It was a packed cocktail event at the Soho House in Los Angeles’ Arts District, where guests were able to view several Badgley Mischka evening gowns that will be part of the fashion house’s entry onto the FashWire platform.
The Wednesday evening event saw a bevy of influencers, including Amanda Lougee, Aubrey Hoover, Olivia Rodriguez and Anya Nicolodei, viewing the brand’s designs in bright spring and summer colors.
Also on hand was Kimberly Carney, founder and chief executive officer of the business-to-business-to-consumer app FashWire that has some 480 fashion brands on its platform. She praised the designs created by James Mischka, who was at the party, and Mark Badgley, who was unable to attend.
“Their collection is always brilliantly curated to really adhere to that luxury customer,” Carney said. “You can be sophisticated and elegant but still feel comfortable in their styles. …They are constantly evolving.”
Bringing Badgley Mischka to the platform is a nice addition to FashWire, which started out with 25 brands in 2018 and has grown by adding contemporary and luxury labels, including Cynthia Rowley, Johnston & Murphy, Áwet, People Like Us and Zamt-Berlin.
Carney, who for many years ran a clothing store called the Brik in Seattle before launching FashWire, started the platform with contemporary brands stocked at her retail outpost. Some of those early clients were AG Jeans and Michael Stars. But the pandemic and the many store closures it spawned dramatically boosted her business. “When retail shut down, everyone wanted us to put them on our platform. Then Oprah Winfrey covered us and we just went from there,” Carney said.
Now her business is not just about fashion. The company in 2021 added GlossWire for beauty products. Last year CasaWire for home goods was launched, and recently the company folded in PawWire for pet products.
The apps are run with a slightly different format than others. Customers, instead of buying directly on FashWire, are referred to each member brand’s website to make purchases. FashWire also gathers a lot of useful information and data about consumer demographics and customers’ likes and dislikes, which is then shared with each brand. That was something that appealed to Badgley Mischka. “They offered us a lot of good information,” Mischka said. “We are just starting to use the demographic information and all the metrics they supply.”
