Imran Amed, Exclusive CEO Of BOF Decoded

With the leadership of Founder and CEO Imran Amed, Business of Fashion (BOF) has become the single-most influential media platform in the field of Fashion and Business, with readers that range from designers, top executives, and other important players from the industry.

This platform gives the fashion industry stakeholders an all-access pass to timely, accurate, and comprehensive information, which Imran Amed co-founded BOF in 2007. Imran Ahmed served as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company before establishing BOF, employed to provide advice to clients in the fashion, luxury, and retail industries. In addition, he was a journalist who contributed to papers including The Times of London and The Guardian.

Imran Amed conversation with Maria Grazia

In a conversation with the Creative Director of the Women’s Collection at Dior, Maria Grazia Chiuri, at the Istituto Marangoni in Mumbai, Imran began by acknowledging the gap that has been created between sophisticated luxury brands and the very Indian artisans and ateliers which help them reach that level of elegance, due to the lack of proper credit acclamation to the craftsmen.

In the talk with Maria, right after Dior’s Pre-Fall show at the Gateway of India, which celebrated the partnership between Chiuri and the Chanakya School of Craft, Imran Amed also said that even after only the assembly was handled in Europe, and the rest of the textile and the garment making was India, garments are labelled as Made in Italy or France.

Amed went on to dig deeper into the reasons behind leaving a critical part of luxury garment-making unappreciated to the right roots. The most prominent reason he discussed is ignorance, the lack of knowledge about real talent, hardship, and expertise these aspects take up. He believes that until and unless people go and see for themselves, the intensity and the creativity which goes into the making of every single piece of fabric, it is impossible to understand the true value of the luxury admired.

The backstory of Imran Amed, whom The Guardian once referred to as the forecaster of the style world, is what fascinates the industry. Even though BOF began operations in 2007, the idea had already begun to take root in Imran’s head while he was visiting a Vipassana retreat centre the previous year. His calm demeanour and constant smile gave the impression that the lessons he gained over those pivotal 10 days, seventeen years ago, have been helpful to him till now.

In an interview, Imran Amed delves into how the Vipassana retreat had changed the track of his life, the decisions he made later and the transformations he went through as a human being. As he shared his experiences, Imran Amed shared a few words of wisdom as well; how it is important to know that life is full of happy and sad things, some moments are going to be full of laughter and peace, but the important aspect is to remember, that change is the only constant. What is good won’t stay good forever, just like bad times, won’t stay bad forever.

Building a company from scratch, his aim had always been to keep his lessons and principles intact, something Imran owes his success to. Amed’s essays filled a hole in fashion media when he first started BOF and dispelled the myth that business and creativity are in different worlds which do not collide. He steadily advanced to become one of the most significant characters in fashion today as he continues to ignite a fresh form of conversation about fashion and offer a critical analysis of the industry’s inner workings.