The Glossy Podcast

Krissy Cela, the fitness influencer and founder of the activewear brand Oner Active, spent 10 years building up her expertise as a creator before finally launching her brand.

That time spent researching, getting to know the community, and building an audience has paid off. Just six years of the brand's existence, it has already reached nearly $200 million in annual revenue.

For this week's Glossy Podcast, Cela joined Glossy editor-in-chief Jill Manoff for a live recording from the stage of the Glossy E-Commerce Summit in Miami, where the discussion centered on how she's been able to scale up her brand so quickly.

Part of that comes from her knowledge of the community. Oner Active's ambassadors program opens for applications once a year and routinely gets around over 30,000 applicants.

“All of them are vetted, and then we send them a free set from the latest collection — no one else will have access to that collection," Cela said. "And in return, they’ll create content. I think we’ve created 16 million impressions across social when only gifting 100 sets,” she said, explaining the program’s high ROI. “The girl with the content that performs the best then becomes affiliated with the brand. [She can then

As we approach the 250th anniversary of the United States' founding, we're living in a fashion world that's more globalized than ever. K-pop stars mix with American celebrities and European designers to form a diverse and international fashion consensus.

But there's still something ineffably unique about American fashion. From New England prep to country Western and urban hip-hop, there is no shortage of subcultures and aesthetics that originated in America and have become global phenomena.

On the Glossy Podcast this week, senior fashion reporter Danny Parisi and editor-in-chief Jill Manoff speak with Avery Trufelman, the journalist and host of the fashion and social history podcast Articles of Interest, about what American fashion truly is. We also break down which designers and brands today best emblematize what American fashion means today.

Trufelman said American fashion is defined by a chameleonic approach to style and reinvention. America has a long history of people reinventing themselves through fashion and aesthetics, from George W. Bush reinventing himself as a Texan rancher to Jay Gatsby adopting the fashions of New England to hide his background.

"There's this refrain that America is constantly learning to live up to the ideals that it set out for itself," Trufelman said. "This was pushed by waves of activism over the years. Black jazz musicians started wearing New England prep clothes in the 20th century, and it spread this message that anyone can dress that way. It's fulfilling this idealistic, not-quite-yet-lived experience of an equal society."

Trufelman said several major brands today are defining American fashion, from classics like Ralph Lauren to new designers like Emily Bode. But she specifically singled out Brooks Brothers as playing a pivotal role in defining what American fashion could be.

"Brooks Brothers is the oldest surviving clothing brand in the United States and really exemplifies everything about this country, good and bad," Trufelman said. Brooks Brothers has clothed every American president except two -- too fancy for Carter, not fancy enough for Reagan -- and helped popularize the very concept of a recognizable, mass fashion brand.

"America's gift to the world is brands," Trufelman said. "And Brooks Brothers was a big part of that. We invented mass-produced clothing, which is now such a big part of the fashion industry."

Fresh off a $10 billion valuation, the direct-from-manufacturer online retailer Quince is on a hot streak. It's been testing physical retail with pop-ups and expanding into new categories, from furniture to caviar.

But while the company had no shortage of sales, what it was lacking was a coherent brand story. Dakota Kate Isaacs, formerly a senior director at The Ordinary, started at Quince in February as the company's first head of brand strategy and narrative. Her goal has been to help Quince build an emotional connection with its customers, for reasons beyond just the low prices that attract them in the first place.

Isaacs spoke with senior fashion reporter Danny Parisi at the Glossy E-commerce Summit in Miami this month to discuss what strategies she's been adopting to build those relationships.

"My goal is not to create a new story for the brand, but [instead] to articulate the story to everyone," she said. "The narrative around Quince often gets condensed just to price, but the price isn't the story. The price is the result of the system, and the system is the story."

To that end, Isaacs has been pushing for more initiatives, including a recent furniture pop-up in Los Angeles. Isaacs said pop-ups allow new categories like fragrance and wellness to be introduced in a more comprehensive, aesthetically cohesive way, with accompanying imagery and branding. For example, another recent pop-up for its fine jewelry category was held in a coffee shop in Manhattan.

"I'm working to tell the true story of the business," Isaacs said. "What makes this business unique is the technology and the system behind the business

The World Cup is in the United States this year for the first time since the 1990s, which creates massive opportunities for many sportswear and apparel brands.

Perhaps no brands are as heavily invested in the World Cup as Nike and Adidas. Together, they sponsor many of the teams and have rolled out several large-scale campaigns tied to the tournament. On the Glossy Podcast, international reporter Zofia Zwieglinska spoke with Daniel-Yaw Miller, award-winning writer and creator of the bi-weekly SportsVerse newsletter, about these two sportswear giants and their strategies for the World Cup.

Miller said the fact that the World Cup is in North America this year has given many brands the license to step up their games.

"We haven't seen a World Cup of this scale in many years," Miller said. "It's well-positioned for the biggest companies and brands in the world to make the most of it and justify the case for investing in it. Previous World Cups in Qatar and Russia had their own complications. It's been a while since it was in a location that was home to many huge companies."

Already, Nike has rolled out collaborations with many celebrities and brands tied to the World Cup, including with Jacquemus, Palace and Drake. Miller said Nike, under the leadership of CEO Elliot Hill, has been working to regain ground in its soccer division.

"In 2024, [Nike] came out with a strategy called Sports Offense, which was based around these five pillars, and one of them is football," Miller said. "We've seen that bear out with how the brand has invested marketing dollars in the lead-up to the World Cup."

But Adidas has nostalgia on its side, Miller said, as it's the brand most heavily associated with soccer and dominated the sport for a long time before Nike got involved. The Adidas Samba has been around for decades and recently went through a resurgence just in time for the World Cup.

"Adidas has so many legends like David Beckham, various Brazilian superstars from the ‘90s, Italian legends like Alessandro del Piero," Miller said. "And Adidas has done a good job of keeping them all in their universe and under endorsement contracts usually reserved for active athletes. But the people with the most spending power are people who grew up watching these players."