How much impact can a DE&I consultancy have?

To receive the Vogue Business newsletter, sign up here. To fill the gaps in their diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) efforts — which hit a peak in 2020 but have since begun to wane — brands are hiring external consultants to advise best practice around everything from the cultural significance of design decisions to recruitment policies, to initiatives that provide opportunities for underrepresented groups. Several startups have sprung up to fill this need. However, the efficacy of these partnerships, and how much work a third party can accomplish, remains to be seen. Can lasting change be forged via an outsider? “2023 is a pivotal year for the conversation on DE&I in the fashion industry. Particularly when we look at what’s happening economically, there are brands that are scaling back on their DE&I initiatives,” says Daniel Peters, founder of London-based consultancy Fashion Minority Report, founded in 2020, which has worked with Farfetch and Asos. Some fashion brands have appointed chief diversity and inclusion officers in the past two years to lead DE&I efforts. Companies who don’t have someone in this role often leave DE&I to the HR or people teams. DE&I is still too often viewed through a purpose-driven lens — a business value rather than a business function. However, without creating tangible strategies for DE&I to become baked into every part of the business, progress ends up stalling. A 2022 report from Culture Amp shows that 86 per cent of organisations believe DE&I is valuable but only 27 per cent know how to measure the effectiveness of their DE&I initiatives. External consultancies are popping up with the aim of pushing forward genuine action: among them, Fashion Minority Report encourages brands to partner on its emerging talent development programmes and create opportunities for underrepresented groups; Artis Solomon (founded in 2021) uses fashion history and cultural context to evaluate brands’ corporate and design strategies; and Maestra (founded in 2019) aims to develop long-term initiatives for brands that benefit the business as much as they do underrepresented communities. Peters says that the stagnation in DE&I hasn’t negatively impacted his business — if anything, the consultancy is signing more clients. “Some brands feel as if they’ve hit a wall in terms of what they can do internally, so they’re now starting to seek counsel from organisations such as ours,” he explains. Fashion Minority Report’s revenue was between £55,000 and £60,000 in its first year of business, and in its second full year has reached above £220,000 with five times more clients. The benefit of an external consultant is impartiality — someone that employees of all levels can bounce ideas off of and feel more comfortable confiding in compared to their managers. Working across multiple companies, and sometimes across different sectors and regions, allows these consultants to have a broader view of what’s moving the dial. Brands that reach out proactively to consultants are often already thinking about DE&I meaningfully, while those that wait until disaster strikes often need to be convinced of a new outlook in addition to figuring out the logistics of implementing that strategy. The main challenge, founders say, is that there’s a fine line between encouraging accountability and pointing fingers. “How can we challenge systems in ways that don’t always feel as if somebody’s being told off?” Peters says. Collaboration first Fashion Minority Report says it takes a collaborative approach that builds on a brand’s previous DE&I strategies. The first step is to assess elements of a brand’s existing DE&I strategy, then identify what the gaps are and what elements the brand should reinforce. In 2020, Fashion Minority Report began working with Farfetch to coach the chairs of the Black Employee Network and develop a career development programme specifically for employees from our Black Employee Network, and has since delivered race in the workplace training and partnered with the retailer on emerging talent initiatives. “The goal of that programme [or employees from the Black Employee Network] is to see growth — promotion, progression or pay change — for all participants,” says Farfetch DEI specialist Tiffany Fraser. Farfetch says it still manages the majority of its DE&I internally but sees Fashion Minority Report as an “important sounding board, educator and facilitator, working passionately with our leadership team and our DEI People Communities to help Farfetch transform our DEI plans, and provide new ways for us to live our values every day”. Peters says that building on a brand’s previous strategy allows him to understand the company’s ecosystem and to also make the company feel comfortable — by validating the positive work the company has already done — which has led to suggestions for strategy shifts being well-received. For those working in crisis management, direct accountability is often necessary — but that can be much more challenging to encourage. “No one wants to face their complicity in these things. No one wants that history to be unearthed. No one wants to have to address those issues, because as soon as they start learning these things they’ll start wondering why we let it go on for this long,” says Kim Jenkins, who started consulting when word about her Fashion and Race class at Parsons spread, catching the attention of several major luxury houses who were seeking counsel on racism, diversity and discrimination. She founded online learning tool The Fashion and Race Database in 2017 and educational consultancy Artis Solomon in 2021, leaving her teaching position at Toronto Metropolitan University in September 2022. Artis Solomon’s revenue is in the low six figure digits, but over the past three years Jenkins’s consulting projects have averaged 84 per cent growth, working with Gucci, Tommy Hilfiger, Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana, The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute and The Lions modelling agency, among others. Jenkins says that it often takes some sort of revelation or deep internal reflection for brands to understand the ways that systemic discrimination shows up day-to-day in their organisation. Strategic consultancy Maestra prioritises storytelling over education, focusing on developing long-term institutional initiatives such as Gucci Changemakers, a social impact initiative created to support diverse communities via grass-roots organisations, or Tiffany Atrium, a social impact platform that aims to advance professional opportunities for historically underrepresented groups. By tying all its work to a creative content project or strategic initiative, it allows companies to remain more engaged as the priority is in action — which then leads to deeper reflection — rather than leading with reflection to spark action. “A big part of the challenge with DE&I is that it can feel like hitting people over the head with education — that [the consultants] are going to come in and tell us what we’re doing wrong and then we can just correct them — but that’s not how the human brain works,” says Maestra co-founder Stacie Gillian. “We push brands to put some skin in the game and build something. It’s the business of creating spaces for provocative conversation, but also if you want your employees to be engaged you have to do the thing,” adds co-founder De’Ara Balenger. The company, which reached mid-seven figures in revenue in 2022, is self-funded but is looking to expand funding opportunities in 2024. “Companies are realising that your internal makeup reflects your ability to conceive of new ideas, how you show up in the world, and above all impacts their talent pipeline. And then, whatever’s happening internally is impacting how you show up externally,” says Gillian. The consultancy began working with Max Mara earlier this year to build out its internal DE&I initiatives and increase employee awareness and engagement. The first initiative that Maestra worked on with the brand was for Black History Month — a talk with Elizabeth Colombo, a French painter of Caribbean heritage, moderated by arts administrator and cultural worker Deana Haggag. “[Maestra] brings an objective, outside perspective and we believe it is important to approach these topics from a place of experience,” says Max Mara USA CEO Cristian Notari. Breaking through the bureaucracy DE&I consultancy startups acknowledge that there are limitations to what they can achieve as it’s often the brand itself that has to figure out the logistics of implementing a strategy. “There’s only so much that we can do to help a business understand that there’s always going to be work to be done. We can put ourselves out there as a resource and a partner, but we can’t force somebody to do something,” says Fashion Minority Report’s Peters. Jenkins, of Artis Solomon, agrees. “I can’t tell you how many CEOs and organisations I’ve talked to who were — behind closed doors — very excited, but when we brought it to the table it got caught up in the bureaucracy and everyone else kind of shut it down,” she says. Artis Solomon offers a historical research service to help brands avoid cultural insensitivity, socio-cultural insights and trend forecasting, and preventative research which includes looking internally at an organisation’s structure and how it could be improved. “Changing the culture or structure of an organisation is costly to them. It can get too much for them when they’re thinking about the oversight, how they’re going to implement it, the logistics that go into new programmes. These teams are so busy they don’t have time for a lecture or to be advised on their designs — and when you’re speaking with creatives, they also don’t love the idea of someone looking over their shoulder and advising them on what to do.” Farfetch acknowledges this challenge. “Depending on an organisation and how far into their DE&I journey they are, one of the potential challenges when implementing change for any business is a resistance to that change, so working with an external consultancy, which can help navigate this type of barrier, is key,” says Farfetch’s Fraser. Farfetch’s process for implementing a DE&I strategy suggestion from a consultant involves key stakeholders reviewing the recommendations to understand the complexities and impacts; developing an action plan with a specific timeline and performance indicators based on the consultant’s recommendations; and monitoring and evaluating the progress of that plan, adjusting where necessary based on how certain milestones or success measures are achieved. “To implement the recommendations effectively, there needs to be leadership and community commitment, open communication and employee participation at all levels of the organisation along with tangible measures in place,” says Fraser. For Maestra’s co-founders, challenges have been less related to how brands respond to their suggestions or to the ebbs and flows of attention that DE&I has received, and more to do with the continued difficulties of existing as two Black women in business. “There’s obviously a real impact when it comes to our business, whether it’s a downturn in business or people not continuing their contracts, but for us there are often times when we are discriminated against, when people are trying to devalue us, where people think they can hire us and just check a box,” says Balenger. “So yes, there’s the business strategy part of it — how we evolve our business and our engagement and how we onboard people to ensure we can address the changing economic environment, that’s a real thing we do with our CFO — but I think the labour of it is harder for us. That’s what doesn’t get recognised — we’re doing all this work but we are the work as well,” says Balenger. Expansion looks different for all three consultancies. Artis Solomon’s Jenkins has been branching out to new formats, such as the podcast she did with Tommy Hilfiger, working with Instagram to create history lessons for influencers to teach in the form of reels, and consulting for a documentary film. Fashion Minority Report is looking to expand into new industries including theatre, film, music and non-fashion retail such as supermarkets or pharmacies. “To our detriment, a name like ‘Fashion Minority Report’ can be off-putting in different sectors, even companies in the creative space, because they see fashion and assume that’s all we can do. But, the conversation [on DE&I] is always the same, there are just different nuances to different sectors,” says Peters. Maestra is trying to move away from being pigeonholed as a DE&I or social impact firm. “What ends up happening is that we become niche, but really it’s about having an approach that everyone should adopt if you want a marketing campaign, an internal philanthropic initiative or employee engagement initiative to reflect what the world really looks like. When people hear ‘social impact’, a brand hears ‘money’ to do things that aren’t necessarily going to impact the bottom line, but that’s not what it is,” says Balenger. “What’s going to be a turning point for a lot of companies is they want to see inclusivity and understand that multiculturalism is a better way to do business.” Key takeaway: Fashion companies are turning to external consultancies as progress on internal initiatives slows down following a spike in interest in DE&I in 2020. In order for a partnership to be effective, consultancy founders in this space need to communicate their ideas in a way that encourages accountability but does not take a moralising stance, and brands must navigate the logistical processes involved in implementing a new DE&I strategy that could potentially involve restructuring parts of the business or reconsidering the way they think. Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com. More from this author: Fashion, watch and jewellery sectors join forces on sustainability Burberry poaches CFO from supercar maker McLaren Why fashion month is failing Black models with textured hair

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