Jessica Couch is ready to drive the fashion industry into the great beyond: AI.
The fashion designer and co-founder of retail strategy firm Fayetteville Road recently told The Grio that she will launch her own tech-driven fashion platform“Looks,” to help consumers with Black-owned brands and stylists with deep data mining.
“I’m building a tech platform called Looks where we’re matching people to products using peer-to-peer engagement,” she told the outlet. “I think it’s super important because no one solved the problem in fashion yet.”
This is the latest offering from the serial entrepreneur following the co-founding of management consulting firm Fayetteville Road, a company founded alongside Brittany Hicks, a fashion buying expert.
“We wanted to find an organic way to gather Black women in retail tech so we launched a brunch series that eventually grew to span the US,” Hicks explained to ESSENCE in a July 2022 interview. “Then, after so many people asked about data mining and e-commerce support, we realized that launching the firm was the next best step.”
Looks will onboard 4,000 stylists and 1,200 brands have already joined the platform according to a report by AfroTech.
“Black people do engage in something called conspicuous consumption…That means that we spend more on our clothes so that we can fit into a certain genre or so that we can be seen a certain way,” Couch told the outlet. “While many people frown upon this, I took that simple behavior, and I wanted to create a platform where we’re rewarded for it.”