During a session at our sister brand’s Women in Retail Leadership Summit last month in Phoenix, leading fashion designer Tracy Reese was interviewed for a keynote session. During the conversation with Gayle Tait, CEO of recommerce platform Trove, Reese touched on her start in the fashion industry; why she left the fashion epicenter of New York City to move to her hometown of Detroit to start her sustainable clothing brand Hope for Flowers by Tracy Reese; the challenge of creating a desirable, accessible, sustainable and, importantly, profitable brand in today’s market; among other topics. Here are a few highlights from the session.

On Choosing a Career in Fashion

While interested in fashion as a child and growing up, Reese didn’t realize that design was a potential career option for her. She viewed drawing and sewing as hobbies and not vehicles for a career.

“I felt that I had to pick a career that was more technical,” Reese told the audience. “I though I’d be an architect or maybe an interior designer. My teachers opened my eyes to the fact that there were amazing colleges that I could attend and that, in fact it [fashion design] was a career. Going to Parsons School of Design in New York for a summer program as a high school student when I was 16 introduced me to the industry. I realized how important an industry it is and I knew that I could have a career that meant something.”

Why She Launched Hope for Flowers

After 30 years in New York City working for large and small fashion brands, Reese made the decision to move back to Detroit to start her own brand, Hope for Flowers by Tracy Reese. Why did she make this decision?

“I definitely believe that you have to listen to your intuition, you have to listen to your gut, and we have to trust ourselves,” said Reese. “After decades in the industry, I was learning to trust myself more. And a few things happened at the same time. I was learning more about responsible design and sustainability, and I had the opportunity to join a cohort at CFDA (Council of Fashion Designers of America). We were learning about fashion’s impact and textiles that have less harmful effects on the environment, supply chain labor … we know how huge this subject is.

“Nine months of meeting every week and listening to different speakers ended with us having to create a blueprint for our businesses — how we wanted to structure our businesses, how we wanted to go forward. As a designer, it’s my job to keep myself inspired, keep learning and stay motivated. After 30 years you get a little stuck and run by the calendar and last year’s business. I was so excited to realize that I could continue to learn and grow. I knew I was more intelligent than the way I was working. We’re a creative industry; we’re all about creativity. So why aren’t we designing the future? I saw this as an opportunity.”

How Hope for Flowers is Different

Reese saw the launch of Hope for Flowers as a way to differentiate the brand in a homogenous fashion landscape. Furthermore, she was excited at the opportunity to work smarter, more sustainably, and without sacrificing the design and product quality that customers had come to expect from her.

“When I wrote the blueprint for Hope for Flowers, I didn’t want it to be just about clothes and more product,” Reese recalled. “I wanted to be more intentional in design. I wanted to remember everything I got into this business to be. We were overdesigning and overdeveloping. I don’t think the stores could even support as much product as they were asking for. But when you’re selling to major department stores, they expect newness every month.

“I wanted to stop that — there was just too much product. And I was wearing myself down and I was wearing down my team. I knew I wanted to slow it down, I knew I wanted to have smaller collections, I knew I wanted to deliver closer to when we could actually wear the clothes, I knew I wanted to design them using sustainable textiles. And I wanted to have a social mission alongside our commercial business, which is why I decided to launch the brand in Detroit.

“I was seeing so much growth in Detroit. Ten years ago downtown [Detroit] was a ghost town. It was like a sad wasteland. Now there’s retail, there are hotels, there are tons of restaurants. A lot of people moved to Detroit because there was so much opportunity. You can really build something from scratch. I wanted to be home; I wanted to be able to give back to the community in some way. For me that meant a.) sharing what I’ve learned about living and working more responsibly and, b.) offering art enrichment courses to young people in Detroit. When Detroit went bankrupt, all of the art and music classes were taken out of the schools. I wanted to contribute somehow because it just breaks my heart that kids in Detroit don’t have the same opportunities I had growing up. I wanted to offer free art classes to Detroit public school and charter school children.”