Transcript - Keanan Duffty
Season 3, Episode 1
Conversation with Keanan Duffty, Designer & Director, MPS-Fashion Management
Joshua Williams: Retail Revolution, a unique podcast that features in-depth conversations with guest experts in omnichannel retailing, with myriad perspectives: technology, consumer engagement, data analytics, merchandising, and more. We pay special attention to current sociopolitical issues and challenges and their implications on fashion retail, as well as opportunities to innovate and rethink retail's future.
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Retail Revolution is produced by Joshua Williams and hosted by Christopher Lacy, both are Assistant Professors in the Fashion Management graduate program at Parsons School of Design.
Christopher Lacy: He is an award-winning British designer, musician, educator, author of Rebel, Rebel, Anti- Style, and an innovator in contemporary fashion design. He is a member of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, a CFDA education committee member, and was the stylist for the 2016 CFDA awards. He is program director of Parsons MPS Fashion Management program. And I'm extremely happy to say he is a friend of mine.
Welcome to the show, Keanan Duffty.
Keanan Duffty: Hey Christopher. Wow. After that buildup. And I think I should just go home now.
Christopher Lacy: And the thing is, is I didn't even say everything you do. So, that gets to be the first thing we talk about, which is you’ve had an amazing career. And when I say that your my friend, for all the listeners, like really, one of the best things about friendships is when you learn things from people and this guy has done so much. I feel like I learn something whenever we speak.
So, Keenan, tell us about you.
Keanan Duffty: Well, first of all, that that is absolutely mutual. I've learned so much from you, Chris in the last couple of years as well. And so, you know, the level of respect goes absolutely both ways. So, thank you for saying that.
Yeah. I mean, I was, I'm from England, originally from the UK.
And I grew up in the North of England in a town called Doncaster, which, I was sort of thinking about retail. Doncaster is really coal mining town, or it was. It's a market town, not a lot of fashion. I mean, all the usual suspects in terms of fashion retail. So, Top Shop and the like. But nothing, at that time, super distinctive. And certainly not for, you know, teenagers that were kind of interested in the subcultures at the time. So, you know, I, I kind of grew up in this town that was a little bit of an island in terms of its relation to popular culture. And so, I spent a lot of time going to other local cities like Leeds and Sheffield and Manchester, which had really great nightclubs, really great music scenes and a lot of really cool independent boutiques. And that was part of what really got me interested in style, in image, was that era? And you know, I'm an only child, my mom and dad left school, when they were teenagers, you know, my dad worked in a coal mine right after school. And then he was, conscripted into the army. My mum worked in the explosive’s factory, for the coal mine. So, they were teenagers. They left school and kind of did these jobs that were locally available.
And then as I said, my dad was conscripted into the army. So, he went off and was stationed in Libya for a while, which was a, I know it was a life-changing experience for him. And, he was actually in a movie the army were asked to help to stage a movie called "Black Tent." And my dad said that was the best three weeks of his army life.
So, sort of post that, he came back to England and met my mom and they became young entrepreneurs and opened hairdressing businesses. And pretty much everything I've learned in terms of creativity and commerce really come from my mum and dad.
Christopher Lacy: Wow. Wow. Now this explains why your hair is always styled so well!
Keanan Duffty: My mum was dying my hair from a young age. So, apparently the experiment began. They are. They're super cool because they would allow me to actually be very expressive as a teenager. You know, when punk happened, I was kind of making my own punk rock clothes. My mom would cut my hair to kind of look like Johnny Rotten and, they're very open and they were very tolerant, I guess. They would let me go to gigs I was 13, 14 years old and they would let me go off with my friends to go and see Siouxsie and the Banshees or The Clash or whoever. And, you know, they were very tolerant. And then when, when New Romantics kind of happened and I started wearing makeup and dyeing my hair, you know, orange and wearing, tottering rounds on, on platform shoes. They're also very tolerant of that, which I can't say the rest of Doncaster was. But you know, that, that was a kind of big lesson for me. I didn't appreciate it at the time, but I really do now. But, you know, some parents really allow their kids to have that, the expression of their creative spirit. And I think it's very, very important.
Christopher Lacy: You took us to the past of where your creativity really began, and that acceptance of it. When we talk about the new century of fashion, one of the things we really can pull from it is the emergence of musicians and celebrities becoming designers.
Keanan Duffty: Hmm.
Christopher Lacy: Right? and how that's taken off. It's kind of a norm for us that there are, there might be this musician who also goes into the fashion industry or, you know, anyone who's a creative moving into this space. But for you. You we're a musician and you really leaned into your craft of fashion design. So how did the two, how did that work?
How did the music influence the design, or did it?
Keanan Duffty: Well, when I, when I was a kid, I used to watch a TV show that was in England, in the seventies, there were only two channels. It was the BBC and there was an ITV. Actually, there were three, there was BBC2 as well, which was kind of like a, a very limited arts channel. But the BBC channel had a show called "Top of the Pops."
And every week at 7:00 PM on Thursday night, they would show the chart countdown and they would have bands like, when I was a kid, it was The Sweet was Roxy Music, Cockney Rebel, LaBelle, Suzi Quatro and of course Bowie. So, there was that. And then it was also stuff like, you know, movies like, the who's Tommy, with amazing iconic performances like Tina Turner, for example, was the Acid Queen; and Elton John and others. And movies like Clockwork Orange, showed me was, you know, musicians don't follow fashion, they create style. They're kind of against fashion they're anti-fashion. So, that was really what indoctrinated me into being interested in image. I would see these people on TV, and they looked like they came from outer space. They look so glamorous, and unattainable in a way, you didn't realize that Bowie, his friend was doing his hair and his wife was making the clothes in their little apartment. You thought that those clothes were these fabulous creations that came from another world. So, that was really an inspiration for me.
But the turning point was that punk happened, because what punk did was it said you can do it all yourself. You can take your flared trousers and cut them down and duct tape the side. You don't need to learn how to sew. You can just put duct tape down the side of the pants to make them into skinny jeans. And you can wear a trash bag as a tee shirt. You don't have to know how to do anything. You don't have to know how to play a guitar, which is perfect. I still don't know how to play guitar! I took my acoustic guitar, and painted it black, of course. Learned a bar chord and away I went! You know, it gave permission to do anything without having to go through the rigors of the training for it but do it with passion and energy.
I think that's a very important lesson for young people that are endeavoring in a creative life, always is that you need to engage that creativity and that passion together. That energy can be more important and can create a better outcome then actually the technique. Learning the technique sometimes gets in the way, because when you know how to things, you can be too scared to try. That comes with age. You know, the older you get, the more you know, become more risk averse in the creative process.
Christopher Lacy: Yeah, actually, in the world of business, one of the things we say about that is you become so good at what you do, that it's this analysis paralysis where all the information you've taken in and all the information that you use, keeps you from innovating and being something new.
Keanan Duffty: Yeah sure.
Christopher Lacy: And I think, when we look out at, the industry of fashion. And we were talking about things like coloring outside of the lines and it not needing to be so structured. When you look out, where do you see this white space, this empty void in fashion retail now. I mean, it's gone through so many evolutions. So, what do you think of it now?
Keanan Duffty: Sure. So, when I consider the white space in fashion retail, I have to think back to the amazing boutiques that really influenced me as a young person. Vivienne Westwood's shop at 430 Kings Road; she's still there today, went through many iterations in the seventies, ultimately becoming Seditionaries, which was the sort of mecca of punk. And before that I was called Sex. It was called Too Fast to Live. It was called Let it Rock. It had these incarnations every couple of years. And whenever it got too successful, Vivian's partner, Malcolm McLaren would close it, change the name and reopen with a completely different look. That was the antithesis of branding, today's brand thing, which is all about consistency. They would sort of totally throw everything up in the air, flip the script and reinvent. And when I look back at that, that was a total inspiration for me, along with other stores that were along the Kings Road. The Kings road was kind of a, a runway. You know, so you'd go down the King's Road. You get off at Sloan Square, off the subway. And then you'd have to walk down this runway for about 45 minutes. And you'd go past Boy, which today people think of as a logo on a tee shirt. But Boy, it was actually a stunning re-sell store. They had a live rat in a cage on the cash register. So, talk about confrontation.
Yeah. they had, famously Janet Lee, who's one of the cofounders of Rough Trade Records worked along with an amazing reggae DJ and filmmaker. Actually, Don Lets, is probably one of the most preeminent documentarians of British subculture. you know, so you'd be learning as you went down King Road. You'd go into these different stores and, you could learn from your peers, you learned from the people that worked in the store. You'd be confronted with these assaults on your senses. And I think that's where today's white space is. It's that sensory assault in some ways. that true originality is missing. I don't really see that in contemporary retail culture. I'm not intimidated to go into a store at all.
When you first went into Vivian Westwood's Sex store or Seditionaries, you were confronted with a salesperson who didn't even speak to you. And when you went to pay for something, that person wouldn't even look at you. They wouldn't even look up from reading the newspaper. They'd just leave the money on the counter. They wouldn't give you a bag to put the garment in. You just have to kind of leave the store feeling like you've got this totem that you passed the test in order to get there. And I think that is, for me, that's really what is missing today. That's where the white space is, to find the excitement, that level of thrill of going into a retail environment, whether it's digital physical. But I do really believe in physical retail. I think the death knell of physical retail is been rung a little too soon. It's evolving and it's always done that.
Christopher Lacy: I remember thinking about this a lot when I was going through my career. I was more into boutiques because of how I felt. I always got to experience the story of the brand through their lens, and how they thought we as a customer should interact with it.
The issue for me was I could never shop in multi-vendor atmospheres. So, those big department stores, for me, it didn't work because I was like, I don't know what the story is, and I'm not engaging with anything except product.
Keanan Duffty: Sure.
Christopher Lacy: And it shouldn't be about it being technology and something digital everywhere for the senses. The sense can be anything. Right?
Keanan Duffty: Yeah.
Christopher Lacy: And to this day, I mean, one of the popups I talk about all the time is Hunter. They did a popup in Grand Central Terminal. And they made it look like you were walking through the Scottish Highlands. So, I mean, there was mist, like in this structure; they put a Hunter coat on you, and you walked on moss. And I thought, this is a sensory experience, to where I talk about this all the time. I bought an extra pair of Hunter boots. You know, it's because I I'm like, oh, I want to walk through the Scottish Highlands. And that goes into brand story. And I think what you do is you tell beautiful stories, because you've lived a life that you can piece these things together, and it comes out so beautifully.
When you started your brand and you're telling that story, and as you went through it, what was something that you wish you would've known at the time you started that brand?
Keanan Duffty: How to write an invoice. I mean, I'd love to have known that basic stuff of the business of fashion.
Just to rewind a little bit, you know, speaking about retail, we used to have a retail store, my wife, Nancy Garcia and I, had a retail store at 50 Spring Street in the early 2000s. And it was only in existence for two years. It was called Slinky Vagabond, which was initially the name of my brand. And to this day, people still ask me about that store. Right?
Christopher Lacy: Right.
Keanan Duffty: So, that was 20 years ago. And it's, it's been closed for 18 years. Okay. So, that's the importance of physical retail is that it creates an experience that I think is indelible in people. That's the first point at which they interact with your brand story. And it's so key, it's so important.
But to go back to the, I was kind of being a bit flippant and saying how to write an invoice, but in terms of when I started my brand, I didn't really know the complexities of the business of fashion. And so, I didn't really know how to properly cost a garment to get it to retail, to make a significant margin, to actually provide growth in a business. And it doesn't matter how left field you are as a fashion brand, at the end of the day, it is as a business. Comme des Garcons create lumpy, bumpy fantastic, challenging garments. Rei Kawakubo is an amazingly conceptual designer, but when you're in Japan, Comme des Garcons shirts and their tailored clothing, fuel that brand. Right? That's not something that they necessarily talk about a lot. Certainly, not the tailored clothing, but that fuels the brand. They have to have a bedrock or something that drives it as a business. And I think that's what I wish I'd really been aware of when I first started my brand, which was actually, when I was in college. I started making and selling clothes whilst I was still at Saint Martins.
I kind of moved to London and studied at Saint Martins and very quickly fell into this way of making things and actually finding a customer for them. So, that was very Instinctive to me. But actually, the business side of it, I didn't know. And they didn't really, that wasn't part of the fashion design course at Saint Martin’s so much. And we were all way too arrogant to pay attention to in any way, to be honest. So, we all thought we were these amazing designers. So, we were too arrogant to pay attention to instructors that was telling us how to, how to build it as a business. But yeah, that's what I wish I'd known is the business side of it.
Christopher Lacy: You've traveled as an educator all over the globe talking to other designers, other creatives. Did you kind of connect the dots and that's how you got to the point where you're like, the vision to create the MPS Fashion Nanagement program at Parsons, is that where that birthed from?
Keanan Duffty: Yeah. I mean, I'm not an academic, I'm not really an educator. I've kind of winged it to a degree. I mean, I've been doing it for the last 10 years, sort of off and on. And, and still, you know, designing at the same time. But what I noticed is that in many fashion education institutions, fashion business is taught as a very dry subject. It's kind of boring. It's not glamorous. It's not enticing. It's not exciting. And often when students apply to schools, if they're not really a designer, they kind of by default get sort of siphoned off into these merchandising programs or marketing programs.
And they're just not, they don't turn you on. They don't , I don't think they make you leap out of bed in the morning and think "wow, I want to study fashion merchandising today," you know, and so creating the Fashion Management program I saw a white space, I thought, you know, there's an opportunity here to deliver something that is, is really engaging with the industry, that brings the industry into the classroom.
And, I tried this before, building a program at NYU, which actually ultimately didn't happen in their school of Professional Studies. And then Parsons had this degree, which they'd been kind of kicking around like a football for several years, nothing was really happening with it. And they actually hired me as a consultant, originally. I had no intention of being involved in the program as an educator. Certainly not as being the director. You know, it sort of kind of happened by default in a way. But it's great fun. We have a great team, and we've also now completed our first year with our students graduating and we've had some fantastic students. So, the need for it is obvious. And the appetite for it is definitely there.
Christopher Lacy: I agree with you. as we ended this first group, all of a week and a half ago, two weeks ago, and we're about to embark on this next time around. I never thought that I would have, I would've learned as much from our students as I did. You know, I've always been welcoming to other perspectives, but I think it forced me to open my eyes in totally different ways, because you are around a group of people who see an industry so differently than what I worked in for 20 some odd years. Right. And they see a completely different; and getting to see it through their eyes.
And so, I want to ask you, ‘cause you make the point, you wouldn't say you're an educator or an academic, that’s not your thing. So, as you've took on this role as being a lecturer and a professor and a program director, what were the biggest things you've learned engaging in education?
Keanan Duffty: Well, I think what, what I've learned, you know, one of the most important things I've learned is to, treat the students with kindness. It's one of the things that was highlighted to me in a message from a student a couple of weeks ago that said, she was very happy to study in the program because of perception of fashion was that it was mean and very strict.
And, that her experience in this program has been more nuturing, let's say. I think that's very important. I learned that from my teacher at Saint Martins, a lady called Natalie Gibson, who still teaches at Saint Martin's to this day. She's an icon of the fashion textile world. She was honored by the queen of England with an MB several years ago. And she taught me to be kind, I mean, I think my nature is fairly kind. I'm a totally stubborn Taurian sometimes, maybe that doesn't come across in such a kind way. You will know that trait very well, Christopher. Um...
Christopher Lacy: I appreciate it.
Keanan Duffty: The hardheaded, the hardheaded stubborn Taurian. But, you know, what Natalie taught me was, much of it was by osmosis. She, she wasn't a kind of finger-waving lecturer. She was more of a person who introduced me to others. She introduced me to Paul Smith. She introduced me to Peter Blake, who did the cover of Sergeant Pepper. She introduced me to a textile agent who started to sell my textile work in New York during college.
So, she actually taught me the value of networking and the value of remaining vibrant, reinventing yourself. Also, don't chase it, let it come to you. I think that's an important thing for students to learn a little bit is that sometimes the more you chase something, the further away it moves. So, you have to let it come to you a little bit.
Christopher Lacy: Yeah, I love that you said that, because I think that's what we all end up doing with our careers, after a while, right? Like, it’s always this thing where you're trying to level up and you want to do this. And so then you think if you didn't get to this and in your career, by this point, then you're in the slow lane.
Keanan Duffty: Hmm.
Christopher Lacy: And something that you and I have talked about was this program, what you created, is also a way for people to say, I want to change my mind. Like, I may have been doing this in my career, but now I want to pivot and do something else and I'm going back to school to do it. So, this isn't a program that's really about people who came out of undergrad and went directly into a grad program.
I want you to talk about like, why that's important to give people this sense of, it's okay that I want to change direction at any point in my life.
Keanan Duffty: Yeah. I mean, I think the right moment to do something is the moment, I'll get a bit cosmic here, but it's the moment when the universe aligns with your, hopes, your dreams and your path, what your path should be. So, that it doesn't have to happen when you're 21 or 27 or 37 or 60. It can happen at any of those times. Society has become very, you know, likes to do define us in certain ways. By this point, you should have done this, that, and the other. I think that's very shortsighted and small minded. I don't think that necessarily needs to be the case.
Fashion is an ever-evolving business. Unfortunately, for some people they don't like that; they want consistency. But fashion is rarely consistent. Brands chase consistency as a sort of benchmark for success. But I think reinvention is very important. So for students that are coming into our program with a different skill set, from a different practice, they actually bring a different mindset. They bring a different way of looking at this industry. And that's very, very healthy. For students that are in the program that have a startup, we built this program to kind of serve those two needs. For folks that want to either evolve their career in the industry or others that may want to change lanes or want to come into the industry. And then aside from that students that have a startup that they want to build and launch. And I think there's never a right time or a wrong time to do any of this. It's when it really aligns for you, that's the right moment, for sure.
Christopher Lacy: I think that's one of the best messages anyone can receive. And sometimes you hear it later in life, when you really get it. And I think it's even more pressured now, right? This idea of where we should be, and what we should be creating, what we should be doing. Because it seems like it's imperative for you to be successful. Because if you're not, I mean, we're looking at economies where you do see the separation of those who are wealthy and those who are not.
And that ground of being in the middle class gets eroded away. So, now you have even more pressure to be successful, right? Because there doesn't seem to be a space for those who are in that in-between anymore. You're either doing really well.
Keanan Duffty: Yeah.
Christopher Lacy: Or you're not.
Keanan Duffty: Also, the question though is, how do you define doing really well? I mean, obviously from a monetary standpoint, but there's also the personal fulfillment of doing what you enjoy. And I think that should be a goal of of every human being to be able to engage, on this planet, in this life, with the thing that they enjoy doing. Now, it's obviously not possible for everyone. And not everyone connects with that actually as well. Not everyone necessarily connects with the pursuit in life that will provide them personal fulfillment. But if they put the money first, I guarantee they'll never be happy. I guarantee they will never be happy because however much money you get, it's never enough.
You ask Jeff Bezos if he's got enough money. I guarantee you he'll say no. He might say yes in the media, but in his private life, he's always looking for more. Right? So, if you go into fashion chasing money, it will be a challenge for you. If you go into fashion, trying to fulfill your personal expression, whether that's in business of fashion, whether it's in the design of fashion, it doesn't matter. But I think you will get more personal fulfillment if that's the way you approach it.
Christopher Lacy: Something that I feel is a running theme, I know I've always tried to get across to anyone who's entering the industry. And I think, you Joshua also share this theory, which is, we have people who come to us and say, I want to be a vice president in whatever company, or I want to be this role in this company.
And then the pushback from us, I think, is always to kind of go, right, but what is it you like to do? And then you figure out where that is in the company. Until I started talking to a lot of the students about operations, I don't even think they considered that operations was something that was cool in a fashion organization. But now hearing about what it does, it resonates with a lot of them because now they understand, oh, my talents can go in this direction. And it's not about chasing a position or chasing the monetary value of it. It should all just work out.
Keanan Duffty: Hmm.
I think another important question is, okay, you want to be the president of a corporation. Why? What's the reason for wanting to attain that role, other than the status that it brings? Other than the financial revenue that it brings? What are you going to do to execute change in that space when you're in that position of power? You know, you look at someone like Marco Bizzarri, who I respect greatly. he is leading Gucci from a point of view of products, he understands the storytelling. He understands that Gucci will do things that may not be necessarily broadly understood, but as a CEO, he is willing to, hold the reigns, but also to allow for the space for that evolution to happen. And, I think that's a very important message for anyone that wants to attain a level of, influence in the industry, is that the balance of creativity and commerce, there has to be some balance. It can't be all about the creativity, because then you get a designer, who's designing stuff that doesn't connect with an end consumer; and it can't be all about the business because then it's probably going to be very backward looking.
Christopher Lacy: Right.
Keanan Duffty: So, you know, that sort of, i kind of clash, I think, between those two worlds, which is creativity and commerce. When the clash happens in a positive way, you get a really great outcome for everyone, for the consumer, for the brand itself, for the business of the brand, for the employees of the brand; that’s when it's really successful.
Christopher Lacy: Keenan, what would you like to see happen in the fashion industry in the next five years?
Keanan Duffty: That's an excellent question. I would love to see the rebirth of really interesting, small scale physical retail stores. To be honest with you, I would love to see that storytelling come back. I think unfortunately, what happened, is real estate took over the fashion industry.
What I mean by that is that real estate became so expensive in metropolitan locations, whether you're in London, Shanghai, Tokyo, New York, LA, wherever. It became so expensive that a small brand couldn't afford to open a retail store. And for me that was always a goal when I was a student at Saint Martins, myself, and all of my contemporaries, we talked about having a shop. We would always say, I want to open a shop. I want to open a shop. And it was really, we didn't understand, but that was the way we could tell our story in the fullest capacity. I would love to see that come back. And one of the positive outcomes of this pandemic, maybe will be a more attainable retail, platform within central metropolitan locations. Because ultimately that's where the consumer flops too is to cities. I could go back to Doncaster and open a, a little retail store, but there wouldn't necessarily be enough people in the local community to support that.
You know, as a, as a, as a, truly as a going concern. Going back to my mum and dad, they were very smart because they opened hairdressing shops in a very small coal mining village. There was no competition. They saw a white space. They saw a community that wants to get their hair done every Friday night because the weekend was coming around and, you know, they, capitalized on that and monetized it at a time when there were very few other businesses doing that. And that idea has always left an indelible mark on me to understand, to find that opportunity and to step into it in an honest way. You know, going into it with an idea that you have, that you think really going to resonate with the end consumer.
Christopher Lacy: I love that you said that. I think one of the things I love to say is that brick and mortar retail, it's not dying. And we heard that for so long. And to your point actually think your future is exactly dead on, because with the results of COVID-19 somebody wanting to shop in large format stores; it's definitely different. Do you really want to have to shop around, 2000 plus other people, who enter that 2000 people an hour?
Keanan Duffty: Hm.
Christopher Lacy: That's pretty big. When you think about a smaller format, it's curated. It seems like it's curated and designed for your personality. It's an experience. That's really where we're going to go. And it is going to change real estate, which is the power of the fashion industry also, right?
Keanan Duffty: Sure. Yeah. Yeah.
Christopher Lacy: So, it's so much broader and impacts so many other areas than we think about.
So, Keenan, my last question for you today is what new projects are you working on? Because I feel like you're always up to something.
So, what's happening? Are we expected to see any cool collaborations, anything like that?
Keanan Duffty: So, well, what I've learned, I have a big mouth and I love talking about things. And what I've learned, especially in the last decade is not to talk about stuff until it's to fruition because in fashion, so many endeavors that you engage in, don't actually happen. I mean, I've, I've done tons of things, but there are tons of things that I've done along the way that never came to fruition, that never happened.
I've been working with a very good friend of mine who's based in Florence, actually between Prato and Florence in Italy, to develop a collection that will be delivered in drops. And it's very, it's got a very specific theme to it. And it's kind of playing on the sort of, you know, I always kind of like a bit of humor. It's playing on the kind of humor and irreverence that have always been part of what I do. I don't want to say too much about it. We were gonna launch it this year. Obviously, the pandemic has kind of a waylaid a lot of people's plans. But that, and some other things, in other parts of the world that I've been working on for the past couple of years, actually as well,
You know, the pandemic has caused everyone to reassess what they're doing, and when they should do it. And I think that's, that's certainly happened with me. It's forced me to not travel this year, which actually has been fantastic. I must admit. It's been a pleasure to spend most of this year at home. And kind of not be on the road here, there and everywhere. But yeah, I'm always involved in a lot of things. And I think that again is an important thing for students to, be aware of and to consider. There are lots of projects that you can get involved in, and there are jobs you may apply for, that you may think you're absolutely right for, but the synchronicity of life might not connect that opportunity or that job, or that brand idea that you're trying to launch with you at that moment.
And so you kind of have to take a beat and say, okay, I'm going to step back. I'm going to reassess. And I'm going to take maybe a different path. Maybe I'm going to choose a path that is so off the wall and so unexpected. that to others it might not seem like sort of logical step. But to me, the outcome could be something that would really deliver an interesting conclusion.
That's, what I've learned is always to sort of look at things, look at opportunities, and do something that's maybe a little bit unexpected. They've actually returned some of the best dividends for me in my career. Working with Reebok back in 2000, I did a co-brand sneaker collection with Reebok for several years.
And at the time people were saying Reebok, wow, that's such a naf brand. Well, who's going to wear Reebok? You know, today I get contacted from sneaker collectors in Beijing who are avid collectors of the shoes that we did during those three years, you know, they've become so I conic. And at that time, they drove my business big time. I mean, that was a very big, very profitable enterprise for my brand. So, I think always look for the unexpected steps.
But yeah, to go back to your question, I always like to keep a lot of irons in the fire. It's always a...
Christopher Lacy: it keeps you young Keenan.
Keanan Duffty: Trying to. Desparately trying to.
Christopher Lacy: Well, I don't think we could have ended on a better note. and, and I couldn't have, I it's like I wanted you to say exactly that and you totally said it. And, and I think that's a great lesson for anyone who's listening.
So, Keenan, how do people stay up to date with what's going on in your world?
Keanan Duffty: Listen to the police broadcasts!“Looking for Keanan Duffty, he's broken the law again.”
I do WeChat and Twitter and all that kind of stuff, LinkedIn and everything. I mean, to Joshua's point, I think he was saying earlier about not being a big fan of Facebook, social media is a necessary evil, let's say, you know, and I kind of, I do sort of post stuff intermittently, extensively on social media and then I'm dormant for ages. So, I'm not in the most consistent social media user. But, you know, that's where you can find out about stuff that I'm involved in. Certainly, at Parsons. I think all of our endeavors in Fashion Management are well-documented through a marketing communications team.
So yeah, that would be the way.
Christopher Lacy: Awesome!
Keenan, thank you so much for being on the show today. I'm so glad we got to have this conversation. We got you in at season three of this whole thing. You're going to kick us off, or you did kick us off. This is awesome. So, thank you so much for your time.
Keanan Duffty: My pleasure.
Joshua Williams: Thank you for listening to this episode of Retail Revolution. A very special thank you to everyone who has helped make this podcast possible. If you'd like to support the work we're doing, please visit our show page at RetailRevolutionPodcast.com and click on the donate link. Our theme music was composed by Spencer Powell.
Be well and stay tuned for our next episode.
