“It’s a competitive landscape out there,” said Andrew Rosen to a roomful of current CFDA {Fashion Incubator} designers last week. “And as Charles Darwin said, it’s all about survival of the fittest,” the Theory co-founder and chief executive said. “You’ve got to survive, and if you can’t—find another profession.”
Rosen welcomed the talent to Theory’s Meatpacking District headquarters on Wednesday afternoon for some candid conversation and tough love. Attendees included: Alexandra Alvarez of Alix; Aurora James of Brother Vellies; Charles Youssef; Daniel DuGoff of DDUGOFF; Tim and Dan Joo of Haerfest; Jason and Julie Alkire of Haus Alkire; Ji Oh; Katie deGuzman and Michael Miller of K/LLER Collection; Thaddeus O’Neil; and Molly Yestadt of Yestadt Millinery.

Although this particular Incubator class consists of designers from varied disciplines—millinery, jewelry, ready-to-wear, leather goods, and more—they more or less shared the same generally areas of concern, namely, how to properly scale a business, whether to focus on direct-to-consumer or retail relationships, how to approach strategic partnerships, and the importance of sustainability. Rosen drew upon his decades in the business to discuss these issues at length, but there was one central tenet he kept returning to repeatedly. “Whatever the issue is with your business,” he said, “Just make sure that you have a strategy. You can’t just show up to your desk at the Incubator and start flailing away. Have a strategy for who you are and where you’re going. If you don’t know where you’re headed, how do you know what you accomplished on any given day?”

Another key theme of the powwow was the importance of designers finding their own voice as opposed to trying to appeal to everyone and listening to too many messages. “I listened to too many people,” said Aurora James. “Everyone said, ‘Make it sexy! Sexy, sexy! Lots of heels!’ But for spring 2018 I’m really excited to get back to flats, which are still the core of my business…Don’t get me wrong, the heels were great—press loved them and they created lots of traction—but I’m just so excited to get back to focusing on the things I love making. And if anything it taught me that you have to experiment to really know what you’re supposed to be doing.”

Rosen closed out the conversation by affirming James’s point: “We can’t all be an Alex Wang or a Demna [Gvasalia]. But what you can do is figure out what you do better than everyone else… Back to what I said about survival of the fittest—you’ve got to figure out what you’re good at to survive.”