It’s a new era for fashion month, where designer collections are just one piece of the pie. As brands across price points and specialties aim to compete in the increasingly competitive retail landscape, more are taking advantage of the opportunity and approaching it strategically. They’re cutting through the noise with innovative marketing tactics, introducing new commerce plays and leveraging advanced digital capabilities to best showcase their products. In this podcast series, running throughout Fashion Month Spring 2024, Glossy and influential leaders are breaking down the evolution of the experiential event. In this episode, we sit down with emerging designer Jackson Wiederhoeft, whose training includes Parsons School of Design and three years under Thom Browne. Like Thom Browne’s, Wiederhoeft's collections are decidedly theatrical, whimsical and, therefore, perfectly suited to a runway. He discusses the importance of taking part in New York Fashion Week, as well as the business perks of his recent honor of being named an interim CFDA member. Related reads: Dora Maar CEO Lauren Wilson on leveraging NYFW’s marketing opportunities Luxury Briefing: The new designer brand playbook champions lifestyle and accessibility

Marcia Kilgore was born to be an entrepreneur.  "I found it very difficult to take direction from other people, … and I always found it difficult to work in places where the standards of the person who was running the place were, from my perspective, mediocre; it would frustrate me to no end," she said on the latest episode of the Glossy Podcast.   Plus, her personality traits are befitting a successful entrepreneur, she said. Among them: "being super curious, being solution-oriented, loving to experiment, having solutions for any kind of hurdles or roadblocks that come along, and being tough enough to never give in." Based on her track record, she's used that to her advantage. Kilgore sold her first business, Bliss Spa, to LVMH in 1999. That was before starting the "masstige" beauty brand Soap & Glory, which she sold to Walgreens Boots Alliance in 2011. In the years since, she's launched Soaper Duper, Beauty Pie and FitFlop, the latter of which she described as a groundbreaker among footwear brands.  "I had this idea for a shoe that would align your body when you walked in it and give you energy [by] rebounding the energy from the ground up," she said. "Shoes had always just been drawn [by designers]. No one was thinking about how the shoe affects the person walking in it. … [FitFlop] is really an engineering company." Kilgore said her entry into the footwear category, after building her career in beauty, made sense given that she’d been "very into reflexology" while running her spa business. As a one-time personal trainer, she was also into wellness. The shoe "connected the dots," in terms of her experience, she said.  Since first launching through the retailer Sweaty Betty — through which one customer email sold 8,000 pairs of its shoes — FitFlop has taken off internationally. Now, having opened the brand's first U.S. store, in SoHo in April, Kilgore is charting its stateside growth.  Related reads: Sarah Flint and CEO Mary Beech: ‘2020 was the year we built the foundation to really scale’ Are heels over? What the footwear market will look like post-coronavirus