Prior to taking the lead at Schutz International, Marina Larroude was vp and fashion director at Barneys New York, a role she took on after holding fashion director roles at Teen Vogue and Style.com. For this week’s episode of the Glossy Podcast, Larroude joins Jill Manoff to talk about her multiple career changes within the world of fashion, the untapped market for good, affordable boots, and the reason brands should consider bucking the usual wholesale purchasing timeline. Edited highlights below.
Fashion’s most effective influencers:
“I want real women to be talking about the product, not necessarily just the fashion community. I really want to put the word out and to have real women, doctors and all my friends and your friends, really excited about a shoe brand. So it does not matter, honestly, if you have 17 million followers or 9 million, or if you’re my friend who has 500. I want people to really be sharing this with their friends.”
Working with wholesale partners:
“What I learned is that you need to be agile. As we deliver product in a matter of eight weeks, I see what’s really performing at our stores. What I have in my stores is not necessarily what you’re going to be able to find in our wholesale partners’ stores. If I see a sandal that’s really performing — we sold so many units in a month, or in a week — we call our wholesale partners, and we’re like, ‘Do you want to jump into this with us? We have this [hot] shoe, and we can delivery that to you right away.'”
The definition of luxury:
“For me, luxury is time. It’s me getting the best product out there for the lowest price that I can. I don’t want to overspend to feel that I’m buying luxury. And I think more women are aligned with that. They don’t need to be buying something that has a high price point to feel special anymore. And I see that a lot, again, at out store on Madison Avenue that I’m at pretty much every day of the week.”
