fun on that day there might have been five or six
impulse buy your. Views on tattoos.
Oh, you know, I used to really think, Oh my God, why are people
doing that to themselves? How will they ever get them off?
Right. And then they became so
ubiquitous that now when you see people who are like fully
covered in tattoos, it's normal, right?
It's changed so much. It used to really be a thing.
It was like you were a yes or no tattoo person.
Now I really don't care if other people have them.
I used to think that if your if your child got one, it said
something about them, right? Like you're going to be judged.
Yes, But I have so many friends older than me, younger than me,
who got tattoos of random things like Woodstock, Tinkerbell.
I mean, who's to judge? Beauty treatment you couldn't
give up. Oh, hair coloring.
I'm a good haircut. Minimalism or maximalism?
Minimalism. Couture or charity shop?
Neither. Crocs cute or puke?
Puke. Sorry Crocs.
They do well, though. They sell a lot.
They sell. They sell a lot.
Sneakers or stilettos. Sneakers.
Skinnies or boyfriends or white legs?
You know this? Sports Lux or Rock chick?
Totally. Sports LAX.
Trendo style. Style.
Color or monochrome? Monaco.
Experimental or uniform? Uniform.
Cashmere or cotton? Both.
Hoarder or editor? Editor.
Shapewear or sexy lingerie? Neither, you know, have you seen
negative underwear? Not that I'm doing a plug for
them or anything like that, but have you seen that brand?
It's really good. So Jenna also right, told me
about them because I said, you know, you should do underwear.
She said that you can never do underwear better than negative
underwear and it is like the somewhere in between.
I guess sexy lingerie is not shapewear as such, but it is
like great very wearable underwear.
I highly recommend. To check out tights or
stockings. I think they're both a plot
against women. Yeah, Bikini or one piece, one
piece beanie or Berry beanie. And finally, yes, Marcia, at the
end of the day, do you or don't you wear in bed?
I have love a really super light cotton men's PJ.
Perfect. Thank you so much for your time,
your witty informed answers. I mean, as you know we we can
chat until we're at the top of the mountain.
But thank you for your time today on this miserable,
miserable London day. You'll be so ready to get on
that plane. Because not the miserable
spending the beginning of it with you.
Oh. Bless you, bless you.
Thank you. Thank you.