Can an ethical Made in New York label scale?

To receive the Vogue Business newsletter, sign up here. Three years ago, Mishka Ivanovic joined the cohort of students excitedly embarking on their first year of a fashion degree at New York’s Parsons School of Design. A year later, she quit to focus on her own womenswear label, Buci (pronounced boo-tsi). It was a bold move that appears to be paying off: the young designer is gearing up to stage her first runway show, off-schedule just ahead of New York Fashion Week on 7 September. Named after a small town outside Belgrade in Serbia, where Ivanovic’s grandmother grew up, Buci is starting to carve out a name for its ethical approach to fashion. Ivanovic commits to only using New York factories that pay workers over the local minimum wage of $15 an hour, and, for materials, sustainably grown organic cotton, deadstock and repurposed fabrics. In an industry used to sourcing cheap labour and materials from developing countries — usually at the expense of the people producing the clothes — it is a commendable model, though one that has so far proved challenging to scale. She hopes the show — taking place at Prospect Park Boat House — will be a turning point. Unusually, for a young brand, the aim is not to attract wholesale buyers (that will come afterwards, in a showroom). Instead, Ivanovic hopes showing the Autumn/Winter 2023 collection in a see-now-buy-now format, accompanied by a pop-up shop that will run over a few days, will gain new direct customers. “I like the idea of mixing what’s traditional and what’s worked for a really long time with what works right now,” Ivanovic says. “We’re in an interesting time where Instagram is driving the majority of our sales — DTC [direct-to-consumer] is important to us.” A contemporary womenswear label, Buci specialises in slip dresses, form-fitting separates and swimwear. Sales were below $200,000 for 2022 but are expected to double this year, Ivanovic says. It has one stockist, Revolve, which accounts for 40 per cent of turnover. The rest is DTC. Ivanovic started the brand in 2020 while she was studying, initially making 30 pairs of organic terry cotton shorts that she sold via a Shopify website and Instagram. When lockdown hit in 2020, she got her break when influencer Marie von Behrens-Felipe spotted the shorts online and reached out and asked for a pair. “I was in Boston, but the shorts were in my apartment in New York,” Ivanovic recalls. “We drove the same day to get the shorts and post them.” Von Behrens-Felipe has 1 million followers and after she posted the shorts, the rest sold out within two hours. “I remember thinking, there’s something here,” Ivanovic says. She started making more shorts at home, then other pieces. Soon, studies were getting in the way, and Ivanovic’s parents agreed to let her invest just under $150,000 of her college fund in the business instead of her next two years of study. She switched to part-time sewing classes, photographed the product in her apartment, and the rest of the money went into creating samples and developing patterns. She is self-funding the show. Made in NY, against the odds While some New York brands such as Bode partly manufacture in New York, rising costs for things like international shipping, and strict minimum order requirements have caused others, including Peter Do and Winnie NYC, to move production to Europe since lockdown. Ivanovic’s commitment to local manufacturing came after a trip to India, where she met some suppliers that manufacture clothing for US customers but could never afford to visit the US on their low salaries. “At that moment I realised I wanted my garment workers to be paid fairly and live closer,” she says. “I printed out the list of the CFDA manufacturers in New York and I called almost all of them.” Only a handful were open to working with a new brand. And it was difficult to strike supplier deals in the beginning. “When I was finding suppliers, I was in rooms sometimes with older men who’d been doing this really specific grading task for 30 years,” Ivanovic says. “They’d use all of these terms and I’d have no idea what they’re talking about, but I’d be so scared to let them know that I didn’t know what I was talking about because then they would overcharge me.” It’s more expensive to manufacture in New York’s garment district. Buci sits in the premium price bracket, ranging from £120 for a top to £466 for a dress. And with over half of sales from DTC, it benefits from higher margins than New York labels that are reliant on wholesale. Local manufacturing gives Ivanovic and her five-strong team better control over the process, helping to reduce delays and waste, as she regularly visits and talks to every link in the chain. “When it’s done far away there’s less communication. If one thing goes wrong and they do the wrong cut, you have 200 garments that can no longer be used.” This oversight also brings transparency: Buci can confidently explain to customers where and how pieces are made. While she’s currently set on manufacturing in New York, Ivanovic is conscious that her garment district network does have limits. “It's definitely something that has come up. But, I think we have a lot of time before we get to that point,” she says. “I would say we’re at 40 per cent production capacity of what our system is able to produce right now. So we have a lot of room to grow.” Once she reaches that point, she would consider moving some manufacturing to Portugal. Buci recently hired a new production manager to help manage supplier relationships as the brand expands. “Production is an art, it’s so detail-oriented and specific. Focusing on Instagram, customer service, running to DHL, shipping orders, fabric arriving, sewing on buttons — being overstretched was one of the biggest challenges for me in the beginning,” Ivanovic says. Showing see-now-buy-now, to prioritise DTC Ivanovic has been surprised by the process of show planning so far. “I definitely did not realise the undertaking when we initially committed to this,” she laughs. “There's been a lot of moments where we’ve been sitting in the office and we’ve looked around and been like, ‘oh my god, are we going to spend this much energy on this or are we going to put down this deposit?’ But if we’re doing it, we’re doing it 100 per cent.” In the days running up to and after the show, Buci will hold a pop-up suite for its customers to try and buy the AW23 collection, which they can then have tailored by a seamstress. Buci will also hold a SS24 showroom in New York immediately after the show, while international buyers are in town. “We started working with Revolve last September. We love working with them, and now we need a little bit more exposure and we need to grow a little bit more — exploring other markets,” Ivanovic says. “We’re trying to work on Europe and Asia.” Revolve launched Buci in April after it discovered the brand on social media. “The response to Buci on Revolve has been incredible, and we’re continuing to build the assortment as we see an increased demand for the brand,” says buyer Rebecca Pomerantz. “The flower button closure detail is a staple of Buci that resonates with our customers, and the dresses in particular have been best sellers.” When it came to planning her debut show, Ivanovic found it difficult to find partners she felt she could trust during the journey. When she first began working on the show, she found PRs and production companies were not fulfilling their roles and delivering the results they promised. Though she ended those relationships and signed with new partners, including Purple PR, the delay was a “big setback”, she says. It “wasn’t a priority” to show on the official NYFW schedule for this season, Ivanovic says, which took some of the pressure off. “Our biggest support system from the beginning has been Instagram and the girls that we’ve worked with. We’re very much staying true to that with the show.” Additionally, holding the show before NYFW kicks off on 8 September means Buci’s influencer community can pull looks from the runway and wear throughout the week, bringing more exposure. The focus is on creating a strong foundation for growth, including building a strong team, she says, and “creating a work environment that reflects the [ethical] messaging of the brand”. “Figuring out how we can stay efficient, but also making sure that people have full lives [when] they’re spending so much time and energy on the success of the brand — that’s how to build longevity.” Key takeaway: Buci is edging its way onto the fashion scene with its transparent and fairly paid supply chain and DTC-focused model. Now, the priority is scaling by building the consumer base with a fashion show and pop-up space, plus courting potential new buyers outside of the US via a showroom — all while maintaining production in New York. Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com. More from this author: How resale platform Luxe Collective is riding TikTok fame to compete The Vogue Business TikTok Trend Tracker British designer Ashley Williams is staging a comeback

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