Welcome to Present Tense

In 2009, one of the collections in the showroom I was working with was a brilliant ready-to-wear collection made entirely out of vintage, one-of-a-kind Kangas and produced mainly by women in a small manufacturing workshop near Nairobi. I don’t know if this brand could have worked prior to 2009, prior to the recession, because the recession brought an exciting new class of designers rethinking the narrative around our industry, around consumption, around customer connection, and space was made for that generation with the void that was created when many of the thoughtless mass market businesses of the 90s and early 00’s could not squeeze their models through the constraints of the global financial collapse. And collections like this (many of which have since closed because of their own inability to squeeze their model through the advent of #influencer culture brands), are what got us all talking about the Brand.

Brands themselves have of course always existed, and to some extent we always knew the backstory behind Narciso Rodriguez at Calvin Klein or how Miuccia Prada got into the leather goods business, but the post-recession landscape gave every brand more story than ever before, and what happens when you start giving brands stories is that naturally transforms into storytelling, and storytelling considers all parts of the narrative of a brand. Storytelling demands that we account for the past, present and future, and storytelling demands that brands participate in the real world as entities much like humans do, striving for self-improvement and introspection as much as they do success.

I have been working in fashion and sustainability for many, many years, and one of the common frustrations and points of friction that companies tend fall into is trying to in-source their improvements rather than taking on outside help, particularly around extremely demanding issues that are not part of their core competencies. Sustainable development, core community values and impact are often set as an additional task onto the full plate of an existing employee, which often hinders growth and development and leads to natural missteps. When these issues are handled departmentally, they often fail to reach their full potential across all aspects of the business - your philosophy, your practices, your communications, your customer’s doorstep and inbox.

This is the crux of my work, to bring mindful, practical, holistic progress to companies who need support evolving their brands across Sustainability, Culture and Impact and in collaboration with an amazing network of (primarily) women who, like me, have an extremely diverse skill set and understanding of how to effectively collaborate with creative enterprise. (I will highlight some of these wonderful people occasionally in this newsletter). I am naming this Present Tense because this progress, which for most is long overdue at best, needs to happen, be spoken of, planned for now. To more truthfully name the urgency I would have called it Past Tense, but honestly there’s nothing I can do to help you with the past.

If you’re interested in learning about progressive business development, sustainability (particularly in material-heavy industries like fashion), and impact engagement, please subscribe knowing that you will receive a limited amount of extremely selective updates from me mostly about those topics. If you’d like to be in touch, or you’d like to develop or renovate or even destroy and rebuild something together, you can reach me by visiting my website:

anjatyson.com