Fashion Nova, the clothing brand that built its empire based on exploitation

  • By：karen-millen

27

11/2022

Follow @viu_ecpe

Fashion Nova is a clothing company that collaborates with celebrities such as Cardi B, Nicky Minaj and Kylie Jenner. Currently, she has more than 17 million followers on her Instagram account and is recognized for displaying creative designs on trendy clothing. In 2017 it was the most investigated brand in the Google search engine, beating exclusive brands such as Gucci, Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent, among others. However, its surprising success hid something unfortunate: according to a report in The New York Times, its workers received wages below the legal minimum.

Fashion Nova was created in 2006 by Richard Saghian. Early in his founding, he opened a clothing store in Los Angeles, but sales were not as he expected. Many of the designs he made were sold on different pages online. That is why in 2013, Richard looked for different alternatives and Instagram was one of them. When creating her account, she uploaded several photos of her designs as well as models wearing her clothes.

Soon after, another idea appeared and it was that the followers of Fashion Nova were well-known people such as models, rapper girlfriends and influencers with many followers. Richard's idea was to give them clothes and for the young women to model their clothes in their accounts, tagging the brand. Currently, all influencers and celebrities resort to this method of displaying different products on their accounts in order to generate large sums of money. A clear example of this is the young model Kendall Jenner, according to the Buzz Bingo portal, for her posts on Instagram she earns 15.9 million dollars and thus became the highest paid woman.

Skinny dresses, colorful prints and skinny jeans are all the rage among young millennials. The key to this is to show different models every week as well as the accessibility of prices. For example, dresses with beaded designs or the simplest range from $51 to $120, and sandals from $103 to $200. According to The New York Times, in 2017, the company's sales grew by 600 percent.