Description

In this episode, Fashion Roundtable's Tamara Cincik chats with the inimitable Karen Binns - Fashion Director at Fashion Roundtable. 

Hailing from Brooklyn, New York, Binns has worked in the fashion sector for over 20 years. Her career began as muse to legendary artist Jean Michel Basquiat and she continued to make a name for herself across fashion, celebrity and music, with a stellar roster of clients all over the world.

Binns previously worked on designer Andre Walker's Paris catwalk shows, and is the creative director for Tori Amos. Binns has consulted for designers including Ashish, Maharishi and Kanye West, and sits on the British Fashion Council's Diversity Steering Group. 

For Fashion Roundtable she has represented us at many events, including at the Victoria and Albert Museum, GFW, Port Eliot Festival, SHOWstudio for our Fashion and Brexit panel, as well as writing seasonal reports from Fashion Weeks. This summer she hosted our Black Lives Matter and the Fashion Industry webinar , where speakers included former Bottega Veneta Creative Director Edward Buchanan. 

For this episode we pick the threads of this conversation and more; Karen and our founder and CEO Tamara Cincik talk about: 

• Discrimination in light of the US Presidential Election.
• The impact of the Black Lives Matter movement on fashion. 
• Breaking into the creative industries. 
• Representation and inclusion in the fashion sector, what it means to be a black woman in the industry, our on-going work since we launched on this and why she is an agent for change. 
• How Karen hosted the first-ever warehouse party in Manhattan.
• Her ones to watch talent list of new generation designers and her hopes for the future.

Note: Karen's thoughts and comments on this podcast are entirely personal.