Clothing Designer Eileen Fisher Models Mindfulness

In honor of the ability of aware girls leaders, a glance again at our 2013 cowl story on clothes designer Eileen Fisher. 

I’ve identified for a while that Eileen Fisher is an individual who brings sturdy values to her enterprise ventures, however she actually caught our consideration in 2012 throughout Hurricane Sandy, when her firm’s headquarters in Irvington, New York, have been flooded, placing a severe crimp of their year-end enterprise shipments.

Regardless of having to haul a dozen dumpster-loads of broken items out of the workplaces and the close by Lab Retailer, to the tune of $1.5 million, Eileen said on the time, “It was simply stuff.”

You may solely think about the feelings that may come up in a chief govt in the event that they noticed their sewage-soaked merchandise floating by. Eileen and her employees didn’t linger there. They mobilized rapidly—organizing carpools, impromptu assembly areas, and arranging interest-free loans for workers needing money in the course of the disaster. That form of resilience and caring instructed us this was an organization with a human face.

Conscious Management Issues

A yr after Sandy, I used to be on the (partially) restored Eileen Fisher HQ, studying concerning the form of care the corporate takes with its clothes: from serving to a Chinese language silk dyer use fewer chemical compounds and fewer water, to launching a recycled clothes program, the place clients return clothes they now not use, with the proceeds going to an initiative that helps enhance the lives of lady and ladies. There’s a yoga/meditation room. In one other room, younger girls are slicing photos out of magazines and studying concerning the tales they’re instructed about themselves by the media—an train within the Eileen Fisher Leadership Institute.

In an trade the place fleeting traits and closely marked-up merchandise manufactured in abroad sweatshops are the norm, Eileen Fisher is listening to the life cycle of a garment, from cradle to grave, in addition to the way forward for the individuals who put on them and the individuals who create them.