Welcome to Fashion's Best Digital Dinner Party

After 15 years in the industry, I'm finally hosting the conversations we actually need.

Welcome to Retail Roundtable — your new favorite corner of the internet where fashion, business, and culture collide.

I’ve always believed that the most exciting conversations about fashion happen behind the scenes: the trends that haven’t hit the mainstream yet, the founders building something remarkable, and the subtle shifts shaping how we shop. That’s exactly what we’re here to talk about every week.

If we haven't met yet, I'm Carly — and my path through fashion has been anything but conventional. At 19, I moved to New York solo to attend FIT, determined to carve out my place in an industry I was obsessed with.

While my major focused on traditional buying tracks, I took a different approach: immersing myself across every facet of fashion I could access. I interned in Lucky Magazine's fashion closet, worked Vogue & Teen Vogue events, merchandised for Alice + Olivia, and got my hands dirty with operations at McQueen. Simultaneously, I spent years on the Alexander Wang and Intermix retail floors, witnessing firsthand the psychology behind luxury purchases and what actually makes someone commit to a five-figure impulse buy.

After graduation, I headed to the Hamptons with Intermix to launch their seasonal boutiques. That experience caught Barneys' attention, and suddenly I found myself overseeing more than $1B in inventory at their historic Madison Avenue flagship. There, I discovered my unexpected love for data — building custom reporting systems that revealed the hidden patterns in how people shop. I was tracking everything from employee selling techniques to consumer behavior across every Barneys nationwide, identifying the subtle patterns that told the complete story of luxury merchandise—from initial buy to final sale.

That role fundamentally changed how I saw retail and fashion: beyond beautiful products and perfect merchandising, I discovered the strategic backbone that determines which luxury retailers thrive and which fade away. (Little did I know I was witnessing the beginning of the end of an absolute icon.)

When Instagram and Facebook (and in general m-comm) transformed the marketing landscape, I became fascinated with how brands could build entire worlds that consumers wanted to be part of. I taught myself digital strategy while piecing together clients and working every side job imaginable — waitressing, bartending, event production — all while building my base in brand development through hands-on experience.

By the time my husband and I moved to Vegas in 2018, I'd developed a distinct perspective on retail and brand strategy. I joined a fitness start-up brand I'd fallen in love with as a customer, taking over their retail division when they were at a critical inflection point. As their Head of Retail, I transformed what had been a small revenue stream into a major business driver — overseeing everything from retail layouts and buying to influencer events, brand collaborations with Year of Ours and Lululemon, private label development, and a complete e-commerce overhaul.

The results were undeniable: revenue increased six-fold in a year, we opened ten new studio locations, and I found myself building out VIP membership platforms and hosting a podcast featuring the female founders of the brands we carried in-studio. I was working directly with franchisees to ensure their locations launched with retail strategies that actually worked for their specific markets.

During COVID, I pivoted to consulting, joining a startup firm as their first hire in April 2021 where I functioned as an operator. I helped scale it to a 15+ person team that transformed over 10 brands. By 2023, I was ready for a change and was recruited by Toptal, an agency that matches freelance talent with clients. I began taking on fashion, beauty, and wellness founders through them while still at the consulting firm. In December '23, I left my consulting role to focus fully on these freelance projects - bringing me back full circle to independence after a decade in the industry.This past year has been the most rewarding of my career — helping stealth brands craft their GTM strategies, building MVPs, creating branding from scratch, and guiding established founders through launches that shattered expectations. One founder's weekend product launch brought in 50% over their MRR, others have expanded globally or completely reinvented their positioning based on strategies we developed together.

The most gratifying part has been the DMs — founders reaching out and trusting me with their businesses at pivotal moments because something in my perspective resonated with them.

Having touched nearly every corner of fashion—from the glossy magazine offices of Condé Nast to Madison Avenue flagships, scrappy startups to DTC darlings—I've collected a perspective that spans the entire ecosystem. I've sold the clothes, marketed the clothes, analyzed who's buying the clothes, and helped create the brands making the clothes. This front-row seat to fashion's evolution has been my greatest education.

That’s what led me to today and my latest role: launching Market Edit, my advisory firm dedicated to helping female founders build brands that matter in fashion and adjacent spaces. After years of working behind the scenes, I realized that what excited me most wasn’t just shaping strategies but empowering the women building them. I kept seeing the same patterns—brilliant founders with game-changing ideas but lacking the right resources, visibility, or support to scale. With women driving 85% of consumer spending yet receiving only 2% of venture capital, the disconnect is glaring. Market Edit exists to bridge that gap, providing strategic media + advisory support that helps founders connect with the right consumers, investors, and partners. (P.S. if you’re reading this before our launch on 3/10, you’re hearing this news first!).

But Retail Roundtable is something different. It's where I get to democratize all the knowledge I've gathered and create the fashion business conversations I wish had existed at every stage of my career — one that's equally obsessed with strategic insights as it is shopping discoveries. A space where talking about business feels inspiring, not intimidating. Think of this as your weekly invite to a fashion-forward GNO: part strategy session, part industry tea, part window shopping, and always a place where you’ll leave feeling motivated, supported, and ready to take action.

Each week, we'll explore what's actually moving the industry forward. Sometimes that's breaking down a brilliant campaign, other times it's spotlighting founders changing the game, analyzing market shifts that matter, or sharing the finds I can't stop thinking about.

Whether you're building your own brand, working in fashion, or simply love understanding the full picture behind the products you buy and the brands you love, RR is your seat at the table.If you made it this far then you deserve a treat! Here’s a picture of Penny- the love of my life and the cutest of all corgis <3

I'm beyond excited to finally bring this to life — and even happier you're here. Let's make Thursdays our thing. x

All my love,
Carly