MY ‘GROWN-UP GAP YEAR’ EPIPHANY
Jane Shepherdson, 60, transformed Topshop into a cultural force, before becoming CEO at Whistles. She surprised her peers by leaving to take a year out at 56, finding a new purpose as an advocate for fashion rental as chair of My Wardrobe HQ. She is also director of the London Fashion Fund, supporting sustainable businesses, and a trustee of charity Smart Works
It had been brewing, I guess, for a couple of years – this growing feeling that fashion was not a good thing anymore. And I was beginning to feel increasingly guilty for being a part of it. The social injustice we’d known about for a long time, but more and more the environmental issues – certainly with my role in trying to make fashion compelling – felt the opposite of the right thing to do.
I got a call from a headhunter who said: “How about San Francisco?” I told my husband, who said: “Why don’t we move to California?” But I didn’t really want to work for a big corporate. But we decided then and there we would spend a year in America. David Bowie had just died, Victoria Wood had died. We were in our 50s and we suddenly thought, you know, we might die tomorrow…
We wanted it to be spontaneous. We said we’d spend a month or so driving across the country and booked Airbnbs.
Because we had our dog, we were constantly going for walks and hikes in the mountain. It was amazing and actually I don’t think we thought very much about what we were going to do when we came back until we were on our way. We both felt a real sense of liberation.
I still loved fashion, it had not gone away. I also thought there must be something where I can use all these years of experience and do something that helps change people’s behaviour even very slightly in the right direction.
I began to think about the fact that we’d been to all these Airbnbs, how people were much more accepting of rental. Fashion rental company My Wardrobe HQ approached me and we got together and I thought they were fantastic. They had this incredible backof-house, incredible logistics, which is the difficult thing with rental, and they were so enthusiastic.
I’m chair of My Wardrobe HQ, but I guess I am more of an ambassador. Throughout lockdown, I spent a lot of time on sustainability panels. There seems to be this huge upswing in how much people want to talk about the sustainability of rental and resale.
The biggest difference probably is the lack of stress that is in my life. There’s enough going on, but it’s never too much.
I’d like to be a part of real change in the fashion industry. I mean it cannot go on: I guess people are going to realise at some point that change has to happen.
I’m really, really passionate about that. And I think it does stem from the fact that I spent all my life doing the opposite and that perhaps I am one of the culprits. So I’m aware that I’m a little bit hypocritical. But, you know, I have realised it! We’ve all got to realise at some point in our lives. That’s very important to me.