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“Being a chief executive has never really been part of my identity,” Eileen Fisher said.Credit...Vincent Tullo for The New York Times
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“Being a boss is not my strength,” Eileen Fisher said, shifting awkwardly in a seat from a sleek meeting room inside the headquarters of a company she started herself almost 40 years ago.
That may seem surprising, given the degree to which Ms. Fisher, 72, has proved herself as a leader with staying power in an often brutal industry defined by relentless change.
After all, she is a designer who built a fashion empire offering modern women comfortable yet empowering designs in natural fabrics that simplified busy lives. In an industry in which, by some measures, a truckload of clothes is burned or buried in a landfill every second, she was an early pioneer of environmentalism as a core brand value. She’s a founder of a company who, in 2006, decided that rather than taking her business public, or getting acquired, she would transfer ownership to her employees instead.
But front and center has never been Ms. Fisher’s style. For most of its history, Eileen Fisher (the brand) has rarely had a chief executive, opting instead for “collaborative teams” of assorted shapes and sizes. It was only in the last 18 months or so that the company has ever even had a single C.E.O., in the form of Eileen Fisher (the woman). She stepped up to steady the ship after the brand, as she put it, “kind of lost its way.”
Now, the queen of slow fashion is ready to give up that role (albeit slowly), part of what she described as a “responsible transition” away from the helm. This latest step in stepping back would, she explained, allow her to concentrate on formalizing her design philosophy so the brand might eventually exist without her.
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