Grammy-award winning artist Ciara wants to inject some love and positivity into the often cold, make profits at all costs, world of fashion. “The world needs a lot more love, respect and care — love, respect and care for ourselves and love, respect and care for each other. And I think that when we think about a lot of brands there is not really that component to it,” Ciara Princess Wilson says about her new fashion business dubbed The House of LR&C. On their LinkedIn page, the company states, “It’s our goal to create good brands that embody Love, Respect & Care.”
Ciara, who co-founded the The House of LR&C with her husband, Seattle Seahawks star quarterback Russell Wilson, tapped friend and former Lululemon CEO Christine Day to help launch, lead and scale up the venture. Day, formerly CEO of a healthy food company called Performance Kitchen, is credited with taking Lululemon to the next level as CEO from 2008 to 2013. Before then, Day spent 20 years or so in key leadership positions at Starbucks.
The House of LR&C checks all the boxes of an apparel house made for current societal times. It has launched with a sustainable streetwear brand for men and women called Human Nation. The assortments — some of which could be found at Kohl’s (Day is friends with Kohl’s CEO Michelle Gass from their time working at Starbucks) — resemble athleisure and are consciously sourced. Products are made from eco-friendly organic cotton at manufacturing facilities that adhere to the sustainability goals developed by the United Nations. They are also 100% recyclable.
“In the end, my goal is to finally squeeze out some of the fast-fashion companies that I think have taken advantage of the environment and the factory workers. It’s about raising the bar,” says Day. Meanwhile, for each purchase the brand devotes 3% to the Why Not You Foundation. That’s the Wilsons’ nonprofit centered on improving children’s health and education and ending systemic poverty. Human Nation’s give-back initiative is not unlike the one pioneered by footwear maker Toms. Currently, Toms donates about one-third of its profits to its foundation. Also under The House of LR&C is Russell Wilson’s higher end fashion line The Good Man Brand. The apparel brand debuted in 2016 at Nordstrom, where it could still be found as well as its own website.
As for the fashion house’s future, Day sees it encompassing more brands (a new women’s brand is slated to debut in August). But right now, it’s about laying the building blocks to source inventory in line with the house’s guidelines. Day envisions tripling the business by the end of 2021. “So I’d like to believe we would be double or triple where we started from at beginning, but I do believe we’ll definitely be another level up in where we started from,” Ciara said on where the business may be a year from now.
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