Men's // Women's
Conversation With: Lauren Bush and Blake Mycoskie
TOMS Shoes founder Blake Mycoskie and FEED Projects founder Lauren Bush have ample common ground—and the will to collaborate on design someday. But coordinating the schedules of two continent hopping, philanthropic-fashion entrepreneurs proves somewhat tricky. Thank goodness for conference lines.
Blake Mycoskie
Blake Mycoskie: Hey Miss Lauren! Congratulations!
Lauren Bush [newly engaged]: Thank you, thank you. Where are you?
BM: I’m home in Los Angeles. We’re taking the whole company skiing next week in Mammoth.
LB: I’m in snowy New York. It’s blizzarding and kind of beautiful. Very peaceful. Hey, congrats on the millionth shoe! Awesome!
BM: Thank you.
LB: And thank you for the song.
Neiman Marcus: What song?
BM: “Truth” by Balmorhea, a band out of Austin, Texas. It’s a song I heard this year and literally started crying. So I sent it to all my friends for Christmas.
Lauren Bush
NM: How long have you been friends?
LB: Since 2007.
BM: There was a dinner in the Hamptons, hosted by Summer Rayne Oakes for different designers and architects and people doing things with an environmental or social purpose. Lauren was there with her cute little dog.
LB: I’m forever grateful because he gave me guidance. You started a year ahead of us, and it was great to pick your brain about factories and warehousing and things that we had to learn.
NM: Blake, what have you learned from Lauren?
BM: Lauren was quicker to expand from her original product and do it with different retail partners and different fabrics. The higher-end bags, the projects with women’s cooperatives—seeing her do that really inspired me to think about our sourcing and materials and price positions. Now we design a special collection for Neiman Marcus every season. That’s something Lauren led the way with.
Toms Shoes
LB: Thanks! Gosh! When we first met, you said you were jealous because I only had one SKU, and you were juggling so many different sizes. I think that gave us more ease in the beginning to go out and utilize different fabrics and reinvent the bag.
NM: What’s next for both of you?
LB: Blake and I have always talked about collaborating, and we need to finally do it this year. Feed’s goal is to keep growing and supporting great causes. We support the UN World Food Programme and Unicef and now we’re also supporting healthier school meals for kids in America through Feed USA. There’s so many different things going on in food aid and school meals.
Backpack by Feed
BM: Both of us started our companies to meet a need.
It’s a perfect collaboration because of the simplicity of our brands and what we do. It’s easy to understand Toms’ one-for-one model and it’s easy to understand Lauren’s [buy a bag, feed a child] model. We have so many overlapping customers, who love both brands. So it’s just a matter of finding the right timing and design.
LB: Toms was one of our first retailers. We sold bags on their site.
BM: We sold a ton of them! It was fantastic.
NM: Do you see more cause-related fashion than you used to?
BM: More companies are incorporating giving into their business, which really excites me. You’re seeing it at the luxury level, as well as the level of kids making things in their dorm rooms.
NM: Any advice for them?
LB: People have to like the product. You can’t ignore that element just because it’s cause-related. Ultimately people won’t buy a Toms shoe unless they think it’s cool and looks right and feels good. And same with a Feed bag. So you have to have a passion for design and product development and entrepreneurship. We have a really distinctive looking product, and that’s what’s given us the momentum to go on and create lots of different products … that look cool and reflect the cause.
Distributing donated shoes in Argentina.
BM: A lot of people get overwhelmed by the enormity of their cause. Hunger in the world is such a huge issue that it can be discouraging, but Lauren focused on how she could help one kid, two kids, 1,000 kids, 10,000 kids, in that order. So she started small and focused on the one person she was going to help. Toms started by focusing on 250 kids in one village in Argentina. So start small and keep it simple.
NM: What else do you two have in common?
BM: Texas.
LB: Definitely Texas.
BM: We both like denim shirts.
LB: And burlap. I’m a proud owner of burlap Toms shoes.
BM: We both like Montauk.
LB: Country music.
BM: Yeah, anything that goes with Texas.
NM: Lauren, how’s your wedding coming?
LB: It’s all very exciting. I went on vacation so I’m just gearing up to think about all of it. Maybe Feed bags and Toms shoes will be involved. Blake, are you coming to New York any time soon?
BM: Yes, I’ll email you.
