The Journal. - Fashion Mogul Says Working Moms Need to Stop Apologizing

Episode Date: September 20, 2026

Emma Grede has spent decades in the fashion industry’s backstage, helping found brands like Skims and Good Americans with celebrity partners Kim and Khloe Kardashian respectively. Recently, Grede has stepped into the limelight to share the story of her rise and her strategies for managing motherhood, a fashion empire and making millions. Jessica Mendoza interviewed Grede onstage at The Journal Live earlier this month. Further Listening: - Confessions of a Recovering Work Addict - For Riz Ahmed, Life is a Spy Thriller - Financial Influencers on Wealth and Work Sign up for WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Last week, we hosted a live show in New York City in front of a great audience of journal Superfans. On stage, I sat down with fashion mogul Emma Greed. She helped found a number of businesses, including the apparel brand Skims and Good American, with Kim and Chloe Kardashian, respectively. Emma and I talked about starting successful businesses, working with celebrities, and saying no to mom guilt. You can watch the interview on Spotify. Welcome to The Journal. our show about money, business and power.

I'm Jessica Mendoza. Coming up on the show, Emma Greed, on the business of fashion, making millions, and the trade-offs it takes to succeed. This episode is brought to you by IG Private Wealth. When your financial life gets more complex, having a clear plan matters. IG advisors build personalized, integrated financial plans

that connect your investments, tax strategies, retirement income, and estate planning. into one coordinated plan. They will help you make confident decisions about your wealth and your future. Get financial advice that puts you at the center. Visit IGPrivatewealth.com to find an advisor near you. This episode is presented by SAP.

Your company's ambitions can't be held back by long implementation, surprise costs, or empty AI promises. SAP Grow AI Cloud ERP gets you live fast, keeps pricing predictable, and delivers built-in AI that gets results the first day, not someday, all on a single platform that's easy to manage, industry-ready, and design to scale with your business. Bring it with SAP Grow. AICloud ERP for any size business. SAP.com slash grow. Well, I'm so glad you're here tonight. I'm so excited to talk to you, partly because I think

you're the perfect guest for us. I've read your book. I've listened to your podcast. You heard the tagline, money, business power. I feel like this is your jam. This is my area. This is it. This is my area. All the things I like the money. Well, I want to start with the fact that we're in New York City at a time when, you know, the power brokers of fashion are coming into town for New York Fashion Week. As somebody who's like really plugged into the industry, I am curious. Where is the money in fashion going right now? The money in fashion? I mean, that's a really great question. Well, where should it go? I mean, where should it go? It should go to the things that we all love

the most. You know, it's really interesting actually because being somebody, that came from more the business side of fashion. I started my career in production, working for the great and the good of the European fashion business. And quite frankly spent my entire 20s going, where's the money? What is happening here? So decided to come to America where the money was

and sort it out with feverish intention. And so I'm coming up on the 10-year anniversary of Good American, which for me is just crazy to think about, And I think about how many companies in that time have come and gone and how many things I did before that company, how many things I've done in between that. And you know, you get this kind of one golden goose moment, which for me has been really around skims. And so it's kind of amazing and quite interesting to look back on the last 10 years and understand what has actually happened. And I actually want to talk to you about both those companies. As you said, they've both had

real staying power in the industry. And you built these companies by partnering with celebrities like the Kardashians and not just partnering as an endorsing, which is typically what we see, but bringing them on as business partners. Can you talk about that distinction? Like, why was that so important to you? Well, it's not even a distinction. It's the way those partnerships come about, right?

And I think that anybody that believes that, you know, putting talent together with a brand is an opportunity either to make money or create a credible brand, will learn very, very quickly that that is just simply not the case. I think we can all count way more businesses that have failed than have succeeded. And so you have to come back to what it really is. Talent can be an incredible accelerator to popularity, to visibility. It's a marketing. Well, I wouldn't say just marketing.

That depends on the individual. And I don't want to be overly pedantic about it, but I think it is an important distinction. What you can do with talent to accelerate the knowledge and the visibility of a product on one hand is incredible. But to make a real product work, you need a business partner. And if you're going into a partnership, the partnership has to equate to more than somebody's following. And I'm really lucky that I found partners who are capable of that. And so how much of it, okay, I know you can't really like show me the recipe for this,

but like how much of it was partnering with the right person and then the right product. And then the timing. You know, you came out with skims at a time when this maybe was something people were looking for, and the same with good American. I think the timing is everything. You know, one of the things that I've always thought about whenever I started anything is almost taking aim at the competition. And so I have an acute awareness for what's happening in the business, for what's downtrending, for what might be needed. And actually, when you think about these businesses, they were answering a consumer problem. They were looking at a space which was devoid of any innovation and taking something.

like the plus-sized space, which for most fashion businesses and brands, is a complete afterthought. You know, it's something everybody's like, okay, we're doing this in the main part of our business. Here's what our range looks like. And here's this extra 15% that we're going to put no thought into. And especially in 2016 when Good American Launched. Yeah, I mean, you think about it, we didn't even have the vernacular that we have today. The industry wasn't what it is today. And so going out on a limb to create something in this space where there was not much that was incredibly appealing, not really much understood about that customer

and doing things completely differently and rewriting the role, that's what make those companies really, really successful because you have to endear yourself to customers. As celebrity talent can drive you to a product once, but it can't keep customers coming back over and over again. Only fierce loyalty for an excellent product can do that. And on that note, on the product, you know, how do you think about product as trends,

develop? Like, what do you look out for? How do you decide, like, this is going to sell? Well, you know, that's something that I can't really put a kind of my finger on because, you know, when people talk to me about trends, I'm like, what? Like, it's just, it's not something I ever think about. We're not looking at fashion week. I'm not looking at trends. Like, no one can tell you to make, you know, a size 15 and invent a new size. No one can tell you to make one-legged shapewear or a bra with a nipple on it. Those things didn't exist. They were innovations. And great products and great companies are born out of doing things differently. So yes, there's an element of running a fashion business, which is always going to be, let's look at what worked last

year, and let's iterate on that and bring something similar into the market. But if that's how you're led, you will die pretty quickly. And so it's hard to say, like, we're looking at trend, because instinctively the way I do business is to go left. It's to look at what's happening and go, okay, that's great, but like, what can we do that's never been done before? So I asked this too in part because I'm looking at your sports apparel brand off season, which you've partnered with Kristen Ushik, the wife of Kyle Ushik of the San Francisco 49ers. And, you know, I went to the website. I was like, this is really cool.

It's very street wear. You know, it's like the kind of thing that you as me, as a woman, I'm looking for something cool to wear to a football. Maybe football game. It's a stretch. Gone. But no, but like it's cool. It looks great. And, but I was going through it.

You know, my household were a, we're a new football. New York Jets household. And I was looking at your website and I noticed, you know, there weren't as much merch for the Jets as there were for like the Eagles or the 49ers. And I, and I... Did we upset you? Did you not... Just my husband probably was more...

He's in the audience right now, a little bit. I mean, everything's down on a curve. But that's what I mean is like you... I assume that is on purpose. You're thinking about what merchandise to sell, who the audience is, who's going to buy this. Yeah, I mean, look, I think with any business days, an element of math and science and art that has to meet, right? And in any business, especially one like off-season, which is a company that I love so much, because it is a company that

exists in a space, again, where women are massively underserved. And if there's any type of, you know, trend in the businesses that I run, it's doing things where I think that customers are overlooked. It's where there's a solution to provide, where there's some piece of the audience that is, for whatever reason forgotten about. And in that lies a massive commercial opportunity. And so when you think about fan apparel and you think about going to a game and the same old hoodie and an oversized t-shirt

and nothing that you would look moderately cute in and yet you look around the stands and the customer and the fans that are there, it's full of women. And women hold all of the purchasing power for the rest of their family. And so it makes sense that catering to that customer would be something that would be incredible. lucrative. Now, on the other hand, going and signing, you know, licensing deals with the, you know, LNB and the NBA and the WMBA. And, you know, it's like, well, not so much it costs money,

but it's really difficult to do. And so I think where I get excited and where I see opportunity is doing the things that take enormous effort that will hopefully yield enormous results. But it's not something that you would do without really understanding what the opportunity is and really, honestly like just not being lazy because I think that what happens is there is a turnkey and an easy way to approach everything if you want that result on the other side of it and my point of view is that if you do better if you approach everything with excellence if you go the other mile customers intrinsically feel it they understand they know they feel seen they feel heard they feel represented and with that comes a lot of loyalty and as a result repeat customers after the break

Emma agreed on why women need to talk more about money. New from Nespresso. Blend wellness into your coffee routine with a coffee plus range, infused with functional benefits. Choose the coffee you love with added B vitamins, like coffee plus B12 to help support immune function, and coffee plus B6 to keep your day moving. Or go with the flow and choose ginseng delight.

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Visit your local Chevrolet dealer today for more details. Well, in the two decades or so that you've been in the fashion and retail business, you've mostly been behind the scenes, but in the last year, that's so. quite changed a lot. You launched your podcast, Aspire. You came out with your book in April. And one of the points that you make over and over in the book, in the podcast. And over. What do I say? I'm very repetitive. I'll tell you that. I think it's a superpower because everybody knows what I want from them, but go ahead. Well, in this case, this is something I'm really excited about is you want women to talk more about money. I do. Why? Because we don't.

And listen, here's a fan. I do. Listen, I'm going to talk to you in the audience. Listen, I tell you what it is, when you have, you know, gone out and raised hundreds and millions of dollars and you sit on the boards of lots of companies and you run companies and I have hundreds and hundreds of staff, men and women, you start to notice behaviour in the workplace specifically. And what happens when you avoid conversations around money is that the money avoids you. And what I've seen over and over and over again is that as women, it's just that we weren't necessarily raised and trained to have those conversations. And what happens with men is that they just speak so freely about money. And they do it everywhere. They don't wait for a special, like, secret moment to share it with their best mate.

They are in constant interaction about every single thing, whether it's a mortgage or it's the rate on a credit card or it's an investment opportunity or whatever. it is, big, small medium in between, and women don't have enough of those conversations with enough specificity. And so I think that what happens is that the stories that we grow up with, our own money story, stays with us. And there's nothing to break the spell unless you know differently. And so my point of view and the reason that I started the podcast and the reason that I wrote the book is because I wanted to be honest about what it's taken for me, about the conversations that I've had and the sacrifices that I've made and the ways that I've done my deals

because the idea of me getting to this position is so that I can do the opposite of gatekeep, right? It's like, I want to share so that you get more and you get more and you get more. And, you know, by default, someone's got to get less. But maybe that's the boys and that's fine because they've been getting for the longest time. So the point is that the more we speak, the more we share, the more open we are, the more this information actually impacts what we're earning. Well, in the spirit of talking candidly about money, Emma agreed, how much did you make last year?

I would never sell you. Only because you'd be so jealous. I'd be like, oh. Well, Forbes reported $405 million is your net worth last year, which is... I am jealous. I think they missed a bit.

I was like, but that was last year, so, you know, it's been a whole year. It's been a good year. But I ask that too in part because you do talk about, you know, growing up without much money. And so I'm curious, like, are you proud of your network today? Is your relationship with money more complicated than just, like, making more of it? That is such a good question, because when you grow up with very little, you know, I was raised in East London, raised by single mom, I'm the eldest of four girls.

And so there really wasn't a lot to go around. But in that way, I was extremely focused on what I needed to live the type of life that I wanted. And it's not that I shy away from telling you an amount. It's very well publicised the value of my companies, how much I own of those companies, and the net worth that is somewhat attributed to that. By the way, you know, my favourite saying is that, like, who cares about any of those valuations?

You know, it's like I really try not to think about it very much. What I do care about, however, though, is the path to ownership. Because the reason that I have those numbers attributed with what I've done is because I did. Because on paper, as a school leaver, as somebody with very little education, as somebody that only came here less than 10 years ago, most of that shouldn't really be the case.

The point is that I put myself in that situation purposely, deliberately. I took a lot of risks. I made an enormous amount of trade-offs, which also I don't shy away from talking about. And so, again, I think it's really important to say, yeah, great, like, I made a lot of money, and the cost of that was. and the reality of that is, and the way that my day is as follows. Because, again, I think that we're in this crazy moment in the culture right now where, you know, the kind of default path for women is that,

I'm just going to like manifest my way into like millions. I'm like, really? Like, I don't think that works. Like, I don't think that that's possible. I've been trying to manifest it for a while. Yeah, I'm sure. Like, do you know what I mean? I'm like, it doesn't happen.

And so I think there's an element of like coming clean that's really required in popular culture specifically as it relates to women, supporting women, women's empowerment and women and entrepreneurialism. And again, I do say women three times because it doesn't exist in the same way for men. Nobody thinks like he manifested his way to it. We're like, good on him. He rolled over a few people and it all worked out like, p'o! Do you know what I mean? And somehow we have to like, you know, like share our profit all along the way to get there. I'm like, absolutely not. It doesn't work that way. Yeah. Well, talk about trade-offs. You know, you're a mother of four, your oldest is 12? Is that right? How do you think about

the space that work takes up in your life? I think about it with a great degree of pride, you know, because I worked very hard to be able to work this hard. And I don't try to hide it from my kids. You know, I am, again, I think that part of that is my upbringing. And I think for so many of us, that guilt is a story that's passed down from other women, from our grandmothers and from our mothers, because the prevailing wisdom is that if, you know, I'm in New York and away from my kids, which I am right now, that somehow I should feel tremendous skill. I mean, the truth is, I absolutely love it. Like, three nights in a hotel, I sleep diagonally in the bed.

I'm like, woo-woo! It's in Tuesday, let's go out! You know, like, but I say that in jest because, again, I think a lot of women feel actually all right about leaving their kids for a few days. It's just not so cool to say it. And the truth is that. we all, when you get and work yourself as I have into a position of great privilege, the idea that I have the childcare and the infrastructure and I'm married a good person and I'm able to do that

is not something that I'm going to be in constant apology mode for. And so I've just kind of wiped that behaviour from my thoughts and from my vernacular. And again, in doing that, I hope that some other woman would be like, yeah, like I'm good. I'm going on that trip because I was asked to do that trip because I'm so good at what I do. Like, there's no shame in the game. Yeah, like, okay to be proud of being good at what you do. 100%. That isn't about motherhood or parenthood.

100%. And I feel totally fine about it so long as we can all just be honest about what those trade-offs are. And you have to choose them. And I think I've chosen quite purposefully. I'm not missing a day when my kid is performing or has an art show.

It's like, am I missing that mom's coffee morning? Like, yeah, I don't want to go in the first place. Right. And this goes back to... I'm purposely planning. planning the trip on that day. I was like, oh, I'm busy actually. Sorry about that. I'm like, PTA meeting back. I mean, honestly. But this is also like, this is what you meant, I think, when you kind of went viral earlier this year and you said you were a max three hour mom. You've

also called yourself a core memory mom. I feel like that one maybe was said for me, but max three hour mum thing was just a level of honesty because I think when you work all bloody week, you know, Monday through Friday and I don't do a nine to five. No one that runs businesses does. And so that don't run businesses don't either, but by the time you get to Saturday, like, I'm not sitting down playing with my kids all day. I'm not evolving the entire weekend around my children.

The reality is by 12 o'clock noon, I'm like, oh, I'm done with you lot, you know? And so what I was doing was being facetious, but also by the same token saying, it's okay. Like, let's give ourselves permission to have a level of honesty about how different ways of parenting

doesn't mean that you're a good or a bad mom. And I think there are all of these labels and all of these things, and it's just such a big distraction. I think that there's so many other things that we could be focused on. There's so much more to glean from me than how many hours I spend with my kids.

And actually, the better question is, Emma, what don't you do? And what are you spending your time on? And I guarantee for any single woman that will be a million times more valuable than thinking about the time that I'm not spending with my kids. Well, so this idea, right, like women cannot have it all 100% of the time.

There are trade-offs. We have to make trade-offs. That's just the reality of life. Like, this idea kind of reminds me of Cheryl Sandberg's lean-in a little bit. Kind of reminds me of the concept of girl boss. In some ways, we've been having this conversation for a while. So I just want to drill down on what you're offering that's new, that's different. I don't know that I'm offering anything new and different.

I think that I'm just telling my choice. truth. I know, you know, I never wrote a book to talk about anything other than the truth of what my journey is and actually to have an opportunity to take that outside a 30 second real. Because when your story is so publicly visible and I am spoken to by so many women on the street every day and the idea that I turn up to work like looking great and put my feet on the desk and tell somebody what to do. I got your lumbotons on. I was like, that's just not been the reality of my journey. I think the reason that the conversation prevails in popular culture is because we can't accept it.

Because the rules that we have laid out for women are constantly judged and constantly discussed and constantly debated by us. And I think there's some responsibility in that. I think that all the men in the room have no idea what I'm talking about. They're like, so, okay. Like great, like moving on. And yet we will have a conversation for, what, when did Lean In come out? Like 20 years ago. 2013, yeah, something like that.

Exactly that. And so I think that we owe it to ourselves to accept it and to say that we can accept that your way might be different from my way. But there is a commonality in the goal. I think that we can all accept and we can all appreciate and we can all agree more importantly that more women in positions of power would be a pretty good thing in this world. Can't argue with that. Right?

It's a fact. It actually is a fact. But we have to also accept the responsibility that we have in that perhaps not coming to fruition as quickly as it should. Thank you so much, Emma. Thank you, guys. Thank you, so much. Thank you, my darling. That's all for today, Sunday, September 20th.

And here are the credits, read by two of our listeners of the live event. Thank you very much to Cyrus Atea and Autumn. billiter. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and the Wall Street Journal. If you like our show, follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. We're out every weekday afternoon. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow. Woo! Nice job.