In a hyper-competitive industry, where brands with staying power are becoming harder to build, Eileen Fisher marks 40 years in business this year.

It’s doubly impressive that the American designer (dubbed the “queen of slow fashion” by The New York Times) has built an enduring label on simple, timeless pieces wrapped in environmentalism and a belief in slower consumption — all while operating in a sector that trades on newness.

But the milestone comes at a precarious moment. The sustainable fashion space Fisher helped establish is in the midst of a brutal shake out. Over the last 12 months, a host of buzzy brands have buckled, unable to survive in an increasingly competitive and challenging market while managing the additional costs and complexity that come with commitments to things like fair wages and responsible production.

Fisher has navigated the turbulence by doubling down on the quietly subversive approach that she’s pursued for decades, keeping focus on her core design philosophy and prioritising ethical and environmentally responsible operations over chasing sales or margin.

Now, after a major pandemic contraction and restructuring, the brand has shored up solid foundations that bely the broader market instability. It’s profitable, and has been for almost all of its four decades in operations. Sales reached $270 million last year. And with former Patagonia chief product officer Lisa Williams installed as CEO — allowing Fisher, 74, to refocus on the creative side of the business — the brand that’s long carried the flag for more mindful consumption is gearing up to grow — mindfully.

“We’re like a little organic farm in the middle of conventional farming,” Fisher said in an interview between meetings during New York Climate Week last month. “We could make cheaper products; we could do a lot of things that would push the growth, but we want to maintain our integrity.”

‘Back to Basics’

Growth — and how much of it to pursue — is something Fisher and Williams think about a lot.

Fisher launched her label in 1984 with $350 in her bank account and an idea. After struggling to find clothes she wanted to wear, she set out to make daily dressing simpler for busy working women. Her signature boxy linen tops and flowing cashmere cardigans are “like Legos,” she said, transcending seasons and working interchangeably.

The concept is not only practical, but designed to make it easier for women to consume less. True to this “slow fashion” approach, Fisher has sought to run the business in an equally conscious manner. She was early to embrace the idea that companies should incorporate environmental and social considerations into strategic decision making. Instead of going public or selling to private equity, she sold a large chunk of her holding into an employee stock plan in 2006.

Still, the company has at times grown beyond its ethos, acknowledged Fisher.

We could make cheaper products; we could do a lot of things that would push the growth, but we want to maintain our integrity.

“There were several moments where…. it got too, kind of too big or, you know, lost track of something in the centre for me,” she said. “There was a stage when we did all those prints — like wow,” she added, gesturing at a bright pink, flower-patterned wall completely at odds with the designer’s signature neutral accents. “There were certain things where the shapes just went crazy and they weren’t timeless anymore and I felt, you know, lost or confused.”

Before the pandemic, sales had peaked at around $450 million, but the collection had ballooned, too. In 2020, they plummeted to $207 million and the company was forced to lay off around a third of its workforce. By the time Williams joined the brand in 2022, it was in the midst of a reset focused on restoring stability and positioning the brand to succeed within the bounds of its core values. To achieve that, the company paired back its collections and refined its messaging. Many of the styles on sale today are versions of designs from the brand’s earliest collection, just done better, according to Fisher; coats are now made from regenerative wool and fits have been refined.

The pandemic was a “sort of back to basics moment,” she added.

A Mindful Growth Model

Together, Williams and Fisher have a kind of cosy camaraderie. Williams brings an organisational discipline Fisher acknowledges isn’t her strongest suit; she’s “the tough mum” who geeks out on operational details, the designer said.

It took more than a year to find the right person to fill the role. One of the many quirks of Eileen Fisher (the brand’s) unconventional business model is that it has rarely had a chief executive, operating for most of its existence as a kind of collective. Before Williams, the last time it hired a CEO externally was in the ‘90s. And while Fisher remains very much involved in the business, this time the appointment had the aura of anointing a successor. That meant someone who could help the company grow, without sacrificing its values.

“There’s a lot of complexity to how we’re trying to reconcile how aggressively we want to pursue growth and if we need it,” said Williams. “We’re not scared of growth by any means. We just want to make sure we’re getting at it with our values in mind.”

The company has plans to open a few more stores this year and it’s added to its marketing team. Efforts to subtly inject a sense of modernity without sacrificing the classic and timeless feel of the designs by playing with a hemline here and material textures or mix seem to be working.

The brand has never exactly been cool. Its designs simultaneously attract devotees who embrace its promise of comfortable elegance and detractors that see it as “frumpy and sexless,” said Kim France, author of the substack Girls of a Certain Age and founding editor in chief of Lucky magazine. (France herself is a fan). Still, the rise of trends like “quiet luxury” have helped broaden its appeal.

We’re not scared of growth by any means. We just want to make sure we’re getting at it with our values in mind.

Though it’s still not back to its pre-pandemic size, sell-through rates are the highest they’ve ever been and the brand has been growing at a slow but steady pace of about 5 percent for the last few years. The company says it’s now in a position where it can carefully step that up.

“It’s not going to be currently or in the near future double-digit [growth]; high single digits is what we’re aiming for,” said Williams. “The whole point of doing this right is not about growth and, you know, huge dollars; it’s about impact and modelling and leading by example.”

Less Is More

At a career moment when many would be looking to retirement, Fisher isn’t done reimagining the fashion model.

She remains one of the industry’s highest-profile advocates for a more responsible approach to business and inspirational figure to many in an increasingly challenging space.

“A business like Eileen Fisher has done such a good job of navigating what they see as success,” said Dana Davis, who ran sustainability, product and business strategy at Mara Hoffman — the slow fashion recession’s highest-profile casualty. “She had an idea and was able to maintain it… it takes a lot of grit.”

Despite the brands’ efforts, its financial success is still tied to worsening environmental damage (the more it makes and sells, the greater its footprint — as Williams put it, “we haven’t cracked the code and decoupled.”) Together, the designer and executive are pushing to keep raising the bar for the business — and that means pushing for change in the wider fashion system.

The company has come out in support of regulation like the New York Fashion Act, a bill that would make large brands more accountable for their environmental impact. And it’s been experimenting with resale since 2009, looking for a way to run a fashion business while producing less.

There’s still a long way to go. To date, the programme has taken back more than two million garments. But it’s still a tiny and complex sliver of the business at 2 percent of overall sales,

“Producing less and finding the right way to keep things in circulation if that’s possible is the right answer,” said Williams. “We’re trying to legitimately figure out how to operationalise this model… there’s going to have to be a different proportion of new to used than what it is right now.”