Diarra Bousso, founder of DIARRABLU, returns to share how AI is helping her reinvent the operating system of fashion. She explains how generative tools are not only streamlining production and eliminating waste, but also fueling creative joy, all while enabling her team to sell non-existent products, manage operations with scientific rigor, and experiment at scale. Diarra also opens up about her personal transformation, from surviving a traumatic accident to building a business rooted in learning and self-discovery. The conversation explores the deeper implications of designing with AI: who gets to be a “real” designer, how creativity and integrity intersect, and why fashion education needs to evolve.
Diarra Bousso returns to Beyond the Prompt to share how she's reprogramming the fashion industry using AI, math, and a relentless spirit of experimentation. From selling AI-generated products before they exist to cutting out waste and wait times, she walks us through a radical new approach to design and operations.
She explains how her team uses scientific rigor to test marketing ideas, create on-demand collections, and rethink the traditional fashion calendar. Diarra also opens up about the origin of her experimental mindset, which began during a year of recovery after a life-changing accident, and how that philosophy now shapes her leadership.
The episode wraps with reflections on sustainability, mental health, and what it means to build a joyful, human-first company in the age of AI. Diarra shares how she’s using AI not just to scale her business, but to reclaim her time, and why her next venture might bring these tools to creators everywhere.
Key Takeaways
Website: diarrabousso.com
DIARRABLU: diarrablu.com
00:00 Intro: AI-Driven Fashion
00:13 Meet Diarra Bousso: Founder of DIARRABLU
01:43 The Power of Experimentation
02:00 A Life-Changing Accident and Recovery
04:40 Embracing a Culture of Experimentation
06:13 Scientific Approach to Business
09:48 Empowering the Team
15:03 AI in Fashion Design
18:36 Revolutionizing the Fashion Industry
28:09 Traditional vs. Digital Fashion Models
32:18 Embracing AI in Fashion Design
32:49 Collaborating with Retailers Using AI
35:06 AI's Role in Prototyping and Design
36:58 The Future of AI in Creative Industries
39:14 Navigating Resistance to AI
48:10 Operationalizing AI for Efficiency
52:18 Balancing Innovation and Personal Well-being
57:19 Debrief
📜 Read the transcript for this episode: Transcript of How The Worlds Leading AI-first Fashion House Flips The Cash Flow Equation with Diarra Bousso
[00:00:00] Diarra Bousso: I'm selling something that doesn't exist based on an AI image, based on a product that doesn't exist just based on raw materials and votes. You're basically paying me for something that doesn't even exist. I haven't even made any investment on anything. It's like pure cash. Hi, I am Diarra Bousso. I'm the founder of DIARRABLU, a fashion company, and today I'm very excited to talk about how I'm using AI to grow liquidity, to improve productivity sustainability, to optimize for joy, and to really think about what it looks like to update the operating system of the fashion industry.
[00:00:36] Jeremy Utley: So Diarra, you have the distinguished position of you're the only, the second guest we've ever invited back. Okay, so
[00:00:43] Diarra Bousso: what, wait, was the first episode that good?
[00:00:46] Jeremy Utley: No, the first conversation was amazing. Favorite. That's the of reason why you're back favorite.
[00:00:49] Diarra Bousso: Yeah, exactly.
[00:00:50] Jeremy Utley: Hello. Hello. That's why you're back is what he said.
But here's why you're back, because I've had the privilege. Henrik knows this, or if he doesn't know what he's about to know it. I had the privilege of continuing to learn from Diara at conferences, at community meetups and things like that, and Dara's pace of learning. Henrik has only accelerated. It's remarkable.
It's remarkable. I think the first time we spoke with Diara, now maybe a year ago, a year and a half ago, we talked about her being the founder of the future. And I think one of the things that's really remarkable is the rate of learning. She's a perfect example of how you have to ratchet up the rate of learning.
She's demonstrating how much faster the founder of the future needs to learn. So to me, that's what warrants DRIU coming back for a second time because it's just what you're doing is incredible. It's so inspiring. So can we start with experimentation? 'cause I know that's kinda the lifeblood of your, you've actually told me privately you consider your life to be an experiment.
Maybe start there, your life experiment philosophy.
[00:01:54] Diarra Bousso: Yeah. I mean, I think. That philosophy actually started 12 years ago. As you know, my life completely changed, and I shared a story with Jeremy when we were playing pickleball a few months ago, but I used to be on Wall Street, and then I had got into this crazy accident and lost my memory, and then I was in this recovery phase and for six months I was just drawing and painting and doing things to be busy.
But I was experimenting with basic stuff. Like I dream of something at night and I wake up and I do it. And that's the experiment is is the dreaming. But it became a job description. For six months, I learned how to train myself to dream, and it was like I'll be dreaming of a beautiful photograph of a flower, and on the next day, either with my crutches, I'll go to the garden, take a picture and post it on Tumblr, or it was just this like very nice self-fulfilling way of just experimenting things like, am I gonna be able to do this small thing tomorrow?
And then once I did it, it felt really good, and then I would do something else. But that's how my recovery went until I learned how to walk until I learned how to remember things. And that's just the like Cliff Notes version, but. After that experiment or very difficult phase, I addicted to this idea of just trying things regardless of the outcome and just like, you know, whether you manage or not.
Like there are days when I would make goals at the time and it's like, I'll wake up tomorrow and I'll walk all the way to my parents' room and surprise them and I would wake up and I wouldn't be able to walk because I'm paralyzed actually. Like technically I'm like learning to walk again. But it wasn't a failure.
It was like I'm not there yet. But it was always adding yet afterwards, like I can't do it yet. And the yet became my little magic trick for everything. So anytime I faced anything difficult after that, you know, six months later I could walk limping a little bit. But then I fully recovered after like a year, and I started this whole journey of like discovery and experimentation.
It wasn't really clear I was where I was going. I was like fashion, art, education, math, all the things I liked. And it was just a matter of, let me try this thing for a week. Let me try this thing for a month. And I was just trying things. I spent five years doing that where it's like I, me just book a one way ticket to Malaysia and see what happens.
And I would just do that and then I would get to Malaysia and I'm be like, I don't know anything here. Let me post on Facebook on my wall, a status update and see who's here. And then someone would respond and be like, oh, I'm here. Come visit us. I did that and visited like so many countries, some of them I stayed for three months or after them.
I stayed for one week and my parents supported that because they were like, she just recovered from something difficult. She's in her twenties, like whatever. After five years they were like, you need to get your life together, like more money. Your 401k is finished and you cannot just, yeah, you need to do something.
I'm like, mom, I'm way popular on LinkedIn 'cause I'm sharing my experiments and I'm getting all this press. And people think, oh cool. She's like, yeah, but you have no money in the bank so you need to get a life. And that's why I went to Stanford. But um, but yeah, this mindset kind of now is, you know, embedded in how I run this company.
And I trying, at first when I just started, it was just me and like my mom. My family was helping me and the first people I hired. I don't think they fully understood this way of working because there's no idea of failure. Like sometime, I mean, I do, um, I keep people very accountable. Like we, we have KPIs and we wanna meet them, but the, the conversation and the philosophy around things is experimentation.
And it starts from any level. So we had a junior marketer, and I remember recently she had proposed something about TikTok, and I'm like, okay, what are you testing this month? And, and it's, it's shocking for them that I'm giving them so much freedom. I'm like, yeah, tests, but don't waste too much money. Like you have to make them small, but you, you can learn whatever you're saying.
Like, oh, we need more founder content is DR. I'm like, cool. Here's a iCloud folder from my phone. Give me your iCloud that add you to it. So all my photos of what I'm doing every day, like just now, I was doing my makeup while you guys were here. That was intentional. 'cause I want them to post it on TikTok and see what happens of me doing my makeup right on the podcast because like, do we want, we want real genuine founder content from you.
So I'm like, okay, here's a folder. Do it and do it for a week or two and show, show me what is, what are you testing? Now it's like, we wanna test if people like your founder content. I'm like, no, that's not, that's too vague. Like, what exactly are you testing and what are you measuring? So now everybody in the company thinks that way.
So annoying. 'cause they feel like we are an lab running experiment. And I use this scientific language with everyone and it's, at first I can see how it's just like so nerdy and lame. But now they're all used to it and like whenever they say something, you'll hear them crash. Oh yeah, let's test it small first and show the r.
I'm like, cool. It's not even about me anymore. It's just like, test things, learn.
[00:06:13] Henrik Werdelin: What I also like about using the, uh, scientific approach, my wife is a molecular biologist and she taught me the phrase of non-viable, which is sometimes when she done stuff in the lab and they have protocols, right? So they basically have like a little recipe where they like put stuff in petris, you know, circle it for 30 minutes, look in the microscope and see something happen.
More complicated than that. Then sometimes, uh, molecular
[00:06:39] Jeremy Utley: biology with Henrik Warland
[00:06:42] Diarra Bousso: as you're talking, I'm thinking patterns and art.
[00:06:44] Henrik Werdelin: But what was cool is like she was, sometimes she, she come back and they go like, you know, how does this experiment that you're, that's nonviable. And you know, it wasn't about failure.
It wasn't about like, it was just like, try how a thesis try it didn't work out. Next thing. Right. And I really start to use that also now in entrepreneurship because it's just such a beautiful non-judgmental way of thinking about way doing stuff. Yeah. Is just, yeah. A bunch of experiments. And some of them works and some of them doesn't.
[00:07:06] Diarra Bousso: I love it. And I think for me that was a mindset I had, but I didn't know it was a thing. I, if I switch screens, do you see it?
[00:07:14] Henrik Werdelin: No. Okay. But I'm wonder what kinda experiments you're doing now. I'm like, if I'm experi, I'm sitting here with like, with I have a balloon in my hand. She's like, okay, new experiment.
[00:07:24] Diarra Bousso: No, I think, I think for me it was like the mindset around it. Like I was doing these experiments in like just because, just how I was thinking. I didn't know it was this thing. And then I read this book called Tiny Experiments. And it's by unclear accounts. And it's basically this approach that when you wanna do something in life at work or whatever, if you approach it as an experiment, there is no failure.
'cause when you're in the lab and you run an experiment, it's back to what you were saying with non-viable, right? You find the results and they either match your hypothesis or they don't. But when they don't match your hypothesis, you don't go back to your lab partner or your team and say, oh, I failed.
It's just an experiment. It's just data. So that approach made me feel like validated in this way of working because sometime I had major in imposter syndrome, especially when I was hiring people who are way above me in like experience and fashion industry knowledge or supply chain knowledge. And like I sound a little chaotic to them where they, it it comes across as, I'm not like visionary or I'm not a, a leader because yes, we have our goals and stuff, but I'm always fine tuning things and shifting them a little bit based on what we learn along the way.
And for some people I've had to let them go because when we do an experiment, we get non-viable results. You have to take action. You have to change course. Some people don't like changing course and they like being on top. You've hired me to make decisions. You set the vision at the beginning of the year, this is what we are doing.
And then when you wanna change course, they look at you like you're this chaotic, inexperienced, young leader who doesn't know anything.
[00:08:51] Jeremy Utley: Can we talk for a second about that drk? Because I think actually there's something there, because this word experiment can have different connotations, and one connotation is it's just an experiment.
Just like shrug your shoulders and no biggie. And if it doesn't work, cool. You know? And that is the non-scientific, but colloquial meaning when most people say experiment, they aren't thinking about rigor. You know, scientific rigor. Yeah, they're, they're thinking Try without regard to the consequences.
It's a little experiment, you know, I think there's something really important there, which is, it's not frenetic and it's not unorganized, it is rigorous. There is accountability. So how do you bring the rigor? How do you ensure that at a high speed of learning in a high experimentation environment. You are harvesting all of the learning from experiments to inform the next step.
'cause this is a critical distinction from just a willy-nilly throw spaghetti at the wall, which is not what you're advocating.
[00:09:47] Diarra Bousso: Yeah. I think it was very important for, when we define these experiments, uh, I'm always using the word, what are we testing? I'm like, open to suggestion, and I think I've empowered the team to come to me with ideas.
And I remember, I, I was like, I am supposed to be your CEO, but like, I need you guys to manage me, so I need to manage up. And you tell me like, we set the goals and we set all of these things, but you actually, I'm at your service and you need to manage me for what you need from me to do your job. Because I remember when I first started, right after Stanford, right?
I was teaching and then after school, I started the company. But I was really struggling with management because I was trying to tell everyone what to do. So I was micromanaging everyone, but I had no life. I was consistently telling people, it's like I'm telling people to go to the airport, but I'm calling them the Uber.
I'm putting their suitcase in the Uber. I'm not taking, like, it was just, I was acting like Google Maps. I was just not working. Versus this time I'm like, I'm, I'm gonna, I'm gonna tell you I need to get to Japan. That's the goal. You figure out how to get there and tell me what part of the trip you need me for and if you get lost, I'm here.
So that's, that's kind of the metaphor I've given them. And you know, I dunno if you wanna route it from plane and do you know, S-F-O-J-F-K and JFK Tokyo, I dunno if you wanna do it by car and at some point you're gonna need to cross some bridges. I don't know if you're gonna build some bridges where they are not whatever you wanna do, but I wanna get to Japan by this time and in this way with these results.
So there are always specific results. And then as the team reports, or when I have my one-on-ones with people and big strategy meetings, people share ideas and we have these metaphor of like the road they're taking. Like what are we doing next? Are we, okay, we're in JFK now, where are we going? How do we get to Japan?
Sometime you're like, sometime we find out we don't wanna go to Japan anymore. And that's very hard for some people because it's like, we've been doing all this work to get to Japan and now we realize the treasure is actually, I don't know, in Florida. Can
[00:11:27] Henrik Werdelin: I ask another question on the, when you set these things up.
Some people also have a difficult time coming up with stuff and I very much agree there's like a subtlety of people also using this thing. Oh, I'm just experimenting with like you're experiencing dumb stuff. It isn't just experiment to experiment. It is you experience in smart stuff, you know, and new original stuff.
Have you found a good way of making it easy for people to come up with the tests that are better than just the average? What DBT would suggest?
[00:11:56] Diarra Bousso: Yeah. A lot of people on the junior side, oftentimes, I'm not gonna lie, I help them with this test because they know what they wanna find out, but they don't know how to test it.
So like I know like for example, we have a junior marketing assistant and she's like, I've given her the Pinterest. She's like, really Junior? She has finished college and this year I gave her the Pinterest account. 'cause I, I dunno, I don't take pictures that seriously, but it's actually very serious and a good source of revenue, but it's not like I'm not putting money behind it.
So I was like, you manage the Pinterest and every week at the meeting, at the marketing meeting. You have to speak for five minutes in front of all these higher leaders, all the marketing team, and share with us what you're learning on Pinterest. So in the beginning, she would come to these meetings and share things and it choose very focused on the fanciness of it.
Like her presentation and her slides were perfect and it was so beautiful, but the substance was not there. And I had to be like, it's cute what you've done. I can see you spend time, but I'm not really learning something I didn't know from this. And I want you to come to the team, teach us something we don't know.
And that made her think about it different come to, I'm like, we know you've been on Pinterest. We know it's gonna be pins of me or the models in the dresses. Tell me something. I don't know. It wasn't even about experiment. It was just to tell me something I don't know. So it was more, more like, how do I dig and find something not obvious?
And it pushed her to think differently about trying to impress us with slides versus really, really digging into something that's not obvious. So the first thing she said was, the way we caption the pins, whether we link them to a landing page or a product page, affected performance. I didn't know that.
So then she brought that into the meeting. She was like, for the next few pins, I wanna see how that works. I'm like, what about you decide which hypothesis you wanna make? Which do you think works better to link the pin to the landing page or to the product page? And she said the product page. 'cause people know exactly what they wanna shop for and they want the pin to just link to it.
Like, okay, so let's test that. She still didn't understand what I was asking her to do. 'cause they're so used to like serving you a final product and impressing you. And for me it was like, you're gonna impress me when you bring me things where I can ask follow up questions because that mean you're telling me something new.
And, and that became a new way of thinking.
[00:13:59] Jeremy Utley: Okay. So folks who are just sidebar for folks who are listening right now going, wait, isn't this beyond the prompt? Aren't these guys? Wait, wait, wait. Ally into ai.
[00:14:06] Diarra Bousso: We went, we went off topic a little bit. Sure. No,
[00:14:08] Jeremy Utley: no, no, we didn't. No, I'm, uh, what I'm doing is I'm level setting here, Dr.
Because there is a shared passion across the three of us, certainly around ai leveraging AI to 10 XA hundred x your team, your organization. A necessary precondition is if you don't have an attitude and an environment that supports experimentation, you're already, you're fighting with one hand, so to speak.
Your AI fluency and proficiency is going to be incredibly diminished if you don't have an attitude around smart, clever, rigorous experimentation. Right. So I wanna shift because I know you have a portfolio as any experiments or does you have a portfolio of experiments? Yeah, I wanna at which, which is a good pun by the way, in this environment, 'cause you're a fashion designer.
Fashion designers have portfolios. I'm a former finance guy, finance people at portfolios. Henrik is a, is an entrepreneur. He has a portfolio of, so it's like, it's like the word that connects our three worlds right now. What I wanna do is talk about your portfolio, not of designs, but of AI experiments.
Would you show us or kinda walk us through. A handful of experiments that you have commissioned on your team to drive insights with AI or to drive outcomes with ai?
[00:15:18] Diarra Bousso: Yeah, totally. It's become, now the thing like that people know I'm constantly testing them on something, not testing them, but testing something.
So like people are excited about it now.
[00:15:27] Henrik Werdelin: So I
[00:15:27] Diarra Bousso: get emails on people like, Dara, you gonna love this? And then they start show me something they tested or that they've done, whether it's the operations director showing me a new approach, he's trying to build this new demand planning tool, but there is no demand planning tool that can plan our demand because we, we are on demand, like all the tools exist to plan finished goods.
And he would share with me either on WhatsApp, voice notes or in email, like things that he's thinking about and he wanna test. And I just encourage them. And he's now taking his AI course because he's so fascinated about all the learnings and this is not something I've encouraged at all. He's so excited that he's doing it.
And when he joined us, he didn't even know Chad d pt, uh, a year and a half ago. Same for the marketing team. They're consistently now. I used to be the one making them like a guide of everything I'm doing so that they can learn and copy from it and like get inspired. Now. They're the ones doing that. For me, it's like the student teaching the teacher.
I feel like I'm their student now because they've gotten so excited about AI and texting that I'm constantly getting videos and photos and recordings of things. And some of them, I have no idea what it is, but I'm just so excited that they have this mindset. But some of the big experiments, I'm gonna share a few that have had a huge impact.
One of them happened in October, and as you know, I used a lot of ai. I mean before ai, I used to use math to generate prints. So this idea of generative design was like how I started my brand as a math teacher and I used to generate this print so I would have options like this is a math generated print I did when I was a teacher and I would put them on avatars and put them on social media and just ask people to vote just so I would know what, what to get some signal as to what works.
That would allow me to order the fabrics and save a story in the factory. And then maybe six months later when I'm doing a collection, I would use those fabrics because I had signal and that that in itself was already groundbreaking. Like that was,
[00:17:09] Jeremy Utley: oh it's radical in an industry where you need 18 month lead time.
Exactly. I mean to cut it by, you know, to cut a year out, it's gotta be blasphemy to most industry insiders.
[00:17:19] Diarra Bousso: Exactly. So that was like already groundbreaking. We took it a step further last month and I think if I really execute this at scale in my life, it'll probably change. Because even the team when it happened, I got all these WhatsApps of like, Dara is probably having her like aha crazy moment.
'cause they understood the impact. So the factory has all these wool fabrics. We are resort wear brands. So we sell summer clothes, swimsuits, beautiful dresses. September and October are worst months 'cause it's cold and people are not buying beautiful floor or vacation. They're going on vacation. And we only have one design.
A poncho is like a rap cape thing. That's the only thing we have that's semi-warm. Everything else is floral and and summary. So October is always the worst month and everyone knows it. And we use that month to do strategy and other things to keep ourselves excited. 'cause revenues are always down on the website.
And for our wholesale partners, they don't buy much from us from fall because our collection is not fall appropriate. So early in this once in October, I was like, morale is low, sales are declining. It happens every year. I'm not freaked out. I know this is happening, but I know for the team that it is a small company, you see those things and you freak out.
It's like I need to find a way to motivate people but also to use, get liquidity because you know, you, you are fashion and capital intensive company, you need cash flow. So I was just like, okay, I'm gonna look at the factory in Senegal. And I identified the fabrics is the highest inventory. Like we don't have any finished good inventory at there, blue.
But the factory in Senegal has fabrics 'cause that's what we, we, we had before and I used to test the fabrics before I produced them, but. We have these wool fabrics that have been sitting there for three years because people don't come to us for wool. So I was like, I need to move these fabrics fast, but I don't know what to do with them and I don't know what to make out of them.
So I just used AI and, you know, into my journey and created a few visuals of the capes we already know how to make, but in those wool colors. I made you slides for this. So basically, uh, on the left, those are real capes we were selling last year in brown and black, so I know that people like capes, but we have a lot of excess fabric in the beige and in the blue in the factory.
And it was like October week one. Web sales are declining and I need to figure out exactly what people like, so we can sell it fast. I have a, a proprietary tech app I built that creates this workflow so I can see things on avatars fast, which I developed a long time ago, but now with AI I can see it on sketches and then put them on humans.
Uh, so I put them on these AI models on the right and put them on Instagram stories and within 24 hours you can see the cream cake. 82% people said they would buy it. And the blue one has 73. And that's significant. Like in my, in, in all the experiments I've run before, anything above 70% has a tendency to be a bestseller.
I used to have like 4,000 people votes. It's the same statistical significant, even if it's 30 people voting, like it's insane. And I have so much data on this, so I, you know, I call up the, the head of operation and I'm like, we need to put this cream cake online like asap.
[00:20:20] Jeremy Utley: And you don't have this pro, you have, you have wool bolts of wool fabric sitting in Senegal.
But there's no actual product per se. No, there's no product. There's raw material. Yeah. And
[00:20:29] Diarra Bousso: this is the first time ever. And I think in this whole industry, like I think I need to talk about this in a bigger way, that I'm basically doing a sample sale of raw materials disguised as products. I'm just trying to sell the fabric and get it out of the, the factory.
But I know that in the form of this wool cape in beige, it's gonna do well. And the blue one too. But I was very betting on the beige. For the first time before I would do this, and I would buy the fabric on, sit on it and six months later I'll go photo shoot and make a sample, whatever. I just use this AI photo and put it up on a, on a sample sale website we are working with and, and people bought this cake based on this picture.
So for the first time, I'm selling something that doesn't exist based on an AI image, based on a product that doesn't exist, just based on raw materials and votes. And then the results here. Okay, so we looked at the sales from October 16 to 28, and the top seller is that cream clip. And the second one is a black one, which we knew from last year was gonna be a good one anyway.
And this is the top seller
[00:21:24] Henrik Werdelin: across all your different products,
[00:21:26] Diarra Bousso: everything including dresses, everything. Like I have over a hundred SKUs and this was the winner. And then I get the breakdown of where, like the cities, it's New York, Brooklyn, Miami, Los Angeles, Washington, Lynchburg, like I have this, this all the states that it was purchased from.
So people buy the cape. Then it goes into our supply chain, like when you order burger at the restaurant and now the artisans are making them. So people have started receiving their capes now, but it was all produced once we got, so it's like a pre-order model, but on steroids because I'm, I'm getting you, you basically paying me for something that doesn't even exist.
I haven't even made any investment on anything. It's like pure cash.
[00:22:07] Jeremy Utley: Can you diara for folks who, so, uh, you know, some of us may be more familiar with the way fashion works. Really briefly, could you paint the picture for somebody who doesn't know how fashion works? When do you make cash outlays historically, what is your kind of cash position look like relative to this one?
Because this is hugely different, but folks can't appreciate it unless they know what the norm is.
[00:22:27] Diarra Bousso: So in the fashion industry, just to give you an example right now, like September was fashion week was spring 2026, I started the traditional development. If I'm following the fashion way, I started the development in April.
March. So since March I've been spending money to produce prototypes for September. I'm talking sampling fabrics, photo shoots, models, sessions to get my, I don't know, 50 different SKUs. And then in September what happens is that you fly to market. It's called market week of fashion week with a suitcase.
You find a showroom on agency, like a trade show, and you hang all your samples there. And for a week, buyers are coming in, Bloomingdale's, Nordstrom, the small boutiques from the corner, all of them. And they look at this 50 samples you have or however many, and they start making their selections and I'll show you photos 'cause I did it in September.
So they do that for a week. Then you chase them down for four weeks to beg them to remember you to place an order. And if you're lucky, they'll place an order by the end of October. By the way, you still have no cash. Then you're gonna deliver the order to them in March and they'll pay you 60 days later.
So by the time they pay you, it's been like a year of you putting cash flow out for prototyping for the market, for the travels, for the agency, for your team. For the production order they made in bulk and then they'll pay you probably sometime around June. 'cause like some of them, most of them are like net 30, net 60.
So if you just wasted 14 months of cashflow and in this model I did not do that. I got my cash in a week.
[00:23:54] Henrik Werdelin: Where are you on then during like is this now the new default for you? Like is this, why not just do all products this way?
[00:24:02] Diarra Bousso: I'm learning. The problem with this is that there's not a big acceptance yet in the industry with AI models.
So I think I need to educate people. 'cause the moment you, you, these people bought these capes thinking they are real capes on real people. I mean they, they don't know, right? So there is something around AI that's really stigmatized in fashion where people just freak out that it's taking people's jobs.
The moment anything AI is mentioned, people are like, oh my God, it's taking people's jobs, taking people, photographer are losing their job, designers are blah, blah, blah. I think I wanna, first, I wanna document this properly and really share it with a very prominent fashion outlet and show how you're not taking people's jobs.
You're giving them jobs that matter. Like my team that weekend or that week worked in dignity. They produce something that is not going to a landfill.
[00:24:51] Jeremy Utley: There's not only kind of the, the waste element, there's also this sense of pride of the thing I made is out there in the world and what you're illuminating, which I didn't realize until now, is there's this, you know, the canonical example is like the t-shirt of the team that didn't win the World Series.
That ends up in some other part of the world, you know, saying that they won, right? But that if you think as a designer, that's like the ultimate waste of time because I had to make a shirt that's actually untrue and they're not proud of it. The, the total opposite is, whoa, this thing that I made people value and love, and that there's so much more, not only there's not just a reduction of waste, there's not only an increase in liquidity, but there's.
A sense of purpose for the team and to be able to then close that loop with 'em. It's really cool.
[00:25:36] Henrik Werdelin: Yeah. I think this is very profound and I think, you know, it has to be the way that a lot of goods are gonna be made. Right. You know, we at, on the bark on the dog toy side, we've done this a few times where we, the one that kind of comes to mind is, um, where we did it when the inauguration, uh, Bernie was sitting with mittens on.
Mm, yeah. And somebody kind of like whipped up that as a dog toy internally, and then the social team just put it up and saying, Hey, please convince our boss we should do this. And then, uh, same thing happened. Everybody went crazy about getting Bernie's mittens as dog toys. And then we sold quite a few of them before like they were produced.
Right. And I can imagine, like, obviously to your point, then you don't end up with a lot of wasted stuff. And these days you can produce a lot of stuff very fast. And so why not? But it's interesting, like when you increasingly, we had, uh, what's it called? Website, uh, where you could put, uh, products on and then get people to pre-buy them?
I's it Kickstarter? Kickstarter. And I think a lot of us who bought stuff, Kickstarter. Is it Kickstarter? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kickstarter. Yeah. And I think a lot of times people have now bought these Kickstarter thing and it, and they work quite a, like the thing that we had hoped, right? It was clearly a version one.
And so it'll be interesting how all this play out, right? 'cause I can easily imagine that increasingly people will just render something on Midjourney. It'll look pretty, they'll put it on Instagram, they can sell it right away, then people get the product. It's not quite what they had hoped. Now, what's so unique with this, of course, is that what people bought was good quality wool that looked the way that they had expected it to.
So then it's perfect. I can only imagine that Instagram's gonna be filled with basically made up stuff in the next few years, and you'll have to really trust that somebody like you with integrity sitting on the other side.
[00:27:22] Jeremy Utley: The, the difference is, this is very important though. The difference because I was actually thinking about that.
It's plausible that folks can generate an AI image to kind of do lead gen, so to speak, demand testing. The difference is Diara has already established all of the just in time supply chain, right? She's the only one who can actually deliver on it. So folks may be able to do the kind of, call it lead gen or or sales, AI driven sales, but without all of the ability and capability that you've already built, you really built a defensible moat to be able to now use AI in the sales.
Can you talk for a second about retail? It's one thing for you to go direct to consumer. How does this affect relationships with retailers? 'cause I know that can introduce a big difference into the, the sales process.
[00:28:09] Diarra Bousso: Yeah. I think this leads to my experiment too. This one that I share is like a D two C.
It was actually a sample sale dropship website. So it's kind of like D two B2C 'cause they have the volume and that's how we could sell these so fast because they have the traffic. And we've listed it there for like a week. So that's my second experiment. And this was also the idea of like retail, like made for you versus traditional wholesale.
So I explained to you how the industry works and the calendar brands show their collection six months before in New York or Paris or Milan or like these big capitals. And they show it to buyers in these trade shows like trade shows or basically Faires. And you have like a middleman in between they said agency or broker or somebody who has the relationships and they invite all the buyers and buyers will come and touch the samples and experiment with them and and see what they like.
And you chase them for a month to get them to remember you. 'cause they're gonna see like a hundred plus brands that week. So it's really painful. And I actually was always against that model this year. I decided to try it again. Experi. Because I wanted to really understand it. 'cause I went for my brand with no fashion background.
And I always use this like tech first approach. So everything was always digital. All our partner stores were like, I mean we work with Nordstrom, Bloomingdale's, all the big retailers, but it's all digital in this model. And I, I've negotiated with them to accept, to work this way. Like it took us a year and a half to get Nordstrom to convince them to allow us to do on demand.
And I remember when they called us they like, you have tens of millions of inventory on all this side. And we were very worried and I was like, oh, none of that is real. Don't worry. It's experiment. It's like hypothetical based on raw materials. And it converse in a formula based on the fabric it converse in inventory.
But actually nothing, don't worry about it. Like,
[00:29:48] Jeremy Utley: Hmm.
[00:29:49] Diarra Bousso: Wow. So I totally broke their
[00:29:50] Jeremy Utley: models. That's hysterical. Yeah. And
[00:29:51] Diarra Bousso: they were just mind blown And like that's, that was the model that I ran. Not because I knew any better, it's because I didn't know any better actually. I started from blank slate and I just came in with what I thought was logical.
Little did I know it was actually super interesting. But this year I was like, I don't understand how the other way works. So I'm gonna go to these market weeks, I'm gonna go to fashion week, I'm gonna go meet people in person. I'm gonna do the sampling. So I was doing these experiments in parallel. On one side, I'm doing my usual fail fast experiment, AI generative way on the other way.
I'm doing it the traditional way while still doing the calendar and testing what that looks like. And the results are incredible. And this is what it looks like when you go in person. So you can see I'm like carrying suitcases from San F New York full of clothes that took four months to prototype. Then we go to this fancy penthouse, we set them up there for a week.
We act all cute, see every day we smiling all day. It sits like a massive waste of time if you ask me. But I wanna do it. And I even had my mom fly in and and come in and see it. Wow. I love the human part 'cause I get to meet the buyers, pull 'em all over the world, shake hands with them, see how they think, how they touch things.
And as I'm washing them from afar, I'm like, everything they're doing can be done with technology. Like they're looking at a dress from another brand. 'cause it's like 10 brands in the same space. And I'll hear them say something like, oh, it would be nice if the flower could be placed here. It would be nice if this could be pink.
And I'm like, literally, I could just press a button and show it to you. But I'm not, I'm just watching. So I'm seeing all these things I can solve with technology and the speed, which they have no idea because they reject it and they just think it's bad. So like they don't even open their mind to it. And then what happened is, I, I did this.
So these images are some of the items that were ordered when I first market in June. It was in resort. For the resort collection. None of this is real. I mean, I made the prototypes in reality and I did the whole formal thing. But these images are not real. These models are not real. And these dresses are not real dresses on a off shoot.
But these things were bought by the buyers. So I have a very important retailer that I bought you. You
[00:31:49] Jeremy Utley: showed them that. You told them that, Hey, just so you know, you guys just bought stuff. That's not real.
[00:31:53] Diarra Bousso: Yeah, I didn't, I told 'em that afterwards. I didn't tell them, but afterwards I told them, 'cause like whatever this, this first dress with the shawl, it was the best seller across the board.
This image is not real. And the same buyers came to the fair and saw these dresses in person, but I showed them these photos and I was like, these photos, after they bought it, I was like, these photos are not released. These images are not real. But you bought these things once you bought them. I went and got the real, these are the real photos I actually took.
So I'm not getting rid of people's jobs, I'm not getting rid of models. I'm still shooting with doing my campaigns and all the stuff, but now I'm doing it with the stuff that people bought. I'm not doing, I'm not shooting a hundred things and wasting everybody's time and wasting all these resources. I'm shooting and photographing and capturing and doing the dreamy, magical stuff with the real deal that has signal, that has demand.
So this is what the retailers bought and I'm like, well, because you bought it, we made it for real. You know, this is a photo shoot. It is real person, real model. And I went through this whole journey to understand it. So while I was doing that, the experiment was, I found another retailer who's very forward thinking and I didn't tell them I'm going to Fashion Week.
I told them I'm gonna design for them and they should just tell me what they're looking for. So they gave me their mood boards and their colors, and I can't mention their name yet, it will come out in the spring. But they gave me all of their information of what they're looking for, the trends, the colors, and I created, this was some of the things I showed them.
This is all ai, but before I get here, I use my own proprietary tools to like do my sketches and my processes, whatever I built before. That's really fast. And then I rendered it on ai. And they were just voting, so like, it was very simple. I gave them a Google slide. I'm like, put a green dot on everything you like.
And this is like the big buyers, the merchandisers people who have the same power as my Instagram. Like one person is probably like a thousand people because they're constantly buying stuff and selling stuff and they understand. So I developed a collection for them. The results were insane. It was 30 x volume.
So I eat this whole headache. I went to New York. I carried the suitcases, I rented a hotel. I, I paid this agency. They take commissions on sale. We've had a hundred plus buyers come in from all over the country. We did secure some really good sales like that I'm proud of. In terms of like relationships, the volumes were very small and the difference between that way of doing things versus when I just reached out to one retailer, just one and told them, I'm gonna design what you want.
Give me the price architecture you like so I can source the right materials for that price point. Even the colors and the prints. And I'll come up with examples and this is just one, but I gave them like 30 plus options because this ai, there's no limits. Can I
[00:34:20] Henrik Werdelin: actually go on question on all this? I mean like I, it's obviously incredibly cool and it seems to be the logical way of doing stuff within technology right now, as I'm sure you'll say, nobody's doing this yet.
And I think we all know that this will be the way that it will be done at one point. It has to be, could you maybe walk us through the steps of what will need to happen? And I guess mostly it's like, when do you think. That the humans in the loop that are currently in the loop will kind of get around to this.
Is it as simple as somebody like you will have to have massive success and then everybody will copy it? Or do you think that increasingly people are kind of getting their head around that made to order like this is the way forward?
[00:35:06] Diarra Bousso: I think you, there are definitely a few key players in the industry who are thinking this way and you know, I saw last week that OpenAI went to the CFGA, which is the console of fashion designers America, and did like some presentation just to show how you can use AI to prototype and like those things that most designers reject.
'cause early this year I went to speak at fashion school at FIT New York and I talked about my word from the math standpoint. So when I say I use math equations to generate prints, everyone is mind blown in collapse. The moment the word AI comes up, people's faces, you can see the switch of disappointment and grief immediately.
It's like the concept is the same is doing, using a generative process that saves you time to get something faster and then decide if that thing is good enough before you actually move forward. It's literally, I'm just trying to fail faster than everyone else. That's it. But if it's done with math and, and generative anything that sounds not ai, it's mind blowing.
The moment the word AI comes in, it cheapens the whole thing. And literally that's how it's branded. It's like it's cheap and it's not artistic and it's like a button and it's whatever. So I think that mindset really has to shift because you could use all the AI tools in the world. You will never get these images I just showed you because there's a lot of work behind it that comes from taste, that comes from being a designer, that comes from being an artist, that comes from culture, that comes from my upbringing, that comes from this understanding design based on my brand's, DNA.
And before I get to this render, I've probably got like 20 steps before where I had a sketch, I drew something, I use art. I have an app to render it quickly on like a sketch based version and then I can put it in chat GPT or OMI journey or any tool to get it on a person. So people just assume you press a button.
But I think the AI hides all the creative human work that gets you to get dressed like this with a print. This print was actually one of my math prints from before, so this, if you wanna give me credit because I say I'm a mathematician. Sure. It's still here.
[00:36:58] Henrik Werdelin: I really think this point is, is very profound and I, because I think it's not just in fashion, I think it's anywhere else.
Uh, I'll give you an example. I'm building this other product and we were having the debate this week of basically we will go over to, let's call it like a vibe coded kind of first principle where it used to be when you build software, often a founder, assuming it's not a non-engineer founder, will kinda like articulate whatever the problem is for the customer and then articulate some kind of way to solve it.
Then you'll often go through a product head or something like that and then they'll spec some features out and then it'll go to the engineering team. The engineer will build it. Then there'll be some, you know, testing and then you'll go back. Right Now, obviously increasingly the non-technical founder will be able to vibe, code a feature really fast and then saying, Hey, this is, this is what I'm looking for.
And then you'll all be spaghetti code and it'll be all these things that you know, which is true. And then he or she will also just break it immediately by writing a pro, the middle. Obviously the bot will kind of like ruin it and then they won't necessarily know how to get it back. There's all this issue with it, but I do think there is a very fair argument that you'll see many companies now software companies being built basically by non-engineering folks.
Yeah, that would be the prime kind of originator of features, and then you'll have to have engineering people involved to make sure that it works and does break the load. I am curious on how fast that change is gonna be. You know, I think you're articulating it very well, obviously for fashion. I think I see it in technology and like engineering and you know, we see it with pet stuff, with bark and stuff like that.
But there's this real, real tense that I think you are describing, which is very real. Like people get not just slightly upset, people get angry about, they get angry. The whole premise that basically non craft people Yeah. Can now go out and create craft. And I think that no, wait, but that's
[00:38:53] Jeremy Utley: not, hang on, that's not what Henry, uh, correct me if I'm wrong, Diara, you're saying the very people who can create the craft.
Resistance you are saying it's not just push a button that nobody in the world can just, oh, just make a blue dress. It involves think that's subtlety, tons of experience. I think that is a subtlety nuance. I think
[00:39:14] Henrik Werdelin: that people, people are the, and you know, obviously there are, tell me I'm wrong, when D goes out to a fashion school and there's a bunch of designers there, I think there is, and I think in fashion it's a little bit different.
'cause they're often, the fashion designers, also the founder. And then, you know, they have the ability to make the drawings themselves. But for many people now you'll have somebody who have great taste, who have like the buyers that you mentioned, who knows about colors, who knows about patents. But what they do not know is how to whip up a piece of paper and then draw the thing.
And they will now be able to become the fashion designer because they'll be able to instruct a bot to kinda like produce this thing. And I, I, I, as we see that in many areas right now, that that is. Hugely confusing and kinda like create a lot of agitation for people because now it can be, people who don't understand the original core craft are now able to be the originator and the producer of this kind of creative development.
[00:40:13] Diarra Bousso: Yeah. I think what you're describing is exactly, it's both that and what Jeremy describes. I think you have people who don't have the craft who can now be creative directors. That's the word. And you know, every fashion house has a creative director. That's the face. Like most designers, actually, many creative directors are not designers.
Like if you look at the big houses, like right now, Louis Vuitton's men's creative director is Farrell Williams. He's an artist, he's a musician, but I'm pretty sure he didn't go to fashion school or sketches. But his vision and his taste is what makes him the creative director. And then he hires a bunch of designers who are actually technical and sit down and draw things.
And there's all these different types of designers and you have the, the actual like. Silhouette designers. You have the technical designers, you have the textile designers, and those jobs are still valid as a matter of how they're even more relevant now because the volume of what you can create is so high, but you need somebody to execute it, to make the dress you're gonna receive match the, the idea you had.
And I think that's where people are losing the plot, is that I said this to the students too. And back to Jeremy's point, I also met a designer recently, very talented designer, like he does luxury dresses that are like $20,000. And I was asking him how his business is doing, and he said, cashflow is tough because sampling is expensive.
So I said, why do you have to sample dresses that cost $20,000? Like, that sounds so silly to me. And he is like, well, these high profile customers, they wanna see something that they can touch and understand and, and they decide if they want the beating on this side. And I'm like, would you be open to using AI to do that?
And he's like, AI can never replace me, girl. And I said, no, no, no. It's not replacing you. It's gonna replace all that wasted time that you show them what they don't like. So the real thing that they will like will come from you, but you're gonna learn what they don't like faster is versus wasting time, making all these prototypes they don't like.
And then he, he passed as second and he's like, oh. I'm like, yeah, it's never gonna replace you, but he would replace all the waste that you're doing in terms of time, beads, resources. And he's like, well if you're gonna teach me Sure. And I'm like,
[00:42:07] Jeremy Utley: Diara, you know who's gonna replace him? This actually, this is this.
We're saying the same thing, but coming from at it from different angles. Yeah. Henrik, it's true what you're saying, that there's a democratization element. Yeah. And it's also true what Diara started out by saying, which is that the people who are primed to leverage the technology the most, who are primed to be the most augmented are ironically the most resistant.
Yeah. And what you should have said DI to this guy is AI's not gonna replace you. Now, someone like you who's AI native is going to be the person who sells the next $20,000 trust. If you don't disrupt yourself for sure, someone who's AI native will, but you, you have this, you know, $20,000 dress designer as all of the requisite contact expertise.
But lemme throw like a,
[00:42:52] Henrik Werdelin: a counter to that argument during 'cause I, I agree, but I cannot, you know, as we know, some models work basically where they output something and then you have a version model that basically kind of decides, right? And so the way that we create, for example, imagery of people who look at something is that the model will create like Ilian versions and then another model will say that ones of like a human.
Now it's not difficult to imagine a world where I let out a bunch of agents that just design stuff and not just one design here. And I don't have tastes in, in the same way that there have. So I'll just create a thousand of them and then I'll put them on Facebook and Facebook's model will basically put a few of them in front of it.
So then suddenly something will kind of happen because there will be a thousand different versions and one of them by chance is going to resonate with some people maybe. Yeah. And so there you could have a scenario where suddenly you have taken the human element of it because you basically just created kind of like the math model of saying if you create a thousand dresses, then you'll find customers on the internet if you show it to enough people.
[00:44:03] Diarra Bousso: Yeah. And I, I think that's valid. The problem is that if you make that really at scale, then the whole world is gonna be creating a thousand dresses that are gonna start being very similar. 'cause you know, all these AI models kind of think the same way. And what's gonna stand out is that craft person who knows how to create a dress that is not yet trained because they are thinking outside of the box.
And I think back to Jeremy's point, if that person amplifies themselves in ai, with ai, they would be unstoppable. So I think when I went to the school, that's what I was telling them. I'm like, AI is not gonna replace you. It's gonna amplify you and make you so unstoppable. Because now everybody has the same tools.
But your advantage of having gone to fashion school or having taste or understanding creations or trends makes you even, I feel like AI is a level playing field, but like it only amplifies what you are already,
[00:44:50] Jeremy Utley: it's, it's going back to the Ironman spacesuit, we talked about this with Nick Thompson, the CEO of the Atlantic.
It's like your underlying strength matters. Henrik Funda, you and I both know this. Yeah. And if you can, and it's so AI can 10 x anybody, but do you wanna be 10 x on your a hundred pound bench press, or do you wanna be 10 x on your 300 pound bench press?
[00:45:08] Diarra Bousso: Exactly.
[00:45:09] Jeremy Utley: And if you, if you're able to do more, if you're able to process more, if you have more taste or whatever, then you are a person.
Now by the way, a human, a human who's a hundred, you know, pound bench presser, who gets 10 XD will outperform the 300 pound bench presser who refuses, who resists the technology.
[00:45:27] Diarra Bousso: And I think that's what's happening. What, what, that's what they are looking at right now. You have the very talented designers who are like thousand found bench pressers.
Yeah. And then over time, if they don't upskill a use technology to their advantage, the a hundred pound bench presser can be 20 x in front of them.
[00:45:43] Henrik Werdelin: Yeah. You know what's daunting on me? I think what people, when they get scared, they get angry. I wonder if people just getting angry. Uh, it's basically the imposter syndrome that gets them scared.
What they're really saying is I might not have the originality that allow me to use my taste to pick something that is truly original. And so what I have right now is the moat that it's technically difficult to do this and when everybody quote unquote can do it, then I might just be average yoker and there for somebody else.
And that makes me angry.
[00:46:18] Diarra Bousso: Yeah. And I think there's also another element, and this came up in schools. It was the fact that the students were saying like they were very happy about the examples of how I'm using ai because I shared the whole sustainability and waste and like a decision. It's more like an operating system for me.
It's not replacing creativity, it's like operationalizing it so that it makes sense. And a lot of the students were saying what was hard for them at first was that they go to school for four years to study something and that somebody who didn't do that training can just go press a button. And I could understand that frustration.
Like I think it's, it's very logical to feel that way. And I think the reframe was now you have four years ahead of those people of knowledge that if you go and do the training of what they do, you're gonna amplify even more than them. And that's kind of how I got them to be excited to be like, okay, how do we start?
And I think it has to be, back to your original question, what's gonna make this industry shift? It has to be at the very beginning. It has to be in education, like the teachers at these fashion schools need to amplify. And I met a teacher at FIT, actually who's trying to do that. She created a course called AI and Ethics in Fashion Design.
You know, she asked me to come and support a bit. I didn't really have the time, but I really liked what she was doing because a lot of these teachers are also from a older generation where the sketching and the craft, they even reject. Like some of them reject using computers to render things even outside of ai.
'cause the craft is about the touching and the art and the magic. And I think it has to start at the schools because that's where people's minds get shaped. As a former teacher, what happened in the classroom is what you believe in. And if I think if your teacher can amplify you and tell you, Hey, you are amazing as you are, imagine how much you can amplify that awesomeness.
And nobody can take that from you. But yes, it's like the person who goes to the gym every day and trains is gonna outperform you eventually, no matter how fit you are, if you don't do anything about that fitness. So I think it has to start there. And I also think in terms of the industry. I'm thinking about it both ways.
As a matter of fact, my last experiment, which I wanna share, is the one that I'm working on right now, which is how do I operationalize all the things I've been learning with JBL and all these experiments and turn them into a product and a separate company that allows other brands to just leverage. And I've been really thinking about how do I do it in a way that's still human, that feels, uh, empowering, that has the right values, but it's also built by the right team.
And as I'm thinking about it, I'm like, if I do this, who am I proposing it to? Is this a tool that I sell to, like a nor show or Bloomingdale's because they have the volume and they can make the noise? Or is it something I go and bring on TikTok to all these small creators who are starting out and give them an opportunity to just launch a fashion brand from their bedrooms?
And I've been thinking about it a lot and I'm quite be honest. At some, I'm still like ideating on the best way and who needs it. Because the established brands already have their systems. They're traditional, old and wasteful, but that's what they know. So my way of testing this is now I'm like, this experiment I just showed you when I 30 x my wholesale volume with this retailer.
I wanna use that as a case study to other retailers and see who bites and then use that as an opportunity to have this conversation with them just like I'm having on this podcast. And really share, just so you know, these are the experiments I've been running. I know all the pain points they all have.
It's always, it's all cash flow. Everybody's trying to guess what people are gonna want in six months all the time, which is the sweetest thing. 'cause people don't even know what they're gonna want tomorrow. But like you make decisions, billions of dollars, lots of waste based on guessing what people are gonna want in six months.
And in six months later you realize you are a little bit wrong and things go on sale. Anytime you see a sale. It means people were wrong with the guessing we
[00:49:44] Jeremy Utley: were wrong. We, we, for a model was we
[00:49:47] Diarra Bousso: 30% off, we're very wrong, we're gonna go 50%. We are super raw, we're gonna go on clearance, 80%. So I wanna this conversation and see who's resonating with it, kind of, and understand how to shape it.
But I, I genuinely in this last five years of doing this experiments and learning, and I think back to what Jeremy said, I'm a sponge and I just absorb everything. I'm seeing the problem and I'm also very much aware of the solution 'cause I've solved it for myself or I'm solving it every day and killing and like hurting myself sometimes.
But I wanna solve it at scale now. And I think that's my new challenge. Um, yeah.
[00:50:21] Jeremy Utley: Professor Ive, Ian raised, so as everybody knows, jar was my former student who's now my hero and professor. And I'm asking you, may I take the mic as a professor for a moment here, Diara. 'cause you're my teacher now. I wanna flip the roles and maybe it's obvious to you, I can't help but say like, go.
Will you go back a few slides here? Even in your presentation?
[00:50:39] Henrik Werdelin: Yeah. Let's see. Because
[00:50:40] Jeremy Utley: I wanna, I wanna show you something. Um, go back, back, back, back, back to the, to the poll. One more. Oh, I think or, yeah, there Diara. I, I hope I'm gonna give you a gift right now. What is the equivalent of doing this to make that decision?
Should you give this tech to Nordstrom or to TikTok creators? I wonder if you already have the instincts and ability to pre-sell and to pre gauge the market To answer that question.
[00:51:17] Diarra Bousso: Oh, you saying to Paul
[00:51:22] Jeremy Utley: Diara, you already, you already know how to do it now, just do it for a different product in a different market.
[00:51:30] Diarra Bousso: Oh, okay. You just, okay. Now I feel like I need, I need to turn the camera off and start making you happy. Then. I'm just having an aha moment, but like it's being captured on camera. It doesn't look pretty
well. Okay. Jeremy, we need to, we have a call at 2:00 PM so we're gonna talk about this.
[00:51:48] Jeremy Utley: All right. All right. Hey, I'm just saying once you know.
[00:51:52] Diarra Bousso: Yeah,
[00:51:53] Jeremy Utley: it feels like you have the keys to the answer to this question actually in your hand, uniquely. And you hadn't thought about connecting the two, we could go on and on forever, obviously.
Is there anything that we didn't cover? I know you, you had prepared a few examples, but is there anything I would love, maybe we could end on this 'cause it's an interesting personal note and then we should wrap just to out of the interest of your time and also listeners, we've heard from folks they love it that these conversations usually don't go beyond an hour or so.
That's something we try to stick with, but tell us about burnout, mental health, sustainability. Because I think for a lot of people when they hear you can do more, you can do more, you can do more. It's like, oh, that sounds like a recipe for disaster. Yeah. Can you talk about how you maintain peace and health and vibrancy in the midst?
You've also, I think on our last conversation you mentioned how you're pulling more all-nighters than ever before. 'cause you're just so stinking excited, right? So what does it look like? What does sustainability personally, not just from a fashion brand perspective, but from a human perspective, what does that look like in the age of ai?
[00:52:53] Diarra Bousso: I think it's been proved quite a bit. You remember last time we had a conversation, I was telling you how I'm not sleeping and I'm so excited. It was like I'm on a creative high all the time while also having real operational job to do. And it was really hard to navigate. On one hand, I'm excited, I'm testing all these things and I feel like I'm unstoppable.
But on the other hand, my brain is just tired and I'm like overloading the team with all these experiments and no structure, and they're all over the like, and this year I was like, you know what? I want these systems to actually work not just for the company and for the industry, but for my own health.
And this is the first year in my life that I feel like I'm a healthy, balanced person. Like I, I've been actively working out more. I've lost 15 pounds this year, building muscle. I'm eating better. I'm traveling less, which is before I used to associate traveling with like, I'm killing it. I'm adrenaline on a plane on this and that.
I've said no to so many things. And last time I missed the podcast because I was pulling an all-nighter doing a photo shoot in South Africa. Before I would wanna be everywhere, and I'll show you how I use AI to, to get more sleep now, is that I, I, I find really good people around the world who can do, for example, the creative stuff.
Directing a photo shoot requires me to be there. Like I'm the creative director. I know how they wanna pause, but now I'm like, I'm gonna leverage these people who are way smarter than me at executing. 'cause I'm not a good executor when I'm in the creative space. And this was the villa we got in South Africa and I was directing the shoot and I was like, I can pull an all-nighter, which is not the healthiest thing to do.
Or I could waste two weeks of my schedule flying to South Africa, being off in terms of time zone, having to mess up my diet, my exercise, be off with my work. And then this for photo shoot. So I chose all-nighter was better, so I still did an all-nighter, missed the podcast as a result. But this is how I was directing it.
I was literally drawing six stick figures in different places of the villa with the pauses I wanted, and then using my AI renders of my models. This is not real. To like explain to them, this is how I want her to stand, where this is how I want her to pause when she sits with the stick figure. It was very silly, but it worked.
Look at, these are the final images. Um,
[00:54:55] Henrik Werdelin: wow.
[00:54:55] Diarra Bousso: There's way more. But like, just to show you an example, I did not go to South Africa. I directed this shoot in 10 hours from my bedroom, and AI was helping me live, give them exactly what I wanted in terms of pauses. And it wasn't even a Zoom call, it was on WhatsApp.
So I, I'm a WhatsApp group. There's a person in the shoot who's meant to be the WhatsApp person, and she's just live taking photos of what's going on and sending it to me live. And I'm just plugging it into this mid journey Sha GBT, creating videos, movements, and just giving them the feedback. Wow. But I didn't have to mess up my sleep or get on a flight.
Yeah.
[00:55:25] Jeremy Utley: That's so cool. You know, it reminds me of something that Virgil Ablo said once he was talking about designing from his eye photo.
[00:55:34] Henrik Werdelin: Yeah. He was saying my eye photo. Yeah. Yeah. He's saying
[00:55:36] Jeremy Utley: my eye photo is the way that I design. And he said, I'm constantly, I'm just marking stuff up with my finger and I'm sending it to the team.
[00:55:43] Diarra Bousso: I'm, I'm like, what? Uh, if you think about it, what is design? It's translating a language of things that you see for other people to like construct and show to the world. And I think we overcomplicated sometimes with all these steps, like the magic is in the seeing, is in the vision. Nobody's gonna ever replace that.
Like, you can go to South Africa and drag the shoot, your images will be completely different from me. But I realized that my, my biggest blessing is my ability to dream and see beauty in things that people might not see. But now I get to capture that in a healthier way. And yeah, I'm like, as much as I can automate things, delegate them, train people to do them better and just kind of have more, I'm not gonna say ease.
I work a lot still, but Amber, I'm not calmer and I prioritize my health way more than I used to before. Like, I'm not trying to do everything all the time at all times anymore. And I find it possible with a lot of these AI tools have helped me quite a lot and helped my team too. So, yeah. I'm excited for the next chapter.
I'm excited for this new company I wanna build. I'm terrified because I know how hard building something is, and I'm really trying to think how do I build something now differently where I optimize for? I mean, now of course you wanna optimize for the typical things that companies optimize for, but how can I also optimize for joy and like ease peace while doing these things?
Like how do you build the next big company but differently? That's, that's been my big philosophical questions lately.
[00:57:12] Jeremy Utley: And, and we'll have you back on in another 18 months and you can share that probably
[00:57:15] Diarra Bousso: about a new company.
[00:57:17] Henrik Werdelin: We'll see. Brilliant. Okay. Jeremy Otley.
[00:57:21] Jeremy Utley: Dude, Jeremy Otley. That's Henrik's. Uh, Jeremy, uh, Eleanor Rigby remix.
Gray album, what would you call it? The, okay, so if Danger Mouse created the Gray album as the mashup between the White album and the Black album, you're more of a green guy than, than the Black. So like what would your mashup be? Would it be the Lime album? I don't know.
[00:57:40] Henrik Werdelin: I'm thinking about that. I, I'll take the Lime album.
I think that Back to Business though, professor
[00:57:48] Jeremy Utley: Diara, I mean, first of all, I love students who become heroes and Diara certainly fits the bill student who's become a hero, just incredible founder. I mean, when we talked to her 18 months ago, she was ahead of the curve, and I think she's only stayed farther ahead of the curve.
Now she's just, she's accelerating, which is really exciting. And to hear some of her more recent updates were super fun. You know, one, one word that she used, which I loved and I wrote down to talk with you about later, is the word yet.
[00:58:17] Henrik Werdelin: Yet she said that at the beginning.
[00:58:19] Jeremy Utley: Right. I can't do that yet. And that I have found is a hallmark of a growth mindset.
You talk about this whole, the classic kind of growth versus fixed mindset. One of the ways it's manifested, as I understand it, is the use of the word yet implies someone has the expectation of progress. And I just love that she started there because so much of her personality and potential gets unleashed by that sense of she is someone in motion making progress.
And I think for anybody who feels stuck adding the word yet to your statements, especially about your abilities, I can't launch a fashion design company yet, is a totally different posture. Anyway. Yeah, that's, that's one word that I think has enormous uh, power.
[00:59:08] Henrik Werdelin: I mean like we talk a lot about experimentation on the podcast.
I think sometimes. It's, as we talked about in the conversation here, sometimes it's misused a little bit because it's kind of like becomes the excuse for mediocre kind of like ideas and, and a little bit like also just, you know, I was just testing. So I think there's two things which if we double click on the experimentation part I thought was interesting.
The one thing is that she kind of talks about how she's helping specifically some of our junior folks with the origination, which I think is interesting 'cause I think there's been like this kind of business practice for many years where it's like, you know, I'll just set overall goals and I'll just let my team do that thing.
Right. And I do get the sense that you is like active in her brainstorm. Mm-hmm. And probably even has like a strong voice I would imagine too. But on the flip side, I think she also is aware of her abundance of ideas and you know, she talks about how. She's like, I don't know if she said they used all over the place, but she used kind of terms realizing that she kind of has a lot of ideas and a lot of stuff going on.
And so she asked her staff to help manage output. Right? Which is obviously a very kind and not very forceful approach. And so I thought that was an interesting dualism in her approach to experimentation, which is, is this okay to be somewhat explicit with some of the ideas that you have for what people should experiment with?
But there's also kind of like a stand where you can say, but I realize I also say a lot of different things and maybe I'm just saying all this 'cause it resonate a lot with me. So you have to manage me back when I come with 10 different things that you can't kinda like run experiments on. Maybe just manage me back and saying, you know, Hey, here's the two things I heard that I like the most from all these ideas you had.
And those are the ones I'm gonna test for next week.
[01:00:51] Jeremy Utley: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I love. The fact that the culture of experimentation leads people to be excited about sharing ideas. She mentioned, you know, her uh, operations lead who's going, oh, you gotta see this. I'm creating this tool. But having that leading with that kind of attitude has a ripple effect on others.
That they start sharing work in progress. They start sharing ideas that are maybe outside of their lane. And it has a really fabulous impact on culture. When the founder is the kind of person who says, you actually manage me. It allows other people, I think, to have that attitude too, which I thought was cool.
I saw
[01:01:29] Henrik Werdelin: this beautiful episode. I'm a huge fan of Anthony Bodin and he have a episode where he goes to Denmark to visit Noma. And this is an old episode, obviously, 'cause he's not been here for a while. And in that episode there's a scene where the after final close of the restaurant, which probably is like 11 o'clock, midnight.
Every week all the chefs at the restaurant stay back and they show different things that they have, like different ideas. They have like experiments and they do it in front of everybody else. And then they talk about them andrene, who owns the restaurant, then critiques it. And what was also beautiful is after that.
So one is like this whole kind of idea, we are all here to try to come up with great things and do great work. Now, at one point Anthony, Ben says, what are going to do? Are, you know, are you then gonna put like if somebody does so really well, are you gonna put it on the menu? And he goes like, of course not.
He goes like, what do you mean? He goes like, well this is their dish. This is not my dish to put in my restaurant. This is their dish. Mm-hmm. To put on whatever they wanna do. Right. Which I thought was like such a beautiful thing that they were not out there to mine new ideas to just make his restaurant better.
They were here for the intellectual interestingness of trying to come up with great stuff and then when they came up it was there to keep, which I thought was like such an interesting stuff. It's beautiful. I thinks beautiful. Also, the idea, which cannot made me think more about, as business owners, we should probably allow people to experiment more with their own things.
Like have their own side project they're working, which they should be allowed to be just theirs, because that by experimenting something that is just theirs, they probably lean even more into it. And then I'm sure they'll come up with ideas then that is useful for the business, but doesn't have to be that direct idea that they kind of were, we're talking about.
Right.
[01:03:18] Jeremy Utley: You know, one of the things that I wrote down, this is kind of like a mantra, but I wrote down Your life is your preparation and there's something to the conversation we were having about folks being intimidated maybe by how fast younger people are getting up the learning curve, or we talked about the experienced designer who's gone wait, you know, the the person who can lift 300 pounds, but somebody can only lift a hundred.
If AI is gonna be 10 X-ing them, they're gonna be able to outperform and. DI's comment that you've already done the hard work. It learning how to collaborate with AI is actually not the hard work you have done. The thing that can't be replicated, you've got, you're able to bench 300 pounds right now.
Imagine what will happen if you get unleash. And I just, I really liked that that kind of, uh, that felt like a very uplifting statement. Like, your life is the training. You've been training now, use AI to get the supercharge use, use AI at the uplift, the augmentation. That was really cool. And the last thing I, that I wrote down that I thought was kinda interesting is just this validating of the novice perspective or the kind of naivete.
As you know, I'm a glutton for kind of origin stories of innovation. And so many great origin stories come from the person who doesn't know that it shouldn't be done that way. And Diara said, that's one, one thing she said is like, I, I did this because I didn't know I wasn't supposed to. You know, and you said, I mean, it seems like that's the way that everybody should do it.
And she goes, well, that's not how the industry does it. And the only reason I did it is because I didn't know you weren't supposed to. Mm-hmm. And I think that that just vindicating and validating sometimes not knowing is really important. So is, you know, acquiring knowledge and apprenticeship and all that stuff.
It's these things they seem to contradict, but they don't. That your naivete or your fresh perspective is sometimes a tremendous advantage to see an existing system in a new way. And there are tons of examples of this throughout the history of innovation. I just love seeing it before our eyes with how she's disrupting the fashion industry.
[01:05:24] Henrik Werdelin: The last thing I added, which I think is building on that, is this kind of like world that I think started way back in making an easy landing page day where, I mean, I remember the first bar box we did that was just a photoshopped kind of box, right? Like there wasn. Really a bark box at the time where I went out to a dog park and tried to sell it to people with my co-founders.
Now obviously now you can just render that very fast. You can be the website, all these different things. And so I wrote this post a long time ago about morality versus virality, about where do we as founders feel we have a responsibility to the people that we are asking to serve the customers. Mm-hmm.
And what's nice about this example is that she already have the raw material she already have, to your point, the system in which she can make this thing come to life. And so she feel very comfortable that she can actually go out, sell it, and then actually deliver on it. But some people without her ethics might not kind of feel like what?
And so I am curious and scared and inspired by this whole next two or three years where I think the internet just will be filled. All this stuff that is rendered. We all will have to figure out how we navigate in this world. Mm-hmm.
[01:06:44] Jeremy Utley: Mm-hmm.
[01:06:44] Henrik Werdelin: Like as founders for sure. Because we will need to, we'll get tempted to just
[01:06:48] Jeremy Utley: stewardship.
Yeah.
[01:06:50] Henrik Werdelin: And then I think there, as we talked about and premise of the book and all that stuff is relationship capital. Like authenticity and our authority and being a trusted partner is something that's gonna matter a lot. Therefore, hopefully people will gravitate to it because the internet will also be transparent.
So if you're somebody who just renders stuff and then don't deliver, uh, you're, you're gonna have a short career.
[01:07:11] Jeremy Utley: Well said Hendrik. Well said.
[01:07:14] Henrik Werdelin: Sounds like you wanted to stop the podcast. Well said. As in like gonna I go now.
[01:07:19] Jeremy Utley: No, but I, I love, we gotta keep that part in 'cause that's hysterical. But the, um, you know, it's funny Rik you saying that is collaborators mind at Stanford for years especially because like you're, if you're in the middle of a lecture or whatever, sometimes you can lose track of time.
A, uh, shorthand that we used to use on stage was if while the other person is speaking you say, that's really interesting. What that meant was, shut up. We've gotta keep going. You know what we do. And so you'd be like, and like you use it a few times, you'd be like, that is really interesting. Like, like, you know, that means to be quiet, right?
[01:07:58] Henrik Werdelin: We have at Pre-Hype, uh, which was just this kind of incubator product studio I worked in for a long time. We had this phrase called Elmo, which I think I ponder my Philip kind of came up with, which is short for enough, let's move on. Oh, that's good. And so he would just go like, you know, I am gonna throw an Elmo here.
So in a very kind of non-threatening way was basically like, please shut up. That's goods. Good. That's good. There you go. We're Elmo. We're El mowing it. Until Same. Thank you, Elmo.
[01:08:24] Jeremy Utley: Until further
[01:08:25] Henrik Werdelin: notice. So until then, thank you so much for listening in and as ever, do you wanna do that backing today, Jeremy?
Begging, begging, pleading, begging for likes and subscribes and all that.
[01:08:37] Jeremy Utley: Yeah, just do it. Do the thing. Do the thing that you know, by the way, I did, I did notice on Apple Podcasts, we got a rude, like a comment recently, which I would love to bury. So maybe we say the code word is bury the rudeness, and if you've made it this far and you haven't ever written a review, we need your help to bury the rudeness that is currently at the top of a Apple podcast.
[01:09:06] Henrik Werdelin: And with that,
[01:09:07] Jeremy Utley: bye-bye. Bye-bye.