The story of amoy new york, a mid-level luxury sustainable fashion brand started by Gallatin senior Katie Xue and Chapman University senior Isabella Chan, began during the COVID-19 pandemic. The duo met by chance and discovered that they had a shared love of fashion, which led to them launching Amoy last June.
Chan, having grown up attending an all-girls school, felt it gave her a complex relationship with her femininity. She struggled with wanting to be able to compete in a male dominated world while maintaining her autonomy and personal taste: her love of fashion and shopping.
“I was very insecure about wanting to do my makeup or worry about how my clothes looked, and I liked to look at Vogue and those fashion magazines,” Chan said. “Especially with second wave feminism, there was like a lot of things like, oh, we have to change or we have to… hide things that were considered traditionally feminine, because we need to be able to like acting or doing. things that are traditionally masculine in order to compete.”
Chan and Xue recognized that feminine people are often not allowed to simply be feminine and respected. Instead, they must also be somewhat traditionally masculine (advanced, deep, strong) in order to gain the broader respect of society. But erasing femininity never quite fit Chan or Xue.
“We are two girls from New York City who love to dress up and wear cute clothes, but we also care about the planet,” said Xue. “We felt we could create pieces for people like us.”
Xue and Chan didn’t bother with idea boards and hours of pondering aesthetics: their vision for Amoy was crystal clear. They spent the months leading up to its launch creating their first product, the Jane Minidress, which retails for $225. The dress is created with fabric made from recycled plastic bottles and made with ethical labor practices, which Xue noted as something Amoy takes pride in. The low back, long sleeve, high neck black mini dress with mesh overlay was inspired by the silhouettes of the 70s, the passion for sustainability and the need to keep moving and be fashionable at the same time.
Once Chan and Xue created Jane’s dress, their earlier periods of social media influence came in handy. They found that social media advertising was the best way to publicize their launch, given its low cost and accessibility to potential customers. A few days before its release, they decided they needed to increase their publicity, so they filmed a friend in the Jane Mini and posted a tik tok from her walking down Sunset Boulevard in the warm light of Los Angeles to Chan’s story.
They said that the first TikTok got about 1.4 million views and estimated that overall their TikToks have gotten 3-4 million views. As expected, their social media press strategy worked and catapulted their brand.
“That first day, we had maybe 20 or 30 orders,” Xue said. “And that’s pretty exciting for people like us who don’t really make that much money.”
Xue and Chan’s excitement was palpable even months later. The couple described screaming every time a new order came in, once even disrupting a family friend’s meditation session.
After the brand went viral, several influencers bought and posted the Jane Mini, including Amelia Gray, who currently has 1.3 million followers on Instagram. But within two months, multiple websites posted ripped versions of her dress.
“It’s scary for us because we put all this time and effort into making it so easy to copy and imitate,” Xue said. “We made this dress sustainable so that people could have a sustainable alternative to the normal clothes they buy. And then here is a business that is undermining our values in terms of sustainability.”
While frustrated with other companies preying on their creativity and using their images and models without permission, Xue and Chan recognized that mid-tier sustainable luxury isn’t realistic for everyone to consume.
“Different types of fashion serve different types of purposes,” Chan said. “And I don’t think we’re claiming that our dress serves all purposes for everyone.”
Sustainability provides an escape from the cycle of revolving-door fast fashion trends. Xue and Chan explained that the intention behind Amoy’s design is to stand the test of time and be truly sustainable, rather than something that is worn briefly and then discarded after it falls out of the trend cycle.
“It takes a long time to develop. [a] pattern and design that we truly believe in,” said Xue. “Feeling like we need to speed up that process is pretty scary. But otherwise, I guess it’s just part of the game.”
Currently, Chan and Xue’s stressors revolve around managing a rapidly growing fashion brand while simultaneously being full-time students on opposite sides of the country. Amoy’s initial summer launch has been a long time coming, but now that school is back in full swing, the pair are struggling to find the time to create new designs they’re excited about.
Chan recently had to take a week off from school because of new york fashion week and juggling planning a NYFW party while keeping up with your schoolwork and traveling. But through it all, Xue and Chan have learned that they can rely on each other’s strengths.
“The advice I would give to anyone is to start young,” Chan said. “You start a brand in college and it doesn’t really work out, and then you go on and do other things because at the end of the day, whatever you did then is still under your belt.”
Although Xue and Chan seem to be incredibly passionate about Amoy and want it to become self-sustaining in the future, they also seem ready to put the wealth of experience they gained wherever their creative hearts take them next.
“The fashion industry is considered less of a great art form than art itself,” Xue said. “Fashion can be superficial to some extent, but I don’t think that necessarily makes it a bad thing for people.”
She also goes on to say that people get involved with superficial emotions all the time, and that fashion should be no different.
For now, all they’re hoping is for both old and new customers to tune in to the presale of their new Jane Maxi. This white lace version of her classic basic dress was released on September 30.
Contact Brooke Wasserman at [email protected]
Source: news.google.com