Alison Loehnis, the Yoox Net-a-Porter boss, tells Kate Whitehead about falling in love with fashion, being trained to within an inch of her life at Ralph Lauren and how landing in London led to her dream job.

Fashion meant self-expression for New Yorker Alison Loehnis growing up. It became her career when she moved to London, to LVMH, then Yoox Net-a-Porter

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Alison Loehnis was always styling her school uniform, but she didn’t expect fashion to become her career after starting out in advertising. Then came London

Kate Whitehead

Published: 6:15pm, 16 Mar 2024

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I was born in New York and grew up in a close-knit family in Manhattan. We have a house on Long Island, which is where my parents, younger sister and I spent weekends and summers.

My mom was in advertising, focusing on beauty brands, and my dad was in the fragrance business. As a child, I gravitated towards things that my parents were interested in, which is when the seeds of an interest in fashion were sown.

My mom was a role model in terms of being able to have a career and a family. She had great style and as a kid I was taken around various stores with her and I saw the joy that fashion gave her.

School of fashion

I went to a girls’ school called Chapin School. I was always styling my uniform – from dodgy things like leg warmers over tights to wearing my dad’s oversized sweaters. There was a store in the village where we would get oversized overcoats, which we wore over our school uniform.

Perhaps because I had to wear a uniform growing up, fashion was always representative of self-expression and freedom. I’d lie in bed thinking about what I’d wear to the school field day weeks before the event. Fashion has always brought me so much joy, I’ve always loved clothes. Going to school in Manhattan was great because the Metropolitan Museum of Art was like a classroom.

I always wanted to study art history. I was excited when it was offered in my senior year of high school – and it was incorporated with the boys’ school, which was fun.

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Exceeding expectations

At high school, Friday was a half day. I usually met my dad and we’d go to lunch and then to a museum. I went to Brown University, on Rhode Island, in 1988, to study history of art. University was amazing and I spent a semester living in Florence, Italy.

I was working in a marketing agency during my freshman summer when my mom’s fashion editor friend told her that a Ralph Lauren store was opening in East Hampton, which is where our house was.

I had so many interviews for a summer job there, it was like applying for college. I was trained to within an inch of my life. We were taught how to always exceed customer expectation. I learned how to do the till and the stockroom and how to fold. I loved selling.

Boot camp

After I graduated, I wanted to find something that balanced business and creativity. I’d always wanted to work in the art world, but when I graduated the market was pretty dead.

I got a job working in advertising at Saatchi & Saatchi as an assistant account executive. It was like professional boot camp. It was a very spoiling first job – I had my own office and secretary.

I had to run meetings and do budgets, I had no idea what I was doing. The account I worked on was General Mills, a breakfast cereal.

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Hello, JFK Jnr

I loved fashion and would save to buy an Agnès b suit, but it didn’t occur to me I could work in fashion.

From the ad agency, I went to work in communications at Hachette Filipacchi Media. They were developing what was then called custom publishing, which were advertiser-led magazines. They published John F. Kennedy Jnr’s magazine, so he was in the office, which was a highlight of that job.

My role was to work across all of our titles and pitch the stories we were working on to local newspapers and television stations.

One of the magazines was called Premiere, a movie magazine they brought over from France. The editor was hired by Disney to open a motion picture office in New York and she took me with her.

I went to Disney and worked in development. Our role was to mine the creative community in New York to find projects to develop into feature films for TV.

Loehnis in May 2023. Growing up, fashion was always representative of self-expression and freedom for her.

Heading to London town

I was approached by a guy who’d started a digital agency and wanted someone who came from entertainment. I thought it sounded interesting.

It was an agency working with lifestyle, entertainment and fashion companies to develop their web strategy. I joined that agency, working in New York, and had a number of clients in the UK. We had a fledgling office in London.

Ever since I’d lived abroad when I was at university, I’d wanted to live in Europe again. I asked if I could go to London for six months – and I never went back.

As someone who loves fashion, it was the dream job. I was the kid in the candy store
Alison Loehnis

In the pink

As soon as I arrived in London, in 2001, I felt at home. I’d only been there a few months when they decided to close the London office and asked me to return to New York. I didn’t want to. I’d worked in client services for a while and wanted to be in a business, in a brand.

I went to work for LVMH, running sales and marketing for Thomas Pink. I had a boss who took a total bet on me. I inherited a network of stores, migrated a catalogue business into an e-commerce business, opened stores in Thailand and China. It was a good learning curve.

Destiny calls

After a year, I met Alexander through mutual friends. He was working in financial PR and investor relations. We got married in 2005. Our son was born in 2006 and our daughter came along in 2008.

I was on maternity leave and thinking about going back to work when I got a call from a headhunter. We went for coffee and she said, “If anything ever opened up at Net-a-Porter would you be interested?” I practically bit her hand off with excitement.

I joined the business in 2007 and loved it from the moment I walked in the door. The business was seven years old and still pretty small, with 150 people.

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Dream job

As someone who loves fashion, it was the dream job. I was the kid in the candy store. The team were energetic, curious and customer obsessed. There was an amazing entrepreneurial spirit and can-do attitude. Everyone was invested in what we were doing.

I’m not someone who sits still. I’m constantly on the go, I’ve got lots of energy and I like to be involved in different things. I never thought I’d be in the same company for 16-plus years.

The business has evolved from being a start-up, to having a primary investor, to being merged and being listed, to being part of Richemont. It’s been an evolution.

Nailing the work-life balance

I think it’s important to be clear about what your priorities are. For me, my family has always come first. As long as you know what your priorities are, the decision is clear. I’ve always been strict about work-life balance.

When I first joined the company and there were few other people with kids, I said when I would be in the office and that I’d be 110 per cent super-focused.

I’d have a blackout period when I’d go home and put my son to bed, and then I’d be available if I was needed for calls after that.

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