Voices of Tomorrow is a recurring feature highlighting PoC who are reshaping the retail industry.
Taiwanese-born Tiffany Hsu never set out to “shop for a living,” as she calls it. But the chief buying officer at luxury e-commerce platform Mytheresa has been living a fashion buyer’s dream since graduating from University of the Arts London’s Central Saint Martins with a degree in fashion design in 2003.
After successful stints at Lane Crawford and Selfridges, Hsu joined Mytheresa in 2016 and the rest is history. She currently leads a team of about 30 people and spends time scouting products, attending trade shows, and buying appointments.
On her career journey
Of course, the path to where she is today wasn’t as straightforward. Hsu’s journey started with a “small boutique” in London called Feathers—her first job out of college as she worked her way up. “I started as a shop girl,” she said.
But according to Hsu, she never set out to be a buyer in the first place.
“To be honest, it wasn’t the career path I would’ve chosen for myself, but at the time, I needed a visa, so whoever offered me a job, I took it,” she told Retail Brew.
Hsu said in the beginning, she wasn’t even sure fashion buying was a legitimate job. “Back in the day, fashion buying wasn’t even like a degree; you just study design, or maybe you do merchandising,” she said. “I think it was a very good way to apply both my love for fashion and design and also commerce together.”
On biggest shifts in fashion
Now an industry veteran, Hsu says lots of things have changed for fashion buyers. For starters, the widespread use of social media and smartphones have altered the way people can scout for sources. “I used to have to find things in magazines and in libraries,” she explained. “It’s really hard to know what’s going on around the world, and you’re kind of stuck with what’s given to you. It was very hard to find new things. So, [it’s] really different now, because now everybody has opportunity. Regardless of if you have the resources or the connection, you can put yourself out there for people to see.”
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She added that although she works with several big brands, she is easily able to find smaller graduate collections or international brands that weren’t on her radar before simply because things are more accessible today. “I don’t have to find people from trade shows anymore,” she said. “Now I can find people like students who just graduated who probably even haven’t put together their first collection, but I managed to see it. I can contact them.”
But while social media has been instrumental in shaking up lots of industries, the advent of e-commerce has also been a game changer.
“It’s amazing, you know? I lived through the pre-digital era, and obviously I was very young at the time, and fashion was really different; it was very exclusive, elitist, so to speak—it’s for a very niche group of people,” Hsu said. “But now, everyone’s creating their own tribe. Young people are free to express themselves.”
On supporting women
However, despite becoming increasingly accessible, Hsu says the industry is far from perfect—especially for women who are few and far between in the fashion C-suite: “Even in the company I work for, we have executives who are women, but, if you count them, the percentage of men is still higher than [women],” she said, adding that most major brand CEOs are men. “I think us as women need to help other women, because we understand the challenges that we have and stick together.”