Ghizlan Guenez is the founder of themodist.com, which is a digital platform that has taken the fashion scene by storm with its refreshing approach to conservative dressing. Over 75 luxury brands including Christopher Kane, Peter Pilotto and Alberta Ferretti are shipped to over 100 countries. Themodist.com provides a welcome alternative for women whose personal dressing choices span all ages, faith and ethnicities. Here we discuss business, emerging talent and fashion choices.
How would you describe your approach to business?
I spent my entire career, 13 years to be exact, in private equity, with the same company. I was fortunate to have joined as one of the company’s first employees and to have been part of its incredible growth and success as it grew to become the largest in the emerging market. Having had that experience meant seeing first hand how a first class company is built. Everything that I learned there became instrumental in the way that I set up The Modist, including the criticality of a clear vision, the importance of excellent execution and finding the right team to buy into the vision and support in bringing it to life.
What prompted you to launch The Modist?
I’ve spent years surrounded by a network of incredibly stylish women who I instinctively knew would relate to the concept of The Modist. So often, women who dress in a modest or demure way have to sift through stores or e-commerce sites to find a piece with the right cut to suit them. I wanted to remove that editing-back process for the customer and create a complete, considered and desirable platform for shopping luxury fashion with a modest viewpoint.
What sets The Modist apart from other e-commerce platforms?
The Modist addresses the needs of a woman who dresses modestly yet loves fashion. Her current shopping experience is frustrating and time consuming and we aim to alleviate that and bring about a solution in the form of relevant fashion, convenience and inspirational styling, all within an elevated end-to-end experience.
Image by The Modist
You’ve also launched ‘The Mod’ magazine. Tell us a little bit about this.
The Mod is part and parcel of The Modist and was part of the vision from day one. In this day and age, content and commerce go hand-in-hand. Women want to shop but also want to be inspired by relevant content and editorial images. It is even more relevant in our case because modesty hasn’t necessarily occupied much of a space in editorials historically, so it was important for us to create content that speaks to the modest dresser in a way that inspires her.
How did you manage to create this covetable modest look while keeping things relevant?
One of our strengths is our deep understanding of the woman we are serving. We understand the nuances of modesty and exercise a lot of sensibilities when styling, and then there is, of course, the element of staying on trend and keeping things fresh and cool. We are changing perceptions and styling helps with that. It is extremely relevant for our woman, given that much of how she dresses involves layering, so she does come to us for the styling as much as she does individual pieces.
Image by The Modist
We’ve noticed The Modist stocks some big name designers. How does your platform help emerging talent?
Alongside established designers and some of the most coveted brands in fashion, we also have a selection of young, emerging designers, who we believe have great potential and a strong direction. We are excited about exploring and supporting the right young talent as much as we are partnering with larger, more established brands.
