‘We need to decolonize our minds,’ says Imran Amed, Business of Fashion founder

Amed holds a degree from McGill University in Canada, an MBA from the Harvard Business School, and an honorary doctorate from Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design in London. In 2017, a decade after founding BoF, he was appointed by Queen Elizabeth II as Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for services to the fashion industry.

With Vogue Philippines’ goal to connect business leaders, experts and visionaries with our Filipino creative communities, the recent 7th Vogue Talks at the Samsung Performing Arts Theater in Makati was filled with 1,235 attendees.

I had the privilege to be seated with Vogue Philippines president and CEO Archie Carrasco, so I asked him how everything came about. He shared that he’s always had a wishlist of global leaders to bring to the Philippines and it was COO and publisher Rhoda Campos Aldanese who made this happen. “That’s her strength,” he shared. With all her hard work, Mega Global Licensing Inc. president Suki Salvador told me how this industry-awaited event was “Rhoda’s baby.” 

The audience held onto Amed’s every word as he shared about his personal and professional life onstage to Vogue editor-in-chief Bea Valdes and fashion director Pam Quiñones. 

“Canadian by birth, Indian by ethnicity, East African by heritage, Londoner by choice,” as his Instagram bio proudly states, Amed followed the corporate path while working as management consultant at McKinsey in London until he was about 30. “I just found myself waking up every day feeling unfulfilled. There’s nothing worse than waking up every morning and feeling like you’re working really hard, but not feeling any sense of connection or meaning or purpose in your work.”

He left McKinsey in 2006 to explore his interest in the fashion industry. “I had one very senior executive, a group of high-profile brands basically looked me in the eye and said, we just don’t need people like you in fashion,” he shared. “There was a lot of people telling me my skills weren’t of use, that there were no jobs for people like me. And so I decided to start my own company.” 

“I didn’t know anything about the media business,” Amed confessed. “I wasn’t trained in journalism and I wasn’t educated in running a media company, but you know, in the same way as I came to fashion as an outsider, coming to media as an outsider also helped me because it just helped me think about things differently. I didn’t necessarily need to follow the rules or the conventions of how those industries work. I can just be innovative and think of different ways to do things.”

“We need to decolonize our minds” declared Amed as he was asked about how Filipinos and Asians can assert their cultural identities through fashion. “The only time we will be truly successful as people is when we stop trying to look for validation from the Global North. Southeast Asia, South Asia, and the Philippines are big markets. The way these markets and these economies are growing, they're going to become even more important.”

In this exclusive interview, visionary Imran Amed shares his insights on the challenges of his career, the role of traditional media, the most underreported issues of the industry, fashion as a catalyst for social change, and his vision for the future of BoF. 

RISSA TRILLO: Growing up, what were some of the most influential experiences or individuals that influenced your decision to pursue a career in fashion and ultimately led to the creation of Business of Fashion (BoF)?

IMRAN AMED: There were a number of people who I met early on in my journey who I learned from. One of them was my friend Mesh Chhibber, who was John Galliano’s PR for many years. He was introduced to me by a mutual friend of ours. There were so many nights I spent just chatting with Mesh and learning from him because he had this whole language of fashion that I didn’t even know.

You know, I didn’t know what a bias-cut dress was. Or I didn’t know who Yohji Yamamoto was, for example.

Then I met people, entrepreneurs like Natalie Massenet, the woman who started Net-a-Porter. And I was lucky to meet entrepreneurs like that who just demonstrated to me that you could build something new in this internet culture that was just emerging at the time.

How has your multicultural background shaped your perspective on the global fashion industry?

I think, most of all, it made me just realize that there’s not a single perspective when it comes to an industry like fashion, which touches people everywhere.

Fashion is probably the rare industry that really reaches people almost in every corner of the world. Everyday people get up and they decide or choose what to wear. Everywhere in the world, people are making clothes, selling clothes, buying clothes. 

What I think is important is when we look at an industry that is that global, it requires having lots of different perspectives. The media industry and fashion for a very long time were dominated by either really localized perspectives, or kind of legacy media that speak with a certain kind or a single perspective on fashion.

What I always wanted to get across on BoF is that there’s all sorts of different perspectives that are valid, and there’s all sorts of different lenses that are valid. So whether that be providing a technological lens, or a business lens, or sustainability lens, or providing a perspective of fashion from Sub-Saharan Africa, or Brazil, or India, or the Philippines, there are all of these perspectives that are valid and important. It was important to me to put all of these perspectives on the same level, so that no single perspective was more important than the other.

What were the most unexpected challenges you faced when transitioning from a management consultant to a pioneering fashion entrepreneur?

Starting in fashion was almost like starting from scratch. My career and professional experience before fashion wasn’t really seen as valid or valuable to people in fashion. So in a way, I had to start from zero and build up a whole new repertoire of skills and cultural understanding.

In a way, fashion is like its own culture. The language is different, the ways people dress are different, the rules are different. I came in as kind of an interloper trying to navigate. How does someone from the outside find a way of understanding how everything works?

The one benefit I had is that as a management consultant, I was constantly parachuting into different industries. So I had to get really smart on the banking industry in Ireland or the real estate industry in Australia. And so as I would meet people in fashion, I was kind of developing this mental map of how the whole industry worked, because that’s what I knew how to do. I was used to taking in large amounts of inputs and data and information, and then trying to make sense of it. In a way, writing BoF was an encapsulation of that mental map that I was developing.

But it wasn’t easy. It took a lot of work, and it meant starting from scratch.

In the current digital age, how do you see the role of traditional fashion media evolving, and what innovations do you believe are necessary for survival?

The distinction between traditional media and digital media is gone.

Everyone’s got access to the same platforms: Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Twitter or X, whatever you want to call it. Everyone’s using the same platforms to reach the same groups of people. And so there’s been a real democratization of media.

The real differentiation must come in terms of quality. Anybody can create something that they can put on any of those platforms. So how do you really stand out?

Stand out by having a differentiated point of view, creating something people trust and believe in, and focusing on quality. That’s what’s required whether you’re traditional media or new media.

What innovative trends or technologies do you believe will most significantly impact the fashion industry in the next decade?

Artificial intelligence happens to be the single most important technological change that we’ve probably ever seen in our lifetime. We’re just at the very, very early stages of that change or transformation.

One person I spoke to said, “We’re in the first pitch of the first inning of a baseball game.” Is baseball big in the Philippines?

Not really. More basketball.

So think about it like the first jump ball in the first quarter of the first game of the first season. We’re so early, so there’s still a lot that’s going to happen.

I personally find that very exciting, because as someone who was able to participate in the first wave of technological change in our industry, I see technological change as inevitable. And therefore, it presents opportunities, basically. It presented an opportunity for me all those years ago. It’s going to present opportunities for innovative thinkers now.

And for those of us who want to remain relevant and continue to be part of the innovation that’s happening in fashion, we must also think about how this is going to change the way we work.

How do you see the relationship between sustainability and profitability evolving in the fashion industry, and what part can BoF play in this transformation?

Sustainability and profitability are inextricably linked. Waste is one of the biggest issues we have in fashion because we make so many clothes that are never bought or sold or worn. But that also means that companies are throwing away or discarding or storing in warehouses clothes that they paid to create, that were never sold to anybody, and therefore, they didn’t make any money on those clothes. So a big part of the losses in the industry, or the things that kind of dent the profit of the industry, is the fact that we’re making clothes that nobody wants to buy.

So, yes, that has huge impact on the environment when we’re creating things that people don’t wear. But it also has a huge impact on profit because they’re clothes that nobody buys. Solving the waste problem also helps to address a profitability problem.

BoF is such a trusted voice. You always shed light on issues like this.

Our role is to ask the tough questions, provide analysis and insight on what some of the answers might be, and to continue to drive the conversation around these topics. We feel a great sense of responsibility to do that, given the influence and reach that BoF has. And so we want to use the platform that we have to raise these conversations.

So, for example, we did something called the BoF Sustainability Index, which measured the progress that 30 fashion brands — big, big fashion brands — made against the specific targets they’d set around emissions, workers’ rights, a whole bunch of other elements of sustainability.

We reported and worked on advancing conversations around fur and the use of fur in the fashion industry. We were the first to report on Gucci removing fur from its operations. We did a big announcement when Elle magazine globally banned fur from all of its editions, more than 40 editions around the world, both in the advertising and editorial and on a regular basis.

We raise these issues, challenge the industry, and participate in conversations around how the industry needs to change. The role we play is really a conductor and leader of an industry-wide conversation.

What do you think are some underreported issues or the most pressing issues in the fashion industry today that you believe deserve more attention?

For me, it’s really about workers’ rights and the supply chain.

During the pandemic, we really saw how fashion companies—particularly western fashion companies, who don’t necessarily own or operate their own supply chains—they work with third parties and contractors to manufacture clothes in Bangladesh or India or Vietnam or other countries.

We’re still a long way from having a situation where the people who work in those supply chains are paid a living wage, working conditions that are appropriate for that kind of work. During the pandemic, we saw that a lot of those companies canceled orders and left those people without any income or any way to live, because the factories that are kind of contracted to make the clothes weren’t able to pay their workers.

Because there’s such a distance between these brands and the people in their supply chains, they often don’t feel a sense of ownership or responsibility—that also, by the way, can happen in the luxury end of the supply chain. Currently, there are some investigations going on in Italy about luxury brands and their supply chains there.

So this is not just a fast fashion issue, this is a wider industry issue—to make sure that the people who work in the supply chain are given the opportunity to work in dignity.

How do you think fashion can be a catalyst for social change? And what role does BoF play in this movement?

I think because the fashion industry employs millions and millions of people around the world, especially people in emerging markets, and markets that are known for manufacturing clothes—a lot of those people are women. And in these markets, when you employ women and women have a steady job, and they have regular pay, and they’re treated with dignity, that means there’s a whole family of people that are influenced. Fashion has the power to make all of those lives better if we treat our workers with respect.

In what ways do you think fashion journalism can better address and promote cultural and social diversity?

The people that are telling and writing these stories need to reflect that cultural diversity. What’s important is having all of the perspectives from different parts of the world, from different cultural groups, from different socio-economic classes, from different genders. If the people writing about and telling fashion stories reflected the diversity of the industry, then you’re going to have a huge variety of stories that are told.

How do you hope to see BoF evolve in the next 10 years, and what legacy do you wish to leave in the fashion industry?

When people ask me to predict the future for the next 10 years, I find it hard because I think we’re living in a world that’s changing so fast. Like five years ago, if you’d asked me that question, I could never have predicted COVID. I couldn’t have predicted the rise of artificial intelligence. I couldn’t have predicted the huge post-pandemic boom that the industry saw. Plus the situation we’re in now where the industry is having a reset.

And so, I don’t really think like that. I think very much that BoF needs to respond to what’s happening in the moment. When COVID happened, I sat down with our editorial team and I said, nobody knows what’s going to happen now. Our responsibility is to guide the industry through whatever the future holds.

And so I guess my answer to that is I hope BoF can always be a resource for the fashion industry, for the beauty industry, for the luxury industry to face up to, to navigate, and to kind of seize opportunities in whatever the future holds.

We live in a world that’s very, very hard to predict. What I just hope is that for the next hundred years, BoF will be around to be that guide to show the way, to kind of be a spotlight, like a lighthouse that helps to light the way so that people can find a way forward, whatever the world has in store for us.

If you could give one piece of advice to aspiring fashion entrepreneurs and journalists, what would it be?

Find your voice. In journalism or in entrepreneurship, you have to have something unique to say or a unique product to offer to the market. I happen to be a media journalist entrepreneur. I think the reason BoF found an audience was because it was saying something new and had a unique voice. If you can find your voice, you’ll find that an audience will discover you and stay loyal to you as long as you stay true to your voice.