This new women’s clothing brand takes all the guesswork out of shopping for work
The Insider Picks team writes about stuff we think you'll like. Business Insider has affiliate partnerships, so we get a share of the revenue from your purchase.
MM.LaFleurDuring his presidency, former President Barack Obama told Vanity Fair that he only wore two kinds of suits: gray or blue.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg habitually wears the same gray shirt to almost every public event.
Why? Because both men wanted to pare down how many decisions they had to make, in light of the impact of the high volume of other decisions each day would demand of them. In essence, they wanted to save their energy, because the outfit wasn’t that important in comparison with what was to come.
Similarly, men in the office have a standard, seemingly interchangeable rotation of the same suit to put on before work each morning. Having a socially acceptable uniform that’s convenient and ubiquitous means they’re able to save on time while still conveying competence.
Women, without the luxury of such a uniform, are required to spend much more of their valuable time orchestrating an acceptable outfit for the day. And if they were to wear the same gray dress day in and day out (or in some cases even four months apart), they’re much more liable to scrutiny.
The professional woman's morning routine is unnecessarily long, in part because of poor workwear options and the hurdles that stricter social codes and vaguer social rules impose.
Many women would be relieved to have an arsenal of work clothes they didn't have to think about, so they could spend their energy on the decisions of the day that do matter. Which is why MM.LaFleur was created.
For the woman whose work day often looks more like 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., they've got you covered. The designers and stylists spend their time painstakingly perfecting how work clothes will look on you, all so that you never have to think about them. Which is one fundamental reason why the company is doing so brilliantly well. One dress, the Etsuko, has raked in $3 million alone since 2014.
The company's purpose is to provide women with the rotation of professional, sharp clothes that can be thrown on in the morning with only cursory thought. True to the mission of making women's lives easier by cutting steps instead of adding them, MM.LaFleur will deliver to your door a box of clothes specially picked out for you by one of their personal stylists.
It's called their Bento Box, and it's either a one-time delivery or a subscription service if you so choose. Simply take a short quiz on things like your office dress code, your size and preferences, and how much you typically spend on your work wardrobe.
When your box arrives, try on the clothes, keep what you like, and send the ones that you don't back. They'll only charge you for what you keep, and you never have to spend hours in a dressing room again. For returns, if you can't get to a post office or don't want to, simply text the number they provide for you on a card inside the box, put the clothes in the return bag provided, and leave it outside your door for UPS to pick up and return for you. That's what I did, and it was seamless.
The clothes are made from scratch to accommodate the lifestyle of a woman on the go: many clothes in the collection are machine washable and can go from a suitcase straight onto your body without looking worse for wear. If your kids spit up on you while you're holding them, no worries, just chuck it in the washer.
MM.LaFleur doesn't really care about the billboard aesthetic of 2D images, they care how the clothes look on you. Instead of going the usual route for women's clothes, head of design Miyako Nakamura doesn't create by using a size 2 model and just scaling up for anything larger, but actually uses a wide range of models from the outset— draping layers of material over the model's body and cutting the dress there to achieve just the right shape and outsmart potential bunching. Nakamura works in 3D, accounting for how a dress will fit around a real body, of any size and shape.
You'd think this would be common practice in high-end workwear for women, but because it's a) a remarkably expensive way to make clothes, and b) creates clothes that look best on, instead of primarily in ads that can sell en masse, this isn't the case. But for a company that means to finally give women the trusted clothes that can replace their other time-consuming options, precision in craft is essential.
What this means is that MM.LaFleur's team actually prefers you to get in and walk around in their clothes instead of viewing them in 2D first, such as online images. But working with the strictures of the internet, they've even uploaded videos of three ballerinas from the New York City Ballet dancing, uninhibited, in their new summer line. As Nakamura says, "Our clothes don't really look good on hangers." They're designed to be worn by "three-dimensional beings with hips, shoulders, butts, and boobs of varying sizes."
If that doesn't sell you, it's a feat worth knowing that up to 70% of their clients are repeat customers.
Women in finance, banking, and other power sectors are too busy to spend their time shopping, and MM.LaFleur has simplified the process.
As the former head designer of Zac Posen, Nakamura knows how to manipulate materials to highlight you in an elegant, understated way. You'll get sleeves that fall to exactly the right spot to make your arms look trim, an understanding of the collarbone being okay but the cleavage not, and little innovative hacks designed to make your life at work and at home easier, like little loops in the dresses to hold your bra straps in so they won't slip out at an inopportune time.
Our office at Business Insider is more casual than that of MM.LaFleur’s target audience, but if my job required me to be in slacks or a dress and heels regularly, I can’t think of a service that would come as a greater relief. Everything they sent in my Bento Box was better made than the workwear I already owned. The Foster pants were stretchy and comfortable while also managing the difficult task of being flattering and appropriate. The materials were soft, the lines were smooth, and the seams angled to fall against me without bulging. It was true — I couldn't have known how much I'd love them online.
As soon as I had researched the Bento and tried it myself, I texted the powerful women in my life who might benefit from a service like this, and each one was ecstatic. The MM.LaFleur business model is necessary, and it's successful in part because of that and its loyal customers, but those repeat clients come back for their even more lasting business secret: clothes that are beautiful, functional, and getting smarter all the time.
No comments: